Red Tide (19 page)

“Where are you two now?” he demanded.

“Third and Bell,” Jim told him.

“Get down to Elliott and Broad…we’ve got a report of a car-train accident.”

“On the way,” Jim said.

34

T
he car took one final tumble and then lurched to a stop, amid the groan of torn metal and the tinkle of broken glass. The steel carcass came to rest upside down, with Corso’s face so close to a greasy railroad tie he could smell the creosote. The roof had been torn off, along with a piece of his right ear. He could feel pain in his shins but couldn’t get his legs to move. He was able to turn his head just far enough to see Meg Dougherty, unconscious, bleeding from the nose and mouth, hanging from her seat belt on the far side of the backseat. He couldn’t see the front seat at all.

“Hey,” he called to Meg. “Hey.” No answer.

And then his words were swept away by the sound of the locomotive backing up, and then the final jarring screech as the train became disentangled from the car’s twisted remains and was eased backward up the track. The sound of fluids hissing on the car’s hot engine block. The smells of smoke and antifreeze and motor oil brought back an image of watching his father work on his battered Buick under an elm tree.

And then the voices from outside. Calling for someone…anyone inside the car to speak. “Here,” Corso rasped. “I’m here.”

“Got somebody alive in there,” he heard someone shout.

“No way,” a voice scoffed.

“I’m telling you. I heard him.”

And then a face was pressed right up to his…upside down. Lots of gray stubble on his jowly face. “You hang in there now, buddy. We got help on the way.”

Wasn’t often you beat the cops to an accident scene. They set up the shot so that both the throbbing locomotive and the twisted husk of the car were in the frame. The red light on the front of the camera told him they were rolling.
“This is Jim Sexton reporting for King Five News from the corner of Broad Street and Elliott Avenue where a midday collision between a passenger vehicle and a freight train has left the car little more than a steaming chunk of scrap metal.”
Pete used the telephoto to pan slowly in on the smoking car. The sound of sirens could be heard in the background as Jim began to trudge up the tracks toward the wreckage.
“Bystanders believe there may be as many as four people trapped inside the car at this time. The condition of the occupants is not known.”

When Pete aimed the camera back his way, Jim bent at the waist and picked up a twisted piece of sheet metal.
“The power of the locomotive has literally torn the car to pieces,”
he intoned.
“One can only pray for the safety of anyone trapped inside.”

He kept walking toward the wreck, talking as he went along, Pete trailing him with the camera.
“The sound of sirens is in the air now as emergency crews
rush to the scene.”
He kicked a piece of debris out of the way and kept moving down the tracks, even as the first aid car arrived, siren whooping, light bank blazing.
“As yet there is no word on how this accident may have occurred, but one thing is for certain…”
The rest of his narration was drowned in a sea of sirens as a fire truck and half a dozen police cars arrived on the scene simultaneously. Jim picked up his pace, trying to cover the last thirty yards between himself and the accident before anyone told him to back off. Police cars skidded to a stop at both adjoining intersections, blocking Broad Street from both directions.

A pair of EMTs were at the car now, lying on the ground, peering into the car’s interior. Pete brought the camera to bear just in time to catch one of them getting to his feet and waving frantically at the fire truck, which immediately roared to life. Shouts filled the air, until one of the police cruisers blocking the bottom of the street was backed up, allowing the fire truck sufficient room to make a wide turn at the foot of Broad Street and nose into the narrow alley between the train tracks and Elliott Avenue. Jim looked around. Everyone was too busy to take any notice of him. He couldn’t believe his luck.
“Keep shooting,”
he chanted at Pete Carrol.

They had a plan now. While four firemen stood by with a variety of firefighting equipment, a cable was pulled from the side of the fire truck to the far edge of the car. Took a minute to find the right place to attach the hook and then the whine of a winch could be heard above the idling sounds of the train and the fire truck.

At first the car refused to budge, then with a loud pop began to skid sideways until something caught, providing enough resistance for the car to begin to flop itself over onto its one remaining tire. With shouts and caution, gloved hands inched the car inexorably over. At the point where it was resting on the passenger door, a fireman crawled under the wreckage, leaving only his booted feet sticking out from the pile of twisted metal while he surveyed the inside of the car. He lay still for a full minute before wiggling out from under and motioning the crew to continue winching the car upright.

