Before It's Too Late

by Sara Driscoll

  “So then we were left with a fleet of ships and nothing to do with them?”

  “Sort of. Some of them were sold off, but these weren’t pleasure vessels or even good transatlantic freighters, because they were too small. So most of them were never used, and, in the end, were sold as salvage and eventually scrapped.”

  Meg had been listening quietly from the back, but finally spoke up. “Why on earth would they sink them in the middle of the Potomac? That seems like a bad idea.”

  McCord turned around in his seat to speak to her directly. “It’s not exactly in the middle, but I understand your point. The Potomac has always been a busy waterway. The problem is they were never meant to stay there. The salvage company moved them to a bay just off the Potomac that put the ships out of the main waterway, but was still easily accessible thirty miles south of DC. Their plan was to just keep them there, short-term. Except they went bankrupt during the Depression and the ships have been there ever since. Some of the ships were lined up and burned to destroy them faster, but you can’t burn what’s underwater, so that was never going to work. There are over one hundred and eighty-five wooden ships in the bay and a couple of latter-day metal additions, all just slowly falling apart and returning to nature. And when I say ‘returning to nature,’ I really mean it. The metal ships are rusting, but are still mostly intact, while the wooden ships are disintegrating from the water and the weather. Most of them are totally underwater at high tide, but those ships closer to the shore have become nesting islands for waterbirds, herons, osprey, and bald eagles. In fact, the site was proposed for national marine status in 2015.”

  “So where will she be? Where would he put her? She could be on any one of those ships.”

  “It looks like some of them are submerged all the time, so it won’t be there, but other than that, any of the others could be fair game. What I’d like to know is how he’s getting her out there.”

  “That one is easy,” Webb said as they bulleted past a pickup truck overloaded with building supplies. “There are a ton of boat rental places up and down the Potomac where you can rent a boat by the day or even for only a few hours. I’ve done it myself. All he would need to do is rent a two-person kayak and then keep her sedated and drop a blanket or tarp over her while he’s on the water and no one would be the wiser. The river can be busy on the weekends, but on a Monday morning, I bet he could slip around, unseen, while everyone is off at their day jobs. As far as where she is, don’t forget we’ve got a secret weapon,” Webb said. “Do you trust your dog?”

  There was no doubt in Meg’s mind. “Always.”

  “Then I think we need to leave it to Hawk,” Webb said. “He’ll know, and he’ll get us there. He’s a Lab, and he can probably swim better than us anyway. The rest is on us to get Cara to safety, and then we’ve got to run for Antietam.” He glanced in the rearview mirror at Meg. “There isn’t any way we can pull in anyone else? Someone to search for this other victim on the QT?”

  “Do you know how many times I’ve nearly called Brian?” Meg could hear the edge of hysteria in her own voice and tried to curb it, pushing down the panic rising inside, not only for Cara, but for some unknown woman, another mirror image of herself, dying terrified and alone. “He threatened my parents. Sure, I could call them and tell them to keep an eye out for a maniac, but what if he just waits? Maybe he doesn’t strike this week, but he’ll do it next week, or the week after that. They can be as careful as they want, but he’s already proven himself to be deadly. And it wouldn’t be a game this time. There would be no clues. Just two executions.” She swallowed hard, steadied herself. “No, this has to be us. In his mind, both women are going to die because he thinks the CRRU has been cracking the code and solving the riddles. He doesn’t know it’s been us for half the case.”

  “So we’ll save them both.” Webb’s statement didn’t allow for any alternative outcome. “That should make him go off the deep end. McCord, do we have any idea of what the second site might be?”

  “Working on it. Okay, the first part of the clue was ‘history was made nearby.’ We know we’re looking at Antietam, but this says not on the battlefield itself. Tie that in with the reference to ‘treatment’ and I think I’ve got a good idea for the location.” He looked over his shoulder to see Meg peering at his monitor. He tapped a small square just to the east of the long, sprawling battlefield on the map, filled with red and blue bars and arrows indicating troop lines and movement. “The Pry House Field Hospital. Back in September of 1862 it was used by the Union Army as General McClellan’s headquarters, but today it’s a museum.”

