We all fall down, p.28
We All Fall Down, page 28
“Yes.” Sergio shows a hint of a smile. “It is not quite . . . direct.”
After their driver drops them off at a helipad outside of Naples, a small noisy chopper carries them to an Italian military base outside of Rome. From there, they board an air force jet that flies them to a base in Egypt, outside of Alexandria. Alana spends most of the flight on the phone, updating Monique Olin and then Byron. She’s disheartened to hear that all the gains in Genoa have been more than offset by the outbreak in Naples, where the plague continues to spiral out of control and the hospitals have been flooded with suspect cases.
On the tarmac in Alexandria, a sleek gunmetal-gray helicopter is waiting for them with its rotor already turning. As they lift off, the talkative pilot explains with great pride, in broken English, how his AB 212 chopper has a range of several hundred miles and flies as smoothly as a seagull. Alana’s slight airsickness tells her otherwise.
Forty minutes later—and four hours after they left Italy—a naval ship appears out of the mist below them.
“Is that her?” Alana asks Sergio over the headphones.
“The San Giorgio, yes. A COMSUBIN team is already waiting for us onboard.”
“What’s that? Special ops?”
“Yes. Italian special operations maritime assault force. Similar to your Navy SEALs.” Then he adds, with obvious pride, “Only COMSUBIN has a much longer history.”
The pilot eases the helicopter down on the ship’s deck. There are two other choppers, larger than theirs, lined up on the deck beside them. Mechanics are attending to both aircraft while sailors load equipment and boxes inside each of them.
An officer in forest-green fatigues appears outside the door of the helicopter. He reeks of special forces, from his thick neck and chest to his crew cut and rigid posture. He salutes crisply and then shakes hands with Sergio. They speak in Italian for a few moments. Sergio turns to Alana. “This is Capitano Monti. He will lead the assault team onto the Cielo di Asia.”
Alana shakes Monti’s strong hand and, assuming he doesn’t speak English, glances over to Sergio. “How soon do we leave?”
Monti answers for him. “Forty-five minutes, Doctor,” he says with minimal accent. “After the briefing. Come now, please.”
Monti leads Alana and Sergio inside the ship and into a long narrow conference room where several men are seated in rows of chairs, all wearing the same dark green fatigues. The room goes silent. Monti stands with arms folded below a screen that fills the wall above him. Alana counts eleven other men. Each one of them is stone-faced and sits bolt upright. There are a few impassive nods for the guests after Monti introduces them.
Alana and Sergio claim two empty chairs near the front. Sergio leans closer and says in a low voice, “The capitano described you as a soldier with the NATO counter-bioterrorism force.”
“Does that mean he will let me join the raid?” she whispers back.
“I believe so, yes.”
Monti clicks a button in his hand, and an image of a modern freighter fills the screen. The sheer size of the Cielo di Asia is daunting. And the vessel appears even bigger when the image flips to a cross-sectional blueprint. Modular containers are stacked six stories high and there are three levels belowdecks.
Monti speaks rapidly. Sergio can only translate in snippets. Alana gleans enough to understand that if Stefano is not immediately found, the soldiers will scour the ship in pairs from top to bottom.
Monti clicks the button again, and the screen fills with a photo of a smiling Stefano that Alana hasn’t seen before. There’s something lonely in his self-conscious grin. Monti advances through a few more photos of the monk. Then he extracts a printed photo from his front pocket and waves it around, indicating that everyone should be a carrying the same picture.
Monti advances the slide and an image of a self-contained breathing apparatus appears on the screen. He switches to English. “Dr. Vaughn will discuss the safety requirements now.”
Surprised, Alana rises to her feet. She pulls Sergio up by his arm. “Will you translate for me?” she asks, and he nods.
She walks the soldiers through the steps involved in securing their biohazard suits and then describes contact precautions, stressing the importance of washing their hands during decontamination, especially their thumbs, which she knows people, even doctors, sometimes forget. She reminds the soldiers to avoid any direct contact with potentially infected people or with rats, and emphasizes the importance of sealing any trapped or dead animals inside biohazard bags.
