by Alex Kava
He pulled off his shirt and started unwrapping the old bandage, but Maggie stopped him.
“Here, let me.”
For the next several minutes Creed didn’t need to worry about his breathing because he was practically holding his breath. Every revolution to unwrap the old bandage and then wrap the new one required her hands to touch him, and she had to lean into him so close her hair brushed against his skin. She was avoiding his eyes but he couldn’t take his off of her. By the time she was finished he was exhausted from trying so hard not to feel so much.
Her eyes were still examining her handiwork even as she lay back down. They were face-to-face except for about eighteen inches between their cots. That and a Jack Russell terrier who was already breathing heavy and fast asleep. Creed was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to sleep if he were in Grace’s place, but he liked trying to imagine what it felt like to have Maggie’s body against him.
“Thanks,” he told her.
“Thanks for saving me a cot.”
“You don’t suppose Ben will be upset?”
She opened one eye and raised her eyebrow, waiting for an explanation.
“That we’re sleeping together.”
She didn’t answer. Closed both eyes again, but even in the dim light Creed could see her smile.
46.
Washington, D.C.
Ellie had sneaked down the back steps and waited until she saw Carter leave the building. Then with the help of another staff member she had loaded the boxes into the trunk of her car. Now the contents of several of those boxes carpeted her living room floor.
“Mom, George is eating pizza in the game room.”
Ellie glanced up. Her daughter stood at the edge of the mess but didn’t seem fazed by it, as if her mother always brought home copies of forty-year-old classified documents and scattered them around the house.
“I told him he could.”
Ellie dug out another set of file folders and started sifting through them.
Her daughter didn’t budge. Ellie looked up at her again and waited.
“Are you okay?” she asked, scrunching up her nose at the mess as if seeing it for the first time.
“I’m fine, sweetie.” But still she waited.
She knew her kids missed their father. George Ramos was a liar and soon would be a convicted criminal, but the man had always been good to his children. The last year had been difficult for them. Sometimes Ellie wondered if the kids were waiting for signs that she might fall apart or leave them, too.
“Can I have pizza in my room?”
“Sure.”
“Really?” She stared at Ellie like it was a trick or a test.
“Would you bring me a piece before you go upstairs?”
The girl nodded, still eyeing her suspiciously as she left the room.
Ellie sat back, stretched her legs out in front of her, and arched her back. She’d need a dozen people to help sort through the mess and still not know what to look for. The DoD had overwhelmed them with so many documents—many of which seemed blatantly irrelevant—that she suspected that was their strategy. It was as if they were taunting the committee to try to find the needle in their haystack.
And what did it really matter? There had been a hearing years ago. That hearing had insisted a study be conducted. Hadn’t those committee members gone over all these same documents? If there was damning evidence, wouldn’t it have been found by now?
She tossed the files in her hand off to the side. She didn’t even know what she was looking for. Did she really care or was she simply angry that Quincy might be keeping her in the dark? He was even using her chief of staff.
But why didn’t they want her to know about Frank Sadowski? He was a veteran from her home state of Florida who was affected by Project 112. Of course she’d encourage him to testify. But in July she didn’t even know about these congressional hearings. Was Sadowski the only reason that Senator Quincy had allowed her to be on the committee? Did he think he might somehow be able to control the veteran’s testimony if Sadowski thought he had his own senator on his side? What kind of game was Quincy playing? And using her chief of staff to do it?
She wondered if Quincy had ever intended to treat her like a full-fledged member of this committee. But how could she complain? She had used being the token woman as a trump card to get on the committee. And her reason for wanting on? She needed to lift her profile for reelection. How lame was that? How selfish was that?
Ellie raked her fingers through her long hair and leaned against the sofa.
Dear God, she was as bad as the rest of them.
Games, compromises, quid pro quo—everything came with a price. From the very beginning she should not have put up with any of their sexist actions and degrading comments. Her first month in the Senate she was stunned when one of the most senior members had told her that she had the “prettiest bottom” for a senator. Okay, so at least he hadn’t pinched it, but his remark certainly set the stage for what the others thought was appropriate.
She thought it would get old and go away. Sort of like a fraternity initiation ritual. But just last week another senior senator had asked her if it was tough being without her Latin husband, insinuating that she must be accustomed to sex and lots of it. In so many words he went on to offer his services. She had laughed like it was the funniest joke she had ever heard because she had no clue how else to respond.
Isn’t that what the men did—tell each other rude, crude jokes and then roll with laughter?
She pulled out another stack of files and stopped. This was ridiculous. A waste of time. She started to shove them back into the box when a manila envelope fell to the floor. Even before she picked it up she could tell it was old. The metal clasp indented the fold and rust encircled it. The envelope felt brittle between her fingers. There was something thicker than paper inside.
Ellie glanced at the outside of the box. All these files were copies of original documents. Was it possible someone had mistakenly dropped an original?
