Red Tide

by G. M. Ford

  Jim Sexton could feel the eyes of envy. In these days of press releases and tightly managed news, it wasn’t often anybody gained a serious advantage on the competition. Once was rare. Twice in the same day…unheard of. The footage of the train wreck had aired before the victims ever arrived at the hospital and had since been picked up by the national media. Beth had called to say her sister Judy had seen Jim’s report on CNN. It was all he could do to keep an idiotic grin from hijacking his face.

  No point in asking Dobson anything. He was pretty sure he’d worn out his welcome with the chief. Pete had the camera rolling while the chief held forth on how he didn’t have anything to say. No…he wasn’t giving out the officers’ names…no…he wouldn’t identify what were rumored to be two civilians in the car, one of which had to be the tall guy in the back, standing there looking blandly out over everybody’s head. Jim was sure he’d seen the guy before, more than once, but just couldn’t put a name to the face. The chief was winding up. No…he had no further statements at this time. Good-bye.

  And then Jim began to wonder what the chief was doing here anyway. Yeah…the accident had been spectacular and all, and Harry Dobson had never been particularly averse to a little free face time, but with all the other stuff going on…spending an hour with a couple of injured officers…what was that about? Nobody was dead.

  Jim watched as the chief turned his back on the retreating media horde, reached into his inside pocket and set several folded pieces of paper on the tray the skinny cop was clutching to his chest. After exchanging a couple of words, the chief gave the cop a pat on the shoulder and disappeared down a hall to the right.

  Holmes hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the handle and closed the door. Bobby Darling sat on the edge of the bed staring at the ceiling.

  “Soon,” Holmes said. “Soon.”

  Bobby nodded and threw himself back onto the bed, arms and legs spread like he was making snow angels. “You think we’ll all get home?” he asked.

  Holmes considered his answer. “No…probably not,” he said.

  “Me neither,” Bobby said.

  “And even if we did…”—Holmes emitted a bitter laugh—“even if we all got back…we could very well fall victim to our own actions.”

  “I don’t let myself think about that,” Bobby Darling said. He glanced over at Holmes, who now stood placidly looking out the window. “What do you not allow yourself to think about?” he asked.

  “Me?” At first, Holmes seemed offended by the question. He stood by the sliding door to the balcony scowling out into space. “I don’t allow myself to think about the years in between…when my family and I…” He had to stop and collect himself. “I try not to think of the many times when I would be out…at night…walking among the fields and the smell would rise from the ground…the smell of nothing natural on this earth would rise from the wet soil…and how I would go to my prefect in the morning and tell him how I felt certain such a smell could not be good for people…how I was concerned for my wife and children…and how he would wave me away like a bug…just tell me it was a ‘residual’ effect. That was his favorite word, residual. Told me I worried like a woman.” Holmes shook his head in disgust. “Of course, he and his family lived many miles away in Nora Dehi. He came in by train every morning. I should have known. I should have followed my instincts.”

  “He lied to you.”

  “But I should have known.”

  Bobby sat up. “But how could you have…”

  Holmes threw back the drapes revealing a four-mile stretch of wind-whipped waves, wild and whitecapped, shattering against one another in a frenzy of movement. In the distance, Bainbridge Island seemed to float on the surface of the water.

  “Look at this,” he said to Bobby. He checked his watch. “In four hours it begins.” He pointed north. “Right out there somewhere…our moment begins.”

  Bobby bounced himself onto the floor and ambled over to the sliding glass door. He took the last few steps tentatively, as if he were approaching the rim of an open pit. Holmes took notice of his reticence. “Does the water scare you?” he asked.

  “I don’t swim,” Bobby answered, his eyes as wide as saucers.

  Holmes snapped the lock and slid the door open. Bobby took a step back as a rush of air fanned the curtains, waving them halfway to the ceiling. Holmes stepped out onto the balcony and peered down into the inky recesses of Puget Sound. After a minute, the color of the water found its way into his eyes. His face was grim when he looked up at Bobby.

