Robert Ludlum's(TM) The Ares Decision (Covert-One) Read online

  The rusted steel had barely touched his skin when the wire was wrenched from his hand and he felt himself being dragged back toward the line of vehicles.

  17

  Prince George’s County, Maryland, USA

  November 16—1448 Hours GMT–5

  WHAT IN GOD’S NAME is going on in here?” Fred Klein said, coming to an abrupt halt in the doorway. Covert-One’s massive bank of computers and the cinema-like screens built into the walls were all dark, their power cut off at the supply.

  Jon Smith finished winding tape around a garbage bag covering the security camera above him and jumped from the chair he was standing on. “Marty’s the best computer guy on the planet. But he also has an overdeveloped sense of curiosity. You don’t want him in your system.”

  “It’s just a videoconference, Jon. Our system is completely compartmentalized and our security is state-of-the-art. I’ve been assured it’s unhackable.”

  “Trust me, that’s like waving a red flag in front of a bull to this guy. The only way to be sure he doesn’t learn about you and Covert-One is to go low-tech.”

  Klein shrugged and entered the room, examining Smith’s face with a strange intensity. “How are you doing, Jon? What happened to Rivera was horrible. But you understand it wasn’t your fault, right?”

  Smith smiled weakly. In truth, he wasn’t so sure. Maybe he shouldn’t have taken Klein’s call. Maybe they should have given the young SEAL more time before running in there with a bunch of questions. Maybe he could have been a split second faster.

  “Yeah, I’m fine, Fred. Thanks for asking.”

  “Okay. Are we ready, then?”

  “Just about.”

  Smith sat at a small table and opened a brand-new laptop, covering the built-in camera with a piece of tape and connecting it to one of the room’s oversized displays. He slapped a 3G stick in the side to get an Internet connection independent of the one Covert-One used and pressed the power button.

  The login screen that he expected didn’t appear, replaced by a full-screen image of the evil clown from the Stephen King movie It.

  “Where’ve you been, Jon?” It said. “I’ve been waiting around for, like, a year, now.”

  Smith frowned as the image morphed into the puffy, disembodied face of Marty Zellerbach. How did he do this stuff ?

  “Sorry, buddy. I had a few things I needed to take care of.”

  “What? Cleaning your oven? Are you kidding me? Have you seen this video? It’s crazy, man! And I know crazy.”

  He and Zellerbach had known each other since grammar school, when the sickly boy had first displayed both his stunning intellect and the mental instability he continued to struggle with. They’d formed an unlikely friendship, and ironically Smith’s early training in hand-to-hand combat came from defending the helpless genius from jocks who mistook his mania for disrespect.

  “Hey, I can’t see you, Jon. What’s up with your camera?”

  “Must be on the fritz.”

  The face on the screen turned perplexed. “I’m showing everything working, but I’m just getting a blank screen. Hold on. Let me fix it.”

  “It’s not important, Marty. You know what I look like.”

  “But there shouldn’t be anything wrong,” he whined. “I can figure it out. I’m not going to be beaten by some crappy webcam. Not now. Not ever.”

  “Marty! Focus, okay? We’ll fix the camera later. How’d you do on the video?”

  “The video. Yes! The video. Horrifying! Fascinating! Like nothing that’s ever been recorded before! Can you imagine—”

  “Did you learn anything?”

  “What are you talking about? Of course I did. So are you living in Prince George’s County now?”

  Klein’s eyebrows rose and he glanced nervously at the bags covering the security cameras. Smith pointed to the 3G stick and mouthed “cell tower.”

  “No, I’m just here for the afternoon. We were talking about the video?”

  “Right.” Zellerbach’s head faded and was replaced by a stream depicting a blood-soaked woman running down one of Rivera’s men. The images had been significantly sharpened and were even more horrifying than they were before. Smith had to fight the urge to turn away as the woman began beating and tearing at the struggling soldier.

