NOT Iran or Al Qaeda? Not any of the bad guys on the target board? Not the people whom the President is about to attack? Or is it more complicated? Is there a connection between that farm and Washington, D.C.? Because someone here went after me at that church.
I heard myself laughing. It was a harsh, abrasive bark. I remembered what Eddie had said once after one of our Wilderness Medicine sessions, in a Mexican restaurant in Cambridge. Want to bet, One, that the world won’t be destroyed by Doctor Evil in the end, but by Bozo the Clown?
Well, I thought, taking the cassette but leaving the plastic container on the kitchen table, they’d need DNA equipment, but that costs only a few hundred dollars. They’d need a way to spread the disease. A few vials could do that. They’d need samples of leprosy, but Tahir Khan had been a researcher. It wasn’t proof in a court of law, but it was enough just now for me. I felt my throat go dry, and my heart beat strong and steady.
In the kitchen the TV was still on as I considered turning myself in and appealing to Burke directly. Would I even reach him if I tried? Holy shit! The numbers just shot up!
NEW PROJECTED DEATH TOLL: 65,000–80,000.
PROJECTED INFECTED ESTIMATED: 270,000–360,000.
On the CNN map, the red ovals were bigger. Perhaps whoever was reporting numbers had changed interpretation, or made an error accounting for the sudden jump, or, as I hoped, was overstating things.
At what point, I wondered, would those numbers start rising as fast as the WORLD POPULATION totals on the electronic sign in Times Square; single digits becoming triple, climbing at slot machine speed, a backward countdown to total disaster, digits rising instead of falling to reach the point of no return.
I wrote a long note, and left it on the table with the plastic cassette holder. I shotgunned an e-mail out to Eddie, Burke, Havlicek, and Homza. I cc’ed the head of the Wilderness Medicine Program, and a major general I knew in the Marines. I said I’d leave the empty cassette container — hopefully bearing Robert Morton’s fingerprints — on Galli’s table. I took the cassette itself.
How to make friends with your boss: Break into his house. Steal one car and leave the other for vandals. I’ll pay you back, Admiral. I’ll buy you new cars.
Albany, New York, would, on an average day, be a seven or eight hours drive away, requiring one Prius refill, if the tank was full to start.
I knew about the mudroom corkboard where Galli hung extra keys to Cindy’s ten-year-old Prius. I left a hand-scrawled IOU for $55,000 to pay for all I stole. If money was still in circulation when this was over, and I was alive, I’d be happy to pay. If it wasn’t, the loss of two cars and a watch and a pistol was not worth mentioning. Neither was the extra cash I riffled from a kitchen closet, and jewelry — more barter material — that I stole from upstairs.
The Prius started right up in the garage, but the tank was only half full. I’d worry about fuel later. The day had a beautiful, dazzling, post-storm glow, soft cottony snowfall on trees, the kind of white you see in urban areas before cars dirty it, the Currier & Ives winter wonderland effect.
Even if I manage to reach New Lebanon, what then?
A Prius is a low-slung vehicle, so despite front-wheel drive, getting out of the snowy driveway was difficult. I had to back up and change direction twice, and gun the engine when the tires spun in five inches of fresh fall. Grant Road was no better. It rose slightly on the way to Nebraska Avenue. I slid sideways and slowed and went to a lower gear and almost made it to Nebraska when I got stuck. A door opened on a one-story ranch house on the right and a bulked-up figure in a parka emerged and headed for me with something long and metallic, glinting, over his shoulder.
I fumbled for the Glock. But I saw with relief that Galli’s neighbor carried a snow shovel, not a rifle. He rapped on the window. I recognized him from block parties. His name was Fred Gray and he worked as a lobbyist for the American Tobacco Consortium. The soft-spoken joke teller didn’t look particularly happy now. I rolled the window down and his worried look changed to surprise.
“Joe Rush! I thought you were the admiral!”
“He let me borrow his car.”
“He and Cindy are still at Georgetown Hospital?”
“That’s where I’m going,” I lied, realizing that this man had not seen my face on the news, didn’t connect me with anything wrong. It turned out that something much more important was on his mind. He’d come out to ask Galli a question.
“Our daughter, Celia, is stuck at college, in Iowa. The TV says she’s in a clear zone, but last time I looked, that red area is almost in Ames. She’s in her sorority house. She says they have food for four more days.”
“Thank God she’s safe,” I said.
“Do you think she’ll be all right?”
He knew I didn’t have an answer. He was too smart for that. But I gave him what he wanted, assurance. “Everyone’s working hard to figure out this thing,” I said.
“Let me give you a push, Joe. And thank you. Tell the admiral. Thank all of you for working so hard.”
Wisconsin Avenue was plowed along a single lane running north-south, so police or troops could pass. I was alone on the road at the moment, and felt exposed, but had little choice. If I could convince Burke or Havlicek to send people to Upstate New York, there could be Marines in helicopters there in an hour. If I couldn’t, I had to go.
Turn left, and I’d head for the Pentagon or FBI, to try a direct appeal. Head down Nebraska, to Homeland Security? Burke had threatened to lock me away in Leavenworth. By now he’d probably issued orders to that effect. Or was he the one who had sent Robert Morton to kill me?
Turn right and I’d drive toward the Beltway, and Interstate 95, out of Washington.
I turned right.
Hell, I’ll have a better chance if I stay away and hope that one of my messages gets through. There’s no guarantee that even if one does, it will convince anyone. No guarantee that the traitor won’t block it.
I stepped down on the accelerator gently. The one open lane had been salted. I heard the tires crunching on the granular result. On a normal day, I could make New Lebanon in eight hours. But now I could be stopped any minute by police or soldiers, even before I reached the Beltway.
Now, every block is a risk.
Driving, I pulled out Robert Morton’s tape cassette. The Prius was ten years old, so the sound system gave riders the option of listening to cassettes as well as CDs.
HARLAN AT CHRISTMAS.
I inserted the cassette in the slot, and listened, horror growing, as the Prius skidded north.
SIXTEEN
Major Edward Nakamura watched the striped curtain slide open in the emergency room alcove, and the next patient walked in. He tried to smile sympathetically at the woman, who was clearly terrified and sick and fighting panic. Eddie was exhausted from lack of sleep and worry for his wife and daughters and for Joe Rush. He’d been working for ten hours straight. He’d not eaten in eight. The scrape of the curtain sounded like fingernails on a blackboard. The announcements over the intercom seemed louder by the minute. A man was screaming out in the ER, “How long do you have to wait for help around here anyway!”
Eddie said calmly, “I know you’re scared. I’m going to do all I can for you. Would you mind undressing down to your underwear?”
The woman was forty-two, the admission form said, and had been in decent health only days ago. Now the face was ravaged, the symptoms identical to ones he’d been looking at helplessly for hours. Diagnosis wasn’t complicated, a six-year-old could do it.