by James A Ross
No answer.
“Susan! That non-overlapping immune system out there is going to come back in here and slaughter me! Then he’s going to do whatever he’s got planned for what’s on that boat—which I doubt is world peace, if he had to kill me to do it.”
Seconds passed. Tom could no longer hear Hassad’s voice. Whatever the argument had been, it was over. Footsteps approached the back of his chair. He braced for the blow or the coup de gras, or whatever was going to come next… and last.
Pale fingers tore at the tape over his wrists. Gossamer hair swept his chest.
“Hurry,” he said.
Susan clawed the tape with her nails and then with her teeth.
“Find a knife.”
But as he spoke, Hassad shouted. Footsteps pounded across the floor. Hassad’s pistol slammed against the side of Susan’s head. He lifted the phone in his other hand and screamed into it what was unmistakably a curse. The arm with the gun straightened in the direction of Susan’s fall. Tom could see red welling through wheat, but he could not see Hassad. Susan moved her head from side to side, mouthing, but not speaking. She struggled to her feet beyond Tom’s line of vision. Hassad cursed again – at Susan, into the phone, at himself… The blast of his gun, contained and amplified by glass and concrete, was deafening.
Tom had no thoughts or sensations. He did not know if he had been shot… only that he was not yet dead. Cogito ergo sum. Footsteps hurried from the room and then returned. A thin cold blade penetrated the tape and skin at his wrist. The hand holding the blade carved backwards and then moved to the other wrist and ankles in quick order. Blood oozed through severed flesh, cloth and bond.
“Move!” Hassad hissed.
Tom pitched to the floor, hands slipping in a pool of blood. Hassad yanked him to his feet. A litany of foreign curses spewed from his throat. On the path leading to the bluff, Tom pitched forward onto his hands and knees. Hassad put a boot to his ribs.
Tom fell again on the steps and on the seawall. The Dobermans barked in frenzy at the smell of blood. Hassad shoved him into the pilot’s seat, cast off the lines and braced himself against the cuddy. The dogs jumped into the boat.
Dazed and exhausted, each breathe was an agony. Susan was surely dead and Hassad would just as surely kill him once they got to wherever he wanted Tom to pilot the boat.
“Move!” Hassad shouted. His gun traced a palsied ellipse in front of Tom’s face.
The wind had died just as Susan had predicted, and the swells at the mouth of the inlet had fallen to less than a foot. There was no moon or stars. Grey clouds covered the sky to the horizon.
“North,” Hassad ordered.
Tom turned the wheel and eased out of the cove.
“Faster!”
Tom opened the throttle. The police cruiser surged and began to skim over the water. Hassad shouted instructions… curses. Tom was no longer listening. His eyes were locked onto the nautical compass.
Hassad pressed the pistol to his cheek. “North!” he screamed.
Tom looked away and let the wheel drift to port. The speedometer read twelve knots and climbing. Hassad screamed again as the boat held steady at north north west. Oblivious to the gun beneath his eye, Tom turned and looked over his shoulder. The impact felt like being struck in the back by a falling tree.
A hundred yards north north west of Pocket Island, the propellers of the twin Sea Witch engines caught the underwater ledge known to local boaters as Sunken Island. The transom of the patrol boat shot clear of the water and fell back with a spine-fusing jolt. Hassad flew the length of the deck and through the door of the cuddy. The Dobermans barked in panic and at each other. The outboard propellers ground the underwater obstruction, screaming metallic agony. Hassad struggled to pull himself upright. When the props regained clear water, Tom leapt over the side.
* * *
His body sank.
Icy water paralyzed limb and thought. He tried to turn his torso toward light, but his limbs would not respond. His body felt like a pillar encased in wraps. He did not try to hold his breath or struggle not to breathe. Those mechanisms were locked and frozen. What senses still functioned told him that he was drifting. Thoughts came at widely spaced intervals.
Hassad shut off the engine and flipped a toggle above the symbol of an anchor on the panel behind the wheel. A splash and the sound of scrapping chain followed. The boat began to swing at the bow and then steadied. The dogs were already in the water.