  “I should have known,” he said.

  Charly Hart set the tray on the ledge running all the way around the room and picked the papers from the top with his working hand. He shook the pages open and peered at them through his shattered glasses, turning his head this way and that in a vain attempt to find a clear field of view.

  Corso walked to his side. “Didn’t I hear your boss say you ought to go home and take it easy?” Corso said.

  Even through the starburst lenses Corso could see the hardness in the detective’s eyes. “I’ve got a partner getting his foot sewn back on,” Hart said. “Way I see it, there’s no going home.” He gestured with the papers…toward the door. “You got somewhere to be…feel free. I gotta figure out what happened today that gave some asshole the urge to crush us all under a train.”

  Corso held out his hand. “Lemme see,” he said.

  The detective hesitated for a moment and then dropped the pages into Corso’s hand. Corso looked them over. Four pages. CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION CANADA printed across the top. A list of maybe fifty names, sorted in a variety of ways. Some kind of legend or glossary on the last page.

  “What name did you say Bohannon was using?” he asked Charly Hart.

  “Magnusen, Martin Magnusen.”

  Corso flipped over to the second page. There it was. Crossed the border at Blaine last Tuesday afternoon at one fifty-three. Carrying an Indian passport of such-and-such a number. Listed his occupation as student. Corso read the data out loud.

  “That squares with what the tattoo guy told us,” Charly Hart said.

  “There’s a number after his name. What’s that about?”

  “Starts with a nine?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Nine means he’s a male.”

  “Nine-dash-one.”

  “One’s Caucasian.”

  “Dash-five-six.”

  “Not a Canadian citizen.”

  “Dash-seven-zero-dash-three.”

  Charly shook his head and winced, wishing he hadn’t. “Look on the back page.”

  Corso followed the list with his finger. “Means he’s a student.”

  “Dash-three.”

  “No idea.”

  “Country of origin: India.”

  “How many other nine-dash-one-dash-five-six-dash-seven-zero-dash-threes we got?”

  Took Corso a minute. “None.”

  “Anything close?”

  Again Corso scanned the data. “Got several nine-dash-four-dash-five-six-dash-seven-zero-dash-threes.”

  “What’s the four?”

  Corso rolled his eyes down the page. “Race: East Indian.”

  Charly Hart started to shrug but thought better of it. “We didn’t run into any—”

  “We did,” Corso said. “The guy with the shark eyes.”

  “What?”

  Corso told him the story. Hart wasn’t impressed. “It’s not much,” he said. “Just some guy who farted and a feeling you’ve got.”

  “I’m telling you…he never even blinked at the autopsy photo.”

  “I can’t be…” He threw his good hand into the air. “We’ve got nothing going on with the Indians. They’ve got no reason to hate us. Why would anybody from India want to do Americans harm?”

  “Everybody hates us.”

  Charly Hart sighed and looked away.

  “Call your boss. We’re gonna need some help,” Corso pushed.

  Charly Hart peeked over his shoulder
at Jim Sexton, who had surreptitiously slid over in their direction, trying to hear what was being said. Mr. Nonchalant, standing there now trying to look all cool and disinterested.

  “You want to give us a little privacy or what?” Charly Hart asked.

  Jim shot him a half smile and a two-fingered salute as he bumped himself off the wall and started across the room. Charlie watched him go, making sure he was out of sight before he walked back into the corner of the room. He checked again, then pushed the button and said, “Chief Dobson,” into the speaker.

  “Yes, Detective,” was the immediate reply.

  Charly checked his back again. “I think we got something here,” he said.

  “Something like what?”

  Charly told him. The reply was a little slower in coming this time.

  “Just a hunch of Mr. Corso’s? That’s what you’ve got?”

  Charly swallowed hard. “Yes sir.”

  “What do you need?”

  “A Tac Unit to the U District. Fifteenth Street. Last block before Ravenna.”

