Vector

by James Abel

  “Hobart, if that’s what made it fall apart, it would have fallen apart anyway,” I said gently.

  “I know.”

  “Where is he going?”

  “Didn’t you hear what I said? The cities where he’s released insects? Have you found what connects them? New York? Newark? Now Memphis. Look for a defense contractor with operations in those cities. He’s doing what he said. Making an example of one company. Find other places where they have branches, wait for him there.”

  Doubtful, I said, “That was an awfully long time ago. You think he’s still that way?”

  “Well, he’s here, isn’t he? Attacking us, isn’t he? He went over there to join them and came back, didn’t he? Do you have a better idea? He’s targeted one company. Figure out which one.”

  I heard a boy screaming in my mind. I don’t care about your stupid lectures. Someone ought to blow everyone up.

  Regret smells like an old blanket, mothballs and sage, shoe polish and pinyon; it sounds like a hissing oxygen tank on a deck in New Mexico.

  Haines said, “Ten years later I met my wife, Cyn, and fell in love. This house was Cyn’s. Cyn died of cancer five years ago. She left the place to me.”

  “Things worked out,” I said.

  “I was lucky in the end. But you never forget the first one. I keep thinking, what if I gave Tom the idea?”

  Josie was back, hands on hips, looking down at Hobart with caring disapproval.

  Is it possible what he’s saying is true, or did I just hear rambling fears from an old man who is out of touch? Is it conceivable that the boy who Hobart Haines knew grew into a man who has targeted one company?

  Josie piped up. “You need to sleep, Hobart. And you should go, Doctor. Your driver was a thief and I sent him away. My friend will take you to the airport and charge you nothing. I will fill a thermos with coffee. And a sandwich for the plane.”

  Check it out, I thought. Fast.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Tom Fargo forced himself to look meek and afraid, but he was waiting for an opportunity to kill his captor. He headed back toward New Albany, in the wrong direction, away from his final target. The gun in the hijacker’s hand hovered six inches from his stomach. The man leaned close in the passenger seat, the boy and woman in back, her head on her son’s lap. The sky was black, and rain pummeled the windshield so hard that the wipers barely helped his visibility. The headlights—on high—cast a pathetic glow extending out a few feet.

  The smell of blood and wet was ripe, and the car hydroplaned through water, sent up twin shafts of spray.

  I can’t drive them to a hospital. Or even into a town. By now Memphis police will have probably distributed the photos of me that kid took with his cell phone.

  Tilting power lines seemed about to topple down on them. Masses of electric cables disappeared like writhing water moccasins into streams overflowing across the road.

  “We’re going too fast,” Tom said.

  “I ought to blow your head off,” snapped the man. Big guy, black, mid-thirties, with gray, short wooly hair and a thick beard and black-framed glasses. The man wore a skullcap. Of all the people to stop Tom, a Muslim. A brother, wearing his weekend going-to-dinner best; checkered button-down sopping cotton shirt and soaked khakis stained with his wife’s blood.

  “If Tina doesn’t make it, you won’t either,” the man growled.

  I could have released the insects anywhere. I could have let them out of their containers in a dozen places between Pittsburgh and here. But I passed up that opportunity. I wanted to release them in a specific place.

  He had no illusion as to what would be coming toward him, from town. No way state and local police had not been alerted by Joe Rush’s press conference. Maybe they’d not recognize the Ford. But they would be stopping cars, checking drivers.

  It can’t end like this. Give me courage. If my mission has your favor, show me a sign.

  The woman moaned. Her hijab had slid off her head to wrap her shoulders like a scarf. Brown plain dress. Spittle on the lips. One shoe off. Tom had glimpsed the unconscious moon-shaped face when they laid her down. The boy cried silently. The woman had voided herself. The purplish stain gluing dress to chest told Tom she’d probably been thrown forward by the crash, hit a door or steering wheel or piece of glass.

  Fear is an adrenaline problem. Conquer it and convince them you will help them. Get that gun moved away.

  Tom made his voice tremble.

  “My brother, may I tell you something?” he said.

