Backblast by Candace Irving (miss read books TXT) 📕

cut to make room for a false bottom. This bottle was inside. There's enough of the clear liquid left to test."

"Fuck me."

It seemed the general's aide had serious issues keeping his mouth shut amid all sorts of circumstances and locations, because even his boss glared at him.

"Captain Hoffman, you're dismissed."

The man turned redder than the bottom of her shower had last night. But he stood and immediately evacuated the wardroom.

Palisade nodded to the now empty chair. "Have a seat."

Like the aide, she complied with the alacrity due a general's orders.

"All right, Chief. What's the game plan for this thread?"

"I'd like to pull his record, get my ducks in a row before I interview him. I have time. The staff sergeant's in sickbay at the moment. I tasked Chief Yrle with ensuring that he stayed there in ignorance until I give the word. Last night's seas hit him pretty hard. He's been there half the night plugged into an IV."

"Is he faking?"

With the stench she, Yrle and Vetter had been subjected to? "No."

Palisade nodded. "I'd like to see him."

She shook her head. "Sir, I'd rather you didn't."

"Explain."

"For one, we don't know if he's guilty. If he did do it, why keep evidence lying around? Regret? Perhaps. But Corporal Vetter also knows the staff sergeant from their embassy duties and is currently sharing Brandt's quarters aboard this ship. Also, even if Brandt did poison the translator, he may not be our traitor. Or Vetter for that matter. Hachemi's murder could just be a case of flat-out revenge. According to Chief Yrle, Staff Sergeant Brandt is prone to sharing about a younger brother who plays for the Longhorns. While Captain McCord received his ROTC commission from UT, that's something Vetter could have known—or share a connection with—as well. Frankly, I need more information about both men before I show my hand."

One of those steel gray brows lifted. "And if Brandt is guilty?"

"Then I definitely don't need you or your stars in the mix. It's just seasickness, sir. Nothing that should warrant a general's concern, an Army one at that. We'd risk alerting him as to the real reason behind my own…compassionate visit."

In short, let her do her damned job.

The one he'd flown to Campbell to personally ask her to do.

"Agreed. I'll skip the meet—for now."

"Thank you, sir."

"The major tells me you've already got a solid lead on identifying the seventh woman from the cave, too."

"Yes, sir. I believe she worked with Durrani—and that the doc had a sexual interest in her. Given his attitude toward women, especially those he worked with, that interest might stand out with his former co-workers. We bring along that photo of the woman from the cave, baby included, and someone may talk."

Palisade inclined his silver head once more. "Major Garrison briefed us on the bastard's interest in the woman. That's solid work there, Chief. The major also let us know that this damned plot goes further back than any of us suspected. Back to when you and he were in Germany, damned near a year and a half ago."

She caught the flash of compassion that briefly tinged the blue.

She wasn't surprised John had informed his boss and mentor about the exact nature of their conversation in that parking lot—and especially its significance. But the general hadn't drawn attention to Durrani's other comment. The one regarding equipment potentially lost by the spook.

Why?

Riyad had definitely attended John's meeting with Palisade then.

She was weighing the implications when the door to the wardroom blew open behind her. Too many combat tours had her and John on their collective feet and spinning around before Chief Yrle had made it all the way inside.

"Agent Chase, Doc wants you in Medical. Brandt woke a couple minutes ago and starting yelling for you. Then he had some sort of seizure. I think he—"

Regan never heard the rest. She was already barreling out of the compartment, her boots pounding along the deck as she headed for the door marked "Medical" that she'd noted in the corridor on her way to the meeting.

John was at her side, adding a surreal, déjà vu feel to the trip as they reached the door to sickbay and slammed through.

The scene inside cinched the feeling. And her clawing fear.

Make that terror.

The staff sergeant was lying on a gurney shoved into the middle of the aisle between two rows of patient racks stacked on either side like bunkbeds. Mantia and the beefy corpsman Regan had seen twice before—in that conference room and in the brig—were at Brandt's side. Only this time, the men weren't working on Hachemi or Durrani. Nor were they working on the Marine's sweat-drenched body.

Brandt was dead.

Worse, that telling, fetid odor that had all but oozed from the lungs and pores of every soldier who'd died from the chimera back at Fort Campbell hung in the air.

She took one look at John and knew he smelled it too.

Mantia looked up, the adrenaline from a full code still riding his damp, flushed features, along with the added grief of crashing down on the losing end. The man appeared…lost. "He's dead. Staff Sergeant Brandt was alive five minutes ago. He'd woken up from what we thought was another nightmare and looked straight at me and said, 'They're not real. Tell Agent Chase, they're not real.' And then he seized."

"Son of a bitch." John.

She nodded as the inescapable reality locked in. The psycho-toxin. Durrani hadn't injected all of that chimeral crap into her arm back in Charikar. There was more of the virus out there…and someone was using it.

As if to taunt them—as if that seizure, that sweat and that smell weren't enough, nearly those exact words Brandt had used had come from one of John's men, Sergeant Blessing, shortly before he had become the first one to die from the virus.

Regan threaded her fingers into John's and squeezed firmly as the doc continued to shake his head in disbelief.

"We lost him before you came through the door. It happened that quick. One