Chapter Twenty-Four
S tone reached out to take the envelope, and Sharp sucked in a breath to stop him, but Grace hollered first.
“Don’t touch it!”
Everyone froze.
“Anthrax. Envelopes.” She nodded at a table that stood against the nearest wall. “Put it there.”
The general’s aide walked over, gently set the envelope down, and backed away with his hands in the air.
“Sir,” Grace said to him. “We brought an effective disinfectant with us, wash your hands in it.” She turned to the general. “I recommend you seal off Akbar’s quarters and work area.”
“Contaminated?” Marshall asked.
“I won’t know until I can test for anthrax, but it’s better to be safe rather than sorry.”
Marshall ordered a man to bring some of the disinfectant from the helicopter.
“What would it look like?” Sharp asked. “If there was anthrax planted there.”
“That’s the problem,” Grace said to everyone. “The spores are so small, you’d think it was a little bit of dust.” She sounded as worried as he felt. Dust? How were they supposed to fight that? With vacuum cleaners?
“General Stone,” Sharp said. “This attack could be aimed against you or whichever high-ranking officer it would require to clean up this messy situation. Respectfully recommend you leave the base.”
“Or the people behind this attack could be waiting for me to leave,” he said. “It would be relatively easy to take me out in a helicopter.”
“Not if one left before yours as a decoy.”
The general grunted and considered the floor for a moment. “Major, could this anthrax be produced anywhere?”
“I’ve been thinking about that. Some mobile labs are fully equipped for anthrax. Max is working in a portable isolation chamber in a cave at this moment. And, if you’re not too concerned with safety, all you really need is power and privacy.”
“Afghanistan is riddled with caves.”
“For a lab to be operating for any length of time, they would need to bring in fuel for generators.”
“And other supplies, as well.” Stone nodded and turned to Marshall. “Have your people review satellite pictures of the region from the past month. Look for fuel and other supplies going into the mountains, or vehicles leaving full and returning empty.”
“Yes, sir.” Marshall turned and nodded at a man, who ran off to carry out the orders.
“I’ve got a bio-suit, but I’ll need a Sandwich,” Grace told the general.
“I can have one here in three hours,” Stone said. “Colonel Maximillian organized resupply for this eventuality.”
“Excellent.”
“Until it gets here,” the general said, pointing a finger at her, “you are to report to the base hospital. You will follow any recommendations the ranking doctor might make. Understood?”
“But, sir, Akbar’s quarters?”
“There are people on base who can take care of that. Hospital. Now.”
Grace looked like she’d just sucked on a lemon. “Yes, sir.” She turned her sour expression on Sharp, but all he did was smile back. She needed care, and he was willing to play dirty to make sure she got it.
Grace saluted the general and left to follow his orders, he hoped.
“You.” The general looked at him with a scowl on his face. “You’ve made yourself responsible for the major?”
It wasn’t exactly a question, but he answered it anyway. “Yes, sir.”
“Commander Cutter was your CO and now he’s dead.” The general shook his head. “What a goddamn mess.” He looked at Smoke, March, Clark, Runnel, and Hernandez. “Is this all that’s left of your team?”
“No, sir. Our second in command, Leonard, is at the village north of here where the anthrax first appeared, with the other two surviving members of the team.”
“I’ve sent reinforcements up there and ordered anyone healthy to return here. They should be joining you soon enough.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Your job is to dog the major’s steps. Never let her out of your sight. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.
“I don’t care if she squawks loud enough to raise the dead, you men go where she goes.”
“She’s that important?” Marshall asked, his own expression sour.
“People with her skills don’t grow on trees. We’ve got less than a dozen specialists like her in the army,” the general said. “But she’s also reckless. You boys keep her out of trouble or I’ll have your asses over a hot fire. Understood?”
“Sir, yes, sir,” they responded together.
“Go,” he ordered.
They went.
Marshall raised a hand, as if to stop them from leaving. “Sergeant, I...” He stopped with a faintly surprised look on his face, as if it were the first time in his life he didn’t know what to say.
Sharp didn’t need to hear the words. “I’ll tell her, sir.”
Marshall’s face turned red, but he met Sharp’s gaze with a steady one of his own. “See that you do.”
Sharp saluted and led his team out into the sunshine.
It looked like a beautiful day. Quiet and peaceful.
He’d learned not to trust either.
The walk to the base infirmary didn’t take long, but Grace was already lying down on a gurney, a doctor and a nurse talking to her while they worked.
The nurse glanced up and saw him and his guys walking their way. She pulled the curtain to block their view.
As if that would stop him.
He flashed a hand signal at his men to stay where they were and ducked around the curtain.
“Out,” the nurse ordered as soon as she caught sight of him.
He looked at Grace.
She rolled her eyes. “He can stay. I have the feeling General Stone ordered him to stick close.”
