The Memory Collector (49 page)

“I’m a doctor and a San Francisco Police Department liaison. We need hazmat decontamination. We have a blood-borne pathogen. Universal exposure control precautions.”

Kanan pulled himself upright. He threw two pistols on the tarmac beside the rifle and limped toward his family. He was a mess, but the expression suffusing his face, erasing all his pain, was joy.

Jo ran halfway to him and held up her hands. “Stop, Ian. You’ve been contaminated with Slick. You can’t touch anybody until you’ve been cleaned up.”

He halted, swaying, and stretched a hand toward his wife. “Misty.”

Misty approached Jo’s side. Her face looked ready to crumble. “Ian.”

“Does Riva have a weapon?” Jo said.

He shook his head. “Negative.”

She felt tension loosen and dissipate into the sky. Inside the terminal, people pressed against the plate-glass windows, staring and pointing. On the tarmac, ground crew and baggage handlers approached. The driver of a fuel tanker opened his door and stepped out onto the running board. In the loaded 737, passengers jostled to see what was happening. The captain jogged down the stairs from the Jetway. Cameras flashed.

The scene was chaos, Kanan and Seth were injured, and behind the swell of jet engines she heard police sirens. She would probably get hauled to jail.

The night felt glorious.

It was over. Jo knew what she was feeling: primal exhilaration. She had survived.

The firefighters pulled on gloves and protective eyewear. Jo did likewise, snapping on a pair of latex gloves and putting on plastic safety glasses. She said, “Favor?” and wangled a coat and stethoscope from them. If she assumed the trappings of authority, she might keep the police off her back temporarily.

Kanan stretched a hand toward Seth. “Christ—you’re wounded.” He called in distress to the firefighters. “My son’s been hit. Help him. The bastards shot my son.”

Two firefighters grabbed a medical kit and ran to attend to Seth. Another fire truck pulled up by the wrecked pickup and began spraying it with firefighting foam.

Kanan wobbled on his feet, lost his balance, and fell to his knees. Jo followed a firefighter-paramedic to his side.

“Hold still, buddy.” The firefighter began examining Kanan. “What’s this?”

Under his penlight, Jo saw the message written on Kanan’s arm. It now read
Saturday they died.

Kanan stared at it, then looked at Seth, flat on the tarmac, and Misty, standing back, hand pressed to her mouth. He reread the message with horror.

“What the hell’s been happening?” he said.

Jo took a gauze pack from the firefighter’s medical kit and poured Betadine on it. She knelt at Kanan’s side.

“You kept your family alive,” she said.

She rubbed the writing off of Kanan’s skin. But though the words disappeared, he continued staring at his arm.

He looked up at her. “It won’t ever go away, will it?”

It broke her heart to know what he meant. “No.”

He would never know, for more than five minutes at a stretch, that his family was safe. If they were in front of him he would feel elated and wild with relief. If they left his sight he would forget and plunge again into despair.

“Every few minutes, you’ll reset to the last thing you recall before your injury,” she said.

“I’ll always think they’re gone and that I’ll never get to them in time.”

He would wake up every morning in fear and grief. It would never lessen.

“Did I hunt down the bastards who took them?” he said.

“Yes.”

He nodded, but his satisfaction was short-lived. “In a few minutes I’ll try to hunt them down again, won’t I?”

The firefighter touched Jo’s shoulder. “Excuse me, doctor.”

Jo stood and let him get to work. All Kanan’s memories—the truth, reality—would be collected, and he would be left only with the unresolved crisis.

The emergency lights danced over the scene, turning it glaring primary colors, red and blue, adding to the white aircraft landing lights. Fourth of July in March. Kanan and Misty looked at each other. Ian’s pale eyes were full of tears.

“Woman, you’re the best thing I’ll ever see.”

“We’re okay, hon. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Her voice was thready. Jo put an arm around her shoulder. Misty smiled uncertainly at her.

“Ian,” Jo said. “Do you remember being in contact with Slick?”

