THE 4400® WELCOME TO PROMISE CITY (20 page)

And whose fault is that?
Marco thought, but held his tongue. To be fair, Ryland and Haspelcorp were exploring
the military possibilities of promicin long before Collier offered the shot to the general public.

Meghan was already working out the logistics involved. “In any event, Philly is still at least six hours away by plane. And it’s not going to be easy getting out of Seattle without being noticed. The air force is still enforcing a no-fly zone over Promise City.”

Collier chuckled. “I may be able to help you out there.”

T
HE
P
ACIFIC
P
LASMA
Collection Center had seen better days.

The storefront windows had been boarded up. An out-of-business sign had been posted inside the front entrance. Graffiti had been spray-painted on the walls and windows. “
JORDAN COLLIER IS GOD!
” read bright orange letters. “
PROMICIN = DEATH!
” somebody else had rebutted. Cigarette butts and broken glass littered the sidewalk in front of the defunct establishment. A wino dozed on the stoop. If the Global Outreach Committee really owned the property, they didn’t seem to have done much with it yet.

“Nice neighborhood,” Tom said sarcastically. They had driven straight here from Bellingham. Diana had phoned NTAC on the way to update them on the investigation; unable to reach either Meghan or Marco, she had left a message with Abby instead.

“If you like fixer-uppers,” Diana remarked, glancing around. The Skid Row plasma center was located on a street corner in an economically depressed part of
town that had not yet benefited from the 4400’s ambitious brand of urban renewal. Across the street was the burnt-out husk of a liquor store destroyed during the rioting two months ago. Around the corner was an abandoned Scientology recruiting station; apparently, L. Ron Hubbard had not been able to compete with Jordan Collier in Promise City. An X-rated bookshop, a little farther up the road, seemed to be the only operation still in business. A gray sky threatened to drizzle at any moment.

Welcome to Promise City,
Diana thought.

Their voices roused the wino, who looked up at them with bleary, bloodshot eyes. Broken veins defaced his swollen red nose. A shaggy gray beard kept his grizzled features warm. His tattered wool peacoat would have been turned down by Goodwill. A nauseating stench emanated from his presence. He furtively tucked an empty bottle of Thunderbird behind his back before extending a grimy paw. “Spare some change?”

Diana figured it couldn’t hurt to slip him a five. Perhaps he’d seen something between his drunken stupors?

“God bless you.” He staggered to his feet. His breath reeked of alcohol, but he seemed more or less sober. “City needs more people like you.”

“You here often?” Tom asked.

“Used to donate twice a week,” the man confessed, “back before everyone got sick.” He regarded the agents hopefully. “You know when this place is going to reopen? Damn unfair that I can’t sell my own blood anymore. I never took one of those stinking shots …”

“What makes you think it’s going to reopen?” Diana asked. “You seen any activity lately?”

The wino nodded. “They unloaded lots of crates and equipment the other night. ’Round midnight when I was trying to get a good night’s sleep.”

And when nobody else was looking,
Diana thought. She produced a photo of Bernard Grayson, lifted from his driver’s license. “You seen this man around here?”

The wino squinted at the photo. “Yeah, I think so. Looks kind of familiar.” He handed the picture back to Diana. “He the new guy in charge?”

“Maybe.” Tom passed the guy another five. “Go get yourself something to eat.”

The man’s eyes lit up at his unexpected windfall. “Talk about my lucky day! You’re good people, both of you.” Slipping the bills into his pocket, he hurried off in search of sustenance, or so Diana hoped. Chances were, though, the money was going to buy some more Thunderbird and not a Big Mac.

He left the empty bottle behind.

The agents waited until the helpful vagrant was out of earshot before conferring. Diana put her photo of Grayson away. “Well, what do you think?”

“Sounds like probable cause to me,” Tom said. He considered the boarded-up storefront. “Front door or back?”

Diana tried to peer through the slats, but all she saw was darkness. There didn’t seem to be any lights on inside, let alone anyone moving about. She hoped this wasn’t another dead end. “The back. Less conspicuous.”

