Search For Reason (State Of Reason Mystery, Book 2)

by Miles A. Maxwell

  If Everon had it figured, the hospital generator — and Enya’s respirator — had less than four hours of fuel left.

  But no one had heard from Thomas Substation all afternoon. None of Hunt’s people were answering radio calls. Hopefully, the substation was ready to send power to the hospital. Lama’s control circuit had stopped operating, and Everon hadn’t been able to leave any of his trusted people behind. Ortega and Rani had moved on to do other jobs — leaving only four Williams people to complete Thomas’s repairs.

  Everon felt like pushing the stick over and moving on. But he held the MD-900 motionless in the air. Thomas wasn’t going to do them any good if they didn’t have the lines to transmit power to it.

  Metalhead waved the HALO over, and it crabbed the cable sideways into position.

  Everon could almost feel the huge helicopter’s red needles fading left, sucking down fuel — Junior’s fuel tank in sync with it. Sucking away Enya’s life. Worse, over the next two hours Big Mombo’s power demand would double — Junior would use diesel twice as fast.

  As if reading his mind, a faint voice came over his headset. “That’s 2,000 more in the tank, E!” Scrounge at Mercer! “I read just under 6,000 gallons.”

  “Good job, Scrounge!” Holmes transmitted, surprising Everon.

  The heavy cable slid into the clamshell, latching automatically. “That’s it. Twenty-two!” Metalhead transmitted.

  Sparks shot out as she cut away the last of the old damaged cable with a portable grinder. Everon’s eyes followed the thick chunk as it dropped to the ground.

  Bet the sparks were a lot bigger than that Monday night, Everon thought, the long white-hot length falling, melting snow until the grass caught fire. What does it take to actually melt a high-tension line? He didn’t know. He’d never heard of it. Some of the smaller 12,000 volt neighborhood lines, brought down by ice storms and stuff, sure. Never the big ones!

  “There’s never been an atomic attack on U.S. soil before either,” Nick had pointed out, then laid out the most reasonable theory:

  “Look, just before the bomb goes off, Mercer’s taken offline, right? By who, we don’t know, but suddenly all Mercer’s load is on the Schuylkill generator. The line to Thomas can’t carry another ampere. So when the bomb’s EMP destroys the relays, the breakers protecting Nicola and Thomas just freeze — and the power line carrying the most load actually melts! And BOOM! The big transformer at Nicola blows, exploding like a bomb itself!”

  Once they had a minute to breathe — once Enya did — maybe they could find an answer to the question they were all asking: “Who the fuck shut down Mercer? And how is it connected to those assholes back in the woods?”

  Not now.

  The twenty-four-year-old lineswoman’s strong slim hands lined up the ends of the heavy cables and used a small hand winch to pull them together — into an explosive sleeve-splice that looked something like a long yellow corn cob.

  Almost too fast to follow. Perfect.

  Everon watched through the cockpit window as her shiny hardhat dropped back down to her truck . . . away from the detonation space.

  “Okay, Nan, Andréa,” she transmitted. “I’m clear.”

  It’ll move faster now, Everon thought. Bryce’ll tension the line. They’ll bolt the cable to the insulators, remove the clamshell rollers. Twenty-two towers. Eight bucket trucks, eight towers at a time. Hours, not days. The HALO can go now. The monster’s work is done! Everon was pleased the two red-headed female pilots were working so well together.

  Hang in there, Enya!

  In the HALO’s right seat, Andréa’s hand snapped overhead to twist a knob.

  “You’ve done really well today,” Nan told her. “Staying awake all this time. And your flying is still smooth. Amazing, really. Let me get the cable release,” she added, rising to go aft.

  “Maybe we’re used to a little tougher conditions here in Pennsylvania than you guys have in Nevada,” Andréa responded just a bit snidely.

  The monstrous helicopter lurched.

  “Shit!” Andréa’s voice blasted through the headset. Like a cork released underwater, without warning the giant HALO shot upward, Andréa struggling with the controls. It would have knocked Nan off her feet had she not been well braced. She felt herself grinning.