“We believe Stefano is carrying several infected rats,” she says, and waits for Sergio to translate. “Ideally, we would capture the rats alive. But do not take chances with them. A bite through the glove could lead to infection. If you’re in doubt, kill the animal.”
Monti says something in Italian and a grim laugh ripples through the room. “The capitano says that the same applies to Stefano,” Sergio translates.
The meeting breaks up. Sergio and Alana follow the soldiers to a room full of biohazard equipment. They suit up in complete silence. Alana’s mouth goes dry when Sergio passes her the same Beretta handgun he gave to her during the raid on the bomb makers’ hideout. It feels heavier in her hand.
The team assembles on deck and then breaks off into two groups. Six men head for one of the awaiting assault helicopters whose rotors are spinning slowly. Monti beckons Alana and Sergio over to join him in the second helicopter.
As soon as the doors close, their chopper takes off with a jerk. The staccato of the beating blade fills the otherwise tense silence in the cabin. This time the butterflies filling Alana’s stomach are not from motion sickness.
Fifteen minutes later, the coastline of northern Egypt comes into focus. A city emerges ahead of them. As the choppers fly lower, she can see that the harbor below is crowded with cargo ships. They descend steadily, until a freighter that matches the one shown in the briefing comes into view. Alana’s breathing picks up when she sees the Italian flag. She squints to read the markings on the side: Cielo di Asia.
The pilot slows the aircraft down to a near-standstill. Alana cranes her neck to watch the other chopper drop down and hover twenty feet or so above the ship’s deck. Its door opens and a rope drops to the deck. Moments later, the first soldier, with his rifle strapped to his back, rappels down the line and lands on the deck in a defensive crouch.
As the others follow, the soldiers on her aircraft stand and shuffle toward the door. Alana tucks her gun into the back of her waistband and rises to join them, her heart in her throat.
Chapter
Sixty-Two
Stefano hears more thumping overhead, and he wills the trembling out of his fingers. Everything is wrong, and has been since the moment he saw his own image on that website and bolted from the computer room without bothering to email Don Arturo. They had stripped Stefano of his one gift: his anonymity.
He is surprised he hasn’t already been caught. Yesterday, the ship’s security officer checked his room looking for his missing roommate. Stefano hardly breathed during the brief inspection. But the officer never thought to move the stack of clothes, blankets, and pillows in the closet, behind which Stefano had stuffed his diminutive roommate along with the knapsack full of rats.
The thuds grow louder. They are coming for him. He has been certain of it even before they reached Port Said, even before the captain announced on the speakers that all shore leaves were canceled until further notice.
God is also refusing him leniency. “Carry my creatures ashore!” The voice of the Almighty commanded just after they laid anchor.
But how, O Lord?
“Hide them!”
I cannot access the containers. I have tried. They are too securely locked and bolted.
“Find others!”
Which others?
He waited, but the Lord shared no further guidance.
It is only now, as Stefano skulks past the galley in search of a place to hide himself, that he recognizes his salvation.
The galley is far more spacious than San Giovanni’s kitchen was. And the pantry is larger still. No one else is around, as the captain has called the entire crew, including Cook and his assistants, to the assembly deck.
The dried food bins stacked at the side of the pantry might prove to be his salvation. He pops the lids off the containers full of flour, rice, and even corn chips. When he finds the three bins piled with dried cereal, he recognizes them as the ideal temporary home for the rats.
Stefano was going to bring all six rats, but he decided not to, opting instead to leave three of them in the bag in his room. After all, when they do find him, how will they know how many animals he has brought on board?
The knapsack is squirming as he lowers it to the floor. The rats sense the danger even more acutely than Stefano does. He slips his glove on and extracts the first of the animals by the tail, recognizing him as Puzzone by the ear that was gnawed in a previous fight. As soon as Puzzone falls onto the bed of cereal, he burrows down through the flakes until his whole body disappears. “Well done,” Stefano whispers.
