by Jan Coffey
“Seems like it.” Judd nodded toward the lake. “That fog hanging out around the Point should burn off pretty quick.”
Haley looked across the water and saw the thick pocket of fog that had just enveloped the end of the Point. Frowning, she glanced at her husband.
“Why don’t you folks stick around town till it lifts,” Judd suggested. He added with a laugh, “Hate to see you miss the island and end up in Canada somewheres.”
Neil smiled at the older man as he locked up the car and shook his head. “No. The boys are excited. It’s better to get on the way and get settled in. We’ll be fine.”
“I can grab another boat and you can follow me out, if you like. With the fog—”
“I can find my way,” Neil said too quickly for Haley’s comfort. “After eight summers, I know these waters like the back of my hand. Thanks anyway, Judd.”
Haley shook her head. “Men and directions,” she muttered, saying goodbye to the old man.
Their coolers and bags of groceries and luggage and fishing gear were piled high in the middle of the small rental boat. The boys were already up at the bow, but it took some coaxing to convince Trouble to climb in. Haley held the dog between her feet in the stern seat, where she sat next to Neil.
“I get the top bunk,” Stevie announced argumentatively up front.
“No, you slept there last year. I get the top bunk,” Bobby asserted loudly.
The battle started before they’d even left the shore. Haley waved back at Judd, who was standing on the dock, looking after them pensively. He waved back.
The small boat cut through the waters toward the Point, and then moved past it. Haley only half-listened to the ongoing argument. When the boat entered the bank of fog, however, the boys stopped abruptly. Neil slowed the boat. Haley could only see a few feet ahead, though every now and then she would get a glimpse of some trees to the right or left, or the end of a boat ramp coming down from the unseen shore of one of the islands.
The thick fog stuck like a mist to her skin. She felt cold creeping down her back. She looked at the bag that contained her sweatshirt. It was buried under everything else.
“Do you know where you’re going?” she asked her husband quietly.
“Of course,” Neil answered, obviously trying to sound cheerful. “Trust me, will you?”
“We aren’t too far away, are we?”
“We go past one more island, and then you’ll see our place.”
Haley felt relief wash through her. She called to the boys. “We’re almost there.”
“What are we going to do first when we dock?” Stevie asked, turning in his seat.
“Are we going fishing?” Bobby chimed in.
“We’ll unload the boat first,” Neil told them. “No one goes anywhere until we’ve taken everything out and put it in the cottage.”
Just getting close to their vacation cottage was making a noticeable difference in everyone’s mood. Haley looked around. Even the fog seemed to be lightening. If Judd was right, in another hour the sun would be shining.
Hopefully.
Haley considered that her best move would be to introduce herself to their neighbors first. The two cottages had only a hundred yards or so of grass and pine groves separating them.
Suddenly, the southern end of the island appeared through the mist. Then, the dark outline of the other cottage. No sign of life there. She looked ahead as the beach and floating wooden dock came into view. Trouble started barking.
“He’s never been there, and still he’s excited,” Neil said.
Haley noticed the other power boat tied to the dock. There were water skis piled by it, and a canoe and two kayaks on the beach. Their neighbors were definitely on the island. Trouble’s barks became more forceful. Haley held onto his collar, wrapping the leash around her hand.
“He’s just ready to run,” Neil said.
“Judd mentioned that the family in the other cottage has a dog, too,” Haley reminded her husband.
Neil shrugged. “You should let him off the leash. The dogs get along much better that way.”
As the boat pulled near the dock, she unclipped the leash. With one graceful leap, Trouble landed on the wooden planks at a full run. Nose to the ground, he dashed off into the fog.
“Where’s Trouble going?” Stevie asked, standing up as his older brother jumped out onto the dock and tied the bow line to a nearby cleat.
“I think he’s looking for a buddy,” Neil answered.
Immediately, there were a dozen questions from the teenagers about the other family on the island. Haley pointed to her husband. “Help your dad. I’ll get you the entire scoop in a minute.”
She couldn’t see or hear the dog. While the boys helped to secure the boat, Haley stepped onto the dock and walked toward the stretch of sand and rock beach. The familiar outline of their cottage broke through the fog. The rocking chairs on the porch, the two kayaks, the canoe, the outside shower on the side of the cottage, the tire swing hanging from the ancient oak tree in the front yard…these were all familiar sights.
She looked back at the other cottage through the haze. There was still no one outside, but she noticed the screen door was propped open.
“Trouble!” she called out, hoping the dog hadn’t decided to visit on his own.
There was no barking, no sounds. Haley kicked herself for not asking Judd the other family’s name. She guessed they must have gone off fishing, and Trouble had gone off after them.
The island was about half a mile wide and maybe a little bit longer. Neil and the boys liked to fish on the rocks on the west side. That was probably where the other family was. Well, they were in for a surprise when Trouble found them.
She walked up the path toward their own cottage. There were no locks on these houses. There was no crime, no one to intrude on people.
