Deadly Undertaking by Allen Gregory (to read list TXT) 📖

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precisely?” Flint quickly added, “Or, more importantly, develop an antidote?”

Malloy eyed Flint thoughtfully. “Possibly. But it would take some time. And if Mr. Peabody is correct in this interpretation of the message he intercepted, it is something we have precious little of.”

“I see what you mean, Doc.” Flint shuddered as if an icy finger had run the length of his spine.

“I’m here. What can I do?”

The two men turned to see the petite Cho-Soon Jeong standing quietly beside them.

How does she do that? Flint wondered. I never heard a sound.

“CJ!” Flint exclaimed. “I wondered where you were. We didn’t see you at Hector’s funeral this morning.”

“I was running a bit behind,” CJ replied. “By the time I got there, you guys had cleared the place, so I tried to make myself useful. I picked up enough information about the alert to understand that Hector was emitting measurable levels of a dangerous pathogen, so I headed to the funeral home to see if I could get a lead on anything there.”

Flint did a mental facepalm. CJ was truly something else. The two of them had undergone their basic training together, but there the similarity ended. She always seemed to be one step ahead of him. They’d had a brief fling during their basic training, but now they seemed to be doing an awkward social/professional thing that made it difficult for them to know what to expect day-to-day.

CJ was physically slight, but strikingly beautiful, and her long, luxurious jet black hair and dark eyes presented a deceptive package. Flint had seen her take down men three times her size in short order. She was tough, smart, and intuitive. It was no surprise that she had taken the initiative to check out the funeral home.

“Excellent!” Malloy beamed. “And what did you find out, Ms. Jeong?”

“Not much,” she shrugged. “As far as the owners knew, Hector’s procedure was remarkably unremarkable. Except for the cosmetic repairs done to Hector’s head wound, the embalming was pretty straightforward.”

“Did you speak to the embalmer?” Flint asked.

“No,” CJ replied. “And that’s the weird thing. The guy who did the embalming? He hasn’t been to work since he did it the day before yesterday.”

Malloy and Flint cast each other sidelong glances.

“I know, right?” CJ handed Malloy a small head shot of a young man whose picture looked as if it had come with a wallet—squeaky clean and painfully nondescript. “I got his file photo from the funeral home and checked out his ID. All of the stuff in his personnel file? Gone. Everything they’d used to verify employment? Either scrubbed or bogus.”

Flint studied the employment record. “Carl Murphy? Nice and ordinary-sounding name.”

“Yes. And aside from what we suspect of Mr. Murphy, his time at the funeral home was extremely ordinary. Lots of funerals, lots of embalming. Lots of dead people that didn’t explode.”

“Was he a new employee, Ms. Jeong?” Dr. Malloy asked.

“You’d think so, sir, but actually, no. He had been on the job for over three months, and according to the owners, he’d done outstanding work.”

Malloy chewed his lower lip reflectively. “Hmm. That indicates that whoever is behind this has been preparing for today’s events for quite some time. They have the resources, people, and above all, patience required to make something like this happen.”

Flint nodded. “Three months is certainly long enough that he’d not have anyone looking over his shoulder while he worked. It would have been relatively easy for him to rig up the body with the pathogens and the explosives.”

“All too true, Mr. Stryker,” Malloy agreed.

Their discussion was interrupted by a loud knocking sound. They all turned to look at the isolation room, its ballistic glass still bearing the grisly residue from the earlier explosion.

Cinder was standing on the other side of the glass, wearing his bright yellow protective garb and helmet, smeared with blood, bone fragments, and other gory souvenirs from the two Linchpin operatives’ obliterated remains. He was pressing something against the glass.

They moved closer, and there, clutched in the oversized safety glove of the Linchpin explosives expert, was a tangle of metal, melted plastic, and broken glass—all that remained of a cell phone.

Eight

Flint handed Cinder a cold bottle of water. The explosive expert’s face was bright red after being in the confines of the protective suit.