  “All clear on the release cable!” she called over the HALO’s roar, as she felt Andréa stabilize, then bank for Nicola-Juniata.

  Floating above frozen forest, Everon shook his head. A long horn sounded through his headset three times.

  A pause . . .

  BOOM! The mini red fireball exploded in the air around the splice. The heavy cable ends had been forced together. Into one solid piece. And as the cable went tight and rose into position, he turned for Thomas.

  Dean’s Call

  “What’s bothering you, Dean?” Sally Adlan asked her husband. A young-looking blue-eyed blonde of thirty-two, Sally hid her education and native intelligence behind a bouncy exterior.

  “Mmm?” Dean answered distractedly, replaying his wife’s question. He’d been oblivious to the cacophony of jungle sounds around him. Her voice barely penetrated. His search was not going well. For more than an hour he’d been frustrated by a computer connected unreliably with the Internet.

  “Oh, it’s that Ketupa on TV. It’s driving me crazy. What’s that guy doing with it? I mean, where’d it come from?”

  Sally married Dean twelve years ago while they were still in college. They’d noticed each other in advanced biology but were too shy to say anything. During a graduate ten-person field trip to Brazil, they barely spoke to each other the entire ten days.

  Communication between them finally began when they bumped into each other in a pet store a day after they got back, introduced by a pair of light-blue quaker parrots named Josh and Janeen. Josh said “Fuck!”; Janeen replied, “Off!” Momentarily embarrassed, Dean and Sally looked at each other, then laughed until they cried.

  They bought the two parrots to raise as a joint project. Two weeks later Dean and Sally moved in together.

  They were never able to train the little quakers away from that one phrase. But they taught them enough other things to say that it didn’t come up too often. Dean and Sally hatched no offspring of their own. A yellow-beaked toucan, a couple of red-tailed hawks, several macaws, a golden eagle and a big pelican named Otter with a permanently damaged wing — these were their children.

  Both now held PhDs in ornithology, but Dean’s lively blonde wife was the one with the amazing memory. She knew where every type of food, every in-house medicine was kept. Sally smiled, “The narrator of the news program said his name was Franklin something — an odd name, Reveal maybe? Supposed to be minister of a church up in Erie. Maybe you could just call him?”

  Searching an Internet that since the first bomb, often-as-not went nowhere, Dean eventually located a list of Erie’s various churches and spent the next hour calling around. At First Congregational he connected.

  “Yes,” they had a Doctor Franklin Reveal. “Yes,” he’d been in New York. “No,” Dean wasn’t a reporter.

  Dean rubbed a hand across his reddish-blond hair while he patiently explained his expertise with birds to Dr. Reveal’s suspicious secretary.

  “Franklin Reveal. How may I help you?” The voice caught Dean off guard. Deeply soothing, somehow beyond strong. Ministerial.

  Dean was too excited to dwell on it. “Reverend Reveal, this is Dean Adlan in Pittsburgh. I’m an ornithologist. I saw you on television yesterday.”

  “You must be calling about Harry.”

  “Harry?”

  “That’s what we call him. The owl?”

  “Oh — yes, exactly! Where did you find him, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  Franklin paused. “I found him on top of my sister’s apartment building,” his tone darkening, “in New York City.”

  “Apartment building? Did you know that owl is extremely rare in this part of the world?” Dean
asked excitedly. “I think what you’ve got is a Ketupa zeylonensis — a brown fish owl. That’s what they’re commonly known as in Asia. Is he your sister’s pet?”

  Franklin paused. “Not that I know of. Cynthia never had any pets.”

  “It’s extremely unusual to find one in the Western Hemisphere. I’d like to speak with your sister, if I might.”

  “Unfortunately, she perished in New York.”

  “Oh — I’m sorry. I didn’t . . .”

  Seconds ticked by, Dean feeling distinctly uncomfortable — until Franklin said, “It’s all right. Actually, Harry helped me discover my missing niece, Melissa. She’d somehow become locked in my sister’s old file cabinet. I’ve no idea how she got in there. Harry helped save her life.

