Red Tide (21 page)

Took Corso a minute. “None.”

“Anything close?”

Again Corso scanned the data. “Got several nine-dash-four-dash-five-six-dash-seven-zero-dash-threes.”

“What’s the four?”

Corso rolled his eyes down the page. “Race: East Indian.”

Charly Hart started to shrug but thought better of it. “We didn’t run into any—”

“We did,” Corso said. “The guy with the shark eyes.”

“What?”

Corso told him the story. Hart wasn’t impressed. “It’s not much,” he said. “Just some guy who farted and a feeling you’ve got.”

“I’m telling you…he never even blinked at the autopsy photo.”

“I can’t be…” He threw his good hand into the air. “We’ve got nothing going on with the Indians. They’ve got no reason to hate us. Why would anybody from India want to do Americans harm?”

“Everybody hates us.”

Charly Hart sighed and looked away.

“Call your boss. We’re gonna need some help,” Corso pushed.

Charly Hart peeked over his shoulder at Jim Sexton, who had surreptitiously slid over in their direction, trying to hear what was being said. Mr. Nonchalant, standing there now trying to look all cool and disinterested.

“You want to give us a little privacy or what?” Charly Hart asked.

Jim shot him a half smile and a two-fingered salute as he bumped himself off the wall and started across the room. Charlie watched him go, making sure he was out of sight before he walked back into the corner of the room. He checked again, then pushed the button and said, “Chief Dobson,” into the speaker.

“Yes, Detective,” was the immediate reply.

Charly checked his back again. “I think we got something here,” he said.

“Something like what?”

Charly told him. The reply was a little slower in coming this time.

“Just a hunch of Mr. Corso’s? That’s what you’ve got?”

Charly swallowed hard. “Yes sir.”

“What do you need?”

“A Tac Unit to the U District. Fifteenth Street. Last block before Ravenna.”

“Ten minutes.”

“We need another car,” Charly Hart said into his palm.

“I’ll send a unit for you.”

Pete Carrol had stopped loading the gear into the back of the mobile unit and was gazing over at Jim Sexton in amazement. His jaw dropped as he listened to the chief say, “I’ll send a unit for you.”

Jim snapped the walkie-talkie phone closed and threw a crooked grin his way. “You heard the man, Petie. U District. Fifteenth right before Ravenna.”

Pete grinned back. “You on a roll now, baby. A serious roll.”

37

T
he black-visored quartet bent low as they made their way around the sides of the house, staying close to the building and beneath the windows. Two to the left. Two to the right. The pair on the right deployed themselves on either side of the old-fashioned cellar doors, while the other two duck-walked all the way around the corner of the house and disappeared from view.

Protected from head to toe by black Kevlar body armor, the seven members of Special Weapons and Tactics Squad Number Three looked considerably more like androids than they did like human beings.

The guy whose name tag proclaimed him to be Sergeant Nance was running the show from a hundred feet up the street, which had been blocked at both ends by police cruisers to prevent civilians from blundering into the middle of the operation.

Nance turned to Charly Hart. “Good to go,” he said.

Charly nodded. Nance whispered into his shoulder-mounted microphone and the show began, as another trio of storm troopers burst out of the overgrown shrubbery and sprinted for the front door. Two flattened themselves against either side of the door while the third swung a massive metal battering ram against the knob, sending the door crashing inward with a bang.

Nance, Charly Hart and Corso were a third of the way across the street when the pair of SWAT cops suddenly reappeared on the front porch. The one on the right made sure the splintered door stayed closed while the other one used one hand to pull the guy with the battering ram down from the porch and the other hand to indicate that everyone concerned should stay back. Insistently back. Way back.

Nance’s earpiece squawked. “How many?” he asked his microphone.

Charly Hart’s mouth had already formed a question when Sergeant Nance pushed another button on his radio. “Need a haz-mat team to…” He ran through the address and zip code. “Level Four. I’ve got officers who are going to need decontamination.” He listened. “Now,” was his answer to an unheard question.

He turned to Charly Hart. “Got at least two corpses in the house. Blood all over the place. Looks like what I hear the victims in the tunnel looked like.” Corso held his breath. Nance went on. “I don’t want my crew in there until we know what’s going on.”

Charly Hart said he understood. He used his good hand to find his phone.

Jim Sexton had the volume turned all the way down and the speaker pressed tightly against his ear. He lay in the damp beauty bark between a pair of azalea bushes whose gnarled limbs curved and twisted about one another like praying fingers. Two shrubs down, Pete Carrol lay on his belly, the camera trained on the front door of the house across the street, where everything had come to a sudden halt.

“Chief,” the skinny cop said into the speaker.

“Detective Hart.”

