Forty Acres: A Thriller (35 page)

CHAPTER 94

M
artin Grey peeled open his eyes and squinted at the blinding white light. The light flicked back and forth from eye to eye.

“Wake up,” an unfamiliar male voice called. “Time to wake up.”

“Stop,” Martin groaned. He turned away from that annoying light. His head felt like it weighed a ton.

The light shut off and he heard the voice again. “Good morning. Can you tell me your name?”

Martin squinted up at the man staring down at him. He was African American, about Martin’s age, and he was wearing a white coat. Martin realized that the man was a doctor.

“What’s your name?” the doctor repeated. “Can you tell me your name?”

Martin’s lips were dry, and there was a nasty taste in his mouth. “Martin,” he answered hoarsely. “Martin Grey.”

The doctor smiled. “That’s good. How old are you? Do you remember that?”

His vision clearing, Martin could read the name tag on the doctor’s white coat. It read Dr. Gordon Hudson.

“Mr. Grey,” the doctor pushed, “tell me how old you are.”

“I’m thirty-three,” Martin said. “Where am I?”

The doctor smiled. “You’re at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. My name is Dr. Hudson. You’ve been in an induced coma for four days. Welcome back.”

“Four days? But—” As Martin tried to absorb this, images and memories began flying back, like pieces of a puzzle coming together. Then all at once he remembered everything. “Anna!” Martin cried as he shot up. Dr. Hudson and a nurse pounced immediately to hold him down. The nurse secured the IV tubing and monitoring cables tethered to Martin’s body.

“You must calm down, Mr. Grey,” Dr. Hudson said firmly.

“But Anna— They’re going to—”

“Your wife is safe, Mr. Grey. She’s right here.”

Martin blinked at Dr. Hudson, not sure that he had heard right. “What? Where?”

Dr. Hudson didn’t answer. Instead he just stepped back and allowed Anna to step forward.

Martin couldn’t believe his eyes. It was really her, it was Anna, staring down at him. There were tears streaming down Anna’s face but she was smiling and so, so beautiful.

Anna threw herself onto Martin and they shared a hug so long and so tight that finally the doctor had to intervene. “Easy, you two. We have to be careful of that shoulder for a while.”

As they parted, Martin grabbed Anna’s hand. “That place, Forty Acres. It was horrible. It’s—”

“I know,” Anna said. “Martin, everybody knows. I think the whole world knows what you did.”

Confusion leapt onto Martin’s face. “What I did?” Martin remembered the trapped slaves. He remembered time ticking away. He hesitated, afraid to ask Anna the question. “You mean . . . they’re okay? The mine didn’t explode?”

Anna shifted sideways to allow another person to approach the bedside. The young woman wore a pink patient’s gown. Beneath the gown Martin could see that her entire torso was wrapped with bandages. Her long, strawberry-blond hair was tied back in a ponytail.

It was Alice. She was alive. Which meant that they were all alive. Martin reached out and squeezed Alice’s hand, and Alice squeezed back. They shared a warm smile and Alice wiped tears from her cheeks.

“I’m so sorry,” Martin said. “What I did to you—I had no choice. If I didn’t—”

“If you didn’t,” Alice finished for him, “none of us would have gotten out of there. You saved my life, Mr. Grey. You saved all of us. That’s all that matters.”

“I wasn’t sure what I did worked,” he said. “How did everyone get out?”

Alice shook her head. “I don’t know. I was out of it. They said that all the lights went out and then the doors just opened. I heard that it was Vincent who found you.”

“That big guy?”

Alice nodded.

Dr. Hudson returned to the bedside. “I hate to break this up, but there are several tests that I need to run.”

“We’re next-door neighbors,” Alice said to Martin. Then she waved good-bye and headed for the door.

As Martin watched Alice leave, he noticed something inside the room that made his eyes widen. “What the—?”

His hospital room was filled with flowers and gift baskets and balloons and what looked like thousands of get-well cards. There was barely any room for the medical equipment. Martin noticed the TV set mounted on the wall. The sound was muted, but on-screen Martin could see a reporter standing before a huge crowd outside a tall white building. The sign on the side of the building read Emory University Hospital.

Martin turned to Anna and the doctor. “That’s here?”

Dr. Hudson nodded. “That’s live. It’s been like that ever since they brought you here.”

Anna, beaming, took Martin’s hands into hers. “You won’t believe what’s been going on. It’s the biggest story ever. Martin, you’re a hero.”

Stunned, Martin looked back at the screen. The crowd was completely mixed—whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, just people. It was nothing like the helter-skelter that Oscar had predicted.

Martin turned back to Anna. “Did they catch them?” he asked. “Please tell me they caught them.”

Anna shook her head. “Not yet. But it won’t be very long. There was a story just this morning that they think they found a list of secret members.”

