The Emissary (29 page)

With no time to figure out what possibly was going to happen next, or where she was going to go when she got to the top of the hill, she ran out from her dark, empty apartment to the taxi, to escape to the mountains inland.

Jimbo took the wheel. The tumultuous rain crashed down all around them so hard that keeping the car on the road was nearly impossible. He couldn’t even see out the windshield much more than a few feet in front of him. “Why the hell does everything have to happen all at once?” he said, trying to wipe the humidity off the inside of the window. Sam switched on the heater, which, in Lorna’s beat-up old car, was about as helpful as using an eyedropper’s worth of hot water to defrost a freezer.

He stayed on the main roads, driving as fast as he could, but the floodwaters down by the waterfront were already as high as the car’s fender. Finally, as they climbed out of the area and approached the Psychiatric Facility, the streets were easier to navigate, and he was able to push it. “Let’s hope we’re not too late,” he said, as they drove up to the empty parking lot. He cut the lights as soon as they turned into the driveway, and crawled in, enveloped in the dark rain of the storm.

Jimbo turned to Sam. He could see the fear in his eyes, but he knew the kid would come through for him. “You’re gonna follow me in, exactly three minutes after I enter that door. Have the gun ready and cover my back. That’s all you have to do.” He reached into the trench coat pocket and pulled out a knitted ski mask. “And wear this—we don’t want your old man or anybody else to know you were anywhere near this thing.”

Sam took the mask. “What about you?”

“Don’t you worry about Jimbo—I’m not new to this cloak-and-dagger business.” He pulled the handle of the door to get out. “Three minutes exactly, from the time I open the door. Gun out. Follow my lead.”

He got out of the car and ran up the walkway to the facility. Sam slipped the mask on, counting down the seconds until he had to get to the door.

A night nurse and an orderly were watching the news of the earthquake on television. San Francisco was reportedly devastated; reports were just starting to come in from local news stations in the Bay Area. All the waterfront areas were leveled; the financial district and several high-rise buildings were literally wiped off the map. It appeared the anticipated “big one” had at last hit the city. They watched, consumed by the bad news, distracted.

Jimbo’s entry into the lobby in the middle of the night, without any notice at all, startled them. “Evening, ma’am,” he said, walking up to the counter. “We’ve got a pickup for a patient, Ms. Jamie Hastings.” The water rolled off his coat, forming a puddle at his feet.

“A pickup at this hour—in this storm? This facility is closed for the night.”

“Yeah, I hear that—it’s some crazy weather out there—waves washin’ over the piers down at the harbor … some streets flooding down there too.”

The nurse looked at Jimbo suspiciously. “And you’re out in this weather, trying to transfer a patient at midnight?”

“Yes ma’am. I don’t ask questions, I just do my job. I have orders to transfer her to Vancouver ICU immediately—something about her test results.”

“Yeah? You have an order in writing?”

The nurse picked up the phone. A wall of a man, the orderly stood up, menacingly. Jimbo had no choice but to pull the gun on
them, making his moves and writing the script of Jamie’s rescue as he walked through his own movie.

“That’s not such a good idea. Hang up the phone, ma’am, and you sit right down, big man. No reason anybody has to get hurt here, but I do know how to use this, and I will if I have to … so please. Don’t do anything I’m gonna have to feel bad about later.”

Sam walked in on cue.

Without taking his eyes off the two of them, Jimbo instructed Sam to check the supply room off to the side of the office, and find something to tie them up with. Sam disappeared into the storage room and came out with two straitjackets, which he held up for approval. While Jimbo held the gun steady on them, Sam first tied up the orderly, then the nurse. With the gun pointed right at their heads, they knew better than to resist.

“I appreciate you being civilized about this all. No reason anybody has to get hurt here tonight. Where is she?”

“Down the hall, to the right, room 157.”

“You have staff on duty?”

“We’re the only ones left for tonight,” the nurse said.

“Okay, good. We’re going to lock you up in this room in here—you can see how it feels to be in a cage, like these poor people are, for a little while. You make any noise, I will kill you. Push any buttons, do anything to get in my way, and I will kill you. All I want is the woman, so if you have any brains at all, you’ll just sit quiet and let me take care of my business. You got it?”

