Page 44 of Breaking Danger (Ghost Ops #3)

Mac looked tired and drawn. “The infection has spread to the rest of the country. There are now severe outbreaks in Houston, Dallas, Seattle, Denver, Chicago and Boston. Plus a number of smaller cities. Martial law has been declared in half the country. We know this because our comms system is picking up sporadic signals, but we are completely unable to establish any kind of radio contact with anyone in the military. There is no priority higher than getting that case to a safe place, there is nothing more important that the US military could achieve, and we can’t communicate with them, not in any way.

Snyder tried and he connected with a lieutenant somewhere for half a minute.

Then they were cut off.” His jaw flexed.

“But we’re trying 24/7 to get through. The instant we do we’ll get a bird to you, no matter where you are.

“But we’re not getting help any time soon, Jon.

We’re on our own. The good news is that we still have people pouring in and we’ve located more strongholds.

People are dug in and most of those communities are going to make it.

The countryside is littered with the bodies of the infected. They are dying fast.”

Sophie snapped to attention. “Do you have any hazmat suits, sir?”

“Mac.”

“Okay, Mac. Do you?”

Mac turned to Elle.

“Yes,” Elle said. “Three. Nick picked them up when he went to a research lab to liberate some equipment for us. Why?”

“We need dead bodies. We need to know how long the virus can survive in corpses. I think we should be okay. The most virulent viruses known to us—the hemorrhagic fever viruses like Ebola—cannot last more than three days in corpses. Smallpox can’t survive more than 24 hours.

And most viruses deteriorate when exposed to ultraviolet rays.

A lot of the dead infected will be outdoors.

This is my best assessment. But…we need to be sure.

So have two men in hazmat suits find a dead infected, put him in another hazmat suit and we’ll try to replicate a Level 4 containment lab to the best of our ability. ”

Nick stirred, looked at Elle, then back at her. “Sounds dangerous for you guys.”

“It’s all dangerous, Nick,” Sophie said before Elle could talk.

“But we’re going to beat this thing and when we start reconstruction we will also have to know whether a coyote who slinks away with an infected’s arm will become infected and infect a human being in turn.

I don’t think the virus is transmissible to animals because it was tailored for humans, but we must know for certain.

We have to know whether we need to undertake a massive program of burying in mass graves dug very deep and lined and covered with cement or if we can simply bury the dead normally because the virus is dead.

Because the mass graves that would have to be dug under containment conditions would take months and months.

And in the meantime, men, women and children will starve to death.

If we know that the virus can’t survive outside the body we can bury the dead quickly even as we care for the living. ”

Nick nodded, a brusque up and down movement. “On it. I’ll grab one of the ex Marines not on guard duty and go out.” He disappeared from the screen.

Elle’s eyes followed him then turned back to the vid. “And I’ll set up a separate lab with Catherine, trying to make it as much a containment lab as we can.”

“How are you doing for supplies?” Jon asked.

Mac sighed, a huge heave of his massive chest. “Up until yesterday I’d have said we’re doing fine, but we just got another influx of three hundred refugees. We’ve got people sleeping in the corridors in shifts. We’re down to about four days’ reserves.”

“Well, we’re bringing in as much as we can in the Lynx. And if ever a helo can be spared, Robb’s got enormous stocks of food here.”

“Yeah. He said. So we’ve done as much on our end as we can for you.

We lost satellite contact about 12 hours ago so we can’t give you any more details on the terrain you’re going to have to cross.

All our drones are busy with finding survivors, but we’ll have them checking in on you as often as we can. ETA?”

“The way I mapped it, if we get a straight run, we should be at Haven at around oh, seven hundred hours tomorrow morning. That’s if we don’t run into problems. If the Herrington Bridge is still intact.

If we don’t run into more infected than we can deal with.

If Robb’s Lynx holds up. Lots of variables. ”

Mac gave a two fingered salute off his forehead. “We’ll be at the road entrance to Haven from oh six hundred hours on. Good luck, soldier.” Mac’s gaze turned to Sophie then back to Jon. “Bring her home.”

