by Alex Kava
She turned on the big-screen TV, pocketing the remote and continuing on to the kitchen. The fifty-six-inch plasma had been a splurge for someone who watched little television, but she justified it by having college football parties on Saturdays in the fall. And then there were the evenings of pizza, beer, and classic movies with Ben. Colonel Benjamin Platt had become a close … friend.
That was all for now, or so they had decided. Okay, so they hadn’t really even talked about it. Things were at a comfortable level. She liked talking to him as much as she liked the silence of being with him. Sometimes when they sat in her backyard watching Harvey and Ben’s dog, Digger, play, Maggie caught herself thinking, “This could be a family.” The four of them seemed to fill voids in each other’s lives.
Yes, comfortable. She liked that. Except that lately she felt an annoying tingle every time he touched her. That’s when she reminded herself that both their lives were already complicated and their personal baggage sometimes untenable. Their schedules constantly conflicted. Especially the last three to four months.
So “friends” was a comfortable place to be for now, though decided by default rather than consensus. Still, she caught herself checking her cell phone: waiting, expecting, hoping for a message from him. She hadn’t seen him since he’d spent two weeks in Afghanistan. Only short phone conversations or text messages.
Now he was gone again. Somewhere in Florida. She wasn’t used to them not being able to share. That was one of the things that had brought them closer, talking about their various cases: hers usually profiling a killer; his identifying or controlling some infectious disease. A couple of times they had worked on a case together when the FBI and USAMRIID (United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases—pronounced U-SAM-RID) were both involved. But Afghanistan and this trip were, in Ben’s words, “classified missions” in “undisclosed locations.” In Maggie’s mind, she added “dangerous.”
She fed Harvey while tossing a salad for herself and listening to “breaking news” at the top of the hour:
“Gas prices are up and will continue to soar because of the tropical storms and hurricanes that have ravaged the Gulf this summer. And another one, Hurricane Isaac is predicted to sweep across Jamaica tonight. The category-4 storm with sustained winds of 145 miles per hour is expected to pick up steam when it enters the Gulf in the next couple of days.”
Her cell phone rang and she jumped, startled enough to spill salad dressing on the counter. Okay, so having a killer’s blood and brains splattered all over her had unnerved her more than she was willing to admit.
She grabbed for the phone. Checked the number, disappointed that she didn’t recognize it.
“This is Maggie O’Dell.”
“Hey, cherie,” a smooth, baritone voice said.
There was only one person who got away with using that New Orleans charm on her.
“Hello, Charlie. And to what do I owe this pleasure?”
Maggie and Charlie Wurth had spent last Thanksgiving weekend sorting through a bombing at Mall of America and trying to prevent another before the weekend was over. In a case where she couldn’t even trust her new boss, AD Raymond Kunze, Charlie Wurth had been a godsend. For six months now the deputy director of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had been trying to woo her over to his side of the fence at the Justice Department.
“I’m headed on a road trip,” Charlie continued. “And I know you won’t be able to say no to joining me. Think sunny Florida. Emerald-green waters. Sugar-white sands.”
Every once in a while Charlie Wurth called just to dangle another of his outrageous proposals. It had become a game with them. She couldn’t remember why she hadn’t entertained the idea of leaving the FBI and working for DHS. She swiped her fingers through her hair, thinking about the blood and brain matter from earlier. Maybe she should consider a switch.
“Sounds wonderful.” Maggie played along. “What’s the catch?”
“Just a small one. It appears we most likely will be in the projected path of Hurricane Isaac.”
“Tell me again why I’d be interested in going along?”
“Actually you’d be doing me a big favor.” Charlie’s voice turned serious. “I was already on my way down because of the hurricane. Got a bit of a distraction, though. Coast Guard found a fishing cooler in the Gulf.”
He left a pause inviting her to finish.
“Let me guess. It wasn’t filled with fish.”
“Exactly. Local law enforcement has its hands full with hurricane preps. Coast Guard makes it DHS, but I’m thinking the assortment of body parts throws it over to FBI. I just checked with AD Kunze to see if I can borrow you.”
