Rising Phoenix

by Kyle Mills

  The group was silent for a moment, letting his words sink in.

  “So what you’re saying is that we may have a large quantity of coke, possibly distributed all across the States by now, that is going to kill everyone who uses it,” Sherman said.

  Beamon turned to Richter. “Have we confirmed that it’s only coke?”

  “Not really. Three people isn’t much of a basis for a good statistic.”

  He turned back to Sherman. “Yeah. Best case.”

  “And you agree with him, Frank?” Calahan asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Recommendations?”

  “I recommend that I get to work catching these guys before things get out of hand,” Beamon answered. “I’ll need to put together a few people to help me out. Are there any empty offices around? Maybe something with a decent-sized conference room?” Beamon stood up and jammed his hands in his pockets.

  “Why don’t we just give Mark the SIOC,” Richter suggested, using the acronym for the FBI’s Strategic Information Operations Center. “He’s gonna need the communications equipment and computer anyway.”

  “Fine.” Sherman began to rise. “Mark—this is top priority—you can have anyone you want, unless they’re undercover.” He turned to Calahan. “The most important thing now is to get a press conference together to announce Mark’s appointment and to warn people about the scope of the threat. Do you agree?”

  “Absolutely,” the Director replied. It was well known that he loved to see himself on television. “Perhaps we can set something up for tomorrow?”

  15

  Washington, D.C.,

  February 9

  Mark Beamon walked unsteadily along the center line of the street. The sun was blinding him as it reflected off the windshield of a van stopped in the middle of the road about twenty yards away. He turned slowly in circles, watching brightly colored cars skid to abrupt stops and well-dressed young men and women jump out and take cover behind their open doors.

  Beamon’s slow turning eventually brought him face to face with a haggard group of men peeking out from behind the van. They were further distinguished by the old gray Thompson submachine guns gripped tightly in their hands.

  He was vaguely aware that he was dreaming, but he dropped to his knee and pulled his pistol anyway. He was completely exposed, standing alone in the middle of the street. At least he had backup.

  The men behind the van started firing, filling the air around him with bullets. He could see individual rounds as they whipped past him and as they left the barrel of his .357. He looked behind him. The young agents crouched behind their car doors, reached into their jackets in unison, and pulled out laptop computers. As they powered up, a beeping sound drowned out the gunfire.

  He swung his arm wildly at the alarm clock as the beeping turned to ringing. He hit the snooze button dead center, and silence once again reigned in the dark bedroom, though the smell of gunpowder in his nostrils was slower to dissipate as the dream slipped away. When the ringing started again only moments later, he realized that the phone, and not the alarm, was the culprit. The bright red numbers on the clock hovered in the darkness, announcing that it was just after four A.M.

  Beamon fumbled for the phone, keeping his body flat on the bed. Finally finding the receiver, he pulled it to his ear.

  “Beamon,” he announced sleepily.

  “Turn on CNN.” Tom Sherman’s voice.

  Beamon pushed the phone back onto the night-stand and sat up. In his youth, he had loved these late-night calls—they promised an interesting morning and made him feel important. Now they just made him feel tired.

  He piled his two pillows behind him and fumbled for the remote. After a moment of searching, he found it, and the room was bathed in the unsteady gray light of an old black-and-white movie. Humphrey Bogart was lighting a cigarette in the lobby of an obscenely ornate hotel.

  The light in the room flickered again as Bogart disappeared and a thin young woman with a microphone took his place.

  The woman’s green coat glowed in the harsh light of the TV cameras, contrasting her pale skin and quickly moving red lips. Behind her the light faded, leaving about forty feet of dead space ending in a white building with heavy-looking double glass doors. As his eyes adjusted, Beamon began to focus on the dead space. Upon further examination, it appeared to be full of people at different levels of activity. Along the bottom of the television, the caption JOHNS HOPKINS HOSPITAL was spelled out in capital letters. Slightly larger was the word MUTE. Beamon had always liked TV better with no sound.

  “So what the hell’s going on, Tommy?”

  He pressed the volume control, and the woman’s voice went from a timid whisper to a self-assured shout: “… what you’re seeing is happening at hospitals all over the country.”

  Beamon focused on the screen as the camera panned away from the reporter and splashed light on the activity behind her.

  He had never been in a war but was a fan of war movies. What he saw reminded him of triage after a battle. The soldiers were always strewn out in the dirt, some lying quietly, others writhing and bleeding. Heroic doctors and nurses would run from litter to litter, hunched over against sniper fire and helicopter wash.