  “There’s no way he’s got a victim stashed in a museum,” Webb scoffed. “What happens when someone trips over her on a tour and sounds the alarm?”

  “I’d be with you on that logic, except this museum is only open Thursday to Sunday.”

  “And today’s Monday,” Meg said. “The place would be locked up tight. And it’s away from the main battlefield. No one would be going in or would be anywhere near the place.”

  “The worst that might happen is the cleaning crew found her, but chances of that are pretty small. They’d probably either be going in Sunday night after closing or Wednesday before opening. If he got in earlier today, either by breaking a window or picking a lock, no one would even know she was there.”

  “Why is this place significant?”

  “Because besides being McClellan’s headquarters, it was also the emergency medical center run by Dr. Jonathan Letterman, the Union Medical Director. According to this website, it’s considered the birthplace of battlefield and emergency medicine. But now we’re into your area of expertise, Webb, not mine.”

  “Trauma response?”

  “Right. We know we’re going to be looking at something having to do with suffocation. And based on the location and the background, it’s going to be some sort of battle injury that could lead to death by suffocation. So what could it be?”

  Webb did a quick shoulder check and then darted around a bus lumbering along under the speed limit. “A couple of things. You could have crush injuries, like a horse falling on you after it was shot. But considering the Wiccan victim, I think we’ve been there, done that. Or you could have any number of injuries that breach the pleural space.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s really a cavity, but in emergency medicine, we tend to think of it as the fluid-filled space between the two membranes that surround the lungs and separate the lungs from the chest wall. It maintains negative pressure in the chest—meaning less than atmospheric pressure—and this allows the lungs to expand and contract during normal breathing. But anything penetrating that space is catastrophic. If there is blunt-force trauma—say if you’re hit by a nearly spent cannon ball—and your ribs are broken and pierce the pleural membrane, that negative pressure will go positive. Or if there is sharp-force trauma—maybe a shallow thrust of a bayonet—that breaks the membrane and lets in air, that’s a pneumothorax. Or penetrating trauma—let’s say a musket ball this time that not only pierces the pleural space, but also hits blood vessels—then there will be a buildup of blood. That’s a hemothorax and that puts pressure on the space as well. The end result for all three is the same: the lung on the side of the injury collapses and you can’t inhale and exhale, your oxygen level drops, and in severe or prolonged cases you suffocate.”

  “Nasty,” McCord muttered.

  “Definitely. There’s also one other thing it could be. Those battles were fought in the woods and in the cornfields. There were hundreds or thousands of troops stomping through those areas. If they marched through a hornet’s nest and stirred up a few hundred angry yellow jackets, anaphylaxis is also a possibility from an extreme allergic reaction. No EpiPens for a speedy save back then.”

  McCord was muttering and typing madly, clicking, searching. “Not anaphylaxis. Too early. Nobel prize for that research given in 1913.” More searching and muttering. “Hemothorax standard practice of intercos
tal incision came about in the 1870s.”

  “ ‘Standard practice,’ ” Webb repeated. “Which means they were experimenting with it earlier. Given the time frame, we could be looking at early innovations during the Civil War. Believe me, with battlefield injuries, there were a lot of men to practice a new technique on.”

  “Okay, so that’s one to keep in mind.” More typing. Then he held very still. “Wait a second. I may have something here. Something better than the hemothorax. Dr. Benjamin Howard.”

  “Who is Dr. Howard?” Meg asked, leaning between the front seats to look at the picture on McCord’s laptop of a solemn man in a Union Army uniform, with a full beard and dark, wavy hair.

  “Dr. Howard was the assistant surgeon who came up with the technique of hermetically sealing chest wounds to stabilize a pneumothorax.”

