The Ironclad Covenant

by Christopher Cartwright

  “Should we be worried?” Tom asked.

  “Probably. His name hasn’t made the news yet, which means he probably isn’t dead – or at least, his body hasn’t yet been found.”

  “How long are you going to stay there?”

  “Not long. If Elise can’t track him down there’s little I can do to find him in a city of eight and half million people and rising.”

  “You’ll be back tomorrow?” Tom asked.

  “No. The day after. I want to visit an old friend of mine. A girl I met working as a medic in Afghanistan all those years ago.”

  “An old girlfriend?”

  “No. Just a good friend of mine. We like to catch up every couple of years. It’s been too long and she’s had trouble with her father’s failing health, so I wanted to go visit her. I was meant to have dinner with her tonight, but she got stuck at work. She’s promised to try and finish on time tomorrow.”

  “All right, I’ll see you then.”

  “Yeah, then we go and find this stolen Meskwaki Gold Spring.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Virginia knew something was wrong the moment she stepped into the plant room the next morning. The supervisor’s office overlooking the garage was standing room only with two senior ranking managers awkwardly stuffed into the tiny office, standing around the Station officer’s desk, hands resting at their waists in the universal non-confrontational stance. One of them motioned toward her presence with a look, and their conversation instantly faltered.

  She accidentally glanced back in the direction of the door through which she’d entered, and fought the overwhelming urge to run for her life back through it. As though sensing her apprehension, the Station officer stepped across the threshold of his office door and beckoned to Virginia. “How are you Virginia?”

  “Not bad I guess.” Getting closer she added conspiratorially. “There’s a lot of brass in your office this morning Andrew,” trying to project her usual cavalier attitude.

  Andrew spoke without preamble. “Come on in and take a seat, Virginia.”

  Virginia reeled with impending doom. There was a cheap Walmart chair way beyond it’s intended lifespan waiting for her. As she sat heavily she regarded the three, gray headed, gold-emblazoned uniforms that stood across from her, each wearing the same somber, downcast expression. Time passed indeterminately slowly as Virginia waited for her inevitable demise to be spelled out.

  The introductions were skipped. Everyone knew who each other was. The most heavily-adorned Senior Inspector spoke first. His jaw was set hard and his eyes fixed with determination. “Virginia, there’s really no easy way to say this.”

  Virginia looked to the floor between his black tactical boots. She wondered how she was going to explain the theft of one million dollars, and racked her brain to think of a way to salvage her job, dignity, credibility, everything she had worked for over her entire lifetime. She cursed herself silently. One moment’s stupidity she thought.

  She tried to speak. Her voice was a dry croak. Anxiety and trepidation, jamming her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “I’m sorry, sir.”

  Her tongue felt glued to the inside of her mouth. Sweat trickled down her back and her face flushed. With her heart slamming in her chest she raised her face as though to the executioner for his final absolution.

  “Virginia… Anton’s been killed.” The old man said.

  She felt her heart stop. Somehow her worst imagined fear had been surpassed by an unimaginably more horrible reality. Anton Mercia was dead. His young, mischievous and vivacious life cut short unexpectedly.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  Andrew was the first to meet her eye. “We’re all very sorry. We know you were close to him.”

  “But, what? How?” Virginia was now completely adrift. Confusion, guilt, shame and pure anguish washed over her like a million gallons of ocean. She pushed out short, heavy breaths for a while and stared into the middle distance as they gave their answer.

  “He was driving into work early this morning and had an accident with a stolen garbage truck. He was killed instantly. Nobody’s really sure how it happened but the truck crossed over the divider and got him head on. They think maybe the other guy was drunk or something, but he left the scene before the police arrived. His body’s been identified and he’s up at County waiting for the formal from his wife.”

  “Dear God!” Virginia said to herself, running her open palms across her face.

  The office walls pressed in on her as anxiety took hold and threatened to strangle her. “I need some air,” Virginia said, rising unsteadily and making for the door. She made it to the exterior door of the building and leaned against the rail of the massive shutter door. She watched the traffic buzz past and idly wondered if anyone would stop her from wandering out into it. She heard the familiar shuffle of her station officer’s approach from behind. She turned to meet him. “You got any cigarettes, Andrew?” Virginia knew her supervisor had long since given up trying to quit smoking, and would certainly be holding a packet.”

  “I thought you quit?”

  “I did,” Virginia said, gratefully inhaling the smoke as her boss lit it up for her.

  They said nothing for a time, just stood there and smoked in the door of the Fire Station. Clearly contrary to all possible regulations, both knew the gravity of the moment outweighed any possible admonishments from their superiors standing only a few feet away. “I know you two were close Virginia, real close. You want to take some days?”

  Virginia paused for a moment, sucking back another deep lungful. Her disdainful words came with thick smoke streaming from her nose and mouth “No. I want to work, and then I want to drink until I forget.”

  “Fair enough. Almost figured you would. There’s a single over at the 288th at Maspeth, nice guy too. You should have a pretty decent day over there. Take three-twenty-six when you’re ready, it’s right where you left it last night.”

