Alcatraz

by Michael P. Spradlin

  “You don’t have that authority. Not even under the Patriot Act. It clearly states that emergency medical decisions are not subject to—”

  Callaghan sighed. He pulled out his phone and pushed a button.

  “Boss?” he said into the phone. “Yes. I know you’re busy. Sorry to interrupt. I’m here at the hospital. Boone wants everyone moved into an OR wing and to have it sealed off. I’m on it, but there’s a problem. I’ve got a Dr. Simpkins here who doesn’t approve. Yes. Yes, sir.” Callaghan pushed the speaker button and held the phone in his hand.

  “Am I speaking to Dr. Robert Simpkins?” the voice on the phone said.

  “Yes . . . who is this . . . what is the meaning—”

  “This is President J. R. Culpepper. Do you recognize my voice?”

  “I don’t believe you . . . and furthermore, this agent Callaghan is disrupting treatment and endangering the health of my—”

  “Dr. Robert L. Simpkins,” J.R. went on, talking over the sputtering doctor.

  “Graduated from UCLA’s medical school. Oh. I see you had to take organic chemistry twice as an undergrad. I hear that’s where they separate the wheat from the chaff. I thought about being a doctor back in college, but decided on political science instead. You live in a high-end condo at 14845 Pierce in the Marina District. And—”

  “Who is this? I demand to know who I’m talking to!” Dr. Simpkins’s face was turning red. Callaghan touched a button on the phone and the screen blipped. President J. R. Culpepper’s face appeared on the screen.

  “Can you hear me now, doctor?” he asked.

  “I . . . yes, I can . . . Mr. President, and I apologize, but medical protocol states . . . that . . .”

  In the corner of the room, a fax machine rang. The machine kicked on and began printing.

  “Coming over your fax machine right now is a copy of Executive Order 8354-A. It essentially gives Special Agent Patrick Callaghan of the United States Secret Service authority to do anything he deems necessary and requires all personnel at your hospital to obey his orders to the letter. In addition, it also gives him present and future immunity from any criminal or civil liability should he, in his professional judgment, be required to use any means required, up to and including deadly force, in order to ensure the safety of all parties. Is there a window in the room, doctor? Where you can see outside the hospital right now?”

  “Ah . . . yes,” Dr. Simpkins stammered.

  “Go to it. Look outside,” J.R. said.

  The dazed doctor shuffled slowly to the window. Looking out, he saw a caravan of military vehicles full of U.S. Marines braking to a stop in front of the hospital. They exited the Humvees and personnel carriers and took up positions around the building. Helicopters hovered in the air nearby.

  “Doctor.” J.R.’s voice came over the speaker. “Come back to the phone.”

  The doctor walked back to Callaghan, a look of pure astonishment on his face. He peered into the phone.

  “Do you understand now? You’re not in charge anymore. Agent Callaghan is. He is now officially the boss of you until he decides this incident is over or I send someone to relieve him. You will do what he says, when he says it, without question. Am I clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” Dr. Simpkins whispered.

  “Good. Don’t bother me again.” J.R. disconnected the call.

  “Are we good?” Callaghan said.

  “Yes. Of course,” the doctor answered. He turned away and immediately began issuing orders to the nurses and orderlies.

  From a corner of the ward, a loud scream and the crash of metal hitting the floor echoed in the enclosed space. Callaghan whirled around, instinctively reaching for his weapon. Malak had knocked down an orderly and was limping toward the door, blood trailing across the floor behind her. Somehow she had found the strength to lift herself off the hospital bed.

  “Malak,” Callaghan whispered, rushing to intercept her. “Malak, you’ve got to stay here.”

  “NO!” she cried. “I’m going to Angela. Don’t try and stop me, Pat.”

  “Malak. Quiet,” he said, speaking quietly, hoping no one could hear him over the din of the OR. “We need to try to save your cover if we can. You’re hurt. You need medical attention.”