  Every once in a while, a light from another source flooded the scene, bringing a new perspective. He punched the volume button one last time.

  “…it’s impossible to tell how many patients there are here, because they keep moving them in and out of the hospital—I lost count at seventy-eight. Obviously the doctors have begun examining people out here in the parking lot. From where I’m standing I can see in through the glass doors of the building. It looks like the floor is covered with patients. I’m not sure how they’re getting stretchers in and out—it looks impossible to walk in there.” Steam billowed from her mouth as she spoke.

  The camera panned right, illuminating the face of a blond man in a leather bomber jacket, lying on the ground amidst the turmoil. His face was stark white. Beads of water clung to his cheeks, shining like diamonds under the harsh camera light. He didn’t acknowledge the attention, he only stared up through the rain, chewing on his lower lip with a jerky mechanical precision. Blood had begun to flow from it, mixing with the light rain to run pink down his chin.

  Beamon sat silently in his bed, vaguely aware of Sherman’s breathing on the other end of the phone. The reporter turned away from the camera and tried to stop a quickly moving young doctor. He shrugged her off without looking up. Her second attempt, involving actually grabbing a man’s arm, met with more success. He was much older, apparently wiser about good publicity’s role in saving lives.

  “Could you tell us what’s going on here, Dr….?”

  “Mason,” he replied looking into the camera with a practiced calm. “We’re not entirely sure. The symptoms seem to be consistent with the victims of the suspected drug poisonings that have been getting so much press lately, but yesterday we only had six patients with those symptoms. Today…” His voice trailed off as he pointed to the chaos behind him.

  “Doctor, the prior victims of these tainted drugs were all diagnosed as terminal. Are you saying that none of these people are going to survive?” Her professional poise began to crack as it sank in that she might be standing in the middle of a graveyard.

  “I really couldn’t say.” He fingered the stethoscope hanging around his neck. “What I can tell you is that they’re at the best hospital in the world and we’re doing everything we can—now you’ll have to excuse me.”

  Beamon hit the Mute button as the reporter began to summarize the few words that she’d been able to get.

  “Shit, Tommy,” he said quietly into the phone. As he spoke, the screen darkened for a moment, switching to a man standing in front of a similar scene. The caption placed it as a hospital in Phoenix.

  “I sent a car for you, Mark. It should be there in less than fifteen minutes. See you at the office.” There was an audible click.

  Beamon sat fo
r a moment in silence, cradling the receiver in his lap. He’d had a gut feeling that this case was going to be uglier than anyone expected. But he hadn’t planned on this.

  The doorbell rang just as Beamon finished the right sleeve on the shirt he was ironing. He laid the iron upright on the board and jogged to the door, wearing only a pair of gray slacks.

  “Mr. Beamon, I’m Steve Adams. I was sent to pick you up.” Beamon examined him carefully. He looked impossibly young.

  “Come on in, Steve.” Beamon eyed the crisp white collar poking up from the young man’s navy topcoat. “Agent Adams—I do believe that you look like a man who knows his way around an iron.”

  A puzzled look came over the smooth face.

  Beamon led him to the ironing board and offered him a position behind it.

  “I owe you one,” he called, racing up the stairs of the town house to shave.

  Less than five minutes later he reappeared, still bare-chested, but now wearing shoes and holding a jacket, coat, and tie. He found his shirt hanging neatly on the end of the ironing board, and the young agent flipping through a six-month-old copy of Newsweek.

  “I knew you wouldn’t let me down … what’s your name again?”

  “Steve Adams.”

  “Sorry, it’s early,” Beamon explained, as he finished buttoning his collar and began tying his tie. “Okay, let’s go.”

  Beamon stretched wildly as the Bureau sedan cruised slowly past Union Station. He glanced at his watch. No wonder his mind was still foggy, it had been less than twenty minutes since Sherman’s call.

  “Hey, Steve, you know if you take a right at this light, there’s a little twenty-four-hour donut shop up about a mile on the left.”

  Adams looked at him incredulously. “Sir, I don’t know if you’ve been briefed, but there are hundreds of people dying. Mr. Sherman told me to get you to headquarters as soon as possible.”

  “Shit, son. I’m not a doctor—there’s nothing that I can do for these people now that I can’t do in ten minutes. Take a right.”

  Adams went silent and swung the car onto a narrow side street. Beamon’s memory for pastry was photographic and it was less than three minutes before a Dunkin’ Donuts appeared.

