Her Last Defense (16 page)

T
he cramped room the Rangers had commandeered to work in was quiet as a morgue at midnight. None of them had left it for more than forty hours…not since Macy had learned that the terrorists planned to strike on Sunday, which was now just a sunrise away.

And not since she’d been infected with ARFIS.

Grim-faced and looking more bedraggled than Clint had seen any of them in a long while, they had regressed from touch-typing on their laptops to stabbing at the keyboards as if they could poke information out of them.

Kat set the handset of the desk phone in front of her back in its cradle and chewed on the inside of her cheek.

Del raised his head. His fingers hung suspended in midair over his computer. “What’s going on in that blond head of yours, Kitty?”

She hated to be called Kitty, and Del only did it when he wanted to get a reaction out of her. The fact that she didn’t seem to notice this time had Clint out of his seat and walking over to better hear what she had to say. Even Bull stopped typing and cocked his head toward them.

“I think we just got a break,” Kat told them.

A ripple of…something hummed through the room.

“Elaborate,” Bull ordered.

“I just got off the phone with Jackie Tucker from Josephine, Texas, outside Houston. Nice lady, by the way. Didn’t even complain that I woke her up at midnight.”

“Okay, I’ll bite,” Del said. “Who is Jackie Tucker? Besides a nice lady.”

“She’s a clerk with Enterprise Car Rental.”

Del leaned back. His chair creaked. “I thought we didn’t get any hits on our computer check of cars rented with foreign ID.”

“We didn’t. But I asked if they’d seen anyone that matched our descriptions—vague as they are.”

“And?”

“Jackie recognized them. She said they tried to rent a car with foreign ID, but they didn’t have a credit card. Tried to put a deposit down on the car with cash, but the company doesn’t allow that. No plastic, no car.”

“Jeez, how did we miss that?”

“Since they didn’t actually get the rental, it wasn’t in the database.”

Bull started pacing, his long legs eating up the width of the small room in three strides. “Okay, so we know they were at—which airport in Houston?”

“Intercontinental.”

“We know they were at Houston Intercontinental. Del, get on the phone and get me security video from all terminals and the rental-car counter around that time period. We might actually get our first look at these animals’ faces.” He scrubbed his palm over two days’ worth of whiskers. “They tried to get a car and couldn’t.”

“We need to check the stolens.” He shrugged when his three teammates all turned his way. “It’s what I’d do if I needed a car and couldn’t get one the regular way.”

“Kat, you get on the stolen-vehicle reports. See what’s missing in and around the airport that day. Clint, you can help with that.”

He knew the captain was just throwing him a bone, trying to keep him busy, keep him from thinking too much. Kat was perfectly capable of running a stolen vehicle search.

“I need to go see Macy.” He wanted to tell her they were making progress. Tell her to hold on.

Brinker was in with her when Clint suited up and pressed the airlock release that would admit him to her room. On seeing Clint, he got up from the chair by her bed and shuffled to the door, still looking bent and frail from his own illness. Behind him, Macy lay pale and still on the bed. A fine sheen of sweat glistened on her forehead.

“She’s getting worse,” Clint said.

“Her fever’s up and her blood pressure’s down,” David whispered, as much as anyone could whisper through a respirator. “I’m starting to see some capilla
ries bursting under her nail beds, and hear a little fluid in her lungs.”

David had arrived just six hours after Clint had called him at the Virginia VA hospital yesterday. He’d said he would have been here sooner, but he’d had to make a stop in Atlanta to pick up some interferon, a drug he thought might help Macy. Turns out he’d brought the entire CDC supply of the antiviral agent.

He’d also liberated José from the holding facility and brought him to the hospital. Something about harvesting antibodies from the monkey’s plasma and mixing them with Macy’s blood.

“She said none of this would work. It didn’t work in Malaysia.” Maybe Clint should have believed her. Maybe he should have accepted her fate with the same courage and dignity she had.

Bullshit.
He wasn’t accepting anything. Not until she was cold and buried. Maybe not even then.