  “Out of the way, Agent Callaghan. Step away from my daughter or you will regret it. We go to Angela. Now.” Callaghan looked to his left to see Ziv limping along behind his daughter. His face was as white as mashed potatoes and he looked like he might pass out at any moment. “We don’t want to hurt you. But we will if you try to keep us from her.”

  “Listen, both of you. Angela is safe. Boone has her hidden with Q. Whoever did this can’t get to her. Both of you can barely stand. You’ll be no good to her until you’re patched up.”

  “I am going—” Malak winced as a needle plunged into her shoulder. The sedative made her instantly woozy and she collapsed forward into Callaghan’s arms. Dr. Simpkins stood behind her, holding an empty syringe. Callaghan gave him a thumbs-up and handed Malak off to an orderly.

  “That’s what I’m talking about, doctor,” he said.

  “No!” Ziv shouted. He tried to reach Callaghan but his strength left him and he tumbled to the floor. Orderlies and nurses rushed forward and returned Malak and Ziv to their beds.

  “Okay,” Callaghan said. “Let’s get this place locked down.” Then, as everyone moved about like a swarm of bees, following his orders, he muttered under his breath, “Boone, I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 15

  5:30 p.m. to 7:15 p.m. PST

  Moving Fast

  If I was a nervous wreck before, my mind was racing at about ten thousand miles an hour now. The difference was, I was sitting at the table in the galley of our former sailboat, and Angela was pacing back and forth like a cheetah in a cage. Croc usually slept. But now I could swear he was acting like a guard dog. He would climb the few short steps to the hatch leading to the cabin and smell and examine it, and take a long look though the window. Then he would walk through the galley all the way forward to the sleeping berths. Like he was patrolling the perimeter.

  “Angela,” I said. “I’m sure if your mom was seriously hurt, they—”

  Her beeping phone interrupted me.

  “It’s Agent Callaghan,” she said. “Hello? What happened?” She listened. I could hear his voice over the phone but couldn’t make out the words. “Do they . . . she did? He did? Is Vanessa going to be okay? Will you tell my mom I love her when she wakes up? Make sure she knows I’m okay? Thank you.” She disconnected the call. The color returned to her face and she visibly relaxed.

  “Is your mom okay?”

  “Yes.” Angela ran her hands through her hair. “Whoever attacked them used a knife. Everyone has terrible cuts and some of them are bad, but they’re going to be okay. Vanessa is in surgery, but the doctors think she’s going to make it. Agent Callaghan moved everyone up to a surgical ward, and it’s locked down tight. Buddy is . . . Buddy is not. He’s gone.” She bit her lower lip for a few seconds, then let out a large sigh.

  “What?”

  “Agent Callaghan said my mom was wounded and bleeding, but she climbed out of bed and tried to leave so she could get to me. So did Ziv. They had to be sedated. They’re both fine now . . .” She stopped speaking, and her eyes welled up with tears.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes. I just . . . you know . . . It’s that you go so long, living your life, trying to do normal things and thinking a certain way. Like how I thought my mom was dead. Then I found out she was alive and what she did and why she did it. And it makes me proud. I suppose others might be angry, having been deserted and alone all those years. I mean I had my dad and all, but still . . . I don’t know. I’m just so happy she’s alive. I don’t care about the rest of it. And I have a grandfather. Life is so funny.”

  “At least your mom is not a supervillain,” I muttered.

  “Oh, gosh, Q. I’m sorry. I didn’t mea
n . . .” She frowned, and her cheeks reddened with embarrassment.

  “It’s okay, Angela. Really it is. I’m happy for you. I just . . . It’s been my mom and me for so long that Speed is more of a stranger than a father. I mean he’s got to be like the world’s greatest actor to pull all of this off. No one could actually be as dumb and messed up as my dad pretended to be all those years, without being a real sociopath. For years he made both Mom and me think he was barely able to function as a human being. Now I find out he’s a criminal mastermind. I still can’t wrap my head around it.”

  “You need to give yourself a break. You aren’t the only one he fooled, Q,” she said.

  “Well, give the man an Oscar.” I was quiet a moment.

  “What?” Angela finally prodded me.

  “Nothing.”