  “I was about to leave what was left of the apartment, when I saw this brown mass, Harry, shaking at the cabinet’s base. I reached down to scoop him up and I heard my niece crying inside.”

  “Amazing!” cried Dean. “Where are you keeping, uh, Harry?”

  “At the moment, he’s here in my office. He’s lost a few feathers. They just fell out. Is that supposed to happen? He mostly stands in one spot on his perch and shakes a lot. I assumed it was fear, after the bomb, all the explosions in the street. Is that normal?”

  “That type of feather loss isn’t really normal. It might be hunger, mmm — or it could be something more serious. What are you feeding him?”

  “He ate some trout yesterday, but today he doesn’t seem very hungry. I tried grasshoppers. What do they like?”

  Dean felt himself racing ahead, “Look, Reverend, we’ve got one of the most advanced aviaries in North America down here in Pittsburgh. We take care of quite a few rare and exotic birds. Many are injured when we first get them. My wife Sally and I have brought more than a few back to health.”

  “No kidding. Pittsburgh?”

  “Yes.” Dean could feel his excitement growing. “We’ve got a few smaller birds too, but we specialize in the larger raptors and birds of prey: eagles, hawks, falcons — eventually we may place them with good people in good environments. What I’m trying to say is, would you be interested in letting us take care of Harry for a while?”

  “You sound like you have a real passion for what you do.”

  “True.” Dean realized he was gripping the receiver, pressing it excessively hard to his right ear. Am I really about to get a Ketupa in here to study?

  “Uh — hold on a second, Dean.”

  “Okay.”

  There was some kind of commotion out in the front office. Franklin stepped over and cracked his door. He listened for a second, frowned and closed it. Picked up the phone again.

  “Actually,” he said, “I’ve been trying to take care of Harry but have no idea how to do it. And, well, I’ve got too much on my mind right now. I was going to start calling some of the pet stores around town. It would actually be quite a favor if you’d take care of him. If I can get away for a couple hours or so, maybe I can have him down there this afternoon.”

  While Franklin was on the phone it was getting crazy. All of Marjorie’s lines were flashing. She knew what most of them wanted. She was Franklin’s protector, his friend.

  The front door opened.

  “This is Sheila Koontz, National Press,” a woman in one of those mauve pantsuits said backing in, lights blazing, cameraman in tow. “We’re here at the First Congregational Church of Erie, Pennsylvania, to try to speak with a real American hero.”

  Marj was too stunned to speak.

  The reporter continued: “You know him best as one of two bothers who saved thousands of lives on the George Washington Bridge in New York. You’ve seen his picture with his niece Melissa, and his owl Harry, getting off a helicopter — on TV, on the cover of many publications. A Father, er — Reverend named Dr. Franklin Reveal.”

  “Ma’am!” Marjorie shouted. “You can’t just film here like this! Ma’am! He’s not available!”

  Ralph Maples came out of his office, fire in his eyes. “What. Is. Going ON HERE?”

  Medical Release

  “Maybe Bobby should wait outside.”

  The boy’s eyes fixed sullenly on Dale. “It’s Bob. And I’m staying.”

  “He’s old enough to hear whatever you have to say.” His mother’s face was filled with grief and pain. “Just tell us, Doctor. Is there no hope at all?”

  Dale Rass had been here many times before. The news was hitting them hard. They were looking for any way out. Another option. Trying to make a bargain with death.

  But there was no use sugarcoating it. For either of them. He shook his head. “I’m very sorry. None.”

  In the window’s morning light he showed them the paper trace. It was completely flat. A horizontal line. “There’s been no brain activity at all for two days.”

  “I hate to sound callous,” the wife asked, “but why should we do it? Why should I let my husband be cut up?”

  “I suppose I could try to give you the same old reason — doing it would be like offering a smile to a stranger. It costs you nothing but it benefits someone else. I don’t really agree with that — and I suspect right now neither do you. I’m not even sure a smile is free.

  “I could say the woman to get his heart might go on to be of some future benefit to all of us. I don’t know that either.

