Map of Bones/Chapter 1

Behind the Eight Ball

Present Day
July 22 11:46 P.M. Cologne, Germany

As midnight approached, Jason passed his Ipod to his friend Mandy. She shrugged it off, returning it to him.

They were sitting on a n open pedestrian plaza called the Domvorplatz. It was a massive Gothic cathedral. They were on vacation holiday from Boston College, backpacking through Germany and Austria.

Noticing the people entering the cathedral, they packed their stuff and entered. They were greeted by Guten Abend. Candlelight flowed through the cathedral's open doorway. The cathedral's history glowed in the light, having the cornerstone placed in the thirteenth century.

They walked an reached the carved doors and into the front foyer. He realizes he is not of the same faith as Mandy dabbed holy water from a basin and made the sign of the cross. He was struck by the majesty of the place.

They took seats near the middle.

A bell sounded and a choir began to sing. Mass brought out pageantry that was magnificent. Jason continued his study, the service wound slowly. When Communion rolled around, the breaking of the Eucharistic bread, parishners slowly filed from t heir pews, traveling up the aisles to accept the body and blood of Jesus Christ. As Mandy walked, Jason used the opportunity to the public restroom.

He noticed something odd. A group of monks walked through, filing through the back doors. Something was odd; they moved too quickly, with military precision, slipping into shadows. Looking around, Jason seees more cloaked figures at other doors. They were keeping their heads bowed piously down, standing guard. Mandy was near the altar, accepting her communion. Sitting, he noticed the monks. They pull out weapons and began firing. The priest died and orders were barked in German, English, French. Stay seated or die. One man walked up. He met the archbishop at the altar, speaking in Latin. An argument lead no where. The men shot a few bullets, but the sarcophagus was enclosed in bulletproof material. The leader spoke out. Let your sheep's blood be upon your hands.

Jason mumbled to himself: elaborate robbery.

Two men lifted large metal disks to either sides of the casement. The weakened bulletproof glass exploded outward. In the flickering candlelight, the sarcophagus shimmered. Jason felt a sudden pressure, an internal popping of his ears, as if the walls of the cathedral had suddenly pushed inward, squashing all. The pressure deafened his ears; his vision squeezed.

He looks at Mandy. Mandy's hand began to tremble in his, vibrating like a speaker's tweeter. Tears ran down her face, turning bloody as he watched. She did not breathe. Her body then jerked and stiffened, knocking his hand free, but not before he felt the bite of an electrical shock arc from her fingertips to his. A thin trail of smoke rose from Mandy's open mouth. Her eyes were rolled back to white, but already they were smoldering black at the corners. Dead.

Everyone else was in the same pose. Only a few had not:those who had not partaken of the Communion bread.

Jason managed to escape. He fell back into the shadows by the walls, finding a wall. Not a true door, but a confessional booth. He fell down, hugging himself with a prayer..

A moment before, h e spotted the coat of arms upon the leader's surcoat. The black cloak had parted as he lifted his arm, revealing the crimson sigil beneath: a coiled dragon, the tail wrapped around its own neck. Footsteps approached and stopped outside his hiding place.

Behind the Eight Ball
July 24, 4:34 A.M. Frederick, Maryland. The saboteur had arrived.

Grayson Pierce edged his motorcycle between the dark buildings that made up Fort Detrick. He wore dark black, a compound called NPL Super Black. Hunched over the bike, he neared the end of the alley. A courtyard opened ahead, a dark chasm framed by the brick-and-mortar buildings that composed the National Cancer Institute, an adjunct to USAMRIID, the U. S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. Here the country's war on bioterrorism was waged across sixty thousand square feet of maximum-containment labs.

He had to ensure his ruse maintained. He had to maintain it as satellite kept view on his. He managed to get a meeting with the contact as he had t aken six months to groom his contact, thourgh connections in Libya and the Sudan. It was not easy in his business as money did not buy much trust. He was in the alley and few eyes were awake at this hour. Reaching the side door, he swiped the lock with an electronic keycard supplied by his contact at the base. The meeting was at 4:45. Reaching his destination building 470, he waited. Anthrax had been used in business in this building in the 1960s, but once again it was conducted under his roof. Pierce carried the second half of the payment, along with a knife in his concealed wrist sheath. Walking up, he is worried he will be found. Patrols around the place did not find him. He narrowly missed a patrol as it shown its light.

A signal of three blinks showed he had seen him. A voice said calmly. A woman. Grey had expected to find a nervous scientist or someone out for an extra paycheck. Treason for hire was becoming more and more common place and USAMRIID was no exception. She was selling fifteen vials of chemical that had the capability to kill a lot of people, if aerosolized properly in a subway or bus station.

He sat down. The woman was Eurasian. She knew his identity and everything. She reveals she is a member of the Guild. She pointed her .45 Sig Sauer at him and shot him, pushing him back. Betrayed. She leans closer to Grey as his helmet was transmitting to Washington DC. The person tells everything that the Fort Detrik will be shut down with anthrax as payback for Sigma Force's interference with their operation in Oman. She acknowledge it as a personal revenge for the death of Cassandra Sanchez.

She points the gun at the faceplate and pulls the trigger.

5:02 A.M.
Washington D.C. === The live feed of the satellite went dead.

The helmet cam died. They had to alert security for Fort Detrick.

It was a trap and they walked into it.

Sir? Asked Logan Gregory, his second in command.

