by Jon Land
It couldn’t be! He was dead! Winston Peet was dead!
But Leeds could not be mistaken. The face on the screen had been that of Winston Peet.
He had watched in awe as Kimberlain battled his machines. The man truly belonged with him here, not in the old world so soon to perish. In the end, when the battle with the two-tonners began, it was all Leeds could do not to root for him to win. Then, when the Ferryman’s death seemed certain, something had gone wrong just out of camera range. Now he saw what that something had been. Peet had intervened and destroyed the two-tonner that had been about to kill the Ferryman.
Winston Peet! Imagine the possibilities… .
It must have been ordained that the battle in his scrap yard would end this way. After all, if there was one man besides the Ferryman that Leeds truly admired, it was Peet. His one great rival whose efforts were nearly a match for his own. But Peet had escaped from The Locks and drowned in Lake Ontario. At least that was what they said. Obviously, though, he had survived and had joined forces with Kimberlain—a match better suited for hell than heaven. It was another potential allegiance, however, that Leeds’s mind strayed to.
“Winston,” Leeds said to the screen, “can you hear me, Winston?”
He fancied that the bald giant paused as he neared the edge of the camera’s range.
“You belong with me, Winston. You belong here. We belong together.”
The possibility set Andrew Harrison Leeds trembling, as Winston Peet vanished into the night.
The Fifth Dominion
Lucretia McEvil
Wednesday, August 19; 9:00 A.M.
Chapter 20
ANDREW HARRISON LEEDS SAT before his wall of video monitors, his own reflection a dull outline on each of the screens. At last he leaned forward and activated one of the monitors.
A shot of Chalmers sitting rigid in a chair filled the screen. Chalmers gazed up at the camera mounted before and above him, as if he knew it had been switched on.
“What are we to do with you, Mr. Chalmers?” Leeds asked him.
Chalmers made sure the speaker attached to his throat was facing the camera.
“Out of … control,” he said.
“Meaning your operatives, of course. All having gone the way of Hedda, is that it? There’s something I think you should listen to.”
Leeds pressed a button. Instantly a pair of voices filled the room where Chalmers sat alone in the darkness.
“Who are you?”
“We could leave me as your grandfather. Easier that way, more pleasant and acceptable.”
“A lie.”
“But, you see, there is no truth. There never was, not for you or any of the others.”
Leeds stopped the tape. “Recognize the voices, Chalmers?”
Chalmers’s face had paled to match the color of the socket sprouting from his throat. “Hedda,” came his mechanical wheezing rasp, the syllables more of an effort than usual.
“And Pomeroy, of course. We’ve already dispensed with the old man, a regrettable fact necessitated by your inability to eliminate Hedda as ordered. Hedda, meanwhile, has become even more dangerous to us now. Your failure has forced me to expend my own resources to deal with her.”
“I can find … her.”
“She is my problem now. But a much more pressing problem is that you would have me believe that the others I entrusted to your care have turned rogue as well.”
“Everything … has broken down… . They won’t come … in.”
“And how hard have you tried to tell them to?” Chalmers made no reply. “I had high hopes for you, Mr. Chalmers. You are someone who could have stayed by my side through the magnificent restructuring of society that is soon to take place.” Leeds’s finger moved to the red button that was apart from me others on his console. “But now you have failed. And for failure there is a price.”
Leeds pressed the red button. Chalmers’s body lurched horribly in his chair. His speaker fell to the floor, and his limbs twitched spasmodically.
“A pity,” Leeds said out loud. “A pity.”
And he turned off the monitor screen.
Chalmers waited several minutes before opening his eyes, wanting to be sure T. Howard Briarwood was no longer watching. Disconnecting the wire that fed current into the chair had been a simple matter, as was rigging the same wire to a bulb across the room. When the bulb lit up Chalmers knew it was time to play dead.