  “Ten minutes.”

  “We need another car,” Charly Hart said into his palm.

  “I’ll send a unit for you.”

  Pete Carrol had stopped loading the gear into the back of the mobile unit and was gazing over at Jim Sexton in amazement. His jaw dropped as he listened to the chief say, “I’ll send a unit for you.”

  Jim snapped the walkie-talkie phone closed and threw a crooked grin his way. “You heard the man, Petie. U District. Fifteenth right before Ravenna.”

  Pete grinned back. “You on a roll now, baby. A serious roll.”

  37

  The black-visored quartet bent low as they made their way around the sides of the house, staying close to the building and beneath the windows. Two to the left. Two to the right. The pair on the right deployed themselves on either side of the old-fashioned cellar doors, while the other two duck-walked all the way around the corner of the house and disappeared from view.

  Protected from head to toe by black Kevlar body armor, the seven members of Special Weapons and Tactics Squad Number Three looked considerably more like androids than they did like human beings.

  The guy whose name tag proclaimed him to be Sergeant Nance was running the show from a hundred feet up the street, which had been blocked at both ends by police cruisers to prevent civilians from blundering into the middle of the operation.

  Nance turned to Charly Hart. “Good to go,” he said.

  Charly nodded. Nance whispered into his shoulder-mounted microphone and the show began, as another trio of storm troopers burst out of the overgrown shrubbery and sprinted for the front door. Two flattened themselves against either side of the door while the third swung a massive metal battering ram against the knob, sending the door crashing inward with a bang.

  Nance, Charly Hart and Corso were a third of the way across the street when the pair of SWAT cops suddenly reappeared on the front porch. The one on the right made sure the splintered door stayed closed while the other one used one hand to pull the guy with the battering ram down from the porch and the other hand to indicate that everyone concerned should stay back. Insistently back. Way back.

  Nance’s earpiece squawked. “How many?” he asked his microphone.

  Charly Hart’s mouth had already formed a question when Sergeant Nance pushed another button on his radio. “Need a haz-mat team to…” He ran through the address and zip code. “Level Four. I’ve got officers who are going to need decontamination.” He listened. “Now,” was his answer to an unheard question.

  He turned to Charly Hart. “Got at least two corpses in the house. Blood all over the place. Looks like what I hear the victims in the tunnel looked like.” Corso held his breath. Nance went on. “I don’t want my crew in there until we know what’s going on.”

  Charly Hart said he understood. He used his good hand to find his phone.

  Jim Sexton had the volume turned all the way down and the speaker pressed tightly against his ear. He lay in the damp beauty bark between a pair of azalea bushes whose gnarled limbs curved and twisted about one another like praying fingers. Two shrubs down, Pete Carrol lay on his belly, the camera trained on the front door of the house across the street, where everything had come to a sudden halt.

  “Chief,” the skinny cop said into the speaker.

  “Detective Hart.”

  “We’ve got bodies. Lots of blood. Looks a lot like what they found down in the tunnel. We’ve called for a haz-mat team. They’re saying twenty minutes.”

  “I’m on my way to City Hall. Keep me informed.”

  Jim Sexton crawled along the edge of the front porch and whispered in Pete’s ear. Told him what was going on and how he ought to save his tape until the haz-mat team arrived. The soft whirring of the camera stopped. Pete slipped his Mariners cap over the lens and lay the camera on its side in the bark.

  “We wait,” Jim mouthed.

  Pete understood. He rested his head on his forearm and closed his eyes.

  Holmes checked his watch and then snuck a quick look at Bobby Darling, who lay stretched out on the other bed watching some cartoon peopled with yellow-faced characters. He seemed to be calming down a bit. The incident with the train and the size of the target had gotten Bobby a bit more excited than Holmes would have preferred. His experience with Bobby suggested that the kid was reliable only so long as the plan was well structured and remained more or less on track. Forced to improvise, the kid tended to panic, which was why he’d paired him with Brian and planned on sending them out last. By the time they left the hotel, the others would already have completed their assignments.

