State of Emergency

State of Emergency - By Marc Cameron




PROLOGUE


December 9

11:30 PM

Near Karakul, Uzbekistan





Riley Cooper inhaled slowly, ignoring the metallic odor of violent death. He lay on his chest, watching, flat against a long wooden table four feet off the stone floor of the kill house. Once a fortified rest stop for man and beast on the ancient Silk Road, the dilapidated caravanserai was now a patched stone structure of cell-like rooms. Sagging sheep pens ran along the west side, forlorn and empty in the purple darkness. A toothed wind, heavy with the smell of wool, swept through the open window from the northern desert. S-shaped metal carcass hooks clanged like blood-rusted wind chimes above his head.

Cooper pressed an eye to the night-vision monocular and wished it was attached to a rifle. Coming into Uzbekistan unofficially was dangerous enough for a man in his position. Possession of a sniper rifle could cause an international incident. Still, he wasn’t the type to be completely unprepared. Just after he’d arrived, he had haggled with a small-time gun dealer in Tashkent for a Russian GSh-18 nine-millimeter pistol. The handgun, along with eighteen armor-piercing rounds, had cost him his five-thousand-dollar Rolex Submariner. He loved the watch, but such things were often the coin of the realm and the price was well worth the comfort the pistol brought resting on his hip under the navy-blue hooded sweatshirt.

Cooper was slender, a shade under six feet tall. His narrow waist and powerful, ostrich-like legs had shouted Olympic sprinter when he was in high school, but, on the advice of a family friend, he’d decided to go another route. That route had put him here in a freezing Uzbek desert with a night-vision scope to his eye.

A ring of curly blond hair bristled from the edge of the black watch cap pulled tight over his head. His skin was on the pale side—making him particularly visible in the darkness. Before climbing into position in his hide, he’d taken the time to smear black paint over the high spots of his nose and cheekbones, breaking up the form of his face in the moonlight to anyone who might glance his direction.

Nestling down against the chill of the night wind, Cooper peered through the green reticle of his night-vision scope to study the Russian less than thirty feet away. They had met two years before in a bar outside Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan. Mikhail Ivanovich Polzin had honest eyes and a no-nonsense manner. Cooper liked him as much as a man in his position could like a communist agent. They’d shared many bottles of Ak-sai Kyrgyz vodka and stories of home. Some of them were probably even true. Still, meets like this were touchy and had the Russian known he was being secretly watched from the slaughterhouse, he might very well have put a bullet in Cooper’s head on principle alone.

Polzin stood along a ribbon of moonlit dirt track, facing the feeble twin headlights of an approaching truck, emerging from the frowning black mouth of the desert. A chilly wind wracked his body with a violent shiver and Cooper watched him snug the fleece collar of his greatcoat up around his ears. The American found it ironic that Polzin wore a coat and hat made of Astrakhan, the finely curled pelts of day-old Karakul lambs. Tens of thousands of the tiny things were slaughtered here at this very kill house and places like it every spring. The slaughter had to take place only hours after the lambs were born, before their pelts, valued for centuries because they were smooth as wet silk, lost their curl. Within a few days of birth the Golden Fleece became nothing but coarse wool.

Cooper tried to push the stench of old death out of his mind. His thoughts drifted for a quick moment to his fiancée, Jill, back in Richmond. He couldn’t help but chuckle. As much of a meat eater as she was, had Jill seen this Russian wearing the fleece of a half dozen day-old lambs, she would have clawed his eyes out.

Rattling in from the darkness, the rusted green hulk of a UAZ flatbed truck squeaked to a stop beside Mikhail Polzin. A plume of fine dust blossomed around the truck as the driver’s door creaked open. A stooped and bony man who looked to be in his sixties—which in the hardscrabble life of this part of the world could mean late forties—climbed from the rounded, egg-like cab. He approached the Russian agent, right hand over his heart in traditional Muslim greeting.

A big-busted woman with a body shaped like a fuel drum sauntered around from the passenger side, rocking back and forth in a waddling walk as if she had a bad hip. The grimy belly and frayed knees of her smock and trousers suggested she was used to a life lived close to the dirt. A black headscarf pulled her jowly face into a permanent scowl. She took no time with the niceties of introduction and began to wave gnarled fingers at two boxes in the bed of their truck. One was the size of a military footlocker, the other, made of the same olive drab material, the size of a large suitcase. She ranted in a shrill mix of Uzbek and Russian, her words pulled tight as an overly wound clock. A gust of wind ripped away the bulk of her animated lecture, but the part Cooper heard caused him to lean forward, straining to hear more.