“In Zambia.”

“Tonight?”

“No. Why?” And then his eyes said that he knew. “Second exposure would be fatal, wouldn’t it?”

Jo nodded. “The firefighters are going to take you through decontamination and then get you to the hospital.”

“Good.”

She turned to Misty. “Don’t let Ian lose eye contact with you. Not even for a minute. Got it?”

Sadness and fear curved across Misty’s face. “Got it.”

Kanan raised a hand. “Don’t worry. I’m never letting them out of my sight again. That’s a promise.”

Jo stepped away, took out Murdock’s phone, and dialed a number.

It was answered brusquely. “Quintana.”

She heard Gabe’s voice and her throat caught, her spirits soared, straight into a cloud of tears.

“It’s me. I’m okay. It’s over,” she said.

“Where are you? Where’s Kanan?” Gabe said.

“The San Jose airport. Quintana, you don’t know how good you sound. Where are you?”

“I just got out of police custody. I’m on the 101 halfway to Moffett. Jo, where’s—”

The whoop of a police siren erased his question.

“What did you say, Gabe?” She smiled. She couldn’t help it.

“Where’s Kanan’s backpack?”

“I don’t know.” She looked around. She didn’t see it by the pickup or in the trail of debris thrown out of the pickup in the crash.

“His computer battery is in the backpack,” Gabe said. “It’s packed with Slick, and it’s destabilized. Jo, where is it?”

She walked toward the truck, searching. Heard Riva rustling around inside the cab, groaning and trying to slither out the sunroof.

“I don’t see a backpack,” she said.

“Jo, get the hell out of there. It’s a bomb.”

Jo Beckett, M.D., forensic psychiatrist, was no chump. So she told herself. She knew all the psychological defenses. Denial. Bargaining. Rationalization, projection, isolation, schizoid breaks, binge eating. And she told herself she had a handle on her own defenses, which meant that a crisis couldn’t blindside her. Life, and training, and catastrophe had whupped all surprises out of her. When it came to emergencies, she was a sprinter out of the blocks. She had world-class reaction times. Fire a starter’s pistol and
pow,
she’d go.

But she stood on the tarmac and felt that Gabe’s words had come at her from behind a sheet of glass, like light, and had bounced off.

“What do you mean, a bomb?”

“Kanan’s computer battery contains the sample of Slick. It’s about to explode. Do you hear me, Jo? Grab your goddamned ass and
run.
”

The noise of the entire world seemed to rush through the glass. And the scene spread out before her, in its shining, tangled horror.

Kanan spent and damaged behind her. Seth bleeding on the tarmac. People in the terminal. People on loaded airliners. Ten, twelve big jets, plus fire, police, paramedics rolling up by the minute. And the truck driver hopping down from the running board to jog over and offer his help. The truck driver from the gleaming jet fuel tanker. Wings. Full of fuel. A fleet of fire waiting to ignite.

“Oh, my God, Gabe—can . . . oh, shit. We need the bomb squad.”

“There’s no time. The sample’s volatile, it’s eating through the container, and when it gets sufficiently oxygenated, it’ll explode. Clear the area.”

She looked around. “We can’t.”

“Kanan’s army buddy was with him when Kanan armed the device. He gave it seventy minutes maximum before it went up.”

“How long has it been?”

“Ninety-two.”

She seemed to itch, to tingle, to feel like she was rooted to the tarmac. “Can we contain it?”

“I can’t predict how big the explosion will be. The best you can hope is to sequester it inside a fortified steel bunker. Jo. It. Is. Going. To. Blow.”

“Stay on the line.”

She jammed the phone in her pocket and sprinted to the nearest police car. If Slick exploded and sent the fuel tanker and jetliners sky-high, the blast would kill everyone on the tarmac and trap hundreds in burning jetliners—bleeding, embedded with shrapnel, all impregnated with Slick.