A narrow alley ran behind the building. A loading
dock jutted out from the wall. Greasy puddles filled the potholes. Rats scurried behind a rusty metal Dumpster. Discarded bandages, left behind by the plasma center’s former clientele, were still wedged in the pavement. The alley reeked of urine and rotting garbage.

It was a long way from the tasteful decor of Grayson’s funeral home.

Ascending to the loading dock, Tom quietly tried the door, which didn’t budge. Diana considered knocking first, but decided against it. If Bernard Grayson was hiding out inside, they wanted to catch him by surprise.

Tom got into position to force his way in.

“Wait,” Diana said. “Have you taken any U-Pills today?”

He shook his head. “You think I should?”

“Might not be a bad idea.” She was immune to promicin, thanks to playing guinea pig for Kevin Burkhoff a few years back, but Tom was not. “If Grayson and company
have
managed to duplicate Danny’s ability, and can generate an airborne version of promicin, we could be entering a hot zone.”

He didn’t argue the point. “Guess it couldn’t hurt to play it safe.” He extracted an emergency packet of pills from his pocket and gulped them down. “Okay, let’s find out what’s going on here.”

Diana stood by while her brawnier partner applied himself. Grunting, Tom slammed his shoulder against the door, which refused to budge. “That’s more solid than it looks,” he commented, wincing. He drew his Glock instead. “I think we need a little more firepower.”

“If you say so.” She covered her ears.

Their sidearms were capable of firing either conventional rounds or tranquilizer darts. There was no question what kind of ammo he was using as he discharged his weapon. A gunshot echoed loudly in the alley, and ten millimeters of lead blew the lock apart.

Diana wondered if anyone would report the gunshot.
In this neighborhood, probably not.

“Watch yourself,” he said as he kicked the door open. Neither of them wanted another close call like they’d had at the funeral home. Diana still had a bump on her head where that crazy morgue technician had coldcocked her. Guns drawn, they cautiously entered the rear of the building.

“NTAC!” she called out. The initials were stenciled on the backs of their heavy blue jackets. “Anyone here, please identify yourselves!”

Nobody responded. Shadows shrouded the interior.

Questing fingers found a light switch to the right of the door. Fluorescent lights hummed to life overhead, revealing what appeared to be some sort of storage area. Wooden crates and cardboard boxes waited to be unloaded. Bags of saline were stacked upon a shelf. A mop and broom were propped up in the corner. A stainless-steel door guarded what looked like a walk-in refrigerator.
Probably where they used to store the collected plasma,
Diana guessed.
Wonder what they’re keeping on ice now?

Danny’s body?

We’ll have to check that out,
she thought,
after we’ve cleared the scene.

Holding their firearms in the high-ready position, they
spread out and methodically swept the premises. Just beyond the back rooms, they entered a large area equipped with brown vinyl couches and IV poles. A variety of smaller work spaces surrounded the open floor. “Clear!” Tom shouted out from the reception area up front. Diana poked her head into a series of offices and an employee locker room. A long Plexiglas window divided the donation area from an attached laboratory. Faded posters touted the lifesaving benefits of plasma donation. A flyer on a bulletin board extolled a Thanksgiving Turkey raffle that had probably never happened. Apparently every pint of plasma you donated had earned you another chance at the turkey.

“Clear!” Diana called back from an empty office. They appeared to have the place to themselves.

Bernard Grayson was nowhere to be seen.

The agents converged in the center of the donation area. They holstered their guns. Tom walked across the room and peered through the window at the lab beyond. “You’re the scientist,” he said to Diana. “This tell you anything?”

“Well, I don’t see any plasmapheresis machines on the floor here,” she observed, “which suggests that the Global Outreach Committee is not in the business of harvesting plasma from winos.” A fully equipped crash cart, complete with shock paddles, implied more serious medical procedures. She took a closer look at the equipment on the other side of the Plexiglas divider. “CAT scans. Centrifuges. A DNA sequencer. At a glance, I’ve got to say that this looks suspiciously similar to the setup we found at Grayson and Son.”

Tom nodded. “That’s what I thought, too.”

“Which means we’re on the right track,” she said. The temperature was nicely toasty compared to outside, which meant that somebody had turned the heat back on after the center was shut down. She unzipped her jacket. “We just haven’t found our man yet.”