  “Smart guy,” said Webb. “The number of deaths from pneumothorax dropped astronomically, once it was figured out that resealing the wound with an airtight dressing could reestablish the proper pressure and reinflate the lung. So, is this guy related to either Antietam or this field hospital?”

  “Both. He served with the Nineteenth New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment as an assistant surgeon and was with them at Antietam. In fact, when their commanding officer, General Hooker, was shot in the foot, he treated him and got him back to active duty within only a couple of weeks.”

  Impatience was steadily building in Meg. She knew there was nothing they could do right now while Webb got them to Mallows Bay as fast as possible, but all this talking just made her want to do something. “Maybe I’m not following, but what does General Hooker’s foot have to do with a suffocation injury?”

  “Dr. Howard was the guy who figured out a way to treat the ‘sucking chest wounds’ killing so many Union soldiers. The injuries themselves might not be that serious, but men were dying anyway. He figured out that closing the wound with metal sutures, then bandaging the wound with alternating layers of linen drenched in thick syrup, which dried to become an adhesive film and created an airtight seal. He saw survival rates quadruple with this treatment. Think of the clue. ‘Look to the man who deduced the treatment to save her.’ That’s our guy, Dr. Howard. He’s telling us where to go, once we get to Antietam. That’s how I got to the Pry House Field Hospital Museum. It all fits.”

  “If we’re looking at a pneumothorax, you could be looking at someone who takes hours to die slowly. It would be exactly what this guy would need if he has to take two vics and hide them in separate, distant locations.” Webb’s eyes narrowed on the road, and Meg could tell his mind was somewhere else.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking I’m going to need some basic supplies on hand. Leave it with me.” He glanced at the clock on the dash and pressed down harder on the accelerator, pushing them all back into their seats.

  “You trying to get us pulled over?” McCord asked.

  “A firefighter and an FBI K-9 handler on the way to an emergency? I could talk us out of a ticket and into an escort in about twenty seconds. I’d rather not waste time stopping, but if it happens, we’ll use it to our advantage.”

  Meg met Webb’s eyes in the rearview mirror, knowing all the worry swirling inside her was there for him to see.

  “Hang in there,” he said. “We’ll be there before you know it.”

  Monday, May 29, 12:33 PM

  MD-224 South

  Nanjemoy, Maryland

  “That’s it—the dirt road to the right.” McCord pointed at what looked like a double-rutted cart path about twenty feet ahead, mostly engulfed by trees and tall brush.

  Webb hit the brakes, the back of the truck fishtailing slightly in response. A honk sounded behind them as he wrestled the truck around the sharp turn and into the lane. “Sorry,” he muttered, raising a hand in apology to the driver behind him who was caught off guard by the sudden turn. He had to bring their speed way down on the bumpy, narrow road. “You’re sure this is it? We meet another vehicle on this road and I’m not sure I’d be able to pass it.”

  “There’s a paved road farther along that leads to a boat landing, but it’s set back into an inlet that’s the mouth of Mallows Creek and is surrounded by marsh. I’ve been studying Google Maps as we drove, trying to find the fastest way to get us there. This will take us almost all the way to something called Sandy Point. It’s a little farther north of Mallows Bay than the boat launch, but this road will take us almost all the way to the shore. We can then run along the beach to the ships. I figured we’d make better time on foot over land than swimming through the inlet and out into the bay.”

  “Unless we’re very wrong,” Meg said, “we’re going to be swimming no matter what. Water is the key to his plan.”

  “But the less we have to do, the better. The fleet goes a fair way out and we have no idea of where Cara is or what we’ll need to do, once we get there, so we need to save our strength for when we really need it. I like to work out at the gym as much as the next guy—” He cut himself off to glance at Webb. “Okay, you’re the wrong person to be sitting next to because you firefighters work out a lot, so let’s compare me to the next normal guy. But I don’t swim that much. Running, I’m your guy. If you go to Iraq and don’t have the stamina to run like hell for long distances when needed, it’s game over.”