The possibility that Briarwood might want to dispose of him had always been very real to Chalmers and had grown increasingly more real as of late. Ultimately Chalmers had elected to force the issue; his apparent death would give him the freedom to enact the remainder of his plan.
He checked his watch: just a few more hours before the next stage would be upon him. Chalmers climbed out of the chair and moved toward the door, eyes lingering on T. Howard Briarwood’s camera for the last time.
“I’m sorry, miss,” the policeman said as politely as he could manage. “The whole area’s still closed off until we’re sure it’s safe.”
Hedda tried not to show any reaction besides dismay. “What happened?”
“Plastic plant burned down to the ground. Air’s still polluted with chemicals.”
Hedda shrugged and turned her car around. Inside, fear tugged at her. She knew which plant it was without being told; she had known since catching the first scent of a harsh burnt odor several blocks back. She had come here to Leominster, Massachusetts, on a two hour drive straight from Logan Airport, where she had flown in from Paris. The drive on top of the flight had left her fatigued until the sharp acrid stench of an inferno’s aftermath revived her.
Hedda parked her car on a nearby street and approached PLAS-TECH on foot. Pinned to her sweater was the press badge she carried to permit access where it might otherwise be denied. She carried a notepad and pen to further flesh out the charade.
A fireman with a soot-blackened face was sitting on the sill of his truck as she passed. Hedda stopped and came back his way.
“When did it start?”
“I been here twelve hours.”
“Arson?”
“Could be we’ll never know.”
Hedda jotted some notes and spoke again. “How many dead?”
The fireman regarded her with disdain. “Where you been, lady?”
“They sent me up from New York.”
He stood up. “Then let me give you the scoop. Employees were working a full shift in there when the building went. Every last goddamn one of them was trapped.”
There had been four survivors. By morning, one had already died, and the three others lingered in critical condition. The least critical of these, Hedda learned, had been transferred to the burn unit at Mass General Hospital.
The morning edition of the Boston Globe told her pretty much everything else she needed to know, not just about the fire but about the background of PLAS-TECH as well. The company was a plastics manufacturer that was doing just fine with the space program until NASA’s bottom dropped out after Challenger. It retooled and rebuilt but lost a fortune along the way. Then a subsidiary of the massive Briarwood Industries conglomerate bought out PLAS-TECH, and rumors abounded that the company had been granted an unspecified government contract. Whatever the case, the stock soared and the company was well on its way to recovery when the fire struck last night. Tragically, it was reported, all indications were that the sprinkler system was never activated.
Tragic but not surprising, Hedda reckoned. Somehow PLAS-TECH must have been linked to whatever plot was to employ Lyle Hanley’s transdermal toxin. Hanley had produced it while remaining unsure until the very end how it was going to be dispensed. Perhaps the answer lay with PLAS-TECH. Perhaps something they had manufactured had been treated with TD-13.
At Mass General, Hedda incapacitated a female security guard, left her in a storage closet, and emerged in her uniform. The survivor from the deadly fire was named Ruth Kroll. Hedda found her room and cringed at the s
ight. The form lying in the bed of ice barely resembled anything human. Only the eye and cheek on the left side of her face were free of bandages. The rest of her body was encased in white gauze.
“Mrs. Kroll?”
The eye turned toward Hedda slowly.
“We need to talk, Mrs. Kroll. I know you’re in pain and I’m sorry, but the fire last night wasn’t an accident. It was set to wipe out all traces of whatever you had been working on at PLAS-TECH. It was set by people who plan to kill far more people.”
Ruth Kroll’s eye glistened with tears.
“Will you help me?”
No response. But the eye regarded her, asking questions of its own.
“I can get to those people, Mrs. Kroll. I can stop them. It’s what brought me here. But I need your help.”
The woman’s bandaged right hand rose off the bed of ice. Hedda came closer and placed a pen in it. The hand grasped it as best it could. Hedda held her notepad in front of it.
Who? Ruth Kroll asked.
