Her Captivated Hero, page 15
“Mason Gault is in charge of Midnight Delta.”
“I’ve heard of your team,” the general smiled at Mason. Then he turned to Max. “You command the Night Storm team, right?”
“Yes Sir,” Max nodded.
“What have you told your men?” the general asked Captain Hale.
“Not much,” the captain said as he stood at the front of the table. “I was waiting for you to arrive.”
“Good. Who’s this?” The general nodded toward Liam.
“This is Commander Liam McAllister. He’ll be coordinating the three teams while they’re out in the field.”
The general grinned for the first time since he came into the room. “Your reputation proceeds you, McAllister. Seems like you’ve pissed some people off lately.”
Liam didn’t say anything, but his smile was shrewd. While the general and Liam had a mini-bromance, Gray tried to get Riya’s attention, but she was busy folding the corner pages of her black composition notebook. She might not show any expression on her face, but her nervous tic showed she was as stunned by this turn of events as he was.
“Have a seat, men,” the general said to Hale and McAllister. After they were seated, he looked around the conference table. “Gentlemen, and Lady, we have a problem that is going down in the next twenty-four to thirty-six hours according to our sources at Langley. Someone very close to the upper echelons of the Saudi royal family is planning something big. They’ve been dealing with a lot of negative international media attention which has turned into some instability within the family. It’s creating a power struggle. Our CIA source, who is exceedingly reliable, says that the Prince is planning something in less than two days.”
The Middle East, like that was something new. But the idea of Riya being part of something with the Saudi royal family made his blood cold. He tried to get her attention, but her gaze was fixated on her notepad.
“You think the Saudis are responsible for creating that contagion?” Riya asked the general.
“Yes. Our team was able to analyze the delivery system used in the proof of concept they pulled in Las Vegas. It has the same signature as one the Saudis used with a nerve agent in Yemen.”
“What proof of concept?” Liam asked.
“That’ll be explained at the overall meeting,” the general said. “In here, I want to go over what Langley said and the team assignments.”
“There is a tech conference in Dubai, a fashion show in Bahrain, and a humanitarian award ceremony in Abu Dhabi. Every single one of these is a viable target, but we’ve identified the most people the Saudis might want to take out, at the Abu Dhabi event.”
There was a ringing sound, and the general pulled out his phone.
“I need to take this,” he said as he got up and went to the corner of the conference room.
“Why do we need scientists?” Gray said looking at Captain Hale.
The general put his phone back into his pocket. “Good question. I’ll handle that explanation when we’re with you and your entire teams. Where are they?”
“We have all of our men assembled together down the hall,” Mason said.
“Great. We’ll go meet with them,” the general said as he stood up. “The CIA thinks all three targets have a high likelihood of being hit, but I’m convinced it’s going to be the humanitarian award ceremony in Abu Dhabi. There are five or six high profile targets that the Saudis are salivating to take out.” He pointed at Gray. “Since your team just handled Al Khabor, I want Black Dawn there.” He turned to Captain Hale. “Captain, who do you want on the other two assignments?”
Captain Hale gave Gray’s counterparts considering looks. “Max, you’re Bahrain. Mason, you’re taking Dubai.”
The general started talking again. He turned to Liam. “We’ll follow you, Commander to the meeting room.” He motioned for Riya and the other two scientists to follow him out of the room. Riya kept her head down as she left.
“Fan-fucking-tastic, we get to babysit a bunch of models in Bahrain. Seriously, put a bullet in me,” Max said under his breath.
“Aren’t you single?” Mason asked Max, as Gray watched Riya’s braid swing behind her while she walked out the door.
“Yep,” Max answered. “And when I was younger, I dated models. These days I’d prefer to dress in a chicken suit and carry one of those billboards in Times Square.”
God, could these two clowns take any longer to get out of the room?
“Speed it up, I need to get to the briefing.” Gray growled at Max.
“What’s up with you and the pretty scientist?” Mason asked.
“If you’d get out of my way, I can tell them that the pretty scientist isn’t qualified to go on a mission.”
Max and Mason stopped, blocking his way. Mason pushed a hand into his chest. “What the fuck are you thinking?”
“Riya is mine, and she sure as hell isn’t going on a mission to some sort of hotspot. No way, no how.”
“Man, you have no choice.” Max’s voice was implacable.
“Watch me.” He pushed past Mason and Max and yanked open the conference room door.
14
The general had given her no indication regarding the mission on the short drive from the TAID headquarters to Coronado. But he was sure willing to pepper her with questions regarding the contagion she had examined while at the Pentagon lab.
“You had said that it was possible to funnel down the contagion so that it could target an ethnicity and maybe even get to the point where it could be specific enough to focus in on a sickle cell carrier, right?”
It had taken a few moments for Riya to respond because she hadn’t thought the general had been listening to her when she’d been in D.C.
“That’s right.”
“Could it get to the point where the poison could be sprayed in or delivered through an air duct, and just be directed at certain family members?”
Riya felt her pulse rate increase. “Absolutely.”
“This isn’t just a theory?” His eyes left the road, and he peered over at her.
