Fire Will Fall (7 page)

I didn't want to force my throat into speaking. I finally picked up a paperback on vitamins for AIDS patients I'd been planning to read last night before crashing, and I threw it at the door. Her face appeared a moment later, wide-eyed and blushing.

Rain and Owen and I just barged in on each other with a knock. Sometimes Cora's shyness was adorable; other times it was annoying. We didn't always have the energy to lead her around by the nose. I gestured her in.

"Can I get you anything?" she asked.

I fumbled for a slushy our new live-in nurse, Marg, had left for me an hour ago, but by now it was warm and watery, and the orange juice burned on the way down.

"Do you want a refill?" she asked quickly. "Regular water?"

I shook my head, thinking my eyeballs would blow out. I patted the bed, not exactly wanting company, but Cora was more like the family pet than a person, insofar as she wasn't as noisy. She handed me the TV remote and sat at the edge of the bed where it had lain. The
Montel Williams Show
was on the muted screen, somehow making me think of idle time I didn't want. I looked at Cora instead.

She was a little like one of the portrait people who had stared from the walls of the stairwell when I stumbled up here last night. A woman in eighteenth-century garb now stared at me from a portrait between the two windows. Cora wasn't dressed like her, but she wasn't dressed like us either. Our hospital rooms at St. Ann's had been littered with jeans, cutoffs, gym trunks, sweatpants. I think Cora owned one pair of jeans. Right now, she was wearing black shorts, a black top that matched, and a really thin gold chain around her neck with a locket that I knew contained a picture of her grandmother. Her hair, the same color as a Hershey bar, was pulled tight in some knotty thing at the back of her neck, like she took all the time in the world to fix herself up. Well, she had the time. We each had our little coping mechanisms. Hers was being impeccable.

I pointed to her and held up four fingers.

"Yes, four-star. I went out for about twenty minutes and looked all around this property. There's a pond, there." She pointed out the south window. I could only see treetops and a blue sky. "The old outbuildings are, well, starting to fall down, because they haven't been restored and are a hundred and fifty years old at least. Great Bay is on the eastern side, but you can't see the barrier islands right now. Too misty. When you're up to it, you have to let me show you about."

She sounded casual, but hope rang through it. I let a fact seep back in that both strengthened and alarmed me: Cora got flustered when I was symptomatic. It made me want to get up, though I'd have to face my boredom once I did.

"I took some pictures," she continued. "And Mrs. Starn showed me a darkroom down in the basement. It's the old-fashioned kind, the kind I suppose Aleese used to develop her war photos. I learned how to develop film the old-fashioned way at school, and I'm going to develop these. Mrs. Starn said the photo historian will bring me some chemicals this morning."

She must have gotten up at seven to accomplish all this. I felt outdone and tried to sit up. She was suddenly on her knees beside me, helping me wedge the pillows around. I forced myself to speak and ignore the razorblades.

"Be careful of those chemicals."

"I will. I have gloves."

"Wear a mask."

"Oh."

"Ask Marg for one." I grimaced without meaning to.

"I'll go find her..." She backed away on her knees and stood guiltily, like she had caused my pain.

I made some annoyed, choppy motion with my hand that was meant as some version of "Relax, will you?" But she took it wrong.

"...and I'll bring you a new slushy!" And she bolted out the door again.

I threw back the blanket and sat on the side of the bed. I could have stayed in bed all day and nursed my sore throat, but I wouldn't be the worse for having gotten up. Our immune systems actually still worked. But it was like a car running on three pistons. This symptom would go away in a couple of days like it had the last few times—whether I stayed horizontal or faced my life.

SHAHZAD HAMDANI
SATURDAY, MAY 4, 2002
10:15
A.M.
Upstairs

I
APPROACH THE BATHROOM
and turn on the light switch, only to find Tyler sitting on the toilet seat with his mouth open and his eyes staring at me. Except only the whites of his eyes show. With his skin condition it appears most horrific, and I am not amused by his grin when he hears me gasp.

