Hot Zone (Major Crimes Unit Book 2) Read online

  Krenshaw froze in his tracks, crouching down and turning slowly to face Howard. A couple of bystanders leapt for cover behind their cars.

  “Give yourself up, Doctor. Or I’ll be forced to shoot you.”

  Krenshaw didn’t look afraid. In fact he seemed amused. In his free hand he held a small glass cylinder.

  Howard stayed where he was but kept his gun levelled. “What do you have in your hand, Doctor?”

  Krenshaw’s lips drew back like a curtain into the delighted grimace of a corpse. “Just a concoction I whipped up. Weaponised Dengue Fever, if you must know. Symptoms start with fever, headaches, nausea and vomiting, before progressing to a rash and fluid in the chest. The beauty of this particular strain is that it is highly symptomatic. You see, the more typical strain affects less than one-quarter of infected patients. This will infect over 90% with the most severe case. I carry it with me everywhere. Call it an insurance policy. You try to stop me and I smash the phial, which contains a highly concentrated dose of the disease. It may not cause an epidemic, but it will, at the very least, infect you and me, and perhaps a few dozen sick children inside this hospital.”

  “Have you not already infected them with something nasty?” asked Howard. He dared not take another step forward and was forced to stall for time. Maybe he could shoot the doctor without the phial smashing, but the fear of what was inside escaping made his blood run too cold to try.

  “Alas, no,” said Krenshaw. “I was just about to begin my rounds. You see, I like to do my most important work at night and evening is nearly upon us. Morning and afternoon seem like queer times to give people death sentences, don’t you agree?”

  Howard felt sick. “You were going to infect a bunch of children. You’re mad.”

  “I am very sane, I assure you. In fact it takes a huge level of sanity to make the sacrifices I am making. I want to change the world for the better. Infecting a bunch of sickly white children with HIV is a means to an end. They would get the best care, maybe even live full lives, but the fear would be enough to get this country to pay attention.”

  “Your mission is over, Doctor. Just hand the phial over and give yourself up.”

  “Hand it over? Are you so sure you want to take this from me? You have gone quite a striking shade of alabaster.”

  Howard tried to swallow, but there was a lump in his throat. He spoke in a squawk. “Nobody else is getting sick today, Doctor. This isn’t the way.”

  “It is the only way.” Krenshaw tossed the phial into the air.

  Howard felt his eyes almost fall out of his head as he watched the small glass bottle arc towards him. His legs tried to carry him away, to run, but he knew it was wrong thing to do, so, with a diving lunge, he threw himself forwards instead. The phial was tiny, but as it tumbled it caught the dimming sunlight and glinted. It gave Howard something to focus on. He hit the pavement hard, chin striking the ground and sending him dizzy. For a few seconds, he forgot himself and lay there in a daze. When he got his wits back he panicked and looked around urgently. He opened up his hands and almost wept when he saw the intact phial clutched in his right fist. His relief turned to fury, though, when he saw the word INSULIN printed on the label. It had been a bluff.

  Howard clambered back to his feet, ignoring the spike of pain in his left kneecap where it had struck the pavement. Krenshaw had already made a run for it and had gained a good lead. A parked car up ahead blinked and beeped as the doctor unlocked it with his key fob. There was too much distance between them now for Howard to get to Krenshaw before the doctor hopped in his car and drove away.

  Howard brought up his gun, drew a bead, and fired. His round struck the bumper of a car and ricocheted. There were still bystanders hiding in cover and they yelled out in fright now. Howard couldn’t risk them getting hit. He lowered his gun and sprinted, hoping against hope that Krenshaw would fail to escape in time. But Krenshaw was almost at his car and seemed to realise he was home-free. He turned around to smirk at Howard.

  “Until next time,” the doctor gloated, clutching the briefcase to his chest like it was a prize.

  There was the sudden screech of skidding tyres.

