No Immunity (31 page)

“Treating them with what?”

“A derivative of ribavirin. I’ve got some in a freezer case in the trunk. If I can get to the boys in time, it could make the difference.”

“This late?”

“The latest research indicates at least an ameliorative effect. Mixed with a drug called Cyro—But this is getting too technical. Trust me, what I’ve got is the best treatment there is. Whether it will be enough, I don’t know.”

Yeah
,
well
,
I do know.
Ribavirin enhanced survival rates only if it was given early on. And only in specific arenaviruses. For Lassa fever it was a godsend. For Ebola, useless. In the case of an idiopathic condition, how could Louisa be doing any more than taking a stab and hoping? Why this particular combination—unless she knew the strains of virus that had infected the boys?

Louisa eyed the narrow, windy road, shot a glance at the gray soil and low prickly wild plants. “Just where are the boys?”

“A couple hours out of town.”

“On a road like this?”

“Worse.”

“But where?”

“I’ll direct you, Louisa.”

“I’m not a chauffeur! Tell me or—”

“Or what?” Purposely Kiernan kept her voice light and the aura of collegiality in place. “What do you want? I’m the only one who knows where they are. I’m taking you there. But it’s not like there are street signs. I’ll know the turns when I see them—I hope.” She forced herself to add plaintively, “I’m doing the best I can.”

“Sorry. Of course. I’m just edgy.”

Plaintive always worked. It just galled her to use it.

Already the town was barely visible. The landscape, which she had seen only in the dark, was green and gray in all directions, dry and endless. She checked the rearview mirror again, but by now she expected the road behind to be empty. With all the resources of the county sheriff’s department and the United States Navy, Fox wouldn’t have to tail them. And if he did choose that low-tech method, he had plenty of time before there were any turn-offs.

She thought of the boys, but it was Louisa who put words to the worry. “Even in Vegas, where there’s grass and shrubs and potted palms, Juan and Carlos looked stunned. What were they thinking—how do you think without words? But that’s another issue. They looked as if a spaceship had abandoned them on Mars. To them this dirt and sand and air so dry it cuts your skin was as incomprehensible as living in outer space. I wanted to ask … everything.” She sucked in breath, staring ahead at the empty road, hands white on the wheel. “And in the end I could
do
nothing for them.”

“But you did arrange for them to go to the tropical park, didn’t you. Grady said a friend told him about it.”

Louisa’s jaw tightened before she could smile. She clasped the steering wheel harder. “One of my professors in college had a project with government funding and he had to bring some of the specimens up here. He used to tell me about the park. It sounded so perfect for the boys.”

“When was the last time you were there?”

“Never. I just heard. Why?”

“Because, Louisa, the park is downwind of the naval testing facility. They shoot viruses and bacteria into the air to see if they can identify them.”

She gasped. “Microbes? In the air?” Her foot came off the gas pedal; the car coughed; she fumbled with the gearshift and barely downshifted before the engine stalled. “It used to be a park. That’s what my professor said. It was wonderful. And now it’s what—poison?” She was shaking her head. “Oh, God, you can’t be right.”

“I am.”

“Oh, no. Is that where the boys got infected?”

Kiernan nodded.

Louisa was still shaking her head. She turned to Kiernan, beseeching. “I thought … I thought it would be nice for them. I sent them there, and now they’re … dying.” As she swiped at her damp cheek, she scraped the scar beside her eye and gasped. “I was only trying to do something nice for them. You understand, don’t you?”

Kiernan could have nodded and let her off the hook. She didn’t. She knew this type of woman who needed to be liked and who used her charm as means of entree. Without that acceptance she would be helpless, and desperate. Louisa Larson would have to work for approval this time. First off, she’d have to answer questions. “The woman who’s caring for the boys was sweating, feverish. Was that how it started with the boys?”

“I think so. By the time the neighbors called me they were too weak to stand. They were having trouble swallowing. If they’d gotten to me earlier—”

“That was the fourth or fifth day?”

She hesitated. “Could be.”

“How long have they been symptomatic by now?” Kiernan prodded. “A week, ten days?”

“Maybe a week I don’t know. Eight or nine days.”