“You talked to Kunze? Today?”
“Yep. Just a few minutes ago. He seemed to think it’d be a good idea.”
She wasn’t surprised that her boss wanted to send her into the eye of a hurricane.
CHAPTER 3
NAVAL AIR STATION (NAS)
PENSACOLA, FLORIDA
Colonel Benjamin Platt didn’t recognize this part of the base, though he’d been here once before. Usually he was in and out of these places too quickly to become familiar with any of them.
“It’s gorgeous,” he said, looking out at Pensacola Bay.
His escort, Captain Carl Ganz, seemed caught off guard by the comment, turning around to see just what Platt was pointing out. Their driver slowed as if to assist his captain’s view.
“Oh yes, definitely. Guess we take it for granted,” Captain Ganz said. “Pensacola is one of the prettiest places I’ve been stationed. Just getting back from Kabul, I’m sure this looks especially gorgeous.”
“You’re right about that.”
“How was it?”
“The trip?”
“Afghanistan.”
“The dust never lets up. Still feel like my lungs haven’t cleared.”
“I remember. I was part of a medevac team in 2005,” Captain Ganz told Platt.
“I didn’t realize that.”
“Summer 2005. We lost one of our SEALs. A four-member reconnaissance contingent came under attack. Then a helicopter carrying sixteen soldiers flew in as a reinforcement but was shot down.” Ganz kept his eyes on the water in the bay. “All aboard died. As did the ground crew.”
Platt let out a breath and shook his head. “That’s not a good day.”
“You were there back then, too, weren’t you?”
“Earlier. Actually the first months of the war,” Platt said. “I was part of the team trying to protect our guys from biological or chemical weapons. Ended up cutting and suturing more than anything else.”
“So has it changed?”
“The war?”
“Afghanistan.”
Platt paused and studied Captain Ganz. He was a little older than Platt, maybe forty, with a boyish face, although his hair had already prematurely turned gray. This was the first time the two men had met in person. Past correspondences had been via e-mail and phone calls. Platt was a medical doctor and director of infectious diseases at Fort Detrick’s USAMRIID and charged with preventing, inoculating, and containing some of the deadliest diseases ever known. Ganz, also a physician, ran a medical program for the navy that oversaw the surgical needs of wounded soldiers.
“Sadly, no,” Platt finally answered, deciding he could be honest with Ganz. “Reminded me too much of those early days. Seems like we’re chasing our tails. Only now we’re doing it with our hands tied behind our backs.”
Platt rubbed a thumb and forefinger over his eyes, trying to wipe out the fatigue. He still felt jet-lagged from his flight. He hadn’t been back home even forty-eight hours when he got the call from Captain Ganz.
“Tell me about this mystery virus.” Platt decided he’d just as well cut to the chase.
“We’ve isolated and quarantined every soldier we think may have come in contact with the first cases, the ones that are now breaking. Until we know what it is, I figured it’s better to b
e safe than sorry.”
“Absolutely. What are the symptoms?”
“That’s just it. There are very few. At least, in the beginning. Initially there’s excruciating pain at the surgical site, which is not unusual with most of these surgeries. We’re talking multiple fractures, deep-tissue wounds with bone exposed.” He paused as several planes took off overhead, drowning out all sound. “We’re starting to move aircraft out of the path of this next hurricane.”
“I thought it’s predicted to hit farther west, maybe New Orleans.”
“Media is always looking at New Orleans,” Ganz shrugged. “Better story I guess. But some of the best in the weather business are telling us it’s coming here. Just hope we’re on the left side of it and not the right. That’s why the admiral’s nervous. That’s why I told him I needed to call you in. I told him, if Platt can’t figure this out, no one can.”
“Not sure I can live up to that.”
“Yes, you can. You will. You have to.”
“Pain at the site,” Platt prodded him to continue, wanting to keep focused before the fatigue derailed him. “What about the med packs left at the site?”
“That’s what we thought with the first cases. We removed the packs and that seemed to alleviate the pain, but only temporarily.”
“Infection?”
