my lovely, lovely girl. Who will you be after tonight?”
“Omar,” she said. “I brought you a gift.”
He smiled. “I never doubted you. Not for one moment.”
He beckoned to her, and she went to him. She handed him the vial, but he placed it on the table next to the bed almost without looking at it.
“Later,” he said. “We can think about that later.”
He pulled her close to him. She moved into his strong embrace. She pressed her face to his neck and got his scent, the subtle smell of his cologne out in front, and the deeper, earthier smell of him. He was not a clean freak, this man. He wanted you to smell him. She found it exciting, his smell. She found everything about him exciting.
He turned and pressed her, face down, onto the bed. She went willingly, eagerly. In a moment, she writhed as his hands removed her clothes and roamed her body. His deep voice murmured to her, words that might normally shock her, but here, in this room, made her groan with animal pleasure.
When Omar awoke, he was alone.
That was good. The girl knew his preferences. While sleeping, he did not like to be disturbed by the jarring movements and noises of others. Sleep was rest. It was not a wrestling match.
The boat was moving. They had left Galveston, exactly on schedule, and were heading across the Gulf of Mexico toward Florida. Sometime tomorrow, they would anchor near Tampa, and the little vial Aabha had brought him would go ashore.
He reached over to the table and picked up the vial. Just a small vial, made of thick, hardened plastic, and blocked at the top with a bright red stopper. The contents were unremarkable. They looked like little more than a pile of dust.
Even so…
It took his breath away! To hold this power, the power of life and death. And not just the power of life and death over one person – the power to kill many, many people. The power to destroy an entire population. The power to hold nations hostage. The power of total war. The power of revenge.
He closed his eyes and breathed deeply from his diaphragm, seeking calm. It had been a risk for him to come to Galveston personally, and an unnecessary one at that. But he had wanted to be there in the moment when such a weapon passed into his possession. He wanted to hold the weapon, and feel the power in his own hand.
He placed the vial back on the table, pulled on his pants, and rolled out of bed. He shrugged into a Manchester United soccer jersey and went out onto the deck. He found her there, sitting back in a lounge chair and gazing out at the night, the stars, and the vast dark water around them.
A bodyguard stood quietly near the door.
Omar gestured to the man, and the man moved to the railing.
“Aabha,” Omar said. She turned to him, and he could see how sleepy she was.
She smiled, and he smiled as well. “You’ve done a wonderful thing,” he said. “I’m very proud of you. Perhaps it’s time for you to sleep.”
She nodded. “I’m so tired.”
Omar bent down and their lips met. He kissed her deeply, savoring the taste of her, and the memory of the curves of her body, her movements, and her sounds.
“For you, my darling, rest is much deserved.”
Omar glanced at the bodyguard. He was a tall, strong man. The guard removed a plastic bag from his jacket pocket, moved in behind her, and in one deft move slipped the bag over her head and pulled it tight.
Instantly, her body became electric. She reached back, trying to scratch and pummel him. Her feet kicked her up out of the chair. She struggled, but it was impossible. The man was far too strong. His wrists and forearms were taut, rippling with veins and muscle doing their work.
Through the translucent bag, her face became a mask of terror and desperation, her eyes round saucers. Her mouth was a huge O, a full moon, gasping for air and finding none. She sucked in thin plastic instead of oxygen.
Her body tensed and became rigid. It was like she was a wood carving of a woman, her body sloping, bending slightly backwards at the middle. Gradually, she began to settle down. She weakened, subsided, and then stopped entirely. The guard allowed her to sink slowly back into her chair. He sank with her, guiding her. Now that she was dead, he treated her with tenderness.
The man took a deep breath and looked up at Omar.
“What shall I do with her?”
Omar stared out at the dark night.
It was a shame to kill such a good girl as Aabha, but she was tainted. Sometime soon, perhaps as early as tomorrow morning, the Americans would learn that the virus was missing. Soon after that, they would discover that Aabha was the last person in the laboratory, and was there when the lights went out.
They would come to realize that the power failure was the result of an underground cable being deliberately cut, and the failure of the backup generators was the result of careful sabotage conducted several weeks ago. They would make a desperate search for Aabha, a no-holds-barred search, and they must never find her.
“Get some help from Abdul. He has empty buckets and some fast-drying cement in the equipment locker down by the engine room. Take her there. Weight her with a bucket of cement around her feet and calves, and drop her into the deepest part of the ocean. A thousand feet deep or more, please. The data is readily available, is it not?”
The man nodded. “Yes sir.”
“Perfect. Afterwards have all my sheets, pillows, and blankets laundered. We must be thorough and destroy all evidence. On the very unlikely chance that the Americans raid this ship, I don’t want the girl’s DNA anywhere near me.”
The man nodded. “Of course.”
“Very good,” Omar said.
He left his bodyguard with the corpse and went back into the master bedroom. It was time to take a hot bath.
CHAPTER FIVE
June 10th
11:15 a.m.
Queen Anne’s County, Maryland – Eastern Shore of Chesapeake Bay
“Well, maybe we should just sell the house,” Luke said.
He was talking about their old waterfront country house, twenty minutes up the road from where they were now. Luke and Becca had rented a different, much more spacious and modern house for the next two weeks. Luke liked this new house better, but they were here only because Becca wouldn’t go back to their place.
He understood her reluctance. Of course he did. Four nights ago, both Becca and Gunner had been abducted from that house. Luke hadn’t been there to protect them. They could have been killed. Anything could have happened.
He glanced out the big, bright kitchen window. Gunner was outside in jeans and a T-shirt playing some imaginary game, the way nine-year-old kids sometimes did. In a few minutes, Gunner and Luke were going to take the skiff out and go fishing.
The sight of his son gave Luke a pang of terror.
What if Gunner had been killed? What if both of them had simply disappeared, never to be found again? What if two years from now, Gunner didn’t play imaginary games anymore? It was all a jumble in Luke’s mind.
Yes, it was horrible. Yes, it should never have happened. But there were larger issues here. Luke and Ed Newsam and a small handful of people had taken down a violent coup attempt, and had reinstalled what was left of the democratically elected government of the United States. It was possible that they had saved American democracy itself.
That was nice, but Becca didn’t seem interested in larger issues right now.
She sat at the kitchen table in a blue robe, drinking her second cup of coffee. “Easy for you to say. That house has been in my family for a hundred years.”
Rebecca’s hair was long, flowing down her shoulders. Her eyes