by Al Macy
What is going on? What is happening? I rasped out, “Thank you, Mr. President.” I had a terrible taste in my mouth.
The president turned away as I was wheeled out. “And don’t worry. The FBI will cover the dry-cleaning bill.” From his tone, it sounded a little like a joke, but I had no idea what he meant.
Charli Keller had been watching from the hall. She and a doctorish fellow, possibly the president’s personal physician, walked beside the gurney. The ceiling rolled by, and passing faces of West Wing employees held curious expressions.
“Charli, what just happened?”
“You don’t want to know.” She grinned.
“I do want to know. Come on. What’s going on?”
“You just unconsciously supplied comic relief to a tense situation.”
“Spill it.”
“You passed out and upchucked on the leader of the free world.” She laughed.
“The president?”
“No, Einstein, the other leader of the free world.”
“What are you saying?” I asked. “I wasn’t sitting anywhere near him.”
She seemed to be trying to keep her laughter under control. An astronaut had died, after all. She looked me in the eye as I was being loaded into the ambulance. “Two words, Jake. Projectile vomiting.”
No. Please make this a dream.
CHAPTER THREE
I felt better the next day. A glass wall separated my hospital room from the hall, and a steady stream of medical personnel passed by, getting a look at the hospital’s new attraction: The man who threw up on the president.
My doctor popped through the door to my room without looking up from her clipboard. She was a willowy redhead with a huge nose that gave character to her otherwise everyday face. She picked up my chart, and the muscles around her mouth battled against a grin. The grin won.
“How are you feeling today, Mr. Corby?” She had an upper-class British accent.
“Go ahead. You can laugh.”
She did.
“I’m feeling better,” I said. “Can you tell me what’s going on?”
She leaned in, shined a light in each eye and had me squeeze her hands. “There’s nothing to worry about. We think you had a bad reaction to the combination of drugs you received. The main problem, however, was too much activity before you were ready, you silly bugger.” She stood back up and made some notes on my chart. “We’re going to keep an eye on you, and tomorrow I’ll figure out when we can send you home. Are you ready for some visitors?”
I nodded, and she popped back out the door. Doctors came and went pretty quickly in that place. Hallstrom stuck his head into the room and wrinkled his brow while biting his lip. “Is it safe to come in here?”
I rolled my eyes. “Very funny. Come on in.”
He and Charli smiled their way to my bed. Hallstrom’s grin faded as he got another look at my injuries. “Feeling any better?”
“Oh, I’ll live.” Was I overdoing the macho talk? “What’s the status of the ISS?”
“I guess you haven’t been watching the news.” Charli looked at the TV, which was off.
I shook my head.
“Well,” she said, “Marko, Sasha, and Yuri returned safely to Earth in their Soyuz. Marko is now in a hospital. He had significant bleeding in his brain. Early word is he’s going to survive, but he’ll be in a wheelchair and have some cognitive deficits.”
“What about the others?”
“The second Soyuz was damaged in the attack.” Charli slid a lock of hair behind her ear. “When the first Soyuz undocked, they saw that much of the remaining Soyuz had melted into slag. So, Commander Shepard and Medical Officer Pettit are stuck, hanging on in the heavily damaged ISS. At one point last night, the station started spinning, but that’s under control now. Bottom line, they barely have enough power to keep themselves alive, so we need to get them home ASAP.”
I looked from Charli to Hallstrom. “How do we do that? The shuttle’s done, right?”
Hallstrom nodded. “NASA decommissioned all the shuttles. It would take way too long to get one flying again.”
“Is there another Soyuz available?”
“No,” Hallstrom said. “The engineers are trying to kludge together a creative plan, but so far, they haven’t come up with any workable ideas.”
“But the situation is even worse,” Charli said.
“Worse?”
“Yes.” Hallstrom ran a hand through his hair. “The terrorists claimed responsibility for the attack, and they say they’re going to finish off the ISS unless their demands are met.”