  Two jet-black vans pulled up behind Krenshaw, making the doctor spin around in fright and stumble on his heels. Two burly men in balaclavas hopped out of one of the vans and grabbed Krenshaw before he even knew what was happening, then they bundled him inside the van and held him down on the floor as he struggled. A third person hopped out the front of the other van and ran around to close the side door of the other. This person wasn’t wearing a balaclava and was, in fact, a woman.

  Howard tripped and stumbled, before stopping completely. In front of him was a woman who’d gone missing more than four months ago and not been heard from since. A former colleague.

  Sarah noticed Howard standing there and froze with the same shocked expression that he no doubt wore on his own face. The driver of the van shouted at her and she got moving again, slamming the side door shut of the first van before hopping back into the front passenger seat of the other. Then both vans took off, tyres squealing as they took off around the corner and disappeared.

  Howard stood rooted to the spot for so long that he began to shiver from the cold. He couldn’t believe who he had just seen: Captain Sarah Stone.

  10

  Howard found Dr Hart sitting inside a small waiting room with a sofa and coffee machine. There was a nurse beside her, rubbing her back as she prodded anxiously at the red spot on her neck. The nurse left when Howard entered.

  “Are you okay?” Howard asked Dr Hart. She was a pretty woman, not much over forty, but right now she was haggard and grey and her blonde hair seemed almost white. She didn’t say anything in reply to him, just stared at a spot on the wall, barely blinking.

  “Krenshaw was bluffing,” said Howard enthusiastically. He plucked the insulin phial from his pocket and showed it to her. “He convinced me this was Dengue Fever but it’s just plain old Insulin. The syringe he stabbed you with was probably nothing.”

  “They’ve pried open his locker,” she eventually said, a detached numbness to her voice. “You should go take a look.”

  Howard took her advice and left her alone. On his way to find a nurse to direct him, he took out his mobsat and placed a call though to the Earthworm, MCU’s base of operations. He went straight through to Director Palu.

  “Howard. Update me.”

  Howard cleared his throat and began. “My investigation at Whiteknight seemed to confirm the epidemic was engineered and led me to a suspect named Dr Alistair Krenshaw. I tracked him down to Reading Children’s Hospital where he was planning to carry out a second act of terror. This time a mass infection of the HIV virus on already sick children.”

  “You stopped it?”

  “I did, but Krenshaw managed to escape. He was…abducted.”

  There was a brief pause before Palu spoke. “Abducted?”

  “Two black vans pulled up right behind Krenshaw and two men leapt out and dragged him into the back. Palu… Sarah was with them. Sarah Stone.”

  The next pause was even longer.

  “I know,” said Howard. “It doesn’t make any sense, but it was her, I swear. There’s no doubt in my mind.”

  “Then, where the hell has she been? And who is she working with?”

  Howard stopped in the middle of the corridor and leaned up against the wall, groaning. “I have no idea, but whoever she is with has the doctor and I am positive Krenshaw is our man. What is Sarah involved in?”

  “Do you have a description of the men she was with?”

  “No. They were wearing balaclavas.”

  “I’ll have Jessica check CCTV for the area. I’m sure the hospital will have something.”

  “Check the rear car park,” said Howard. “That’s where the black vans arrived.”

  “Do you have any other leads?”

  Howard sighed. “Not yet. I’m about to search Krenshaw’s locker and see what I find. Can you
have someone gather everything we have on the doctor?”

  “Of course. Good work, Howard. We’ll catch Krenshaw; only a matter of time.”

  “I’ll keep you updated.” Howard ended the call, found a nurse, and asked to be taken to Krenshaw’s locker. Inside the staff changing area, there was another nurse already there waiting for him.

  “This is the doctor’s locker,” the woman told him, indicating which one she meant.

  The locker was hanging slightly ajar, so Howard fondled the edge and swung it open wider. Inside was not a comforting sight. The top metal shelf was stacked with phials of clear liquid. A bundle of unsealed syringes right beside them.

  “Do we know what’s inside them?” asked Howard of the nurse.

