The picnic area was just as he remembered, hidden from the main trail. It abutted the blue lake, and mosquitoes were out at this time of day. No one else was by the shore as he knelt down, and opened the container as easily as if it contained potato salad. He watched his mosquitoes fly out. It was like seeing a swarm of bombers take off from a military field. The wings were the jet rotors. The vectors would hone in on human sweat or perfume like a smart bomb is programmed to veer toward targets.
The swarm dissipated, going this way and that, a few lighting on a lily pad, some heading off toward the trail, others drifting sideways on a breeze toward joggers who had appeared and retreated into the forested path.
Tom wedged the container into a muddy nook filled with cattails. There were still a few sluggish insects inside. He stood and brushed off his pants, and ten minutes later he was back in the Subaru, his radio tuned to an all-news station as he left the park. “FBI sources in Chicago confirmed that the two men killed in a standoff — and who made a threatening phone call to Washington — had ties to a jihadist group.”
Tom smiled. The diversion had worked!
“A car registered to one of the men was found with a booby trap inside. Fortunately the bomb did not blow up. It had been rigged incorrectly.”
Tom grinned because the bomb had intentionally been rigged not to work, so the agents would find planted “evidence” left in the glove compartment of the car.
“Maps identifying future targets were found in the car. A massive manhunt for associates of the Illinois attackers is under way throughout the Midwest.”
Tom laughed. No attacks were planned there.
Reaching I-80 again, he felt a small stab on his wrist and observed a mosquito there. Not one of his. It was bigger. A tiger mosquito. He let it feed. Then it was sucked out the window by a breeze.
In two days people in Allegheny County would start to get sick, among them, he hoped, some of the special people who had caused him to choose Pittsburgh as a target.
Tom headed east and south. He carried dried camping food, granola bars and jerky, fresh water in gallon containers, and an empty bottle to piss in, if he decided to avoid stops. Four hours later he pulled off the road in West Virginia, ate a ham sandwich, used the public restroom, and slept six hours, curled on the front seat.
Refreshed, he headed off again.
Even if the police find the bodies in New York, no one will connect me to the outbreak. I am sorry I had to kill you, Rebeca. I will pray for you.
The radio announcer said, “In other news, White House spokesman Jack Ickel today announced ‘mission accomplished’ in Tunisia in the effort to contain Islamic militants. Ickel said local governments are now strong enough to mop up on their own. Military aid will be diverted to humanitarian purposes.”
Tom pounded the dashboard in jubilation. They gave in! They actually gave in! Hobart Haines was right!
He had promised Kyle Utley to stop the attacks if the U.S. capitulated. Now the plan’s succeeded on multiple levels. Panic and death. Profit for the cause. And now that Washington gave in we can blackmail them or bring them down by releasing the information.
Back in Brazil, Dr. Cardozo was trying to create more vectors. If that happens we will send teams to hit the enemy in Germany and France, London and Russia!
The promise to Kyle Utley had always been a lie.
I’m not going to stop until all vectors are out.
He’d rejected Washington as a target. He preferred to sow fear in other cities, to have America blame their leaders for the problem, not sympathize with them. He skirted the capital on the maze of surrounding highways, a man-made capsid of tar protecting human bacteria. The D.C. Beltway spilled him onto I-95 in Northern Virginia, last stretch of East Coast megalopolis.
Urban congestion dropped away. Thick forest rose up on both sides of the highway, and traffic sped up to seventy-five miles an hour. He took the Richmond bypass and three hours later crossed into North Carolina. The road went from six lanes to four. Everything looked more rural. A grassy median strip separated northbound lanes from south. Billboards jutted above pine forest, showing ads for log cabin homes; a shop that sold fudge; Pilot brand gasoline. He smelled pine sap and pig farms and freshly mowed grass. Visit the mothballed battleship North Carolina in Wilmington, he was advised. A gray state police car passed, lights flashing, its trooper ignoring Tom, not even glancing at the biggest threat he’d ever be near.
An hour and a half later Tom exited I-95 at the I-40 cloverleaf turnoff and steered west toward Tennessee.
Six hundred fifty thousand people lived in Memphis, on the Mississippi bluff. The rock and roll birthplace. The barbecue capital of the U.S. In summers, vacationers swelled the population on any given day to over a million.
Tom saw the Colorado license plate on the mobile home in front of him; the white and green, the outline of the Rocky Mountains. His head began to hurt. His gaze drifted down to the familiar, proud red bumper sticker.
I TOOK THE COLORADO CHALLENGE!! I FOUND COLORADO CALM!!
From inside that camper ahead, a small boy looked out at Tom from the back window. He made an imaginary pistol with his fingers. He “shot” at Tom. He looked about six.
Tom couldn’t believe his reaction. After all these years he realized he was crying. He felt the tickle of a single tear on his cheek.
He did not want to look at that kid. He sped up and passed the camper. That boy was heading toward Memphis. The boy’s parents might stop there to enjoy a meal, view, motel. That halt might kill them.
Tom pressed down on the accelerator, and the mobile home receded in his rearview mirror.
He thought, drying the tears with a wrist itching from the mosquito bite, that the kid had looked familiar.
He’d looked like Hodge.
The world condensed for Tom. Some people mark past years by seasons, by jobs, or by marriage. Tom divided his youth into periods corresponding to the men with whom his mother had slept at the time.
Tom thought back, transported.
Five-year-old Tom Fargo lies in his single bed in the two-room pine cabin and smells wood fire, ponderosa pine, and aspen forest outside, and a whiff of rum from the bedroom, behind the closed door. Mom and Doug are fighting in there. Mom’s boyfriend drinks heavily some nights. And when Doug gets loud, so does Mom.
“You have no self-control. Like a goddamn dog!” Mom screams.
Tom lays wide-eyed, terrified. Doug has never hit him, or Mom, but he is big and scary when angry. Normally everyone likes Doug, especially women. “They give bigger tips,” Doug says with a wink when he and Tom are alone.
Tom’s bed is in the living/dining room in the company cabin. They all live just outside the Pike National Forest, one hundred feet from a ring of larger cabins housing clients who pay a lot of money to come here for two weeks at a time.
“Switch off the computer and reconnect with nature. Join us for a once-in-a-lifetime experience led by professional guides! Hear your heart beat in the magnificent Rockies! GET COLORADO CALM!” the brochure says.
But Colorado calm is for clients, not their guides, Doug and Mom. Tom’s mom is a petite twenty-two-year-old from Denver, who got pregnant when she was sixteen, barely finished high school, and left home. Doug, twenty-five, is charming, funny, a storyteller with clients. In public, Mom and Doug are always smiling. But inside the cabin where they live for six months a year — the other six they live in Mexico — fights erupt.