Charli had one hand on the rails of my bed. “They call themselves the Ninety-Nine-Percent Solution. Our mad scientist, McClaren, and a guy called Weston Broker are the leaders. Recognize this man?” She handed me a photo.
I looked at it, remembering the man immediately. I tapped the picture. “Yes, that guy directed my interrogation. Looks like a yuppie in L.L. Bean clothing. He seems confident.”
Hallstrom nodded. “That guy is a former venture capitalist who has organized an alliance between militia groups, McClaren, and radicalized investors. Their philosophy is a mixed up combination of Unabomber, Timothy McVeigh, and Occupy Wall Street. Here’s what they sent us.” He pulled a pack of papers from his briefcase and handed it to me.
“All this? This is, what, eighty pages?”
Hallstrom nodded. “Just read the summary at the top. You’ll get the idea.”
I took a look.
Dear fellow citizens of the world. The information revolution and the globalization of commerce has been a disaster for the human race. The United States government has spent our hard-earned taxes, taxes which were illegally levied, to benefit only the wealthiest of its citizens and the all-powerful corporations while ignoring the needs of 99% of its citizens.
Our group has arisen to strike a retaliatory blow which will serve as a wake-up call to our leaders and express the revelation of the mass injustice that has been perpetrated on us …
I flipped through some of the other pages. “I get the idea. Do they have any specific demands?”
Hallstrom checked a page on his clipboard. “Let’s see. They want to abolish income tax, they want some big corporations disbanded, the list goes on and on.”
I frowned. “But what about specific, immediate demands?”
“Right,” Hallstrom said. “They have a list of twenty so-called political prisoners, some of whom are dangerous criminals. If they aren’t released by December 10th, the group says it will destroy the ISS.”
“Can we move the ISS? Change its orbit?”
Charli shook her head. “Apparently not. If it weren’t damaged, we could, but the way it is now, no.”
“Well, that gives us three weeks. And I should be pretty well healed by then.”
Hallstrom scoffed and put his hand up. “I’d love to use you, Jake, but you’d better sit this one out.”
“We’ll see,” I said.
I heard a small gasp at the door and looked over to see my wife, Mary.
I’ve never figured out what I did to deserve her. She’s forty-one, five years my senior, but strangers still suspect she’s my trophy wife. Everyone notices her eyes first, large and deep and the color of amber. They work together with the rest of her exquisite features to provide color commentary for everything she says. She has a trim figure that lies somewhere between yoga instructor and gym rat.
Her frown, as she crossed to the bed, let me know how angry she was that I had gotten myself into the situation that resulted in my injuries, but a softness in the set of her mouth told me how happy she was to be with me again. I put my water cup back on the side table, misjudged the distance, and spilled it, getting a puzzled glance from her. She doesn’t miss much.
She managed to give me a full-body hug—ouch—without the usual awkwardness of an embrace with someone who’s reclining.
“Director Hallstrom and Charli Keller, I’d like to introduce my wife, Mary, who
owns and runs a successful graphic design company down in Mexico City.”
That earned me an eye-roll from Mary. She knew I always felt the need to let people know she’s her own woman, not a submissive little housewife. She’s tried to cure me of that, explaining that it doesn’t matter what people think of her.
After my FBI handlers excused themselves, Mary climbed into the bed, knocking my pulse oximeter and setting off a few alarms.
It was so good to be snuggling with her again. What was it that made me go off on these adventures?
Mary sighed and pressed her head against my shoulder. “Oh, Jake, what’s wrong with you?”
“What a coincidence.” I held her tight even though my ribs weren’t happy about it. “I’ve been asking myself that same question. If you don’t know the answer, I don’t think I can figure it out.”
“You know I’ve never interfered with your obsession with terrorism.”
“Hey, I thought I asked you not to make fun of my hobbies.”
She looked up at my face. “Jake, if you’re trying to figure out what’s wrong with you, you might start with your inability to be serious.”
“You mean like the guy who walks into a bar—”
“Jake, you really, really don’t need to save the world. You know that, right? Have you thought about what it would be like for me if you were killed?”