“The effect is minimal when patients are already showing symptoms before treatment begins. But we got Macy early. And the conditions in Malaysia were deplorable. None of the patients there received the kind of supportive care she’s getting.”

“But it still isn’t going to be enough.”

David’s reddened eyes filled. “Probably not, no.”

“How much longer has she got?” Clint hated the way his voice croaked.

“Hard to tell. The interferon and the immune plasma are helping. They’re not going to cure her, but they’re slowing the progression of the disease. We’re buying her time.”

“How much time?” he pressed.

“Twelve, maybe eighteen hours.”

Clint’s gloved hand clenched. His fingers trembled, and he ignored it. His bum arm couldn’t have mattered less to him at the moment.

“What about the back door that Ty mentioned? He said they had a way to kill the virus.”

“My team—Macy’s team—in Atlanta, and every other virologist at the CDC, are working that angle. It’s theoretically possible. Just about anything is possible when you start altering an organism’s genome. Much the same way a computer programmer leaves a back-door into a program, they could have programmed in an inherent vulnerability that only they would know about. It wouldn’t be any harder than programming in ARFIS’s lethal qualities. I supposed I’d want that safeguard if I were a terrorist. To know that I had a way to stop it when I was ready.”

Clint grunted. “Or when you’d been paid enough money. They could hold the whole world hostage with a cure to ARFIS. Can you find this back door?”

“The genetics involved are very complex. In months, or a year, maybe we could figure out what they did. But twelve hours?” He shook his head and sighed. “Everyone is trying.”

“Keep trying. Buy her every second you can.”

David nodded, looked from Clint to Macy. “I’ll give you some privacy.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

He didn’t know how David knew about him and Macy, but he did seem to know. Probably it was obvi
ous just from looking at them. Watching the way they looked at each other. The doctor hadn’t made an issue of it.

Lucky for him. If he had, Clint doubted he could have resisted busting the man’s jaw.

Macy was drifting. Floating. But not on air or water. She felt as though she was living in a vat of clear gelatin too thick to pull into her lungs. It hurt to breathe.

She opened her eyes and saw Clint hunched over her bedside with his gloved hands holding tight to her clammy fingers. He looked like a statue. How long had he been there?

She’d been sleeping, she thought. Had she slept her life away?

He sensed her awakening. His own eyelids fluttered and those gray eyes that could see right through her swept over her face, evaluating.

“Hey, beautiful.”

She coughed. “Don’t make me laugh.” She knew what she looked like. She’d treated a lot of women in her condition in Malaysia.

“Good news.” He used tongs to gather a few ice chips from a bucket next to the bed and placed a few on her tongue. It was the closest thing to heaven she expected to experience until she arrived there in a few hours. “Brinker says you’re holding your own against this thing.”

“Is that another joke?”

“Totally serious.”

At least he hadn’t said
dead
serious.

“You’ve got to hold on, okay?” He squeezed her hand. “You heard Ty. The terrorists programmed in a way to kill ARFIS. Everyone at the CDC is looking for it. All your friends are trying to help you, Macy. You have to let them, by holding on.”

“No. Time.” Her head was going muzzy again. It was hard to concentrate.

“Then we’ll get the cure from the terrorists, dammit! Wherever they are, they’re bound to have some with them, just in case. We’re making progress on finding them. It won’t be much longer. You’ve just got to hold on!”

“Clint.” Her throat was raw. On fire. “You have to accept—”

“I
have
accepted, Macy. I’ve accepted that I can’t undo what’s happened, as much as I want to. I’ve accepted that I can’t take your place, as much as I want to. I’ve even accepted that I can’t help you, at least not alone. I need Brinker, and my teammates and your teammates at the CDC to do that.”

“Clint—”

“No. Listen to me. There is a difference between accepting and giving up. I have accepted. But no way am I giving up. If I’m going down, I’m going down fighting, Macy. And I want you to promise me you’ll do the same.”

None of the pain she was suffering because of the virus savaging her internal systems compared, at that moment, to the pain the look on his face put in her heart. The love was there, plain to see. And the sorrow. The grief.

