She tried to move her arms, working in all directions, imitating the curl motion of weight lifters, then trying to push back the other way. She could move a half inch within the suit but wasn’t strong enough to crack the thick, multilayered neoprene. Next she flexed her legs, tried bending over at the waist, twisting. Nothing worked.
She thought how ridiculous it would be to freeze to death here, trapped in a suit that was supposed to be a life-support system. Even worse was the thought of Guillotte running free. There was no telling what he might do.
For a moment rage took over, and her muscles tensed and struggled against the suit. It was like trying to run in a block of ice and accomplished nothing but a slight wobble side to side. She tried again, and again, but the suit was not going to break or bend.
She stood, catching her breath, thinking. There is always a way. She just had to puzzle it out. She couldn’t go forward or backward, up or down. Couldn’t bend the suit or break out of it. Yelling for help wouldn’t do any good. She considered urinating, thinking that warm liquid might soften the suit’s lower half. But she knew that there wasn’t enough liquid in any human bladder to do that. She would end up standing in a few inches of frozen piss.
She remembered reading a story, perhaps apocryphal, about a climber, buried in an avalanche, who produced a turd, waited for it to freeze solid, and used it to dig himself out. But even if she managed that, she wouldn’t be able to reach it inside the suit.
She was beginning to shiver. Her teeth were chattering. A cold, empty space was opening in her chest.
This would not be a quick death. She had read accounts, none apocryphal, by stranded mountaineers who froze into comas, thinking right up to the point of unconsciousness that death was certain, then waking to discover that they had been rescued. It would be slow and increasingly painful for a long time; then would come numbness, everything growing weak and dim, and a long, gentle falling away from the last light.
Her rational brain grasped that. Then, like birds startled from a tree, thoughts and images began to fly from her mind. The lovely, burnt-honey smell of horses. Taps at her father’s funeral. Her mother’s hands, small, but rough and strong. And people she loved, her mother and father, two brothers, best friend Mary Stilwell down in Florida, Don Barnard.
And Bowman. For all the others she felt sadness but not regret; she had lived with them as fully as she could, knowing that loving and being loved were life’s greatest gifts. But with Bowman, regret did come. So much would be left undone between them: the moment when she might have said, “I love you,” another when they might have exchanged vows, and then all the other possibilities — including even children. She was thirty-one. Still young for a scientist, and certainly not old for a mother.
One thing left undone was especially troubling. Bowman came from a ranch in Colorado and had grown up horseback. She came from a horse farm in Virginia and had as well. And yet they had never ridden together, had never shared the experience of melding with half a ton of pure beautiful power. Both had recognized how special it would be. They had talked about it so often that it had become a kind of personal idiom with its own definite article: “When are we going to do The Ride?” But they had never made it happen. She had never made it happen.
She remembered Merritt’s talk about how it became harder and harder to stay away from danger. She knew it was true. She had worked in BSL-4 labs with the most lethal pathogens known to man and had loved every minute of it. Eventually even that had become routine, and she’d asked Barnard to put her in the field, where even greater risks reopened the adrenaline spigot.
She yelled then, not specific words but a raw and guttural howl. Breath and energy finally ran out, and she fell silent. She looked up, but no lights stirred green and purple around the black bowl of sky, no meteors cut white streaks, and no stars twinkled, as if even they had frozen to death.
She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and waited for the same fate.
60
Graeter picked up a dart, aligned the barrel between the thumb and first two fingers of his right hand, cocked his arm back. Shook his head once and put the dart on his desk. Where the hell was Leland?
A moment later, his door banged open and a Dragger barged in. At least he thought it was a Dragger, given the grease-smeared overalls and black bunny boots. But it was a Beaker in Dragger’s clothes. And not just any Beaker. It was Hallie Leland.
“What are you doing in that outfit?” he asked. “In fact, what are you doing here? I was trying to find you.”
She told him how a gust of wind had rushed across the ice, wobbling her in the frozen suit. How she had shifted her weight to that side, tilting the suit a fraction of an inch more, then shifted the other way, back and forth like pumping on a swing to go higher, until finally she’d felt herself tilting and falling and hitting the ice, cracking the suit.
She told him about Fida: “I think Guillotte killed him and left him down there to make it look like a suicide.” Then she recounted what had happened in the dive shed. He stood.
“I’ll find Guillotte. And I hope the son of a bitch tries to fight.”
“Why?”
“Because,” he said, gathering up his badge folder and gun, “then I can shoot him a dozen times.”
61
Dolan knocked on Gerrin’s front door. No one answered. Taylor had gone around to cover the rear of the house. Dolan pounded with the heel of his fist. Inside it must have sounded like thunder. Anyone would have heard.
“Well, easy way or hard way,” Dolan said. He had brought a crowbar for just such an eventuality. Motioned for Bowman and Barnard to stand back as he got ready to drive the bar’s straight end between the door and the jamb.
“Hang on,” Bowman said.
He stepped to the door and took a stainless steel device from one pocket. Dolan started to say something but stayed quiet and watched. Bowman laid the thing over the door’s lock set and touched a sensor on its side. For a few seconds nothing happened. Then the sound of metal moving against metal and a distinctive click. Bowman repocketed the device. Dolan stared at him.
“It works with high-end locks and old ones,” Bowman explained. “They have enough steel in the tumblers. Not as messy.”
“How in hell did you—?” Dolan started.
“Don’t ask,” Barnard said.
Dolan glanced at him, nodded. “Copy that.” He keyed his radio, raised Taylor. “We’re in. Hold your position.”
He drew his service weapon, eased the door open, and stepped inside.
“U.S. Marshals,” he shouted. “We have a warrant to search these premises. Anyone here present yourselves or be subject to arrest for obstructing federal officers.”
No response.
Dolan went to the back door and let Taylor in. Barnard and Bowman waited while the marshals cleared the first floor. They followed them upstairs and waited in the long hall while the marshals looked into every room until only one, at the far end, was left. The door was closed. Dolan motioned for them to approach.
There were no more rooms. The house did not have a basement. Taylor eased the knob around, pushed the door open gently. The two marshals went in first, separating immediately, weapons up.
The red dots of their laser sights centered on the forehead of the small, dark-skinned man sleeping with a pair of noise-canceling headphones on.
Dolan turned on the ceiling lights.
Taylor, beside the bed, prodded the sleeping man’s shoulder. “Dr. Gerrin. Wake up. We have a warrant,” he said.