Excerpt of The Cost of Love by Drue Allen

Dean Dreiser did not want to start his day viewing a
biologically hot, still decomposing body. He preferred
stiffs with bullet holes.

He shuffled out of the central command trailer,
convinced the biohazard suit he wore had been designed to
amplify the desert's heat. It occurred to him he should
have taken his dad's offer to help with the family's Brazos
River guide business. Why the hell did he think he needed
to be a government agent?

If he weren't an agent, he wouldn't be working for
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. If he didn't
work for USCIS, he wouldn't be in New Mexico at White Sands
Missile Range. At forty miles wide and one hundred miles
long, God had forsaken this land long before the U.S.
government arrived.

“This way, Agent Dreiser.” The lab doctor took off on
a southeast heading, assuming Dean would follow.

The man had to be at least seventy and looked as if
he'd been in the desert most of those years. His skin had
wrinkled up so that he resembled a prune more than a
person. By Dean's calculations, the old guy didn't weigh
enough to keep his biohazard suit from floating off the
desert floor.

Ten yards away, the good doctor noticed Dean had
stopped. He turned with the impatient expression of someone
who had important lab experiments to run and demanded, “Is
there a problem, Agent?”

They could communicate through a universal intercom
system within their suits, a fact that had Dean at a
distinct disadvantage. He knew the doc's security
clearance, but he did not know the clearance level of every
man on this frequency. He'd learned last year what a single
security breach could do, and he wouldn't risk it again.

That security breach had come in the form of an agent
Dean had met only once--Keith Servensky. A mole inside
USCIS, the bastard had nearly killed Dean's best friend and
one of their best agents. If someone had checked
Servensky's security clearance at every point in the
mission, he would have been stopped before he'd done any
harm. Instead, he'd pushed his way into operational
maneuvers above his level. In the confusion of the moment
no one had stopped him. As a result, he was complicit in
Operation Dambusters and the killing of thousands in Bath
County, Virginia.

Dean wanted his weapon, and he didn't want to state
why on an open frequency.

Doctor Kowlson--Dean could see his name sewn on his
BHZ suit now that he'd stomped back to join him--raised his
left hand, pointed at the blue intercom button, and pushed
it. “This opens a direct channel between the two of us.
Now, is there a problem, Agent?”

“The problem is my weapon is still in the trailer,
and even if I had it, I couldn't very well use it while I'm
in this suit.”

Doc Kowlson held his gaze for a count of five, then
glanced toward heaven as if to pray for mercy. Finally he
held up his hands, as if in surrender. He looked to Dean
like the Pillsbury Doughboy, hands waving in the morning
heat.

Kowlson used his white gloved fingers to enumerate
each point, as if the visual would lend credence. “One.
You're surrounded by armed military personnel, so one less
weapon shouldn't concern you. Two. The threat we face is
biological and therefore microscopic. You can't shoot it.
Three. It's a fucking ninety-eight degrees and rising, and
I'd like to finish before it reaches one-hundred-and-ten.
If you don't mind.”

Without waiting for an answer, the good doctor
shuffled off. Dean had never been put in his place by a
Doughboy, and he still wanted his Glock on his person where
it belonged. But ten years in active operations had taught
him some battles cost more than their net worth. The New
Mexico sun combined with the two dozen guards holding a
ready military stance--and no biohazard suit--confirmed
this would be one of them.

Dean took off after the doc. For a little old guy he
moved with amazing speed.

They reached the front of the site in ten minutes.
The biohazard dome stretched roughly the size of half a
professional football stadium and rose out of the desert
like some freakish giant jelly fish. All to cover the
location of one deceased?

Another twenty military personnel surrounded the side
they approached from, including guards posted at the single
entrance. Anyone going in passed through an ocular scan
first. Dean started to remove his helmet, but the guard
stopped him. The lieutenant, a young man who couldn't have
seen thirty, placed the scanner over Dean's helmet and
waited for the light to blink green.

The site resembled a NASA moon outpost he'd seen in
some old science fiction movie. It was easy to forget
Albuquerque lay just seventy-five miles to the northwest.
Once the scanner confirmed his identity, the guard allowed
him to pass. Dean stepped inside the dome, thinking the
inside could not be more surprising than the outside. He
was wrong. The facility glowed with enough computer and
satellite equipment to run a very large, very advanced op.