They both nodded.

“You don’t want to be dead for something as simple as that, I’m pretty sure.”

Sam pushed them into the storage room and locked them in. The surveillance camera system monitors were behind the desk. Jimbo disconnected the system, hoping the nurse had been telling the truth, otherwise they were going to have company. He flipped
through the medical charts until he found Jamie’s—that was going to be a big help to Doc. He handed it to Sam. “I’ll be carrying Jamie out. You keep this.”

They stood back, waiting to see if anyone responded to the system being down, but no one came. Jimbo figured in a storm like the one they were in, nobody would have even questioned it. And then, it was late in the night and the place was empty. They moved stealthily through the main hall, making their way to Jamie’s room as fast as they could.

There was Jamie, white as a corpse, out cold on the bed. Jimbo almost gasped at the sight of her—he thought she was surely dead by the looks of her, but when he put his fingers to her throat, he got a pulse. It was weak, but she was alive. He detached the saline drip, bundled her up as best he could in the blankets, and swept Jamie’s limp body into his arms and then over his shoulder. Sam ripped the shower curtain off the hooks to help protect her from getting drenched, and then, just as quickly as they had found their way down the dark corridors, they made their way to the exit, with Jamie in tow.

Everything went without a hitch: nobody dead, nobody hurt, and Jamie was alive.

“You know the way back to the ship from here?” he asked Sam as they ran through the storm to the car.

Sam nodded and got right into the driver’s seat. Jimbo laid Jamie in the back, and then got in the backseat with her, holding her in his arms to keep her warm. Sam pulled off the mask and then crawled out the driveway, slowly at first and then, once he hit the main road, he pushed the car as fast as he could risk driving through the flooded streets. The waterfront was taking the worst pounding, and the flooding got worse as they got closer to the port.

“What happens when we get to the ship? Do you have any idea what comes next?” Sam said, watching the road while he talked to Jimbo in the back.

“I’m making this up as I go along, boy, but I know how it plays out for you. You drop us off at the ship, and then you take the car and drive into town. Stay out of the West End—it’s going to get the full brunt of the tsunami, if it hits. Get into a place inland and check into the top floor. You got money?”

“I’ve got a few bucks and plenty of plastic.”

“All the better. You need to create a trail for yourself: your cover. Don’t park in the hotel garage—leave the car on the street somewhere. All the better if they tow it, so don’t worry about that. You go in, looking a little drunk, and make a scene at check-in. You’ll be creating a story line, so you want people to remember you coming in. You tell them you’re with USOIL and you’re looking for another employee—Liz Bartholomew. Ask if she’s checked in yet.” Jimbo leaned over the seat. “You go into the lobby bar and get a drink—hang out, look drunk, be public about it. Sit at the bar … play the bartender, you know what I mean? Talk bullshit—he could be questioned down the road, if it gets to that. Just repeat the story—bad storm, lost your phone, your girl … and you tied one on. You think you can pull that off?”

“No sweat, Jimbo. I can do obnoxious real well.”

“That’s true, Sammy boy. You can.”

They managed a laugh in the middle of chaos unfolding.

“No matter who you talk to—and I’m telling you loud and clear—trust no one—you have one story. You left me at the Crow’s Nest sometime in the night, you can’t remember … we drank a lot. Rain was pouring down hard, you wanted to find your girlfriend. You understand?”

“Yeah, I got it.”

“One of the guys in the bar was going into town—you got a lift in, because there were no taxis, and you figured it was safest to stay in town, a ways from the harbor—so that’s why you went there.”

“But the bartender saw us leave together.”

“Don’t you worry about that—these are my people. They know how to do discreet.”

Sam took a right onto a street that was flooded out a few feet ahead of them. In the darkness of that night, they barely caught it in time to avoid plunging the car into the river that was forming.

“Damn! Back this sucker up!” Jimbo cried.

Sam threw the car into reverse and pulled them out, just in time. Close call. “Now what? I don’t know any other way to get down to the port.”

