Fatal

by Michael Palmer

  “You can’t leave me here like this,” Hal was bellowing, each plea more desperate, more pathetic than the last. “What if I have a heart attack? What if I have to pee? In this country we’re presumed innocent until proven guilty. Who made you the goddamn judge, jury, and executioner? For Christ’s sake, Matthew, listen to me. I’ve known you since you were born. You can’t do this!”

  “Hal, where are your car keys?”

  “My what?”

  “The keys to your car.”

  Matt had found his bike in the garage and retrieved the key to it from the kitchen counter. But if he was going to drive 170 miles across Virginia at eighty miles an hour, he would much rather do it in a Mercedes sedan than perched on a Harley with a novice rider, who hated motorcycles, squirming on the seat behind him.

  Hal stopped his machine-gun ranting and laughed.

  “If I had them you surely wouldn’t get them,” he said. “Not unless you let me go. But thanks to you, I don’t have any keys at all.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I had only one set—my other one’s with Heidi—and my set was in ol’ Larry Hogarth’s pocket when he made the big swan dive. Too bad.”

  “Hal,” Matt said, checking the knots one last time, “I hope you don’t get the pleasure of driving an automobile again for the rest of your life.”

  He stopped in the hallway for Hal’s fleece-lined leather jacket, hurried to the garage, pulled on his helmet, and revved up the Harley. He had made the drive to Washington in two and a half hours. Cutting fifteen minutes off that time stretched the bounds of possibility, but not past the breaking point. Then he checked the fuel gauge and groaned. Just under half a tank—two and a half gallons at best. At the speed he intended to be going, they would be getting around fifty miles per. There would be no chance to make the trip without stopping. Gassing up would be brief, but rolling into the station, pumping, and rolling out would probably add three minutes, maybe even four. Still, depending on when the actual injection took place and how lucky they were once they reached the clinic, it was still remotely possible.

  Ellen raced out of the front door and met him as he was backing the Harley past Hal’s Mercedes. Dressed in Heidi’s leather jacket and black slacks, she looked every bit the biker.

  “Let ’er rip,” she said, climbing up behind him.

  “Just pull on your helmet, lean back, relax, hang on, and watch the world go by,” Matt replied, accelerating down the drive. “Did you reach your friend?”

  “No, but I left him a message. Ordinarily he’d be fishing in the pond behind his cabin at this hour. Today I hope he’s out pacing about, worrying about why he hasn’t heard from me.”

  “I’m sure he is. Well, here we go. Second star to the right and straight on ’til morning.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Ellen said. “Just go fast.”

  Go fast. . . . Damn you, Hal.

  With vivid, lurid images of the victims of the Belinda syndrome in full control of his thoughts, Matt swung onto the highway and hit the gas.

  “SHER, THE LIMO’S here,” Don called out. “A white stretch limo, at that. Isn’t this something.”

  “We’re just about ready,” Sherrie called out from the bedroom. “I want this girl to look her very best for her debut on national TV.”

  “Worldwide TV,” Don corrected.

  He watched as a man and a woman in dress suits, wearing sunglasses, emerged from the limousine and headed up the walk. Men in Black, he was thinking.

  “Ta-da,” Sherrie sang, holding the baby out to her husband.

  “You both look just fine,” Don said, beaming. “Really fine.” He took the baby and kissed Sherrie on the mouth. “No one could ever guess you had this baby just four days ago.”

  “You’re pilin’ up some big-time points, sir,” she said, checking out the scene below their window. “Not every kid has the Secret Service escort them to their baby shots. You ready?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be. Even when I was fightin’ Golden Gloves, I don’t remember being this nervous.”

  “You, nervous? What are you nervous about?”

  “Believe it or not, the baby.”

  Startled, Sherrie turned slowly and looked at him, a shadow of concern darkening her face.

  “You mean the shot?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She sighed.

  “Me, too,” she said. “I’ve been afraid to talk with you about it because I was afraid you’d think I was crazy or . . . or ungrateful. I know Mrs. Marquand told us that plenty of people, babies and grown-ups, had received this shot when it was being tested. Still, Donelle’s going to be the very first to get it after it’s been approved.”

