The truck came to a screeching halt. The helicopter pilot lowered the helicopter so that he was almost eye level with the driver. Diesel exhaust stopped spewing from the mufflers.
“Throw your keys out the window.”
There was a pause and then a key ring flew onto the street in front of the cab.
“Place you hands against the front windshield,” instructed the pilot.
The driver placed the palms of his hands against the window.
Three northbound police cars caught up with the rig. Two cars pulled in front of it while the third guarded the rear, boxing the truck and trailer in.
Two deputies ran over to the truck cab with their guns drawn. One pulled the door open while the other kept his gun pointed through the window at the driver.
The truck driver was pulled out of the cab and asked to lie down flat. He was quickly handcuffed and searched. Finally, he was rolled over.
The arresting deputy looked at a printout and back at the man. “What’s your name?”
“Michael Holland,” said the scared 42 year-old.
Then deputy spoke into his radio. “The driver isn’t our suspect.”
The deputy on the circling helicopter looked at the overlay on the computer screen. “The signal is coming from within the truck.”
The arresting deputy looked down at Holland. “We have probable cause to search your truck. Do you have the key to open it?”
The man looked up at him. “No. Of course not. You have to ask the postmaster for the key.”
Twenty minutes later, a police escort brought the nearest United States postmaster with a key to unlock the trailer. When Simmons and Rios arrived, the sheriff’s deputies were going through bins of mail in the middle of the highway under the postmaster’s supervision.
“I can tell you how this is going to end,” said Simmons as she watched from the driver’s side of her SUV.
“You think we should tell them what we told Brooks?” asked Rios.
“Yeah, but it’s not going to matter right now.”
The deputy from the pursuit helicopter was walking around with a laptop with a 3G connection. He moved toward one of the bins and pointed it out. Two deputies ran over and turned it over, spilling a pile of mail onto the highway.
The deputies quickly sorted the mail into a pile of letters and a pile of packages. A bomb tech walked over with a handheld scanner and waved it over the packages. He pulled three from the pile and set them on the highway.
The deputies cleared away the other mail while the bins were loaded back into the truck.
A bomb-sniffing dog was brought over to inspect the packages. He sniffed at them and then looked up bored. The dog was walked back to a car.
The county chief of detectives walked over and looked at the packages. He picked up one and walked it back to where Brooks and several other higher-ups had parked their cars. He set it on the hood of an SUV.
Simmons and Rios walked over to get a look as a technician with rubber gloves slit open the small box. He reached inside and pulled out Mitchell’s iPhone. The lock screen had a screen grab of a page from the notepad app as its background image.
The technician held out the iPhone for everyone to see what the note said.
“When I think you’re serious about helping me, I’ll send up three flares so you can find me. Until then, no surrender. Mitch.”
37
After helicopter footage of sheriff’s deputies searching through mail on the highway aired on Fox, CNN and MSNBC, another shoe dropped. Someone had leaked footage of the mall incident and the Super Center robbery to the major networks. Although the footage was being held for release by the city police department, it had been passed around to so many different agencies, there was nowhere to point a finger.
To the general public and news pundits, Mitchell’s claims that something odd was happening to him gained much more credibility when they could see for themselves how strangely people behaved in the footage.
The “contagious hysteria” meme was quickly dropped. Talk shows began using terms like “rage virus” and “zombie gas.” Mitchell had gone from being called a public menace to a one-man WMD.
Baylor got the news in the middle of a conference with Homeland Security’s South Florida emergency response coordinator. He went through the roof. He left the room to make a phone call.
“I thought I asked you to keep the footage from being released!” he shouted at the man on the other end of the phone.
“We tried. But there were too many copies out there. It was going to happen sooner or later,” said the man.
“Damn it. I wanted this contained before this got out.”
“Wanted what contained, Baylor? Is this one of your projects?” asked the man.
“No. Of course not.” Baylor hesitated. “From what we’ve seen in our lab, we have reason to believe that this may be the work of a foreign power.”
“When did you learn this?”
“Twenty minutes ago. I was just sent the results from our blood work on the mall victims. We found evidence of an aerosol in the lungs that was used as a dispersant.” Baylor lied through his teeth.
“How do you want to proceed?”
Baylor ran his fingers through his hair. He needed a way to call the shots on the matter behind the scenes. If it was still handled by local authorities, he wouldn’t have as much influence. If it went to a federal level, he had the connections to make sure that he and his group wouldn’t be in the line of fire. “We need to elevate this to a federal matter.”
“On what basis?” asked the man.
“On the belief that this man has in his possession a chemical agent that induces panic. Most likely supplied by a foreign power or terrorist group.”
Baylor had thought about saying that he actually believed that Roberts was infected with a form of weaponized Mongolian Flu, but that was too close to what the actual truth was. If he could get Roberts into custody, the right custody, he wouldn’t have to worry about suspicion falling onto project Great Wall.
“You think this man is a terrorist?”
Baylor paused. Saying yes brought in a whole new set of problems. The FBI and CIA would start digging around for any kind of connection between Roberts and foreign groups, a connection Baylor knew didn’t exist. If Roberts had been Muslim and traveled overseas in the last ten years, any kind of connection could be made. Unfortunately, he was a white man with no strong religious beliefs. If any of the Aryan supremacist groups could put together something more sophisticated than a fertilizer bomb, he might be able to make a compelling case for Mitchell being part of one of them but, sadly no, he thought.
“Do you think this man is a terrorist?” asked the voice again.
“No, I don’t think he’s willingly part of any terror groups.” Baylor thought briefly about saying Mitchell was acting alone but knew that wouldn’t wash. A weaponized version of Mongolian Flu wasn’t a kitchen table project. “I think he may unwittingly or under the threat of coercion is carrying a dispersant on his person.”
Baylor thought of the footage he’d seen. In the mall he had on a backpack. In the Super Center he was wearing a large coat. The idea that Mitchell had a device on him that sprayed a chemical agent was starting to gain traction in his mind.
“Do we need to apply containment to all of the locations where the dispersant was used?” asked the voice.
Containment meant sealing the mall, the Super Center and everywhere else Mitchell had been. It also meant other agencies looking for evidence of the dispersant. A dispersant that Baylor only half believed could actually exist.
Saying no would attract suspicion that he knew more than he let on. He decided to hedge his bet.