“You sure?” the doctor said.
“Yeah, he was the first one to patch up my leg. I don’t think the sight of my underwear is going to incite him into unbridled lust.”
Someone outside the curtain coughed.
Sharp grinned, but kept his mouth shut.
“Who’s out there?” she asked.
“Who do you think?”
“All of them? Huh, I guess I scared someone pretty bad.”
“Several someones.” Including him. Sharp shook his head. “You’ve got a nose for trouble, Doc.”
She winced at something the doctor or the nurse was doing. “I wish I didn’t.”
“How’s her infection looking?” Sharp asked the doctor. “She had a fever before.”
“It looks okay,” the doctor said after a glance at Grace’s face and her nod. “I’m going to give you a liter of saline to get you rehydrated,” he said to Grace. “Keep taking those antibiotics.”
“Of course,” she replied. “Can I go back on duty as soon as that liter is infused and I’ve had something to eat?”
“No,” Sharp said. “You need eight hours of rest, minimum.”
“He’s right, Grace,” the doctor said. “Sleep is your next order of business.”
She looked from Sharp to the doctor and back, then rolled her eyes again. “Fine.”
The doctor walked away from Grace and stripped off his gloves. “Angie is going to put a new dressing on that and get the IV started.”
“Thanks, Ted,” Grace said. She looked at Sharp. “Could you hunt down some food? You should eat too.”
“Sure.”
Sharp sent Hernandez and March to get food for everyone while the nurse got the IV running in the back of Grace’s hand.
Sharp pulled the curtain aside so Smoke and Clark could join them. A few minutes later, March came back with a couple of trays piled high with sandwiches and bottles of water. Sharp took way too much satisfaction in watching Grace eat.
He was such a Neanderthal.
“March, how’s your shoulder?” Grace asked while they ate.
March paused in his shoveling of food into his mouth. “Fine. Doc cleared me for duty.”
Grace frowned at him, but didn’t say anything more.
When Hernandez came back, his face was so carefully blank Sharp knew shit had hit the fan somehow.
“What?” Sharp asked him, setting his meal aside.
“Her bio-suit has been punctured in multiple places,” Hernandez said. “It’s useless.”
“Marshall hid ours somewhere, track those down.”
“They’ve been destroyed too.”
“Fuck me,” Sharp hissed. When were they going to catch a break with this bug baker?
Grace looked pale. “Sabotaged? When?”
“Don’t know,” March answered.
“General Stone and Colonel Marshall need to know.”
“Fill them in, Hernandez, then get your butt back here.”
Hernandez saluted and jogged away.
Sharp studied Grace’s expression. She was staring into space, her mind obviously working.
“What next?” he asked her.
“I think we can safely say someone doesn’t want any of us to have the proper isolation equipment available.”
“Agreed.”
“If it were you,” Grace asked him, “revenge on your mind, and you wanted to kill a bunch of American soldiers, including a general, what would you do with a baseball-sized amount of anthrax spores?”
Scary question.
“I’d probably put a Plan A and B into motion. Plant some inside the base and throw some at the base.”
“Plant some,” she muttered under her breath. “Like in a workspace or gathering place?”
Sharp considered that for a moment. “Nope, if it were me that lost my family and I was wanting to kill those I decided were responsible, I’d take out the highest-ranking person in the organization by making sure my weapon was targeted at him. The throw-and-run type of weapon, I’d use on the grunts taking orders.”
She nodded. “I agree. Please send someone to tell General Stone and Colonel Marshall not to go back to their quarters until they’ve been checked for spores.”
“Yup,” Sharp said, nodding at Clark.
“Next, we need to evacuate the base. Get all the grunts out of here.”
“Hmm, I don’t think that’s going to work, sweetheart,” Sharp said.
“Why not?”
“If everyone leaves before the designer has released his pestilence on everyone here, he’ll just change his plans and target another base. One we might not know about. Now is the time to find him and stop him. Before he initiates his attack.”
“How are we going to do that?” She shook her head. “It won’t work. I’m not willing to sacrifice a few hundred soldiers like they’re nothing more than fish bait.”
“That’s not what I’m saying. I want to hunt this fucker down and kill him before he has a chance to do anything else.”
“Hunt him where?”
“That’s what all those satellite pictures are going to help with. We should be able to narrow down the possible locations.”
“And if you’re wrong?”
“We move on to the next location.”
“What if that’s wrong?”
“Grace,” Sharp said, smiling at her. “This is part of the job we’re actually good at.”
“Why don’t I feel reassured?”
He shrugged.
Clark came back at a run. “I was too late.”
“What?” Grace asked sharply.
“Marshall went to his quarters. When he opened the door, a light bulb fell on the floor and shattered, releasing a cloud of fine dust.” Clark stopped to take in a breath. “He closed the door right away, but some of the spores could be hanging around, right?”