  “Yes. Something. You have a tell.”

  “I do not have a tell,” I said.

  “Yes, you do. When you’re curious or have a question about something, you arch your eyebrows.”

  “I do not,” I insisted, immediately de-arching my eyebrows. It’s not good for magicians to have tells.

  “Well, you’ve got something on your mind, so spill.”

  “Do you believe Boone?”

  There, I’d said it. I looked away from Angela and around the galley where we were sitting. The Hackworths hadn’t changed much. The tabletop was new. The old one had been made of wood and had a chocolate milk stain on it from when I’d spilled a glass once. It had left a dark spot on the wood. There was a window over the sink and they’d hung curtains with little anchors printed on them.

  That was about the only change. The granite countertop by the stove was still there. The wood paneling lining the cabin walls still felt warm and homey. I missed this boat.

  Croc was at the hatch, looking out through the glass into the coming twilight. He swiveled his head around and looked at me and made a curious sound. It was almost as if he understood what I’d said. And that I was questioning my loyalty to his master.

  Angela was quiet, like she was giving my question serious thought. “I think I do. Boone believes it. Yes, I believe him. I know I was suspicious and a skeptic at first. But I believe him.”

  “The Holy Grail,” I said. “The Holy Grail. I always thought it was just a story.”

  “Well, just because—” Angela started to say.

  Croc barked, interrupting her.

  “Okay,” she laughed. “It is the real Holy Grail. But there are all kinds of things in the world that we don’t understand and can’t explain. Maybe this is just one of those things. Maybe we aren’t meant to understand it.”

  “Like algebra,” I said.

  She laughed again. She was relaxing. “Not exactly, but there’s a saying that what people used to think of as magic hundreds of years ago is now just science. Or something like that. Maybe what Boone found is just an undiscovered element or chemical that gives off properties the way uranium gives off radiation. It just hasn’t been discovered or studied. Science and our understanding of the world is changing all the time. Maybe Boone just found this cup that was somehow exposed to or made from some chemical element before anyone else did. Once it’s recovered and analyzed we’ll know why it does what it apparently does.”

  It didn’t sound so crazy when she explained it like that.

  “I guess,” I said, getting antsy again. “Before I reach into my pocket and you sigh and roll your eyes, can I get one of my decks of cards?”

  “Sure. And while we’re waiting, and I know my mom and Ziv are okay, I can do research on it,” she said, smiling and pulling her laptop from her backpack. Only Angela could make doing research sound like winning the lottery.

  While she tapped away, I shuffled and ran through swivels, flourishes, aerials, and some other one-handed manipulations of the deck. I tried to think about Speed. He couldn’t do anything with the Grail without Boone. But still, what would he try next? The ghost cell had always gone to ground after they had staged an attack. At least until recently. They stepped back into the shadows, never taking credit for the things they did. Then they would take weeks, months, sometimes years before doing anything.

  Something had changed. Whatever it was, they’d altered their regular methods. They had staged successive attacks in Washington, tried to blow up the USS Cole Memorial, kidnapped us in Kitty Hawk, tried to destroy the Alamo Memorial, and launched chemical attacks in several cities. What had triggered the change in behavior? Why weren’t Speed and his dirtbag followers disappearing into the shadows like ghosts? He was accelerating. For all these years he’d had the Grail, he just couldn’t do anything with it. Now all of a sudden, he takes it out of hiding, kills Buddy, Number Two, at the bank and . . . what? What would he do next?

  The bank. He hit Buddy and the SOS crew at the bank. According to Buddy, Speed had given him the Grail with instructions not to tell him where it was. If Buddy had to search his safe-deposit boxes for it, how did Speed know where to hit them? He could have blinked around, watching them. But that would’ve used up a lot of his energy, according to Boone.

  He was watching. Somehow he had eyes on everyone. But could he have enough people to watch all those banks? Or would he use electronic surveillance the way X-Ray did? Could he hack the traffic cams? If he knew Buddy was with Malak and the others, why hadn’t he sent another team to take him back?

  Why? Then it hit me.