  “You’ve probably got me beat there,” Webb said. “But I could bench-press circles around you.”

  “Really? Want to put your money where your mouth is, fireboy?”

  Meg studied the two men in the front seat, knowing their whole performance was to keep her distracted during a drive where she couldn’t do anything other than focus on being helpless. “Hey.” The men stopped comparing gym routines. “Thank you, both. No matter what happens, I owe you everything for trying. It’s just . . .” She broke off, not even sure how to put the maelstrom of fear swirling inside her into words.

  “No thanks required.” McCord’s tone was edged with something she hadn’t heard before, and, for the first time, Meg had an idea of how terrified he was. He’d gotten to know Cara over the past month—had become friends with her—not as Meg’s sister, but as a smart, independent woman who ran her own business and was working one-on-one with him and his beloved, and still slightly nuts, puppy. He had his own personal connection to Cara—maybe more of one than Meg suspected before now.

  A connection she was more than willing to use because the only thing that mattered was Cara.

  Webb slowed the truck as the road in front of them ended in a small clearing. He pulled off to one edge, the truck lurching slightly sideways on the uneven ground. “This is as far as we can go. Time to let Hawk lead us the rest of the way.” He glanced at the dash. “Twelve thirty-five. We’ve got fourteen minutes to high tide. Let’s move.”

  They jumped from the truck, Hawk leaping down behind Meg. She glanced back at the vest still lying on the seat of the truck, then slammed the door, leaving it inside. If she was right, and water was going to be their way in, he didn’t need anything extra weighing him down. When they hit the beach, she’d even remove his collar. They were going into waters full of disintegrating wood and rusting ironwork. She couldn’t chance him going in with anything that could catch his collar or pull him under.

  She pulled on her SAR pack and turned to find Webb in the bed of the truck, a compartment open, pulling out items he was tossing to McCord. “What’s that?”

  “Anything we can carry that can withstand water and might be useful out there and not weigh us down too much.” Webb eyed the pack on her shoulders. “Take that with you in case we need closer access to it, but leave it on the beach. You’ll want to pull out anything useful you have. Small tools, a knife. Have you got pockets?”

  “Would never go on a search without them. I buy these yoga pants specifically because I can move in them and they’ve got two big zippered thigh pockets.”

  Webb jumped down from the truck and slammed the tailgate back into place. He took a few item
s back from McCord to split the load, jamming them in his jeans pockets. “Do you need to give him her scent?”

  “For Cara? No.” She hunched down in front of her dog. “Hawk, we need to find Cara. Find Cara.” She gave him the direction toward the beach and then followed as he broke into a run, his nose high in the air. The men fell into an easy jog behind her.

  They worked their way toward the beach for the first few minutes. The call of gulls and the scent of river water drew them toward the shore, Hawk unerringly leading them through trees and underbrush toward sunlight flashing off water before them. They broke through the trees just as a whomp-whomp-whomp overhead heralded a double-rotor Sea Knight helicopter shooting into view to sail overhead across the Potomac, headed for Marine Corps Air Facility Quantico on the other side of the river. Hawk didn’t give it even a glance as he stopped briefly to scent the air, and then headed south, toward the Ghost Fleet.

  “Do you think he has her scent?” McCord puffed, jogging beside Meg. “Is it possible with this kind of breeze coming off the river and all the other smells?”

  “You’d be surprised,” Meg said simply, and left it at that. She trusted her dog. The scent he was looking for was one he knew intimately. All he needed was a single trace of her scent and he’d be after her. That he drove forward without hesitation gave her hope.

  The beach below their feet had once been fine sand, but now was littered with shards of weathered, sun-grayed wood and strewn with denuded trees toppled from the forest, turning what could have been an easy jog into an obstacle course. Fronds of feathery seaweed, dotted with bright yellow starflowers, danced at the water’s edge, swaying back and forth with the current. The fronds rolled perilously close to the smooth line in the sand clearly marked at high tide.