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Chapter Twenty-three 8 page

"I'll handle that, Commander."

Cam gave Stark's shoulder a brief squeeze. "Thanks. It helps that you—"

Stark's radio sounded and she listened for a few seconds. "Double-check the ID." She glanced at Cam. "An agent, asking for you." She listened again and raised her eyebrows. "CIA."

"Perfect," Cam muttered. CIA agents were notorious for not being team players. No one in the other services really trusted them, and with good reason. They showed little allegiance to anyone except their own director, never shared intelligence—and what they did share was always suspect. "Do you have a name?"

"Lawrence."

Cam shook her head. The name rang no bells.

"What shall we do with her, Commander?"

"Send her up. We might as well get a look at her."

Stark relayed the message and signed off.

"Kind of strange, isn't it?" Stark asked. "CIA doesn't usually get involved in domestic issues."

"All bets are off, now. And besides," Cam said pointedly, "we have no idea what they might know about the situation that we don't. Let's hope we can work this street both ways and learn as much from them as they think they're going to learn from us."

"Now there's a plan I can get behind."

The buzzer sounded and Cam said, "I should be at the Aerie by 0830."

"Yes, ma'am. See you then."

Cam crossed the living room while the others continued to talk and opened the door. She felt a wave of dizziness, as if the room had suddenly spun three hundred and sixty degrees while she stood rooted in place. Then her natural instincts surfaced and she felt nothing but a cold calm. Valerie looked different than she had ever seen her before. She was just as beautiful—dressed just as elegantly as ever in a Prada business suit and low Ferragamo heels—and her eyes held the same glimmer of compassion that had always drawn Cam in. But this morning she wore a weapon on her right hip, although no one who wasn't very good at detecting such things would have noticed because of the excellent cut of her suit jacket. But the core of steel that Cam always knew Valerie possessed was very close to the surface now. It was evident in the way she stood and in the sheer power of her gaze. She radiated the supreme confidence that some agents had, but few deserved.

"Agent Lawrence," Cam said quietly. "Is it still Valerie?"

"It is, yes."

Cam glanced at her watch. "We have a briefing in twenty minutes, so if you don't mind, I'd like to leave the introductions until later. Although, of course, I'm sure you know everyone's names already."

Valerie's eyes skimmed past Cam to where Diane sat on the sofa, laughing at something that Blair had said. At that instant, Diane turned her head, a look of shock crossing her face when she registered Valerie's presence. Diane stood quickly and took two rapid steps forward, her expression of pleasure quickly turning to one of uncertainty.



"I just need one minute," Valerie said, her gaze still fixed on Diane's face.

Cam didn't need to turn to know who Valerie was looking at. "I'll say goodbye to Blair."

"Valerie?" Diane asked, her voice raised in surprise.

"I only have a few seconds right now," Valerie said quickly. "Everything I said to you was true. But there—"

"What are you doing here?"

"Just listen, Diane." Valerie touched her hand so fleetingly it might have been an accident. "I couldn't tell you everything before. I'm a federal agent. I—"

Diane's expression shut down, her face going as blank as if she'd suddenly donned a mask. "Never mind. I don't want to hear it." She turned abruptly and without a word walked past Cam, who was on her way back to the door.

"Ready?" Cam asked.

"Yes." Valerie watched Diane until she disappeared into the far hallway, then met Cam's gaze without a trace of emotion. "Let's go."

They'd been in the car ten minutes before Cam broke the silence. "Why did they bring you in now?"

"Since Tuesday, priorities have changed," Valerie replied.

"You must have been under for a long time to establish Claire's identity. I can't imagine they neutralize your kind of operative's cover lightly."

Valerie put her back against the door to face Cam in the driver's seat. "They don't tell me all the reasons, Cameron. But we all know how important Blair's security is." She saw Cam's hands tighten on the wheel, but continued evenly. "I know the players. And believe it or not, there are people who think that I can be helpful in the situation."