  Five-thirty. Two hours until Wesley and Nathan reported for duty. Two and a half before Samuel and Paul left. Fifteen minutes later it would be Bobby and he. An hour after that, it would all be over. In more ways than one.

  He’d hoped to survive. That’s the way the plan had been presented. That they could do what they had to do and then get away, but the minute they got specific about the plan and how it might actually work, he’d realized that chances of any of them walking away were fairly remote. Wasn’t rocket science. Hell…even Bobby had figured out they were on a suicide mission. When you’re taking directions from a man who doesn’t care whether he lives or dies, it’s pretty safe to assume he doesn’t hold your safety any more dearly than he holds his own. So when Brian became a liability and it became obvious to Holmes that he was going to be forced to get more involved than the plan originally called for, he was ready. Not necessarily eager, but ready.

  Funny how, even among those with nothing to live for, dying was more palatable in the abstract than in reality. How the closer the hour came, the deeper the blackness of the pit became and the colder the air rising up from the depths below. How the mind begins to fill with unanswerable questions when the final hour slinks round at last. The questions nobody’s ever come back from the grave to answer. The questions bridging the gap between being and nothingness. The place where faith begins.

  The haz-mat team leader was pulling off his gloves as he came down the front stairs. His mask was perched on top of his hood. And then another pair of orange-clad firemen backed out the front door, similarly unmasked and unconcerned, leaving the front door ajar as they came down onto the lawn. The tiny ovals of face visible inside the tightly drawn strings looked bemused. Fearless leader gestured with his bare hand.

  “Come here,” it said to Charly Hart and Corso and Sergeant Nance.

  Charly Hart’s injuries were beginning to catch up with him. He moved with all the grace and agility of a Hollywood mummy as he and Corso made their way down the jumbled sidewalk. At one point it took Corso’s steadying hand on his elbow to keep him upright. By the time they arrived, haz-mat had already spilled his story to Sergeant Nance.

  “What do we got?” Charly Hart asked.

  The guy started to turn his back. “Like I told him…” he said over his shoulder.

  “Tell me,” Hart
said in a tone that stopped the guy in his tracks.

  The guy turned slowly. Gonna tell the cop what he could do with his attitude problem. The sight of the battered Charly Hart froze the reproach in his throat, however, and, in a spasm of lucidity, he discerned that he was probably dealing with a desperate and deranged man here and it might be better to hold the grief.

  “Oh…you…the train,” was all he said.

  Charly Hart gave him a nod small enough to pass for a tremor.

  “Got two bodies. One male. One female. Not a bio. Multiple stab wounds. Hell of a struggle. It’s a mess. You’re gonna need a forensics team in there.”

  Corso watched the air drain out of Charly Hart. Watched him wobble and then reach for his pocket.

  “Better safe than sorry,” Sergeant Nance said with a dishwater grin.

  38

  When a soft tap sounded on the hotel room door, Wesley held a finger to his lips and tiptoed across the room. He checked to make sure the door was double locked, fondled the Buck knife in his front pocket for a moment and then pressed his eye to the little optical peephole.

  The image was distorted and disjointed, like looking at the world through a piece of broken glass, but it was Holmes all right. Standing in the hall swiveling his head back and forth as he checked the corridor. Wesley snapped the locks and pulled open the door.

  Before stepping inside, Holmes checked the hall one more time. Satisfied that he hadn’t been observed, he hurried into the room and relocked the door.

  “You’re ready?” he phrased it as a question, although that’s not what he meant. Wesley waggled a hand as if to say “more or less.”

  “Remember…” Holmes began his litany. “Take your time. Your best opportunity to leave will be among all the others. If they let you work together…that’s fine. If not…you just go about your business on your own. You know where to meet afterward.” He paused long enough for Wesley and Nathan to indicate they’d been listening. “This is our moment,” he said.