She’d do anything to take that look away. Anything.

She took a breath and heard the fluid mixing with the air in her lungs. “It’s hard.”

“I know it is.” He leaned over so that his face shield was just inches from her nose. “But people survive ARFIS, just like they survive other viruses like HIV and Lassa Fever and Ebola.”

She wanted to laugh, but didn’t have enough air. “What do you know about Ebola?”

“I’ve been surfing the Net.”

She saw a flicker of light across the wall, and realized someone had entered the observation room. Managing to turn her head a fraction of an inch, she saw Clint’s captain behind the glass.

He switched on the intercom between the rooms. “Clint, we have to go.”

She tightened her grip on his hand.
No.
Not yet.

“See?” Clint said, and produced another fake smile. “We’re closing in on the terrorists. He wouldn’t pull me out of here for any other reason.”

“Stay,” she croaked.

He lifted her hand to his face shield as if he could bring it all the way to his lips and kiss her knuckles. “I want to. You know I do. But I have to go. I have to keep fighting, for both of us.”

And she knew he was right. He would keep fighting long after she was able.

He was her last defense.

He pulled something out of the pouch at the waist of his suit and put it in her hand. It was cool and smooth. Metallic, like his eyes.

“What is it?” she asked. She couldn’t lift her head to look.

He lifted her hand, with whatever it was still in it, so she could see.

“Your badge?”

He curved her fingers over the silver circle and star so that it pressed into her palm. “I want you to hold on to it for me. Don’t lose it. I’m going to need it back soon.”

“But—” Involuntarily, her bleary gaze landed on his bad shoulder.

“I told you, I’m not giving up. On anything. I’m going to find a way to keep doing what I do whether I can hold a gun or not. But I need you to help me. I need you there with me. I love you, Macy. I love you.”

Then he backed away from the bed and was gone before Macy could gather the strength to tell him she loved him, too. Yet even when he was gone, Macy couldn’t help feeling as if he were still there. He’d left her more than his badge.

He’d left her his heart.

She closed her hand over it and held on tight.

“What’ve you got?” Clint strode down the hall from the decon room with Bull at his side, though every cell in his body screamed for him to go back. To stay with her.

He was very much afraid he might never see her again.

“Three stolen cars around Houston Intercontinental Airport around the time our boys were there. A red Corvette.”

Clint jerked his head to the side. “Too flashy. Our guys would want to keep a low profile. And there are four of them. They wouldn’t fit in a ’Vette.”

“Second car is a beat-up old truck with the tailpipe wired on. I’m thinking they’d want something more reliable. Wouldn’t want to chance breaking down.”

“I’m with you.” Though at least half of him was still in the room down the hall, with Macy.

“Third vehicle is a white Chevy van. Late model. No windows, like a business van.”

Clint stopped just outside the door to the Ranger’s room. “That’s it. Now all we have to do is find it.”

“We already have. A Dallas PD beat cop saw it parked outside Texas Stadium an hour ago and ran the plates. They were just getting ready to send out a tow when I put a hold on it and told them to back off.

“Texas Stadium? Do the Cowboys have a home game tomorrow?”

Bull nodded tightly.

“Was there any sign of our suspects?”

“The officer said the place looked secure, but he didn’t go inside. He figured the van had been abandoned.”

Clint chewed on that. “Maybe he scared them off.”

“Or maybe they’d already gone.”

“Or maybe they were still inside, working, and had no idea there was a cop on their doorstep. How long ago was this?”

“An hour.”

“We can be there in a less than two, better if we fly.”

“Chopper’s already on the way.”

Bull held the door while Del and Kat poured through, carrying their gear. Clint turned to follow his teammates, but Bull held him back with a hand on his arm. “By the way, what was all that about you finding a way to do what you do, even if you can’t hold a gun?”

Clint’s chest constricted. He could lie, or he could dodge the question. But if Macy could tackle ARFIS without complaint, he could face up to a little nerve damage. He just didn’t want to delay getting to the terrorists—and a possible cure for Macy—a second longer.

