“Bullshit.” Cooper picked up the Beretta, checked the load, then leaned forward and attached the holster to his belt.
“I don’t know. You should see the light in this guy’s eyes. And there’s more.” Quinn took a deep breath, and when he spoke again, his voice sounded muffled, as though he were cupping a hand around the receiver. “Cooper, he says there’s going to be an attack. A big one. Something that makes his sister’s virus look tame.”
The air in the car had grown cold, and Cooper’s flesh goose-bumped under the wet shirt. “Her virus would have killed hundreds of people.”
Bobby Quinn said, “Yeah.”
“Some of my best friends are normal. I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
—Comedian Jimmy Cannel
CHAPTER THREE
Like most institutions of its kind, the Department of Analysis and Response wasn’t much to look at from the street. There was a granite sign fronted by a neatly tended flowerbed, and half a dozen security gatehouses. A dense line of trees screened everything beyond.
The guards who stepped out were trim and serious looking, dressed in tactical blacks with submachine guns slung on shoulder straps. One of them circled the car, a heavy flashlight in one hand; the other moved to the driver’s side window.
“Evening, sir.”
“Hey, Matt. I told you, it’s Cooper.”
The man smiled, looked down at the ID Cooper held, then back up at his face. His partner shone the flashlight into the backseat of the car, the fingers of his right hand resting lightly on the grip of his weapon. “Hell of a night, huh?”
“Yeah.”
The flashlight spearing through his rear windows snapped off. The guard glanced over the car roof, then said, “Have a good one, sir.”
Cooper nodded, rolled the window up, and pulled through the gate.
To a casual eye, the road might have seemed designed for aesthetic reasons, winding as it did around nothing in particular. But the design concealed the protective measures. The curves limited speed, reducing the chance a car bomb could reach the complex. The manicured grounds assured excellent sight lines for sniper towers not quite hidden by clusters of very precisely pruned trees. Half a dozen times the steady hum of his tires hiccupped as he rolled over retracted spike strips. From the parking lot, Cooper could just make out the tips of the antiaircraft clusters mounted on the roof of the building.
Hell of a long way from the beginning. Had it really been seven years ago that he’d followed Drew Peters into the old paper plant? Cooper could still taste that faded fart stink, could see the slanting shafts of sunlight through high factory windows. The building had been shuttered for a decade, cheap, clean space hidden back in a Virginia industrial park. The director had led the way, followed by Cooper and eighteen others, all handpicked, all nervous, and all trying not to show it. Twenty highly skilled individuals who comprised the newest division of the DAR, the razor tip of a unique spear. Equitable Services. “The believers,” Peters had called them.