  “I know.”

  “I was speaking to Andrea last night about her son Randy. He was one in May. He has fits all the time that his doctor says are caused by a reaction he had to one of his baby shots. He has to take medicine, and now Andrea says the medicine is messing him up.”

  “I didn’t know that. Is the shot one of the ones Donelle’s gonna get?”

  “It has to be. She’s going to get thirty shots at once—all the ones she’s ever going to need.”

  “I wish we knew more,” Don said.

  Sherrie walked across the room and embraced him and their daughter.

  “Same here,” she said, just as their Secret Service escorts knocked on the door.

  THANKFULLY, THE DAY was sunny and dry. Matt pushed the Harley as hard as he dared, across the Virginia border, then along rolling two-lane roadways through the lush Shenandoah Mountains and the Appalachians. In less than an hour, they had picked up Route 81 in Staunton, and were headed north toward 66. Matt kept their speed at an even eighty, nudging it up a mile or two when he sensed there were no police around. The windscreen and top-of-the-line shocks made it feel like forty. In Harrisonburg, they took on four gallons and learned that they were about 110 miles from Washington. An hour and thirty minutes remained before the shot heard round the world would be fired.

  Depending on the congestion once they hit the city, they had a chance. They picked up I-66 in Middletown and headed east, barreling on through light traffic. Riverton . . . Markham . . . Marshall . . . The Plains . . . bit by bit, they were making up time, closing the gap against the moment when Lara Bolton would trip a switch and inject the first dose of Omnivax into the thigh of a baby girl.

  Three percent. Maybe more. Not odds he would ever want to have operating against his child.

  On the seat behind him, Ellen sat quietly for most of the trip, using the handgrips for balance, and occasionally his arms.

  “This isn’t nearly as unpleasant as I remember,” she yelled as they sped through a particularly spectacular mountain pass.

  “I’ll help you pick out your first bike,” he hollered back.

  For most of the initial hour of their trip, Matt had constantly scanned his rearview mirrors and the road ahead, looking for problems or police. As the day grew brighter and the road more hypnotic, his thoughts drifted to Nikki. He pictured her hunched over Fred Carabetta, battling through the pain of her fractured ankle, using makeshift instruments to perform a delicate procedure that could easily have ripped the man’s vein in half. Courage, resourcefulness, compassion, intelligence—over the short time they had known each other, she had shown him so much. He had truly never believed there was a woman who could take Ginny’s place in his soul and his heart. Now, at least, he knew it was possible. Perhaps for the first time, he acknowledged the effect that Ginny’s death continued to have on him—the indolent and virulent depression that had functioned like a great wall, preventing him from experiencing true joy. Was Nikki the answer? Maybe, he said to himself as they rocketed along the interstate. Maybe she was.

  Catharpin . . . Centerville . . . Fairfax . . . by the time they passed through Arlington, they had ten minutes left. Probably not enough unless there were some preliminaries. There was still going to be the problem of getting in contact with someone
with enough power to stop the injection, and doing it without getting killed.

  Traffic was heavier now, much heavier, and Matt was forced to slow into the twenties to join the migration along the west bank of the Potomac. To his right he caught a glimpse of Arlington National Cemetery. Joe Keller would never be buried there, nor would Kathy Wilson or Teddy Rideout or any of the others who were victims of Hal Sawyer’s war. But Matt knew that thanks to the woman hanging on behind him, the death of every one of them would eventually save lives.

  Eight minutes until three.

  “Take this exit,” Ellen called out. “We’ll cross the Potomac here and look for signs to Anacostia. We’re almost there.”

  They headed east on 395, crossed the Anacostia River at Pennsylvania Avenue, and then turned onto Minnesota. This was the tenement, lead paint, hard-scrabble section of the city—a drug-infested, 80 percent unemployed island of violence and despair, situated less than two miles from the Capitol. It was hardly an accident that Lynette Marquand had chosen a community health center here to showcase Omnivax. Her husband was trailing badly among black and Hispanic voters. Matt wondered how long it would take for Lynette to accept the tale of Lasaject and halt the inoculations.