Tom felt the thud of anchor hitting rock and heard the grind of chain against hull. Seconds into the icy water, his brain had gone someplace else, but he could feel it returning. No light… only wet and cold. He could not see his body.
Then boots scrapped something firm and his legs extended to feel bottom. Opposite would be up and air. Boots found muck, pushed hard, rose inches and then settled again.
Longer than he could have believed or imagined, his head breached the surface. Lungs hauled air and then froze in mid-bellows. Wheezing gasps triggered answering growls. He could not stop choking. He might just as well have rung a dinner bell. The Doberman was on him in seconds.
Pointed teeth skewered his frozen shoulder. Hardened claws raked his torso. A mangled hand found the canine’s collar, but the dog’s grip was a lock. Tom felt the grind of canine teeth on human bone. Then they began to sink. Holding tight to the dog’s collar, he twisted, but otherwise ceased to struggle. His only advantage now was his awareness of mortality and a determined attachment to it. Somewhere along the endless descent, the canine released its grip, but Tom continued to twist.
Toes entered muck. He began to count: one thousand one, one thousand two. He twisted the studded collar hard. The canine raked his claws the length of Tom’s torso. Frenzied jaws snapped empty water. Tom held tight, and with all his remaining strength, twisted. One thousand nineteen… one thousand twenty.
Claws and teeth turned away.
One thousand thirty. Tom released the leather strap, felt for bottom and pushed hard.
Up and air was impossibly far this time. He could not lie to his lungs now. They knew the truth. But he told them that they had no choice but to hold or to fill with life ending water. Waving arms and scissoring legs, he tried to banish thought. When air came, it was like an awakening from a long, cold sleep.
Hassad heard the splash and turned the patrol boat spotlight toward the sound. The second Doberman answered with a frenzied bark. Tom filled his lungs and treaded water. When the dog lunged, he surrendered his body and took the canine’s studded collar.
* * *
Joe tied the Dooley’s jon boat to the trunk of a massive beech tree, its smooth, gray bark scarred with hearts and initials as high as young passion could reach. There was no hope of finding a path through the overgrown woods. He scrambled blind through thickets of laurel and blow-down pine, then followed the ridge at the top of the hill to a stark glass and concrete octagon at the edge of the bluff.
Holding the riot gun in his outstretched hands, he approached the rear of the house. Inside, Susan Pearce lay sprawled beside the hearth of a double fireplace, cold to the touch. Flags of severed duct tape hung from the arms of a wooden chair that faced the row of windows overlooking the lake. There was no sign of Tommy.
Blood-streaked footprints painted a grisly path through the snow leading to the cove. The sound of waves drifted up from below. From somewhere beyond came the menacing bark of an angry dog. Joe dropped to his haunches and cocked an ear to the sound. There were no boat noises or any human sound. But the howl of frenzied predator closing on its prey was clear and close. Joe sprinted back through the pitch black woods to where he had left the Dooley’s boat.
* * *
Tom’s head breached the surface. Hassad swung the spotlight toward the splash. The struggle with the dogs had carried Tom far astern of the crippled police boat. Sunken Island was somewhere close, but he could not tell where. His left arm was stiff and useless where the dogs had mauled it. He had no feeling
below the knees. Little strength remained to swim or even to stay afloat.
A sharp whistle skimmed across the water, followed by a harsh, guttural shout. “You can die without my further help, Mr. Morgan!”
The spotlight on the patrol boat stuttered like a broken metronome. Tom paddled beyond its reach and listened to an anchor winch groan. He leaned into the waves and kicked feebly.
“It shouldn’t be much longer,” Hassad shouted. The scream of battered outboards overwhelmed the rest of the outburst.
Tom tried to kicked harder and stroke with his one good arm. Hassad’s high-pitched taunts struck cold, hollow notes of madness. But it did not make them untrue. It was unlikely Tom could survive long in this frigid water. His teeth were cracked from chattering. He’d lost all feeling in face and limb. But he forced himself to kick with two legs and paddle with his one good arm. If his body quit, so be it. But he would not let his mind give the order, or assent to it.