  “We’ll need to get them to a lab, but I can tell you they aren’t legally endorsed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that these didn’t come from an approved pharmaceutical supplier. They’re either black market or, worse, homemade. There’re no labels, no serial numbers. Even the bottles aren’t NHS issue. Whatever is in these phials didn’t come through the system.”

  Howard thanked the nurse and asked her to bring Dr Hart to him. She would still be understandably distraught, but he needed answers.

  She appeared five minutes later, back in charge of her emotions, yet slightly timid in voice. “What can I do for you, Agent Hopkins?”

  “Is there any way of finding out what is inside these phials?”

  “They can be tested for HIV fairly quickly, if that’s what you mean? I’ll contact the lab and fast track it myself.”

  Howard nodded grimly. “What are you going to do about yourself?”

  She shrugged, almost as if she didn’t care. Howard thought it more likely the numbness of shock, or maybe she just knew there was little she could do. “I’ll have to start on anti-retroviral immediately,” she explained, “whether I am infected or not. It will take three months or so before any blood tests will be reliable.”

  Howard put himself in the doctor’s shoes and felt quite sick. It was going to be a long three months of hell while she was forced to wait for results on whether or not she was gravely ill. “Krenshaw admitted he never managed to infect any of the children,” he said, hoping it would give her some solace.

  “You let him get away, though?”

  Howard didn’t take it personally. If anyone had the right to apportion blame, it was Dr Hart. “I’m sorry. I have all my people working on it. We’ll get him, I promise.” He chose not to complicate matters by explaining about the black vans and his former colleague appearing to snatch Krenshaw away just as he was about to get away.

  “I need to go back to Whiteknight,” she said, looking away from him. “I can get treatment there and I need to get back to trying to deal with the Ebola epidemic.”

  Howard nodded. Any friendliness that had existed between them was now gone, extinguished the moment Krenshaw plunged a syringe into her neck. Howard had failed the woman, and could tell that Dr Hart regretted ever having met him. He regretted it, too, but for different reasons.

  “If you need anything…”

  Dr Hart nodded, turned around, and left.

  For a while, Howard stood alone in the locker room, staring at the collection of unlabelled liquids in the locker and shuddering. Eventually a nurse came in and started loading everything into a padded yellow crate. “I’ll get this sent straight to the pathology lab in Slough,” she told him. “If you leave me your details, I’ll have them call you with the results.”

  “Thank you.” Howard left her his details and thanked her, then exited the hospital as quickly as he could and stood out in the fresh air of the newly arrived night. It felt good to be in the open, out of the claustrophobic confines of the hospital. His breaths were longer, steadier, and, as he walked over to the curb where his MCU Range Rover was parked, he began to feel better. He wondered where Dr Hart had gone and how she was getting back to Whiteknight. Running, probably, if it got her away from him. The thought of her alone and scared brought tears to Howard’s eyes as he finally allowed himself to acknowledge how much today’s ordeal had upset him. He’d been relentlessly afraid the entire time, but it was Dr Hart who had been hurt.

  A shrill ring caused Howard to flinch from his thoughts and pull his mobsat from his coat. He answered the call and placed it to his ear. “Hopkins.”

  “Howard!” It was Jessica Bennett, a Georgia gal transferred from MCU America and currently his closest colleague, as well as probably the smartest person he knew. She, too, was a doctor but specialised in the mind rather than the body. “I checked the hospital CCTV and got a good look at the black vans. I saw the men you saw. Was that really Sarah?”

  “I’m certain of it. I looked her right in the eye. Not like she could be mistaken for anyone else with those scars of hers.”

  “I thought she was dead.”

  “Me too. Looks like everything we assumed was wrong. She’s working with someone and they have Krenshaw.”

  “It’s her daddy,” Jessica blurted out, her southern state accent more prevalent when she wasn’t speaking slowly.

  Howard unlocked the Range Rover and got in behind the wheel where it was warmer and quieter. He adjusted the mobsat against his ear and then continued the conversation. “Her father? How do you know?”

  Jessica told him. “The men in the back of the vans were wearing balaclavas, but I got a clear view at the driver who wasn’t wearing a mask of any kind. I ran his face through the Interpol and military databases and it came up as a wanted war criminal, Major Jonathan Stone.”