  Virginia drew down hard on the end of her smoke, and with a practiced finger flicked the butt far into the street. She still had the muscle memory even though she hadn’t smoked a cigarette for probably fifteen years. She made a beeline for the bathroom, her head spinning wildly with both nicotine and emotion. A sudden cold sweat and she just made it to the toilet to violently empty her gut. Staring down at the bowl through the blur of tears with acid dripping from her mouth and nose, Virginia elected to switch over to her default emotional setting. Absolute numbness. A necessary, and well-honed skill in her line of work. She counted to ten, took a deep breath and washed her face and hands.

  She didn’t wait around to talk to any of the senior brass who’d come to comfort her. Instead, she knew the best thing for her was to get back into her ambulance, and work another day. Few things were a better distraction than the problems of people whose medical conditions or injuries were in the process of very nearly killing them.

  Virginia climbed into three-two-six, started the engine and drove out the large roller door. She knew the way to Maspeth in Queens well. She took Flushing Ave, skirted the top of Bushwik and around the back of the Newtown creek area. She was in a detached daze as she drove the familiar roads. It was as if she was now watching the events in front of her eyes from afar, completely separated from reality as her mind struggled to compartmentalize the events of the last 24 hours.

  It was because of this that her reaction time was so poor when she spotted the oncoming garbage truck. She wasn’t moving fast. It was a quiet road and she was set in a sort of mental autopilot, lazily making her way to the fire station on the other side of town. The garbage truck wasn’t moving fast either, but it was moving fast enough.

  Three seconds before the collision, she spotted the driver take the corner wide. She jammed on the brakes, but it didn’t matter.

  The garbage truck collided with the passenger’s side of the ambulance. The truck was probably going less than fifteen miles an hour, but it had momentum.

  Her world spun wildly
, as the ambulance was thrown in a two-hundred-and-seventy-degree arc. She felt the rear tires of the ambulance edge off the gutter, across the pedestrian strip, and nearly head into the Newtown Creek.

  She had enough aptitude remaining to jam on the brakes and then pull up the handbrake. The ambulance’s tires gripped the blacktop, coming to a complete stop.

  Virginia expelled a deep breath. Her heart hammered in her chest and adrenaline surged through her body. Her eyes were wide with fear, but she was alive.

  What the hell just happened?

  To the side of her she heard the 600-horsepower turbo diesel powerplant of the garbage truck grunt, as it edged closer to her.

  Her head turned around with a snap.

  It all happened so slowly, her mind, unable to make sense of the strange events, struggled to accept the inevitable.

  Her eyes locked with the driver of the garbage truck, whose face was set with unnerving resolve. She heard the engine whine as the driver shoved the gear into low and slowly drove toward her.

  Virginia reached for her door handle. It moved, but the door wouldn’t open because the first hit had damaged the locking mechanism. Her eyes darted to the passenger seat.

  It was too late.

  Her passenger’s wing mirror was suddenly filled with headlights, bullbar and Mack grille, and all she could hear was the wind up from a 600-horsepower turbo diesel powerplant. She saw the front heave up under the torque of the motor, and then the bulk of the machine as it swayed out and away as the wheels steered harshly in toward her ambulance.

  In the time before the impact Virginia’s mind ran through the list of possible options and outcomes. There was no mistaking the intent behind what was about to happen. No accidental take-off or underestimation of braking distance was at play here, someone was about to plow in to her as hard as possible.

  A garbage truck weighs between thirty and fifty thousand pounds depending on how full it is, add to that the torque from the Mack engine within and you’ve got a crushing tidal wave of kinetic energy. She figured that the brake force created by her Dodge P4500 quad cab chassis was no match, at best she might slow his progress a little. From her experience on the road, Virginia also knew any diagonal impacts in a motor vehicle crash were by far the most lethal. Vehicles are engineered to withstand frontal and rearward assault, and to some extent are reinforced against a direct side impact, but the shearing forces of the diagonal hit threatened to tear her very heart from her aorta.

  She pulled her body to the right and braced on the steering wheel in an attempt to prevent being knocked unconscious. The truck rammed into the side of the Ambulance, unleashing an expulsion of smashing energy through the chassis and her body. The safety glass from her window cubed and shattered into the left side of her face with the violence of the impact and the ambulance reared up underneath her, bucking wildly as the roar of the truck’s diesel powerhouse again filtered into her perception.

  She was now being shunted brutally across the sidewalk and into the rusted rail fence that would either crush her in the cabin, or give way – allowing her to freefall twelve feet into the freezing Newtown Creek below.

  It was the latter that occurred; the posts tore easily from the clay at their long-eroded bases and the rail fence went free as her ambulance was shoved through. Virginia felt the floor rise up and around to her left as the van tipped over the edge and rolled, passenger side first down the steep embankment. A moment of weightlessness during freefall preceded the crushing impact and deafening roar as the inverted Ambulance landed flat on its roof in the water.