“Thanks, Flint.” Cinder grimaced as he took a swallow. “God! Seriously? Water? Are you trying to poison me?”

CJ rolled her eyes and shook her head. “What is it with you two? Have you never gotten out of ‘frat-boy mode’?”

Cinder looked wounded, his eyes huge and his brows knit like a sad puppy. “That hurts, CJ. I consider drinking to be an art form, an endeavor to be undertaken by true believers with a passion for fine spirits, unlike our heathen friend here, Mr. Stryker.” He grinned wickedly at Stryker, winking conspiratorially at CJ.

Exasperated, Flint pleaded, “Can we just talk about the matter at hand? Time is running out if we’re to believe Sherman’s interpretation of the intercepted message.”

Malloy nodded somberly. “Yes, please, Mr. Porterhouse. Time is of the essence. Perhaps after we deal with our present crisis, we will be in a better position to appreciate your sparkling wit and humor.”

Realizing that he was testing Dr. Malloy’s patience, Cinder nodded and cleared his throat. “Right, Doc. First, let me say, whoever dreamed this up is a real sonuvabitch. This was a two-fold design. First off, the explosion itself would’ve created significant damage. And secondly, the dispersal of the toxins would’ve had far-reaching and devastating consequences.” He paused to observe the somber faces of the others.

“Proceed,” Malloy said grimly.

”The detonation system is pretty straightforward. The explosive setup was placed inside the body cavity at the time of embalming, along with the propulsion system for the pathogens. A cell phone was placed somewhere on the body or underneath it in the casket. As long as cell service was available, the bomb could be detonated from anywhere. A quick phone call and—BOOM!”

“Doesn’t heat usually destroy pathogens?” asked CJ. Flint looked at her and thought, Beautiful and smart. Why can’t I ask questions like that?

“Sometimes, yes,” replied Dr. Malloy. “This particular pathogen, however, seems to have been created in the laboratory to be heat-resistant. Even so, the wave of the force of the explosion would carry the payload of toxins away from the site where it is stored, the goal being to disperse them in as wide a range as possible. This microorganism is a ‘designer death germ,’ created to withstand conditions which normally make it hard for them to survive.”

“So, you’re saying these things are created to live forever?” Flint asked.

“Not at all, Mr. Stryker,” Malloy replied. “That would be foolhardy for its creators. How could they survive in a world in which an unstoppable pathogen has been released? No, I would guess that whoever created this has also created the means to survive it. We can devise an antidote, but it will have to be reverse-engineered.”

Flint glanced at his watch. “I’m guessing not by 6:00 p.m., though?”

Malloy shook his head, his face a bleak mask. “No, Mr. Stryker, I’m afraid not.”

The four of them grew even more subdued as they considered the mammoth odds against them.

Suddenly, Flint brightened. “Wait a minute! Cell phones all have RFID chips in them, right? Which means they can be tracked!”

Cinder nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, virtually every mobile device has an RFID chip in it, as do automobiles, credit cards, and lots of other things that are tracked nonstop 24/7.”

“Well, using Linchpin’s database, we should be able to narrow down the number of funerals scheduled around the country today at 6:00 p.m., and . . .”

“You may have something there, Mr. Stryker,” Malloy interjected. “What was the message again?” Stryker held up his mobile to show him the message’s text.

Reaper 6 @ 1800 hours. Prepare for the Age of Reason<500MM Xxxxxx

“It’s not a huge stretch to postulate that Reaper 6 is a probable reference to the ‘Grim Reaper’.” He tapped the phone’s screen lightly. “Mr. Peabody said that the six X’s probably represent six different entities who are responding to the original message. If I understand him correctly, he is trying to isolate the locations of those six entities. If he can do that, it will go a long way in helping us narrow our search parameters.”

Flint’s phone vibrated, silently announcing a new text message. He quickly scanned the text, raising his eyes to meet the other’s gaze before saying, “I just received a text from Sherm. He thinks he knows what’s going to happen, and it’s bad. Very bad.”

Nine