She stepped on the porch and looked back. The fog was lifting. The boys had already unloaded everything on the pier. She opened the front door. The faintly musty smell mingled with lemon wax brought back more memories. Inside everything looked the same. Rustic furniture, the wood bunk beds in the nook off the sitting area, the little kitchenette with the lime green fridge, the bedroom that was no bigger than a closet off the living area with the creaky double bed and the tiny bathroom off of that.
“Come over here. Right now. Come here, Trouble.”
Neil’s shouts brought Haley back out onto the porch. Her husband, juggling a suitcase and groceries, was standing on the path.
Trouble was on the neighbors’ porch.
“Great,” she whispered.
“Come on, good boy,” Neil called again.
With a little yelp, the dog ran back inside.
“What is he doing in there?” Neil asked.
“Probably helping himself to their lunch. I’ll get him.” Haley started across to the other cottage.
“Hello,” she called as she neared the porch. She felt awkward about walking into their neighbors’ place without anyone there. “Come out of there, Trouble.”
“Mom, something really stinks over here,” Bobby called up from the beach.
Haley saw the two boys near the dock, walking around the neighbor’s boats. Her husband was heading down the path. He could handle it.
“Come on, Trouble!” she called more forcefully.
“Smells like a dead animal,” Stevie called out. “I think something is dead under the canoe.”
She took another look back. Neil was there. She could hear him moving the boys back.
“Trouble!” Haley called, stepping onto the porch.
Three pairs of sneakers and an assortment of flip-flops were next to the open door. A paperback book with its pages curled from the rain sat on one of the rocking chairs. There was a half glass of something that looked to be milk on the table between the chairs. A couple of flies were floating on top. A brownie next to it had become a feeding frenzy for ants.
Dread filled the pit of her stomach. “Trouble!�
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The dog barked inside. She stepped in. A foul smell hit her senses. It smelled something like chicken that had gone bad, but not exactly. The layout of the cottage was similar to theirs. Trouble was sniffing and crying next to something on the bottom bunk. Suddenly, Haley realized that someone was sleeping there.
“Hello!” she called. The person wasn’t moving. She covered her mouth and nose with her hands.
“Dad, is that an animal?” one of the boys asked loudly from the beach.
“Get back!” Neil’s command was sharp.
Feeling faint, Haley looked back outside through the open door. Her husband had pushed the canoe over and let it go upright. It was rocking slightly. He and the boys were moving back and staring at something lying on the ground where the canoe had been.
“There’s a collar on him,” Bobby shouted. “It’s a dog.”
Trouble barked and ran into the tiny bedroom off the living area. Haley’s eyes had adjusted to the dim light of the cottage, and her gaze followed the animal. As she saw what was attracting the dog, she felt her stomach heave.
A partially decomposed body lay stretched across the double bed.
Two
Bagram Airbase, Afghanistan
Ten days later
The mission had now been upgraded to Urgent. Ten fatalities. A large area surrounding Moosehead Lake remained under quarantine.
“That’s the only runway, three thousand three meters,” the pilot said through the headset. “It’s over thirty years old. It was covered with land mines when we first moved in.”
Austyn Newman looked out the small window at the rugged Afghan landscape. He believed the answer to the outbreak in Maine lay down here. Austyn had been assigned to this trip because he was specifically trained in countering biological attacks. This was his field of study, what he had trained for most of his career.
Matt Sutton, the agent accompanying him on this trip, was a senior intelligence officer in Homeland Security. Austyn had been able to tie the strand of bacteria they’d seen in Maine to a specific laboratory in pre-war Iraq, but finding the suspect had been Matt’s doing. Searching through CIA files, he’d somehow come up with the location and the name of the scientist who’d been in charge of the Iraq facility. He’d also been able to come up with a three-inch thick file the CIA had gathered over the years on Dr. Rahaf Banaz.
Both of them reported to Faas Hanlon, the top intelligence officer at Homeland Security. The deputy director and Hanlon preferred to use small teams to handle different aspects of the investigation. Everyone worked together, and Hanlon insisted on having the latest information at all times; he never knew when the National Security Advisor or the President’s office might be on the phone to him.
The airstrip cut a path in the middle of the rocky desert. There were some buildings, a few of them large enough to be hangars. Other structures spread out on the desert floor, some that looked to be under construction. At one end of the field below, a sea of tents and pre-fab housing covered two or three acres of ground. US Army units.
“The Soviets built most of the permanent buildings, didn’t they?” Matt Sutton asked the pilot.
“Yes, sir. The airbase played a real important role during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan back in the 80s,” the pilot explained. “It was the regional base of operations for troops and supplies. It also was an initial staging point for Soviet forces at the beginning of their invasion, with a number of airborne divisions being deployed here permanently. Well, they thought it was permanent.”
“They put a lot of work into it,” Matt commented. “I’m surprised they didn’t level the whole place before they left.”