Cam swiveled her head and fixed Valerie with a cold stare before averting her gaze back to the traffic. "Well you know me, don't you?"

"You fell into the net by accident, Cameron. You were never an intended target."

A muscle in Cam's jaw bunched. "And I don't suppose you can tell me who you were supposed to be spying on, can you? When you weren't fucking them, that is."

"As you no doubt realize, my job description is counterintelligence, and Washington, DC is an excellent place to find out what our friends are really up to."

"Yes, it's amazing what you will reveal when someone's just fu—"

"Cameron, please don't," Valerie said quietly. "It was never like that with you."

Cam stared straight ahead. "Are you going to tell me that you never filed a report on me?"

"I'm not going to lie about that—"

Cam laughed bitterly.

"But there was never anything compromising in the reports."

"I guess reporting to the CIA that the first daughter's security chief is frequenting whores on Capitol Hill doesn't strike you as being compromising. Christ." She had to make an effort not to grind her teeth. "I'm surprised they didn't bust me out a long time ago."

"Everyone has secrets, Cameron. Sometimes secrets can be powerful currency."

Abruptly, Cam swerved to the curb and jammed on the brakes. She swiveled to face Valerie. "Was any of it true?"

"Every touch," Valerie said quietly.

Cam searched her eyes and saw the pain. She searched her own heart for the true source of the rage that had followed fast upon the disbelief at finding Valerie at the door that morning. She'd never been in love with her, but she'd cared. Deeply. And she'd let Valerie see things that she revealed to very few people—she'd exposed herself in her weakest moments.

"Christ"

"I'm sorry, Cameron. But I can't apologize for doing my job, only that I hurt you in the process."

"Right." Cam grimaced, thinking that she'd said the same thing more than once herself. "We're going to have to work together, and frankly, I don't trust you."

"Camer—"

"I don't trust any CIA agents. On principle." Cam grinned briefly when she saw a true smile flicker across Valerie's full lips. "But as far as I'm concerned, whatever happened between us is personal. That's not part of the job now."

"Thank you." Valerie put her hand on Cam's wrist. "You were never an assignment, never work, for me."

Cam turned her hand over and slid her palm into Valerie's, their fingers linked and their eyes held, a silent acknowledgment of what they had once been to one another. Then they separated, settling back into their seats as Cam started the car.

"Agents Savard, Davis, Lawrence," Cam said, making rapid introductions as everyone found seats in the small living room of Stark and Savard's apartment. Cam took the end seat on the sofa and reached for the coffee mug that Savard had placed in front of her on the low wooden table. Absently, she noted that the fish tank against the far wall seemed to have a new batch of baby somethings congregated just below the surface in a shimmering silver cloud. Then the apartment receded from her view, and all her focus turned to Savard. "What do we know?"

"It's more what we don't know," Savard said. "We concentrated on the IDs of the four dead commandos, and the short answer is, no one knows who they are. Fingerprints haven't turned up anything in our databases or NCIC."

"Don't tell me these guys aren't ex-military," Cam said sharply. "These guys were professionally trained."

"Interpol?" Valerie asked quietly.

Savard gave her a long look. She 'd recognized her from a previous investigation when a few agents very close to Cam and Blair had learned of Cam's liaison with a woman identified as a Washington call girl. Apparently they had been mistaken. "They're still checking."

"DNA?" Cam asked of Felicia.

Felicia shook her head. "Not yet, but Quantico expects results within twenty-four hours."

Cam didn't ask how Felicia knew that, and she didn't care. All that mattered was that she had access to whatever intelligence was available without delay. Even though she should be able to get any information she needed to run her investigation, if she went through regular channels there would be resistance at every level, and it might take weeks to learn what Felicia could discover in a matter of hours by hacking into the various databases.

"Someone knows who these guys are. Let's get their faces out to every possible source here and abroad." Cam turned to Valerie, who sat slightly apart from the others in an overstuffed chair that had seen better days. "Any place in particular we should be looking?"