“Okay, okay.” Dr. Hudson laid a hand on Anna’s arm. “Give me about forty-five minutes with your husband, then you can come back in. I promise.”

Anna planted a kiss on Martin’s cheek. “I’ll be right outside.”

Martin waited while Dr. Hudson turned to the nurse, who was the only other person in the room, and said, “I left my notebook in my office. Could you run and get it, please?”

The nurse appeared puzzled. “Your notebook, Doctor?”

“Yes, it’s right on my desk. Thank you.”

“Of course, Doctor.”

The nurse exited and Dr. Hudson turned his full attention to Martin. “That’s a pretty brave thing you did, Mr. Grey. I feel lucky to have you as a patient. I mean, you being a genuine hero and all.”

“Thanks,” Martin replied, feeling a bit awkward about his new status.

As Dr. Hudson removed a syringe from his coat pocket and uncapped the needle he said, “That business about secret members—that’s pretty unbelievable, huh?”

Martin fixated on the syringe in Dr. Hudson’s hand. That Forty Acres had secret followers wasn’t unbelievable at all. In fact, Martin knew that it was true. Any successful black man, anywhere, could be one of Dr. Kasim’s loyal followers, even a young doctor in Atlanta.

“Mr. Grey, are you okay?”

Martin pointed to the syringe. “What is that?”

“Vitamins. My own special brew. I’ve been giving you an injection every day.” Dr. Hudson threw Martin a sideways look. “Don’t tell me the hero is afraid of needles.”

Martin knew that if he let the paranoia he was feeling take hold, he might not ever be able to get past it. Martin refused to live his life in fear. He shook his head and said, “No, I’m good. Go for it.”

Dr. Hudson chuckled. “Well, all right, then.”

While Dr. Hudson swabbed his arm with alcohol, Martin turned to the TV set across the room.

News footage from four days earlier of the slaves being rescued from Forty Acres filled the screen. Martin watched a dramatic helicopter shot of the compound grounds, speckled with dozens of tiny figures. As the angle descended, the tiny figures resolved into people—the white slaves draped in rags, waving their arms, jumping, shouting, cheering, praying, and embracing each other.

Martin had saved them.

CHAPTER 95

T
wo weeks later, Martin, his arm in a sling, was slumped on the couch beside Anna, munching on potato chips while watching the evening news. It was a CNN special report about the ongoing roundup of criminals involved in what CNN had christened “The Forty Acres Conspiracy.” Shots of handcuffed men escorted into police stations, courtrooms, and FBI headquarters flashed on Martin’s beloved fifty-two-inch flat-screen. Martin spotted several familiar faces: Kwame, Tobias, Solomon, even the two forest rangers. What surprised both him and Anna was that the two rangers weren’t the only Caucasians complicit in Dr. Kasim’s madness. During the report, several other hunched-over white men were seen being led away by federal agents.

A huge portion of the news special was devoted to the two men conspicuously absent from the perp walks, Dr. Thaddeus Kasim and Oscar Lennox. There was endless speculation and theories about where the two ringleaders could be hiding, but the authorities had yet to track them down. Martin had been debriefed several times by several different agencies about the entire incident, and questions about Dr. Kasim’s whereabouts were always high on the list. Unfortunately, like everyone else, Martin had no clue. He’d never tell Anna, but the fact that Dr. Kasim and Oscar were still at large made him more than a little uneasy. The sooner those two were behind bars, the sooner he’d be able to get a full night’s sleep.

Martin’s face appeared on the television screen. It was a clip from his very first interview, while still in his hospital bed. “Jesus, not that guy again,” Martin said. “Enough already.”

Anna chuckled as Martin picked up the remote and switched the channel.

Their smiles evaporated when a report about Lamont Bell filled the screen. Lamont Bell was a sixteen-year-old African American high school student who had been abducted and tortured, his dead body dumped in a park in West Chicago. Racial epithets had been scrawled all over his mutilated body, including several references to Forty Acres. The story had broken only a day ago, and already it was everywhere, a news juggernaut second only to the Forty Acres story itself. It was as if the exposure of Forty Acres were a major quake that had shaken the entire nation, and the Lamont Bell story a tsunami that followed it. And there were other Forty Acres aftershocks sprouting up around the country. In Greeleyville, South Carolina, a century-old black church had been burned down. In Athens, Georgia, a bar brawl between white and black college students erupted after a report about Forty Acres played on the bar’s television. In Washington, DC, the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial had been vandalized, Dr. King’s granite visage desecrated by a splattering of bloodred paintballs. All these reports were disturbing and received plenty of attention from the media, but none had the impact of Lamont Bell’s murder. The images of the teenager’s brutal injuries were difficult to look at, especially for Martin. However irrational, Martin couldn’t help feeling responsible.

“Martin,” Anna said, squeezing his hand, “turn it off.”

