“Hell of a job, Sam.” Lenny said to his partner as they stopped beside their jet-black Audi rental car, “That charge was just about right. Now we’ll wait and see what happens.” The sound of alarm bells filled the evening, alternately becoming louder and then softer, in the wind-whipped air currents. From somewhere, perhaps from the burning building – it was hard to tell – came a single faint cry and then silence, while the falling ice crystals clacked coldly against the roof of the car.
“Come on, hurry up and get in,” Sam said fumbling for his keys with his wet fingers. “I hate this weather.” He got into the drivers seat and closed the door but didn’t start the engine. Lenny ran around to the other side and sat in the passenger seat. From their vantage point in the first row of the parking lot, they could see the main entrance to the biosciences building. Frightened workers were beginning to run from the exit, holding their hands in front of their faces to protect them from the falling snow and ice, before they disappeared into the darkness.
“Look, Lenny,” Sam said a minute later after they were settled in the car. “I’m not so sure of this. I mean, do you really think this guy’ll come by after we blow up his office? Think about it. You know, if it was me, I’d be running in the other direction right now.”
“Yeah, I know. Me too. But see, these university professors are different. They’re not really all that smart. Not like us anyway. They’re academics, see? So they’re really good at studies and tests and stuff like that. They can read books and pass tests better than us, sure. But there’s something they don’t have,” Lenny replied.
“What’s that?” Sam asked.
“Common sense. They don’t have any. Trust me. I had an uncle that was a professor.”
Sam rubbed his hands together, trying to restore the circulation to his fingers. He gave Lenny a hard look. He wasn’t sure about Lenny’s judgment, but Lenny was in charge of this operation.
“OK, Lenny. Maybe you’re right. I don’t know. But it seems like a big risk to me. Do you have any idea what will happen to us if we get caught?” Sam looked in the rear view mirror. There was no one there.
“What do you mean? Caught by who?” Lenny replied while making himself comfortable. He was prepared for a long wait before his prey came to take the bait.
“An Garda Siochana, the Guardians of the Peace” Sam said turning his eyes now towards the window of the burning office. The flames seemed to be decreasing slightly but huge volumes of black smoke had begun pouring out.
“An Garda who? What the hell are you talking about?”
Sam gave him a look of unbelief. “Didn’t you even read the briefing documents?”
Lenny smiled, “Hell no. I don’t need that stuff. Just tell me what to do and I’ll get the job done. It’s simpler that way.” He took a Marlboro from his pocket and put it in his mouth but didn’t light it.
Sam took a very deep breath and waited a few seconds before replying. “The Garda is the national police force of Ireland, Lenny,” he said. “Look, I know you don’t care or give a shit about this place, but these guys have a very long and very, very tough history.”
“Oh yeah? No kidding? Like what?”
“Like dealing with the IRA and the UDF and a bunch of other Irish groups that practically invented terrorism…and these guys won.”
“IRA huh? Yeah, I heard of them. Who the hell is the UDF? Anyway, so what? Those guys probably don’t amount to crap compared to what me and my guys was doing in Iraq.” Lenny replied. Neither said anything for a minute and then Lenny said, “So how long did they fight these guys anyway?”
“Since before you were born, Lenny. Long, long before you were born…”
The wailing of the sirens of fire trucks and ambulances could now be heard in the distance. The sounds raced along with the trucks up the Western Road towards the university. Moments later three white, yellow and blue striped, Garda cruisers arrived on campus. The gardai officers, wearing highly reflective yellow coats, ran from the cars and took up positions outside the building. As usual, none of the gardai were carrying guns.
While the two Omega special agents kept watch from their car in the parking lot, a few hundred meters further up the hill Dan turned away from the apartment window and looked at Sheila and Brendan. They could see the shock on his face.
“The gardai just arrived,” he said, almost in a whisper. “Can you hear the sirens? There’s more on the way too, I’m sure. I have to go down there.” He started walking to his coat that was hanging on a hook by the door.
