Page 32 of Breaking Danger (Ghost Ops #3)

“Jon. The main house is open on the beach side. You’ll move past the pool and pool house, then there are steps up to a patio.

There’s a security system. The code is montecarlo 2025.

” He glanced sideways, his face softening.

“Montecarlo is where I met my wife. Once you’ve punched in the code, go inside and then punch in mylove to set the security system again.

” Even in the hologram Jon could see the man’s cheeks turn pink.

Mac looked away, lips tight against a smile and Nick rolled his eyes behind the man’s back.

“If the electricity has gone, what then?”

“We have a generator guaranteed to run for 96 hours if the mains go off, we never went full solar. But if something has happened, if you can climb, get up to the second story and go in through a window. The second story is where the four guest bedrooms are and we switched the security off. Damned things went crazy every time a guest opened the window for some air. Even if the fridge and freezer are no longer working, there’s food that should still be good.

We get our water from an artesian well, run by a very small solar generator so you’ll have plenty of running water, hot and cold.

Use anything you want in the house, take anything you need.

The welcome and safety we’ve received here—well, I couldn’t thank you and your friends in a thousand lifetimes. Everything in the house is yours.”

Jon dipped his head. “Thank you. The vehicle?”

Robb grinned in pride. “Brand new. Top of the line. I keep it fully serviced. To open the garage door, press the remote in the tray between the seats. It opens the gate in the outer wall, too. These guys here seem to be really well-organized but if you can, bring some of the food we’ve got stocked.

Flour, bags of dried fruit, things that won’t spoil.

Oh, and if it’s not too much trouble, my wife, uh, she’d really like a big pink cashmere shawl that’s draped over a chair in our bedroom.

She’s really attached to that shawl. I gave it to her for our fifth wedding anniversary.

You guys seem to have the only intact communication system in California, so if you have any problems, just get me back online. No problem.”

“You’re very generous, sir—” Jon began.

“God, no!” Robb lifted his hands in horror. His eyes were suddenly glassy with unshed tears. “Don’t thank me! This place has saved our lives. Everyone has shared generously. I couldn’t possibly pay back what I owe you. So consider that house yours for the duration.”

Responding to a touch on his shoulder, Robb moved away, the camera automatically adjusting its focus to Mac and Nick.

“So,” Jon said. “Sitrep.”

Mac and Nick separated and there he was, Captain Lucius Ward.

The man Jon had loved like a father. The man who’d put together the Ghost Ops team and made them tighter than brothers.

The man who’d nearly broken him when Jon thought the Captain had betrayed them.

He hadn’t. How could they have ever thought that?

That the Captain could betray them? He’d have died first and he almost did die.

When the intel Catherine had brought them—that the Captain and three of their teammates were being held in one of Arka’s research facilities and they’d gone down to rescue them—the four men they’d rescued had been as close to death as Jon ever wanted to see.

If not for the intensive care Catherine and later Elle provided, his captain and teammates would never have made it.

Jon straightened and Sophie looked at him in surprise. “Sir.”

The last time Jon had seen the captain he needed two sticks to walk.

Now he only needed one. Probably the reason for that was behind him, the once famous actress, Stella Cummngs, now their chef and head of the communal kitchens.

Though her beautiful face had been slashed to ribbons she was still beautiful in everyone’s eyes.

Not to mention the fact that they ate better than any community on earth.

“Jon,” the captain replied. “We have some news. Good news.”

Jon blinked. Good news. Christ. “That’s—that’s good,” he said lamely. He hardly knew where to put good news in his head. No place for it.

“The US government has started getting its finger out of its butt.” Someone slapped him lightly on the back and he turned his head and mouthed sorry .

“They’re not ready to cross the quarantine zone though, the fuckers.

Sorry ,” he said before the hand could slap him again.

“There’s a lot of confusion in the military going right up to the Joint Chiefs level and in government, going right to the top.

The fact that a former general, that dickhead Clancy Flynn?—”

He braced himself but clearly Stella had given up on cleaning his language up. And Flynn was a dickhead. Had been a dickhead. A murderous son of a bitch dickhead. Luckily, he was now dead.