“Surgical sites show no swelling. Patients have no fever. Although they report feeling very hot and sometimes sweat profusely. They complain about upset stomachs. Some vomiting. Headaches. And yet all vital signs are good. Blood pressure, heart rate … all normal. Here we are.” Captain Ganz stopped as his driver pulled up to a side entrance of a brick two-story building.
The steel door was reinforced. A security keypad blinked red, its digital message flashed C CLASS I.
Ganz punched in a number then pressed his thumb on the screen. Locks clicked open: one, two, three of them. Inside was a small lobby, but Ganz took Platt down the first hallway to the right. The corridor was narrow and the two men walked shoulder to shoulder.
“The admiral wants me to evacuate these soldiers. Move them inland to the Naval Hospital instead of keeping them here right on the bay. But as you know, moving them presents all kinds of problems.”
Finally they arrived at another door, another security keypad. Ganz went through the same process again, but when the locks clicked this time he pulled the door open just a few inches and stopped, turning back to look Platt in the eyes.
“Within a week, four, five days, the blood pressure plunges. The heart starts racing. It’s like the body is struggling to get oxygen. They slip into a coma. Organs rapidly begin to shut down. There’s been nothing we can do. I’ve lost two so far. Just yesterday. I don’t want the rest of these soldiers to see the same end.”
“I understand. Let’s see what we can do.”
Ganz nodded, opened the door, and walked into a small glass-encased room that overlooked an area as big as a gymnasium, only it was sectioned and partitioned off, each section encased in a plastic tent with sterile walls that sprouted tubes and cords, monitors and computer screens.
Platt sucked in his breath to prevent a gasp. There had to be more than a hundred hospital beds filling the space. More than a hundred beds with more than a hundred soldiers.
CHAPTER 4
PENSACOLA BEACH
Liz Bailey would have rather stayed out in the Gulf and be battered by the waves and the wind. But they were grounded for the rest of their shift and for the last five hours had been battered by the sheriff of Escambia County, the director of the Santa Rosa Island Authority, the commander of Air Station Pensacola, a federal investigator from the Department of Homeland Security, and the deputy director of DHS via speakerphone.
It was crazy and Liz couldn’t help wondering if they might have gotten off easier if they had never looked inside the cooler. If only they’d just handed it over and headed back out. Too many of the questions seemed more about containment of information rather than gathering the facts.
“Who else have you told?” the sheriff wanted to know.
“We followed proper procedure for finding human remains at sea.” Lieutenant Commander Wilson no longer bothered to hide his impatience. Keeping a cool head was a skill Wilson hadn’t learned yet.
Liz wondered if he was sorry that he’d asked Kesnick to open the cooler. Seeing him defensive and irritated by the consequences of his actions was almost worth the detainment. Almost.
Earlier, the look on Wilson’s face had convinced Liz that their pilot had never seen a severed body part before. At first she thought Wilson didn’t believe Kesnick. But she saw his eyes and glimpsed what looked like fear—maybe even shock. With his visor pushed back to get a better look at the contents inside that cooler, there was no hiding his expression. At least not from Liz, who had been in a position in the helicopter to see it, to catch it straight on. Normally it may have garnered sympathy. Instead it simply reinforced her lack of respect for the guy.
Finally dismissed for the day, the four of them wandered out into the sunlight.
“Beer’s on me,” Wilson announced. “It’s early. We can get a good seat on the Tiki Bar’s deck. Watch some bikini babes.”
Someone cleared his throat. Liz didn’t look to see who.
“Oh, come on,” Wilson said. “Bailey doesn’t mind. Not if she’s one of us.”
Always the edge, the challenge, putting it back onto Liz.
“Actually it sounds like a good idea,” she said, putting on her sunglasses, still without looking at any of them and not slowing her pace.
“Only if we can get a couple of hot dogs.” Tommy Ellis was always hungry.
“Geez, Ellis. Can you stop thinking about your stomach? We’ll get them later,” Wilson insisted.
“What if the hot-dog man isn’t there later?”
“He’ll be there,” Liz told them, now leading the way to the Tiki Bar. “And he’ll probably talk us into going out again for another beer with him.”