“We’ve got bodies. Lots of blood. Looks a lot like what they found down in the tunnel. We’ve called for a haz-mat team. They’re saying twenty minutes.”

“I’m on my way to City Hall. Keep me informed.”

Jim Sexton crawled along the edge of the front porch and whispered in Pete’s ear. Told him what was going on and how he ought to save his tape until the haz-mat team arrived. The soft whirring of the camera stopped. Pete slipped his Mariners cap over the lens and lay the camera on its side in the bark.

“We wait,” Jim mouthed.

Pete understood. He rested his head on his forearm and closed his eyes.

Holmes checked his watch and then snuck a quick look at Bobby Darling, who lay stretched out on the other bed watching some cartoon peopled with yellow-faced characters. He seemed to be calming down a bit. The incident with the train and the size of the target had gotten Bobby a bit more excited than Holmes would have preferred. His experience with Bobby suggested that the kid was reliable only so long as the plan was well structured and remained more or less on track. Forced to improvise, the kid tended to panic, which was why he’d paired him with Brian and planned on sending them out last. By the time they left the hotel, the others would already have completed their assignments.

Five-thirty. Two hours until Wesley and Nathan reported for duty. Two and a half before Samuel and Paul left. Fifteen minutes later it would be Bobby and he. An hour after that, it would all be over. In more ways than one.

He’d hoped to survive. That’s the way the plan had been presented. That they could do what they had to do and then get away, but the minute they got specific about the plan and how it might actually work, he’d realized that chances of any of them walking away were fairly remote. Wasn’t rocket science. Hell…even Bobby had figured out they were on a suicide mission. When you’re taking directions from a man who doesn’t care whether he lives or dies, it’s pretty safe to assume he doesn’t hold your safety any more dearly than he holds his own. So when Brian became a liability and it became obvious to Holmes that he was going to be forced to get more involved than the plan originally called for, he was ready. Not necessarily eager, but ready.

Funny how, even among those with nothing to live for, dying was more palatable in the abstract than in reality. How the closer the hour came, the deeper the blackness of the pit became and the colder the air rising up from the depths below. How the mind begins to fill with unanswerable questions when the final hour slinks round at last. The questions nobody’s ever come back from the grave to answer. The questions bridging the gap between being and nothingness. The place where faith begins.

The haz-mat team leader was pulling off his gloves as he came down the front stairs. His mask was perched on top of his hood. And then another pair of orange-clad firemen backed out the front door, similarly unmasked and unconcerned, leaving the front door ajar as they came down onto the lawn. The tiny ovals of face visible inside the tightly drawn strings looked bemused. Fearless leader gestured with his bare hand.

“Come here,” it said to Charly Hart and Corso and Sergeant Nance.

Charly Hart’s injuries were beginning to catch up with him. He moved with all the grace and agility of a Hollywood mummy as he and Corso made their way down the jumbled sidewalk. At one point it took Corso’s steadying hand on his elbow to keep him upright. By the time they arrived, haz-mat had already spilled his story to Sergeant Nance.

“What do we got?” Charly Hart asked.

The guy started to turn his back. “Like I told him…” he said over his shoulder.

“Tell me,” Hart said in a tone that stopped the guy in his tracks.

The guy turned slowly. Gonna tell the cop what he could do with his attitude problem. The sight of the battered Charly Hart froze the reproach in his throat, however, and, in a spasm of lucidity, he discerned that he was probably dealing with a desperate and deranged man here and it might be better to hold the grief.

“Oh…you…the train,” was all he said.

Charly Hart gave him a nod small enough to pass for a tremor.

“Got two bodies. One male. One female. Not a bio. Multiple stab wounds. Hell of a struggle. It’s a mess. You’re gonna need a forensics team in there.”

Corso watched the air drain out of Charly Hart. Watched him wobble and then reach for his pocket.

“Better safe than sorry,” Sergeant Nance said with a dishwater grin.

38

W
hen a soft tap sounded on the hotel room door, Wesley held a finger to his lips and tiptoed across the room. He checked to make sure the door was double locked, fondled the Buck knife in his front pocket for a moment and then pressed his eye to the little optical peephole.

The image was distorted and disjointed, like looking at the world through a piece of broken glass, but it was Holmes all right. Standing in the hall swiveling his head back and forth as he checked the corridor. Wesley snapped the locks and pulled open the door.

Before stepping inside, Holmes checked the hall one more time. Satisfied that he hadn’t been observed, he hurried into the room and relocked the door.

“You’re ready?” he phrased it as a question, although that’s not what he meant. Wesley waggled a hand as if to say “more or less.”

“Remember…” Holmes began his litany. “Take your time. Your best opportunity to leave will be among all the others. If they let you work together…that’s fine. If not…you just go about your business on your own. You know where to meet afterward.” He paused long enough for Wesley and Nathan to indicate they’d been listening. “This is our moment,” he said.