“Flynn was part of the creation of this virus, so there’s been a lot of finger pointing.

I begged them in Washington— begged them—for a helo to pick you guys up but no one has the authority right now with a broken chain of command.

Plus there have been outbreaks of infection in Idaho, Oregon, Nevada and Texas and they are busy trying to contain them, together with setting up a reporting system in every community in the US.

I simply haven’t been able to get through to anyone who has an airborne command.

Actually, we can’t get through to anyone. ”

Fuck. Jon had been hoping for a helo pickup. Not going to happen. “So what’s the situation between us and you?”

The captain’s bald head was cruelly crisscrossed with surgical scars.

When his jaw muscles tightened, the scars danced on his head.

“Not good. We’ve got pockets, strongholds really, of uninfected but they are holed up and if you make a beeline, they’re not close enough to come out and help.

You’re just going to have to make a run for it at night. ”

“Over uneven terrain. In the dark, with night vision.” Yeah, that was going to be fun.

Lucius shrugged. “All you can do is hope the Lynx is up to it. We can’t clear the way for you with bombs. The noise and maybe the light would attract them.”

“Yeah, we saw that in San Francisco.”

“Get that case to us, son, but don’t get here without Dr. Daniels or I won’t answer for your safety.

And Elle would have my head. But once we have vaccines, we’re going to save us a lot of souls.

Couple people here are already starting planning for after.

Rebuilding. We save enough people we can start society all over again.

Which is better than what we thought we’d be facing when this clusterfuck started. ”

Fuck yeah. They had been looking at a future in which they might have been the only people alive in California. Maybe the world. If people were already thinking of rebuilding, someone was feeling hope.

“Okay son, that’s about it. We’ll be with you every step of the way but we can’t help. Get here safely with the vaccine and Dr Daniels and we’ll start saving the world. Before I sign off there’s someone who wants to talk with Dr Daniels.”

He shuffled slowly aside and Elle took his place.

Her face was pinched and anxious, but cleared when she saw Sophie.

Her hand went to her throat. “Oh God, Soph! You’re okay!

When the helicopter blew up, we thought—we thought you wouldn’t make it.

We watched you guys get out of Dodge. I don’t think I’ve ever been as scared as that in my life. ”

Sophie took Jon’s hand, held it tightly. “Jon got us out safely. I knew he would.” She turned her head, kissed his cheek. Jon looked at her, at her mouth, and was tempted. Really really tempted.

Silence.

Elle’s eyes opened and everything but a light bulb went up over her head. She looked at a faintly smiling Sophie, to him, then back to Sophie and her mouth opened as wide as her eyes. A big hand reached over and gently closed her mouth.

Sophie wasn’t helping her and damned if Jon was going to. He didn’t care who knew he and Sophie were together. He’d found her and he was damned well going to keep her.

“Oh, um. Okay.” Elle was having trouble shifting gears.

Catherine joined her, tilted her head toward Elle and murmured, “The lab. Tell her about the lab.”

“Yes.” Elle shook herself out of her stupor and bounced straight into nerd scientist mode.

“Okay. The lab. We’ve got a good cell line going so incubation time will be a matter of minutes.

There’s a refugee here who worked at the Stanford research lab and we’re putting together an application via patch instead of injection.

With that delivery system, we can double the inoculations. ”

“Do we have an estimate of survivors?” Sophie asked.

Elle turned her head, spoke with Catherine, who spoke to someone else off screen. Elle checked a mini tablet then looked up. “Anywhere between one and two million people. As of now. That number will go down.”

Everyone was silent.

At the last census, California’s population stood at a little under sixty million.

Jon glanced to his right, to the silent landmass of the coastline, dark except for a few fires.

The whole state was the graveyard of about fifty eight million people, dead or dying over the course of the past forty eight hours.

More than a million people an hour. Possibly the largest and fastest death event in the history of the world.

Dead bodies piled up like a vast slaughter-house.

Men and women and children. Nothing they could ever do would bring them back to life.

Teachers and firemen and grade schoolers and musicians and doctors.

The list went on and on. Humankind in California was reduced to a few strongholds fighting for survival, hunkering down like cavemen, shot back in time to ten thousand years ago.