But Martin kept watching. He watched fidgety home video of Lamont shooting hoops with his dad. He watched Lamont’s mother sob before a crush of reporters. He watched a candlelight vigil made up of hundreds of Lamont’s classmates and a small mountain of flowers and cards. Martin watched because he had this crazy feeling that it was his duty to watch. He’d made a choice and now he had to live with it.

Anna reached out and pivoted Martin’s head away from the television screen so that he was facing her. She answered his tortured eyes with a firm yet loving gaze. “You did the right thing,” she whispered. “Now please, turn it off.”

Martin nodded. He aimed the remote and pressed the off button.

The doorbell rang. Anna looked at her watch and groaned. “They’re early.”

Martin and Anna greeted Glen and Lisa at the front door. There was an exchange of hugs and kisses, then Lisa sniffed the air. “Mmmm . . . Is that lamb? Smells incredible.”

“God, I hope so,” Anna said, biting her lower lip. “It’s kinda your recipe. Actually, since you’re here, you can help. Come, come.” Anna grabbed Lisa’s hand and dragged her into the kitchen.

Glen reached into a Toys “R” Us shopping bag and pulled out what looked like a brand-new chess set. He handed it to Martin. “Just a little gift.”

Martin looked baffled at the box. It wasn’t just a chess set. It was a Mephisto talking chess trainer. A shiny gold sticker on the shrink-wrap promised that the gadget was endorsed by Kasparov himself. Martin frowned blankly at Glen. “Um, thanks . . . I think.”

“Not for you, Perry Mason. It’s for our future partner. Why do you think my mind is so sharp? When I was a kid I played lots of chess with my dad.”

“Glen, Anna’s not even showing yet.”

“Sure, sure, it’s a little soon. But the game talks. You and Anna can play and the kid can hear every move. Kids begin learning in the womb, that’s a proven fact.”

Martin shook his head in disbelief. “You’re crazy, you know that?”

“Says the man who single-handedly took down the biggest conspiracy in the history of ever. I
still
don’t believe it.” Glen gave Martin’s good shoulder a friendly slap. “You okay? How you holding up, bro?”

Martin felt himself stiffen. Glen had probably called him “bro” a thousand times over the course of their friendship, but this was the first time that it had grated on his nerves. He felt a strong urge to ask Glen not to use that term again. At least not until the bullet wound in his shoulder had healed and the nightmares had stopped and the world had returned to normal. But Martin decided against it. He didn’t want to put a damper on tonight’s dinner, and more importantly, he didn’t want to poison his relationship with his best friend. So, for the second time that evening, Martin heeded his wife’s advice.

He turned it off.

“I’m getting there,” Martin replied, putting on a brave smile. “I’m getting there.”

Martin led Glen over to the living room wall unit and popped open a small liquor cabinet. He was about to pour Glen his usual Jack and Coke but Glen insisted that, like Martin, he’d just have a Diet Coke. “When you’re off the meds,” Glen said, “the first round’s on me. But just the first.”

Martin chuckled and reached for the Diet Coke, but the front doorbell interrupted the moment.

“Hey, who’s that?” Glen said. “You never mentioned another guest.”

Martin looked equally surprised. “There isn’t one. At least, not that I know of.”

Anna appeared in the kitchen doorway wearing oven mitts and an accusing stare targeted at her husband. “Did you invite someone and forget to tell me?”

Martin raised his hands. “Not guilty. I swear. Hold on.”

Martin crossed to the window beside the door and peeked past the curtain. “That’s odd,” he said, turning back to Anna. “It’s the cable guy.”

Anna glanced at her watch. “Now? I thought the upgrade was tomorrow.”

“I did too. At least that’s what they told me.”

“That
is
odd,” Glen said with a chuckle. “Who the hell ever heard of a cable guy coming early?”

The doorbell chimed again.

Anna sighed and said to Martin, “Well, dinner’s ready. Could you ask him to come back another time?”

“I’m sure that won’t be a problem.”

“Then could you two come help carry in the food?”

“On our way,” Glen said.

Anna thanked them with a smile then retreated into the kitchen.

Martin reached out to open the door but suddenly paused. With his hand inches from the brass doorknob Martin stood there, frozen, in a moment of deep thought.

“You okay?” Glen asked.

Martin withdrew his hand and turned to Glen. He whispered, “I have a bad feeling about this.”

Glen looked confused. “What? Why?”

Martin pressed a finger to his lips, then continued in a hushed voice. “Do you know how long it takes to get an appointment? If I send him away, the cable company might insist on rescheduling. But if no one’s home, there’s a chance they’ll figure out their error and send someone tomorrow as planned.”

Glen smiled and whispered, “Very smart.”

Martin eased away from the front door. “Come on, let’s go help with dinner.”

As Martin and Glen quietly stepped toward the kitchen, the doorbell tolled for a third time, its beckoning tone lingering in the air like an unanswered question.