“I don’t know yet.”
The eye blinked in frustration.
Who? Ruth Kroll scrolled again.
“Who am I, you mean. The same people who did this to you tried to kill me. They’ll try again unless I find them.”
Ask, the bandaged hand wrote in wide strokes.
“What had PLAS-TECH been working on since being purchased by Briarwood Industries?”
Contract.
Hedda flipped the page. “Yes, a government contract. I know that. But what were you producing?”
The writing took longer this time, letters lengthening and overlapping themselves. Micro-thin plastic strips. Monofilament design. Meshlike. Millions of them.
“For what?”
Don’t know.
“Were they destroyed in the fire?”
No. Already shipped.
“Where?”
Ruth Kroll waited for Hedda to turn to a fresh page. Three production plants.
“What kind of plants?”
Paper.
Hedda was as frustrated with that answer as the poor woman seemed with the whole direction of the questioning. It made no sense. Assuming the shipped plastic strips had been treated with TD-13, why had they been shipped to paper mills?
“Did all this have something to do with the government contract PLAS-TECH was working on?”
Strips did, the woman scrawled.
“How?”
Don’t know, she wrote. Secret even from us. The ice sloshed about her as she shifted painfully.
“Who might know? Is there anyone I can talk to who can help me find out the secret?”
O’Rourke, the woman jotted.
Hedda recalled the name from the news clipping Deerslayer had left for her in Paris. The clipping had to do with Briarwood Industries’ acquisition of PLAS-TECH. O’Rourke had been the lone Briarwood official quoted.
“Where can I find him?” Hedda asked.
When phone calls to O’Rourke’s Boston office yielded nothing, Hedda learned from Briarwood Industries’ central headquarters that he was at his vacation home in Stowe, Vermont. She drove north and called his number when she was a half hour away, announcing herself as a Briarwood administrative assistant who needed him to sign some papers immediately. The woman who answered informed her that he had taken his kids to the Alpine Slide and would be back early that evening.
The Alpine Slide recreational complex was located another ten minutes from O’Rourke’s home. She would have to rely on the picture from Deerslayer’s news clipping to recognize him. Though it was black and white, the shot was clear enough for her to know he was a tall man with thick salt-and-pepper hair. She’d know him once she saw him at the complex. The presence of his kids could complicate things, however. After all, there was the very real possibility that O’Rourke was in danger as well.
All the more reason to seek him out, Hedda told herself. Everything pointed to the fact that Lyle Hanley’s TD-13 had been implanted on the plastic strips produced at PLAS-TECH. O’Rourke was her only chance at this point of finding out what the three paper mills were going to do with them.
Why three? Why not just one to ease security problems?
The answer lay in the government contract O’Rourke would be able to enlighten her on.
The Alpine Slide complex was crowded on such a perfect summer day, and Hedda studied the faces for O’Rourke’s. She rotated her search among the shops, restaurant, water slide area, and the Alpine Slide itself. She could see people on colored sleds barreling down the last of the Alpine Slide where it spiraled down the mountain like a white marble fountain. Actually it was formed of asbestos asphalt, a surface most conducive to jetting down its banked structure. To the right of the slide was a complex of water slides filled with splashing children.
The lines for both attractions were long, and Hedda continued to loiter. As she made her way once again through an area of small sheds featuring displays of candies and crafts, she suddenly spotted her quarry. There, standing with two boys near a hut called the Fudge Factory, was O’Rourke. She recognized him instantly from the photograph.
Before she could approach him, O’Rourke was dragged by the boys back toward the line for the Alpine Slide. She would follow him up, then, and speak to him up on the mountain where there would be fewer people around.
O’Rourke and his sons boarded a tram car which would carry them to the drop-off point for the slide. Hedda rode alone in a car a dozen back from her quarry’s. She wondered if O’Rourke was in danger even now, wondered if the presence of his sons had been the only thing that had saved him. A warning would be necessary after they spoke, just as she had warned Hanley.