"Our best guess," Valerie replied carefully, "is the Middle East or Afghanistan. Second-best guess, Libya, although we don't believe they have the contacts required to orchestrate Tuesday's attack."

"All right," Felicia said. "That's a place to start."

"In the meantime," Cam said, "if we can't get anything on the commandos, then we'll have to concentrate on Foster. I want to know everything about him from the minute he was born. I want the names of the people he roomed with at the Academy, the women or men he dated, the names of the agents he worked with on previous assignments, his previous partners, his travel itinerary for the last ten years. I want to know everywhere he's been, everything he's done, every last thing about him."

"Since the assault team members were all Caucasian," Valerie said, "I'd suggest looking at all the paramilitary organizations nationwide. That fits their profile." She looked at Savard. "The FBI should have a considerable file internally, but there has been some counterintelligence activity by.. .other organizations, as well."

Felicia smiled. "I'll have a look around."

"Good. Let's start putting together organizational profiles on every known paramilitary group," Cam instructed. "Personnel, geographic location, financial resources, political affiliations, publications, propaganda.. .anything that might hint at armed retaliation."

"Do we have anything that ties these guys to the World Trade Center?" Savard asked, directing her attention pointedly toward Valerie.

"No," Valerie replied, her expression completely composed. "From what we know now, the hijackers appear to have been foreign terrorists. The men who attacked Ms. Powell were not." She sighed. "And neither event was anticipated. Certainly not in the present time frame."

"We need access to your people's intelligence files," Cam said, deciding it was time to find out whose side Valerie was really on. "Can you get us in?"

Valerie hesitated. "As far as I have access, yes."

"If you open the door," Felicia said, "I'll—"

Cam's cell phone emitted a series of sharp, staccato beeps and she yanked it off her belt as she jumped to her feet. "Roberts."

"Cameron," Lucinda Washburn said with an urgency that Cam had never heard in her voice before. "There's been an incident at the Aerie. They've called for a HAZMAT team and quarantined the building."

Cam didn't hear the rest of the message because she was already running for the door.

 

Chapter Fifteen

The NYPD had worked fast. Cam ran into the first barricade two blocks from Gramercy Park. Patrol cars angled across the intersection and a bevy of uniformed cops milled in the street. Three helicopters swooped low over the tops of nearby buildings. She slammed her car to a halt nose-in against the curb, yanked the keys from the ignition, and jumped out. She was vaguely aware of shouts aimed in her direction as she ran, her badge extended in her left hand. Dodging and weaving around the bodies that interposed themselves between her and her destination, she just kept screaming, "Secret Service. Secret Service," and shouldering aside anyone who didn't get out of her path quickly enough.

When she rounded the corner of the gated square diagonally across from Blair's building, the congestion in the streets was magnified a hundredfold. Squad cars, ambulances, bomb squad armored vehicles, and official personnel from the police, fire, and emergency rescue departments clogged the sidewalks and streets. She rapidly scanned the building's facade, half expecting to see the top floors gone. The only thing she could imagine was that a bomb had detonated or was about to.

Her stomach cramped, her legs screamed with acid build up, and her chest burned with air hunger, and none of it was from her race through the crowds. It was from a terror that had gripped her the moment Lucinda's words had registered. Someone had gotten to Blair. Despite everything she had done, everything she had anticipated, everything she was— -someone had gotten to her lover. Christ. God Blair!

"Secret Service, get out of the way. Get out of the way," she barked as she pushed and shoved her way toward the double glass doors to the lobby of Blair's apartment building. "Secret Serv—"

Several pairs of hands grabbed her jacket and dragged her away from the door as a wall of blue closed around her. Blindly, she reacted with an elbow strike that found a target, as evidenced by a grunt and a muffled curse. Then her back was slammed into the wall, followed by her head, and the world spun in a dizzying circle, trees and sky and sidewalk flashing by in an off-kilter parade before her eyes.