Their small peasant farm had been cursed with sick livestock and bad water. She spit disdainfully on the ground and threw her hands into the air, clutching at her headscarf with both hands for effect. Rheumy eyes glowed through the green pixilated image of the night-vision scope.

Cooper understood some of the words all too well. Gritting his teeth, he rolled slightly to remove the pistol from his waistband and place it on the table within quick reach. He slid the satellite phone from the cargo pocket of his pants. His position was several feet back from the window, making it impossible to get a signal, but he punched in a number anyway, entering a coded text before pressing send. The phone was programmed to continue its search and send the message in an instantaneous burst as soon as it located a satellite, even if it was turned off and on again.

Outside, the Russian took an envelope from the breast pocket of his wool coat and handed it to the old man. The Uzbek passed it to his wife, who promptly opened it and began to count the thick stack of what looked like American bills.

Polzin followed the old man to the bed of the truck, took something from his pocket, and played it back and forth across the boxes, nodding.

“Many thanks, my friend,” Cooper heard the Russian say. “There will be another payment, double the one in your wife’s hands, as soon as I get these items back in safekeeping.”

“What good is money if our sheep are dead?” The old woman took the time to stuff the envelope inside her smock before throwing up her hands again. “Take our truck, we will walk ba—”

The desert suddenly erupted with a swarm of blinding lights as four all-terrain vehicles roared in to surround Polzin and the Uzbeks. Clouds of dust cast crossed shadows from the headlights as they all came skidding to a stop. A tall, slender man in a puffy, lime-green ski parka and designer blue jeans dismounted his four-wheeler with a theatrical flourish. Even in the darkness, Cooper could make out the black line of a thin mustache. Striding purposefully to the ranting Uzbek woman, the newcomer raised a pistol and shot her in the face.

The man spun, giving an exaggerated shrug. “What? Isn’t anyone going to thank me for shutting her up?” He spoke in accented Russian, slurring heavily as if he had marbles in his mouth. “I should think you of all people would be grateful,” he said, addressing the old man. “No? Well, you may as well join her then.” He pressed the muzzle of his pistol to the trembling Uzbek’s chest and pulled the trigger. He stepped back to let the old man sag, then pitch headlong into the dust beside his dead wife.

A short female in a matching lime parka and dark green tam dismounted her own all-terrain vehicle.

She shook her head. “Aren’t we in a mood tonight.” She laughed, indifferent to the cold-blooded murders. The tam slouched forward over her eyes and kept Cooper from getting a good look at her face. Skintight black pants hugged broad hips. White running shoes seemed to glow in the headlights. “This bores me. I go for a walk.” A moment later she had disappeared behind the dead Uzbeks’ truck.

A third man, dark, more slightly built and jumpy, took the shooting as an indication he should get off his ATV to climb onto the bed of the truck. His face glistened with perspiration even in the cold night air. It was difficult to tell in the darkness, but he wore heavy gloves and he looked to have some sort of protective vest under his open coat.

He spoke English, but from his accent, Cooper guessed him to be Pakistani. “Ahhh!” he said after examining the contents of both boxes with gloved hands. “Just as you suspected.”

“You are certain?” The man with the thin mustache giggled, wide-eyed.

“Quite,” the Pakistani answered. “No doubt.”

“Oh, this is most excellent news!” The man in the lime-green ski parka clapped his hands, one still holding the pistol. His eyes fell on the Russian. “How rude of me,” he said. “I am Valentine Zamora.”

He pronounced it Valenteen.

The fourth rider, a thick-necked brute with a dark tangle of curly hair and a broad nose squashed above his bearded face, took up a position to Zamora’s left, two paces behind him. He was obviously the muscle.

“Polzin,” the Russian said. He’d raised both hands to shoulder level without being asked.

Good, Cooper thought. Do this on your terms, Misha. This is big. . . . Keep ahead of the curve.

“Mikhail Ivanovich.” The fingers of Polzin’s left hand fiddled with something as if he was nervous. The ring, Cooper thought. It was the first thing he’d noticed about the Russian agent when they’d met, a gold two-headed eagle ring that symbolized Mother Russia. It was an odd thing for a spy to be so brazen about his affiliations.

“Oh,” Zamora said, almost yelping as he rubbed his hairless chin. He bounced on his feet as he spoke, brimming with energy. “I am well aware of who you are. People in my line of work tell frightful stories of people in your line of work. The secret group deep inside the Federal Security Service. . . .”