“Yes, sir. See you at oh seven hundred hours tomorrow.” Jon’s jaw was tight as he switched off the comms unit and turned to her. He was less wild-eyed than before, steadier. Mission-ready. “You ready, honey? It’s going to be a long, hard trip.”

Dangerous, too. He hadn’t mentioned that part. He didn’t need to. “Ready,” was all she said.

Jon pushed a button and the engine lit up. There was barely any noise, just a low controlled purr, which was lucky since noise attracted the infected. He didn’t switch the headlights on. With a great deal of luck, they would be able to find their way home silently and invisibly.

Sophie hardly dared hope for such luck, but since their ride back to Haven—the helicopter—had blown up back in San Francisco, she figured the scales needed balancing and that would do nicely. A long, hard, safe trek across the state. Yes, she was up for that.

“Heading out,” Jon said and the Lynx moved forward.

He pressed a button on the panel. The gate behind the house started slowly rolling open.

It was set in the high walls cutting the compound off from the rest of the world.

Jon went slowly over the gate tracks set in the ground, pushed the button again and the gates closed.

Sophie turned her head to look at the compound one last time, already almost invisible in the darkness. A massive dark shape in the general darkness.

“I’m very grateful to that place,” she said. “In more ways than one.” She smiled and put her hand on Jon’s arm. Just for a second, just to let him know the deeper meaning of her words. His hard profile didn’t change, but he placed his hand over hers briefly, then removed it.

Sophie missed that hand. Jon had a way of inspiring trust with the merest touch, but now he needed to concentrate on the task in front of him, getting them and the case to Haven, safe and sound.

She was scared but she was also determined to help, not hinder him.

Though he hadn’t asked her to, she resolved to keep an eye on the scanner set on the dashboard signaling the existence of infected within a 500 meter radius.

The monitor with the waypoints was above the scanner so Jon could reference them both easily at a glance.

“It looks like we have safe, clear passage right across the Humboldt State Park,” he said.

“It must have been fairly deserted before the infection hit. As of yesterday there were no pileups. The pileups begin right after we leave the park and we’ll have to go off road.

” He shot her a look. “It won’t be comfortable. ”

Sophie looked at him and sighed. “I’m not a cream puff, Jon. I can take a little jostling.”

His face transformed suddenly. In a flash, his cheekbones flushed and his eyes narrowed and she realized that there could be sexual innuendos inferred in her words.

Of course, when she and Jon were in the same room, sex was in the room too.

And they were in an enclosed space here in the Lynx which was suddenly suffused with pheromones.

“You are most definitely a cream puff, honey. My cream puff and I love gobbling you up. Jostling you, too.”

Heat flashed and oxygen fled the cabin of the vehicle.

There was some snappy sexy comeback and if she had access to her brain, she’d have said it.

Definitely. As it was, she didn’t have access to her brains, only to her sex organs.

Her thighs clenched hard as her vagina contracted. Oh God. Had he noticed?

Yes, he definitely had.

But they were rolling out onto a road now and he didn’t say anything. He put on his night vision gear, which looked like unusually thick sunglasses, and turned to the road ahead.

Sophie couldn’t see anything in the total darkness. She had never been in a moving vehicle before without any lights at all, not even headlights. It was unnerving.

Her time in California had been spent studying and working, she’d never made it up this far north before. She knew about the park, of course. It had the tallest trees in the world, that was all she knew.

Soon they were deep in the forest but she could only tell by negative input.

The black sky’s blackness became even more absolute with the tall canopy blotting out the night sky.

She could infer trees by an abstract structure, maybe some kind of electric charge of living things, but not by sight.

They were almost visible out of the corner of her eye but disappeared when she looked straight at them, like ghosts or goblins.

Jon wasn’t having any problems, though. He was seeing everything, clearly in control.

For just a moment, Sophie was tempted to ask to peer through the night vision glasses but resisted.

It would be folly for him to take them off, even for a second.

They weren’t on a sightseeing trip, they were running for their lives.

So on they drove, through darkness for her, through a flat green-tinted dayscape for Jon. The only thing that told her they were on a road was the smooth feel of the asphalt beneath the wheels. Soon, she knew, that would stop and the truly dangerous part would begin.