Both young men looked frightened and tentative. Wesley was playing with something in his pocket. Nathan’s hands trembled slightly.

“It’s all right to be afraid,” Holmes said in a low voice. “We’ve been afraid for years. Afraid to go outside. Afraid to breathe the air. Afraid that someday we might wake up and it would happen all over again.” He made a rude noise with his lips. “We know all about afraid. Fear has become our friend.”

They nodded without conviction.

“Come on. Time to get going,” Holmes said.

Jim Sexton was stiff and cold. The forensics team had been in and out of the house for an hour and a half. Darkness had begun to settle on the street like a mantle. Last week’s rain had leached up through the beauty bark, dampening him to the bone. He smiled to himself and shivered slightly in the breeze. They had some great exclusive footage. The SWAT team busting into the place. The haz-mat team arriving. The EMTs and the bodies coming out on gurneys. The crowd of uniforms milling around in front of the place. The arrival of the feds and the heated argument that followed. All of it was great. Pete was right. He was definitely on a roll. All he needed now was to get this stuff on the air.

Jim was weighing the merits of returning to the station with the footage, when the phone in his pocket squawked. He grabbed it quickly and jammed the speaker hard against his ear.

“According to Canadian Immigration, they’re all from something called Madhya Pradesh,” the woman’s voice said.

“From what?”

“It’s an Indian state.” When Charly Hart didn’t respond, she added, “Somewhere out in the middle of the country is what they told me.”

“Thanks. Anything else?”

“The card found on Mr. Bohannon’s body is a key card. The lab says it could be used to open a dock gate or a garage door or the doors in any one of a dozen local hotels. The only prints on it are his own.”

He thanked her again and must have neglected to remove his finger from the
SEND
and
RECEIVE
button because a third voice could suddenly be heard coming from the speaker.

“Where did she say they were from?”

Charly Hart mimicked the sounds he’d heard.

“Madhya Pradesh,” voice three corrected.

“Something like that. What about it?”

“Bhopal is the capital of the state of Madhya Pradesh.”

“So what?”

“So Bhopal is the one place in India where you just might find a bunch of people who have a score to settle with the United States.”

“How’s that?”

“Union Carbide.”

Jim Sexton rolled over onto his dry side. “Holy shit,” he whispered to the wind.

“December second, 1984. I remember the date because it’s my sister’s birthday and the year because it was the first time I ever saw my work on the front page of a newspaper,” Corso said. “I was fresh out of college and green as cabbage. Working for the
Atlanta Constitution.
They gave me the assignment of collecting all the Bhopal information off the AP and Reuters wires and compressing it into two columns a day. I didn’t get a byline or anything. It was strictly wire service attribution, but for me it was a big deal. Up until then I’d never done a story more urgent than a charity flower show.”

Two houses up, a trio of yellow-jacketed forensic technicians appeared on the front porch carrying an assortment of evidence bags and boxes. “Looks like they’re finishing up in there,” Charly Hart said. He began to move slowly up the street as Corso continued to talk. “So anyway…” Corso went on, “Union Carbide has this big pesticide factory out in the middle of India. It’s in India because there’s no way the EPA or any other government agency lets them put anything like that here. Way too dangerous to put near white folks.”

“I remember now. There was a leak or something.”

“Or something. Forty tons of methyl isocyanate leaked from the Bhopal factory. Five hours later an area of forty square kilometers with a resident population of almost half a million people was covered with a cloud of lethal MCI gas. People woke up with their eyes burning out of their heads. With their lungs full of fluid. Within three days, eight thousand people died…mainly of cardiac and respiratory arrest. Another twenty thousand suffered permanent chronic injuries.”

Charly Hart looked over at Corso. The strain of the day had etched deep lines at the corners of his mouth. “That many?”

“That was just the beginning,” Corso said. “When the smoke clears, the Indian government sends in teams of police and bureaucrats and scientists to get things cleaned up. Within two years,
they’re
dying at a rate fourteen times the national average. Cancer is everywhere. Women are giving birth to stillborn children who don’t even look like human beings. Different skull shapes. Extra fingers, extra eyes. You name it and they’re giving birth to it.”

Charly Hart stepped on an uneven piece of concrete and stumbled. Corso put a restraining hand on his elbow. “Next thing you know the Indian government finds itself every bit as liable as Union Carbide, so they agree to some shitty settlement with the company…works out to less than five hundred dollars a victim…doesn’t even begin to cover medical expenses let alone damages. Then, before you know it, Dow buys Union Carbide and the whole company just disappears down the corporate gullet…leaving absolutely nothing that anybody can sue. Dow says it’s not responsible for Union Carbide. The government blames Dow. Just as neat as can be.”

