Oath Of Honor

Chapter Nineteen

The neon sign announcing the Bayside Motel blinked erratically, illuminating the L-shaped motor court in flashes of holiday red and green. A mud-spattered black Ford pickup truck and a low-slung eighties Cadillac convertible with big patches of rust-colored primer on the fenders were the only vehicles in the gravel lot. A light burned in the room closest to the road. A hand-painted sign propped in the streaked window proclaimed “Office.”

“Looks like a hot-sheet motel,” Wes said, laughing softly.

“Cord swears this place is clean and makes decent coffee,” Evyn said.

“That’s all we need, then.” Wes didn’t care where they bunked—she’d slept in worse places, including a tent in the Afghan mountains. Compared to that, this rated five stars.

Evyn pulled the rented Jeep into the lot just as the sun went down and the wind came up. “I’ll run in and register.”

When Evyn pushed open the door, the wind clattering through the branches of the red oaks surrounding the motel filled the Jeep with a sound like machine-gun fire. Wes jerked and her stomach lurched. She had been posted to a field hospital close enough to the front to hear the firefights ranging in the hills at night, her tent a poor shield against stray rounds. She’d rarely slept deeply, her body always primed to duck and cover. Even now, eighteen months later, she instinctively looked for cover when a car backfired or a door slammed. She hadn’t been this jittery since she’d returned stateside. The afternoon’s brief unscheduled swim shouldn’t have thrown her equilibrium off so much—maybe her agitation was due to the lingering chill the steaming shower hadn’t dispersed.

Leaning out the open door, Evyn peered up at the sky. “Cord said we might get snow, and I think it’s arrived—blowing in fast. You should stay in the car until I get back. The last thing you need is to get wet again.”

Wes reached across the seat and grabbed Evyn’s sleeve, stopping her from climbing out. “You need to stay dry too.” She handed her North Face jacket to Evyn, who had left the rescue station wearing only jeans and her T-shirt. “This has got a hood. Go ahead, take it.”

“You sure?”

“The heater’s blasting in here. I’m plenty warm. Plenty hungry too.”

Evyn grinned. “Excellent prognostic sign. What do you think about pizza? There’s a place across the street, and I doubt we’ll get anything delivered out here tonight if a storm is coming.”

“Sounds great. Since I already know you’re not a vegetarian, I’ll take pepperoni.”

“Perfect. Mushrooms?”

“And black olives.”

Evyn nodded approvingly. “Nailed it.”

Wes laughed. “How about beer?”

“Sam Adams if I can’t get any kind of microbrew?”

“You nailed it.”

Laughing, Evyn jumped out, shrugged into Wes’s jacket, and flipped up the hood. She slammed the door, shoved her hands in her pockets, and ran through the icy mix of rain and snow, her form briefly outlined by the headlights before she disappeared into the dark. Wes watched a few seconds longer, a strange foreboding churning inside as soon as Evyn vanished from sight. She clasped her hands and put them between her knees. She wasn’t cold, but her fingers were icy. She wondered if that was her imagination. The temperature had fallen rapidly in the face of the approaching storm, but she was used to cold weather. She shivered and peered into the near-empty lot, a creeping unease making her twitch.

Evyn had left the headlights on, and the halos from the slanting beams seemed to be keeping the circle of darkness at bay. She’d never been afraid of the dark and didn’t get spooked by unknown terrain. She was a naval officer and an emergency physician—she was trained to handle imminent danger. The headlights dimmed and the darkness drew closer. Her breath came a little faster and a heaviness pervaded her chest.

She closed her eyes and she was upside down again, swirling in an endless void that sucked her down into cold, dark silence. Gasping, she shot up straight and opened her eyes. Outside her fogged window, the snow fell thicker, a white blanket screening the world from view. She couldn’t see the motel. She couldn’t see where Evyn had gone. Evyn. Evyn was solid and real and warm. She fought the urge to get out of the car and look for her.

