Backblast Candace Irving (classic novels to read .txt) 📖

knocked us all out with while we were in his van. Plus, my physiology's different; I'm a woman. None of those factors apply here." She turned back to Palisade. "As for Brandt's infection, I doubt he even realized it occurred. It had to have been subtle or he would have come to sickbay upon his return, but I'll check with Dr. Mantia. Either way, whoever injected the staff sergeant is also most likely the traitor. He or she isn't with the Army though." Because they also knew that the traitor had read her BI and worked at the embassy.

"They're with State."

She offered up one last nod.

This one, the general returned. Grimly. "I'll make the arrangements—and I'll get you that list. Looks like you'll be interviewing those names personally. Meanwhile, get those tests on that bottle wrapped up ASAP. You're headed to Islamabad, Chief."

"Yes, sir."

God willing, she'd be able to tear through Staff Sergeant Brandt's life quickly and use whatever she found to locate their unknown traitor. Because there were several new questions burning through her brain. How many other vials of that chimera were still out there?

Who did their traitor plan on infecting next…and when?

Or had it already happened?

18

Thanks to Chief Yrle's connections in the Griffith's laundry, Regan had been ready to disembark in under an hour, freshly pressed, dark blue suit already donned. Since the ship had moved into the northern part of the Arabian Sea to receive General Palisade's chopper the night before, it had taken a mere two hours to reach Al Dhafra. From there, it was an additional three to Islamabad via the US Air Force C-130 rumbling around her, most of which she'd spent in this webbed seat, reading everything she'd been able to download on Staff Sergeant Brandt while waiting at Al Dhafra.

Unfortunately, she'd finished skimming the material a while ago. With fifteen minutes of flight time left, she was officially bored.

But she wasn't alone. For the second time in two weeks, Palisade had sent her off to one of the 'Stans with a pair of bulked-out gorillas in tow. Although, this time, the general had added a sleeked-up ass into the mix.

Regan glanced across the belly of the cargo plane, returning the latest glare from said ass. Like her and the two gorillas flanking her, Riyad had swapped his shipboard attire for a ubiquitous white shirt and dark business suit. Also like her, the spook's sidearm was no doubt holstered neatly beneath the jacket of his suit.

She had no idea what Corporal Vetter and John had beneath their suits, but she suspected John was carrying considerably more than the rest of them put together.

She could only pray he wouldn't need it.

Once they touched down at the international airport in Islamabad, she and Vetter were headed for the embassy. John was not. He hadn't offered up his intended location, and she hadn't asked for it. Not given the nature of his mission. The only information he had offered had been a name. His. If she received a call over the next day or two from a Karl Goethe—pick up. That, combined with John's dark gray, hand-tailored suit, suggested he'd be going under via a CIA-related cover, most likely as a German executive.

It made sense. As a whole, Pakistanis were profoundly in love with all things German, up to and including—of all people—Hitler. While the majority of the world might consider Hitler a monster, a significant portion of Pakistanis didn't. There, many saw the Führer as the hero who'd freed them from British rule.

John would undoubtedly be leveraging his proficiency with the German language and that Pakistani love for the German people to his advantage.

But with whom?

Riyad had been right about one thing in her stateroom the day before. Over the years that he'd spent as Special Forces, John had operated on and around some exceptionally blurred lines on the globe, especially those along Afghanistan's porous southeastern border with Pakistan. While doing so, John had made quite a few connections. And, yes, some of those connections were shady as hell.

Right now, those were precisely the sort they needed.

While Vetter returned to his guard duties in Islamabad and Riyad headed off to link up with Agent Castile at the US consulate in Peshawar to add his FCI skills, as well as his own proficiency with Dari, Pashto and Arabic, to Castile's knowledge of Urdu and the search for the seventh victim, John would be abusing every one of those connections of his that he'd deemed capable of getting them the information they needed.

Beginning with that Russian Bioprepart contact of Durrani's…and whoever else Aleksi Skulachev had been selling biological warfare agents to.

They might desperately need the intel John was after, and she might still be pissed over that chest-beating incident in the Griffith's wardroom earlier that morning, but she was worried. About him. Who was she kidding? The idea that whoever had infected Brandt with the chimera was still out there scared the absolute shit out of her. How much more of that virus did their unnamed traitor have?

And what else was in his possession?

John might be immune to the chimera, but he wasn't immune to everything those Bioprepart monsters had created.

As the C-130 dropped noticeably in altitude, the sudden pressure in Regan's inner ears pushed her attention back to the mission. The cargo plane had begun its final approach to Islamabad International, where she was due to be met by an agent with the Diplomatic Security Service. From there, she and the DSS agent would head to the embassy so she could begin interviewing the State Department personnel who'd received her BI.

The only foreseeable complication—and, admittedly, it was a huge one—would be discerning if the initial seven recipients on the general's list had then turned around and shared her backgrounder with anyone else. If so, who? A dicey quest, to say the least, since anyone admitting to the affirmative would also be admitting that they'd passed on classified information without proper authorization.

A bit of a