He pulled out of Bull’s grasp. “Come on. I’ll explain on the way.”

B
rinker leaned over Macy’s bed and wondered if she could still see him. Still hear him. He had to go on as if she could.

“Macy, I’m going to intubate you now to help you breathe.”

“No.” Her voice sounded as though she’d swallowed glass, but he was glad to hear it no matter how it sounded. “Have you…heard from him?”

David didn’t have to ask who “him” was. He’d seen the way she looked at her Ranger. She’d never looked at him that way.

And, he had to admit, he’d never looked at her that way, either. In his own way, he’d loved her. But he’d loved his science more. It wasn’t until he thought he was losing her that he’d become desperate to keep her. He’d
have to live with what he’d done as a result for the rest of his life, and still it would never be punishment enough.

He should be the one with ARFIS, the one dying. Not her.

Not her.

If she died, if anyone else died because of him, he wasn’t sure his life would be worth living.

“No word yet, honey, but I’m sure they’ll all be back soon. They had a good lead. They’ll come back and they’ll bring the cure.”

“Tell him, David,” she whispered hoarsely.

“Tell him what?”

“Tell him to be strong. Don’t give up.”

“I’ll tell him, honey. I know he’d tell you the same thing if he were here right now.”

“Tell him I know he’ll find a way to keep doing what he does.” She swallowed painfully. “Tell him I love him.”

“He knows, honey.” He stroked damp curls back from her forehead. He could feel her fever even through two pairs of gloves. “He knows.”

As her eyes closed again, he curled her fingers around the silver circle and star in her limp palm, then picked up the synthetic hose that would hold her airway open as her body’s organs began to shut down, one by one.

“What the hell is taking so long?”

A block away from the football stadium, Clint marched back and forth outside the mobile command post.

“You know the drill,” Del said calmly beside him, waiting in full tactical gear—a reminder to Clint that his fate and Macy’s was out of his hands now. Thanks to his undependable arm, he would be stuck in the command post handling radio traffic while his friends entered the stadium.

He guessed it was better than being left out of the operation altogether. The Rangers had taken the news pretty well. Been sympathetic without making a big emotional scene. Thank God for that. His emotions were in enough of a turmoil already today. He just wanted to get this over with. Get back to Macy.

“This is a big place,” Del continued. “We had to call in SWAT teams from five suburbs to cover it. Dallas Fire Department just now got here with the hazmat gear. The captain had to study blueprints of the structure, come up with a plan. Everybody has to be briefed. It takes time.”

“It’s been over an hour.”

“And it’ll probably be another before we go.”

And another couple of hours to get the cure back to Houston. If they found a cure.

Too long. It was taking too long. Assuming Macy was still alive when they got back. Even if she was, it might be too late. If her internal organs were too badly damaged, she couldn’t survive even if they did manage to kill the virus in her system.

He checked his watch. “If they’re here, they’ve been in there almost all night.”

“I imagine it’s delicate work tapping into the water lines without setting off any alarms or causing a flood.
And they’ve got to have some kind of complicated setup to keep the virus alive in a contained environment until they’re ready to release it into the water. Otherwise the virus would all be dead before people arrived for the game tomorrow. Plus they’d probably want to insert the virus at multiple points in the system, to catch as many people as they can, and as a failsafe. That’s all gotta take time.”

Del was right. But what if they weren’t in there? What if they were long gone, their cure with them?

He and the other officers here would have saved the city, maybe the country, from a major catastrophe, he told himself.

But Macy would still die.

“So how come you didn’t tell me about your arm?” Del said, watching him pace from his position propped against the van. Trying to distract Clint? Or honestly hurt that he hadn’t leaned on him? He wasn’t sure.

“We’re supposed to be partners,” Del said. “Not to mention it was my wife you were trying to save when you got shot. Makes me kind of responsible, you know?”

No distraction. Del was stinging. And more than a little pissed off underneath that veneer of calm.

“It was nobody’s fault but my own I got shot. And I wanted to say something to you, to all of you. I just…couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

“You mean you were in denial.”

“That, too.”