“So . . .” The Russian hunched his shoulders slightly as if stricken with a chill. “What is next?”

Zamora gave him a slow up and down, appraising, saying nothing. He suddenly spun on his heels, moving with an agitated flourish very close to dancing. He swung his arms back and forth for a time, as if walking in place, before beginning to speak. Facing away, much of what he said was impossible for Cooper to hear.

“. . . must be smart . . . Vympel unit . . . selective. I assume . . . also a scientist?”

Polzin shrugged, his hands dropping little by little as he spoke, fingers still toying with the ring. “I am no scientist, merely a civil servant. She is very old, you know, well past her useful life span. And there are the codes to consider. My own government does not even know what they are. You may as well let me take her home.” He nodded toward the boxes in the back of the truck.

“Take it home?” Zamora spun. His bouncing grew more pronounced. “Oh, no, no, Mikhail Ivanovich, that is not necessary. I myself will provide her a fantastic home. She may very well be old, but Dr. Sarpara is extremely talented. He assures me he will be able to make her viable as ever. You know, there are those who would have me use such a thing against your country.” He leaned in as if with a secret. “But you should know I have other plans that involve something more . . . red, white, and blu—”

The Russian’s hand flashed to his coat pocket. He rolled, snatching up a hidden pistol to fire through the cloth. At least one of his rounds hit the Pakistani man on the truck.

Cooper reached for his own pistol, cursing the darkness. The night-vision monocular was useless for aiming and the headlights didn’t offer enough light to engage two armed opponents at that range.

Polzin got three shots off before Zamora and his thug mowed him down.

It was over in the span of a breath.

The Pakistani doctor clutched at his neck. He teetered for a moment on the back of the truck before falling headlong, arm draped over the wooden rail.

Zamora spun, running to the wounded Pakistani. Checking the man’s wrist for a pulse, he turned again, one hand clasped over his mouth, the other brandishing the pistol. He launched into a string of Spanish curses, pacing back and forth in the eerie pool of red light cast by the UAZ’s dusty tail lamps.

“Monagas.” He turned, nodding to his thick-necked companion. “Comrade Polzin has caused me a great anxiety.”

Unleashed, the man called Monagas smiled a crooked smile, then strode to a writhing Polzin and put two bullets through the back of his head.

Cooper’s mind raced in the relative safety of his hiding place. He concentrated to slow his breathing. Knuckles white around the butt of his own pistol, he flinched at each shot the man put into his friend.

Zamora’s hand still hung over his mouth, as if keeping it there helped him think. His gun hand hung loosely at his side.

“Perhaps one of your contacts in Iran,” Monagas offered.

“No.” Zamora waved him away. “The Americans hover over them like hawks. I have to think. . . .” He leaned over, hands on both knees. For a moment, it looked as if he was going to be sick; then just as quickly he bolted upright. “There is someone, but . . .” He tapped his forehead with the slide of his pistol as he paced back and forth, stopping every so often to kick the dead Russian and curse him in breathless Spanish. Dust from his feet puffed up in the headlights.

At length he stopped, staring into the blackness of the Uzbek desert.

“I need to think,” he said, muttering something Cooper couldn’t make out as he walked through the curtain of darkness.

His boss gone, Monagas stooped in the dust to lift the dead Russian’s hand. The eagle ring, Cooper thought. This pig-eyed son of a bitch took trophies.

Cooper lowered his handgun and grabbed the satellite phone. Intelligence was about information, not revenge. If the back of the Russian truck held what he thought it did, Cooper knew he’d eventually have to make a stand to keep this insane SOB outside from ending up with it. Until then, he had to make certain the information got back to higher—at all cost. Caught up in the drama unfolding outside his window, he’d neglected to send more texts as information became available. Such a rookie mistake.

Thumb-typing with both hands as fast as he could, he didn’t hear the hissing scrape of shoes on concrete until it was too late.

He froze, straining his ears in the darkness. The sound was behind him—and close.

Too close.

Cooper’s hand shot toward the pistol before he even understood the context of the sound. At the same instant a peculiar whoosh, like fluttering wings, came from above. Something heavy struck the side of his neck, the force of it rolling it half up on his side. A wave of nauseating pain sank down his spine. His right arm fell, slamming against the table, limp and useless. His fingers were still inches from the pistol. He gagged as some unknown force yanked his head back and forth like a frenzied dog. Unable to move on his own, the cold realization that he was paralyzed washed over Riley Cooper.