  “I’m not your damn brother!”

  He gasped, “Please! I’ve been driving since yesterday! No sleep! My father! He’s in the hospital in Florida! He has cancer! I need to reach him, and when I saw you in the rain I didn’t think! . . . I was wrong not to stop!”

  “Watch the road, asshole.”

  Tom jerked the car sideways and straightened at the last second. The swerve pushed the man against the door. But he remained in control. Tom glanced at the glove compartment. Inside lay his pistol. A fleshy ripping sound seemed to come behind, from inside the woman.

  Tom recited, in a quavering voice, “You will not attain true piety until you voluntarily give of that which you love. Whatever you give, God knows of it.”

  The boy’s gasp came over thunder. “You’re Muslim?”

  Tom said, “Those who expend their wealth right, openly or secretly, their reward awaits them with the Lord.”

  The boy said, glancing at his dad, “Poppa?”

  Poppa growled, “Just drive and shut up.”

  But Tom did not shut up. “To walk with my brother for his help is better than keeping to the mosque for a month. Put down that thing. It’s freaking me out.”

  The gun, a big Smith and Wesson 629, a bear defense gun, stayed up. NEW ALBANY, 15 MILES. Tom did not need the guy to like him, just to hesitate. In town would be police, nurses, patients. Tom imagined himself carrying the woman into the hospital. He imagined people staring, turning to an overhead monitor broadcasting national news. He saw his face on the screen as Joe Rush said his name for all to hear. Tom made himself tremble.

  “Stop shaking,” the man with the gun barked.

  “I can’t! You’re scaring me!”

  He tried to think. What lay ahead that might help him? Had he seen turnoffs or rest stops? He could not recall. He’d concentrated on driving earlier, not on the sights.

  Tom pleaded with the man, piteously.

  “Please! It might go off by accident.”

  “I saw your face when you tried to get past us. You knew what you were doing.”

  “Poppa?” the boy called in terror.

  “What?”

  “I think she stopped breathing,” the boy said.

  The man didn’t turn around. But he shifted closer to Tom, and Tom smelled bile on his breath. Raspberry . . . gum or candy, maybe, and sweetish pipe tobacco.

  “She’ll be okay,” the man tried to reassure his son.

  NEW ALBANY, 6 MILES.

  Lightning flashed on a sign: a yellow triangle with a black cross on it. An intersection was coming up.

  “Poppa. I can’t stop the bleeding.”

  Tom volunteered, “I know first aid.”

  “She’s alive. And tough,” the man said. But he’d given Tom what he needed. Confusion. Fear. A chance.

  “Look, you have the gun,” Tom said. “She needs help now, before we get to the hospital. Let me make it up to you. Stop that bleeding.”

  “Poppa? The blood!”

  “Please! Let me help,” Tom urged.

  “Keep going,” the man ordered, but there was less rage in him now. Tom took a chance and started braking.

  “What are you doing?” the man demanded.

  “We need to help her now.” We! “We need to pull over for a minute.” We! “Ther
e’s no time!”

  The intersection was coming up, and Tom glimpsed—far ahead—a series of red flashing lights, meaning ambulance or police. The man and boy had been looking at the woman, and they’d missed it. It would mark another accident or downed tree. Or worse, a roadblock. An upcoming curve in the road hid the flashing lights. Only Tom had seen them.

  “Do it fast,” the man said, but now there was more despair in his voice than anger.

  Tom coasted onto the gravel shoulder. He did not know if the vehicles ahead had been coming toward them—if they were they’d be here in moments—or had been stationary. The Ford stopped with a jerk. There were no lights visible and no traffic behind them. When the hijacker turned to see his wife, Tom’s hand came up off the steering wheel and he drove the side straight and true into the man’s Adam’s apple, crushing the larynx.

  The gun went off but fired into the seat. The boy screamed. Tom had the man’s wrist in hand as the man clawed at his throat, eyes bulging. The woman had toppled from the boy’s lap. It was easy to pluck away the gun.

  Tom shot the man in the face, jerking him back. He spun and shot the boy, too. The woman remained unconscious.