“Okay,” Wes whispered aloud, “you know what this is. Fatigue, residual hypothermic confusion, delayed stress reaction. You’re entitled to all of it—for an hour or so.”

Cataloging her symptoms helped relieve the pressure in her chest some. She took a deep breath, heard the faint wheeze of constricted bronchioles. Evyn was right, she wasn’t fit to fly. She needed to replenish the fuel she’d burned off while struggling against the killer current. She needed to sleep. Evyn had to be in nearly the same shape—she’d been in the water almost as long. And she’d fought the current for both of them.

The car door opened and Wes jumped. Evyn dropped into the seat beside her.

“Okay,” Evyn said, wiping traces of melting snow from her cheeks with one hand. “I called over for pizza and they said it would be ready in fifteen. We can get settled and I’ll run over and get it.”

“Maybe we should forget that,” Wes said, her voice sounding hoarse and foreign.

Evyn backed the Jeep out of the slot and headed farther into the lot. The long, low motel came into view again as she coasted forward. “Why? I thought you were hungry?”

Wes swiped at her forehead. She wasn’t hot, but she was sweating. She wasn’t cold, but she was shivering. “Sorry. I—”

“What’s going on?” Evyn stopped in front of a green metal door just barely visible through the falling flakes. A cockeyed 12 made from white stick-on, glow-in-the-dark numbers identified the room. She downshifted into neutral and pulled the parking brake, leaving the lights on. “You okay?”

“Yes—sorry. Just jumpy. Sorry.”

Evyn rested her palm on the back of Wes’s neck. Her fingers were hot as banked coals. “Nothing unusual. You had a hell of a shock earlier.”

“So did you. You need to stay warm and eat and—”

“Hey,” Evyn said. “That’s all in the plan, Doc. You can relax. Really.”

“I know. You’re right. I’ll be fine.” Wes closed her eyes and let her head fall back into the secure cradle of Evyn’s hand. Evyn’s fingers glided up and down the muscles on either side of her spine, easing the tension, sending warmth through her. She sighed. “I don’t think the weather is going to get any better. We ought to make a run for it.”

“Let me get the door open and you get inside—keep dry,” Evyn murmured, continuing the gentle massage. “I’ll bring in our gear.”

“I appreciate it, but I can help carry our stuff.”

“This is the part where you practice letting me take care of you.”

A tingle of unease skittered down Wes’s spine—she’d been looking after her own needs most of her life, and her need for Evyn’s touch, her presence, made her feel exposed and vulnerable. She didn’t want Evyn’s attention just because Evyn felt guilty. “None of this is your fault.”

Evyn frowned. “I suck at connect-the-dots, and I’m missing this picture.”

“You don’t have to look after me because you feel responsible.”

“Wow. Okay.” Evyn’s hand fell away. “I’ll just let you fend for yourself, then—and when you finally do collapse—”

Beneath the edge of anger in Evyn’s voice, Wes heard hurt. She didn’t want to hurt her. She didn’t want the cold distance between them that had nothing to do with the storm or the dark either. “So maybe that came out a little wrong. I guess I suck at the being taken care of thing. I had two little sisters who couldn’t even remember our dad. Things were harder for them, and my mother had only so much energy to spread around between the four of us.”

“Okay.” Evyn’s shoulders relaxed and the tightness around her mouth softened. The red highlights in her hair gleamed against the glow of snow cocooning them, an ethereal image that imprinted on Wes’s brain. She was beautiful—not model perfect but strong and bold.

Wes wanted to erase the last vestiges of wariness in Evyn’s gaze. She wanted to trace the line of her jaw, but instead she grazed her fingertips over the back of Evyn’s hand where it rested on Evyn’s knee. “Can we try that again?”

A moment passed and Wes held her breath. Evyn’s hand turned over and their fingers entwined.

“How about we get you settled and I’ll go for pizza?” Evyn asked.

