Backblast by Candace Irving (miss read books TXT) 📕

minute he was dreaming, and the next, he was dead. There was nothing I could do."

Mantia was correct.

The only reason she and three of John's other soldiers had survived their own deadly dance with the chimera was because of Gil's brilliance and his access to Fort Detrick's vaccine for a virus that appeared to be related to the psycho-toxin, along with a dose of—of all things—the chicken pox vaccine. Neither of which would have been aboard a US warship operating in the middle of the Arabian Sea.

But as right as the doc was, he was also wrong.

Regan gave John's fingers one last squeeze and released them so she could step up to the gurney. To the utterly flabbergasted physician. "He wasn't dreaming, Doctor. Staff Sergeant Brandt was hallucinating. That's what he wanted me to know." Just as Brandt had wanted her to know what—and possibly who—had killed him.

Except he'd run out of time.

She could only pray that his mortal timing hadn't become theirs.

Regan retrieved her phone and located Gil's number. She held the phone up so that Mantia's corpsman could copy it down. "Contact Lieutenant Colonel Gilbert Fourche, US Army. Blanchfield Community Hospital, Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Dr. Fourche will be able to fill in the rest of the holes. At least the ones he's seen before. Dr. Fourche will also need tissue samples and blood from the staff sergeant." Lord knew they'd taken enough from her. "Fourche and several other doctors are still working on the virus that caused this. But, please, know that there's nothing you could've done."

As guilty as she felt for assuming the original seasick diagnosis was sound, she couldn't have prevented this either, even if she'd known differently. Heck, given that no one else had vomited to that extent, Brandt probably had been seasick, too. Which might have even masked his initial chimeral symptoms from himself. Either way, by the time the Marine had crawled into sickbay, he was already all but dead. The makeshift treatment Gil had cobbled together would never have reached the ship by now.

"Rae?"

She turned around to face John. He'd pulled himself together. But from the shadows darkening his tight, professional stare, she could tell that the same guilt was eating away at him too. And he'd known the Marine longer.

"This changes things."

"I know." She tipped her head toward the door, to where Riyad and the general were standing. Waiting. "Let's go let him know."

John motioned for her to precede him across the rolling deck. Every cell in her body had been so focused on the journey here, and the horror of what they'd found when they arrived, she hadn't realized the sea state had picked up again.

She halted in front of Palisade, not even bothering to mask her expression. The general already knew that the news she was about to impart was devastating; she might as well let her face reflect it for a change. "I need to go Pakistan, sir. Today."

"Explain."

"I'll test the liquid in that bottle and dust it for prints, but I already know what they'll show." She'd bet every one of those iron birds up on the flight deck on it. "Staff Sergeant Brandt poisoned the translator."

"You found proof—here?" Riyad.

She nodded. It was in the air. It'd been in the air in the Marines' stateroom too, but the more nauseating stench of vomit had overridden it. "I've already provided Mantia with Dr. Fourche's number. We'll need the official, medical confirmation from them, but the sweat drenching the staff sergeant's body? The hallucinations Brandt himself confirmed seconds before he suffered the seizure that killed him—"

"That foul odor?"

This nod was for the general. "That, too."

"It's the goddamned psycho-toxin, isn't it, Chief?"

She nodded once more. "Yes, sir. But we've got a silver lining, General. Several, in fact. Staff Sergeant Brandt was an embassy security guard, so while I haven't had a chance to access his record yet, I can almost guarantee he wasn't suicidal or he'd never have passed the testing and been accepted into the program. That means someone injected the virus into him. Not only does the chimera need to be refrigerated, it also requires a significant stressor, mental or physical, to activate." Murdering Hachemi definitely qualified. "But the necessity of the stressor limits the timeframe of Brandt's exposure. Without an adequate stressor, the virus can linger for weeks, possibly months inside the body. Dormant. Dr. Fourche and his team have also since discovered that the virus peaks roughly one to two weeks after the introduction of the stressor—"

"But Hachemi was murdered yesterday." Riyad again. And he was taking on at least one annoying habit of the general's aide.

Speaking out of turn.

She smiled anyway. Sort of. "True. Which is why I suspect that Brandt didn't want to murder Hachemi." A suspicion that fit with the staff sergeant's general demeanor and personality, as well as the cross-branch loyalty toward John that Brandt had displayed during their interview. "But if Brandt was blackmailed into killing the translator against his will, that would do it." What better stressor to a man of honor? "And if the blackmail occurred while the Marine was in the hanger at Al Dhafra two weeks ago—"

"The timeframe fits."

Regan bit down on her tongue at this latest interruption. She had no choice. It had come from the general. "Yes, sir. It does."

Palisade ran his fingers around the crop of silver stubble atop his head. "So the staff sergeant wasn't infected aboard this ship."

"No, sir. I believe he was injected at Al Dhafra, albeit unwittingly." Just as she'd been. Though she'd mostly likely have been the easier of them to infect, since she'd been unconscious at the time.

Riyad opened his mouth again. This time, she cut him off with a swift shake. "I know, I know. I fell ill almost immediately. But I've been told that I was an outlier. Not only did Durrani inject the contents of an entire vial into me, I'd been unconscious for hours and already physically taxed because of the Russian gas Hachemi