“They cleared out of here in a hurry,” the pilot said with a shrug. “There was more than you see now. The Sovs threw up a lot of support buildings and base housing units. Most of them were destroyed by years of fighting between the various warring Afghan factions. We’re now putting up some of our own buildings, over there. Being only twenty-five miles north of Kabul, this is a strategic place for us, too.”
“What’s the smoke I can see beyond that ridge?”
Austyn looked past his partner at the clouds of smoke rising above the pale, reddish-brown ridge of sand and rock.
“There’s a makeshift refugee camp there. I’m told they’re planning to move the whole camp to the far side of Bagram, away from the airbase.”
“I heard there’s a serious problem with landmines in this area.”
The pilot nodded. “Something else the Sovs left behind. Every time we think we’ve got them all taken care of, another one goes off. An Afghan worker lost a leg to a mine last week. But that’s not all. At the beginning of this week, an Air Force pilot I know found an unexploded, rocket-propelled grenade half buried just outside his...Hold on.” He adjusted his headset and spoke to the air controller on the ground. In a moment he turned back to his passengers. “Looks like we’re going to have to circle one more time.”
There’d been too many casualties and there was no end in sight, Austyn thought. The Taliban was growing stronger in some sectors with every passing month. He looked at the landscape around the base and airstrip. NATO forces had moved in some thirty thousand troops to Afghanistan to take over areas of the country, but there were large sectors, like this one, that were still run primarily by US troops.
The Brickyard was supposed to be about a half hour driving distance from this base. The existence of the classified facility, run by the Central Intelligence Agency and staffed by special Army personnel, was officially denied by the US government. It was what the media back home called a ‘black site.’ Austyn and Matt had been briefed on it three days ago. The prison, they were told explicitly, was used solely for the war on terror. At present, the Agency was holding twenty-two prisoners—male and female—at this prison. None of the people here had been charged with crimes or convicted. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, these prisoners were ghosts. There was no record of them anywhere. And there never would be.
In the past, Austyn had never been too keen to know about facilities like this. He knew they existed, but even as a senior agent in the Science and Technology division of Homeland Security, he’d never interrogated a prisoner in his life. He didn’t want to know how many black sites were around the world. He didn’t want to think about the rights of these prisoners. He definitely didn’t want to think about the possibility of an innocent person being held or tortured in such places. He wanted to believe that holding these people was a matter of national security. He knew that—no matter what the media reported—that it was a rare occasion when abuses occurred. The Agency did a better job overseas, as Homeland Security did stateside, of holding onto the right people than they got credit for.
Whatever Austyn’s feelings had been before, however, his involvement with places like the Brickyard prison had changed with the bacteria outbreak in Maine. How he’d felt before no longer mattered. Now he was glad that there was a place such as this, where they could find and question a suspect. The consequences of not learning more about the bacteria they were facing was potentially devastating.
“Over there.” Matt motioned to something outside his window. “That must be the Brickyard.”
The military jet was now dropping through patches of cloud. Austyn looked where his partner was pointing. A cluster of buildings sat between a pair of hills some distance away from the base.
“I think you’re right,” Austyn agreed.
They’d been told that an abandoned brick-making factory had been converted for use as the prison. Austyn saw a military supply truck driving along a dirt road away from the factory. A cloud of dust rose up in its wake. The countryside surrounding the prison was barren, a wasteland of pale rock and dirt and scrub foliage.
The jet started its descent to the runway. Austyn stuffed the files and pictures he’d taken out to review back into his briefcase.
“I guess we’re as ready as we’ll ever be,” Matt commented.
A corporal met them at the plane, and Austyn listened to him as the escort walked them toward a nearby hangar. It had obviously rained that morning, but with the exception of some puddles, the sun had dried everything. The air was parched, but there was a heaviness in it that you felt deep down in your lungs. A military fuel truck driving along the runway raised more dust and made the air even more difficult to breathe.
Austyn noticed the looks they drew from soldiers they passed. He remembered what he’d heard about the lack of variety in the food here. The service personnel looked forward to any stash of food that visitors brought along. He regretted not having thought ahead.
He focused on two dust-covered Humvees racing along the concrete and pulling up a few yards from them. A woman, with captain’s bars on the collar of her field jacket, climbed out.
“That’s Captain Jane Adams,” the corporal said as she approached them. “She’s in charge of the facility you’re going to.”
Higher rank didn’t spare the officer from the dust. She and the driver were covered with the same dirt as the vehicle they’d arrived in. Matt and Austyn were introduced to their host and hustled into the Humvee.
Captain Adams was barely over five feet tall, and thinly built, but she had an authority in her voice and a sharpness to her gaze that made her seem about six foot six.
Before leaving Washington, Austyn had been told of an ongoing internal investigation at the Agency regarding prisoner handling at the Brickyard prison. In an effort to head off action by any oversight committee, there’d been a complete turnover of staff during the past year. Captain Adams was heading up the new crew.
As they left the camp, two more military vehicles joined them, one in front and one in the back, forming a caravan. They passed through a number of security checkpoints before reaching the open road.