  The rain battered the windows and streamed down. Tom pressed down on the accelerator and rolled twenty feet to the intersection, then turned onto a small feeder road. It was black and deserted, farm country. He heard sucking sounds from the back. The woman still lived. The boy could not possibly be alive.

  He pulled over a quarter mile later and got out. The grass was mowed here, and there was a wire fence along the road. A pasture maybe. A ranch or farm. But he saw no lights. No homes. He was in a bubble of darkness.

  Tom opened the passenger door and dragged the man out. He was big and heavy, but Tom was filled with adrenaline. He toppled the body into a roadside ditch. Then he did the same with the boy. The woman was breathing fitfully, eyes shut, twitching. The rain smashed into her as he dragged her through the grass. She rolled down onto her husband and son. Had she seen him? Had she regained consciousness for a moment and seen him?

  She had not seen him. She might live if God smiled on her.

  Tom left her lying with her men, barely alive.

  • • •

  He drove back onto the highway. The rain had lessened enough so that he could see, in the direction of New Albany, that the flashing red lights were now arrayed in a line across the road, blocking the route into town, or out.

  Roadblock. But he’d avoided it.

  He kept the headlights off because those cops might otherwise see his car turn around, head the other way. The feeder road carried him across the median strip. The car smelled of shooting and blood, and the backseat was soaked and shredded from the bullet. Padding lay everywhere. He shivered from cold, rain, or adrenaline loss. But he was free again. As long as no one stopped him, no one could see the evidence in the car.

  Allah, keep me safe until tomorrow night.

  He turned south again, and east. He needed only a few hours to reach the correct destination.

  Where I will release the last vectors, he thought.

  Against a very specific foe.

  TWENTY-NINE

  New Mexico state police and health officials had set up way stations at the airport. Security lines leaving terminals were slower moving than ones going in. IF YOU ARE COMING FROM AN INFECTED AREA, STOP AND HAVE ALL LUGGAGE EXAMINED. IF YOU FEEL ILL, ALERT AUTHORITIES, signs read.

  I’d switched my return ticket to an earlier flight with a Washington, D.C., stopover, and, waiting for boarding, found a seat in a quiet area to convene a group meeting. Eddie’s face swam up on the left top of my screen.

  “It’s in Pittsburgh, Joe. Five infected.”

  I fought off twin senses of anxiety and letdown. I’d flown across the country and now knew about as much as I had before I left. Hobart Haines was an old man with a far-fetched theory. It was hard to believe that Tom Fargo was carrying out some idea he’d spewed forth as a kid. That Haines, driving around with the boy, years ago, had created a future terrorist, pulled the psychic switches.

  Haines probably exaggerated his own importance. It’s what old men do when they look back.

  Eddie said, “The Pittsburgh victims remember being bitten two nights ago, at a park.”

  Beside Eddie was Stuart, in his office. We were meeting thanks to the Wilderness Program’s encrypted system, as we were frozen out of the FBI’s. Reduced to the status of fretting civilians, we got our news like most people in the country, from the press.

  Stuart said, “That park was sprayed earlier, Joe. But it was crawling with mosquitoes. Amazonian variety, from the DNA.”

  I told myself, Just because Hobart’s theory is old doesn’t mean you don’t check it out.

  Izabel Santo had not answered my summons. She was either in the air, or asleep back in Brazil. Aya occupied the lower left-hand box and had a pugnacious look on her face: lips tight, eyes hard, probably because I’d not returned her call earlier. Mostly she looked hurt. I reminded myself that my intern was only sixteen.

  “Where’s the Brazilian?” she asked, uttering the nationality as if it were a curse, refusing to use Izabel’s name. I said Izabel was gone. “Good,” Aya said. “She’s like, slutty!”

  I noticed a dozen travelers and airport workers clustered beneath an overhead monitor, watching shots of police roadblocks around Pittsburgh and Memphis.

  “Ray was right about one thing,” Eddie said. “Cops all over the country are being flooded with ‘sightings’ of Fargo. And the tip line! Over five thousand calls.”