In eight or nine days Lassa patients were dead.
Let her be right about her treatment.

Louisa pulled the wheel hard, taking the BMW into a curve, and let the wheel slide back in the loop of her fingers and thumb. The familiar movements of driving seemed to pull her out of her shock.

She had to keep Louisa on edge. “The woman is dead. The boys were exposed at the same time—”

“No! Not necessarily. When Grady called that night—he wanted me to check on the boys—he told me he had car trouble. He found a sheltered spot, a sort of lean-to, he said. And for a couple of hours he fiddled with the engine before he finally gave up and limped the car to the gas station. He said the boys watched him, but he left them picnicking when he made the run to the mechanic.”

“And the woman?”

“Of course Grady didn’t mention her to me. But she could have been picnicking or exploring the whole time. How would I know?” She shot a glance at Kiernan. Checking for her reaction, Kiernan noted. Purposely she showed none.

“A week ago it was still hot here,” Louisa hurried on. “In a desert like this it’s summer for a long, long time, and then one day you wake up and it’s winter. No fall, no warning.”

Faye at the Doll’s House had said the woman was already annoyed. Not the state of mind to spend hours handing Grady a wrench or a rag. Not when she could wander through southwest Nevada’s botanical wonder—and never guess she was breathing in toxic particles. Did the boys get a smaller dose? Did they have a natural immunity? Or were they the first victims of person-to-person transmission from the index case?

It wasn’t my fault!
Louisa had insisted with each answer.
Trust me! Think well of me!
But that Kiernan could not do.

The only reason Louisa would have a specific drug would be because she knew what virus or viruses she was dealing with. And the only way Grady Hummacher could have gotten into the tropical park behind the guarded gate of the Naval Proving Grounds would have been if he’d had a pass …If the woman who’d told him about the park had also given him her pass.

She turned and looked out the back window, squinting into the distance. The narrow line of road marked the rise and fall of hills going back and back till it became indistinguishable from the high desert on either side. There was no car, no person in sight.

Of course Fox wasn’t following so close. He didn’t have to. He could count on Louisa.

K
IERNAN SAT WITH HER
feet braced against the dash of Louisa’s BMW. Snow had begun falling, scarce at first, now thick. Louisa clasped the steering wheel tighter; even so, the car skidded in the sharp curves.

“How much farther?” Louisa’s voice was raw, any sociability gone.

“An hour maybe. Do you want me to drive?”

“No!” It was a moment before she said more calmly, “The place the boys are, is it on this road? Or do we turn off?”

“We turn. Soon, I think. But I’ve only done this route once, and that was at night. So I’m just going to have to be alert for landmarks.”

Grudgingly, Louisa nodded, and Kiernan settled against the headrest, watched the road, and considered what she knew. Grady Hummacher had snatched the boys and driven through the night to the Doll’s House. His one phone call from there had not been to inquire about Irene’s health, as she had assumed. His goal had been to hide the boys. For that he called his sole contact, Jeff Tremaine, whom he knew from the Carson Club.

She nodded to herself. At one time she had speculated it was Jeff who operated the safe house. Of course Jeff knew of his wife’s operation.

Maybe Grady was worried about the boys; maybe he just didn’t want to be tied down as he auctioned his find in the oil world. If he was savvy, he intended to keep them out of the hands of his competitors and enemies.

“There, Louisa! Right!”

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

“Take it.” As soon as the car swung right, Kiernan shut her eyes, willing a clear memory of the road. How long till she had left the pavement? Ten minutes, fifteen? “Speed up. We need to make time now.”

“Because we’ll be off the pavement soon?”

“Right,” Kiernan admitted.

“This isn’t a truck, you know, are you sure—”

“Louisa, what choice do we have?”

“If you’d tell me where we’re going, maybe I could come up with another way. I’ve been around here before.”

“No time for that.” Kiernan spotted a road to the right. It was closer to parallel ruts than a map-worthy route.

She checked the road behind them, eyeing the horizon for a telltale plume of dust, seeing only emptiness and snow.

If Fox was following them, there would be no telltale dust now, not in the snow.

“There, turn left.”

“On that! I’m going to have no transmission left. Can’t we—”

“Turn, Louisa.”

