“Do you think Sarah will be waiting at the house for us?” Jerry asked.
Seth forced himself back to the present. “I don’t know. We’re a little early. We made great time.”
“I hope she isn’t. I could really use some rest before we have to debrief on everything.”
“Don’t worry about it, Jerry. If she starts in with us, I’ll take care of her.”
“There it is,” Seth said, pointing to the Eureka city airport.
Jerry banked the plane, and they made a beeline for the landing strip. In a matter of minutes, they were out stretching their cramped, achy bodies.
Twenty minutes later they were driving through the redwood forest. Looking at the soaring, monolithic trees always gave Seth a feeling of peace. To him the massive trees represented a serenely surreal permanence in an otherwise transient existence. Jerry drove, and they rode in silence with their windows down.
It was clouding up. The next ten miles went by slowly as they turned off the main road onto a gravel-packed one carved out of the old-growth forest by a lumber company decades ago. The fertility of the land spawned tremendous greenery – lush fields, pristine forests and wildflowers. This felt like the Earth’s womb – a place where life begins. Just as the Midwest spewed industrial filth to kill the northeast’s forests and lakes with acid rain, this place spewed life in all shapes and forms. The air was sweet enough to taste and he savored it.
“When are the Carriers going to be here?” Jerry asked.
“Friday.”
In a couple of minutes, they turned onto an even narrower dirt road that led directly to the house. From the outside, it didn’t look like much – a two-story barn-like structure that had been built in the 50’s and was just under six thousand square feet. Jerry had spent three months here earlier this year getting it ready for them – retrofitting it with expensive solar panels and a generator and doing a bunch of general maintenance. Now they had a completely self-sufficient, out-of-the-way place to conduct business. In that respect, it was actually quite similar to where they had been in Maine except there was a good size city twenty minutes away.
The driveway was empty, the large house dark.
“Beautiful,” Seth said. “It looks like we beat them. Let’s go in and catch some sleep before they show up.”
“Sounds great,” Jerry replied through a yawn. “I’m spent.”
Inside the musty house each of them went straight for his room. Seth dropped onto his bed and stared at the ceiling, contemplating the events of the past few days. Things had to take a turn for the better.
11:45 pm Quincy, Massachusetts
“We urgently need to question him,” Carl said to the doctor and his intern.
“My patient is not in any fit state to be questioned. I understand your urgency, but my priority here is for my patient’s wellbeing. He is still delirious and in very real danger of dying,” the doctor explained.
“This guy just shot a cop. He didn’t care about that cop’s wellbeing. He has critical knowledge of a very important investigation that we need to extract from him. If he’s going to fall into a coma or die, we need to speak to him before that happens. Lives are at risk here,” Carl said.
“His condition is critical. Do you know what that means?” The doctor said.
“I don’t care what it means,” Carl replied.
“Well I do and, right now, his life is hanging in the balance. If we can get him stable, you might be able to question him. Our focus right now is saving his life,” the doctor said as he turned and headed for the door. His intern was obviously confused, not knowing what to do, support his boss or the authorities.
Carl motioned to Irving to shut the door and block it as he walked after the doctor.
“Out of my way,” the doctor said but Irving stood firm.
Carl reached out, grabbed the doctor’s shoulder and turned him around. “Look, I think we got off to a bad start. Let me—”
“Stop it. You’re not listening. We have a critically ill patient here and the first and foremost duty of every member of the staff in this hospital is to our patient’s health. I cannot, and will not, let you question my patient until I deem he is well enough to be questioned. That is my final word on the matter.”
Carl’s face reddened with every word from the doctor’s mouth. “You’re the one who isn’t listening, doctor. I’m the god damn FBI. If I want to question that son of a bitch, I damn well will.”
“I’m afraid that’s not your call. And if you go against my instructions I will have you thrown out.”
“Ok, I get it. This is your domain. But don’t fool yourself. You may be the king of this hospital but we’re the government and we need to question him immediately.”
“I’ve said all I’m going to say. Move out of my way.”
Carl exchanged a quick glance with Irving then said, “Fine, Irving will stay here and keep me updated. The second he comes around, we need to speak to him and if you think you can hide behind your Hippocratic Oath, you’re mistaken.”
9:45 pm PDT Humboldt County, California
The headlights reflected off the pickup truck parked in the driveway and lit up the dark house beyond as the car came to a stop and Camilla, Mike, and Sarah climbed out.
“This is it? It looks like a dump, Sarah,” Camilla said. “I figured a half a million bucks would have bought a castle up here.”
“No such luck but this place has everything we need, and it’s out of the way. No one will know we’re here,” Sarah replied. She had paid the real estate agent with cash, and he hadn’t seemed at all surprised. “It’s nice inside and we’ve got almost fifty acres – lots of privacy, nobody is going to just happen to stumble by. It looks like Seth and Jerry are here.”
“The place is dark, they must be asleep,” Mike said as he hauled their bags out of the trunk. Sarah and Camilla grabbed the groceries.
“Let’s not wake them up,” Sarah said as they climbed the front steps. “They’ve been going straight since Tuesday.”
Sarah turned on some lights as they went to the kitchen. The walls and ceiling were lined with rustic, rough-hewn wood that absorbed the glow from the lights, muting it to the point that it seemed like candlelight.
Camilla made them peanut butter sandwiches and coffee.
“So what’re the plans now?” Mike asked as they sat around the table eating.
“We’ve got to wait for Mark to get here with the truck. Then we can set up what we need for the implementation phase,” Sarah said.
“What’s that involve?” Mike asked.
“Primarily our network. We need to be able to track where the Carriers have been and what they’ve done. We also have a satellite dish that we’ll hook up so we can monitor the news feeds and get internet access. It won’t take too long for someone to realize that something is going on; I’d say within four or five months, on the outside – probably more like three. Then we just sit back and watch.”
When it was time to go to bed, Sarah showed Mike where he could sleep, and led Camilla to her room.
“Well, this is it, Camilla,” Sarah said as she sat down on the edge of the bed. “This is when it all truly starts. It’s been a long road, but I’m glad that we stuck with it.” Sarah felt a wave of emotion pass through her. She had been working on the project for eighteen years – it had been like raising a child and now she was more than ready to set it free on its personal life-long odyssey and watch the results unfold from afar.
Camilla put her arm around Sarah. “We’ve been through a lot to get here. We owe it all to you, Sarah. Without your dedication and commitment, we could never have made it to this point.”