River of No Return : A Jake Trent Novel (9781451698053)

by Bertsch, David Riley

  He returned downstairs wearing a blue oxford-style button-down that was too snug to be tucked in. He complemented it with Jake’s best pair of blue jeans and gray leather Wallabees.

  J.P.’s sullen mood on the way to the hospital was punctuated by angry rants aimed at Esma’s captor. “I’d like a few minutes with that son of a bitch!”

  Jake assured his friend that it wasn’t worth it. “He’s going to rot in prison. No worse punishment than that.”

  “How long?”

  Jake had checked the Idaho criminal code to quench his own curiosity. “It’s first-degree kidnapping, where there’s intent to . . . uh . . .”

  “Yeah. Go on.”

  “Well, depends on the circumstances.” Jake looked at his friend, who stared eagerly back from the passenger seat.

  He decided to err toward a longer sentence. “Thirty years, maybe.”

  J.P. pondered this for a moment. “Seems short.”

  Jake had to agree.

  The sun was peeking through intermittent clouds as they pulled into the visitor parking at St. John’s.

  Inside, the lobby was empty. Jake and J.P. went straight to the reception desk. The nurse minding the desk looked up awkwardly. He was tense.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Checking in to see Esma,” J.P. said anxiously.

  “Of course.” The nurse picked up the phone and spoke quietly into the mouthpiece. “Visitors for Esma.” A pause for an explanation. “Okay. Thank you.”

  “A doctor will be right out,” the man said.

  “No,” J.P. said faintly, his nerves more obvious now. He shook his head. “I know where the room is, I’ll go myself.” He started toward the far end of the desk, where a corridor led to the ICU.

  The nurse stepped out from behind the counter, hands up, to stop him. Jake jogged toward his friend and restrained him from behind.

  J.P. tried to pull away. “Why? What the fuck is going on?”

  “Everything’s okay,” Jake said. “The doctor is on his way out.”

  “Got him?” the nurse asked Jake, who nodded and eased his writhing friend down into one of the waiting room’s chairs, where he held him by the shoulders. J.P. continued to make a fuss. Jake eyed the red security button on the counter’s edge and prayed the nurse didn’t press it.

  “What the fuck, Jake?” He was nearly hyperventilating, and still trying to get up.

  Jake wondered the same thing. Sepsis was dangerous. But she couldn’t be gone. Jake had seen Esma just a day ago.

  “It’s okay.” Jake was bent over his friend, keeping him planted in the chair.

  “Get someone out here!” Jake shouted.

  The nurse got on the phone again. “I’m telling you to hurry, please! It’s her boyfriend.” When he hung up, he mustered a calm smile toward Jake and J.P.

  “Jake, why won’t they let me in?”

  “They will. Hold on.” J.P. was out of breath from the struggle and close to tears.

  The doctor was a slight woman, barely over five feet. She looked to be in her early forties. She walked fast, which Jake didn’t like the looks of. When she got to them, she held her hand out for J.P., who was too fretful to notice.

  “Dr. Antol,” she said, tucking her hand back to her side. She showed the apparent ambivalence that doctors could sometimes summon in the face of trauma.

  “What the hell is going on?” J.P. was trying to get around her to the corridor. Jake struggled to hold him back, and the nurse started coming around the corner.

  She turned to the reception desk. “Danny, it’s okay. I’m just going to take them back.”

  She walked at a deliberate pace toward the ICU and talked calmly. Jake figured she was trying to work on J.P., manage his emotions before she broke whatever horrible news she had.

  They arrived at a large window looking into a room, where Esma lay unconscious, surrounded by computers and tubes.

  Dr. Antol stood in front of the door, blocking their way for a moment.

  “Esma suffered a fibrillation of the heart.”

  J.P. was distracted; he stared through the window at Esma’s inert body.

  “Hey, do you know what that means?” The doctor reached for his shoulder. It startled him.

  J.P. looked up and shook his head. “No.” His face was ghost white. Another nurse went into the room, checked the monitors and the IVs, and left.

  “An hour ago, Esma’s heart rhythm became dangerously weak and inconsistent, which is called a fibrillation. We revived her with CPR and the defibrillator. She is stable now.”

  “How?”

  “It’s not always clear why it happens. We think in this case the sepsis may have been the cause.”

  “The infection?”

  “Yes,” the doctor answered. “Or possibly stress from the incident, or some combination of both.”

  “Is she going to . . . ?”

  “Her heart is functioning normally. The sepsis is still an issue. She is on a heavy dose of antibiotics.”

  Jake could tell that J.P. wanted to fight back, tell them to work harder, save Esma no matter what, but an air of resignation washed over him.

  “So there’s a chance she’ll be okay? When can I see her?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  * * *

  Jake did his best to comfort J.P. in the lobby, where he insisted on staying until they kicked him out at 9:00 p.m. When his friend was calm, Jake stepped up to the desk.

  “I’d like to see another patient, please. Allen Ridley.”

  “I’ll have to have someone come and take you back.” The nurse was unwilling to leave J.P. alone.

  Allen’s room, outside the Radiology wing, was a brighter scene. The man was awake, watching a late-night show, and eating flavored ice out of a plastic cup.