  Traffic had slowed to a near-crawl.

  Two minutes, if that.

  “Are we close enough for you to make it on foot?” Matt asked.

  “Maybe. I’m not quite sure where we are relative to—wait! Fenwick Road. Over there! That’s the street. I’m certain of it.”

  Matt accelerated and swung the Harley up onto the tree belt and across a weedy lawn, onto Fenwick. Several blocks down the street, they could see broadcast trucks, a number of them, lined up along the side of the road. Then they saw the blue barricade a block ahead.

  “What time do you have?” Matt asked, hoping his watch and the one Ellen had taken from Heidi’s bureau disagreed.

  “After three,” Ellen replied sadly, “maybe five or six minutes. You gave it a heck of a try.”

  How long was the show going to last altogether? Matt wondered. Probably not more than ten or fifteen minutes, with maybe some commentary from the various networks’ health gurus after that. If regular broadcasting resumed, it might be hours before they could get their story heard, and get word out to the pediatricians of the country to stop the injections. They had failed to stop the initial injection, but there still might be a chance to get to someone in a position of influence in time to prevent thousands of other exposures.

  Three percent.

  “BARRICADE,” MATT ANNOUNCED. “We’re there.”

  As they approached the intersection, a young D.C. cop strode lazily toward them. He looked queerly at Granny Biker, perched comfortably on the raised passenger seat behind Matt.

  “No admission here,” he said. “You’ll have to head that way two blocks until you see the officer, or else go back to the freeway.”

  “Should I say something to him?” Ellen whispered.

  “I think we get only one chance at this, and he ain’t it. By the time he finishes calling his supervisor, who will call his supervisor, it’ll be tomorrow.”

  “What, then?” Ellen asked.

  By now, several other cars had pulled up behind them. The officer walked past the Harley to repeat his instructions to the occupants of a silver minivan.

  “I think we have to move up a couple of levels in the chain of command. Hang on.”

  “Just pray that kid in the policeman’s uniform doesn’t start shooting.”

  “It’s not him I’m worried about,” Matt said. “Hold tight. I’m going to try to make it up to the front door of the clinic. What time have you got?”

  “Ten after.”

  “Damn.”

  Matt waited until the policeman had moved to yet another car, and then quickly accelerated around the barrier, up over a low curbing, and down the sidewalk. If the cop fired at them, they never heard or felt it. They were closing rapidly on the phalanx of broadcasting vans marking the entrance to the clinic. A hundred yards . . . fifty . . . Matt was entertaining theatrical visions of driving through the glass front door when, from the corner of his eye, he caught rapid movement coming from his left. He slowed and was turning his head when a woman hurled herself at them. Arms outspread, she connected with his and Ellen’s shoulders like a missile, sending both of them sprawling off the motorcycle and onto the dirt of a weedy, trash-strewn vacant lot. The riderless Harley skidded on its side along the concrete and came to rest against the base of a tree. The woman, an athletic brunette in her thirties, held them down until two other Secret Service agents arrived, guns drawn.

  “Not a move!” one of them snarled, his pistol fixed on them. “Take those helmets off slowly, you first.”

  Ellen and Matt did as he demanded.

  “I’m a doctor,” Matt said quickly.

  “Please listen to us,” Ellen said. “I’m a member of the commission that approved the vaccine they just gave to that baby in there. My name’s Ellen Kroft. We’ve just discovered there’s a serious problem with Omnivax. We need to speak to someone in authority while they’re still on the air so that we can warn the public and keep more kids from being vaccinated. Hundreds of lives may be at stake. Please! I’m telling the truth. There’s a dangerous contamination of the vaccine. Mrs. Marquand must be told about it.”

  One agent, a lanky black man with a scar across his chin, eyed them suspiciously, then took a silent poll of the other two. Both merely shrugged.

  “ID?” he asked.

  Ellen shook her head.

  “Of course.”

  “Wallet, jacket pocket,” Matt said.

  “Take it out slowly.”