“No, it isn’t just a theory. That contagion was elegant in its design, and it was on its way to surpassing anything I have seen before. Whoever has developed it is a genius.”
“Smarter than you? Because everything I’ve read, and everything I’ve been told, is that you are a wunderkind. There’s nobody better.”
That stopped her up short. She knew she was good. Brilliant even. But the best?
“I don’t know, General,” she said honestly.
“I’m hoping that you’re not needed. If things go right, you won’t be. But it’s possible we’re going to need your brain. And if we do, you have to be smarter than this asshole. Got it?”
What is going on?
“All I can do is try,” Riya answered.
“That’s not good enough.” She saw his knuckles turn white as he gripped the steering wheel. “You better damn well succeed.”
So here she was walking into a huge room filled with big men, some of whom she’d met, all of them looking grim, and she could feel Gray behind her back. She might have trouble reading people, but there was no mistaking the fact that he was beyond angry.
“Take a seat,” the man who had done the introductions said. He gestured to her and the two other CDC scientists to sit down in the front row. She watched as the other two SEAL team lieutenants went to the back of the room, but Gray sat down right beside her, his body vibrating with rage. She wanted to run away, or cry. Actually she wanted to do both. But then she looked at the general at the front of the room. He was staring directly at her.
“Okay everybody, listen up,” he started. “I’ve brought you together because we have a big problem.”
She heard someone mumble behind her. “Like that’s new.” He sounded amused.
“Your lieutenants will inform you of the mission specifics, they’re being sent to us from Langley. On a high level, they are in three high profile events in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Bahrain.”
“We have extremely reliable intel that a poison is going to be used on at least one if not more specific targets and that it is sanctioned by the higher echelons of the Saudi royal family. If we were to give a heads up to either the governments of Bahrain or the U.A.E., there would be a massive shitstorm. Therefore the analysts out of Langley have determined, along with your Captain, that your three teams can handle this.”
“Fuck yeah,” that same quiet voice mumbled.
Riya raised her hand.
“Dr. Patel?” The general pointed at her.
“You’re talking about the same contagion that I examined last month, correct?”
He nodded.
“Are you sure it can be amplified to large enclosed spaces?” she asked.
“Yes. Did you hear about the Llewellyn triplets who were rushed to the hospital from the nightclub in Las Vegas two nights ago?”
“Who?” she asked.
The general grimaced. “My thought exactly. They’re some YouTube sensation. Anyway, they died. Their deaths had all the hallmarks of meningitis. As soon as it was flagged, the CDC got involved and we got involved. We knew it was the same poison used in Al Khabor. The nightclub was twelve-thousand square feet. Those were the only three people impacted.”
Holy crap.
“Holy shit,” a man said behind her.
“Dr. Patel, since you researched this contagion, would you please come up and explain the significance of the triplets being the only ones affected.”
Riya stood up and went to the lectern. She rifled through the pages in her notebook. Giving a presentation wasn’t new, but having to give it when cold blue eyes were glaring at her made her knees shake.
Just keep your eyes on the page.
“When I first examined —”
“Louder,” someone yelled from the back.
She looked up and saw Gray, her gaze skittered away from him, and she saw Drake Avery. He gave her a sweet smile of encouragement. It helped. She cleared her throat.
“When I first examined this, I thought it was a toxin, because I only had a sample of cloth. There were microscopic particles of the airborne poison that was actually a contagion. I soon realized it carried a fast-acting form of meningitis, something that had never been developed before. In speed, it is along the line of Ebola or ricin. After comprehensive testing, it was clear that it only impacted the Y chromosome, i.e. men. What’s more, the way it was developed, the person who was targeted was not contagious.”
She looked up and saw that everybody in the room was nodding their heads.
“It was clear to me that even though it was used as a poison, that this kind of specific virus could be developed further so that it could target specific gene pools. If that could happen, why not reverse it so instead of a poison, turn it into a treatment for things like sickle cell anemia?”
Again, she looked up. She was surprised by the number of heads that were still nodding. She shouldn’t have been. She’d read enough SEAL books to know that intelligence was part of the selection criteria. God knew Gray was brilliant.
“Dr. Patel, does this poison have to be DNA specific, or could it be used on a broad population?” Liam McAllister asked.
“The thing that makes this so extraordinary is that they can target DNA. In theory, yes Commander, they could use this contagion on the masses. But what would be the point?” she answered.
Now came the part where she needed to come clean with the general. “When I left the lab in D.C. I continued to work on the specific sequencing of the contagion. It was intriguing. As I reversed engineered the sequence —”
“What?” the general said in a deep voice. “Would you mind repeating that Dr. Patel?”
What was he going to do, send her home? Not bloody likely.
“I said that after I left D.C. last month I doodled with the sequencing of the contagion from memory. It was important work that couldn’t be shoved into some corner. Lucky for us I was able to reverse engineer some of the bacteria’s sequence and calculate—”
“Doc,” she looked up and saw Drake Avery with his hand up.
“Yes?”
“Are you saying you figured out a way to stop the poison?” Drake asked in a friendly voice.
