The music in the square stops, followed by the crackle and shriek of hundreds of hidden speakers switching to PA. It gets attention, calls for silence, and there is just an instant, then, when WilsonVille seems to freeze, only the sound of the rides still running filling the gap. Gabriel checks the phone in his hand, bringing up group two, the last half dozen charges. Thumb poised over the SEND button.
Your attention, please.
A man’s voice, and Gabriel thinks that he’s hearing the strain in it, the stress, and he can’t stop himself from smiling.
Your attention, please. This is Eric Porter, director of park and resort safety. With regret, we announce that due to unforeseen difficulties, WilsonVille will be closing for the day, effective immediately. Friends will help you make your way to the nearest exit. Please follow their directions in a calm and orderly fashion. We apologize for the inconvenience…
Gabriel Fuller doesn’t bother looking down at the phone in his hand. He just presses the SEND button one last time. Eric Porter is still speaking, repeating the announcement, and behind him he hears another voice over the speakers, and he can’t hear the words, but he recognizes the tone, the anxiety in it, and it gives him a strange, wonderful sense of satisfaction and power.
He’s not the only one who’s heard it, either. All around him, people are beginning to react, some still listening, others already in motion, and some are trying to be calm, some are trying to be orderly. But not all of them, not the ones who are thinking that the way they came in is the quickest way to get out, and voices are starting to rise and still Eric Porter is on the PA, and Gabriel thinks that he can hear that strain in his voice even more now.
The man never uses the words “evacuation” or “emergency” or anything that might cause a panic.
He never, ever says the words, “toxin” or “gas” or anything like that.
Gabriel Fuller doesn’t say those words, either, despite the momentary, perverse pleasure the thought gives him. Like shouting “Fire!” in a crowded movie house or “Bomb!” in an airport security line. That is not the plan, however, that is not what the Uzbek is counting on him to do, and the thought of what the wrong word could now cause has him thinking of Dana again. Dana, who should be at their apartment, taking the day off, and not here because she can interpret for the deaf.
He doesn’t want anything to happen to her. It would kill him if something happened to her, he realizes. So a calm, orderly evacuation, and by the time the authorities know what’s really going on, Dana and everyone else will be outside the gates, and they’ll be safe. Then all he’ll have to do is get through the rest of this day. Get through this day and into the night and he’ll disappear for a few days after that, and then he’ll make his way back, back to her.
Now he’s being carried along in the press of people, and they’ve passed the Sheriff’s Office, coming up on the WilsonVille Store, so many people, and they’re being herded, so tightly together. He almost misses his chance, fakes stumbling, rights himself, allows himself to be turned around. Stumbles again, and then he’s through the door of the store, and just as he knew it would be, it’s already empty, already cleared. Racks and racks of official WilsonVille Wear, and he drops low, out of the sight line of the windows, but more important, out of the sight line of the cameras watching the store.
Belly-crawling his way to the main bank of registers, a broken circle of counter smack in the middle of the room, pushing his duffel ahead of him as he goes. He takes it slow. With the evacuation running, he can’t imagine that anyone who’s still watching the video monitors in the command post is paying attention to the interior of any store, let alone this one. Still, he keeps his movements deliberate and controlled, for fear of catching anyone’s eye.
The cabinets beneath the register are locked, and Gabriel has to go into his pocket, comes back with his knife. It’s a horrible thing to do to a blade, a disrespectful way to treat it, but it’s the only tool he has. He snaps it out and forces it into the gap, working it up and down until he hits the latch. It’s a tight fit, and he slams his palm into the base of the handle, and wood splinters as metal is forced into the gap. He twists, wrenches, thinking the knife is going to snap. There’s a crack as the lock gives way.
He stows the blade, opens the now-broken doors. There’s the squat tower for the computer that runs the register, still powered. A snarl of cables running from it, and then, beside it, the blinking green lights of the router. He pulls it free, turns it in his hands, and God bless WilsonVille Technical Services, because each port is clearly labeled with a small white printed sticker. There are two marked VIDEO, and he pulls the cords from each, turns the cameras watching the interior of the store blind.
He replaces the router, tries to get the doors to close again as best he can, then is into the duffel, now removing the carefully folded Tyvek suit, the gas mask. He’s breathing quickly, heart racing, hearing the voices outside as he changes, and then, just sitting there, back to the counter, gas mask in his lap.
He just wants this to be over. He just wants to get through this. Then he’ll have done what the Uzbek wanted, what the Shadow Man has required, and he can make his way back to Dana, and never leave her again.
He can make his way back to Dana, and be Gabriel Fuller for the rest of his life.
If he can just get through this day.
Chapter Ten
Bell has just signed the authorization allowing time and a half for Dana Kincaid, the ASL interpreter he’s brought in for Athena and Amy and Howe and the rest, when Nuri shoves his office door open. There’s no knock, and he looks up and sees it in her eyes, and before she’s finished speaking he’s out of the chair and moving, feeling the dread bursting in him like exploding glass.
“The Spartan,” Nuri says, backing up as he approaches, then pivoting, falling into step. “Alarm just spiked in the southwest of the park, near Terra Space.”
“Bio or chem?”
“It’s reading botulinum.”
A cold fear latches onto Bell’s back, begins trying to claw its way into his chest. “Got to be a false positive.”
“And just wouldn’t that be nice? Struss is running a diagnostic now, but we don’t know how long it’s going to take.”
“What’s the wind?”
“Blowing from the south-southwest, about three knots.”
“Botulinum?”
“Yeah.” Her voice is flat, the doubt and the concern canceling one another out, Bell imagines.
They’re coming down the stairs, now, from the third floor to the command post on the second, and Bell is taking them two, three at a time. Nuri, a handbreadth shorter but long-legged, nonetheless struggles to keep up. Bell runs the numbers in his head, three knots an hour, 156 acres, converts to metric, says, “Little over eight minutes before it covers the park.”
“Closer to seven, if we assume even distribution, constant wind speed, which we can’t. But we’re talking about an unknown, it could be less, could be more.”
Nuri leans ahead of him, shoves the door open into the second-floor command post. Heads turn, and Bell can see the fear, hear the silence of the room as he moves to the air monitoring station, where a middle-aged Norman Struss is working a shift that’s on the verge of turning into a nightmare. Bell ignores the man, feels eyes on him, Nuri’s among them, as he stares at the monitor. The Spartan’s screen lists chem and bio agents in columns, has its own section for radiation, and it’s flickering through readings as though it were flipping through a slide show. Then it settles, displaying an image much like an EKG, with multiple color-coded lines running across a horizontal axis. Negative anthrax, negative sarin, negative cyanogen, negative radiation, negative, negative, negative, negative.