A flaccid cheek pressing helplessly against the table, he could see the heavy hips of a female figure wearing tight spandex pants. The woman. He should never have let himself lose track of her. She clicked on a flashlight and tapped the toe of a white running shoe on the concrete as if annoyed that he was taking so long to die.

Cooper found it impossible to breathe. Straining his eyes, he found the problem. An S-shaped carcass hook stuck from his neck, just below the jaw. It was a miracle that he was still conscious.

A small hand with manicured black nails grabbed the rusted hook and gave it an impatient twist. Metal scraped bone and Cooper groaned reflexively, choking on his own blood. His eyes fluttered as he watched the woman stuff the satellite phone in the pocket of her jacket.

That’s right, he thought. Take the phone outside with you. . . .

He wracked his foggy brain, trying to remember how much of the text he’d completed. He’d hit send the moment he’d heard the noise, just before the woman hit him. He hoped it was enough.

The beam of a second flashlight played across the stone floor. A set of black boots clicked into view.

“I have it, my darling,” Valentine Zamora said, broken, distant in Cooper’s ears, as if coming through a long pipe. “Can you believe it? It is actually mine.”

“It means you are rich?” The woman’s voice was whiskeyed and raw, as if she’d been screaming for three hours at a rock concert.

“I am already rich.” Zamora giggled, a high-pitched, almost feminine sound. “No, no, no. This will show the world that your precious Valentine is not a person to shove about like a little child.”

Cooper strained to hear more. Through the gathering fog, and unable to turn his head, he could only see the murderous couple from the waist down. They stood together, arm in arm as if watching a sunset, waiting for him to die.

“It is amazing!” Zamora stomped his foot. “Baba Yaga is mine.”

Baba Yaga.

The words struck Cooper as cruelly as the rusty hook. He’d feared as much, even alluded to it in his text, but the reality of hearing it spoken filled him with overwhelming dread. He fought to stay conscious, suddenly cold beyond anything he’d ever experienced. Years of training barked inside his head, screaming at him to get to his feet and do something.

Baba Yaga was an intelligence black hole, a poisonous soup of Cold War theory and whispered stories of gray-haired Soviet spies.

No longer able to focus, Cooper’s mind drifted back and forth from his mission to thoughts of his family in Virginia. By slow degree the bone-numbing chill melted into waves of enveloping warmth. His breaths grew shallow and further apart. There was nothing he could do, no matter how great the threat. His eyes gave up a single tear as they fluttered shut for the last time.

A crimson ribbon seeped from the wound in the young American’s neck and dripped to the broken stone below, mingling with the blood of countless slaughtered lambs.





Turkmenbasy, Turkmenistan

The Caspian Sea





Two grubby boys in thigh-length wool coats and tattered ski hats carried the wooden crates along the weathered planks and onto the deck of the cargo ship. A stubby vessel, the Pravda was not quite seventy feet long. It was hardly big enough to be called a ship, but Zamora preferred not to think of his precious cargo heading out to the world’s largest inland body of water in a mere boat.

Monagas stood with his thick arms behind his back, shouting savage threats to keep the lazy boys motivated.

Zamora sat at the stern next to the thick-hipped woman on boxes marked as tins of sturgeon caviar. He held a phone to his ear. A sly smile crossed his face, twitching the corners of his pencil-thin mustache. The woman leaned back on both hands, eyes closed, face to the sun.

“Hello, Mike,” Zamora said, speaking louder than usual, as was his habit when he was talking to someone halfway around the world. He kept his voice sickeningly sweet. “How are you?”

“Mr. Valentine,” Mike Olson answered. His breathy Texas drawl was almost giddy. “I’m fine, sir. How are you?” He pronounced Zamora’s name like the lover’s holiday. It was a convenient and easy-to-remember alias.

“Just fine, Mike, just fine,” Zamora said. His English was accented but flowed easily due to his time at American universities. “Listen, I talked about a donation to your program, but I’ve come into a sort of a windfall. I’d like to do something . . . I don’t know . . . more significant in nature.”

“Deanne and I are so grateful to you, sir,” Olson answered. “You’ve already been so generous.” The sound of a children’s choir singing to the soft notes of a piano purred in the background. “And the kids appreciate the support. To date, we’ve heard from over three hundred. They’re flying in from all over the U.S. for the event—from all denominations and cultures. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, a group of Baha’i children from Illinois. Imagine, so many ethnicities and religions, uniting their voices for peace, right here in the Bible belt.”