  “Did you see how fast she overtakes him?” Zellerbach said. “It’s like Praman was moving in slow motion.”

  Klein shot him a stern look and Jon shrugged helplessly. He hadn’t told Zellerbach who the men in the video were or anything else beyond a broad idea of what he wanted analyzed. The drawback to hiring the best information guy in the business was that you had to live with the fact that he was going to figure out things you’d rather he didn’t.

  “Yeah, Marty. It’s hard to miss. I figured he was maybe injured or just really tired from the hike in.”

  “Au contraire, mon frère. That guy was screaming fast. Did you know he was one of the best high school wide receivers in the country? Could have gone to any college he wanted to and probably ended up in the pros. Cheerleaders. Supermodels. Lamborghinis. But for some unfathomable reason, he wanted to be a soldier.”

  “Lord only knows why anyone would be stupid enough to join the army,” Smith said wearily.

  “I’m not even sure the Lord’s figured that one out. The bottom line is that woman’s going too fast.”

  “What do you mean ‘too fast’?”

  “I mean I ran simulations, and her speed just didn’t make sense.”

  “Hard to accurately simulate the real world.”

  “Completely untrue, but I knew you’d say that, so I created a three-D map and handed it over to some contractors. They reconstructed it as an obstacle course on a piece of land I own in West Virginia.”

  “You did what?”

  “I had that piece of jungle built.”

  “You’ve only had the video for three days.”

  “It’s like they say in car racing. Speed costs money. How fast do you want to go? By the way. Where do I send my bill? Directly to you?”

  “Sure, Marty. That’d be fine.”

  “Okay. So then I hired WVU’s top sprinter to run the course. I gave him as many practice runs as he wanted, then had his best effort recorded.”

  “And?”

  A grid of green lines overlaid the video, and it restarted, the sprinter being represented by a stick figure. He was slightly faster than Praman but noticeably slower than the woman.

  “Can’t be right, Marty.”

  “I agree. It can’t be. But it is. That rather corpulent woman, running on uneven ground, seems to have just set the fifty-meter world record.”

  Smith chewed his thumbnail for a moment. This wasn’t what he’d wanted to hear. “What about the blood?”

  “It’s not painted on, if that’s what you mean.” The screen faded to black for a moment and an image of a shirtless African man running directly at the camera came on.

  “Look how the blood is laid out on this guy—starting at the head, flowing uniformly down the torso, and collecting around the waistband of his pants. I turned up the heat in my living room and ran a humidifier, mimicking the reported conditions for that day in what I’m fairly certain is Uganda, then covered myself with blood and ran around.”

  Smith’s brow furrowed as he pictured a half-naked Marty Zellerbach wringing a prime rib over his head and then prancing around with his inhaler. It was a surprisingly disturbing image.

  “You know, this physical experimentation thing is really exhilarating, Jon. I thought you microbiologists eschewed computer models because, as a group, you’re not the sharpest tools in the shed. But now I’m starting to see the appeal.”

  “I’m so happy to hear it. What did you learn?”

  “That when you start to sweat, the blood just thins out and then it’s gone. I’m certain now that they’re bleeding from their hair.”

  “Maybe cuts on their heads? Some kind of ceremony?”

  “Sorry, Jon—no
way to know. I cleaned up the video as much as I could, but we’re at nowhere near the resolution we’d need to see little self-inflicted wounds. Call me before you do something like this again and I’ll build you some decent cameras.”

  “Okay. Anything else?”

  “Just one more thing,” Zellerbach said as another video started running in slow motion on the screen. “Look in the back—the tall guy with the sunglasses falling on his face.”

  Smith watched the man drop to the ground and skid to a stop, lying motionless in the dirt.

  “Was he shot?”

  “Nope—no impact. Now look at these stills and the time codes.” A collage of the man lying on the ground came up, spanning almost the entire time of the attack.