“Move over—I know these streets,” Jimbo said. He got out of the back, resting Jamie’s head where he’d been sitting, and got behind the wheel. As Mat had told Jamie, Jimbo could navigate his way around water, all right. Even in a car. He headed back up the road, took a side street, and came back down another way, cutting through town, driving down a one-way street. Nobody was out driving. It was a risk he had to take, and it paid off. It brought them to Harbor Drive, two minutes from where the ship was berthed. The streets were flooded, but the worst was about to happen. The ocean water was almost as high as the pier itself—before long, the streets would be gone.

Jimbo guided the car into the driveway, past the desolate guard station, where, fortunately, no one was to be found.

“What’s going to happen to you and Jamie?”

“Huh, that’s a question I cannot even think about—don’t know how this is gonna go. You just do what I say, boy—and don’t look back. Make sure you’ve got your cover clear in your mind. You lost your phone in the storm, your clothes are on the ship, you tied one on big when you couldn’t find your babe last night.”

Sam nodded.

“Wait for the latest CNN report in the morning, and then call your old man and tell him
The Deepwater
sailed, to get out far from the coast, in case a tsunami made it in, and you missed it. Let him
get you home, safe, and you stay with your daddy for a while. That’s where you need to weather this storm. Okay? We’re out of time—you go now.”

Sam handed Jimbo the medical chart.

“On your way to the hotel, when you’ve cleared the flooded streets down here, find a pay phone somewhere and call 911. Tell them there’s a couple of staff locked up in the admitting office over at the Psychiatric Facility. We can’t leave these people locked up with a tsunami coming in.”

“I will.”

“Make sure it’s a pay phone—make the call fast. No more than five seconds tops, and walk right away.” Jimbo opened the door and stepped into water up to his calves. Sam started to get out too, but Jimbo stopped him. “You gotta get this car out of here, while you still can.”

“Let me at least help you carry her aboard.”

“No. I got it. It’s safer if nobody sees you. Don’t look back—just follow the story and you’ll be safe, you understand? You can walk away from this, Sam. You get near that ship, your cover is gone—any one of them could be a witness. I don’t know who’s who anymore.” He opened the back door and as gently as he could, and without saying another word, he lifted Jamie’s fragile body out of the car, having first stashed the records under the blankets that enveloped her, and then he carried her, draped in his arms, through the water, up the ramp to
The Deepwater
.

“I’ll catch up with you somewhere down the road,” Sam called out after him, knowing that, most likely, it would never happen. He watched Jimbo, his hero, walk away, with Jamie in his strong arms, to whatever safety they could find there. He waited until they disappeared from his line of vision: this bigger-than-life man, his hero, and the enigmatic messenger, intertwined in the strangest of destinies … one that began, and was most likely to end, in the deep.

It took all the strength Jimbo possessed to pull the door to the ship’s lounge open. The crew was there, confused and annoyed, waiting for an explanation as to why they were being called back to duty. In conditions where no ships could sail, with a tsunami warning out, they needed to be home with their families, not rolling around on the rough water, waiting for Jimbo. He walked in, drenched through, and laid Jamie down on the couch just as he felt she was about to slip out from his arms.

“Good god!” Doc cried. He knew there had to be big trouble coming down, but never could he have imagined anything like this. At the sight of an exhausted Jimbo carrying Jamie’s inert body, the crew’s attitude shifted immediately.

The captain removed his dripping trench coat and handed it to Alberto. “We need so much help right now, I’m not sure where to start.” There was a lake around them from the water he’d carried in. Doc removed the water-soaked blankets and the plastic shower curtain from Jamie. Bobby grabbed some wool scarves and a couple of jackets from the rack and they covered her, as best they could.

Doc started giving orders: “Start by changing out of those clothes, Jim. You’re drenched through to the bone. Dom, get me towels and blankets—throw them in the microwave, then bring them to sickbay.”

Jimbo was cold and exhausted. For the first time in his life, he felt old—like he was over, somehow—finished. “Take charge for me, Doc. You see her chart’s there. I need a hot shower.” He headed for his quarters. “Where’s Fin?”

“We’ve got him locked up in the bridge. He tried to run after you—we couldn’t manage him.”