She tried to carefully and slowly bend the metal clasp. One side broke off in her fingers and she felt a slight panic. She set the piece of metal aside and caught herself actually thinking she might be able to glue it back on.
Stupid and silly! Just open the damned envelope.
She slid the contents out onto her coffee table. And then she stopped, her hand in midair holding the now empty envelope. The black-and-white photographs were eight-by-tens, the kind a professional photographer would take. The dates were stamped in scalloped white edges: 1953, 1958, 1962, 1965.
Ellie held each one up. They were nothing like she expected. So much talk about ships and bases being sprayed, about sailors and soldiers being exposed to biological weapons.
But these were not photos of sailors or ships. These photographs were of schoolchildren.
47.
Ellie dug back into the box and found the file folder she thought the envelope had fallen out of. Unlike the others, this one was not labeled.
In all, there were five photographs. The children were lined up and smiled for the camera as a man in a suit waved a strange wand with some kind of light beam. Ellie didn’t recognize it as any kind of magic trick.
In one photo he held the wand over their feet. In another, they were facing away from the camera while he waved the light beam across their little backs.
There was no explanation in the envelope. Only the date stamped on each. She pulled out yellowed newspaper articles from the folder. They were from the Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, and the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Two were from 1994. One was dated 2012. All had disturbing headlines:
MINNEAPOLIS CALLED TOXIC TEST SITE IN ’53
ACCUSATIONS RAISED, DATA DEMANDED
ARMY SPRAYED ST. LOUIS WITH TOXIC AEROSOL
“You haven’t touched your pizza.” Ellie’s
daughter startled her. She was standing over her and Ellie closed the folder and plopped it on top of the photographs.
“I will. I just got carried away.”
“What are you doing, anyway?”
Usually her daughter wouldn’t notice unless it somehow involved her. Such was the mind of a twelve-year-old.
“I have some homework.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
She walked away shaking her head.
Ellie opened the folder again and pulled out one of the articles to read. In 1953 the army sprayed clouds of what they believed was a nontoxic material—zinc cadmium sulfide—in an effort to test how chemicals would disperse during biological warfare. Multiple cities were used as test sites, as were multiple areas within each city. In Minneapolis the material was sprayed sixty-one times in four parts of the city from generators in the rear of trucks or from rooftops.
One of the sites sprayed in Minneapolis was a public elementary school. Students were tested at various times with “special lights” to determine if the chemicals—zinc sulfide is a fluorescent phosphor—showed residual traces on their shoes, clothing, or bodies. And if it showed up, how long it stayed.
Ellie stopped. Took a deep breath. She was feeling a bit sick to her stomach and now the pepperoni on the pizza didn’t help matters.
The articles talked about demands for full disclosure from the army. Zinc cadmium sulfide was now believed to be toxic and could possibly cause cancer and some birth defects. Yet a committee of the National Research Council in 1997 determined that the amounts used in these studies were not harmful.
However, they admitted their research was “sparse” and relied on incomplete information supplied by the army and Fort Detrick about the “quantities dispersed” and the “exact composition of the fluorescent particles” used.
They did admit that more than a hundred biological warfare simulation tests such as these were conducted by the army in urban and rural areas between 1952 and 1969 without the public’s knowledge. Some used zinc cadmium sulfide. Others used Bacillus globigii or Serratia marcescens—both common bacillus found in water, food, and sewage.
Ellie placed the articles back in the folder. Carefully she slid the photographs into the envelope and noticed that there was another photograph, stuck to the inside. She pried it loose and pulled it out.
This one was stamped 1968. Another group of schoolchildren, but this time posing with three men who were all dressed in uniforms. They stood behind the children, smiling for the camera. She glanced at the photograph, then stared at the men, stunned to recognize two of them.
No, it wasn’t possible.
She held it up to the light, then flipped it over to find a label on the back. She read the caption identifying the men, and now she was certain. The man in the middle was a young Colonel Abraham Hess. To his left was an army doctor named Dr. Samuel Gunther. And the man standing on Colonel Hess’s right was Ellie’s father.
DAY 3
48.
Haywood County, North Carolina
Creed had awakened in the middle of the night to the battering sound of rain on the gymnasium roof, so he wasn’t surprised to find water running in the streets the next morning. By now he expected to trudge through mud. He didn’t, however, expect the cold.
Overnight the temperature had fallen. The chill in the air hit him in the face as soon as he stepped out the door. Both he and Maggie looked at each other and headed back inside to pull on extra layers.
Peter Logan and a National Guardsman named Ross picked up Creed, Maggie, and Bolo in a Land Rover. Mud covered every inch of the vehicle; the windows were splattered, making visibility difficult. The bumpy trek up the mountain and the two strange men in the front seat made Bolo nervous. Creed let the dog sit on the leather seat between him and Maggie, despite Logan’s disapproving look.
Thankfully, the rain had stopped. The fog had not returned, either, but the blue-gray clouds still looked swollen and ready to erupt without warning.
The Land Rover could go only so far. Then the foursome pulled on daypacks and followed Ross to the digging site.
