Red Tide (12 page)

22

P
itch black. Corso hurried now. Running quietly on the balls of his feet for just a few strides before losing patience and stretching his long legs into a full sprint, his headlong soles slapping the street as he covered the distance to the corner only to find her gone again…He…

…sat up with a start and looked around. The sound of halyards clanking against masts told him where he was and that the overnight wind had risen.
Saltheart
rocked gently in the slip. He pulled aside the curtain and peered out into a steel gray morning and then flopped back into the bed. He closed his eyes, tried to sleep for a moment and then gave it up, sliding his legs over the edge of the berth and down onto the floor.

He looked around for his clothes only to discover he was wearing them, then levered himself off the bed…groaning at the effort as he shuffled around the corner into the head. The ache in his feet reminded him that he’d walked home. Better part of four or five miles he’d estimated. He ran his hands over his stubbly face and shuddered. Remembering how cold he’d been at the end and wishing he hadn’t been forced to leave his jacket behind.

He used the teak handrails to help himself up the three steps into the galley, where he put together a pot of coffee before stepping out on deck. The air was thick and wet. A glance at the brass clock on the galley wall said it was seven-forty…full-bore rush hour. Overhead, the swoosh of cars on the freeway bridge seemed somehow slower and more ponderous than usual.

Across the lake, the rusting carcass of the ferry
Kalakala
sank slowly into the sand, its peeling art deco dome a sad reminder of better times with higher hopes and brighter dreams. A Coast Guard patrol boat cruised slowly along the far bank, its black machine gun mount ominous on the foredeck.

He closed his eyes for a moment and saw what he knew he would—the bodies strewn about the bus tunnel…the pools of blood and effluent…the final odd angles of the limbs…the horrified looks on their faces…the—he blinked a couple of times, swallowed hard and looked up into the slate sky.

He could feel the change. The uncertainty in the air and how Seattle was now a completely different place than it was this time yesterday morning. He watched the early morning boat traffic on Lake Union for a while and then stepped back inside the galley.

The coffee gave a last, rapid-fire series of gurgles and then went silent. He poured himself a cup and doctored it to his liking. Cream and sugar. New York regular. He held the cup in both hands and sipped at it tentatively as he made his way aft into the salon. Setting the coffee behind the pin rail, he reached up and unfastened the latch holding the thirty-six-inch flat screen TV pressed tight against the ceiling. He eased the screen down and looked around for the remote. He felt like a gawker at a freeway wreck, at once horrified by the twisted steel mayhem and at the same time, inexplicably drawn to leer at the carnage like a peeper at a bathroom window.

The screen lit up, and there it was. The nightmare. Right there in front of his face. CNN. Talking head and a stock picture of Yesler Street. He pushed the volume button. An electronic voice-over filled the air. “Homeland Security confirms an unspecified number of casualties from an unspecified biological agent.” Another ten seconds of noninformation and the picture cut to Harry Dobson, Seattle’s chief of police, standing behind a forest of microphones looking old and haggard. “We aren’t releasing any further information pending the notification of kin. We are…” He stopped talking and strained to hear a question shouted from the throng of reporters.

His face darkened. “The investigation is no longer in the hands of the Seattle Police Department.” He waved off a shouted question. “It’s business as usual,” he said, then caught himself and went into his canned spiel. “Excepting, of course, the tragic plight of the victims and their families.” Another question was flung his way. “Several federal agencies,” he said. “The FBI, the CIA, the Homeland Security people, the Centers for Disease Control…” He spread his hands in resignation. “Your guess is as good as mine,” he said finally. He listened again. “No,” he said emphatically. “To my knowledge, the threats delivered to the media were not attributed to any particular group…Arab or otherwise. Let me say…” he began, before his words were swept away by a torrent of shouted questions.

Corso changed the channel. MSNBC running a canned compilation of terrorist activities. September eleventh. Pictures of Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and a bevy of other Arab terrorists. He pushed the channel button again.

Channel Five. Local news. Old guy with flyaway hair standing at a dais like he was accustomed to it. Caption identified him as Dr. Hans Belder. “I have seen the pictures…” he was saying. He used a knarled hand to sweep over the collection of two dozen serious-looking souls who stood behind him on the dais. “Many of my colleagues have also seen the pictures. There can be no doubt. What we have here is a genetically altered form of hemorrhagic fever.”

As he spoke, the camera panned again, sliding over the somber group from end to end. At the far right of the screen, a familiar face peeked out from the forest of shoulders. Corso had to bring his other hand to bear on the coffee or he would surely have dropped it onto his shoes. It was her. The woman from the bus tunnel. He was sure of it. The short blonde hair. That competent…almost arrogant…look in her eyes. A shiver ran down his spine like a frozen ball bearing.

“Go back,” he shouted at the screen, which instead segued to a shot of Mayor Gary Dean holding a pile of note cards. Corso growled, grabbed the remote and began furiously pushing the channel button. He kept at it until he was satisfied that nobody else was running the Belder interview and then, with a shouted curse, switched back to the mayor.

