by John Saul
“There’s the car,” Morantz said. Even though there were no prying ears, he still used his habitual working voice, just above a whisper, which he knew only Kaplan could hear.
“Well go in from behind the garage,” Kaplan replied in the same lowered tone. His grip tightened on the canvas bag he was carrying. “Even if they look out, we shouldn’t be visible for more than a second or two.”
They worked their way a little farther south, putting the large garage between themselves and the house. Only when they were certain they couldn’t be seen did they leave the shelter of the woods and dash across the narrow expanse of lawn to crouch beside the brick wall of the outbuilding. Once there, Kaplan opened the bag and removed its contents.
It was a small device—no larger than a cigar box—and all that was visible on its exterior were several tiny, but very powerful, magnets. Kaplan opened the box, carefully rechecking the receiver, the capacitor, and the firing cap. Satisfied, he made the final attachments that would allow the cap to accomplish its purpose, imbedded it in the mass of gelignite that took up the bulk of the space in the box, and reclosed it.
“See anything?”
Morantz, his binoculars pressed to his eyes, shook his head. “If they’re in there, they’re still up front. Looks like right now is as good a time as any.”
Kaplan crouched and, keeping his head low, darted out or the lee of the garage and moved swiftly across the concrete apron upon which Carl Bronski’s car, closed and carefully locked, was parked. He stopped next to the right rear wheel, knelt down, and reached under the car with his left hand. A moment later he had found the spot he was looking for, and heard a distinct thunk as the magnets on the exterior of the box clamped themselves firmly to the gas tank of the car.
A few seconds later, both Kaplan and Morantz had faded back into the woods.
For now, all they had to do was get back to their van, and wait.
Lucy Corliss stared at the mess and instinctively touched her son. “But what is this place?” she asked, although she knew the answer even as she spoke.
Even in its disheveled state, it was still obvious that the room was some kind of a laboratory. Hiere was a long counter that took up most of one wall, with various pieces of equipment that neither Jim nor Carl Bronski recognized. On the wall opposite the counter, five filing cabinets stood, most of their drawers open, all of them empty.
“Seems like they took the records and left the hardware,” Bronski commented.
“Which fits in with a government operation,” Jim Corliss pointed out. “Generate a mass of paper, never lose track of a single piece of it, but let the equipment rust. But what was it all about? If all they were doing was medical research, why the secrecy?”
“Come on, Jim. Let’s not kid ourselves,” Bronski said. “This wasn’t just research. Children were being kidnaped and brought out here, where apparently they died.” He glanced toward Randy, who was already disappearing into yet another room. When he spoke again, his voice was grim. “And I’ll bet that even after they died, they stayed on the premises. Let’s see what’s in there.” The trio moved toward the door of the lab.
They found Randy standing in the small room behind the laboratory, staring at a large piece of equipment, his face puzzled.
“Is that an iron lung?” he asked.
Carl Bronski shook his head. “Not quite,” he said, his voice shaking slightly.
“What is it, then?” Lucy asked.
“It looks like a decompression chamber.” He hesitated, his eyes once again flickering toward Randy. Lucy, reading Bronski’s expression, gently nudged her son.
“Wait for us in the other room, sweetheart,” she said. Then, when he was gone, she turned her attention back to the sergeant. “What’s it for?” she asked.
Bronski swallowed hard. “It’s the kind of thing they use in dog pounds,” he said at last.
Lucy, still not quite comprehending, turned to Jim.
“They use it for the puppies,” he explained. “For the puppies nobody wants.”
Lucy paled. “Dear God,” she whispered. “You mean they used that thing to—?”
“That’s the way it looks,” Bronski said, his voice suddenly hard. “But they still had bodies to dispose of. And it looks to me like that’s why they had that thing.”
Lucy, her face ashen, stared at the firebox. “Isn’t it just a furnace?”
“It’s not like any furnace I ever saw,” Bronski replied. “The only place I’ve ever seen anything like that is in a crematorium.” As the Corlisses numbly looked on, he approached the crematory and touched the door.
It was still warm, but not too warm to prevent him from opening it.
The chamber inside was empty.
“They cleaned it up pretty well, but not quite well enough.”
In the corners of the chamber there were a few flecks of grayish matter. Producing a plastic bag from his coat pocket, Bronski scooped up a sample of the stuff, sealed the bag, and replaced it in his pocket.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get out of here. We’ve seen enough, and it’ll take a team of techs to go over this place properly. But offhand, I’d say it ought to be pretty easy to find out who was here. There’ll be prints all over the place, and God only knows what else.” He chuckled, but there was not even a trace of humor in the sound. “When you clear out as fast as they did, you don’t stop to clean up after yourselves. You take what you can and run. And that’s what these people did. I’ll bet they didn’t even waste time looking for Randy. Just packed up everything and took off.”
A few minutes later they were back in Bronski’s car and heading down the driveway. They stopped to reclose the main gate, but ignored the chain that still lay on the ground where they had left it.
“What now?” Jim asked as they turned back onto the main road.