Baha’i, Zamora thought. His Iranian mother would have a fit at that. “Very nice,” he said, running his fingers like a spider up the woman’s thigh beside him. “I have something very special in mind. One of my colleagues will be in touch shortly.”

“Thank you so much, Mr. Valentine,” Olson gushed. “We could make a real difference here.”

“Yes,” Zamora said, “I do believe we will.” He ended the call.

Giggling loudly, he tromped his feet against the deck of the ship as if he was running in place before finally leaning back beside the thick-hipped woman.

“What is it?” She opened her eyes, blinking against the bright sun. He could just make out the tiny dark hairs that ran along her upper lip. Sometimes he thought she could grow a better mustache than him if she’d wanted to.

“Nothing, really.” The corners of his pencil-thin mustache twitched. “I was just thinking of how I will get our Yemeni friends to blow the buckle off the Bible belt.”

“You’re tickling me, my darling.” The woman put her hand over his, pressing it hard against the inside of her thigh. “You know I’d rather be slapped than tickled.”

“As you wish.” Zamora gave the soft flesh inside her thigh a rough squeeze.

The woman yawned. “In any case, before you can blow up anyone, we have to get your precious cargo past the authorities and all their radiation detectors.”

“We will put Baba Yaga in the normal pipeline, hide her in plain sight, so to speak. As long as the containers aren’t specifically interrogated by sensors we will be fine.” He grinned, pounding a fist repeatedly against his knee as if he couldn’t contain himself. “While we go south, Monagas will continue on to Finland with the loose material. Do you know what they call it?”

She shook her head, causing her black bangs to shimmer in the chilly breeze. “What, my love?”

“MUFP.” He giggled again, putting a hand to his mouth. “Isn’t that a funny word? It reminds me of the sound you make when you are . . . you know . . .”

“MUFP?”

He winked a dark eye. “Missing Unaccounted-For Plutonium.”





December 15

Harborview Hospital

Seattle





Trauma doctor Eileen Clayton was standing beside Birdie, the charge nurse, leaning over the other woman’s desk to show off photos of her new grandbaby, when a heartrending wail curled in from the waiting room. Birdie shivered at the sound, searching for her Crocs under the desk with the toe of her stockinged foot.

“What the hell was that?”

Clayton took off tortoiseshell reading glasses and shoved them in the pocket of her scrubs. She was a tall, African American woman, and her extremely short hair accentuated high cheekbones and the length of her neck. Like Birdie, she wore pink scrubs. Her natural smile fled as another wailing moan rose from the waiting room.

At fifty-one, Clayton had been a doctor for long enough to hear her fair share of pained cries for help, but this one chilled her to the bone. She leaned around the wall that separated the office from the waiting room. An attractive young woman in a stylish brown leather jacket clutched her stomach just outside the registration window. Grisly black mascara blotched both eyes, making her look like a maniacal raccoon, and ran in long lines down a round face the color of bleached bone.

“Get this out of me!” Her voice was a ragged hiss, the torn cry of a damned soul.

Dr. Clayton ran from the reception office to the lobby, followed by Birdie. They caught the girl just before she collapsed.

“Have you taken any drugs, sweetheart?” Birdie.

The girl looked up, squinting as if trying to figure out where she was. “I don’t . . . I mean . . .” She vomited, missing Birdie by inches. “Ooohhh, please let me die. . . .” She threw her head back and howled in pain, voiding the contents of her bowels. She let loose a string of vehement curses, shrieking as if she’d drunk a bottle of acid.

Birdie helped steer the dizzy girl around the mess on the floor, guiding her toward the nearest trauma room. She shot a glance at Clayton. “If her head starts spinning around, I’m leaving her to you.”

With all the screaming, the ER instantly became a buzzing hive of activity. Clayton and Birdie got the girl out of her soiled clothing.

“Note the navel jewelry. We’ll need that out if we do an MRI,” the doc said, touching the gaudy stainless-steel butterfly hovering over the girl’s belly button. “Looks like it may be difficult to remove.”

A male lab tech with a receding hairline struggled to start an IV while a heavyset nurse checked vitals.

Her eyes narrowed in concern. “106.4,” she said, popping the plastic thermometer cover into the trashcan.

“Let’s see if we can get your temp down,” Clayton said before patting the girl’s cheek with a gloved hand. “What’s your name, dear?”