  The agent handed Matt’s wallet over to the other man, who scanned the contents,

  “West Virginia license. Matthew Rutledge. It says he’s a doctor.”

  “And I’m the Pope,” the first agent muttered, removing a set of handcuffs from his back pocket. “On your feet, both of you. Jill, pat ’em down.”

  “I’m telling you,” Matt said desperately, as his left wrist was shackled to Ellen’s right, “we have to get down there before they go off the air.”

  “Shut up!” The agent turned to the other two. “Well?”

  Jill lifted the two-way radio from her hip.

  “Bert, it’s Jill. How much longer of a delay before they get the show going?”

  “Delay?” Ellen asked.

  “I said, shut up!”

  “Alan, Bert says ten more minutes,” Jill said to the black agent.

  The man sighed.

  “Tell him we’re bringing down two party crashers for him to talk to. The sooner we get this out of our hands and into his, the better.”

  “Thank you,” Ellen said, utterly relieved. “You’re doing the right thing.”

  “Why does that sound to me like Find another job?”

  “Have they given the shot yet?” Ellen risked asking.

  “No, they haven’t even gotten on the air.”

  “What happened?”

  “What happened is, some wacko got in there dressed as an electrician. He used a pair of electrician’s shears and cut the pool feed cable from the camera inside the clinic to the truck that transmits the signal to all the networks. We’ve been on delay for forty-five minutes now. But I think the cable’s just about been replaced.”

  “Then, hurry,” Matt said. “Get us to one of Mrs. Marquand’s people before they give that shot, and I promise you, you’ll be heroes.”

  “You better be right.”

  With an agent on either side of them, and a sizable crowd jeering from tenement windows, Ellen and Matt were led down the sidewalk, toward the clinic.

  “I can’t believe we’re going to make it,” Matt said.

  “I told you not to give up.”

  “No, that was me. I told you.”

  Ellen turned to Jill.

  “Do you have any idea why the man cut the cable?”

  “Like Alan said, he’s a
wack-job. Listen, in case you couldn’t tell, we’re not having a good day. If you’re juicin’ us about who you are or this vaccine, we’re gonna cuff you to the same tree he’s huggin’ and leave all three of you there overnight to sample the hospitality of the neighborhood.”

  The agent gestured to their right, where the culprit stood, his arms shackled around a good-sized oak.

  Ellen grinned as they hurried past him toward the gleaming health center.

  Rudy waved with his fingertips.

  “Hey, Rudy,” she called out, “this is my new friend, Matt Rutledge. Matt, this is my . . . significant other, Rudy Peterson.”

  Just as they reached the clinic, a couple emerged. The woman was cradling an infant in her arms, holding her so that the child was bathed in the warm afternoon sun. Behind her, just inside the door, Matt could see what looked like more Secret Service people. At the sight of the two of them, handcuffed together, the couple took a wary step backward.

  “Hi,” Ellen said cheerily, her smile threatening to escape the bounds of her face. “Is this the baby who’s going to get the vaccination?”

  “Yes,” Sherrie replied, glancing down lovingly at her child. “Her name’s Donelle.”

  CHAPTER 38

  LATE AFTERNOON SHADOWS WERE STRETCHING across the streets of D.C. when Matt finally fired up the Harley and headed back toward West Virginia. He was riding alone. Ellen and Rudy remained behind to answer more questions from the FBI and to review the evidence Rudy had brought into the city with him. The progression from the Secret Service agent in charge of security at the clinic to his counterpart on Lynette Marquand’s staff to Marquand herself had been rapid.

  There had simply been too much at stake for anyone to delay.

  In a small conference room, Matt and Ellen were being interrogated by former Georgia Congresswoman Joanne Kramer, Marquand’s chief of staff, when word was brought in that the feeder cable Rudy had severed had been replaced. It was the moment of truth. Kramer hurried from the room, leaving the two of them with a Secret Service agent. Five interminable minutes passed before the door opened and Kramer reentered. With her was the First Lady of the United States. Beneath her piled-on-for-TV makeup, Marquand was ashen. There was no warmth in her expression as she took stock first of Matt, then Ellen.