“As soon as we get into radio range, ITI call headquarters and have a team sent out here. Then I think I ought to have a little talk with Paul Randolph. That’s right,” he added, seeing in the rearview mirror the look of dismay on Lucy’s face. “Just me, and maybe someone else from the department You’re out of it now, Lucy. You, and Jim, and the Montgomerys too. From here on in, it’s all got to be official.” Then, still watching Lucy’s face, he caught a glimpse of something moving in the distance. He slowed the car slightly. Behind them, a van was pulling out of a side road.
“Something wrong?” Jim asked.
Bronski said nothing, his eyes glued to the slow-moving van. Only when it turned in the opposite direction did he relax.
“Nothing,” he said. “For a second there, I just thought maybe we were being followed.”
And yet, even as he continued driving, he felt uneasy. There was something about the van …
As they rounded a bend in the road, and Carl Bronski’s car disappeared from their view, Morantz spoke softly to Kaplan.
“About ten more seconds,” he said. “Give them that, but no more.”
Bronski’s brain was working furiously now, trying to remember where he’d seen that van before.
Not long ago.
This morning?
But where? And why was the memory so vague?
And then he knew. Lucy Corliss’s block, part way down the street. He’d barely noticed it
But was it the same van?
If it was, then they were being followed. Except the van had gone the other way. Instead of following them, it was going to—
But if it had followed them, whoever was in it knew where they’d been.
And no longer cared.
“Holy Christ!” he yelled. His foot slammed onto the brake and the car spun into a four-wheel skid. “Get out! Get the hell out of the car!”
As the car skewed off the road, he yanked at the door handle. Maybe, just maybe, there was still time.
With a sudden roar, the gelignite attached to the gas tank exploded, ripping the tank loose from the car, splitting its welded seams and igniting its contents.
<
br /> What a moment before had been an automobile lurching toward a ditch was now a massive fireball rolling into that ditch, through it, then coming to rest a few yards from the edge of the forest.
Carl Bronski died instantly, crushed by the weight of the car, his body a mangled mass resting grotesquely in the bottom of the ditch.
For Jim Corliss, it was worse. As the car rolled, the roof gave way, pressing him down into the front seat, his legs jammed immobile beneath the twisted dashboard.
Flaming gasoline gushed from the ruptured tank, inundating the car, and soon the choking, acrid smell of burning rubber filled the air. Gasping, Jim tried to twist in the seat to help his wife and son, but it did no good. His one free arm groped through the smoke, finding nothing. And then the flames began to eat at him.
“Randy!” he screamed. And then again, “Randy! Lucy!” He took a deep breath, and superheated air flooded into his lungs, searing their delicate tissue, and ending his last slim hope of survival.
In the back seat, Lucy had instinctively grabbed for her son when the car began to skid, and now, as it lay overturned and burning, her mind suddenly went blank with panic. She was going to die, and Randy was going to die, and it was all going to be for nothing. She clutched Randy closer and began screaming.
Randy himself thrashed wildly in his mother’s arms, trying to wriggle free. “Mom!” he yelled. “Mom, let go of me!”
But Lucy, too terrified to understand, knew only that she somehow had to protect her son from the roaring flames. Her mind, filled with a fog of terror, tried to sort things out, tried to make decisions.
Jim. She needed Jim. “Help us,” she cried, her voice already beginning to weaken. “Oh, Jim, help us!” And then, through the fear and the heat and the smoke, she became aware that Randy was no longer in her arms. She reached out and finally grasped him. He was wriggling toward the gap between the two front seats of the car. As her hand closed on his ankle, he looked back at her. His eyes were wide and angry, and Lucy suddenly thought she must be hallucinating.
While the flesh on her hand, the hand that held her son’s ankle, was seared and blistered, Randy’s flesh seemed uninjured. It glowed red in the strange light of the fire, but it seemed to her that it had not yet been harmed. And then she heard Randy talking to her.
“Let me go,” he hissed. “I’m not going to die, Mother. I won’t die.” And then, kicking violently, he escaped Lucy’s weakened grasp and slipped away from her.
Lucy, a vision of her son’s angry face etched in her mind, slipped into unconsciousness.
Randy scrambled through to the front seat. The smoke burned his eyes, and for a moment he lost his orientation. Then he tried to force his way past a blockage and heard a soft moaning sound.
It was his father.
But suddenly all he knew was that he had to get out, that it was getting too hot to breathe. Then he felt a hint of cooler air and realized that the door on the driver’s side was open. He wriggled toward it, his clothes burning now, and caught his foot in the steering wheel. Kicking wildly, he jerked himself free and burst out of the flaming wreckage.
He fell to the ground, then almost instinctively rolled through the pool of burning gasoline that surrounded the car. Getting to his feet, he staggered toward the woods.
Away from the flames, Randy collapsed to the ground, his breath coming in faint gasps, his heart pounding. The last thing he saw before his eyes closed was his father’s face, barely visible through the shattered glass of the windshield, unrecognizable in the agony of death.
Then blackness closed in around Randy, and he felt nothing more.