He kicked again, though he could no longer sense movement, and raked the water with his one good arm. When the image of a resurrected canine flashed across the back of his eyelids, he withdrew his mind. When numbed extremities signaled stalled movement, he brought himself back. Misery crouched on his shredded shoulder and whispered surrender.
A needle-like pain stabbed the back of his leg. He shot a panicked hand to stop it. Knuckles scraped ragged hardness. Fingers touched where hard and soft connected. Numbed brain thawed the answer to what had punctured the back of his leg. Had his frozen face retained the required mobility, he would have laughed. His butt had found Sunken Island in the dark.
The tiny voice that sometimes appears when you’re about to do something stupid, hissed at Tom to be thankful, sit still and keep his mouth shut. Instead, he braced himself on the underwater rock, gathered breath and shouted.
“Yo!” His throat was raw and his lungs shredded, but he continued to bellow. “Eat shit and die, asshole!” Tom struggled to his feet and staggered noisily through the shin-deep shallows. The spotlight from the patrol boat leapt toward the sound. As the boat drew nearer, he dropped and rolled to his back, as if he were afloat in deep water. The twin Sea Witch outboards roared and the thirty-foot cruiser leapt through a cone of halogen light. Tom lifted his one good arm and waved. The battered cruiser hydroplaned erratically through the water like a wounded shark. The bow-mounted spotlight bounced above and around its target, losing and then finding it again. Tom could see Hassad’s face in the halo of light—cadaverous and grim. He could see his eyes, mad and murderous. The little voice screamed at Tom to be quiet and lie still. He crouched in the shallow water, extended his arm and raised a finger.
The thunder of colliding rock and boat was orgasmic.
Twin six hundred pound outboards knifed their skegs into the edge of Sunken Island. Twelve thousand pounds of forward thrust ripped the engines from the transom and the transom from the boat. The butt-less police cruiser skidded a dozen yards and began to settle at the stern. Within seconds it was underwater.
CHAPTER 31
Tom lay in a Coldwater Hospital bed, wrapped shoulder to shin in tight, white bandage. Clear thin tubes snaked between layers of gauze on either side of his body. One drained from his crotch, another from beneath his arm pit. He could move his head and one of his arms, but everything else was wrapped tight. A fat nurse with a faint mustache helped him with the essentials.
A week of dozing and watching cable television began to heal his body. But his head and soul felt flayed beyond repair. When he thought about Susan, the fingers around his heart closed in a fist. When he thought about his busted career, they moved to his gut. The sessions with Johnsen and his pals were almost a welcome distraction.
The BARDA boys started questioning him even before the painkillers kicked in, and they kept at it until they’d sucked everything he had to give. They wanted to know about Frankie, Billy, Susan and Joe, and each of their histories and interconnections. They asked little about Hassad, realizing early that he knew little. They focused instead on Coldwater’s legacy of live and let live cross-border commerce, spending hours on the Heller junkyard depot, and even longer on MadDog Morgan’s “scheme” to send his sons north every summer to perfect their “foreign language.” Who had Tom stayed with? Who had he met? Who had he slept with? It was obvious his inquisitors hadn’t a clue what they were looking for. But he fed them answers until they quit asking. It wasn’t like they were going to stop, or that he had any place to go.
Tom asked to see Joe, but Johnsen said he was busy helping them with their inquiries. They let Mary and her friend Herbert come twice, and Bonnie called once with a distraught Luke listening in. The boy needed to hear that his uncle was okay. Tom babbled in Pig Latin, telling Luke that he should take his dad and Mr. Thompson out to try and catch that big salmon.
Between naps, Tom lay thinking about Susan, her theory about happiness, about the Eurocon mess and how he’d better get used to the idea of “starting over again” at nearly forty, and how he needed to get to the mental place where that felt like an opportunity and not an unjust punishment. But what it really felt like was spiritual and financial bankruptcy, with the specter of jail at the end.