“Taylor Bancroft,” she whispered through cracked lips. Wracked with another spasm, she grabbed the front of Clayton’s scrubs with surprising speed and strength. “It was just supposed to be this once—” Too exhausted to even turn her head, she vomited on her chest. Grimacing, she collapsed back on the bed.

Birdie stripped off the dirty gown and tossed it in a tray for testing.

“What was just once?” Clayton asked, helping the nurse put a damp sheet across Taylor’s chest. The poor thing was burning up.

She motioned for the nurses to go ahead with the IV.

“It was all . . . in condoms,” the girl whimpered between ragged breaths. Tears streamed down her face. “Two thousand bucks to swallow, fly into the country, and poop them out.” Bloodshot eyes begged for understanding.

“Easy money . . .” Clayton sighed.

“I know, right?” The girl nodded, misunderstanding Clayton’s comment as approval. Her body tightened as another wave of pain washed over her. “I turned it all over to the guy . . . but one must have leaked.”

Clayton bit her lip. This girl wasn’t much younger than her own daughter. Her clothes were new and of the latest style. She was probably from a well-to-do family. “Do you know what kind of drug you swallowed, sweetheart?”

“I guessed it was coke, but he didn’t tell me.” She stared up at the ceiling, sniffling between frantic gasps. She beat dimpled fists on the mattress. “I can’t believe it leaked! It was double bagged, one condom inside another. I went straight from the airport to the address like the guy told me to.”

“This guy,” Dr. Clayton said. “Can you call him and see what kind of drug it was?”

Bancroft wiggled her jaw back and forth, looking hollow as if she was going to be sick. “No, I mean . . . I just met him at a club in Helsinki.” She licked her lips as the nausea passed. “He’s Spanish, I think.... There was something wrong with his lip he tried to hide with a beard.”

“Where did you go from the airport?” Clayton prodded, more to keep the girl talking than to gather any information. A blood test would show what drug she’d ingested well before they could contact the smuggler who had put her up to this.

Bancroft swallowed hard, squinting at the pain in her head. “Some warehouse down by the pier. It was a place where they stored a bunch of bank machines—you know, like ATMs.” Her body began to shake with sobs. “He told me it was safe. I mean, I just wanted to get a little extra—”

The girl’s eyes sagged in midsentence and the heart monitor went flat.

ER staff swarmed in with the crash cart, pushing medication and attempting to shock her heart back into rhythm. Nothing worked.

“Note time of death at 6:05 p.m.” Dr. Clayton sighed. Less than fifteen minutes after she’d entered the hospital, Taylor Bancroft was dead. In twenty-six years of practicing medicine, she’d never seen anyone without a gaping wound go from ambulatory to flatline that fast.

“Poor kid,” the charge nurse said, pursing her lips. “Wonder what she was doing in Helsinki?”

“Who knows?” Clayton moved to cover the girl’s face with the sheet, and was startled to find wads of blond hair that had fallen out on the pillow.

The charge nurse leaned over the body helping, her hospital ID dangling from her pink scrub top. A series of black dots traveled up the badge next to it.

“Everyone move away now!” Clayton snapped, snatching the dosimeter badge from her own lab coat.

“Shit!” She took another step back without thinking. This was no reaction to drugs leaking from a swallowed condom. In the short minutes she’d been around Taylor Bancroft, four of the small circles were now darker than their corresponding backgrounds, indicating over twenty-five rads of exposure.

Clayton rushed to the door of the trauma room, eyes frantically scanning the waiting area, where a college-age orderly worked on the mess Taylor Bancroft had made on the floor.

“Jeremy,” she snapped. “Leave it alone!”

The orderly looked up, mop in hand. He wore protective gloves, slippers, and a face mask—unlikely to protect him from the real danger. A blank look crossed his face.

“Leave it be!” Clayton said again, terror edging into her normally calm voice.

An elderly couple and a haggard mother with her small sleeping toddler sat along the far wall of the waiting room. Two fishermen types in wool sweaters and rubber boots occupied the center seats, staring up at the wall-mounted flat screen above the child’s head.

“Everyone outside,” Clayton yelled, summoning all the bravado she could muster. “The ER is closed.”

Taylor Bancroft’s insides had been cooked from radiation poisoning—and every drop of fluid that had escaped her body had turned the ER into a hot zone. If the deadly stuff wasn’t still inside her, then it was floating around somewhere out there—in the hands of someone sick enough to smuggle it into the U.S. inside a college student’s gut.