He drops the other rats into the two other bins of flavored cereals. Tuma tunnels through the chocolate rings as quickly as Puzzone did the flakes, but Ormea perches warily on the surface, his whiskers twitching with suspicion. Eventually Stefano has to reach into the container and scoop the flakes over Ormea until he is finally concealed.
Satisfied, Stefano snaps the lids back on the containers and piles them against the wall exactly where he found them.
The stomping is louder. They are close now. His hand trembles again as he snatches the knife up off the floor where he laid it earlier. He had overheard Cook bragging that it was sharp enough to cut through bone. Stefano wonders if he will have to find out for himself.
He hurries across the pantry to a shelving unit that is stuffed with boxes. He has already nudged the unit a few inches away from the wall, but he still has to suck in his breath just to wedge his thin frame into the narrow space he created behind it.
The footsteps are heavier. They are in the galley now. But Stefano cannot see anyone through the crack between boxes that offers only a sliver of a view. Suddenly a blur of dark green darts across his field of vision. Stefano tenses as the source pauses and comes into focus. A soldier wearing a full body suit and helmet stands a few feet in front of him, pointing a rifle directly at him.
Stefano’s breath catches in his throat. He’s overcome by a mix of terror and relief. Is it finally over, O Lord?
But the soldier doesn’t seem to notice him. He swivels his head from one side to the other, scanning the room, and then moves off to the right. Stefano cannot see the soldier anymore, but he hears cupboards opening and boxes moving. He grips the knife so tightly that his palm throbs.
What am I doing? I am a simple monk. A man of peace.
“You serve me!” The voice in his head is so loud that Stefano is convinced it will give away his hiding spot. “Do not waver! Kill in my name! Vengeance will be mine!”
Chapter
Sixty-Three
Alana stands impatiently beside Sergio on the raised bridge deck of the Cielo di Asia. The air is electrified. They’ve been aboard the cargo ship for twelve minutes. COMSUBIN soldiers are scouring the vessel but have yet to find any sign of Stefano, and a canine search team is already en route for backup.
The freighter’s commander, Captain Murdoch, a bearded Englishman with a lazy left eye, is implacable. “If you had only notified us, we could have apprehended this man!” he mutters, as he paces around the high-tech navigational equipment. “He could be anywhere now.”
“We didn’t want to place your crew at risk,” Sergio repeats for the third time.
“Well, you bloody well did that, didn’t you?” Murdoch growls.
“No, Stefano Russo did that. So did your company when they hired him without screening.”
“A hundred fifty thousand metric tons on board a ship that is as long as a football pitch!” Murdoch rails on. “There’s no end of places for your man to hide!”
“What’s done is done!” Alana snaps.
Murdoch shoots her an icy glare, but says nothing.
Sergio brings his hand to the Bluetooth receiver in his ear, and says a few words. He turns to the captain. “There’s something in Stefano’s room. Take us there, please.”
Murdoch leads them down three flights of stairs to the lowest deck. As they turn a corner, Alana sees a soldier standing outside a doorway down the hallway. They head for him. Murdoch begins to follow, but Alana stops him with an open palm. “Stay here.”
“This is my ship!” he protests angrily.
“Maybe so, but you’re not wearing protective gear. Or would you prefer to expose yourself to the plague?”
Murdoch pivots and marches back the way he came.
Before Alana reaches the room, she spots a hand and part of an arm extending out the doorway. She bolts ahead until she reaches the open door. Inside, a body is sprawled across the floor. The dead man is Asian.
Capitano Monti is already in the room, but he’s not focusing on the corpse. Instead, he leans over the lower bunk and sweeps a flashlight over an unzipped black canvas bag.
“Capitano, who is this man?” Alana asks.
Monti looks over his shoulder. “The roommate. We found him in the closet.” He beckons her over with a flick of his wrist. “Come, Dottore. You must see this.”