He knew he should call Silverstein, but he didn’t have the energy. CNN and Headline News were running endless, breathless ‘terrorist foiled’ stories. But none of them mentioned Susan Pearce, Pocket Island or the Morgan brothers. That pissed him off, but he watched anyway. It was a distraction.
Some octogenarian named Inglesby gave a scary interview about aerosolized anthrax and the frightening implications of what BARDA was rumored to have found in a small boathouse in upstate New York. A spokesperson for the State Police held a press conference and replied to questions, but offered no meaningful answers.
Joe finally showed up at the hospital on day ten. The rings under his eyes would have done justice to a marsupial. “You made a mess out there, brother. Floating dogs. A Demolition Derby with police property….”
“Skip it,” Tom growled. “Where’ve you been?”
“Feds let me out on a day pass.”
“Are they getting anything out of Hassad?”
“Last I saw his professorship, he was stranded on Sunken Island, up to his gonads in ice water. Punk was screaming like a baby when I plucked you out and left him there.”
“But they have him, don’t they? None of the stuff they’ve been asking me makes any sense if you just left him there.”
“After I got you back to the marina, I had Mickey Dooley take Johnsen and his pals out to pluck his professorship out of his ice bath. But I’m not supposed to talk about any of that.”
“Since when do you do what you’re told?” Tom waved a bandaged hand at the television. “I’ve been listening to that gibberish for a week. They haven’t got a clue.”
“Joe shrugged. “The divers got pretty much everything from the patrol boat you sunk. But I hear the lab boys aren’t too excited by any of it. Trunks full of pea powder and vials of bupkis. They also found a car in Frankie’s garage rigged to spread powder.”
“They were excited about that a few days ago.”
“That was when they thought they’d stumbled onto a terrorist factory. But Hassad’s story is that he was going to have Billy drive one of these powder jalopies around town and settle a few old scores. A half a dozen people, max. Not thousands.”
“They’re briefing you? I thought you were on their village idiot shit-list.”
“Still am. Most of this comes from that Dr. Dyer. He wants to do a paper on my blood. Man Mountain that abrin couldn’t kill. I let him leech me twice a week as long as he passes on the agency gossip. Johnsen’s been running a few things by me, too. He calls it ‘what if’ brainstorming. But it’s pretty clear he’s checking out pieces of Hassad’s story. He’s also asked me to look into a few things. Who knows, maybe they’ll make me an honorary G-man when this is over.”
“Do they believe Hassad’s story?”
“They’ve
had him for a week. If he’s sticking to the same story through what I imagine they must be doing to him, I’d say it’s probably true. I’m told he coughed up the cell in Montreal right away. The Mounties pulled in a couple of grad students and two shop keepers.”
“The ones in the grocery store I visited? Who didn’t know Hassad or U-Labs?”
“Sounds like it. Apparently they all met at this fire and brimstone mosque. One of them is from a place where they use abrin to kill cows. He came up with the car and powder idea. Hassad’s story is that, being a chemist, he knew from the beginning it wouldn’t work on any large scale. Something about aerosolizing a spore like anthrax being one thing, and doing it to a compound like abrin being another.”
“So why go ahead with it?”
“He says he got the idea of using the brotherhood to help him settle some old scores, with no one the wiser if things went wrong. Dyer says they tested the powder in those trunks and found it wouldn’t blow more than ten feet out of the homemade dust boxes Frankie made. So that part’s true.”
“What was his plan for actually using the stuff?”
“I don’t know. Johnsen hasn’t ‘brainstormed’ that part yet. But I have this mental image of Hassad coming up behind one of the Cashins on Main Street and jabbing him with an umbrella, while Billy rides by pulling the plug on one of those cars.”
“The Cashins?”
“That’s who Hassad was after. Bobby, his cousin Vinny and a bunch of low life’s who gave him a bad time when he was in school here.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Depends how you feel about getting bent over the hood of a Mustang while Bobby and his cousins take down your pants and have a go at you.”
Tom felt sick. “Is that what happened?”
“Yep. You know how the Cashins and that crowd feel about ‘furiners.’ One of them saw Hassad and Susan together out on Pocket Island and got his pals together to teach the brown boy a lesson.”
