Page 7 of Viral Justice

Word for word meant the answer had been carefully chosen. Chosen responses were used in three situations in the army: As a non-answer to a question that shouldn’t have been asked in the first place. As a calculated response regarding a political or public relations messy event. Or as avoidance of a harmful incident. Which one was this?

Stone excelled in her role as a trainer for the Special Forces combatives program, but she had one major failing. She never hesitated to call anyone she was training on their mistakes, regardless of rank.

She was about to stomp all over him thanks to his.

Hewasa lousy shot.

He secured his weapon, then removed his ear protection.

“I knew you were a terrible shot, but this is beyond my lowest expectations.” She looked at him like he was some kind of insect. “How did you qualify to carry your sidearm with aim like that?”

“A great deal of practice.” He glanced at the rifle he held. “This is not my preferred weapon.”

“You actually have one you like?” Her tone was scathing.

She was pushing it.

He stood and looked at her, altogether enjoying how far back she had to tilt her head to maintain eye contact with him. This woman was a force of nature with a personality to match. To allow her to see weakness was foolhardy at best.

“My tongue,” he said, staring at her mouth. “Weren’t you the one who said I could flay a private alive with it?”

The corners of her lips twitched. “I don’t know many extremists who’ll take the time to sit down and have a conversation with one of us.”

She’d saidus. That and the flash of humor soothed something tense inside him. “Well, I’ve got one of them sending me letters. That’s a start.” He’d received six, filled with rhetoric and raving about a holy war. That wasn’t counting the threats addressed to him, written on dead bodies left where they were sure to be found.

“No, someone is attempting to create fear by including flour inside the envelope to make you think they’re sending anthrax,” she said with concern.

He shrugged that away. “We know how to handle anthrax. It’s the dead bodies that have me worried.”

“The point I’m trying to make is that you need to be prepared to defend yourself, which is impossible with aim like that.” She gestured at the target he’d missed a whole lot more than three times. “I knew you had terrible aim, but this is so bad, I have serious doubts about your ability to defend yourself in any situation.” For the first time since she arrived, she didn’t sound like she was accusing him of anything.

She did have a point. “I’m open to suggestions.”

“It’ll have to keep. We’re expected by the general in his office in ten minutes.” She came to attention and stared at his Adam’s apple as any good soldier would do when addressing a senior officer.

“Very good, thank you, Sergeant.”

She saluted and he saluted back.

Max exited the range with Stone behind him, then they went their separate ways.

He returned to his very drab and banal-looking building that contained his office and work space. The inside was anything but drab and banal. He had a fully equipped level-four containment lab, allowing him to work with some of the deadliest bacteria and viruses in the world.

He stowed his weapon in the locker in his office, cleaned up, and stopped to talk with his assistant, Private Eugene Walsh, who was just hanging up the phone. “I’ll be busy for the next couple of hours with General Stone.”

“Sir,” Eugene said. “That was General Stone on the phone. He’s on his way over here for your meeting.”

“Ah. Excellent, thank you.”

Max sat down at his desk and retrieved the latest email from Dr. Sophia Perry, a physician on his Biological Rapid Response Team. She and her partner, Special Forces Weapons Sergeant Connor Button, were currently training medical teams from Afghanistan to respond to disease outbreaks. That was their official mission. Unofficially, they were attempting to track the movements of a very dangerous extremist—a chemist who’d lost his family in an American air strike on known terrorists in Syria.

No one had known Akbar’s family was in the same hotel.

Akbar continued to work as a liaison between the US Army and the government of Afghanistan. He’d bided his time for a couple of years, gaining the trust of army officers and politicians alike. All while designing his own deadly biological weapons.

His first attempt to use a bioweapon had been a weaponized anthrax.

He’d killed an entire village of innocent civilians in the mountains of Afghanistan, laid an anthrax trap that killed an Army colonel at one of their forward bases, and sworn to kill as many Americans as he could.

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