“The situation is completely contained,” he said. “We are assured that there is absolutely no danger of further contamination.” He shook his head.

“No,” he said. “Other than the fact that Providence Hospital will take over the role of Regional Trauma Center for the next several days…and that the bus tunnel will remain closed…” He waved a blasé hand. “Other than that…we want to encourage Seattleites to go about their business.” He looked narrowly into the camera. “It’s important that we don’t allow these people to affect our daily lives. That we show these people that we will not be intimidated by a bunch of—”

Corso changed the channel. More talking heads. More stock terrorist footage. Then the President, with the word
LIVE
displayed in the lower left-hand corner of the screen.

He and the mayor must have shared the same speechwriter. Same call for calm. Same antiterrorist rhetoric. The usual steely-eyed Baptist assurances that the perpetrators would be brought to heel and punished in a way only Americans had the stomach for.

Corso pushed
POWER
and threw the remote onto the settee, where it bounced twice before coming to rest. He started for the galley to refresh his coffee, when a movement in his peripheral vision stopped him cold.

You don’t see a lot of suits on a dock. Living on a boat not only means you have virtually no closet space, but that whatever you do own, whether from Sears or Armani, is destined, in very short order, to smell like diesel fuel. So the sight of old man Gentry letting a trio of suits through the security gate at the far end of the dock was reason to be concerned.

Corso set the coffee on the counter, turned on his heel and walked quickly toward the stern. He had no doubt. They’d traced the jacket already and were coming for him.

He moved through the boat at a lope, threw open the sliding doors and stepped out onto the stern. In one smooth motion, he untied the dinghy line, stepped up over the transom rail and climbed down onto the swim step before stepping into the inflatable and pushing off.

Through the pea-soup air, he could hear old man Gentry bawling something about “infringing his rights.” He reached behind himself and pulled out the choke on the thirty-horse Evinrude. A push of the
START
button and the engine was purring. He goosed it a couple of times and then pushed the choke back in. Above the purr of the engine, he could hear the hard sound of heels on the ancient wooden dock. They were running now. Old man Gentry was still yelling at them. “Assholes” something.

He jacked the wheel hard to starboard and gave the little boat way more gas than was polite inside the marina. The propeller sucked itself down into the water. The bow began to rise. He slammed the throttle forward and bent low over the wheel. Looking back under his arm, he caught sight of the trio as they skidded to a stop at the rear of his boat. Corso winced as the one on the right reached toward his belt. Crazy bastard was going to shoot. Right here in the middle of the marina. He bent lower, waiting for the whistle of gunfire as he slalomed the boat sideways around the corner, past the big Tolly moored at the end, and went ripping out into the lake.

A smile spread halfway across his lips before the deep rumble of another engine wiped it from his face. He snapped his head around. The Coast Guard patrol boat bounced on the chop. The machine gun was manned.

Corso cut the throttle. Pulled the lever back into neutral and raised his hands above his head. The little aluminum cruiser began to rumble his way. The guy on the sixty-caliber couldn’t have been older than twenty-five. Standard issue Coast Guard blues, orange life jacket, baseball cap turned around backward so as not to interfere with his aim. He was sighting down the barrel at Corso, who raised his hands higher into the air and stood up.

“No problem,” he shouted.

The kid smiled. He had braces, for christ sakes. Corso watched in horror as the kid’s finger tightened around the trigger. Corso closed his eyes. The static clack of gunfire filled the early morning air. The power of the reports shook the little boat, nearly causing his knees to buckle.

Corso held his breath and waited for the huge slugs to tear off one of his arms, to grind his torso in two…to…

His feet were suddenly cold and wet. He frowned and opened his eyes. The front half of the boat was gone. The weight of the engine was rapidly pulling the remaining rig under the water. The kid’s metallic grin was bigger than ever. He let go with a whoop, like he’d just won a kewpie doll at the state fair. Corso was wet to the armpits now, and then, with a single hiss, the dinghy slid into the darkness below.

Corso began to tread water.

23

T
hey had always known each other. That’s how it was in the towns. Everybody knew everybody else forever. If you were not related to them, you knew someone who was. Or at least someone who came from that same town and recognized the family name.

They had new names now. Names they had learned together. Learned to answer to without thinking of who they used to be, or what the new names meant. The kind of names that fell easily from the American tongue. Way back when, he’d had another name. The one his parents gave him, so many years ago. Parag Dubey. After his grandfather. But that was then, and this was now. Now he was called Bobby Darling. He was a boyish, gangly twenty-eight. Narrow-faced, with a sheaf of straight black hair that tended to fall across his damaged left eye. Hair the color of obsidian, his mama used to say.

Bobby Darling had known Vijay Kumar for as long as he could remember. When the doctor peeled the stiff bandage from his eye, Vijay Kumar had been the first thing he’d seen, standing there next to his dirty cot, hopping from one foot to the other like a monkey. These days Vijay called himself Nathan Kimberly. Like the spawn of one of those families who took on the surnames of their oppressors. As an act of respect, they said at the time.

