The gun went off but fired into the seat. The boy screamed. Tom had the man’s wrist in hand as the man clawed at his throat, eyes bulging. The woman had toppled from the boy’s lap. It was easy to pluck away the gun.
Tom shot the man in the face, jerking him back. He spun and shot the boy, too. The woman remained unconscious.
The rain battered the windows and streamed down. Tom pressed down on the accelerator and rolled twenty feet to the intersection, then turned onto a small feeder road. It was black and deserted, farm country. He heard sucking sounds from the back. The woman still lived. The boy could not possibly be alive.
He pulled over a quarter mile later and got out. The grass was mowed here, and there was a wire fence along the road. A pasture maybe. A ranch or farm. But he saw no lights. No homes. He was in a bubble of darkness.
Tom opened the passenger door and dragged the man out. He was big and heavy, but Tom was filled with adrenaline. He toppled the body into a roadside ditch. Then he did the same with the boy. The woman was breathing fitfully, eyes shut, twitching. The rain smashed into her as he dragged her through the grass. She rolled down onto her husband and son. Had she seen him? Had she regained consciousness for a moment and seen him?
She had not seen him. She might live if God smiled on her.
Tom left her lying with her men, barely alive.
He drove back onto the highway. The rain had lessened enough so that he could see, in the direction of New Albany, that the flashing red lights were now arrayed in a line across the road, blocking the route into town, or out.
Roadblock. But he’d avoided it.
He kept the headlights off because those cops might otherwise see his car turn around, head the other way. The feeder road carried him across the median strip. The car smelled of shooting and blood, and the backseat was soaked and shredded from the bullet. Padding lay everywhere. He shivered from cold, rain, or adrenaline loss. But he was free again. As long as no one stopped him, no one could see the evidence in the car.
Allah, keep me safe until tomorrow night.
He turned south again, and east. He needed only a few hours to reach the correct destination.
Where I will release the last vectors, he thought.
Against a very specific foe.
TWENTY-NINE
New Mexico state police and health officials had set up way stations at the airport. Security lines leaving terminals were slower moving than ones going in. IF YOU ARE COMING FROM AN INFECTED AREA, STOP AND HAVE ALL LUGGAGE EXAMINED. IF YOU FEEL ILL, ALERT AUTHORITIES, signs read.
I’d switched my return ticket to an earlier flight with a Washington, D.C., stopover, and, waiting for boarding, found a seat in a quiet area to convene a group meeting. Eddie’s face swam up on the left top of my screen.
“It’s in Pittsburgh, Joe. Five infected.”
I fought off twin senses of anxiety and letdown. I’d flown across the country and now knew about as much as I had before I left. Hobart Haines was an old man with a far-fetched theory. It was hard to believe that Tom Fargo was carrying out some idea he’d spewed forth as a kid. That Haines, driving around with the boy, years ago, had created a future terrorist, pulled the psychic switches.
Haines probably exaggerated his own importance. It’s what old men do when they look back.
Eddie said, “The Pittsburgh victims remember being bitten two nights ago, at a park.”
Beside Eddie was Stuart, in his office. We were meeting thanks to the Wilderness Program’s encrypted system, as we were frozen out of the FBI’s. Reduced to the status of fretting civilians, we got our news like most people in the country, from the press.
Stuart said, “That park was sprayed earlier, Joe. But it was crawling with mosquitoes. Amazonian variety, from the DNA.”
I told myself, Just because Hobart’s theory is old doesn’t mean you don’t check it out.
Izabel Santo had not answered my summons. She was either in the air, or asleep back in Brazil. Aya occupied the lower left-hand box and had a pugnacious look on her face: lips tight, eyes hard, probably because I’d not returned her call earlier. Mostly she looked hurt. I reminded myself that my intern was only sixteen.
“Where’s the Brazilian?” she asked, uttering the nationality as if it were a curse, refusing to use Izabel’s name. I said Izabel was gone. “Good,” Aya said. “She’s like, slutty!”
I noticed a dozen travelers and airport workers clustered beneath an overhead monitor, watching shots of police roadblocks around Pittsburgh and Memphis.
“Ray was right about one thing,” Eddie said. “Cops all over the country are being flooded with ‘sightings’ of Fargo. And the tip line! Over five thousand calls.”
Stuart nodded morosely and looked left, out of the monitor. Probably on his screen Eddie was on his right. Eye movement in teleconference is deceptive. Stuart said, “People are calling us, too. Phones ringing off the hook. I saw Fargo in London! In L.A. Nashville announced that they caught him, but it turned out to be someone else. Maybe Ray was right about not diverting personnel.”
“What did you learn from Haines?” Eddie asked.
I filled them in. “He’s had no contact with Tom or Tom’s mom for years. It was all theory. But it’s worth checking defense contractors,” I said, eyeing Aya, who would be the main one to do it. “To see if one of them has branches in the cities that have been hit.”
“Even if we find him,” Eddie grumped, “he’s just one guy. What about the other jihadists?”
“I’m not convinced there are others yet.”
“You can’t believe it’s just one guy!” Stuart said.
“If it’s different groups, how come the first infections were all near New York? He’s had time to get to Pittsburgh and Memphis. It’s possible that he wants us to think there are more attackers than there really are.”
Eddie shook his head. “What about Chicago?”
“There were no cases in Chicago, Eddie. Just threats. I’m just saying, if it’s lots of groups, why aren’t outbreaks more widely spaced?”
“Christ, he could head from Memphis to Saint Louis. New Orleans. The whole goddamn Mississippi River area. At least there’s crappy weather there. Everything’s shut down. Tornadoes, Joe! Maybe the storms will slow him down… unless he’s already dumped the car. Hell, what if he’s flying?”
“If I were him, I’d dump the car,” Stuart said.
“Aya? Would you like to add anything?”
“Oh, someone cares what I think finally?”
Here we go, I thought. “Aya, I didn’t call you back before because I was busy with Haines.”
“You told me to work with the FBI! You said help Ray, not you!”
She was looking away, off screen, pouting.
“That was for your own good, Aya.”
Her lips twitched. I realized that she was trying not to cry. Aya said in a choked, accusatory voice, “You didn’t tell Stuart to work with Ray. You didn’t tell Eddie or anyone else in Wilderness to work for Ray. Just me.”
“Aya!” But she was right. If she hadn’t refused that order, she wouldn’t be with us now. I felt sorry for Ray suddenly. He had to deal with her teenage emotions all the time. But I was angrier at myself. It was my job to remember that she was young. A team leader has to be aware of the strengths and weaknesses of people who work for him. I’d treated Aya as an adult if I needed her, but as a kid when I did not. Not fair.
“I made a mistake,” I admitted.
Aya’s lips were quivering.
I said, “My bad. My fault. Aya, we don’t have time for this now. You’re with us, okay? So act like it.”