That sobered me up. Of course I’d thought about it.
“Right,” I said. “If anything happened to you, I wouldn’t be able to go on. I’d just drop out of the world. I’d hole up in a cabin in the woods and have food sent in.” I looked up at the ceiling. “I promise I will try to cut down on the heroics. And I will try to remember this promise even in the heat of the moment.”
* * *
They released me from Walter Reed around the time my celebrity status faded. Coincidence? Mary and I hung out in D.C. for two weeks, luxuriating in the Hotel Monaco, doing touristy things, and people-watching in coffee shops. We discussed our plans for having children. We enjoyed long walks in the snow, bundled up in our new down parkas with Mary firmly attached to my arm. Sure, it sounded like a personal-ad cliché, but it felt great.
The ISS was dying, and the news broadcasts were full of schemes for rescuing Catherine and Ray. The world was now on a first-name basis with the astronauts. The news media had amped up interest with two-hour special reports covering their lives and careers. Since they were most likely headed toward an unpleasant death, I didn’t watch.
Mary and I were checking out Space Shuttle Enterprise in the Air and Space Museum when I spied Hallstrom striding toward us. Uh-oh. He closed the distance and put on his best politician smile. I guess the FBI had kept tabs on where I was.
“Jake, look at you. You heal pretty fast.”
“Well, I get lots of practice.”
I had to admit, I liked the guy. He wasn’t as phony as he looked. We shook hands.
After making small talk and gushing over how beautiful Mary looked, he herded us to his favorite coffee shop, the Nonpartisan Cafe.
We got our drinks and found a table in the back, under a huge black-and-white photo of Eisenhower and Nixon toasting one another with coffee cups. Hallstrom took a bite from his powdered jelly donut.
“Dane, the deadline’s in two days,” I said. “Do you really have time for schmoozing with ex-FBI consultants?”
“Here’s the thing, Jake.” He shifted in his seat and glanced at Mary. “We’re stuck. We think we know where that beam came from, but we’ve been scouring the area and coming up empty. I know it’s asking a lot, but it would be great if you could just go there and nose around. Nothing dangerous.”
I raised my hand as if taking an oath. “I promise, Dane, I’m not as smart as you think I am. Mary will back me up on this.”
Mary nodded while sipping her coffee, spilling some.
“Do you know much about Catherine and Ray, the astronauts who are stranded up there?” Hallstrom asked.
“Oh, no you don’t.” I waggled a finger. “That’s not playing fair, Dane. I know they’re fine people—”
“Ray Shepard has four kids under the age of ten, and his wife is pregnant.”
I closed my eyes and ran my hand over my face. “So, not a big believer in population control.”
“Catherine Pettit got engaged just before she left on the mission. Her fiancé is about the nicest—”
“She’s not pregnant, too, is she?” I looked at Hallstrom with mock alarm. Despite the obviousness of his effort to over-personalize the astronauts, he was getting through to me.
“Jake, I wouldn’t have come unless I felt you were the best man for the job.” He took a napkin from the holder and wiped some donut powder off his chin. “You’ll be well-supported. All we need is for you to point us in the right direction. I’m sure you want to get these terrorists as much as we do.”
He knew which buttons to press. I said, “Not that I’m accepting, but where is it?”
A smile appeared on Hallstrom’s face. “Based on the Hubble and ISS orbital paths, and by working out the angle of the beam in the video McGraw showed you, we think the weapon is on the coast of California, up toward Oregon. Some of our calculations even suggest it’s offshore, but those don’t seem reliable. I know you can look around without any danger.”
Mary sat on my left, so I noticed her little eye-roll. I agreed with her. There was no way I’d do this, right?
* * *
The military jet dropped me off at dawn on an airfield north of Eureka, California. The deadline was eighteen hours away.
Mary had given my mission her reluctant blessing. She’s strict about never interfering in my decisions, and I couldn’t resist one more shot at these homegrown terrorists. I’d reaffirmed my pledge to do nothing heroic.