“What?” Sheila exclaimed while she ran over to him. “You can’t do that. It’s too dangerous. Dan, somebody just tried to kill you! You have to stay here!”
Dan smiled at her reassuringly. “I don’t think so, Sheila. This wasn’t an attempt to kill me. They were trying to destroy my office, and it looks like they probably did. They really must want those letters destroyed. I think it’s time I told the gardai all about this.”
“Dan,” she said, “Remember Tim’s warning in those letters?”
Dan took his coat from the rack, “Yes, Sheila, of course, but I have to do something!”
“But Dan they’re after you too, not only the letters! Think about it! They might be out there waiting for you right now!” Sheila’s eyes were beginning to flame with anger.
Dan put his coat on and turned to her. “I know there’s a risk Sheila, but look out the window. See all the gardai? There are more coming too. Whoever did this won’t stick around. I have to make sure the gardai see those letters right away. That’s the only thing I can do. I’m not going to run from these people forever!” He started to turn towards the door.
Brendan and Sheila looked at each other for a few seconds, and then Brendan said, “OK, in that case we’re coming with you. You’ll need all the help you can get. Besides you’ll be safer if we are all together.”
While Dan, Sheila, and Brendan hurried down the apartment stairs, the Cork fire department trucks arrived at the burning building. Torrents of icy water, pumped from the nearby River Lee, soon flooded the first floor hall of the biosciences building and in minutes the hungry flames flickered and died. As the three of them walked into the floodlit area near the entrance of the building, ambulance crews were attending two passersby who had been hit by flying glass, and uniformed gardai were interviewing workers who had stumbled out of the building minutes earlier. The snow was finally beginning to let up and the scene began to take on an air of calm. Dan went over to introduce himself to one of the Gardai.
* * *
While Dan spoke to the Garda, video scenes, transmitted from over a dozen campus security cameras, were being urgently reviewed at Cork City Garda headquarters. The images showed two men walking into the building, one of them carrying a briefcase. Minutes later, both could be seen leaving the building, without the briefcase, shortly before the blast occurred.
In the nearby emergency operations control room a plain-clothed garda detective was watching live transmissions from visible and infrared cameras located on towers in the upper parking lot, above the biosciences building. He was talking quietly into his headset. His monitor showed two men sitting and talking in a black rental car. He had already traced the registration plate to Avis Ireland and he had also had obtained the name and Utah driver’s license number of the driver.
* * *
Inside the parked car, Sam practically shouted as he pointed to the area outside the building. “That’s them! Look, see the redhead? That’s gotta be the one that was in the report. Come on, let’s go. We’ll take’em both out right now!” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pistol that already had a silencer attached.
“Whoa, whoa, buddy. We can’t do that! Not yet.” Lenny said putting his hand on Sam’s arm, “Look, the place is crawling with cops!”
Sam stopped and looked at him. “Yeah,” he said then with a big smile on his face, “but I guess I know something about them that you don’t know. You oughta read the briefing m
aterials, Lenny. The gardai don’t carry guns. This will be a piece of cake. We’ll be in and out before they even know what happened.”
Lenny thought for a moment, and then looked at Sam with resignation on his face. “College kids,” he muttered; then he reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out his gun, and attached the silencer. “OK,” he said. “You win. Let’s do it.”
They stepped out of their car and began quickly walking towards the biosciences building when a voice with a distinctly Irish accent called out from behind them. “That’s far enough, lads. Just stay where you are.”
Sam and Lenny stopped in their tracks. Lenny slowly put his finger on the trigger of his gun and glanced sideways at Sam. Sam nodded and did the same; then they slowly turned around. Ten members of the Garda Emergency Response Unit stood twenty feet away. Each of them wore black and navy blue colored, full body armor, and each carried a camouflage assault rifle. The rifles were all pointed directly at the two men.
“No guns, huh?” Lenny said as he immediately dropped his gun onto the slushy pavement.