Alana steps over the body to reach Monti. She peers over his shoulder into the canvas bag. The inside resembles the old mouse cage she remembers from her grade school, with a feeder and fleece-like material lining the bottom. There are three rats inside, dividers separating each of them. Two of the gray-black animals freeze in the light, while the third stands on its hind legs and sniffs the air.
Alana recognizes their distinct markings as similar to those of the rat from the necropsy Justine performed. She goes cold at being so close to the source of the Black Death. “How do we know if these are all the rats he brought on board?”
“We don’t.” Monti nods toward the sack. “There are six slots here.”
Alana turns her attention back to the dead man. She kneels closer to him. His open eyes are bloodshot and his lips are chapped and cracked at the corners. She palpates with her gloved hand along his neck, but feels nothing. Then she slides her hand under his arm. As soon as her fingers reach his armpit, she feels the golf ball–sized lump. “Plague!”
“You are certain?” Sergio asks.
“Absolutely.”
Monti barks something into the receiver of his headphones and spins away from the bed. He spouts something else as he races out the door.
“There is movement in one of the cargo bays. It could be Stefano,” Sergio translates as he starts after Monti. “Stay here, Alana, and secure the room. Contain the infection.”
Alana is tempted to follow, but she knows Sergio is right. She walks back over to the canvas bag that serves as a portable rat cage. She stares down at the nervous animals inside. “How many more of you are aboard?”
She knows Stefano could have freed other rats almost anywhere on the massive freighter. There are thousands of containers where he could conceal them. All they would need is a food source.
Food! The word hits her like a blow to the chest.
She turns and rushes for the door. “Where is the galley? The kitchen?” she asks of the lone soldier who stands guard outside.
He shakes his head, clearly not understanding what she is asking.
She struggles to think of the word. “Cucina!” she says.
The soldier frowns. “Il terzo piano.” He motions to the ceiling and then holds ups three fingers.
Alana bolts down the narrow corridor and flies up the stairs to the third deck. She runs past the mess hall and through a set of swinging doors into the galley. Inside, all the closet and cupboard doors are wide open. She assumes the soldiers must have already searched the area, but she has a quick look around. Nothing. She hurries through the open door into the large pantry.
Alana groans as she scans the scope of the storage area. A whole shelving unit is filled with boxes. It will take her forever to go through them. Then her eyes are drawn to a group of plastic bins, the size of large laundry baskets, stacked together in twos on the far wall. She steps over and lifts one off the top of the stacks. It’s heavier than she anticipated, and she struggles to lower it to the floor. She pries open the lid and sees that it is loaded with white flour.
Alana reaches for the next bin, which is almost as weighty as the first. She opens it to find it full of rice. She lifts another container that is much lighter. It’s filled with corn chips. She darts back into the kitchen and grabs one of the large serving spoons. She sifts through the bin with the spoon, but feels nothing except more chips. Discouraged, she reaches for another, lighter bin, to discover that it’s packed with plain cereal. She digs the spoon through it, as well, but finds only cereal.
She opens the next container, which turns out to be packed with cornflakes. As she’s about to lower the lid back into place, a few of the golden flakes on one side begin to vibrate. She jams the spoon into the spot and starts sweeping flakes away to one side. After the fourth or fifth scoopful, she spots a trace of gray.
She leans forward and gently touches the spot with the back of the spoon. Suddenly a rat shakes, spraying flakes everywhere and exposing its furry body among the grains. Alana yanks her arm back in surprise and immediately feels the heavy pop of her shoulder dislocating. She gasps in pain.
She clasps her wrist with her other hand and jerks it outward. Just as she feels the relief of the bone slipping back into place, something sharp pokes between her shoulder blades.
A chill rips through her. “Stefano?” she asks, without moving.
There’s an agonizing silence. “Sì,” he finally says.
Alana flinches as the blade’s pressure increases. She’s afraid to even inhale with the knife so close to her spine. “Do you speak English?” she asks.