As if in answer to his unspoken question, Doc Kowlson
said, “All computers respond to voice prompts, since typing
in these suits is quite cumbersome. Of course, each
computer has to be synced to the operator's voice nuances.
The victim's body is over here.”

A smaller tent, approximately twenty feet by twenty
feet, sat off to one side. A separate air supply ran from
this structure into a filtration system and out of the
bigger dome to an area Dean couldn't see.

“Still a hot zone?” Dean asked.

“Yes, and it will remain contaminated for some time.
Possibly years.”

They stopped outside the smaller tent's entrance,
where yet another armed guard stood at attention. This one
recognized Kowlson and stepped aside when he approached.
Instead of entering, the doctor turned to Dean, held out a
hand to prevent him from going any further.

“Do you have any firsthand experience with victims of
biological attacks, Agent Dreiser?”

“I've seen plenty of vics, Doc.”

Kowlson paused, then nodded. “I'm sure you have.
Biological weapons have a way of degrading the body, as
you've been taught. It can be disorienting when you witness
this. The body has a natural reaction, wants to reject what
it sees--often by vomiting. You must fight this response
since you're in a biohazard suit. Under no circumstance
should you attempt to pull off your hood, or one of the men
inside will shoot you with a tranquilizer.”

“I appreciate the lecture.” Dean shifted in his suit,
but never broke eye contact with the doc. “I have a
terrorist to catch, so can we get on with this?”

He saw something less cynical appear in Kowlson's
eyes, then it vanished like a fleeing shadow. It wasn't a
look of doubt--regret maybe. Before he could figure out why
the man might have misgivings, they entered the hot zone.

“Push your yellow com button. All communication
within this zone must be recorded.”

Dean pushed the button. Let the shirts in Langley
review his every word from their safe distance. If he did
his job well, they'd have that luxury. If he didn't, no
doubt Virginia would be on the target list.

Four additional guards stood watch over the victim
inside the tent. They stood at rigid attention--their
weapons at the ready. Their eyes never met Dean's. They
reminded him of the sentries posted at the unknown
soldier's grave in Washington D.C.

Even through his suit, he noticed a marked drop in
the temperature.

“The colder temperature maintains the integrity of
the body,” Dr. Kowlson said.

The young woman, if she could still be called that,
lay on the floor in the middle of the area. She wore hiking
clothes--khaki shorts, a t-shirt, and sturdy boots. The
shirt had been sheared up the middle for the preliminary
autopsy.

Dean's first sight of the victim told him why Kowlson
had felt the need to issue his warning. He'd seen many
victims in various stages of dismemberment, but he'd never
seen one with most of their skin dissolved.

He swallowed the bile that rose in his throat, kept
his hands still at his side. Some lab technician outside
would be reading his heart rate. Fuck them. Anyone who
could look at this poor girl and not register an increased
heart rate wasn't human.

“Estimated time of death?” Dean forced his voice to
sound normal.

“Less than twelve hours ago.”

“How is that possible?”

“This agent works quickly, as weaponized forms
usually do. I would like to say her death was painless, but
my medical opinion is, it was not.”

Dean glanced up as new guards replaced the men who
had been standing there.

“We rotate guards every seven minutes. We're fully
protected in our suits, of course, but it makes everyone
feel better--psychologically--if we rotate the personnel.”

“Who found her?”

“Two hikers who were, let's say, lost.”

“What will happen to them?”

“That is not my problem, or yours.”

Dean willed his feet to step closer to the girl. His
skin began to tingle and burn, but he recognized it as a
psychosomatic response to what he was seeing. He wanted the
expression of horror on her face engraved on his memory.
The more he understood of what she had endured, the better
chance he had of catching these bastards. And he would
catch them.

“Why is only the hair from the front half of her
scalp gone?”

“A good question. When she inhaled the bio-agent, it
went to work immediately, dissolving the skin around her
face. The hair at the front of her scalp lost purchase and
fell out. The agent then travelled down the bronchial tube
toward her lungs, which is why you see the burn marks down
her throat.”

