A Heartbeat Away - Michael Palmer [148]
A canister was dropped on the rug in the center of the room. Angie and the others began to cough as the foul-smelling vapor stung their lungs. Her eyes were watering profusely, and her throat seemed as if it had closed off. Gloved hands grabbed her from behind. Before she could scream again, a patch of duct tape was pulled across her mouth, and her hands were secured behind her. The whole operation had taken less than a minute. Then, the room went completely black.
Angie came to almost as rapidly as she had gone out. She felt the acidy burn of bile as it worked its way up her throat, and shuddered with a new fear that the tape covering her mouth would cause her to choke to death on vomit.
She rolled to one side, breathed slowly and deeply through her nose, and focused her thoughts on an image of Griff that she had conjured up during their phone conversation from her hospital room. She pictured him down in the Kalvesta lab, bravely and confidently injecting himself with a virus as deadly as any he had hunted down in Africa. From his courage, Angie found strength of her own to remain calm.
All around her, agents were gagging and coughing. Moments later, there was a commotion from the doorway. Her hands were untied, and the numbness in them began to abate. The room was crowded now with police, soldiers, and FBI agents, so numerous that they struggled to move about freely.
“I can’t believe we blew this,” one of the agents who had been with Angie said. “They moved like frigging Delta Force. How in the hell did they get in so easily?”
“The two guards outside are dead, both shot in the head, probably with silencers. We didn’t hear a thing until a volley of machine gun fire from up here. By the time we left the surveillance truck and made it over, they were gone.”
“Rappaport!” Angie coughed out the words when an FBI agent pulled off the tape covering her mouth. “Where is Paul Rappaport?”
“He’s right here,” the agent said. “He was tied up like the rest of you.”
“The cooler … the serum…” Angie struggled to get the words out. She was hyperventilating and her eyes still stung from the smoke. “The cooler,” she managed again.
The FBI agent just shook his head.
“Whatever was in that cooler,” he said, while helping Angie to her feet, “went out the door with the guys who took it.”
CHAPTER 66
DAY 10
1:00 A.M. (EST)
Destiny!
Ursula Ellis knew she was on the brink of history. She stood at the rostrum of the House Chamber and gazed out at three hundred frightened and bewildered faces. But she was their leader now—their shepherd. She had lost the battle of the election, but now, thanks to her destiny and to Genesis, she was going to win the war.
She took a deep breath, inhaling the feelings of the moment, and the events just ahead. The Committee on Rules, facing what she had called “our lives or this bill,” had granted privileged status to her legislation.
She motioned Leland Gladstone to her side. He was carrying the communication device Genesis had given her.
“Have they responded to us yet?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Gladstone said. “Do they know the vote is now?”
“I told them. They’ll come through. I’m sure of it.”
“Maybe we should hold off until they’ve delivered the treatment.”
“We’ve come way too far,” the speaker whispered, sensing a nugget of concern form in her gut. “Just keep trying to reach them.”
It had been two days since Gladstone distributed copies of the bill to each voting member of Congress capable of casting a ballot. Over the time since then, Ellis had heard disgust from every corner of the chamber. One congressman tore the twenty-page piece of legislation in half. Another had tried to set it on fire before the Capitol Police