In the gathering twilight, the neon yellow coat stood out like a beacon. She was maybe forty, with a handful of stiff brown hair pulled back into a ponytail and a look on her face said she didn’t want to dance. “Two dead. One of each. Multiple stab wounds. The woman…name’s Patricia Mitchell…lives next door.” She caught the question on Corso’s face. “She was wearing a medic-alert tag. The male works for the
Seattle Times.
Name’s Jeffrey Unger. He’s a route manager.”

“Anything else?” Charly Hart asked.

“Looks like anywhere from six to eight people’ve been living in there for three or four days,” she said. “We lifted a truckload of prints. Anything that looked new enough…we took a picture of.”

“So.”

“E-mailed the prints to the FBI. Got a special priority. Over a hundred prints we got only one hit.” She shook her head. “These people must have been living in a cave or something.”

“Whatdya get?”

“Came from the FBI print link with Interpol. Name’s Rodney Holmes. Used to be an Indian cop.” She stopped for a moment and read to herself from the card before going on. “He’s the chief suspect in the murder of a police captain he used to work for. You read between the lines it says they know he did it but just can’t make a case.” She read some more. “Says here he blames the death of his family on some kind of chemical spill or something.” Hart and Corso exchanged looks. “He’s been arrested half a dozen times for assaulting government officers. Arrested again in 2001 by the French police in the town of Toulouse. Demonstrating against a chemical spill that killed thirty people there.” She made eye contact with Corso. “Dipped under the radar early last year and hasn’t been seen since.”

A car alarm began to honk in the distance. Nobody paid any attention.

“That’s it? All those prints?”

She shrugged and made a face. “What can I say? It’s statistically aberrant. You’d think they’d be in somebody’s computer somewhere.”

“Yeah…you would,” Charly Hart agreed.

She turned to leave. “We come up with anything else, I’ll let you know.”

Charly thanked her, watched her amble off and then turned away. He pulled off his shattered glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose. “None of this—” he started to say and stopped. “None of this amounts to a damn thing,” he said finally. “We can’t even tie Bohannon to the house, let alone to a terrorist plot.”

“We’ve got the Indian connection.”

“Yeah and there’s an Indian restaurant up the street, but that don’t help us either,” Charly Hart said disgustedly.

“What if…” Corso said.

The detective waved his glasses in frustration. Engines were starting all around them. Shouts flew through the air. The techies and the haz-mats were gonna have to move before the SWAT team could get out, but nobody was going anywhere until the cruisers angled across both ends of the street were moved.

Corso went on. “If I’m planning this thing, there’s a Plan B.” He jerked a thumb at the house across the street. “Someplace to go if the house gets too hot. Someplace close to the target. Someplace where I can go through the final preparations for whatever it is I’m planning to do.”

“Gotta be the germ doctors down at the Weston,” Charly Hart said. “Nothing else makes any sense.” He looked to Corso for agreement but didn’t get it.

“Did I hear Bohannon was carrying a key?” Corso asked instead.

“Electronic. Could open anything.”

“A room at the Weston?”

Charly Hart set the glasses back on his nose. He hesitated and then pulled the phone from his pocket. “Hey…ah…hello…” he said.

“Can I help you?” Same woman’s voice.

“Who’m I talking to?”

“Jamie Celestine,” she said. “I work in the chief’s office.”

“I need the chief.”

“Can’t be done. He sent all nonessential personnel home. The chief and the rest of the bigwigs are down at City Hall putting together an evacuation plan.”

“Was that you earlier…about the Indian information.”

“The chief wanted you kept informed.”

“They tell you which hotels that key could be from?”

“Just a sec.” Papers rattled. “It’s a Texas Instruments key code system. Used locally by…the Airport Hilton, the Airport Marriott, the Airport Holiday Inn, the—”

“Downtown,” Charly Hart interrupted.

“The Camlin, the Vintage Park and the Pioneer Square Hotel.”

“Not the Weston?”

“Nope.”

“Damn,” slipped out. “Oh…sorry,” he said.

“And the Edgewater, but that’s not downtown.”

“Say again?”

“I said the Texas Instruments system is also used at the Edgewater.”

Charly Hart looked out over the tops of his glasses at Corso.

“All of a block and a half from where we kissed the train,” Corso said.

“But nowhere near the Weston.”

“I’m like our boss,” Corso said. “I don’t believe in coincidences either.”

“Sergeant Nance,” Charly Hart hollered.

The SWAT cop had one boot in the street and the other in the black armored van. He stopped his upward motion, put both feet on the pavement and stepped around the open door. He removed his baseball cap and raised his eyebrows.

“Don’t run off quite yet,” the detective said.