On the plane ride, I’d read the briefing papers on Humboldt County. It had a reputation as the dope-growing capital of the country. A quarter of its economy was based on legal and illegal sales of marijuana, but that wasn’t saying much. The lumber and fishing industries were crumbling, and Eureka’s one remaining pulp mill had shut down.
I spent the day searching for things that were out of place. People in camo outfits despite the lack of a nearby military base, new activity in an abandoned building, anything that didn’t look right. All I learned was that I wasn’t a very good detective.
I passed the old freighter on the wharf three times before the dim bulb in my head flickered on. The vessel wasn’t huge like a container ship but still towered over the crab boats surrounding it. Rust bled down from every rivet, and it listed to one side. It didn’t fit in, and that’s what I was after. One worker pulling a handcart up the gangplank wore camo pants. Could it be a front, with a gleaming high-tech interior hiding in the rusty shell?
I pulled out my cell phone and put my finger on the speed-dial for Hallstrom and then stopped. I had nothing to go on other than a hunch. A closer look wouldn’t hurt.
I wandered out onto the dock as if I were just killing time. My worn denim jacket made me look like a local stoner.
The temperature had dropped to fifty degrees with a bone-chilling humidity that made me want to move to Arizona. I wished I had the down parka from D.C.. The sun was going down, the seagulls were screaming, and the low-tide smell was past quaint. Nothing suggested that this boat was anything but a down-on-its-luck workhorse of a ship. I’m wasting my time—glad I didn’t call it in.
“Hey, you.” The yell came from the mizzenmast, or the poop deck, or the scuppers; I’m not up on my nautical terms. “Get back to work.” A ruddy-faced sailor hung over the side jabbing his cigar toward the last four boxes on the wharf. “Now.”
I raised my hands up, putting an appropriate amount of insolence into the gesture, but thinking, Thanks for the invite. I’ll get a quick peek inside the ship, confirm that it’s a red herring, and be on my way. Nothing heroic here. I picked up a box and started toward the gangplank.
“What, are you fucking kidding
me?” Big-cigar man seemed ready to have a heart attack. “One box? Jesus Aloysius Christ, get three.” He threw his cigar into the oily water and stomped off to micromanage someone else.
I stacked the last four boxes in my arms, overachiever that I am, and followed a fellow downtrodden laborer onto the ship and into the hold. I dropped off three boxes and put the fourth on my shoulder. It hid my face and made me look busy.
Something wasn’t quite right about this ship. Don’t they use container ships these days? I climbed to an upper deck and found a room stacked with clear plastic containers of greenish-brown organic material. It looked as if Paul Bunyan were receiving a shipment of vacuum-packed Shredded Wheat squares.
That was the answer to the puzzle: dope. This ship was smuggling marijuana out of Humboldt County. No mad scientists here. Time to get back to dry land and do some more detecting.
The deck lurched, and I fell against a bale of reefer. Ah, jeez, we’re under way. So that’s why the ship had tooted its horn. “Pardon me, Captain. I’m with the FBI, but I’m okay with your smuggling, really. I was looking for a mad scientist. If you could just take me back to the dock, I’ll be on my way.” That wouldn’t fly. I guessed I’d be making a short swim back to shore.
That’s when my cigar-smoking buddy came in for his break. I hid behind a stack of bales. This was a problem. If I didn’t get out while we were still in the harbor, I’d be swimming in the ocean. The porthole behind me wasn’t big enough to squeeze through. I watched the ship’s progress and figured that if cigar man was still there when we were about to clear the harbor, I’d make a break for it. Then—and I’m not making this up—he started singing. Opera. He was actually really good and his voice resonated in the steel ship.
I stood gazing out the porthole, listening to Verdi or Puccini or Paparazzi, as if I were on some kind of opera-lovers’ cruise. The setting sun passed behind the abandoned pulp mill. Hold on. It wasn’t abandoned. Lights were on and two trucks stood near the main building. The dim bulb in my head flickered back to life. That dumb idea about the boat? Forget that. This was where the weapon was. Maybe.