  Jake knocked as he entered. “There’s our hero.”

  “Hardly.” He chuckled. “Like my outfit?” Allen nodded down at his gown.

  “Armani? Hey, you’ve still got your leg though. That’s a nice accessory.”

  “Couldn’t let the volleyball team down.”

  Jake collapsed into the chair beside the biologist, rested his elbows on his knees, and leaned forward. Words came pouring out.

  “We’re in a mess here.”

  Allen listened for a long time—about Esma and the chief, Divya, and the murder at the Game and Fish warehouse. It was a rare occasion that Jake confided in someone like this.

  “That’s not a mess,” Allen said when Jake finished. “That’s a goddamned train wreck.”

  This made Jake laugh. “You saved our asses, you know, Allen. Saved Esma.”

  “That remains to be seen, sounds like.”

  “What do I do?” Jake was tired now. At his wit’s end.

  “You do what I did when you needed my help. Trust yourself. You were made for this.”

  Jake scratched at the stubble on his face.

  “Now get out of here. I haven’t been able to relax and watch TV since they put me in that damned cabin.”

  39

  IDAHO FALLS, IDAHO. OCTOBER 26.

  10 A.M. MOUNTAIN STANDARD TIME.

  The senator was pacing behind the desk in the front office of the lab. He’d released his aides and staff for the recess, citing a need for personal time. Meirong sat still, turning her head only to watch him.

  He was thinking hard.

  “And she survived, the Mexican? Or we don’t know?”

  Meirong nodded first, unsure whether talking would enrage him further. She chanced it. “Don’t know.”

  Instead, he reset himself. “Okay. Where do we go from here?”

  “I think the fibrillator is good, I . . .”

  “No. What’s our exposure?”

  “What?”

  Canart raise
d his voice again. “Can they find this place?”

  Meirong spoke confidently now. “No. Materials are sourced from all over. Some handcrafted. They won’t be able to find the origin of the tracker or the fibrillator.”

  “Can they somehow reverse-trace the signal?”

  Meirong let out a little laugh, which drew a glare from Canart. Her face became serious again. “No. Our software is better than that.”

  Canart moved on. “Any luck on microsizing?”

  “Just a matter of getting the battery smaller, but still strong enough.”

  “And?”

  “We have some ideas.”

  “Fine. Keep me up-to-date. I have to get home for dinner.”

  The senator checked his phone, muttered something in frustration, and put on his suit jacket.

  “You’re leaving?”

  “I have a family and a career, Meirong. What we did was a mistake. The result of too much time working together, that’s all.” He hustled out of the building.

  The Lincoln peeled out of the lot. Meirong slammed the door to the office that was serving as her makeshift sleeping quarters and headed back into the lab.

  It was a skeleton staff: herself and three other researchers. They all had engineering or software degrees, even PhDs, which made communication between her and the group challenging. Communicating had never been easy for Meirong growing up. She understood things—computers, machines, and numbers—but not people. They were too capricious and volatile.

  “Smaller!” she yelled at the men. The goal was to make the device so small as to be nearly undetectable. Her accent exposed itself when she was angry. “Is that so complicated?”

  The energy density of the lithium-limited battery was slowing them down. They had to find a way to pack enough punch into the fibrillator to cause a fatal arrhythmia while downsizing the whole package size and maintaining a steady power source for the GPS unit. How? As it stood, the prototype measured eleven millimeters long and had to be implanted with a large syringe. Ideally, the device would be small enough to be hidden in smaller needles, implanted with vaccines, without detection.

  But the senator’s demand that the entire package measure 20 percent of its current size was outrageous. Impossible.

  “What time is it?” She walked by a man inspecting something under a jewelry scope.

  He pulled up his sleeve. Then tapped the face of his watch. “Dunno. Battery’s dead, I guess.”

  Meirong took one more step and stopped. “How many hours have you been working?”

  He continued working. “Eighteen a day, like the senator said.”

  “All in this seat? Let me see your watch.”

  The man huffed and then obliged, peeling it off his arm and handing it to her.

  “Get up,” she said, and took his seat. “Your battery isn’t dead, idiot.”

  Meirong searched a tool tray for a small file, then grabbed a ball-peen hammer. She laid the timepiece on its bezel and inserted the tip of the file between two layers of steel.

  “Hey, that was a gift! It’s a TAG Heuer!”

  Pnnnk! She hit the file hard with the hammer, and the watch broke apart. With nervous hands, she quickly sorted through the innards.

  “Where are you? Where are you?” She was mumbling. The PhD was wringing his hands—overworked and now witnessing the gory demise of his fine possession.

  “Here!” She held up a damaged string of tiny metal parts, and rushed over to another lab table, where her laptop rested.

  “I’m stupid.” She pounded her fist against her forehead a few times.

  “Wha . . .” The man wasn’t keeping up with her.

  “It’s perpetual motion.” She was typing fast, researching the technology. “The power comes from the movement of your hand as you walk, clap, shake hands, whatever.”

  “So?”

  “It’s the solution to our battery problem.”