"Did I blink when you turned on the light?" he asks. "It's important that you don't blink, or it will ruin everything. I am so stoked to play dead."

"You do not blink," I tell him.

"You gotta winkie-tink?" He stands. He has not been using the toilet—just sitting in the dark, awaiting my arrival so as to alarm me.

"Where you have been?" I ask. "You get quiet after Hodji leaves."

"I cleaned the toilet and shower. Now I'm practicing being dead."

I roll my eyes, not at all sure that Hodji should have told Tyler of this plan yet, despite that it involves us so personally. I have had years of experience with American Intelligence, and I do not think USIC will go for it. It is too radical, reflecting Hodji's fear for our security. He is "too emotionally involved," and as their policies do not acknowledge help from minors, there can be no help for minors, USIC will say. If an anonymous source turns out to be a minor, that is not their problem.

And besides, I have more pressing news to report. "I just found Omar online again today. He was at an Internet café in Tijuana. He either has a plane ... or a patch on his computer."

"Tijuana? That's a border town. Oh shit. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"That he is in Mexico because he is planning to cross over?" I spell it out. "I thought of it first thing last night, but I had also hoped perhaps he was looking for a country in which to practice a new designer germ without attracting attention to himself."

"He could have done that in Ethiopia," Tyler points out. "Or the Sudan, or fucking Greenland..."

I finish and turn to wash my hands, shaking my head at the challenges. "I don't believe USIC has agents in Tijuana. Their base south of the border is Mexico City, and I would imagine that having received that e-mail from us, they sent whomever they had there to look for him in Cancún. Perhaps he is not even in Tijuana but drawing off its server. Perhaps he is in Europe. The agents will be angry if I sent them to Cancún for nothing."

"The agents don't know you sent that tip," Tyler says and starts to pee. He can't withhold a hooting laugh. Obviously, they did know. They just have to pretend they don't know for the sake of their policies. Regardless of a source's age, they are not going to send a script like our gift of last night into the shredder and pretend they didn't receive it.

"Relax. You're not responsible for how they interpret the info that you so graciously send." Tyler continues. "Who was Omar talking to, and what did he say?"

"He was talking to VaporStrike," I say, which will be news to him. This is the first resurrection of VaporStrike online since he and Omar escaped Trinity Falls together.

I think Tyler will be very impressed by this, but he doesn't stop to think of it, in light of his other question: "Did they discuss their new germ that can turn a corpse into a skeleton in four hours or less?"

"Indirectly. He said, 'Fire will fall upon Colony Two.'"

I hear Tyler stop peeing, midstream. My troubles with ShadowStrike and the Trinity Falls water poisoning started with online chatter I captured in November of last year. It was this: "Waters will run red in Colony One."

Tyler mutters curses and follows with what I believe will be the next Question of Our Lives. "Where in hell is Colony Two?"

It seemed that the place was already known by both men, and they did not name it outright. But, anyway, Tyler would not assume the answers would be so easy. The question is rhetorical.

He flushes and then begins his washing ritual, which is quite involved, using very hot water and his own prescription soap bar each time, with suds rising to his elbows. It is disturbing to watch the scalding water run over his pustules, and I turn and face out into the hallway.

He finally brushes past me, and I know he is rushing to my terminal to see this chatter. He cannot understand it, as I have not yet translated it. I sit, saying, "They were having an argument. About the location of Colony Two. Omar does not like it."

"Why not?"

"He wants to strike a group of engineers on convention," I say, copying and pasting. "Aeronautical engineers. Aero companies make weapons for military use as well as the planes which transport them."

"So, their thought this time is to do damage to a weapons manufacturer," he says. "What are we expecting? Aero executives to croak in their hotel beds and turn into puddles of bone and large intestine before their wives and kids even realize they're dead?"

I ignore his sarcasm and consider the logic. "Perhaps this is one of those conventions for executives only, and the families will not be struck."

Tyler cannot endure the wait. "How difficult can this be to trace? How many aerospace engineering companies are there that create arms
and
are having a convention?"