Sam hesitated. He didn’t want to be taken by these men. He knew what to expect.
“Don’t even think about it, lad,” the Garda captain shouted, “You’d be dead before you hit the ground. Just drop the gun – NOW!” Sam dropped the gun.
It was after ten hours of extremely intensive questioning by garda detectives, using all the techniques of interrogation that had been developed during the long years of the “troubles”, that the two highly trained Omega agents broke down and confessed everything they knew about their operation as well as the Omega project.
Early next morning Dan was driven to the main Garda office in Cork City where he was to meet with the Garda chief.
“Professor Quinn,” Captain Roche said with a grin while he motioned him to a comfortable leather chair, “have a seat. You seem to have made a few friends in Alaska, haven’t you?”
Twenty-Four
Like the softly yielding undulations of a sea goddess, the gently rolling waves of the blue Pacific Ocean sparkled in a warm caress of bright, yellow-white sunlight. Far out on the distant horizon, large tumbling breakers crashed silently in a line of white foam, while at the island’s sandy shore gentle wavelets lapped, languidly swishing along the sand, only to silently diminish and fade and then wash back to the sea. The northeast tradewinds were strengthening and beginning to ruffle the shiny green fronds of coconut palms lining the shore, while occasionally, as the breezes swept over the deeper, almost indigo parts of the ocean, white specks of foam lifted up and flew free from the waves, if only for a brief moment.
While cumulus clouds marched in stately procession across a background of tropic, creamy blueness, underneath the sea’s restless surface another cloud – this one gray and fast – moved like a single living being as it swam from the depths towards the shore that the Hawaiians had long ago named Waikiki. Led by the fastest male, the pod of bottle-nosed dolphins swam exuberantly, sometimes charging upward, breaking the surface of the water, and leaping high into the air where they would hang almost motionless for a split-second before rolling onto their side and falling, breeching in a bright splash of white seawater blossoms.
As soon as the male had performed the first breech the others in the pod followed and an underwater cacophony of splashes and gurgles and thuds made it almost impossible for the leader to hear the echoes of his own chirps and clicks. That was of no concern, for this was the open ocean and the dolphin knew this area very well. There were no underwater obstacles to fear and no shallow bottom to be concerned about. If there were anything to fear it would only be the always-present possibility of something unknown, something large and swift, something terrible that might be lurking in the depths ahead.
Yet even the possibility of a dreaded tiger shark lying in wait did not worry the dolphin today. The pod was large – more than thirty dolphins including the females and young - and it could easily surround and kill a prowling tiger shark. It was the shark that should be afraid today. Nevertheless, despite the lack of imminent danger to the pod, the lead male surfaced from time to time as the pod drew nearer to the shore. He was looking for boats. Not that he had any fear of the boats. Indeed, it was the boats, fishing boats, tour boats, dive boats, all the boats of men, that were of interest.
The dolphins had always rendezvoused with the boats. When the sun rose completely above the eastern mountains the boats would come out - as they always did. Some of the boats came out to play – these were the fast ones. The leader knew that they liked to race, but it was the dolphins that always won the races, leaping in and out of the bow waves, and sometimes spinning in the air just to show their delight – not in winning, but in simply racing with their friends.
Other boats, fishing boats or even dive boats, had a different purpose. They were for food when food was scarce. The men on board could always be counted on to toss a few fish to them, and while these may not be the best tasting - and they were certainly not the freshest fish - they did provide nourishment on a regular basis. The pod even escorted the huge cruise ships that traversed the harbor on some mornings. These ships were sometimes bound for distant lands, or sometimes only to a nearby island. Food rarely came from these ocean liners, but the pod swam with them for the sheer pleasure of riding the immense bow waves or swimming in the froth and turbulence of the powerful wake.
The lead male rested a moment on the surface and turned to glance at the sun that was climbing ever higher towards its zenith. Then it dove under the surface and kicked its flukes darting forward and then turning towards the breakers that rolled onto the Waikiki shore. Something seemed different today. The boats were not here. The fast boats, the fishing boats, even the heavy, slow, rumbling ships were not here. Where had they gone? He didn’t know.