By the halfway point in the climb, the sloping angle hid O’Rourke’s car from view. Judging by his head start, he would reach the unloading platform a minute or two before her and then take his place with his sons among those patrons waiting for a run down one of the twin tracks.
The beginning of the tram ride had shown her more of the asbestos asphalt track that swirled and dipped through the mountainside. Closer inspection of the plastic sled hanging from her car revealed wheels on its underside that could be lowered or raised by manipulating a center gear lever. The lower, the faster. Pull the lever all the way toward you and the sled would grind to a halt. Push it all the way forward and the wheels would be forced down flat against the track; the effect would be akin to flying down the mountain.
Hedda could see the unloading platform clearly now, and with that checked the Sig Sauer holstered well back on her hip beneath her light windbreaker, hoping it would not be required. Her tram passed under a sign instructing her to raise the safety bar, and Hedda obliged as her car slid over the wooden unloading platform. A white line told her when to ease herself from her seat, and she followed a streak of white arrows to the right off the platform. Before her, a pair of teenage boys who’d ridden the car immediately ahead of hers grasped plastic sleds from a nearby ramp, and Hedda did the same to blend with the scene.
A pair of long single file lines had formed starting to the platform’s right, composed entirely of sled-bearing patrons awaiting their turn to plunge down one of the Alpine Slide’s twin chutes. Hedda joined the left-hand line and peered ahead in search of O’Rourke’s salt-and-pepper hair.
The line was moving quite slowly. Hedda was close enough to the chutes now to hear the grinding sounds of sled tires being lowered to the slippery asphalt track surface, as riders disappeared around the first bank at regular intervals. Fifteen places ahead in line, a tall man leaned over to tie his sneaker, and Hedda’s eyes locked on the salt-and-pepper hair that had been hidden up until then. She should approach O’Rourke now, while they were safe up here. His sons were in line in front of him, meaning she could even wait for them to begin their drops before making her move.
“Excuse me. I’m sorry.”
Hedda was jostled to the right as a man slid by her toward the front of the line. A parent looking for a child perhaps, she tho
ught, since he wasn’t carrying a sled.
Something made her turn to her rear. Other men had taken up posts through the area of the lines, none with a sled in hand. One met her stare, and his eyes wavered uncertainly, hand creeping inside his jacket.
It was too hot a day for anyone to be wearing a jacket unless they had something concealed within it, as she had.
They had come for O’Rourke!
Hedda discarded her sled to the side and threw herself forward just as the man who had jostled by her yanked out a machine gun. A woman screamed nearby, and O’Rourke swung round. The man fired a burst, and blood leapt from O’Rourke’s midsection. Hedda crashed into the Gunman from behind. He pitched downward, machine gun flying from his hand.
“It’s her!”
“Hedda! …”
The screams reached her ears from behind as Hedda drew her own pistol and lunged toward O’Rourke’s shrieking children. She took them down and covered them in the instant before indiscriminate automatic fire opened up from the gunmen posted amid the lines. The screaming intensified. Bodies dropped everywhere, impossible for her to tell whether from bullets or for cover. She fired six times in rapid succession, aim shunted by the innocent bystanders attempting to flee. At least the children were safe, though, now that the killers had her as a target to focus on.
She could not possibly work her way back to the tram line, leaving only one possible escape route: the slide itself.
To reach it, she had to make the chaos work for her instead of against her. Rising into a crouch, she fired off another rapid burst of six shots and moved toward a sled sitting empty at the top of the track.
Chapter 21
SHE LEAPT ON the sled and shoved it forward along the brief straightaway that led into the slide’s first drop. Jamming the hand lever all the way forward for maximum speed with one hand, she steadied the Sig Sauer with the other and turned back around as the sled jetted down the slide. She drained her clip in the general direction of the gunmen gathering above her, which bought her time to drive the sled into the first curve and out of sight.