The car tilted and bounced as Louisa tried to find a path in the too-wide ruts from much bigger trucks. Kiernan braced her feet and thought of a whale-watching trip she had taken to the Farallon Islands years ago, twenty-six endless miles west of the Golden Gate, hours on an ancient no-stabilizer boat watching a dot in the ocean grow minusculely larger. All to discover that the whales had moved on.

Now in the light she spotted lesser trails leading off the rutted road. Each she discounted, each time hoping she was right. She hadn’t recalled the road twisting so much. Last night the dark had blacked out the options. Now she could see the seductive choices that protected Connie. Louisa held the wheel tightly; she looked as if she were hanging on as much as steering. Not once had she checked the rearview mirror. Because of course she wasn’t worried about her compatriot Fox.

She was leading him there. Kiernan knew that and it infuriated her. But what choice was there? She couldn’t lead Louisa away from the boys when Louisa had the drug that might save them. And maybe save herself and Tchernak. Here in the unforgiving desert she could neither escape with the drug nor overpower Louisa and abandon her beside the road to freeze.

Even with the heater on, the car was cold. Her cotton turtleneck, inadequate before, now felt like paper against her taut skin. Outside, the snow was beginning to stick, throwing the landscape into an eerie black and white. Kiernan leaned her head against the seat. Exhaustion blanketed her. How long had it been since she’d slept? She had been trained on thirty-six-hour shifts in med-school rotations. This stint was still shy of thirty. No excuse for drooping. She straightened up. “Do you have any food, Louisa?” Before Louisa could offer a sarcastic “Help yourself,” she had the glove compartment open and a chocolate bar out. She didn’t want to accept hospitality; she wanted to grab the food as she would from an enemy. She crumpled the wrapper, dropped it to the floor, noted Louisa biting back a complaint, and sat nibbling the chocolate as the windshield wipers cleared away arcs of snow.

“Keep left!” The mine hole came into sight as suddenly as it had the previous night. Almost as suddenly. Louisa had time to gasp, cut left, and skirt it with a yard to spare.

Now in the light the cavernous pit seemed even more horrifying. Nausea sloshed in her stomach. The skid marks from Jesse’s truck were outlined in white now, two deep ruts running into the hole.

“Is that a mine?” Louisa slowed almost to a stop. “I’ve heard about abandoned mines collapsing, but I never figured them to be this size. They could put a cathedral in there.”

Kiernan stared into the crater as long as she could see it, to remind herself of the vastness of the danger she had overcome.

The road wound, corkscrewed downward, narrowed, but the ruts remained too wide for the BMW. Kiernan’s legs ached from bracing herself. In the daylight it was easy to see how well hidden the mine was. No one would go far on this road without a reason. What brush there was was short and provided neither cover nor silencing, and the reverberations of the engine and brakes echoed through the canyon. From the base a person could watch the car slowly descend like a pinball bouncing from turn to turn.

But Connie’s mine hadn’t been at the base, that much she was sure of. They passed the entry road before Kiernan realized it. “Stop. Back up.” The narrow road angled back so sharply, Louisa had to make three cuts before she got the BMW around. Piñons grew so close, they scraped the car on both sides.

A quarter mile onto the drive, they spotted a derelict building in the distance. “You mean, that’s it?”

“It’s habitable inside.”

Louisa stopped the car and pulled her gun-heavy purse onto her lap. “We’ll get out here.”

“All we’d get for that would be exposed. We’re not surprising anyone. She’ll be expecting something.”

When the BMW rounded the last curve, Connie was standing, rifle poised. Kiernan hoisted her head and chest out the window. “Connie, it’s me. The boys, are they still alive?”

Connie pointed to a half-collapsed outbuilding. “Get the car into the car barn. Quick!”

Louisa started to protest, but Kiernan held up a hand. In the silence she could hear the echo of an engine in the canyon.

“I
’M A DOCTOR,”
L
OUISA
called as she drove the car past Connie into the mine’s outbuilding. “I’ve got treatment for the boys.”

Connie waved the car in, just as the guard outside the tropical park must have waved in Grady Hummacher’s car.

Louisa was out of the BMW before the engine was silent. “Where are they?” she demanded.