Logan was subdued this morning. There were no wisecracks, no slaps on the back or inappropriate comments. Gone, too, was the leather jacket. He was dressed this time like he expected to get dirty. Creed wondered if Logan’s boss was getting impatient.
Why had it taken two days for Logan to feel enough urgency to come to the site? Even his surrogate, Isabel Klein, seemed to have disappeared. Neither of them had been concerned about finding survivors—possible staff members caught inside the facility during the first major slide. No one had explained if the bodies they were searching for today were employees. Creed remembered Vance telling him that the rescue crews hadn’t been given any information on the facility at all.
So many secrets. Everything classified. He knew that was the way Logan liked it. Creed could understand that DARPA might have safety and national security reasons for keeping things quiet. He and his dogs were hired to do a job. He asked only the questions that would help them do it. His number-one priority was the safety of his dogs.
Whether they searched for drugs or cadavers he had learned it was better if he didn’t know the details. He couldn’t afford to be caught up in any emotional turmoil that may have already affected the law enforcement officers he was working with. A trainer knowing and expecting too much could lead his dog to too many false alerts. You started to look for telltale signs and anticipate what your dog should be looking for rather than letting the dog’s nose lead the way.
In his attempt to maintain his professional distance, it occurred to Creed as they tromped through the sludge that he didn’t even know what role Maggie was playing in all of this. All he knew was that her so-called boyfriend, Ben, knew Logan well enough that he had arranged for her to be there. He didn’t care how she had ended up there, he just knew it felt good to wake up and see her lying so close to him.
Maggie had worked with Ross yesterday and the two of them took turns filling in what they had found. Ross explained that his crew had worked through the night to create a barrier uphill to divert the flow of water. To Creed that seemed like a huge undertaking just for them to be able to recover a couple of bodies when there were still possible survivors from the landslide in other areas.
From this level those barriers couldn’t be seen. Nor could the equipment used to create and hold them. Creed listened for engines but there was only the faint smell of diesel. What was left behind concerned Creed.
Deep gashes in the earth veined out. On the bed of silt between those gashes were chunks of concrete—some as large as boulders—along with frayed cable lines knotted around branches, splintered two-by-fours, and scraps of metal with sharp, ragged edges.
Studying the area from the ledge he noticed thousands of pieces of glass embedded in the muck. He had sprayed Bolo’s pads with a protective coating that Dr. Avelyn had given him to help prevent the absorption of toxins, but Creed couldn’t put out of his mind the cuts on poor Grace’s paws. Putting any sort of boot or cover on a dog could do more harm than good, tripping him up. He needed to keep a close watch and not allow Bolo to be down in this sludge for long periods of time.
Ross left them and headed farther uphill after whispering with Logan. At one point Creed thought he heard Logan say something to Ross, reminding the young guardsman that he was still in charge. An odd thing, Creed thought, for the deputy director of DARPA to say.
Then Maggie took her turn with Logan. Creed could hear her questioning him, continuing on when she wasn’t satisfied with his answers. Creed tried to ignore them and prepare.
He set his GPS and slid a separate unit into the mesh pocket on Bolo’s vest. Already he could smell the big dog’s anticipation. Creed called it “sweaty head smell,” although dogs didn’t sweat like people. The cooler weather would be better for B
olo, but it wouldn’t necessarily help with scent. It would slow the decomposition rate.
And just because they had drained the field didn’t mean that they took all the smells with it. Even Creed could detect mildew mixed with something caustic. The mud and silt would have already absorbed and mixed in a brew that most likely included human decomposition.
Maggie left her discussion with Logan and was already on her cell phone. Logan made his way to Creed’s side. He noticed Creed glance in Maggie’s direction. He shrugged and said, “Women—they’re usually a pain in the ass.”
“Then why did you invite her here?”
“I didn’t. My boss wanted someone official with forensic experience, someone from the FBI that he probably thought would be on our side. I doubt that he expected Benjamin Platt to send some woman he’s screwing.”
Creed felt the heat rush to his head. The throbbing had never left. The anger would only make it worse.
“I’ve worked with her before, Logan.” He steadied his tone because Bolo’s eyes were on him, shooting nervous glances toward Logan. If the dog believed Logan was any kind of threat to Creed, he’d drop Logan in seconds without warning. “She has plenty of forensic experience.”
“Yeah? Well, I don’t need someone questioning me and making me look bad with my boss.”
“So what’s going on, Logan? Why are these bodies so important?”
Instead of telling him it wasn’t his business, Logan stared at him. Creed couldn’t help thinking the arrogant son of a bitch actually looked like he wanted to tell him. Logan’s eyes darted uphill, then back over his shoulder at Maggie.
“DARPA has research facilities all across the country,” he told Creed, keeping his voice low. “They operate with a lot of independence. That’s the way the head guys like it. Something goes wrong, the head guys can’t be held accountable if they didn’t know what the hell was going on, right?”