chances of them breaking someoneâs skinâor, to be frank
about it, biting themâis quite high. In fact it seems to be their chief joy in
life.â
âAll rightâthatâs enough,â Banks said. He went over
to the bar and poured himself a highball. âThat is the absolute limit of need to
know. Tell him what he has to do, Rupert, so he can actually get to it.â
Hollingshead took off his glasses and wiped them
with a handkerchief. âEasy enough to say, of course. Much easier than it will be
to do. But we need you, Captain Chapel, to go into the field and recover these
men.â
âSir, yes, sir,â Chapel said, standing up. âYou
want me to lead an investigation to locate them, so we can send in appropriate
squads to pick them up. Iâll need to rendezvous with local police and National
Guard units in New York State toââ
âNo.â Hollingshead held up his glasses so he could
look through them, presumably so he could find any remaining smudges. Or maybe
so he just didnât have to look Chapel in the eye. âNo. Nothing that simple.
Weâre asking you to go into the field and deal with these men personally.â
âYou mean Iâm to track them down . . . on
my own,â Chapel said, because he was certain that was what Hollingshead had just
said. Even if it made no sense whatsoever. âFour men who each took
outâsingle-handedlyâa rapid response team.â
âWeâre saying that we need you to find them and
remove them from play,â Hollingshead said.
âRemove them from play?â
âIf you get a clear shot on them,â Banks confirmed,
âyou take it. Bringing them in alive is not required. Theyâre much more valuable
to us dead than they are on the loose.â
âYou want me to kill them,â Chapel said.
âItâs the damned sensitivity of the thing,â
Hollingshead said.
For once Banks had more to say. âThe public can
never find out whatâs happened. It canât learn where they came from, and it
canât learn what theyâre carrying. We canât risk any more high-profile
incidents. Itâs been hard enough covering up what happened to the original
teams.â The CIA director swallowed his liquor with a grimace. âIt has to be just
one man, to keep our involvement quiet. Secrecy is imperative here.â
Jim Chapel was no stranger to the need for secrecy.
Heâd spent his professional life keeping secrets and not asking questions. He
knew how this sort of thing worked, and he knew what Banks wasnât saying. That
the blowback from a leak in this operation would be devastating. Which meant
that these detainees werenât just terrorists, and the human-engineered virus
they were carrying wasnât the product of some black laboratory in a rogue
state.
It was something the government had made. The
government of the United States. The detaineesâthe psychopathic, violent,
homicidal detainees werenât just dangerous criminals. They were guinea pigs.
Specimens that the CIA or the DoD or maybe both had experimented on. And letting
that fact out of this room was unthinkable to Banks.
He noticed one other thing, too, from what Banks
had said.
When Banks talked about the publicâmeaning the
American people, the citizens of the United Statesâhe referred to them as an
âit.â
He was beginning to see why Hollingshead hated this
man.
THE PENTAGON:
APRIL 12, T+5:35
âYouâll need to leave immediately,â Banks
told him. âYouâre going to have to work damned fast if youâre going to catch
them. Weâll do everything in our power to help youâeverything that doesnât
damage national security.â
âI know weâre asking a very great deal of you,
son,â Hollingshead said. âI wish I could give you opportunity to volunteer for
this mission. I wish I could let you turn it