Final Epidemic by Earl Merkel Page B

up the search warrant for his inspection, Trippett had waved it away with a thin, polite smile. After Robles had disappeared down one of the long passages between the storage racks, Trippett nodded in the direction of the warehouse office.
    “Cold night out here,” he said in a mild country twang. “Lowlander’d never guess it was July. Cuppa coffee, ma’am?”
    In any other circumstance, she would have smiled. But not tonight, not while serving a search warrant and not while feeling, after the week she had spent, a million years old.
    Ma’am? April thought, and had been inwardly amused at the honorific. Is that cowboy charm, or do I look as old as I feel?
    She declined the offer.
    They stood for a moment in awkward silence.
    “Whacha’ll looking for, anyway?” he asked.
    “It’s on the warrant,” she said in her best official tone, then relented slightly. “It’s just routine, Mr. Trippett. Agent Robles will be back in a moment.”
    Trippett shrugged, smiling as if to apologize for some slight. Another long moment passed between them.
    “That y’all’s car?” he said finally. “Reason I ask, see, it’s blocking the loading dock. Maybe you could ask them two fellows to move it.”
    “Agent Robles will be back soon,” April repeated.
    “Well, truck there’s wanting in,” Trippett said, looking past her shoulder. April turned to look.
    In that instant, as her eyes slid past his face, she saw his features change from prey to predator. She stepped backward, automatically, trying to put some distance between the two of them.
    The instinctive reaction probably saved her life.
    Trippett grabbed at her, missing as April twisted sideways and smashed the heel of her left hand hard against his cheekbone. She backed away farther, her hand dropping to her waist, clawing to reach the weapon underneath her light leather jacket. Then she had it, the butt of the automatic hard in her hand as it cleared the holster and leveled on target.
    “You move, you die !” April screamed, and she could hear the rage and fear in her own voice. Trippett froze, the muzzle of the Glock two feet from his head. Slowly, his hands rose.
    The shots came from outside, a burst of three. Another. Then, much louder, a heavier automatic weapon firing in a sustained burst.
    From the street, fifteen yards away, a pickup truck squealed to a stop. Whoever was driving had immediately recognized the car parked at the curb as a government vehicle. Before the first of the attackers even jumped to the ground, at least one automatic weapon had opened up at full tilt. Palm-sized blotches of fresh metal, each centered on its own bullet hole, stitched crookedly the length of the sedan. Where a bullet hit glass, the window spiderwebbed into a creamy opacity.
    Other weapons began to fire in staccato bursts. One of them sighted on the streetlight outside, which shattered and flared before going dark. April heard someone shout commands, followed by the clatter of armed men moving quickly.
    Gunfire walked its way across the loading dock, geysering chips of concrete along its path. April threw herself flat. Bullets, the sound of angry hornets, passed inches over her head.
    When she looked up, Orin Trippett was no longer in sight.Through the cacophony of shots all around her, she could barely make out the sound of running footsteps deep in the warehouse. She raised her head, looking in the direction Trippett had fled, then at the car where she had left Hadley and Morrisee. A fresh fusillade pockmarked the concrete near where she lay, making the decision for her. April rolled hard to the lip of the ramp and slid down into its relative cover.
    In a crouching run, April sprinted up the sloping concrete ramp. She reached the head of it just as one of the dark figures outside wrenched open the passenger door of the ruined car. Somehow, the dome light had survived the hail of bullets. It still worked, illuminating the carnage inside.
    Ten feet away, FBI special agent