Page 42 of Edge of Danger

So. She did work for Doctors Unlimited, for real. Good to know. His baby sister and her fiancé worked for that bunch, too. From them, Ian knew it to be a CIA front. Although not all of the D.U. employees were on the CIA payroll or even trained by the CIA. Often, D.U.’s regular aid workers passively gathered intel that the organization’s director passed quietly to the CIA.

But, given the way Piper could handle a rifle and the explosiveness of the targets she’d been tracking, he would bet she was one of the workers in the know about Doctors Unlimited’s CIA connections.

When he got to the part about photographing the bodies, he pulled out his cell phone. “That reminds me. Piper had me take pictures of them with my cell phone. They won’t be high quality, but maybe you guys can pull something useful from them.” He passed his phone to a tech who scuttled forward to take it and left the room quickly.

Finally, he wound down and the rapid-fire questions ceased. His voice was hoarse and his brain exhausted. He’d been through some grueling debriefs in his day, but this one had been a bitch. Everyone was so damned tense that he didn’t need them to spell out just how dangerous this virus was.

The fact that he’d seen the Scientist load three big coolers in his vehicle made it a no-brainer to conclude the guy had not only perfected his virus but created a lot of it. A lethal biological weapon was apparently floating around, somewhere, just waiting to be loosed on some unsuspecting population.

While they waited for the photographs to be recovered, enhanced, and printed, the general filled him in a little. “Until last year’s big Ebola outbreak, previous outbreaks have usually been confined to relatively small populations and tend to cluster in small, isolated villages. Less than forty deathsfrom the disease at a time have been the norm. This matters because the outbreak pattern has given the Ebola virus very few opportunities to mutate.” The general paused to see that Ian was following.

He nodded, and the man continued, “But with this latest outbreak, thousands of cases of the disease gave the virus plenty of opportunity to mutate.”

Ian leaned forward, alarmed. “Did the Scientist’s notes say how it changed?”

The Army man nodded grimly. “He found a strain of Ebola that had evolved enough for him to cross-breed it with another hemorrhagic virus, Lassa Fever.”

“Why cross it with something else? Isn’t Lassa a lot less dangerous than Ebola? If the guy’s looking to make a weapon, why go down in lethality and not up?”

One of the analysts down the table fielded Ian’s question. “From his notes, it appears the Scientist was able to graft all the lethality of Ebola onto a hybrid virus along with all the spread vectors of Lassa.”

Ian opened his mouth to ask what that meant, but the tech who’d taken his phone slipped back into the room just then. The guy said without having to be asked, “We were able to enhance the images. Not only did we get the bodies, but the other images you shot, the ones of the Scientist, came out very nicely We pulled a usable face to run through the facial recognition software.” He paused dramatically for a moment, then announced, “We got an I.D. We’ve got the Scientist.”

A familiar face flashed up on the jumbo screen, and Ian confirmed, “That’s the guy I saw moving the coolers.”

The tech continued, “Name’s Yusef Abahdi. Palestinian expat. Wife was killed a little over a year ago in a bus explosion in the West Bank. Abahdi left Israel with his young daughter soonafterward and dropped off the grid. Until this photograph two days ago.”

An analyst he didn’t know, an attractive woman down the table, piped up. “Tell us more about the child, Mr. McCloud.”

Ian frowned. “Scrawny little thing. Six or seven, maybe. Slept in a cot in her father’s room based on the evidence I saw. Of course, that bedroom had the only air-conditioner upstairs. They were undoubtedly sharing it. Abahdi seemed affectionate with her. Handled her gently when he put her in the vehicle. Buckled her seatbelt for her. Assuming she’s his kid, I’d say he’s a loving father.”

A tech, still staring at the laptop he’d just been typing at furiously, supplied, “Her name is Salima. She’s his daughter with his dead wife. Just turned eight years old.”

“Have we picked up a trail on him?” the general asked the typer.

“Not yet, sir.”

Ian snorted mentally. An optimistic answer. The tech was assuming it was only a matter of time until they found him. In his experience, guys as smart as this Abahdi character weren’t that easy to find if they didn’t want to be. Case in point, Osama bin Laden. It took ten years to find that bastard. If Ian were king, he would follow the money trail to find the Scientist.

The CIA shithead spoke up again. “Our operative is back in town and has given us her report.”

A sick, sinking certainty that the guy was talking about Piper lodged in his gut. He winced. He’d hoped to avoid seeing her again until she had some time to cool off. She was going to be right tweaked that he’d swiped her evidence. If she was already back in town, she would undoubtedly be fired up to find him and confront him over his liberation of her collected evidence.

He might feel guiltier about the theft if she hadn’t hosed his career by dashing into that burning house, or if he hadn’t justendured a hardcore ass-chewing from his boss over choosing her instead of the Scientist.

But hey, during this debrief he’d given her credit for collecting the evidence and for insisting on staying inside a burning building until she got what she needed. She had come out of the debrief smelling like a rose, compliments of him. Not that she would see it that way, knowing her.

The shithead continued, “She has already been debriefed in house and as soon as her report is compiled, we’ll share it with all of you.”

Which would be when, exactly? Now was not the moment for a turf war. A serious terrorist threat was in the offing. Even assuming some of Piper’s PHP guys and his Scientist were working together, nobody had any idea where to find any of them.

Ian looked over at the general. “Have you got marching orders for me, sir?”

“We’d like you to continue working on the Scientist. You’ve gotten closer to him than anyone else. Seen him for yourself. The CIA would like to put a contractor on it with you. The two of you will work as a team.”

He frowned. Not a full-blown CIA officer? This seemed like too important a mission to entrust to a civilian contractor. Ever since the massive information leaks by civilians a few years previously, contractors had been heavily looked down upon in the intelligence community.

It wasn’t unheard of for the various agencies within intelligence family to run joint ops—after 9/11, everyone had learned to share their toys and play nicely with the other children in the U.S. counter-terrorism sandbox—but to bring in a civilian?

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