A Heartbeat Away - Michael Palmer [155]
Gladstone, his eyes widening, still with the gun in his hand, took a shot in the center of his face, the bullet following a path almost identical to the one that had killed Ellis. He instantly fell lifeless across her body, his blood mixing with hers.
A short distance away, Sean O’Neil held his smoking pistol, preparing for the follow-up shot that would not be necessary.
Allaire rushed to Griff, his expression panicked.
“You said the serum couldn’t be replicated,” he said. “You said this was a one-time deal. Can you possibly stretch out what’s left? Can you make it be enough for all of us?”
Griff raised his hands to quiet the crowd. Then, as the cries and commotion settled down, he turned to the president and grinned.
“President Allaire,” Griff said into the microphone, “the antiviral treatment that I developed cannot be replicated. That is true.”
“No! Don’t let us die!” somebody shouted.
Others echoed the fear, and again the frightened, emotional crowd began to unravel.
“Please,” Griff called out to them. “You’ve all been through enough. Please listen.” An uneasy silence returned. “The serum cannot be replicated,” he continued, “so I could not trust myself to be the one to bring it here. Genesis had too many eyes and ears for me to believe they could not get to me, which is why the mixture I carried into the chamber was a ruse, not the antiviral treatment I developed.” He nodded toward the door to the Senate Wing and a solidly built man in a biocontainment suit stepped forward. “Let me introduce to all of you Sergeant Chad Stafford of the United States Army—the one person I knew we could all trust with our lives. The serum in his backpack is enough for every one of you.”
Applause and cheers started in the back of the crowd and rolled toward the soldier like thunder. In addition to his backpack, he held an assault weapon at the ready. People moved aside to allow him to pass as the cheering grew even more intense. All business as usual, Stafford climbed the rostrum stairs and stood next to Griff, who turned to the man and shook his hand.
“Glad you found the place okay,” he said.
EPILOGUE
The Inn at Coco Island, American Samoa, was unlike any vacation destination in the world. Built on stilts, ten feet above the vagaries of the South Pacific winds and tides, on the eastern end of the island, the inn was the only structure on the two-square-mile atoll, save for the home of innkeeper Jarvis H’malea, located on the far west end. The inn had only one suite—six rooms. It was owned by a consortium of Vegas casino heads and serviced by H’malea and his family. Rental was $50,000 a week, with a minimum stay of two weeks.
The closely guarded guest list at the Inn at Coco Island read like a who’s who in entertainment, business, and sports, and the ability to pay the tariff and sea plane fare did not guarantee an applicant a vacation there. The fine, white sand was legend, and the palms were reputed to produce the largest, sweetest coconuts to be found anywhere.
In the ten years H’malea had been the steward at the inn, he had successfully honored demands—dietary and otherwise—from some of the most eccentric, uncompromising men and women in the world. But the request from the two guests flying in now was unique—a king-sized mattress, placed in a grove of palms, on a small bluff facing east toward the sunrise.
The new E. S. Kluft Beyond Luxury Sublime mattress had been flown to Pago Pago from the Kluft factory in California, brought over to the inn by boat, and paid for, H’malea’s Vegas contact had told him, by some sort of special act of the United States Congress. At first, H’malea was sure the man was pulling his leg, but that was before the mattress, with a pricetag in the mid-forties, was off-loaded.
The seaplane materialized as a dot in the perfect late morning sky. H’malea, thumbs in the beltloops of his khakis, strode along the pier past