Del heaved out a deep breath and rolled his shoulders. Clint felt for him. His partner had been standing around in fifty pounds of Kevlar for an hour. Plus
he had the added burden of the gas mask slung over his shoulder, and the weight of the danger he was about to walk into squarely on his shoulders. It wore on a man.

“I still feel responsible,” he muttered.

“You think you owe me? Now’s the perfect time to pay the debt. You make sure nothing goes wrong in there. Take those guys down and find that cure, if they’ve got one.”

Before Del could respond, the door of the command center swung open. Bull Matheson stuck his head out. “Green light. Get ready.”

Time accelerated. Seconds that seemed to drag by just moments ago now flew as men in heavy armor scrambled to get in position.

Bull Matheson gathered his team and looked at Clint. “You keep track of the other teams. Keep us out of the cross fire if it gets dicey in there.”

“Will do.”

“Everybody check your masks. Make sure your gloves don’t have any tears. Hazmat showers will be waiting when we come out, just in case.” He turned his attention to Kat. “And you stay with me. No matter what.”

Her “will do” was notably absent. Bull had been sitting on her like a hen on a chick since she’d joined the team. It looked like she was starting to resent it. Bull didn’t seem to notice, though, as he looked back to Clint. “If there’s anything in there that can help the doctor, we’ll find it.”

A lump the size of San Antonio lodged in Clint’s throat. These were his friends, dressed out like knights
in armor and ready to put their lives on the line to save the damsel in distress.

And a few hundred thousand other lives, he reminded himself. Every kid who washed his hands in the bathroom or person who took a drink from the public fountain at tomorrow’s game was at risk. Then they’d take ARFIS home to their friends and families, who would spread it to their coworkers when they went back to work Monday morning, and on and on.

Where would it stop? Would it stop at all, or were they looking at a biological Armegeddon?

He couldn’t say anything to his team, his partners, so he just nodded.

Moments later he sat behind a console with dozens of switches and buttons, a headset pulled tightly down over his ears and microphone in front of his mouth.

“All teams, on my mark.” He blew out his breath, said a short prayer. “Go.”

Keeping track of the three entry teams and the resources deployed outside for containment should anyone try to bolt required every bit of Clint’s attention for the next ten minutes, and still he had a sense of a clock in the back of his mind, the hands sweeping around, ticking away the seconds of Macy’s life.

“Control, this is red team.”

“Control. Go, red team.”

“We’ve reached the boiler room. No sign of targets.”

He heard Kat’s voice, high-pitched as always when her adrenaline was flowing. “I’m going to check the water lines.”

“No, wait for me.”

“There’s no one here, Cap—”

What Del heard next was hard to interpret. Running feet. Labored breathing. Muttered curses. The oomph of one body slamming into another.

The explosion that came next required no interpretation.

“All teams, hold position! Red team leader? Red team leader? Status.”

Only static answered him.

“Control, blue team leader. We’re close. We’ll go.”

“No.” His stomach twisted, wanting to send help, send eyes to tell him what was happening, but he couldn’t put more officers in danger. “Hold your position.”

“Red team. Reply. Red team.”

Relief washed over him when he heard someone’s harsh breathing come on the line. “Control, the place is booby-trapped.” Del. What about the others? “Explosive devices deployed. Red team leader is down. Repeat, red team leader is down.”

“Can you get him out?”

“The way we came in. Have medics meet us at the exit,” Del replied grimly. “It’s bad, Clint. Real bad.”

An hour and a half later, Del stepped out of the mobile command center. Kat crouched by a wheel well, still in her body armor, with her face in her hands. Del waited for him at the bottom of the stairs.

“She feels responsible.”

“He told her to stay with him.”

“Any of us would have done the same thing, checked
out the water lines. Hell, I was headed over there myself. She just got there first.”

“Bull saw the device?”

Del nodded. “Practically threw her out of the way about a half second before it blew. Took the full force of it himself. Any word from the hospital?”