The heavy weight crushing Wes’s chest dissolved. Evyn’s hand was warm and solid. She tightened her hold. “I’d like that.”

*

The day shift had all left hours ago, and the corridor outside the Level 4 isolation lab was deserted. Her footsteps fell soundlessly on the white tile floor as she made her way to the airlock at the end of the hall. She pressed her palm on the identification plate and leaned down for the retinal scan. The light above the passage flashed from red to green, and the hydraulic door slid open with a faint whoosh. She stepped into the UV chamber, the outer door behind her closed, and she slipped on a pair of protective glasses. When she input her entry code on the wall panel, a hum accompanied the pulse of UV, and the next door in the chain opened. She deposited her protective glasses on the shelf and passed into the inner isolation room, where she methodically went through the routine of testing her positive pressure protective suit—sealing the cuffs at ankles and wrists, zipping the neck, and attaching the air hose to the one-way valve in the center of the back. She twisted the dial and compressed air flowed in. The pressure on the wall gauge held steady at 1 atm. No leaks. She closed the inflow valve and opened the vents along the neck. Air hissed out. She was ready to go to work.

Removing her shoes, she carefully stepped into the bright yellow suit and, after closing the seals, pulled on the calf-high impervious rubber boots. She wore no jewelry to work, not even a watch. She’d only have to remove it—she couldn’t risk any snag or tear that might violate the PPPS. Even a microscopic rent in the isolation suit could allow a contagion to enter, where it might be absorbed by her skin or inhaled into her respiratory system. The biological agents they worked with inside the BSL-4 lab were either highly transmissible or uniformly fatal or both. The suit was her only shield.

Once the suit was secure, she covered the fluid-resistant boots with disposable booties, fit the head shield into place, and pulled on her gloves. She wasn’t concerned for her safety. She was always prepared for any emergency. Caution was a way of life for her, and she’d been trained since birth to be composed under extreme circumstances.

With a bulky gloved finger, she pressed the entrance code, and the chamber pressurized. The inner door opened and she stepped into the lab. She nodded to a colleague working at a nearby station, sequencing a variant of Ebola. After connecting an overhead airline to the suit’s port, she made her way down the aisle, the line following behind her like a colorful yellow umbilicus. She’d volunteered for the night shift six months previously, establishing her routine, arriving a little early, leaving a little later. Her colleagues appreciated her diligence and her willingness to take the graveyard shift for longer than the usual mandatory rotations. At her station, she booted up her computer and retrieved the samples she planned to run on the gel plates that night, along with a second rack of tubes. Over the past six months she’d been carefully siphoning off micro-aliquots of avian flu stock, too tiny to be noticed by anyone else, until she had a single test tube half-full of one of the most virulent synthetic contagions ever produced.

When she left at the end of her shift, she’d slide the tube into a fold in her suit beneath her arm and secure it in place with a strip of the special adhesive they kept for emergency repairs if one of the suits should be accidentally torn. Like a tire patch, the instantly self-sealing adhesive would provide enough protection until the lab worker could get to the decontamination chamber. Tonight, the lifesaving material would allow her to secrete out a virus capable of killing thousands. She wasn’t really interested in the deaths of thousands, however, only one.

President Andrew Powell stood for everything she despised—a spokesman for the rich, a defender of the privileged, a champion of those without morals or values. Her father had taught her and her brothers and sisters the right path, raising them to be survivors. He’d encouraged them to excel, schooling them at the camp with the children of other survivalists, setting them on the path to positions where they could someday make a difference. She’d always known she had a mission, and now she was going to fulfill it. She would help him make his message heard—America for Americans—and now that a leader had emerged, they would have a president who would speak for the righteous. She would help make that possible.

The digital clocks at the far end of the room simultaneously projected the time and date in New York City, Washington DC, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Sydney, New Delhi, Berlin, London. Seven p.m. in Atlanta. Twelve more hours and the first stage of her mission would be complete. Soon the reclaiming of America would begin.