Only a few people knew of Sigma Force and its agents: the President, the Joint Chiefs, and its immediate supervisors over at DARPA. After the shakeup last year, the organization was under intense scrutiny. Mistakes would and could not be tolerated. He had to call them in. Painter was frustrated. He had assumed control of the organization only eight months ago, cleaning up the organization after infiltration by the international cartel called the Guild. He purged everything and rebuilt from scratch. Painter even pulled out the central command out of Arlington into a subterranean warren in Washington D.C. Recently, he had to put operatives into the field, as they had to test things over again. One at Los Alamos investigaton of a nulcear database and another at Fort Detrick, only an hour from Washington. The Guild's attack sought to force Sigma to pul back again and to regroup. He could not afford that.

Painter looked at the dossier in front of him. Dr. ad Commander Grayson Pierce. Painter knew all the details.

Gregory got base security on line. They provided visual and audio feeds. A tinny voice reached them. One word formed. Goddmanmotherfuckingpieceofshit.

5:07 A.M.
Frederick, Maryland

Gray kicked out a heel, catching the woman in the midriff. His ears rang from the sound, and his face shield had cracks. He ignored it all. He took out the dagger and dove. Shots sprung out. He hid. The diver under the table jarred the heads up display.

And his body suit was able to absorb some of the damage. The shot had burned and ached, but no blood.

The assassin was right. His body suit was made Liquid body armor. It was very helpful and had saved his life, for now. The woman spoke, saying she had rigged the building with C4 and TNT. Easy enough since the structure was already scheduled for demolition.

Also, it had vials of anthrax. There were a lot fo anthrax that would be spread by the demolition of the base. With the strong winds, it would spread to the nearby town of Frederick.

Taking off his helmet, Grayson decided to forgo his HUD. Throwing a knife, it bounced off the armor.

The person tried to escape but turned to Grayson and aimed the Sig Sauer at him.

5:09 AM Washington D.C.
lost contact, reported the technician. It was only two more minutes.

=== 5:10 A.M. Frederick, Maryland The first shot whistled past his earr. The assassin shot too fast. He tackeled the woman.

She shot him again, in the left thigh. However, He did not let go. The gun had 15 shots and unknown of fired and left. He needed to end this. Strikijng with his forehead, he kocked her down and kick out at a cord trailing from the nearby table. The library lmap came crashing down to the floor. Beear hugging the woman, he rolled her over the lamp. It would not kill her but that was not the goal. Putting her over the lamp bulb. Gray ran to the lighswitch and flipped it on. Lights flickered on, unsteady due to bad wiring. Turning around, Gray sees the woman take aim but miss. Gray moved out of range, but the woman could not move; having frozen in placeo. Liquid body armer does make for a flexible suit, but it also has a disadvantage. The inside is Propylene glycol, a good conductor of electricity. And it made the suit rigid.

She says the explosion will not stop. There is no detonator and it was on a timer on her wristwatch, set for two minutes from now. Anthrax Bacillus anthracis was sensitive to heat and it had to be jettisoned.

Gray ran off. He ran for the roof.

5:15 A.M.
Washington D.C. He's on the roof, Painter sees. Base security reported a fire alarm going off in Building 470. Painter tells the person to tell everyone to stay away.

5:14 A.M.
Gray looked for the vials in the roof. He follolwed her footsteps to a hooded exhaust vent.

The bomb was in the duct. The fiften glass vials were around in a pellet of c4. A timer of less than a minute. He had to get it away. Taking it, he ran and jumped over the roof's edge.

5:15A.M.
Washington DC Logan called him crazy as they watched him do that.

Frederick Maryland Gray kept it out and met the roof of the Eight Ball. His booted feet hit the surface of the sphere and the liquid body armor cemented around his ankles. He started sliding down as he had fell onto a side. He had to find a way to enter and putt he pathogens inside because nothing has escaped it. Running around the exterior, he found steel hatches.

5:15 A.M.
Painter watched Gray tug at the hatch. He knew the contents had to be anthrax.

Frederick, Maryland 0:18 seconds left. He found another hatch, but heard yelling for him to stop. He grabbed the handle of the second handle, and it opened. Throwing it inside, he leaned his back against it, slumping. The bomb exploded in it, safely contained. Only, it was the primer cord of greater things to come.

Boom Boom Boom.

It was the wired demolitions of Building 470. The building slowly collapsed into a might plume of smoke. The explosion also affected two of Eight Ball's support legs. The whole structure toppled. He ran, making clear of the fall.

He must run as he cannot get caught. Running, he heard the alarms throughout the base. Shedding his suit, he took his identification tags to his normal clothes and ran to his motorcycle. Gray got it to run, and Gray sped off. This took him through Porter Street, and a few streets, zig zaggin and toward the more rural section of the base that surrounded Nallin Pond, a parkland region of rolling hills and patche sof hardwood forest. However, he noticed something hooked around his handlebar. It was a silver chain with a dangling dragon pendant.

5:48 P.M.
Painter looked relieved as he saw that Gray escaped. Whitewahed from on high, the trouble at the base would be blamed on miscommunication, faulty wiring, decomposing munitions. Sigma Force would never be mentioned.

The director of DARPA called. Director McKnight called. It was not a de-brief but a new mission. McKnight had received some intel out of Germany and a team is needed by nightfall, with details coming soon. The urgency is needed and his group was specifically mentioned. The Vatican.