But even as he passed into unconsciousness, George Hamlin’s genetic miracle had already been triggered. Randy’s clothes were gone, burned completely away, and here and there the smooth skin of his body showed faint signs of blistering. But even now the blisters were beginning to dry up and peel away to reveal healthy skin beneath. The injured tissues of Randy’s body were regenerating themselves.
Morantz and Kaplan heard the sound of the explosion just as they turned into the driveway of the Randolph estate. Kaplan nodded with satisfaction. “So much for that part of it. How much time do you think we have?”
“As much as we need,” Morantz replied. “No one’s going to come around here—all the excitement’s going to be back there.”
“What you might call a diversion.”
Morantz threw his partner a dirty look. “We just killed four American citizens, two of whom were a woman and a child. I don’t call that a diversion. I call it.… shit, I don’t know what to call it.” He was silent for a moment, then he said, “I think when this is over, I’m getting out.”
“I’ve heard you say that before,” Kaplan countered. “In fact, I hear you say it in the middle of practically every job.” The car drew to a halt in front of the gates, and Kaplan got out of the van to open them, then hopped back in when Morantz had driven through. “You want me to do the next one?”
“Not particularly.”
They took the van around to the back of the house, parking it in the exact place where Bronski’s car had been only a few minutes before. “Okay,” Morantz said as he set the brake and switched off the engine. “Let’s get it set up, then get out of here. It’s getting along toward noon.”
Working swiftly and efficiently, the two men unloaded their supplies and took them into the house. They surveyed the interior with professional detachment, ignoring everything except the layout of the building. When they had decided on the exact layout of the explosives, Morantz shook his head.
“I don’t know how they’re going to cover this one up,” he said. “I can give them rubble, but I can’t hide the fact that it was a professional job. What they want done here can’t be made to look like an accident.”
“Maybe no one’s ever going to see it,” Kaplan suggested.
“Don’t hold your breath. The explosion alone is going to bring everyone running from miles around. And it won’t take long to find out what caused it either. Any fire department worth its salt’ll figure this one out in about five minutes.”
For thirty minutes the two of them worked. Finally, Morantz made the last connection. He straightened up after hiding the timer under the counter in the laboratory and stretched.
“About five hours?” he asked.
Kaplan frowned. “Why so long? What if somebody comes in here this afternoon?”
“They won’t,” Morantz promised. “But we might as well let them get that mess with the car cleaned up before they have to start on this one.” He glanced at his watch, then set the timing device. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
Without looking back, the two men left the house, climbed into the van, then drove back to the road. Morantz parked the car just beyond the gates, got out of the van, closed the gates, and wrapped them with a chain he produced from the back of the van. Then he returned to the van once more, this time to fetch a large painted metal sign. He took it back to the closed gates, and wired it securely into position. Standing bade, he read the sign:
DANGER
THIS PROPERTY UNDER QUARANTINE BY ORDER OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT
Beneath the warning there was a carefully written paragraph regarding the penalties involved for ignoring or removing the sign and a telephone number which could be called if further information was required.
Satisfied, Morantz got back into the van and started the engine. “Dumb, isn’t it?” he remarked as he drove on and eventually turned into the main road. “We could string up barbed wire and every kid in the area would crawl through it just to find out why it was there. But that sign could sit there for years and no one would ignore it.”
And then, ahead, they saw three police cars, a fire truck, and two ambulances gathered around the smoldering wreckage of Carl Bronski’s car. As they passed it, threading their way through the fleet of emergency vehicles, Kaplan carefully examined what was left of the demolished automobile.
“No
body could have survived that,” he said, his voice betraying a note of satisfaction. “Nobody in the world.”
Chapter 30
ARTHUR WISEMAN MOVED SLOWLY around his office, touching things, examining things, remembering. His medical diploma, neatly framed, but yellowing with age even under the protective glass, hung discreetly behind his desk, a silent reassurance to his patients that he was qualified to do his job.
Around the diploma, in frames of their own, were all the certificates he had gathered over forty years of practice. An array to be proud of, documenting a life devoted to service. Commendations from the town, the county, even the state. Citations from the medical association. The gavel that had been his the year he had served as its president. All of it suddenly confronted him with an overwhelming sense of guilt.
How many had there been?
How many children over the years whom he had unknowingly sentenced to death? How many men and women whose lives he had unwittingly shaken, if not destroyed?
He knew the statistics. It wasn’t simply the children who were the victims. It was the families too. The families like the Montgomerys, for whom the loss of an infant seemed to strike a mortal blow to the basic structure of their lives, leaving them floundering helplessly, unable to cope with their own feelings, or those of their mates, or their surviving children.
Until today he had been able to blame that destruction on sudden infant death syndrome. An unknown killer creeping out of the shadows to daim a victim, then slipping away into the nether regions, its identity cloaked in mystery.
Except that for him the cloak had slipped. Arthur Wiseman had seen the face of the enemy.
It was his own face.
Too busy, he thought.
Always, he had been too busy. Too busy caring for his patients, too busy improving his clinic, too busy raising funds so that Eastbury could have a hospital to be proud of.
Too busy to analyze every medication he used.
Too busy to question each new product that came on the market touted by its manufacturers as the latest “medical miracle.”