A moment later he thought of something else. Perhaps they could go nearer to shore and find the young boys and girls on their surfboards. It was always fun to swim with them, riding a wave for a while and then popping out of the water a few feet ahead of the surfboard and then diving under again before the wave broke. As the pod swam quietly into the shallower, light blue waters just beyond the break he surfaced again and looked towards the shore, but the surfers were gone too. His distant vision was not good, but even so, he could see that the men who used to dot the shoreline and walk and play on the beach were also gone. The tall, white, glistening buildings still perched on the beach, the sailboats and yachts still rocked gently in the Ala Wai boat harbor, and the paddle boats and outrigger canoes were drawn up on the beach, but there were no men - no men to be seen anywhere.
With one last look back at the shore he suddenly flipped his tail, then he dove and turned and started kicking strongly out to sea. The men were gone, the boats were gone. There was no reason – there didn’t have to be. He knew that sometimes things that have been part of everyday life simply disappear and are never seen again. There was never an explanation, and he didn’t expect one. That was the way of the ocean. The dolphin led the pod further out to sea, around Kahala, and then began swimming strongly northwest away from Waikiki. There would be a good-sized school of fish near the sandbars. There always was. He wouldn’t go back to Waikiki tomorrow, and probably not the next day either. Perhaps another time, perhaps not. A brief sense of loss filled the mind of the dolphin as it swam ahead of the pod, but he knew that it would pass.
* * *
A short distance inland from Waikiki beach, behind the row of gleaming hotels that lined the beach, all along Kalakaua Avenue, and all the way back to Ala Wai Boulevard there was an eerie silence. Nothing was moving. The once crowded streets were silent and empty, except for the occasional limo or taxi that was parked haphazardly on a sidewalk or simply left in the middle of the street, the doors still open. The wide entrances of the hotels that opened onto the streets, built for throngs of tourists wearing bikinis and slippers, or wedding dresses and tuxedos, gaped silently. Along Kalakaua Avenue, and along the small side streets,
the shop windows, still full of T-shirts and Speedos, cameras and sunglasses, beckoned with rainbow-colored signs that said “Aloha!”, but there was no one to look, and there was darkness inside the stores.
Three miles away, the business district of downtown Honolulu was different. It lacked the odd, unsettling peacefulness of Waikiki. A column of smoke rose from the roof of the state legislature building. The building’s roof had been designed resemble a Hawaiian volcano and now, ironically, a roiling black billow, sometimes punctuated with orange flames, curled its way upward and out of the peak. Smaller flames flickered nearby in the burnt out shells of the surrounding office buildings, testimony to the battle that had recently been waged here. Military humvees and six wheel drive trucks were parked askew on the roads and sidewalks, even on the grass of the downtown park. Barricades with concertina wire tops lay broken across the streets. Wisps of white smoke still rose from gaping holes in the road, some over ten feet deep, where fighter-bombers had dropped their munitions on the rioting crowds.
It was not the bombs or bullets that had ended the struggle; however. Nor was it the fires or fences that brought silence to the agonized cries of the people who only wanted to leave when martial law had been declared and their airport and harbors had been closed. The silence was the legacy of the disease that lurked everywhere the people had turned: in the doorways, on the food, in the hand of a friend, or on the lips of the beloved. The dreaded disease had slipped through the windows on the gentle breezes and flowed in the water that ran in the brooks. There had been no escape for any of the city dwellers or the tourists. They still lay there, in the streets and buildings of Honolulu, while the pleasant, warm Hawaiian sun had risen and then set in the soft blue sky. Soldier or civilian, Asian or white, young or old, bold, determined, frightened, lost, angry, or sad, it didn’t matter. One by one, whatever they did, wherever they hid, the disease came and found them until finally there were none left to fight and their differences no longer mattered.
The Viral Epiphany Page 15