  Stuart nodded morosely and looked left, out of the monitor. Probably on his screen Eddie was on his right. Eye movement in teleconference is deceptive. Stuart said, “People are calling us, too. Phones ringing off the hook. I saw Fargo in London! In L.A. Nashville announced that they caught him, but it turned out to be someone else. Maybe Ray was right about not diverting personnel.”

  “What did you learn from Haines?” Eddie asked.

  I filled them in. “He’s had no contact with Tom or Tom’s mom for years. It was all theory. But it’s worth checking defense contractors,” I said, eyeing Aya, who would be the main one to do it. “To see if one of them has branches in the cities that have been hit.”

  “Even if we find him,” Eddie grumped, “he’s just one guy. What about the other jihadists?”

  “I’m not convinced there are others yet.”

  “You can’t believe it’s just one guy!” Stuart said.

  “If it’s different groups, how come the first infections were all near New York? He’s had time to get to Pittsburgh and Memphis. It’s possible that he wants us to think there are more attackers than there really are.”

  Eddie shook his head. “What about Chicago?”

  “There were no cases in Chicago, Eddie. Just threats. I’m just saying, if it’s lots of groups, why aren’t outbreaks more widely spaced?”

  “Christ, he could head from Memphis to Saint Louis. New Orleans. The whole goddamn Mississippi River area. At least there’s crappy weather there. Everything’s shut down. Tornadoes, Joe! Maybe the storms will slow him down . . . unless he’s already dumped the car. Hell, what if he’s flying?”

  “If I were him, I’d dump the car,” Stuart said.

  “Aya? Would you like to add anything?”

  “Oh, someone cares what I think finally?”

  Here we go, I thought. “Aya, I didn’t call you back before because I was busy with Haines.”

  “You told me to work with the FBI! You said help Ray, not you!”

  She was looking away, off screen, pouting.

  “That was for your own good, Aya.”

  Her lips twitched. I realized that she was trying not to cry. Aya said in a choked, accusatory voice, “You didn’t tell Stuart to work with Ray. You didn’t tell Eddie or anyone else in Wil
derness to work for Ray. Just me.”

  “Aya!” But she was right. If she hadn’t refused that order, she wouldn’t be with us now. I felt sorry for Ray suddenly. He had to deal with her teenage emotions all the time. But I was angrier at myself. It was my job to remember that she was young. A team leader has to be aware of the strengths and weaknesses of people who work for him. I’d treated Aya as an adult if I needed her, but as a kid when I did not. Not fair.

  “I made a mistake,” I admitted.

  Aya’s lips were quivering.

  I said, “My bad. My fault. Aya, we don’t have time for this now. You’re with us, okay? So act like it.”

  She nodded. She composed herself. I admired her guts. The adult expression was back, a look of moral superiority. Aya said, with an air of drama, “Joe, what if the whole story you told me about that refugee camp, Tol-e-Khomri, is wrong? What if things I learned on my own are the truth?”

  • • •

  “What things?” I said.

  “Maybe it’s better that I can’t access the FBI system anymore. Because maybe all the official reports I saw when I was an intern were wrong,” Aya answered.

  “What did you do?” Eddie asked with attentive amusement.

  “I accessed jihad sites from home. I mean, the Bureau keeps a list of sites and chat rooms that we—I mean they—monitor. If you’re working there you steer clear of them unless you’re assigned to watch them. But I wasn’t there anymore, and I knew which ones were real ones. So if Ray wants to arrest me now he can just do it! I can’t believe my mother even dated him for more than . . .”

  “Aya,” I prodded, to keep her on track.

  “Well! I know those sites are propaganda, like, lies, like, accusations to like get jihadist recruits.”

  “What did you see?” I resisted asking her not to say “like” all the time. My semi-parental authority was a bit limited just now.

  “I’m just saying I know they lie. But you said to look for things that are different. You said never assume that something that sounds crazy is wrong. You said sometimes information is in plain sight but people don’t see it, so always check out even crazy stuff. ”