"Commander. Commander!" A woman's voice shouted somewhere very close to her ear. "Ease up!"

Cam struggled to find her balance, her head still reeling. She knew that voice. She blinked, tried to focus. Hara. Hara and Wozinski. Wozinski had her pinned up against the building with a beefy forearm across her chest. Hara, one hand restraining Cam's right wrist in a viselike grip, was waving off an angry trio of NYPD officers with her other arm.

"Secret Service. We've got this," Hara yelled. "Back off. We've got this."

"Let me go," Cam said in a flat, hard voice.

Wozinski looked at Hara for direction, but she just shook her head and angled her body so that her back was to the cops who still stood muttering nearby. With her face very close to Cam's, she said, "If we let you go and you make a move for the front door again, those cops are going to haul you away, and we won't be able to stop them this time. We could use your help here, Commander. It's your call."

"Is she alive?" Cam asked, her eyes boring into Hara's.

"As far as we know, yes."

"I want to talk to her."

"NYPD has diverted all calls to their own channels. They're jamming cell signals in this sector. We can't—"

Cam twisted her wrist in a move designed to break the strongest restraining grip, and got as far as dislodging Wozinski's arm from her chest before both agents drove their shoulders into her midsection again. Their combined weight forced the air from her lungs and her legs deserted her. Only the two bodies jammed against hers kept her upright.

Hara continued speaking in a calm, even tone as if nothing had happened. "The NYPD is not taking any chances after what happened Tuesday. Right now, their antiterrorism team is running the show, and they're jittery as hell. If we want some control back, you're going to have to get it for us. Commander? Commander, are you getting this?"

"Yes," Cam wheezed. "I'm okay. Let me go."

"Okay, Greg, ease up," Hara said after a long look at Cam's face.

Immediately, Cam felt the pressure on her chest lessen, and she was finally able to get a full breath. She coughed, and her bruised ribs protested. "Sorry." Ignoring the pain, she gulped in another breath and felt her head start to clear. "Fill me in. Fast."

"We don't have much." Hara lowered her voice. "The chief, Egret, and Tony Fazio went up to the penthouse. Greg and I were detailed to the lobby. Waters and O'Reilly are on the rear door."

Cam wanted to shout Tell me about Blair, God damn it! but her years of training kept her focused. She needed to know everything if she was going to take charge. And if Blair was in trouble, she wasn't going to let anyone else take care of her. "What happened up there?"

"We don't know. The chief radioed a code red with orders to contain the building. While we were doing that, she must've called in a red alert to the NYPD, because the next thing we knew, we were overrun with uniforms and nobody's telling us anything."

"Have you seen a command vehicle?"

Wozinski pointed toward the northeast corner of the park. "Opposite side of the street, about halfway up the block. We couldn't get close."

"I can." Cam rubbed her chest unconsciously, but the pain wouldn't abate. She welcomed it. It kept her head clear. "You two stay on the door. No one goes up to that penthouse unless I'm with them, got it?"

"The only ones who have gone up there so far are the HAZMAT team," Wozinski said.

"I don't care if the next one in is the president, I go too."

Both agents visibly relaxed. Simultaneously, they said, "Yes, ma'am."

Cam straight-armed her way down the street, waving her badge and repeating over and over, "Secret Service. I'm looking for Captain Stacy Landers." Landers was the head of the NYPD security division assigned to liaise with the Secret Service and to provide additional forces whenever the president or Blair made public appearances in the region. Landers' division was also part of the antiterrorism squad, and Cam knew she'd be heading up the operation. "Landers. Captain Landers. Where is she?"

Finally, she got close enough to pound a fist on the closed door of the black armored van that bristled with satellite antennae. A face appeared at the small rectangular- bulletproof glass window for a second and then was gone. A voice over the intercom next to the door instructed, "Hold your ID badge up to the camera, please."