  Howard flopped back against the leather driver’s seat. “That makes no sense. Sarah’s father is a Major in the Army. Isn’t he SAS?”

  “He was,” said Jessica, “but he went AWOL with a group of his men almost a year ago. He was last seen in Syria, taking out an ISIS leader.”

  “Well, that’s good. He’s still on our side by the sound of it.”

  “No. He killed the ISIS leader on behalf of a Saudi Prince who lost a cousin in a rebel attack. He was paid to do it.”

  “He’s a mercenary.”

  “Looks like it. He’s been off the radar since he assassinated that ISIS leader, and Interpol had assumed he’d gone into hiding.”

  Howard rubbed at his eyes, feeling exhauster. “What has Sarah got herself into?”

  “I don’t know, but if her daddy has Krenshaw, it’s because somebody else is paying for him.”

  “Any background on Krenshaw yet?”

  “Not much. I’ve requested his work records from World Health Alliance who employed him during his time in Africa. They haven’t gotten back to me yet. He’s been back in the country for two years and has held senior posts in the NHS the entire time. There’s nothing to suggest he’s dangerous.”

  Howard huffed. “Believe me, he’s dangerous. I stood there and watched him inject an innocent woman with HIV.”

  “My Lord.”

  “Yeah,” said Howard. “We need to get this guy, Jessica.”

  “I have Mandy and Mattock checking out Krenshaw’s home and his office at Whiteknight, to see if we can find any clue as to what his next move might have been. I’ll keep working on Sarah’s daddy, see if I can figure out where he might be operating out of. I ran the plates on one of the black vans, but it came back as a stolen Nissan. They’ll probably shed the plates as soon as they get chance.”

  Howard cursed. “I swear, if I get a hold of Sarah...”

  “Don’t assume she’s on the wrong side of this. We don’t have the facts yet.”

  Howard sighed. “No, you’re right. At least Krenshaw is out of action for now. I would hate to think he was still at large with a dirty syringe full of whatever he planned on unleashing next. Whiteknight hospital is a nightmare, Jessica. Two hundred people dying in agony, dozens already dead. Krenshaw planned on infecting a children’s hospital with HIV. The man is capable of anything when it comes to his mission. He wants the UK to
see the suffering of Africa first-hand. He thinks his work will result in money and effort being diverted to finding a cure for all of these diseases.”

  Jessica moaned. “He’s a martyr. There’s no worse kind of madman.”

  “I know. He doesn’t want anything but to carry out his mission. If he manages to get free, there’s no limit to what he might do.”

  “Then let’s just hope that whatever Sarah is doing works out for the best.”

  Howard thought about Sarah for a moment. He had worked with her for less than a month, but he knew that as much as she was aggressive and unhelpful, she was a good person deep at heart. She had a strong instinct to protect the innocent, but she also hated the United Kingdom for what it did to her. If she was with her father there was no way of knowing what she was involved in or what she was thinking. If they were both carrying a grudge towards their country, there was no telling what they might do.

  Howard had an idea. “Jessica, don’t focus your efforts on Sarah’s father, focus it on Sarah herself. If we can work out what happened to her — how she disappeared — we might be able to figure out how and why she ended up with her father.”

  “But we already searched high and low for her,” said Jessica. “We couldn’t find anything. You, yourself, followed every lead you could find.”

  “We assumed then that a remnant of Hesbani’s crew was involved with her disappearance. Now we know different. Look at known associates of Major Stone, particularly the men who deserted with him. If we can find anything on them we might be able to link it to Sarah and find out where she is.”

  “Okay, Howard. I’m on it. You stay safe, okay?”

  “I’ll do my best. Just get back to me as soon as you have something. I want to put a stop to this before Sarah ends up doing something she’ll regret.”

  “Sarah never struck me as a woman who regretted anything.”

  “Then you don’t know Sarah at all. The woman I knew was nothing but a list of regrets. Let’s not give her any chance to add to it.”