Prime (13 page)

“The sealed crypt in which this object was
found, was infected with a particularly nasty strain of proto-bacteria—an
organism very similar to the bacteria responsible for bubonic plague. The first
people to enter were exposed and died in a matter of minutes.”

“There’s a connection between the manuscript
and the plague?” Sasha recalled her earlier conversation with Daniel Parker. The
document that had prompted the Agency to send her to Iraq in the first place,
had suggested just such a link, but following Rainer’s act of treachery, she
had assumed it to be just so much window dressing to sell the deception.

“There is…let’s call it a circumstantial
connection. Archaeological sites contain all kinds of strange things—bacteria,
fungi, viruses, even prions, which have been hidden away for thousands of
years. Investigating those ancient mysteries is my specialty, though in this
case, my motives are…” He trailed off as if realizing he’d said more than he
intended. “I tell you this only because you need to understand that you can’t
interact directly with the artifact. It’s here, in the facility, but it is
still hot. Any attempt to decontaminate it would probably destroy it
completely. Bio-safety level-four protocols are in effect. The closest you will
be able to get to it is in a full environment suit.”

Sasha nodded in agreement without even
considering the pre-condition. She didn’t care about the safety considerations;
she was here for just one thing. The Voynich manuscript was a mystery that
seemed unsolvable, a variable that kept the equation from balancing.

But she would solve it, and when she did, it
would transform chaos into order.

FIFTEEN

Washington, D.C.

Domenick Boucher sank wearily into the chair at the conference table in
the White House Situation Room, and gestured for his traveling companion, Staff
Sergeant Lewis Aleman, to do the same. Despite the fact that Aleman’s right arm
was heavily bandaged and nestled in a protective sling across his chest, he
looked alert and ready for action, which was more than Boucher could say for
himself. He’d caught a few hours of sleep on the flight back from Iraq, but
anxiety over the unfolding crisis had robbed him of anything vaguely resembling
rest.

Despite his injuries and over the
protestations of the doctors at the base in Tikrit, Aleman had insisted on
accompanying Boucher back to the states. “I need to be a part of this,” the
Delta sniper had argued. “If I can’t be in the fight, then at least let me
coordinate the mission from the TOC.”

There was a lot to recommend granting the
request. Aleman was familiar with the team and their protocols, but more
importantly, he was already read in. With the full extent of the conspiracy
still unknown, Aleman was one of a very few people that were above suspicion.
Until more was known about the enemy, secrecy was paramount. That was why the
President had directed the operation be run from the Situation Room.

Boucher was in the process of establishing a
secure satellite link with General Keasling when the President entered the
room. Aleman immediately snapped to attention and somehow managed to extricate
his hand from the sling to offer a salute. Boucher also started to rise but
Duncan waved him off.

“I’ve only got a few minutes, so let’s
dispense with all the formalities.” Duncan nevertheless returned Aleman’s
salute.
“Sergeant, as one shooter to another…helluva job.
I promise you that your sacrifices will not be forgotten, and I will see that
the deaths of your teammates are avenged.”

“Yes, sir.”

Duncan turned to Boucher. “Do we have the General
on the line?”

Keasling’s voice issued from the speakers.
“I’m here, Mr. President.”

“Good. Let’s have the sitrep, gentlemen.”

Boucher went first. “We’ve conducted
preliminary forensic testing on the
intel
recovered
from Ramadi, but there’s nothing conclusive. The paper and ink are of the same
type available for civilian use in Iraq. The only trace DNA evidence was from
the people that we know handled it: the Delta team and our own analysts.”

“Wouldn’t that support the idea that it was a
forgery?”

Boucher nodded. “The most likely conclusion
is that Lt. Col. Rainer created the document and planted it during the course
of the raid. But it’s also possible that the insurgents were working with
him—sacrificial lambs, so to speak—to further reinforce the illusion.”

Duncan frowned. “Let’s cut to the chase. Is
there a WMD lab out there somewhere?”

Boucher knew the President well enough to
recognize that the man wanted a truthful answer, but he hated having to admit
to his own uncertainty. “I wish I could say unequivocally that there is not,
but…”

“I read you, Dom. Keep digging.” Duncan
turned away, directing his voice toward the speaker box. “Mike, what’s your
situation?”

“Sir, we’ve tracked Rainer and the others to
Mandalay. Our people on the ground have placed them at a remote facility east
of the city. We’re in the air now. Once we arrive and get the lay of the land,
I will have a better sense of what our options are, and I’ll develop
contingency plans.”