“Yeah.” He looked back toward the storeroom. “Guess we’d better check out that freezer unit.”

Diana could tell that he wasn’t looking forward to finding more clones of Danny’s body.

“You want me to handle that?” she volunteered.

“Thanks, but that’s not necessary.” He braced himself for whatever they might discover next. “Let’s just get this over with, together.”

“Don’t bother,” a third voice interrupted. “You’re not going anywhere.”

At first the voice seemed to come from nowhere. Then the air shimmered around them and the agents found themselves surrounded by a trio of gun-wielding newcomers. Bernard Grayson was accompanied by two strangers: a ginger-haired youth wearing a University of Washington sweater and a plump, middle-aged Filipino woman in a white nurse’s uniform. The two men pointed semiautomatics at the ambushed agents. The older woman leaned heavily on a cane. She was breathing hard. Perspiration gleamed upon her cherubic features. Diana thought she looked vaguely familiar.

An original recipe 4400, or one of the new “extracrispies”?

Diana reached instinctively for her sidearm, only to
hear Grayson rack his gun slide. “Don’t even think about it,” he advised her. A blue lab coat had replaced his somber undertaker’s suit. He nodded at the buff young man. “Carl, relieve them of their weapons.”

The agents reluctantly surrendered their weapons. The college boy deposited them on an empty couch near the back of the room.

“Hello again, Agent Skouris, Agent Baldwin,” Grayson said. “We’ve been expecting you.”

The SSST, short for Silent Supersonic Transport, was an experimental prototype hijacked from Boeing’s Phantom Works division by a disgruntled engineer who had joined Collier’s Movement after surviving fifty/fifty. The sleek private aircraft was large enough to carry roughly a dozen passengers and fast enough to get them to the East Coast in a matter of hours. State-of-the-art engines muffled the sonic booms associated with the earlier Concorde, allowing them to fly cross-country without rattling crockery across the continent. The stolen plane had launched from a hidden airfield somewhere on the Olympic Peninsula. Meghan and the others had been smuggled out of Seattle blindfolded in order to preserve the security of Collier’s illicit air operations.

Seated aboard the SSST, Meghan had a sneaking suspicion she knew how Richard Tyler and his fellow assassins had managed to get to Rome and back undetected. Not that Collier would ever admit that, of course.

She had to wonder what other top-secret resources
Collier had at his disposal. After all, he now had many of the best minds at Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon, and Ubient Software to recruit from, not to mention p-positive geniuses like Dalton Gibbs. In more ways than one, he had the future on his side.

And that was a very scary thought.

She sat across from Marco, while she researched Eastern State Penitentiary on her laptop. A pair of red designer reading glasses perched on her nose. Thankfully, there was no end of information online regarding the historic prison, including a couple of video tours of the ruins. A glance at Marco’s own computer revealed that he was busy downloading numerous images of the prison’s interior to his cell phone, the better to teleport about the structure if necessary.

Good idea,
she thought.
Too bad I can’t award him a bonus for this mission.

Across the aisle, the two Garritys took advantage of the flight to catch up on their sleep. They snored in harmony.

Tess Doerner sat apart from the NTAC agents, keeping to her self. She appeared immersed in a paperback copy of
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Meghan still wasn’t entirely comfortable including the former mental patient in this operation, no matter how handy her unique ability might prove. As far as she knew, the girl’s only true loyalty was to Kevin Burkhoff. Meghan had to worry about her motives.

If she wanted to take over this mission, how on Earth would I stop her?

Marco looked up from his laptop. His eyes met hers.

“Feels weird not to have Tom and Diana along,” he said. “This is more their kind of action than mine.”

“Tell me about it.” She had already left a message on Tom’s home machine, telling him not to expect her for dinner tonight, but she wished she had been able to speak with him directly before embarking on this mission. Despite Collier’s bias against agents without abilities, she had been sorely tempted to enlist Tom and Diana anyway. They both had a lot more experience with Richard Tyler than she did.

But, no, she had ultimately decided, Tom and Diana were too urgently needed in Seattle to divert them on this dubious rescue mission. Shutting down the plot to clone Danny Farrell was just as important as liberating Richard Tyler.