Jim moved closer.
“As you can see, rescue teams are on the scene. In just a minute here we ought to be able to see…”
He continued to drone on, until something caught his eye. He bent at the waist and picked it up. A license plate, folded nearly in half. He put the mic under his arm and pried the bent metal open. Washington. He looked around and allowed himself a smile.

They had the car right side up now and were carefully tending to the occupants. Pete was changing cassettes. Jim watched as the firemen sawed through the hinges on both passenger doors and then used the Jaws of Life to pry the doors completely off the frame, giving them far better access to the people inside the car.

When Pete looked his way for guidance, Jim simply twirled his finger as if to say: “Keep it rolling. No sense in doing voice-over here. We’ll let the pictures tell the story.” Jim Sexton watched in silence as one by one the car’s occupants were eased out of the wreck, placed on rolling gurneys and then lifted into aid cars.

He turned to Pete. “First the station. Then Harborview.”

“Get Transportation on the line. Get me the make, model and plate number of whatever Gutierrez and Hart signed out and then put out an all-call on the vehicle.”

Margy headed for the outer office at a lope. His voice stopped her halfway.

“Route everything that comes into every precinct for the next hour through this office. I want to see everything.”

She turned to leave but had to bring herself up short to avoid running head-on into her assistant Jamie Celestine, who was on her way in. As her presence in the inner office was somewhat out of the ordinary, she shrugged a silent apology.

“Your wife, Chief,” she said. “Line four.”

Harry nodded his thanks and then waited for the click of the door, before picking up the phone. “Hey,” he said in as light a voice as he could manage.

“I know you’re busy,” she said.

The degree of the understatement nearly caused Harry to laugh. He took a deep breath and swallowed his cynicism. “Whatcha need?” he asked affably.

“Have you got time to talk?”

He used his fingertips to massage his left temple. Seemed like there was a bulging vein there he’d never noticed before. “As a matter of fact…I’m…no, I don’t.”

Her disappointment was palpable. “I just wanted to—”

The office door opened. Margy stuck her head inside.

Harry cut his wife off. “I gotta go.”

“Oh…I…I didn’t—”

“Bye,” he said and hung up.

“Gold Ford Taurus. 879PLN.”

“Get dispatch to—”

“Already did.” She waggled the papers in her hand. “Got…”—she counted—“four domestic violence…a missing person…an assault…” She looked up. “Nothing you’d notice,” she said.

And then Jamie Celestine was in the doorway again. Harry was sure it was Kathleen, calling back to say she was worried about him, or to finish whatever it was she’d called about, or both and so, for the briefest of moments, he felt a sense of relief when she began to speak. “Dispatch says the last contact with Detectives Hart and Gutierrez was from Capitol Hill.”

Harry rolled his eyes and thrust one arm into his coat. “I’ll be at City Hall. Page me when you’ve got something solid.”

Holmes nosed the front of the Mercedes hard against the garage wall and turned off the engine. Anybody wanted to look at the front, they’d have to tow it. He took a deep breath and again told himself how he’d done the right thing. How he and the cop had made eye contact. How there was no doubt whatsoever that the cop had recognized him. How he’d had no choice but to deviate from the plan and put the operation at risk. No choice at all.

Took him a moment to pry his fingers from the steering wheel and look around. Three floors down and across the street, the hotel parking lot was three quarters full. The red Subaru was angled into one of the slots in the middle of the lot. The van was parked out near the sidewalk. He turned off the engine and sat back in the seat. The others had made it safely. He took what felt like his first breath in five minutes and looked over at Bobby Darling, who sat flushed and sweating in the passenger seat, his knuckles bone white as they gripped the overhead handle.

“The others are here,” Holmes said. “Let’s go.”

Only then did Bobby Darling drop his hand to his lap and look around. The Edgewater Hotel was just that…right at the edge of the water. An old-fashioned L-shaped structure that flowed along the jagged shoreline for half a block.

“Let’s go,” Holmes said.

Bobby looked at him as if he’d never seen him before.

“Whatever they knew…”—Holmes snapped his fingers—“is gone now.”

“That wasn’t…I mean…we weren’t supposed to—”

Holmes jumped in. “Once the battle begins, all plans are out the window,” he said. “He knew me from the house. He knew it, and I knew it.” He pointed to the south.

“It’s right there. Did you see it when we drove in?”