Boucher had no difficulty reading between the
lines. Keasling was anticipating a covert assault on the Burmese facility, an
action that was technically illegal and which carried enormous diplomatic risk,
to say nothing of the danger to the Delta operators. Of course, that was the very
reason why Delta had been created; sometimes, the strict letter of the law had
to be broken in the interest of the greater good. Delta’s job was to take those
risks in a strictly unofficial capacity, giving the President full deniability,
and if things went south in the field, they were on their own.

“Contingency plans,” Duncan muttered, and
then he shook his head. “We are in this mess because the system we’ve
inherited—the way things have always been done—is completely ass-backwards.
We’ve got too many agencies working at cross-purposes. Hell, sometimes actively
working against each other. Too many ‘yes men’ who think it’s their mission in
life to either tell me exactly what they think I want to hear, even if it means
cooking up the evidence to support it, or to protect me from knowing the
truth.”

It wasn’t the first time Boucher had heard
Duncan utter some variation of those words. He’d told the American people as
much during the campaign. The bitter pill he’d been forced to swallow upon
assuming the office of Chief Executive was that it truly was impossible for one
man, no matter how dedicated and passionate, to overcome the inertia of
bureaucracy. It had nothing to do with the limits of Constitutional authority;
there were simply too many moving pieces.
Too many human
parts.

But there was something different about the
way Duncan said it this time. Boucher saw a faint gleam in his old friend’s
eyes as he continued. “Enough. No more contingency plans. No more ‘cover your
ass.’ As one of my predecessors famously said, the buck stops here.”

He looked Boucher in the eye. “Dom, I trust
you implicitly, and I know it’s your job to keep me from going off the rails,
but right now I need you to just shut up and listen.”

Boucher felt an electric tingle in his extremities.
What the hell is he doing
?

“General Keasling, we don’t know each other
very well, but I think I’m a pretty good judge of character. I wouldn’t have
given you that star if I didn’t think you were up for the job.”

Boucher knew that Duncan had been prepared to
frock Keasling as a Major General—the rank associated with his new position as
the leader of JSOC. It had actually been Keasling himself who had insisted he
not be advanced three full pay grades, a promotion that would have ignited a
firestorm of jealousy in the Army high command.

The satellite connection couldn’t completely
mask Keasling’s guarded reply. “Thank you, sir.”

Duncan just smiled. “Oh, don’t thank me until
you’ve heard the rest.”

SIXTEEN

Mandalay, Myanmar

Jack Sigler—callsign:
King,
climbed out of the
taxi and scanned the street ahead. He turned a slow arc, checking the area,
high and low, from the ten o’clock position to the three. The other men who had
been sandwiched together in the back of the vehicle did likewise upon emerging,
each checking a different quadrant, overlapping their sectors of responsibility
to identify potential threats.

They had all exchanged their combat fatigues
for civilian clothes. King now wore blue jeans and a black T-shirt with a
picture of Elvis Presley, which Stan ‘Juggernaut’ Tremblay had purchased for
him at an airport gift shop. To further reduce their visibility, it had been
decided to move from the airport to the Mandalay safe-house in two separate
groups. King’s group, which consisted of Tremblay, Silent Bob, and a sniper
named Meyers, who went by the callsign ‘Dark,’ had taken the lead, traveling by
taxi. General Keasling, ‘Irish’ Parker, ‘Roadrunner’ Bellows, ‘Race’ Banion—the
other sniper from the Eagle-Eye team—and heavy weapons specialist Erik Somers,
the last addition to their team, would follow in a pair of rented SUVs.

Somers had been brought on board just before
leaving Tikrit. King knew him only as the big guy who had manhandled the M2
during the extraction the previous night, but he’d come with a personal
recommendation from Parker. The two men had gone through Delta selection
together. An intense but quiet figure, Somers was Iranian by birth, but had
been adopted by an American family shortly before Ayatollah Khomeni’s
government closed off Iran from the rest of the world. He was a former marine
who had switched services to become a Ranger, and he possessed seemingly
superhuman strength, which should have made him an ideal candidate for Special
Forces. According to Parker, Somers had aced the course but hadn’t made the
final cut. There could have been a number of reasons for that, not the least of
which was team chemistry. That was something that weighed on King’s mind as he
contemplated both the mission ahead and the other special assignment General
Keasling had given him.

The street was bustling with activity, all of
it seemingly harmless, but the men remained vigilant as they followed King
along a maze-like path between the freestanding buildings and eventually up a
rickety wooden staircase that led to the second story balcony. He found the
door with the yellow smiley face sticker he’d been told to look for; someone
had used a pen to add fangs and sinister eyebrows to the iconic image.

Tremblay, with a mischievous grin, nodded at
the decal. “I’m going to fit right in here.”