“No. It could be awhile. I’m sure he’s still in E.R.” At least he hoped the captain was in E.R, and not the morgue. He’d seen the injuries. Del had been right. It was bad. Real bad. “I gave them my cell phone number and asked them to call as soon as they knew anything.”

“So that’s it?” Del asked. “It’s over?”

“Blue team and green teams both found virus canisters with material to sustain live virus tapped into the water lines, along with what the clean-up crew found at your location. All three sites were booby-trapped. But there was no sign of the targets.”

Del swore. “I’m sorry.”

Clint was sorry, too. His chest felt cold and dead with sorry, despite the lives they’d saved.

“They were probably gone long before we got here. Must have seen the first cop who stopped to check out the van, decided they could do without it and hoofed it in the opposite direction.”

“Maybe someone saw them on the road. It’s not like there’s anything else real close, anywhere they could have gone.”

Clint heard him, but his mind was somewhere else. “Have they towed the van yet?”

“No. Hazmat crew wants to have a look first, make sure there’s no more virus in it.”

Clint was jogging across the parking lot before Del finished the sentence. He blew by the uniformed officers securing the van and stopped by the driver’s door, cupping his hands to peer in the windows. Del was right behind him.

“What are you doing? Hey, you don’t even have hazmat gear on.”

“The hell with it.” He tried the door handle. Locked. He broke the driver’s side window with the butt of his gun. At least the damn thing still served some purpose.

“Hope that these guys didn’t carry all their gear into the stadium with them.”

He crawled across the driver’s seat, checking the glove compartment and center console. Del opened the side door and checked the cargo area. “Nothing.”

“Nothing here, either.” Then Clint bent over, and hissed in a breath.

Under the passenger seat was an insulated lunch bag, zippered closed. He pulled it out gently, ran the tab back to open it, and pulled out a plastic baggie with four small, brown vials inside.

Del leaned over the passenger seat from the back. “Is it virus, or cure?”

“I don’t know,” Clint said. “But I know someone who will.”

Macy gradually became aware of a bright light in front of her. It pulled at her consciousness. It called to her. She wanted to go to the light. Down deep in her soul she needed to go to the light, but she was afraid. Afraid this was
the
light. The eternal light. The light of the hereafter.

Isn’t that what all those near-death stories described? A bright light that called to them, promised them warmth and comfort beyond words?

Innumerable aches and pains began to make themselves known to Macy. She’d never been flattened by a truck, but this had to be what it felt like. Her head throbbed. Her throat felt raw. Her arms and legs felt like lumps of clay attached to her torso.

She tried to drift back, back to the dark where she’d been—how long? It was cold there, and lonely, but at least there was no pain. No light tempting her to give up her life.

Clint had asked her to fight, and for him, and because she didn’t want to die before she had a chance to tell him she loved him, she had fought. She’d fought with every ounce of her will and her strength. But both those were gone now, and no matter how hard she tried to crawl back to the darkness, the light called her. It called her with such insistence that she couldn’t hold on any longer.

Choking back a sob, she let go. She floated toward the light. The bright rays warmed and filled her, took away some of the pain, and she stopped fighting. She opened her eyes to face the light, and what lay on the other side.

Gradually a figure took shape in the light. A dark silhouette, tall and lanky. The hazy edges of the light sharpened until she realized it wasn’t a light at all, or at least not that light, but a window with the sun shining brightly through it.

In front of the glass stood her Ranger, calling her name.

Was he really here—wherever here was—or was she having some sort of out-of-body experience?

“Clint?” Her throat felt as if someone had scrubbed it with a wire brush.

He jammed his fingertips into the pockets of his jeans and strode toward her. She still couldn’t see much of him. The light behind him was too strong. It hid his face and made her eyes water.

“Hey, beautiful,” he said.

She snuffled. Blinked. “You came back.”

“I told you I would.”

“Need— Need to tell you—” She couldn’t get the rest out. She needed to take a breath first. Several breaths.

He stopped beside her. “Tell me what?”

“G-goodbye.” Her tears welled over her eyelids to leave warm trails down her cheeks. “And I love you. Didn’t— Didn’t get to tell you. Before.”