She grabbed a police officer. “I’m an SFPD liaison. I’m on the phone with the California Air National Guard. There’s a bomb in the pickup truck and it’s going to explode.”

He searched her face. His gaze hardened. “You’re positive?”

“Yes.”

He turned and began waving people back. “Clear the area.” He called to a fire captain. “Get people off these planes.”

“What’s wrong?”

Jo turned. Kanan was calling to her.

“Ian, your backpack’s in the truck. Slick’s eating through the seal in your computer battery, and when it does, it’s going to explode.”

“When?”

“Any second. It’s past the time you estimated.”

“I estimated? Why would I set it to . . .” He turned and stared in horror at the airliners and emergency vehicles. “We have to get it out of here.”

“How?” Jo said.

He struggled to his feet. “Drive it away from here. Keep it in an enclosed space.”

“Like an SUV?” She pointed to the Tahoe.

“Yes.” He took a step, patting his pockets. “Keys.”

“In the ignition.”

The firefighters lifted Seth onto a stretcher and rushed him toward an ambulance. Misty hadn’t moved.

Kanan reached into his pocket and pulled out a ring. He looked at it, puzzled.

From inside the wrecked pickup came a whump and an unladylike grunt. Calder had managed to undo her seat belt. She slithered from the wreck covered in firefighting foam.

She had the backpack in her hands. Kanan limped toward her.

“No,” Misty said. “Ian, stop.”

Kanan looked at the rifle he had set on the tarmac, at Seth, and back at his wife. “How did he get hit?”

Jo and Misty said nothing. He scanned their faces. It sank in.

“I’ll be back,” he said.

“Ian, no.” Misty rushed toward him. “Don’t do this. You promised. You said you’d never let us out of your sight. Stop—a second exposure will kill you.”

A cop ran over and ushered her away from the pickup. “Come on. Move, quick.”

Kanan checked his watch. To Jo he said, “I have time. I can do it.”

Calder dropped to her knees on the tarmac and pulled the computer battery from the backpack. She looked across the runway, toward the waiting Chira-Sayf corporate jet, as though she might try to crawl to it. Through the firefighting foam, the battery was bubbling.

Misty fought to get loose from the cop. “Ian, don’t leave us. You can’t. We need you. For God’s sake, don’t. You’ll be contaminated with a second dose. You’ll die. You can’t do this to us.”

Kanan looked at her and his face broke. His resolve crumbled.

He turned to Jo. “I can’t.”

A suffocating fear took hold of her. Aboard the 737 she saw people jostling frantically in the aisles. Inside the terminal, pandemonium had erupted. Amid sirens and shouting, firefighters were loading Seth into the ambulance.

Misty battled the cop as he ushered her away. “Stop. Get your hands off me.”

Kanan watched. With a broken breath, he said, “Let me forget.”

“What?” Jo said.

“I can do it if I forget all this.” He limped toward her. “If I forget I have my family back. And forget what will happen if I’m exposed again. Then I can do it.”

Jo stared at him in horror. “Ian—”

“I caused this. I have to undo it.”

She got control of her voice. “If you drive too long, you’ll forget what’s happening. Go too far and you’ll keep going. You might head straight back to a populated area.”

He pointed at a patch of dirt a quarter of a mile down the runway. “Twenty seconds.”

Her heart pounded. “You sure?”

“Help me. Keep Misty and Seth out of my sight.”

She held his gaze. Then she turned and dashed to the firefighting crew. “Put Mrs. Kanan in the back of the ambulance with Seth and shut the door. I don’t have time to explain. Just do it.”

Misty was struggling to get free of the police officer. The firefighters called to him. “Bring Mrs. Kanan to the ambulance. Hurry.”

The cop dragged Misty toward it. She twisted in his grasp.

“What’s happening?” She looked at Jo, and then at her husband. “What are you doing?”

The cop and firefighters lifted her bodily into the ambulance and shut the doors.

Jo turned to Kanan. “Follow me.”

She led him out of sight of the ambulance. “Close your eyes.”