Cam faced the video camera lens mounted above the door and held her ID next to her right cheek so that her face and the image on her badge were visible. Ten seconds later, the door slid open two feet revealing a giant of a man in a SWAT uniform. He wasn't smiling. "Come on in, Agent Roberts."

Three men and a woman were crowded into the narrow central aisle, clustered around a bank of video monitors that showed both limited views of both the exterior and interior of Blair's building as well as an aerial shot of the roof relayed from one of the helicopters Cam had heard circling overhead. The woman, a redhead in a tan jacket and slacks, looked over her shoulder at Cam. Her green eyes flickered for an instant with compassion, then went hard.

"Commander."

"Captain," Cam said, leaning over to peer at the monitors receiving images from the surveillance cameras placed throughout Blair's building. There was no view of the interior of the loft because she herself had ordered the video cameras removed from Blair's living space to protect her privacy. The rest of the building seemed eerily deserted. She hadn't expected to see Blair, but still the disappointment was like a knife cutting through her. She wanted to tear the van apart. Procedure. I have to follow procedure if I want to get to Blair. "Status?"

"Egret's security chief radioed a red alert fifty minutes ago," the captain of the NYPD antiterrorism squad reported. "Apparently they ran into some kind of foreign substance up there. We're assuming it's a chemical agent."

"Casualties?" Cam gripped the edge of a metal bracket securing the monitors to the side wall of the vehicle so hard that the edge cut into the skin of her palm. Her mind rebelled at the possibilities. Cyanide, ricin, sarin. Oh my God.

"None reported. We've shut down the building's exhaust units and the Public Works people are isolating the outflow from this grid into special holding tanks." She stopped abruptly and pressed two fingers to the earpiece cradled in the shell of her right ear, tilting her head as if to improve the reception. After a moment, she muttered, "Roger that, sir. Yes, sir, I have that," into her throat mike. She looked up at Cam, her expression grim. "That was the president's security adviser. I've been ordered to hold our HAZMAT unit outside the apartment until a team from Fort Derrick gets here."

"USAMRIID?"

"Yeah. They're already in the air. ETA twenty-five minutes."

It only took another second for Cam to make the connection, and then her stomach twisted. The U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command located at Fort Detrick, Maryland was the only facility in the Department of Defense with a BSL-4 laboratory. What the hell do they think is up there?

"Open a line to the loft. I want to talk to Blair. Now."

Blair jumped when the portable phone on her breakfast bar rang, staring at it as if it were alive. The last time she'd tried it, for what must have been the fiftieth time, it had been without a signal. None of their ceil phones or radios worked either. That couldn't be a coincidence, or an accident. They hadn't heard from anyone in almost thirty minutes, and being kept in the dark as to what was happening really really pissed her off.

She snatched up the phone and snapped, "Blair Powell. Who the hell is this?"

"It's Cam, baby. You okay?" Cam tried desperately to keep the tremor from her voice.

"Hey," Blair said gently, her temper instantly soothed. "I'd be great if somebody would tell me what the hell is going on."

"You're not hurt? You're not sick in any way?"

"No. We all seem to be all right." Blair moved to the other side of the loft from where Stark and Fazio paced in tight circles, their useless cell phones clutched in their hands. "Where are you?"

"Right out front with Stacy Landers. Can you tell me what happened?"

"We were moving my canvases," Blair explained, "and there was a plastic bag stuck between two of them. We didn't see it there, and when we pulled the frames apart, whatever was in the bag spilled out."

Cam was struck by a wave of dizziness and braced a hand against the ceiling of the van to steady herself. "Spilled out or blew into the air? Do you remember?"

"Uh.. .a little of both, really. What's going on, Cam?"

"We're not sure just yet. Who actually broke open the bag?" Who had the most exposure to whatever was in it?

"Fazio—-he was unpacking some of the crates for me. Why?"

"Stark and Fazio are both all right too?"