Bobby looked away and nodded. “It’s much bigger than I thought possible,” he said. “It’s bigger than a mountain.”

“Your moment will be bigger too.”

Bobby mulled it over and then reached for the door handle.

35

H
ans Belder flipped the plastic evidence bag containing the coaster onto the table. “Of course it’s possible,” he said. “The same technology used to accelerate the life cycle of a virus could…theoretically at least…be used to slow the process down.”

Isaac Klugeman held up a moderating hand. “Much more difficult, however,” he said. “An abbreviated life cycle would be far more easily attained than…”—he gestured at the coaster with the back of his hand—“something like this.”

Belder nodded gravely. “I concur. Life is always easier to shorten than to prolong. It is unfortunate but true.”

“And, of course, there’s the matter of the host,” Helen Stafford said.

“It cannot live without a host,” Belder added. “That fact is the very nature of the beast. A virus is neither dead nor alive. It’s somewhere in between, which is to say, a virus is alive only so long as it can move from host to host.”

“Unless…” Klugeman began and then changed his mind.

“Yes?” Belder threw the word out as a challenge.

“Unless…” Klugeman pointed down at the coaster. “The thirty hours part is easy,” he said. “It could be done in the same manner as the material in the bus tunnel. Instead of a spore like ragweed or whatever they used…a spore that releases its load immediately upon contact with air…they would need one whose viability they could control.”

“Something organic?”

Klugeman shrugged. “Organic or engineered…it wouldn’t matter.”

“But the viral life span?”

“Once it was delivered into the air, the virus would have to be able to feed on some part of the host in order to survive for any length of time on its own.”

“Like?”

Klugeman thought it over. “Perhaps something as simple as a pinecone,” he said. “When the individual seed breaks off the cone, it takes a small piece of the cone with it. That small piece acts as a…”—he waved a hand—“as a placenta for the seed. It keeps the seed alive until the proper combination of moisture and soil makes it possible for the seed to take root on its own.”

“Think about it,” said Colonel Hines. “They somehow introduce the virus into the hotel where we’re all staying. We inhale it. Suddenly we’re all carriers. We’re on our way home. We’ve got spores on our clothing that we pass on to our fellow passengers. We go home and interact with the other people in our lives…infecting them…they interact with others…” He cut the air with the flat of his hand. “You get the picture. For the next week or so…”

“Longer,” Belder said. “If the Walsdorf Conjecture is correct…and it appears to be…then it’s likely that the incubation period of the virus has been similarly extended. Which of course exponentially increases the number of contacts by individuals, which increases the number of…”—he rolled his hand in a circle as if to say “and so on and so on.” He seemed unwilling to go on.

“You realize what we are talking about here of course,” Klugeman said.

“The doomsday virus,” Hines said immediately. “You’re talking about the beginning of the goddamn end is what you’re talking about.”

Belder turned away. Rubbed the corners of his mouth with his thumb and forefinger. “At this point in history, I would like to think there could be no such thing as a doomsday virus. I would like to think our knowledge of both chemistry and genetics is sufficiently far along to prevent anything so dreadful.” He braced both arms on the table and looked out at those on the other side from beneath his thick bushy eyebrows. “I will say, however…the scenario which Dr. Klugeman has described…might push our systems as close to catastrophe as I am willing to imagine.”

“It’s the apocalypse,” Hines said. “The end of the world as we know it.”

“It would take the caregivers first,” Klugeman said. “They’d be treating people for headache…for nosebleeds…for fatigue…for any number of common ailments for days…weeks before they realized what they were dealing with.” He looked around the room. “The doctors, the nurses…the support staff…their colleagues, their families and friends…they would be among the second wave of dead.”

“Without the professionals…”—Belder made a helpless gesture with his hands—“we would be at the mercy of the virus.”

“Have you informed the federal authorities of this?” Klugeman asked Harry Dobson.

“They laughed at me,” Harry said. “Told me somebody was having me on. Said they had a hot lead on a Hamas cell operating out of Portland.”

As a buzz of conversation began to spread around the room, the pager on Harry’s right hip began to vibrate. He pulled it from his belt and checked the number. He excused himself, walked around the table and stepped out into the hall where he dialed for his messages. Margy’s voice. A half octave too high.

“We’ve got an emergency report on a car being hit by a train down on the waterfront.” She paused. “The make on the plate comes up as one of ours.” He heard her breath catch. “879PLN.”