“Yeah, how can you be so sure?” Ellis demanded.
“Because the hot-dog man is my dad.”
CHAPTER 5
NEWBURGH HEIGHTS, VIRGINIA
Maggie O’Dell downloaded and printed the copies Wurth forwarded to her. The photos and initial documents from the Escambia County Sheriff’s Department reminded her that she’d want to take her own photos. She’d be able to decipher only the basics from these shots.
One photo showed an assortment of odd-shaped packages wrapped in plastic and stuffed inside an oversize cooler. The close-ups displayed the individual packages lined up on a concrete floor used for staging. What she could see beyond the plastic wrap looked more like cuts of meat from a butcher shop than parts of a human body.
She asked Wurth if they could wait until her arrival before unwrapping the packages. He told her it was probably too late.
“Doubtful. You know how that goes, O’Dell. Curiosity gets the best of even law enforcement.” But then he added, “I’ll see what I can do.”
Now Maggie sat cross-legged in the middle of her living-room floor, scattered photos on one side, Harvey on the other. His sleeping head filled her lap. She kept the TV on the Weather Channel. Initially the TV just provided background noise, but she found the weather coverage drawing her attention. She was learning about hurricanes, something that might come in handy in the following week.
Maggie found it interesting that the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, though measured by sustained winds, was also based on the level of damage those winds were capable of causing. A category-3 storm produced sustained winds of 111 to 130 miles per hour and could cause “extensive” damage; a category 4, 131 to 155 mile per hour winds and “devastating” damage; a category 5, 156 miles per hour and greater winds with “catastrophic” damage.
One hundred and forty mile per hour winds were not something Maggie could relate to. Damage, however, was something she could.
Hurricane Isaac had already killed sixty people across the Carib
bean. Within several hours it had gone from 145 mile per hour winds to 150. The storm was expected to hit Grand Cayman in a few hours. One million Cubans were said to have evacuated in anticipation of the monster hitting there on Sunday. Moving at only ten miles per hour, the hurricane was expected to enter the Gulf by Monday.
On every projected path Maggie had seen in the last several hours, Pensacola, Florida, was smack-dab in the middle. Charlie Wurth hadn’t been kidding when he told her they would be driving down into the eye of a hurricane. Consequently, there were no available flights to Pensacola. Tomorrow morning she was booked to fly to Atlanta where Charlie would pick her up and they would drive five hours to the Florida Panhandle. When she asked him what he was doing in Atlanta—his home was in New Orleans and his office in Washington, D.C.—he simply said, “Don’t ask.”
Wurth still had difficulty acting like a federal government employee. He came to the position of assistant deputy director of Homeland Security after impressing the right people with his tough but fair investigation of federal waste and corruption in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. But Wurth, like Maggie, probably would never get used to the bureaucracy that came with the job.
Maggie knew she should be packing. She kept a bag with the essentials. She just needed to add to it. What did one pack for hurricane weather? Sensible shoes, no doubt. Her friend Gwen Patterson was always telling Maggie that she didn’t have the appropriate respect for shoes.
She glanced at the time. She’d need to call Gwen. She’d do that later. The foray with today’s killer was still too fresh in her mind and on her skin. Her friend the psychiatrist had a knack for reading between the lines, weighing pauses, and detecting even the slightest of cracks in Maggie’s composure. An occupational hazard, Gwen always said, and Maggie understood all too well.
The two women had met when Maggie was a forensic fellow at Quantico and Gwen a private consultant to the Behavioral Science Unit. Seventeen years Maggie’s senior, Dr. Gwen Patterson had the tendency to overlap maternal instincts into their friendship. Maggie didn’t mind. Gwen was her one constant. It was Gwen who was always there by Maggie’s side. It was Gwen propping her up during her long, drawn-out divorce; setting up vigil alongside Maggie’s hospital bed after a killer had trapped her in a freezer to die; sitting outside an isolation ward at Fort Detrick when Maggie’d been exposed to Ebola; and most recently Gwen was again by her side at Arlington National Cemetery when Maggie paid her last respects at her mentor’s gravesite.
