At 4:19 the video feed in Nicodemus’s cell dissolved into white static. The guards had unlocked the cell at 4:41.
That left a twenty-two-minute gap during which Nicodemus vanished.
The video feed trained on the outside of his cell door, however, showed a continuous picture, and the door did not open. The FBI and investigators from the Department of Corrections spent days going through the stored video files of all of the cameras at Graterford. Nicodemus was not seen on any of them.
Manhunts in three states could not find him. TV alerts and posted rewards resulted in no useful responses. No trace of him was ever found.
But as Rudy, Circe, and I stood in that cold hallway outside Nicodemus’s cell, I think we all had the same feeling. It was absurd, impossible, and foolish. But it’s what I felt, and when I looked in their eyes I saw the same shadows. The same ghosts.
We did not voice those thoughts. In our profession you don’t. Just as you do with pain, you learn to eat your fear. Even fear of something that may not have an explanation.
Rudy crossed himself, though. And that said it all.
(3)
Vox’s betrayal hit a lot of people hard. It shook the foundations of our government. So many key people in government, so many people in crucial jobs in labs and nuclear power plants and defense factories, so many of our most highly trained special operators, had been screened and vetted by Vox. Over seventy people in the DMS had been screened by him. Did it make them all guilty or complicit? No. Circe O’Tree had been approved by Vox, and so had Grace Courtland, Top Sims, DeeDee Whitman, and Khalid Shaheed.
What it meant was the start of a witch hunt and a wave of paranoia that would make the McCarthy years seem like an era of tolerance and understanding. Church did not want that to happen and over the next months he would spend more time in front of Congress than he would overseeing the hunt for the Kings.
Vox vanished off the radar. So did Toys and the rest of the Seven Kings. All of the think-tank records had been stolen. That was a sleeping dragon, and we all knew it.
T-Town was shut down pending a review, but absolutely no one wanted to do that review. No one wanted to be known as “the next Hugo Vox.”
Rudy, Circe, and Bug spent thousands of hours going over the psychological profiles of people in key industries, looking for those personality types that jibed with Plympton, Grey, Scofield, Snow, and Taylor. They identified 103 possibles. Amber Taylor became part of the debriefing team that conducted the interviews. Aunt Sallie coordinated with Federal Marshals for an unprecedented number of new identities in Witness Protection. With Santoro locked away wherever Church has him it might mean that no one would ever come after the families of the people he had coerced and psychologically tortured—but was that a risk we could ever take?
It was an enormously expensive venture, but somehow the funding always materialized. I wondered if some of the Inner Circle were helping. They were still a pack of evil bastards the DMS would have to take down, but if they wanted to avenge their children, so be it.
As far as I know, the Inner Circle are still on the “to-do” list of Aunt Sallie and Mr. Church. Not a nice place to be.
(4)
The hunt for the Seven Kings wasn’t over. We all knew that. It would go on until we found out where they were, and tore them down.
Sounds so easy. Like the War on Terror would be over when we found and killed Osama. But do any of us believe that? Is this a winnable war? It’s a fair question, and a hard one, and the answer is probably “no” for both sides.
And yet we have to fight it. If we don’t, the bad guys get bigger, bolder, more dangerous, and more destructive. Right now they’re jackals nipping at the weak and the unwary. We can’t allow them to become the dominant predator.
All of which sounds like a lot of flag-waving, but it’s not that simple. We have to be careful not to become what we hunt. We almost did that with the Patriot Act, taking away civil rights in the name of protecting them. That can’t happen.
Yet where does that leave guys like me? Where does it leave Echo Team and the DMS?
(5)
I stood at the window of my hotel in Washington, looking out at the green stretch of the Mall, watching the masses of crowds that were already gathering for the big New Year’s celebration tonight. The papers said that there would be a candlelight vigil. For the London Hospital, for the Sea of Hope and all that it represented, for the victims of the Starbucks attack. I would like to think that some of those candles would be lighted in honor of the DMS agents, SEALs, Delta operators, and shipboard security who had died to keep this from being an international day of mourning.
Now the sun was setting over Washington. In a few hours this year would burn away. It was crazy. At the beginning of June I was a Baltimore cop. By early July I was fighting to stop terrorists with a doomsday plague. By the end of August I’d fallen in love with an amazing woman, and I lost her to a murderer’s bullet. I’d led good men and women into battle with monsters. Actual monsters. And I’d gone aboard a cruise ship packed with people who had gathered for the purpose of easing the pain and suffering of children living in the most economically depressed places on earth. Good people of all races and religions, all colors and political viewpoints, working together for the common good. On that ship, out in the middle of the dark Atlantic, I had moved among the very best humanity has and fought against the very worst humanity can be.
Was this my life?
After Grace died I had planned to leave the DMS forever. Even the Warrior in my head had been glutted from all the blood and death. The Cop had become convinced that all goodness had died with Grace … and the Modern Man was adrift, clinging to the last splinter of hope. Then Church had called me and brought me back. To the London Hospital, to Fair Isle, to the gunfight in the coffeehouse, to Jenkintown, to the slaughter of the DMS, and to the Sea of Hope.
So … was this my life? Fighting and fighting and fighting?
It is a horrible moment when you can no longer count the number of people you’ve killed. I closed my eyes and leaned my forehead against the window glass. It was mild for December, but the glass was cold.
I heard a rising burst of laughter from the adjoining suite. Rudy and Circe. They sounded happy. I felt gutted and empty.
