Enemy Among Us by Jason Melby

Author:Jason Melby
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ePublishing Works!
Published: 2013-06-26T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 40

Burns rode shotgun in McLeary's rented Charger as they entered the parking garage below a covert DEA facility nestled within a cluster of high-rise offices outside a high-tech industrial park. Neither spoke on the elevator ride to the seventh floor task force office.

Burns flashed her badge at the guard on duty inside the office suite. "He's with me," she told the officer in uniform, pointing to McLeary beside her.

"You're late," Kriegel barked from the conference room window overlooking the Miami traffic below. He closed the vertical blinds and dimmed the lights. "Shut the door." He motioned to Doctor Beckman who plugged her laptop computer into the video projection monitor on the table. "This is Doctor Candice Beckman, a senior pathologist with the CDC."

McLeary shook her hand. "Doctor."

Burns followed behind McLeary. "I'm Special Agent Burns. Nice to meet you."

"Likewise," Candice answered. She pointed to Agent Bryant seated across the room in jeans and a Miami Dolphins jersey. "I assume you all know Special Agent Bryant and his team with the DEA task force?"

"We've met," said McLeary. He stared at Agent Bryant with contempt, recalling the face of a former accuser.

Kriegel snagged the wireless remote from the table and clicked the PowerPoint presentation to flash the image of a bearded man with a bloody face, half buried in the crumbled ruins of a deserted military bunker destroyed by a surface-to-air missile. "Special Forces snapped this picture from a drone three years ago in Afghanistan after an airstrike on an al-Qaida stronghold failed to neutralize the primary target."

"Who is he?" asked McLeary.

"His name is Ahmed Mahmoud Abdullah, a radical fundamentalist and previous deputy chief scientist from Saddam Hussein's former death squad. Abdullah's believed to be responsible for conducting hundreds of lethal experiments involving aerosolized biological pathogens on civilians. Mostly women and children." Kriegel paused to reflect. "As the photo shows, he was left for dead in the airstrike rubble until our friends at Langley uncovered new intelligence to suggest otherwise."

Kriegel clicked the next slide to illuminate the picture of an airline baggage handler.

"Meet Marcus Noland, a former CIA asset killed in Amsterdam where he was working as a ground crew member for Transatlantic Airlines. Noland was feeding the Agency information on Abdullah's whereabouts and his alleged plans for a wide-spread attack on U.S. soil."

Kriegel clicked to the next slide, which showed a dead woman on her knees in a public restroom with her head in a toilet. "This photo was taken one week ago. Intelligence suggests Ahmed Abdullah assumed the identity of Marcus Noland to gain access to the airport facility where he got close to this woman, Carla Bonnnove, Marcus Noland's girlfriend and ground crew shift supervisor in charge of baggage screening. He used her to gain access to a baggage sorting area. We believe Abdullah was attempting to smuggle something out of Europe and into the United States."

"Smuggle what?" asked Agent Bryant.

"I'll get there in a moment."

Kriegel advanced the presentation, showing a bathtub full of partially liquefied human remains. "You're looking at what's left of Marcus Noland who took his last shower in an acid bath.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.