Free Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry

breaks. All he had to do was enter a code on his laptop. And if that didn’t work, Gault always had a backup plan ready; and if he disappeared his assistant, Toys, could initiate one of several retributive plans.
    Gault heard the hiss of hydraulics and the guard grunted at him, indicating that he was allowed to turn. The whole back end of the cave had swung out to reveal an airlock as sophisticated as anything NASA had ever used.
    “Please,” Amirah said, gesturing that he enter. One of the two guards remained in the cave while the other stepped into the airlock with Gault and the Princess. The massive door hissed shut and there was a series of complex sounds as various locks and safeguards engaged. A red light flicked on above the door and they turned to face the exit door as a green light came on above it. Amirah went through another code procedure, but this time the guard did not order Gault to look away. Now the guard grinned at Gault, who gave him a wink.
    “How are the kids, Khalid?”
    “Very well, sir. Little Mohammad is walking now. He is all over the place.”
    “Ah, they grow up so fast. Give them a kiss for me.”
    “Thank you, Mr. Gault.”
    The second door opened and a wash of refrigerated air filled the chamber. “Ready?” Amirah asked.
    “Say, Khalid      why don’t you go into the office and watch some videos. Give us a couple of hours.”
    “Happy to, sir.”
    They stepped out of the airlock and into the bunker that was as different from the camp outside as a diamond was from a lump of coal. There was a big central room packed with state-of-the-art research equipment and intelligence-processing hardware including satellite downlinks, high-speed Internet cable hard lines, plasma display screens on nearly every surface, and a dozen computer terminals. Surrounding the central lab were glassed offices, the supercooled chamber for the bank of Blue Gene/L supercomputers, and the five clean rooms with their isolated air and biohazard control systems. Down one corridor was the staff wing, with bedrooms for the eighty technicians and the twenty support staff.
    The setup had cost a fortune. Fifty-eight million pounds, all routed through convoluted banking threads that would require an army of forensic accountants to follow. Nothing could be tied directly to him or to Gen2000. It was Gault’s belief that this was not only the most sophisticated private research facility in the world, but also the most productive and diverse. Genetics, pharmacology, molecular biology, bacteriology, virology, parasitology, pathology, and over a dozen other related sciences merged into one compact but incredibly productive factory floor that had paid for itself four times over with patents filed under the names of over seventy doctors who were on his payroll through one university or another, not the least of which was the first reliable drug for treating the rare blood cancers, new-onset sarcoidosis, and asbestos-related diseases that have cropped up in survivors of the World Trade Center collapse. The irony of that made Gault want to laugh out loud considering he’d advised bin Laden about the likely and potentially useful postcol-lapse health hazards before the Al Qaeda operatives had even enrolled in flight school.
    Amirah led the way past the rows of technicians, still playing her role as the dutiful wife of the great leader even though these people were hers, every last one of them. Only Abdul, her husband’s lieutenant, and a small squad of his personal guard were currently beyond her control, and they were outside. And even that sense of loyalty would change in time. Everything was going to change.
    She led Gault into the conference room, then closed the door and engaged the lock, an action that turned on a red security light outside. The room had no windows. Just a big table and a lot of chairs.
    Amirah turned away from the door, tore away her chadri, and attacked Gault.
    She was fast, savage, hungry.
    She pushed