“It’s not a poison. It’s a bacteria. It’s a contagion. It’s not caused because you breathe it and it poisons you, it causes you harm because it prevents your body from functioning. Then your body begins to deteriorate. The difference between a poison and a contagion is-”
“So can you stop the toxin?” he asked hopefully.
She sighed. “Toxin isn’t the right word either,” she winced.
Drake smiled easily. “Got it. Contagion.”
“So have you figured out a way to stop the contagion even after it’s been sprayed?” Gray’s voice was biting.
“If I get to the victims fast enough, I think I can, because the aerosol shouldn’t have hit them with an intense enough dose to kill them immediately.” She turned to the general. “I’m assuming these triplets took at least twelve hours to die, and that none of the normal treatments for meningitis worked?”
He gave her a surprised look. “How did you know?”
“It’s how I would have progressed the contagion after a month. What they had developed last month was in its early stages.”
“Do you have notes that we can review?” one of the CDC scientists asked.
“I’ll scan them and e-mail you copies,” she offered.
“No,” Commander McAllister said. “We’ll make copies here, and provide them to you. I don’t want things on unsecure e-mail servers.”
“Mine is secure,” Riya protested.
“I’m not talking about yours, Dr. Patel,” Liam said as he nodded toward the two CDC scientists.
“I need you to break into your teams and go over your specific plan details,” the captain said. “Dr. Patel, you’re going to Abu Dhabi with Black Dawn since they’re assigned to the most likely target and you’re the one most familiar with the contagion. I trust the fact that you are familiar with members of that team will only be a plus.”
He wasn’t looking at her, he was staring at Gray.
“Captain, may I talk to you?” Gray asked.
“No,” he said. “Dismissed.” He started walking out of the briefing room. The general paused at the lectern.
“You walked a very fine line, Dr. Patel. A very fine line. Do you understand me?”
She gulped. “Yes Sir.”
“If something like this happens again, you won’t find me so understanding, do you comprehend me?”
“Yes Sir.”
He left the briefing room.
Commander McAllister stayed behind. “Max, hit the Conference Room C. Mason, you’re in One over in the annex building. Gray, you and your team will stay here with me.”
Riya watched as Max tapped one of the scientists on their shoulder. Apparently they were interchangeable.
Lucky them.
She watched through her bangs as the lieutenant named Mason escorted the other scientist out of the room. Soon she was left with Gray, Liam and the five other SEALs she’d already met. Well thank God for small miracles, at least I can put names to faces.
“Liam, can I speak to you in the hall?” Gray’s voice was a subdued roar. She jerked her head down so that the only thing she could see were her notes. Riya heard the door click. Her lip hurt, she tasted copper.
“Riya?”
It was Aiden O’Malley. She couldn’t look up. She couldn’t.
“Honey, Gray’s behaving like an ass. You need to ignore him.”
She turned another page in her notebook, and pressed down the corner. Uh-oh, she needed to stop doing that. They needed to be flat so they could be scanned. She wasn’t doing anything right.
“Let me. You guys take off. I don’t give a shit if you interrupt Gray and Liam.” Aiden sounded angry.
Oh no, another harsh voice.
She heard footsteps, and then the door closed again. A man’s big hand slowly pulled the notebook out of her grasp. She had no choice but to look up. Aiden had a compassionate smile on his face.
“Honey, you need to quit biting your lip.”
She touched it and winced.
Then all of her emotions, her questions, bubbled out, in a forlorn cry.
“Why is Gray so mad at me? I don’t understand.”
Riya was horrified when she felt a tear track down her face. She never, ever cried. Not ever.
Aiden walked to her side of the lectern and pulled her trembling frame into his arms. “He’s angry because he’s scared to fucking death.”
“That makes no sense at all,” she choked the words into the front of his olive green t-shirt. She sucked in a deep breath then pushed out of his arms.
No, this wasn’t right at all.
“Aiden, my country needs me. This contagion might behave like meningitis, but it isn’t. It’s something else. I’ve almost got it. If I can analyze the pure form, I can reverse the virus before it gets to the lethal stage.”
“Those are some pretty big ‘ifs’,” Aiden said.
“Yes they are,” Gray said.
Riya whirled around to see Gray and Commander McAllister standing in the doorway.
“If we do our job right, it’s never going to come to that, now is it?” Aiden asked his Lieutenant in a steely voice.
“The reason we send you out on these missions is because they’re fluid. It’s up to you to make sure the bad guys are stopped.” Liam’s voice held just as much steel as Aiden’s. “Dr. Patel, Gray has put in a formal protest for you not to be on this mission. What is your decision?”
All three sets of eyes were on her. She kept her gaze on the Commander. “This is my area of expertise. Nobody knows more about this contagion than I do. I promised the general I would do it, not because it’s in my field, but because I needed to be involved. I have to help my country, just like the three of you have been doing for years.”
“Then you’re going with Gray and his men.” He pushed open the door. “Get your asses back in here,” he called out. In seconds, Wyatt, Dalton, Dex and Griff filed into the room.