  “I compared all these down to the millimeter, and that guy doesn’t budge. I’m pretty sure he’s dead. And what’s interesting is that this is just the best video we have of this phenomenon. I counted three separate occurrences.”

  “If not a bullet, then what?”

  “Nothing, as near as I can tell. That’s what’s so weird. They just dropped dead.”

  Smith drummed his fingers quietly on the table. The mind automatically inhibited extraordinary physical feats to prevent catastrophic injury and exhaustion. That safety valve could be bypassed, but it was rare—women pulling cars off their children, people under the influence of certain narcotics, extreme fear.

  “Okay, thanks, Marty.”

  “No problem at all. If you ever get anything like this again, send it to me right away. I’ll drop everything. Unbelievable. Crazy—”

  “I will. Now I want you to delete the video and your analysis.”

  “No problem.”

  “I don’t just mean delete it; I mean write zeros to it. I want it completely unrecoverable from your system.”

  Zellerbach sounded a little put out. “Fine.”

  The screen went blank and Smith powered the laptop down.

  “What do you—,” Klein started but then paused when Smith made a cutting motion across his throat.

  “The computer’s turned off, Jon.”

  Smith picked it up and slammed it repeatedly into the edge of the desk, leaving the floor strewn with parts. “Never underestimate Marty Zellerbach.”

  18

  Prince George’s County, Maryland, USA

  November 16—1551 Hours GMT–5

  SO YOU’VE GOT NOTHING, Barry?”

  Jon Smith cradled the phone against his shoulder and looked around the office Klein had set him up in. Beyond a chair, a desk, and a pad of paper, it was completely empty—reflecting the utilitarian nature of the man who ran Covert-One.

  “I dunno, Jon. Bleeding from hair follicles is pretty unusual. Scurvy is the only thing that comes to mind, but it wouldn’t create the kind of flow you’re talking about. Are there any related symptoms?”

  “Not that I know of,” Smith said, irritated that he had to lie. Science was about the free exchange of ideas, and keeping the big picture from one of Harvard Medical School’s top people wasn’t the way to get answers.

  “Then I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “Thanks anyway. If anything comes to mind, you know my number.”

  He hung up and marked the man off the long list of scribbled-through names representing luminaries in every field from toxicology to infectious disease to psychology. And what did he have to show for it? A bunch of guesses. Incredibly educated guesses, but guesses nonetheless.

  There was a quiet knock on his doorjamb and he glanced up from the pad. “Tell me you’re here with good news, Star.”

  Her training was as a librarian but her look leaned more toward outlaw biker. It drove Klein crazy, but there was nothing he could do—she was to paper what Marty Zellerbach was to the cloud.

  “I think I may have found everything,” she said, sounding strangely despondent.

  “Thank God. I knew you’d come through.”

  “Yeah…The problem is that when I say ‘everything,’ I mean this.” She held up what looked depressingly like two sheets of paper.

  “That’s it?”

  “Sorry, Jon.” She slid one of the pages onto the desk. “Did Mr. Klein tell you about the German doctor who mentioned attacks like this sixty years ago?”

  “Yeah, but he didn’t give me any details.”

  She tapped the document in front of him. “This is a note from a Stanford professor who spent a few months working with the late Dr. Duernberg on a project in Uganda. Skip to the highlighted part—the rest is just a bunch of yada yada yada.”

  The passage was only a few lines long and discussed a possible parasitic infection that caused insanity in humans. It went on to say that the transplanted Jewish doctor was looking into the phenomenon. And that was it.

  “If Duernberg’s dead, what about the good professor?”

  “’Fraid not. Shark attack.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Swear to God.”

  Smith leaned back in his chair. A parasite. Interesting, but improbable. He pointed to the sheet still in her hand. “What’s that?”

  A smile spread slowly across her face. “The pièce de résistance. You ready to be impressed?”

  “Always.”

  She laid the black-and-white photocopy on his desk with a flourish and Smith leaned over it, reading an elegant longhand description of a tribe of fierce warriors who fought covered in blood and didn’t use weapons. Local villagers believed them to be possessed by demons.