"Yes. We were instructed to move as far away from the problem site as possible without leaving the apartment. That was over half an hour ago, and that's the last we heard from anybody. Why are we being kept up here?"

Cam hesitated and then realized that the truth was the only choice. Blair could handle anything from her except a lie. "We have to assume that substance—the powder, whatever it is—is potentially harmful. We can't move you until the potential contamination is contained. We're bringing in a team now to do that."

"There's a HAZMAT team here somewhere, I heard them talking to Stark on her radio before we lost contact with everyone. Why aren't they in here decontaminating us, if that's what we're waiting for?"

"Washington is sending up a special team," Cam said. Her shirt and jacket were soaked with sweat, despite the fifty degree temperature outside and the powerful air-conditioning unit in the van that ran at full power to cool the electronic equipment. The inactivity was making her crazy. She wanted a firsthand look at the situation. She wanted to see Blair. "They'll be here any minute."

"Yeah, yeah. Any minute. I'll bet." Impatiently, Blair strode to the windows and looked down to the street. "God, there's five times as many people down there now as there were twenty minutes ago. What aren't you telling me?"

"We're all pretty much waiting on this team to arrive, baby. As soon as they touch down, I'll come up with them."

"That's grea—" Blair stopped her restless route around the perimeter of the room, her eyes narrowing. "They're coming from DC. So someone either knows what this is or thinks they do, because they don't want the local people handling it. Just who are these people, Cam?"

"USAMRIID."

Silence ensued while Blair searched her memory for an association to the familiar-sounding name. "Wait a minute, isn't that part of the bioterrorism response unit?"

"Yes."

"So," Blair said thoughtfully, reaching behind her to grip a chair back. She suddenly felt light-headed, and the feeling frightened her. "What are we talking here? Ebola? Some kind of plague?"

"I don't know, baby," Cam said in frustration, hating the note of fear she'd heard in Blair's voice for the first time. "I'm waiting to find out, the same as you."

"I don't want you coming up here," Blair said sharply. I won't have anything happening to you. Not again.

"I'll come up with the containment team. I'll be perfectly saf—"

"No. " Blair saw both Stark and Fazio glance at her in alarm and she waved them off, mouthing, It's okay, when they started toward her.

"Listen to me, Blair. I need to see you. I need to be sure you're all right. I'm coming up."

"Cameron, think. My security chief is stuck in here with me. I've got no one on the outside who knows anything about me except Lucinda, and she's not capable of running the ground show. I need you healthy so that you can handle my security while they sort out whatever this thing is. If you get sick, or they even think you are, you won't be any use to me. Think, sweetheart. I need you out there, not in here." Don't come near me. I won't have you die because of me.

"We don't even know there's anything dangerous up there. I'll be well protected."

"Cameron, if you don't do this for me, I'll have Stark tell Stacy Landers to keep you away from here altogether."

Cam swore vehemently. The four NYPD officers hanging on her every word pretended not to notice. "Blair, don't do that."

"Promise me you won't come up here." She waited, the silence ringing hollowly between them. "Cameron. Promise."

"All right," Cam finally said. "Unless I get clearance from the USAMRIID team."

"Fine, but I want to hear it from their team leader." Blair let out a sigh. "Stark is waving to me. She wants to talk to you. I've got to go. I love you."

"I love you." Cam's throat was so tight she could barely speak. "I'll see you soon."

Stark took the phone from Blair with a nod of thanks. "Commander. I felt given the circumstances I had no choice but to—-"

"It was a good call, Chief," Cam said. "Blair—all of you, you're all right?"

"Yes, ma'am. Any word yet on what we're dealing with?"

"Negative. You'll just have to sit tight until the biohazard team from Fort Detrick has a look."

"Fort Detrick? Oh man." Stark turned away from Blair and Fazio and cupped her hands around the phone. "In today's briefing there was a report about that team investigating a bioterrorism attack in New Jersey. They suspected anthrax."


Date: 2015-12-11; view: 806


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