King appraised him with a sidelong glance. It
was still a little hard to reconcile this blond man with his punk-rocker goatee
and an always ready one-liner, with the guy that had dropped out of the sky
wielding .50 caliber
death
in both hands. He had no
doubt of Tremblay’s ability in combat—he’d already witnessed it first hand—but
a successful team had to be able to work together every day of the week, not
just on the day of the big game.

Two hours ago, it wouldn’t have mattered. Two
hours ago, his orders were simple: take the team you’ve got and go after the
bad guys. But then, Keasling had taken him aside. “The President has ordered me
to put together a new unit; fast, mobile, unlimited resources, non-existent radar
signature, if you take my meaning. He and I both agree that you are the ideal
candidate for field leader.”

King had been in the Army long enough to be
extremely wary of ‘special assignments.’ “Sir, that’s already Delta’s job
description.”

Keasling’s expression at that moment had
spoken volumes. The general hadn’t seemed particularly happy about this
development either, but he wasn’t about to contradict the President. He clearly
expected the same from King. “Think of this as the
Delta
of Delta. The difference is that you will get your orders
directly from a handler in the National Security office. Administratively,
you’ll still be part of JSOC, but in all other respects, you will completely
bypass the chain of command.”

King had decided to keep the rest of his
opinions to himself. “When does this go into effect?”

“It went into effect five minutes ago, when
the President told me to make it happen. Obviously, we’ve got some growing
pains ahead of us, but arrangements are already being made for a live uplink to
your new handler.”

Keasling hadn’t asked if he wanted the job;
maybe that wasn’t even an option, but King figured the general had known all
along that he wouldn’t refuse.

Which meant he now had to
think about trying to select a team of operators for this ‘Delta of Delta,’
while at the same time planning for the mission already underway.
It was evident that Keasling expected him to
build his new team from the current group, but King knew that no matter how
outstanding the shooters were as individuals, what really mattered was whether
they could work as a team.

He tried the door—unlocked, as he’d been told
it would be—and went in. The space beyond was dimly lit by sunlight filtering
through the curtained windows, and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the
relative darkness. Cardboard boxes and blankets hanging from a web of
clotheslines had been used to partition the area, but his attention was
immediately drawn to the center of the large open, room where an impromptu
assemblage of foam mats had been laid out in a square and bordered with ropes
on all four sides. It was a boxing ring.

A strange repetitive noise emanated from the
shadows—a slapping sound interspersed with grunts of exertion. He glimpsed a
ratty-looking heavy punching bag hanging from a metal frame in a corner of the
room. The bag quivered from persistent blows, and as he advanced toward it, he
saw the person responsible for the assault on the other side.

Tremblay let out a low whistle. “I think I’m
in love.”

King’s first impulse was to agree. The person
pummeling the heavy bag was a woman—blonde and petite, wearing a tight-fitting
T-shirt that clung tantalizingly to her curves and a pair of short shorts that
covered just enough to set the imagination on fire. The perspiration running in
rivulets from her face and dampening the fabric of her shirt did nothing to
diminish the sheer sexiness of her appearance; in fact, it made her even more
appealing.

The scene was surreal; the woman could have
been a model, posing for a camera shoot, but there was nothing simulated about the
punches she was throwing. She glanced up as they approached, but gave the bag
several more hits in rapid succession before formally acknowledging their
presence.

“You must be the Delta boys.” She offered a
coy grin, and rested her boxing-gloved hands on her hips. “Sorry, you caught me
in the middle of my workout. I wasn’t expecting you until later.”

Tremblay matched her smile. “And we weren’t
expecting…
you
.”

“Down boy,” King muttered. He turned to the
woman. “What’s the word of the day?”

She raised an eyebrow.
“So,
right to business?
That’s okay. I like that in a man. The word of the
day is ‘timberline.’” She paused and locked stares with him. “I’ve shown you
mine…”

“The counter-sign
is
‘grapefruit.’ I’m King. Laughing boy here is Juggernaut, and the other stooges
are Bob and Dark. Are you Baker?”

It had not been made clear if that was her
real name or a mission callsign, but when she nodded, Tremblay gave a little
gasp of comprehension. “I’ve heard about…” He turned to King. “Do you know who
this is?
The Legend of Zelda?”

King shook his head, mystified. He didn’t
think the other man was talking about the old Nintendo game.

Tremblay turned back to the woman. “That’s
who you are? Zelda Baker.
The first woman to ever make it
through Ranger school.”

King’s brow furrowed. The statement didn’t
make any sense. Females weren’t eligible for Ranger school because of the
military ban on women in combat occupation specialties.