  Virginia was jolted head first toward the ceiling. Her head clashed with the B-pillar, knocking her unconscious.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Virginia was shocked awake by a torrent of freezing water that surged throughout the sinking ambulance. She was hanging upside down from her seatbelt which had been tightened by the safety pre-tensioners during the initial impact. The ringing in her ears was overcome by the noise of the swirling eddy that was gushing in an ever-widening stream where the dash met the windows. The smell of the burning oil and engine fluids that streamed from the vents in the console around her, and the vibration and sound of the faltering V8 from under the sinking hood all confounded her brain.

  It took her a full five seconds to orient her mind to the sensations and visual images of her surroundings, and another five to formulate the linear thoughts required to react. She was trapped, in a vehicle, sinking fast. There were only a few options left to her and her failure to utilize them immediately would result in her death.

  The fingers on her right hand scrambled for the release on her seat belt. It didn’t matter. The damned mechanism was jammed. She frantically tried it again but didn’t get anywhere. Water was already rushing up to her downward facing head and she needed to tilt her head just to keep breathing.

  She’d been to thousands of motor vehicle crashes. There was nothing entirely alien about her environment. No reason she needed to panic – except this time it was her life at stake.

  Her training kicked in.

  She steadied her nerves by focusing on priorities. Right now, the first one was to free herself from the seatbelt. Without that, nothing else mattered. She would drown in the next few minutes. But the mechanism had jammed.

  So, how could she free herself?

  Her mind came up short. Instead, she returned to her training. More importantly, how would she free someone else trapped in the same position?

  Scissors!

  Her right hand moved up to the small holder on the inner thigh side of her cargo pants, removing her trauma scissors. She withdrew them and used her straight left arm to brace against the remaining dashboard to slow her fall, with her left elbow locked and wedged against the roof of the cabin she cut the seatbelt.

  Virginia allowed her legs to bunch up and she came to a crouch on the roof, turning to be head upward. The ambulance suddenly dipped as the heavier engine end sucked the van downward from the hood, causing her to lose balance again.

  She stepped off the slippery wet dashboard and climbed vertically into the rear of the ambulance as water completely flooded the driver’s cabin. The airtight seals on the rear compartment were slowing the progress of the water, but not by much. She guessed she had around thirty or forty seconds before she was completely swamped.

  She stood on the seat backs and concentrated on a solution to overcome the next two equal priorities – she needed to get out of the ambulance without getting killed by whoever attacked her in the first place.

  There was no doubt in her mind that whoever was driving that garbage truck was probably watching to make sure she sank with the car, and she was determined not to disappoint them. After all, it’s much harder to murder someone who’s supposed to be already dead.

  Virginia reached down into the side locker and grabbed the mobile oxy-viva kit they used on jobs, and a three-foot oxygen tube from the shelf next to her. She unzipped the kit and connected the hose to the spigot, starting the flow at six liters per minute. With fifty liters compressed into the bottle, she could relax a little. She had what she needed – some time, and probable survivability.

  She held the backpack in front of her like a life-jacket and waited as the freezing water climbed up to her chest. She breathed air for as long as she could until the icy waters finally flooded the entire ambulance. With her face now fully submerged, she placed the oxygen tube into her mouth and started to take slow, full breaths.

  Virginia closed her eyes and waited.

  The ambulance remained partially afloat for nearly another two full minutes, before finally becoming negatively buoyant and sinking.

  It moved quickly, and she had to swallow to try to equalize the pressure in her middle ear, but still her ears felt like they were being crushed. There was nothing she could do about it. The ambulance was going to sink at whatever rate it was going to sink at and there was nothing she could do about it. In her head, she counted the seconds, trying
to guess how deep Newtown Creek was.

  In the back of her mind, she recalled something she’d once read during her initial training, regarding diving physiology and hyperbaric treatments. What she remembered, now terrified her.

  Symptoms of central nervous system oxygen toxicity, which include seizures, neurological deficits, and death, may occur after short exposures to partial pressures of oxygen greater than 1.3 atmospheres.

  In simple terms, death may occur in divers breathing pure oxygen at just ten feet of seawater.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Virginia didn’t wait for the ambulance to sink any farther.

  She reached up over her head and unlatched one of the rear barn doors with her right hand. The cabin was filled with floating debris consisting of packaged medical items and bandages. It was strangely quiet in there, just the sound of sucking swirling water, and the creaking of the ambulance chassis. Virginia took fast deep breaths as the truck gathered speed, starting its inevitable descent. She let the last of the air in the cabin shove the back door ajar as the ambulance slipped under the surface, and she made her way through the opening with the kit held at her chest. The ambulance slipped past her, down into the murky depths below.

  Navy flight training kicked in as she steadied her nerves. She stayed below the surface and bit gently on the hose between her teeth from the oxygen bottle. She was sinking with the weight of the kit, and from the downward eddy caused by the car. She needed to lose her tactical boots to swim, so she shouldered the backpack straps of the oxy-viva and secured the waist belt.

  She unzipped the sides of her boots and pulled them loose, discarding them and her socks. It was very dark now, so she figured she must be either deep, or in the progressively thickening sludge that no doubt lined the bottom of the creek.

  Virginia traced the path of the bubbles, until she was confident which way was up and which way was down. She kicked her legs, and fought her way toward the surface. The visibility was less than a few feet. After about fifteen seconds, the water above turned sepia.