"I have only begun to check on that. But it appears that of American companies inventing parts as well as, say, missiles, there are well over five hundred. Most participate in an annual convention."

The translation appears on the screen, however tattered from lack of synonymous terms. I create what I perceive to be proper English where there is none, and he reads behind me.

OmarLoggi:
I have studied the weapons made by this aero firm and am just about ready to give a go-ahead. We could take out all their executives and throw the peons remaining into a tailspin. They will have to shut down. They will feel they have been visited by the devil himself when the coroner arrives to declare as dead the piles of bones and cartilage and seepage.

VaporStrike:
May I be so quick as to tell the others, then, "Fire will fall in Colony Two"?

OmarLoggi:
Don't be hasty. I have reservations.

VaporStrike:
We cannot strike this firm at its offices, because of its security. The convention facility is perfect. With your new vinegar, the victims only have to indulge once.

Tyler looks down at his arms, which he is compulsive enough never to scratch or pick at. "We should consider ourselves lucky. He's probably been working with tularemia for about thirty years. He's probably just now ironing out all the kinks. What if we'd been struck by that strain?"

Americans love to ask "What if?" Instead of answering, I create more text.

VaporStrike:
The troops are in place.

OmarLoggi:
Tell them to calm down. We have to be extremely careful.

VaporStrike:
It is not as risky as you are thinking. They will look for us to strike in Britain, Spain ... Ethiopia.

Tyler steps backward, saying, "Whoa. Guess it's an American hit. But we already knew that, eh?"

"Say where, you devils," I mutter at the screen. At times I have felt my muttering has brought me luck.

VaporStrike:
Speak to me of your reservation.

OmarLoggi:
It is bad luck to keep striking the young.

"Jeezus." Tyler shudders. "I suppose
'keep
striking' is a reference to almost killing four teenagers last time."

ShadowStrike obviously kept up with the news concerning their almost-successes. Yet it is upsetting to hear them make reference directly to the Trinity Four, whom we helped save. I try to wait patiently for more chatter to appear.

VaporStrike:
You are referencing the fact that there is an amusement park directly across the street from the target.

Tyler points to this line on the screen, chuckles evilly, and says, "
Bingo
."

I can barely enjoy the fact that we just cut our search down to one-tenth of what it would have been. Tyler always manages to state horrific things more easily than I do, and I had to listen to him thinking aloud.

"It's one thing to imagine full-grown adults melting like the witch in the
Wizard of Oz.
It's another thing to think of it happening to kids. What, do they come off the slide at the water park and simply start to smoke like—"

"Will you please show more respect?" I ask patiently.

"It's gross. I can't help it."

Omar:
The industrialized world will find your choice most offensive, my friend. We have to think of how we could be viewed—if we want further backing and further political support from others.

VaporStrike:
As we will never trumpet our success like some organizations do, how will anyone prove, or even be aware, that it was us?

Omar:
Our major backers will know, although I have just spoken with Chancellor. He is like-minded to you.

"Who is Chancellor?" I ask, banking the code name in the front of my mind. It is new to us. My fingers itch to send this to Hodji.

"Obviously someone holding the purse strings," Tyler says.

VaporStrike:
They are all like-minded to us. We would not change critical plans if we were endangering puppies, would we?

Omar:
Your meaning?

VaporStrike:
These are the children of dogs.

Omar:
I see.

VaporStrike:
I am not completely inhuman. I am not saying to intentionally strike many men's offspring. I am saying let's not alter our course for what we realize is certainly not a tragic loss, even if much of the world is deceived into thinking it is.

I note their exits and try not to absorb their philosophies into my brain. It will only give me a useless asthma attack. I focus on how happy I am to see that we have more to puzzle over. We can eliminate many convention centers as the potential hit site by focusing on those that are in close proximity to an amusement park. I ask Tyler the best way to do this. It seems there is no easy method. He will download lists of amusement parks and we will begin the daunting task of comparing their addresses to those of nearby convention centers and engineering firms using them as hosts. I perceive it may be a long and boring day.