Nathan paced back and forth across the dusty front room like a caged tiger. He’d always been nervous and quick with his hands, but the excitement of approaching events had lent an even more manic quality to his birdlike movements.

“Martin’s been gone too long. Something’s not right here,” Nathan said.

“Not much gets by you does it?” Bobby snapped.

If Nathan picked up on the sarcasm, he didn’t let on. “What did Mr. Holmes say when you told him that Martin had broken ranks?”

“He said he’d take care of it.”

“What if Martin’s gone to the authorities?” Nathan wanted to know.

“If he’d gone to the authorities, they’d be here by now. Besides…” Bobby hesitated. “I’d be willing to bet he’s in no position to be dealing with the authorities.” He threw a grin around the room. “Just like everybody else in this house. Huh?”

Nobody bothered to argue.

“His real name’s Brian,” Madhu Verma said out of the blue. “He used to live around here. That’s why they brought him along.” Nathan scrunched his features and did his “I’m offended” face, the one Bobby wanted to pound to jelly with an iron rod.

“His safety depends on anonymity,” Nathan chastised. “If he really told you—”

Madhu laughed in his face. “Fucking amateurs,” he spat.

Madhu Verma was now known as Wesley Singh and was, without doubt, the angriest human being Bobby Darling had ever encountered. When they were children together, Madhu had tortured small animals until their anguished cries had filled the air like funeral smoke. To see him there, sitting on the couch cleaning the nine-millimeter for the millionth time, stroking the weapon like it was his private part, sent a shiver down Bobby Darling’s spine. This was the person Bobby wanted to keep in front of him at all costs. He had no doubt that, if pressed, Wesley would murder any one of them in a heartbeat.

Parul Rishi and Suprava Remar were cousins. With Parul it had been easy. They’d taken out the
r,
made his first name into Paul. Left the last name alone. Suprava had become Samuel Singleton. Depending upon how one looked at it, it could be said that Paul and Samuel had suffered the worst luck of all of them. They had merely been visiting when the disaster struck. On any other day, at any other time, they would have been safe in faraway West Nimar where they had lived. As fate would have it, however, their entire families had journeyed north to attend the wedding of yet another cousin, and thus had suffered the same fate as the locals.

The doorbell rang, sending the room into a state of suspended animation. Nobody moved except Bobby, who pushed himself off the couch and ambled over to the door. It was the old lady from the house next door. Bobby made sure Wesley had lost the automatic before he pulled open the door. She was short. No more than five feet tall. Hair all piled up on top of her head in a grandmotherly way. Long beaded chain looped around her neck with her glasses dangling from the ends. She was angry.

“This has got to stop. I’ve called the paper. They’re sending a man out.”

Bobby gave her his boyish puzzlement face. “Excuse please?”

“My newspaper,” the old woman said. “It’s gone again.”

Bobby kept his face in concerned mode. He looked back over his shoulder. Surveyed the room. “Any of you know anything about this lady’s newspaper?” he inquired. He waited for the grunts of ignorance to settle and then turned his attention back to the woman. “I’m sure it’s nobody here,” he said.

She tapped the screen door with her finger. Bobby thought about severing the finger with his Buck knife. Maybe sticking it up her ass. Maybe sticking it up her ass without cutting it off. Decisions. Decisions.

“Ever since you guys moved in here, three mornings in a row now it’s the same thing. I go out and the paper’s gone.”

“Must be somebody else,” Bobby tried.

“Somebody else my butt,” she spit. She wagged a bony finger in his face. He could feel the blood rising in his chest like a wave. “It better stop, sonny,” she said. “I’m telling you…it better darn well stop.”

With that, she turned on her heel and waddled off down the brick walk. Bobby parted the dusty curtains and watched as she skirted the separating hedge and then cut across her own front lawn on her way home.

“Bitch,” he said.

When he turned back toward the room, Wesley was smirking as he pulled the folded newspaper out from under the sofa cushions. “I like to watch her scratch around for it,” Wesley said. “Like a chicken after you cut off one of the legs.”

Killing a chicken for dinner had never been enough for Wesley. No…he had to make it into a spectator sport…something that satisfied that bottomless thirst for pain and suffering he carried around inside himself.

Bobby opened his mouth to protest, even though he already knew the answer. He wanted to ask what kind of person steals a paper he doesn’t even read, at a time like this, when they’re this close to having their revenge. But a sudden movement in his peripheral vision pulled his attention to the street in front of the house.

Holmes…driving by slowly with the window down. Driving a dark blue van just like the gray one Martin had left in. Holmes. The man who had come to help them and, for his trouble, had lost everything in the world he valued. The man who’d picked them from the garbage and brought them together for this moment.

He watched as Holmes cruised by. Then stepped out onto the porch and kept his eye on the van until it turned left into the Safeway parking lot and disappeared. Four minutes later, Holmes strode into view.

Holmes nodded at Bobby on his way up the stairs.

“Where’s Martin?” Bobby asked.

“Elsewhere,” was the terse reply.

“Is he going to be a problem?”

Holmes shook his big square head. “Not in this world. Perhaps in the next.”