Was this my life?
Was this who I am?
I opened my eyes and saw the first of the candles flare up down in the Mall. A tiny spark in the sea of late-twilight gloom. For a moment there was only that one small light in the darkness, and the loneliness of it was almost unbearably sad.
Then someone bent close and used the flame to light their candle. And others did, and more, sharing out the light so that it spread. Slowly and sporadically, but steadily. An infection of light that did not defeat the darkness—the darkness was too big, too vast, too powerful to ever be completely destroyed—but for now, for this moment, those tiny flames conspired together to drive the darkness back.
I placed my palm on the glass. I don’t know why. Maybe it was a romantic or childish need to feel the heat of that light. But the glass was cold.
And yet …
I smiled.
The cold was okay. The fact that I was up here in the darkness of my room, in the darkness of my thoughts, was okay. The flame was still there. If this was who I was, and if it wasn’t for me to be part of the light, then maybe that was as it should be.
I am what I am. I’m a hunter and a killer. I’m the Cop and the Warrior, and the Modern Man. As I—as we—watched the light from the vigil candles spread, the answer to the question was there. It had always been there.
Was this my life?
Yes.
Acknowledgments
As Joe Ledger’s biographer (ahem) I rely heavily on the brilliance, insight, experience, and patience of a variety of experts. Thanks to Dr. John Cmar of the Infectious Disease Department of Johns Hopkins University Hospital; Dr. Steve A. Yetiv, professor of political science, Old Dominion University; D
r A. M. Dodson, FSA, Research and Teaching Fellow, Department of Archaeology and Anthropology of the University of Bristol; Dr. Pawel Liberski of the Department of Molecular Pathology and Neuropathology, Medical University of Lodz, Poland; Philadelphia police officer Bob Clark; the men of the 1/111th Infantry Battalion–Recon Platoon, with Thirty-sixth Brigade–Iraqi Army Recon; Marie O’Connell, Jackie Szambelak, and Dr. Barry Getzoff; Michael Sicilia of the California Homeland Security Exercise and Education Program; Walt Stenning, Ph.D., former head of psychology at Texas A&M University; Michael E. Witzgall; Ken Coluzzi, chief of Lower Makefield, Pennsylvania, police department; the International Thriller Writers; authors David Morrell, Gayle Lynds, Sandra Brown, John Gilstrap, Jason Pinter, and Eric Van Lustbader; George Schiro, M.S., consulting forensic scientist; Greg Dagnan, CSI/Police/Investigations Faculty–Criminal Justice Department, Missouri Southern State University; Peter Lukacs, M.D.; Ted Krimmel, SERT; and Suzanne Rosin, winner of the “Name Joe Ledger’s Dog” contest.
And special thanks to Javier Grillo-Marxuach, Michael De Luca, and Matthew Snyder; Fran and Randy Kirsch, Charlie and Gina Miller, Arthur Mensch, Sam West-Mensch, and Greg Schauer; Geoff Strauss; Nancy Keim-Comley, Janice Gable Bashman, and Tiffany Schmidt; and Rachel Stockley and Ian Graham.
And, of course, Michael Homler, Joe Goldschein, Matthew Shear, and Nadea Mina at St. Martin’s Griffin and my agents, Sara Crowe and Harvey Klinger.
And to the wonderful staff at the Starbucks in Southampton, where much of this book was written (yes, I do believe I’ll have a refill).
Also by Jonathan Maberry
Fiction
Rot & Ruin
The Dragon Factory
Patient Zero
Ghost Road Blues
Dead Man’s Song
Bad Moon Rising
The Wolfman
Nonfiction
Wanted Undead or Alive
Vampire Universe
The Cryptopedia
Zombie CSU
They Bite!
Praise for The Dragon Factory
“While Joe has announced his retirement, eager readers can look forward to one more volume in this humorous, over-the-top cross-genre trilogy.”
—Publishers Weekly
“This is like a video game on steroids mixed with The Island of Dr. Moreau. Maberry has done an excellent job of ratcheting up the action while downplaying the ick factor that sometimes runs through his earlier books. Expect this straight-ahead thriller to hook action-crazed readers and inspire them both to seek out the first Ledger book and eagerly anticipate the next installment.”
—Booklist
Praise for Patient Zero
“Plenty of man-to-zombie combat … a fast and furious read.”
—Publishers Weekly
“An enjoyable read … hard to set down.”
—Fangoria
“Heated, violent, and furious … as palatable as your favorite flavor of ice cream. A memorable book.”
—Peter Straub, New York Times bestselling author
“Night of the Living Dead meets Michael Crichton.”
—Joseph Finder, New York Times bestselling
author of Power Play
“Joe Ledger and the DMS have my vote as the team to beat when combating terrorist threats on a grand scale!”
—David Morrell, New York Times
bestselling author of First Blood and Creepers
“Brilliant … it puts the terror back in terrorist.”
—James Rollins, New York Times bestselling
author of The Judas Strain
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE KING OF PLAGUES. Copyright © 2011 by Jonathan Maberry. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
eISBN 9781429966894
First eBook Edition : March 2011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Maberry, Jonathan.
The king of plagues : a Joe Ledger novel / Jonathan Maberry.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-312-38250-6
1. Secret societies—Fiction. 2 . Bioterrorism—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3613.A19K56 2011
813’.6—dc22
2010040418
First Edition: March 2011
Jonathan Maberry, The King of Plagues
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