  “The recipient can’t legally offer you any money. But if you need another reason, and if you’ll keep it between us, I’ll personally give you the fee I get from the operation. In cash.”

  He told them how much he charged. They were shocked.

  The woman’s son responded violently, “Why would you do that?”

  Dale studied the boy for a moment, nodded softly, “Because I can. Because the operation will be difficult. Because I like the challenge of fixing people.”

  They looked to each other. The boy whispered something in his mother’s ear. The woman nodded back. “We’ll sign,” she said. “But I don’t think it’s right you working for nothing.” She looked at her son. “It’s more than enough — you give us half your fee.”

  “Fine with me,” Dale said. He pushed a form and a pen across his desk.

  The woman signed.

  “And now,” said the woman, looking at her son, “if you’d give us a few minutes, Doctor, we’d like to kiss — ” she choked back a sob, “what’s left of Brian goodbye.”

  Time To Die

  “If you can hear me, Cheryl,” Russ whispered, “don’t rescue me. Not yet. I’m okay.”

  Scared shitless. That’s how he’d felt at first. Quaking, tied up in a porta-potty.

  An hour later he’d begun to realize, Maybe this isn’t so bad.

  FBI Agent Russ Bezier, aka Russ Bass, was up on his knees next to the toilet seat, leaning his collarbone and the tiny microphone disguised as a mole up to the vent. Other than the smell, he really was okay.

  Though his field of vision was somewhat restricted by the slots, his location was excellent. He could see anybody who stopped directly outside. Hear plans, time tables. People always talked on the way to the bathroom. Especially the women. His only real worry: This damn mic better be transmitting. His hope was maybe the guys in the lab would be able to amplify and filter the recording later. Probably they were already working on it.

  As the day wore on, he could tell what they were planning was something pretty big. Something that had to do with those eight blue garbage trucks in the front yard. He heard the word nuclear more than once. And Vegas, and Idaho, giving the impression these people definitely had something to do with the New York and Virginia bombs.

  A big 18-wheel semi arrived. He couldn’t see too well.

  They were using a forklift. Unloading big crates of something. Moving whatever it was to the back of the garbage trucks. He’d have to get Cheryl’s help to get him out. Possibly when night fell.

  “We’ve got to check out these blue garbage trucks,” Russ whispered into the tiny mole-mic beneath his shi
rt. “Cheryl, if you can hear me, get a team of agents —”

  And then Russ heard something that sent the fear of God through him:

  “Ah’ll do ’em!” laughed a man with a Georgia accent, a tremendous beer gut and bushy brown muttonchops along the sides of his heavy jaw.

  “Appreciate it, BB,” answered the big Viking guy named Erik. “Taking care of that little creep can only help your chance of moving up in the leadership.”

  “Ahh-course, the prodigious number of articles ah published on the movement’s website ain’t hurtin’ mah chanc’s being held in high regard neither.”

  A moment later three of them yanked the porta-potty’s door wide open. He kicked one in the face, kneed a second one in the groin.

  But the space was too confined.

  They spun him around. When they handcuffed Russ’s elbows together behind his back, that’s when things got really scary. Dragging him from the porta-potty, they handcuffed his ankles and connected them to his elbows.

  They stuffed a gag in his mouth and carried him into the back of a long orange van with no windows. The fat muttonchop guy with the Georgia accent named Billy Bob got up front. The van started. Rumbled out what felt like the front gate and onto the pavement. With Russ trussed up like a turkey on his side.

  Things weren’t looking too good at all.

  Marjorie’s Surprise

  “I’ve worked it out with Reverend Maples,” Marjorie told Franklin over his office phone. “He’s asked me to try and fit your last few people today into his own schedule. ‘As long as you’ — now I’m only quoting him you understand — ‘get rid of that bird!’” She laughed, self-consciously. “’Course, that reporter thing didn’t go over too well either.”

  “Thanks, Marj,” he smiled wryly, put down the receiver and looked into Harry’s huge yellow eyes. Speckled feathers, almost fur, of brown and tan and black, shivered back. “I may have found somebody nice to take care of you.”