  The PhD was on track now. “The torso doesn’t move enough. Our signal would be inconsistent at best. The hand, it swings like a pendulum . . .”

  “I’m not talking about the torso generally moving. The chest—I’m talking about the heart beating and lungs expanding. It’s the most consistent power source in the body. I can’t believe I overlooked it . . .”

  “Will it generate enough power?”

  “Plenty for the GPS, considering its efficiency.” She cracked her knuckles and typed some more, flying through science-journal articles online.

  In the meantime, the other two men left their stations and gathered behind Meirong, transfixed by her breakthrough. They were amazed at the speed with which she scrolled through complicated microcircuit schematics, all the while talking to herself, noting God-knows-what in her head.

  “If we have the right capacitor,” she finally said. Then closed the laptop.

  “Huh?”

  The little ducklings followed her to the front office but she shooed them out, wanting to talk to the senator alone.

  “It’s me.” She took a deep breath. “I think we can get the packet down to size.”

  “Yes.” She nodded. “Ten days, max.”

  40

  TRAM VILLAGE, CHINA. OCTOBER 27.

  9 A.M. BEIJING TIME.

  Xiao sat in his office perched above Main Street and tapped a pen on the rough cedar desk. How had he let Canart outmaneuver him? If the whole transaction blew up, he could face extradition to the United States. He couldn’t let that happen.

  He hadn’t been in direct contact with Meirong for months. Falling for the American senator. Foolish child. That was the moment he’d lost control of the situation. It wasn’t that he particularly cared with whom his daughter slept, but he had to be certain where her loyalty lay.

  He’d tried to call the whole thing off. Get her home, find someone else he could trust to develop the chip. Someone with better resources, who could assure him that he would make the money he deserved.

  They had made quite the team—the savvy, powerful father and the brilliant-but-unpredictable daughter. Xiao had long known his daughter’s intellect was his most valuable asset. Alone, she wasn’t capable of using it to her best advantage, but he could help. Win, win.

  With Meirong’s new lust-driven allegiance to the senator, Xiao risked losing her, but there was no other way to play it. Ever since his wife’s death, he’d longed for closure. Along with his will to ­survive—to flourish—solving his wife’s murder was one of the things that drove him. He would never be satisfied until he knew who killed her, and why. And that was information Senator Canart said he possessed.

  So he’d let the deal play out, at least for a reasonable amount of time.

  The last remaining issue was what to do with Charlotte Terrell.

  When Xiao entered the Wapiti Suite, Charlotte was at the window, watching trucks roll in from the main gate. He waved at the giant, dismissing him. Charlotte didn’t acknowledge her captor.

  “There is television, you know.” Xiao sat on the bed. Charlotte didn’t respond. “What you looking for, Ms. Terrell?”

  Charlotte walked over to the bed and stood over him defiantly. “What the hell is this place?”

  Xiao stood, walked past her, and went to the window. “Do you see this?”

  “The food trucks, yes.”

  He chuckled. “Beyond the trucks.”

  “Clouds.” Charlotte joined him.

  “No clouds. Smog. The city. Do you know population of China?”

  Charlotte shook her head, not following.

  “Something like one and a half billion.”

  “That’s a lot of people.”

  “True. But that’s not the worst part. In the late eighteenth century, the entire world’s population was less than that. Yet one scientist was horrified at the power of population. Do you know why?”

>   “No.”

  “Because population growth is geometric, while sustenance is finite. Meaning, in a matter of time, any population outlives its welcome, so to speak.”

  “And then?”

  “Then we don’t know. Chaos. Some say the strongest survive. But I am realist. And what do realists do?” A smile came to his face. “They buy insurance.”

  “So, what are you saying? Tram Village is a colony?”

  “When my daughter was fourteen, she showed me a calculation. A prediction. It has been spot-on. It won’t be long before this country collapses. Man running like wild dog looking for a carcass. People killing one another, God only knows. But when it does collapse, I will be prepared.”

  “Good for you.” Charlotte left him at the window.

  Xiao turned to face her. “And so will you, should you remain prisoner.”

  “You think you and your daughter will survive the end of the world in a country club?”

  “It’s only insurance, should we fail.”

  “How do you plan to do that?”

  “Meirong has her ways, but the public finds them hard to swallow.”

  “Why don’t you just kill me?” Charlotte was sitting on the corner of the bed with her head in her hands.

  “The same reason I built this very place we sit.”

  “Insurance.”

  “Now you’re starting to understand.”

  “But you are from a family of politicians—important men. Won’t your government protect you?”

  “It’s a convenient story.” Xiao laughed. “Your husband told me he grew up in cow shit. I grew up in much worse than that.”

  41

  WEST BANK, SNAKE RIVER. OCTOBER 26.

  2 P.M. MOUNTAIN STANDARD TIME.

  Jake was pounding his fist on the fly-tying table and muttering profanities into his phone. Pick up, pick up! J.P. was just outside the front door smoking, so when he heard the beep, Jake tried to hush his infuriated tone.

  “Divya, what the hell is going on? Two people are dead. I’ll do whatever you want, but you have to tell me what’s going on!”

  “What a fucking week, man.” J.P. stepped back inside.