  “Flip it over,” Star said.

  He did and found a fuzzy photo of a dead African male in traditional dress. His hair was thick with dried blood and his torso was streaked black.

  “Where did you get this?” Smith asked excitedly.

  “The National Geographic archive.”

  “Can we get in touch with the guy who wrote it?”

  Her expression turned a bit pained. “You didn’t read as far as the date, did you?”

  He ran a finger quickly down the page, stopping at the bottom. October 3, 1899. Great. The trail of dead scientists and explorers continued to lengthen.

  “Any progress?”

  Fred Klein had taken a position in the doorway, his arms crossed tightly in front of a tie that had seen better days.

  Star immediately turned nervous. “I’ll just take off and let you two talk.”

  She went for the door but Klein didn’t move, instead pointing to the gold ring in her nose. “New?”

  “No, sir. But I only wear it on Fridays.”

  To his credit, Klein managed to not grit his teeth when he responded. “Very becoming.”

  She flashed him a broad smile and ducked past, escaping to the relative safety of the hallway.

  He frowned at her retreating figure for a moment and then closed the door behind him. “Thoughts?”

  “No intelligent ones,” Smith said. “Star found a brief mention of a possible parasite that causes insanity, but no details. And there’s this hundred-year-old picture of a warrior who appears to be in a similar condition to the people who attacked our ops team. Doesn’t prove anything, though. It could just be a forgotten ritual that Bahame brought back to life.”

  “People dropping dead for no reason? Women setting land-speed records? It’s starting to look like more than a ritual to me.”

  Smith nodded. “Incredibly strange, I agree. But not completely unprecedented. Think of the berserkers, for instance.”

  “The what?”

  “They were the most feared of the Vikings. There are a lot of theories about where they came from, but it seems likely that they were carefully selected for their personality traits—maybe including mental illness—and that was combined with elaborate rituals and alcohol or drugs. The bottom line is that they displayed very similar characteristics to the people in Uganda: superhuman strength and speed, imperviousness to pain, fearlessness, and so on.”

  “So you’re saying Bahame’s just filling them full of cocaine and religious imagery, th
en setting them loose?”

  “It’s not the only explanation, but it’s sure as hell the most straightforward.”

  “What about the parasite angle?”

  Smith shrugged. “I’m not ready to rule it out. You could have a carrier that doesn’t present symptoms and lives somewhere humans don’t go very often. Then, every hundred years or so, someone gets bit or eats some undercooked bush meat and they contract the infection.”

  “So maybe it cropped up again recently—Bahame’s men tend to hide out in remote, unpopulated areas. He saw it, and now he’s figured out how to use it as a weapon.”

  Smith opened a drawer and pulled out a file containing everything they had on Caleb Bahame. He was unusually intelligent and, despite being born in a tiny, out-of-the-way village, had spent two years at Makerere University in Kampala. He had been academically eligible for a scholarship to study in London but became prone to ecstatic vision and increasingly violent. Eventually, he’d been expelled.

  After that, he’d spent some time as a drug trafficker, switching sides a number of times during his two-year stint in the business. Then he’d fallen off the face of the earth, reappearing five years later as the brutal terrorist and cult leader that he was today.

  Smith dug through the pages and turned up Bahame’s college transcript. “He started out as a biology major, but he only got through a few basic classes before he started focusing on religion. Straight As, though…”

  “Would it be enough?”

  “Bahame’s psychotic, but he’s not stupid. I don’t doubt that he’d know what he was looking at if some kind of biological agent cropped up in his own backyard. But it’s just as likely that he found some natural hallucinogenic in the jungle—particularly in light of his background in the drug trade. In the end, though, I’m just speculating. The behaviors we’re talking about are pretty sophisticated.”

  “Sophisticated?” Klein said incredulously. “They acted like a bunch of animals.”