“She didn't grab her neck?” Dean squatted beside the
body.

“She didn't have time. That would have been a natural
reaction to a tickle along the throat. But at the same time
her esophagus began to burn, the bio-agent paralyzed all
the neurons in her brain. Although she wanted to grasp her
neck, her fingers had forgotten how.”

“She would have collapsed then.”

“Yes, but she wouldn't have been able to crawl or
move.” The doctor now spoke in a clinical, detached tone.

“She would have been conscious?”

“So our preliminary results indicate.”

“For how long?”

“Perhaps ten minutes. No longer. Much of her skin
dissolved causing her to sustain a great amount of blood
loss. She bled out. That, technically, would be the cause
of death. It would have been a very agonizing ten minutes.”

Dean had all the information he came for, but he
stayed a moment longer, stared into pale blue eyes that
would never again see a New Mexico sunrise.

“Approximate age?” he asked softly.

“Early twenties.”

Dean stood and made eye contact with Kowlson who
nodded toward the opposite end of the tent.

They exited out a different door, where they passed
through three different showers. Dean would have stood
through a dozen had he been ordered to--anything to
mitigate the burning and itching that had begun in his
throat but now had spread to every inch of his body. Then
he stripped and stood under two additional showers,
dressed, and again submitted to the ocular scan. Stepping
into the desert sun, he took a deep, steadying gulp of
fresh air.

As an afterthought, he turned back to the
guard. “We're being extra careful that the same folks who
go in, come out.”

The lieutenant--this one a woman and no older than
the one at the entrance--didn't bother to reply.

Dr. Kowlson joined him, and they made their way back
toward Dean's once-red Jeep. A layer of dirt made it nearly
indistinguishable from the surrounding desert. Anyone
watching would be hard pressed to name the color, or year,
for that matter. The Jeep had seen better days, as had Dean.

He could have been imagining it, but the old guy
seemed less pissy.

“You handled yourself well in there,” Kowlson said.

“It's my job, sir.” Dean held out his hand, shook the
doc's, then climbed into his Jeep. “What kind of bastards
create something able to do that?”

“The worst kind. Ones we haven't had on our soil
before.”

Dean stared out through his windshield, but made no
move to drive away.

“We're sending you the best person we have in
bioterrorism,” Kowlson said. “She's a genius in the area of
bioweaponized agents, and she completed field ops training
last month. Her name is Dr. Lucinda Brown. She's better
than whoever did this.”

“She'll have to be.”

Kowlson nodded and stepped back. They both recognized
the task facing them was daunting, had both received the
same encrypted message from headquarters three hours
earlier:

Terror alert critical. Attack imminent. Message received
and confirmed--

What you will find in the desert is only a taste. You
cannot stop the justice you deserve. We will strike where
you will suffer the most. We will strike swiftly. We will
strike soon.

While the terrorists hadn't made any demands, they
had made themselves clear. According to their analysts, the
attack would occur in ten to fourteen days, and the weapon
would be dispersed over a minimum of six major metropolitan
areas. No why. No terms of negotiation. Only the threat and
the proof they could do what they claimed.

Dean started the engine and drove through the
makeshift military facility that had been set up around the
victim's body--a body found in the middle of a government
base. As he drove the sun continued its daily climb,
oblivious to the plans of men.

Why New Mexico, why now, and why on his shift? Why
had the terrorists even bothered sending the message? It
had told them nothing, but had managed to put them on
alert. Why would they want to do that? Commander Martin had
relayed nothing else. More data would come from the body of
the girl. Bodies always gave up their secrets--eventually.

Dean pulled to the side of the road in time to vomit
up the little he'd eaten for breakfast. He grabbed a bottle
of water from behind his seat to wash the taste of sour
coffee out of his mouth. They'd never shown him corpses
with no skin in ops training. He'd battled many terrorists
in his ten years, but he'd never dealt with one his trusty
Glock couldn't kill.

Leaning against the door, he gazed out over the
barren landscape.

Dr. Brown better be as good as her reputation. USCIS
had staked all their lives on it.