“I thought it was just scuttlebutt,” Tremblay
continued.
“G.I. Jane bullshit.
Some general had the
nutty idea that Spec Ops needed to be co-ed, so he set up a special pilot
program to start training women for the Unit.”

King glanced at her. She was still smiling,
but there was a dangerous gleam in her eyes. “I’ve never heard anything about
this,” he said.

“A buddy of mine was an R.I. They wanted to
keep it all very hush-hush in case things went horribly wrong…which is exactly
what happened. Only one of the candidates made it through, which just showed
what a stupid idea it was to begin with—”

Zelda cleared her throat.
“Standing
right in front of you, Prince Charming.”

The Delta shooter swallowed nervously. “Ah,
sorry…but you know what I mean.”

“Actually I don’t. I’d love to see how you’re
going to get out of that hole by digging deeper, but we should probably cut to
the chase.”

King wanted to hear more about this
woman—Zelda Baker, evidently the first and only female Army Ranger. Keasling
had told him that their contacts in Myanmar were military intelligence; aside
from that, he hadn’t known what to expect…but as Tremblay had so eloquently put
it, he hadn’t been expecting her. But she was right; they were on the clock. “I
was told that your people are maintaining surveillance on the subjects. Is that
correct?”

“My people?”
Her lips curled in something that might have
been a wry smile or a sneer—he couldn’t say for sure.

She gestured for them to follow her into one
of the partitioned areas, which had been converted into a makeshift office.
There was a wall map of Southeast Asia tacked to one wall and a pad of butcher
paper on an easel in a corner. A folding card table served as a desk, but most
of its surface was taken up by electronic equipment—a military radio, a
computer terminal and a fax/copier/scanner. The only decorative item in
evidence was a stuffed toy sitting on the table right next to the computer. It
was a Ranger Bear, just like those sold in the Post Exchange—a teddy bear in
camouflage BDUs complete with a black beret, but this one had been modified. The
bear’s head had been removed, and in its place was a Magic 8 Ball. King noticed
that someone had pinned a silver rank bar to the beret.

Zelda saw him looking at the doll. “That’s
Lieutenant Ball. He usually makes better decisions than a real officer.”

She stripped off her padded boxing gloves and
tossed them down next to the disfigured bear, then sank into a chair. “Let me
tell you about ‘my people.’ It’s just the two of us—
me and
Shin—and
I really don’t have time for this bullshit.

“
There’s
a quarter
of a million troops in Iraq ‘fightin’ the evildoers.’” She emphasized her
contempt with air quotes. “But do you know where the tangos get their guns?
Or the money to build IEDs to blow your asses up?
Right here.
This is where the evil begins.”

“Drugs.”
King understood immediately what she was
talking about. Opium trafficking in the Golden Triangle was keeping Al Qaeda
and other terrorist groups flush with cash. He also knew that the CIA and FBI
were actively working to shut down the criminal agencies that were facilitating
those activities, but evidently Zelda saw her mission as more than just orders
to be followed; it had become personal.

She waved dismissively.
“Drugs.
Sex slaves.
Child soldiers…anything that can turn a
profit for the triads.”

“Look, I get it. You’re fighting the good
fight here, and you don’t appreciate being pulled off that to do favors for us.
But we’re on the same side.”

She regarded him thoughtfully. “Are you sure
about that? The guys we’ve been trying to take down—the 14K triad—they’ve got a
particularly brutal revenue stream: they kidnap people off the streets and
harvest their organs. Care to guess who buys them? Rich, connected
people—people back in the states—who don’t want to have to wait for a donor
match. Do you think the people in power
really
want to shut them down?”

King realized that he had to take charge of
the situation. “It’s not our job to figure out what they really want. We follow
the orders we’re given.”

“‘Ours not to reason why,’ is that it?”

“That’s what you signed up for, soldier.”

The faintest glimmer of a smile returned to
her full lips, and then she did something completely unexpected. She arched her
back and stretched lazily, like a cat rousing from a nap. “Well then, what are
your orders, sir?”

“General Keasling will have those for you
when he arrives. For now, I’d like all the
intel
you’ve got on the subjects. I understand your man—Shin—is currently conducting
surveillance?”

“He checks in at the bottom of the hour, so
it will be another forty-five minutes before I hear from him.” She tapped a
folder on the tabletop. “He calls me, I don’t call him. That’s the rule. His
communications logs are all here, so feel free to look through them. That’s all
I’ve got for you really. If there’s nothing else, I’d like to finish my workout.”
Zelda stood and picked up the boxing gloves, and then flashed her seductive
grin again. “Actually, I could use a sparring partner. What do you say, King?
Are you up for it?”