  The itch.

  Speed had figured it all out. If he had taken down Buddy and Malak and the others outside the bank, it meant he must have figured out Boone was the Last Templar. Somehow he knew Boone was the key. He didn’t need to send a team for Buddy. He could wait, watch, and then do just what he had done. Blink in when they found it and take the Grail. But how had he figured it out?

  Boone had told no one but Angela and me about the Grail and the container and how it could be opened. If we were the only ones that knew . . .

  He was listening.

  He’d been listening in the whole time.

  I looked around the cabin. Then at the new tabletop.

  The new tabletop.

  I picked up my cards and started shuffling. I was really letting them fly around. Then I intentionally flubbed a one-handed cut and dropped a bunch of cards on my lap and the floor.

  “Dang it,” I said. Angela paid no attention.

  I bent down underneath the table to retrieve the cards; I looked everywhere on the bottom side of the table. At first I didn’t see anything. Then I spotted it. A small flat disk that looked like a battery for a remote control or a hearing aid. It was painted black, just like the post it was stuck to. There was nothing else like it on the post, so I was pretty sure it wasn’t part of the table. It was a bug. I was sure of it. What else could it be? And if there was one here in the galley, you could be sure Speed had them hidden all over the boat. And they must have been very high-tech because Felix and Uly would have swept the boat before we got here.

  I gathered up all the cards and put them on the table.

  “Well, that’s enough of that,” I said. “Angela, could I borrow your computer one sec? I need to look up something.”

  “Sure.” She turned it around, so it was facing me. I tapped away at the keyboard.

  “Ah, there it is. I just thought of some notes for our homework. Maybe the Grail can keep us from going to boarding school,” I said.

  I took a notebook and pen out of Angela’s backpack.

  “What’s got you so interested in homework all of a sudden?” she asked, confused.

  I tried really hard to look and act normal.

  “I mean, we’re stuck here waiting. We might as well use the time for something useful, like finding a way to keep us out of boarding school. Boarding. School. In case I haven’t mentioned it, I don’t want to go. So maybe if we catch up on our homework, maybe if we do some extra credit. How do you think this sounds for the title of our next research paper?”

  I had written:

  Don’t
say anything. Act normal. Speed has the boat under surveillance. Definitely bugged, and maybe cameras. Say something about the Grail.

  She read the message and, as usual, she didn’t show anything on her face.

  Angela was going to make a great spy someday.

  “That might work. It’s an interesting idea. But you know there’s more than one version of the story. Are you sure we want to do a paper on this one?”

  “Well, I don’t know for sure. But look at the details.” I pointed to the screen. “If you had it, and if the legends are true, it would be awfully hard not to use it, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose. So how do we help Boone?”

  “I don’t know. He knows a lot more about this stuff than we do. I guess we have to sit tight until he gets back.”

  “You’re probably right—”

  We were interrupted by a loud knock on the hatch that caused us both to jump and me to make a very embarrassing high-pitched squeal again. I was not cut out for this.

  “It’s me! Boone,” a voice said. “Open up.”

  Croc barked, and when my heart stopped hammering in my chest, I stood up and looked through the hatch window. It was Boone. He looked like he did when we were trying to get into the Hancock building in Chicago. His face was pale and sweaty, and he looked exhausted.

  “Come on in,” I said, opening the hatch. Boone darted in, but then he slammed the hatch shut and I remembered what he said about not being able to blink through something solid.

  He was breathing hard.

  “Hey, Boone,” I said. “You know Angela, she’s been researching this whole Holy Grail thing. She found something interesting. We’re trying to come up with a title for a research paper. Of course we’d be leaving out your details. What do you think of this for a title?”

  I handed him the notebook. Boone played along, reading what I had written. The only thing that showed on his face was a slight narrowing of his eyes.

  “Huh. Well, I never would have thought that. But I’d say you’re probably on the right track. But you’ll have to finish later. Your parents’ limo will be here in a few minutes to take you to the concert at the fairgrounds. I’ll ride with you. I’ve got people following. Can you get ready to go?”