  He jumped out of the car before it had made a full stop, and walked briskly toward the shop. The perfume of brewing coffee masked the smell of the city.

  “Here, I got you some coffee,” Beamon said sliding two steaming cups into the drink holders between the seats, and dumping a handful of sugars and creams between them. “I forgot to ask how you took it.”

  As they pulled away, he searched through the grocery-sized bag on his lap. “Bear claw?”

  “No, thank you.”

  Beamon could barely keep from laughing out loud. Young agents could be so unbelievably stiff. It was the academy that did it, he knew. Pumped them full of patriotic images of saving the world, and built up their confidence with constant reminders that they were the best America had to offer. He had been the same way after graduation.

  “You sure? Donuts are the cornerstone of good police work—especially the creme-filled ones.”

  “I’m sure.”

  This one was a tough nut, and Beamon decided that he was too tired to crack him. Settling back into the comfortable seat, he nibbled on an eclair and lit a cigarette. He ignored the young agent as he made a show of rolling down his window.

  Beamon had quit smoking the day that he arrived in Houston. Back in D.C., though, the willpower had drained from him. He hoped to have this thing wrapped up before lung cancer set in.

  Perry Trent peeked around the doorjamb of the open door to the Oval Office. “Mr. President?”

  Daniel Jameson sat in jeans and a red work shirt on the leather sofa centered in the office.

  “Morning, Perry. Come on in. Coffee?”

  “Yes, thank you.” It always made Trent uncomfortable to have the President of the United States pour his coffee. He nodded a greeting to Michael Bryce, the White House chief of staff, who had taken his customary seat in a soft tapestry chair directly across from the President. As attorney general, Trent rated a less comfortable spot a few feet farther from the power.

  “So what the hell’s going on, Perry. Yesterday you told me some crazy had dropped rat poison in a few drugs, and this morning I get woken up out of a sound sleep and told that hospitals all across the country are filling up with dying dopers.” Jameson plunked two sugars into the cup and held it out.

  Trent reddened slightly. The President was already suffering from a serious ulcer and dangerously high blood pressure, though those facts had been effectively kept from the press. When he had asked for a briefing on the first victims, Trent had downplayed the situation. At the time there had been no reason to think that it was anything more than some right-wing fanatic running around with a household chemical. No reason to start the President’s ulcer bleeding.

  “I was wrong,” he explained simply.

  Trent had spent almost the entire drive to the White House on the phone with Tom Sherman at the FBI. Now that he was sitting across from the President, he wondered what they’d talked about for so long. The information he had didn’t amount to much.

  “It would appear that a shipment of cocaine has been tainted with an extremely deadly poison that attacks the liver and kidneys. It looks like the shipment was hit somewhere pretty far upstream—and now it’s been cut up and distributed all over the country.”

  The President let out a sound like a leaky tire and leaned back into the sofa. Trent paused, thinking that the President was going to ask a question. When he didn’t, Trent continued. “The FBI began their investigation the moment the ads appeared in the paper and are tracking a number of leads. So far none has panned out. Obviously they have made this investigation their top priority.”

  “And you think Bill Calahan is competent to run an investigation of this magnitude?” Bryce asked.

  “No, but Tom Sherman can. And he’s brought in Mark Beamon to head up the investigation.”

  “Isn’t he the guy that found that Coleman kid?”

  Trent nodded.

  “Good choice,” Bryce said. “The press loved him—not a lot of political savvy, though.”

  The President seemed deep in thought for a moment. The two men watched his expression carefully. “So what’s your recommendation, Perry?” he asked finally.

  Trent’s brow furrowed slightly. “I don’t think that there is anything you or I can do, really. The Bureau’s got its teeth into this thing, and I’ve directed them to use every method available to get these guys—fast. I told Sherman confidentially that if he had any ideas that might be unconventional, I wanted to hear them. And if they had any merit, I’d bring them to you.”

  Trent took a sip of his coffee. “I know that neither of you much cares for Bill Calahan, but I don’t think he’s particularly relevant to the investigation. In my opinion, we can trust Tom to get this investigation off the ground pretty quickly.”

  “Calahan’s having a press conference tomorrow at ten, isn’t he?” Jameson asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay, Perry. Thanks. I want to be kept up on everything that happens in this investigation. Daily reports. Nothing’s insignificant, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Trent promised himself that he wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. Jameson would get more detail than he could handle. Trent was painfully aware that he was getting off easy. Too easy. It gave him a queasy feeling.

  “Thank you, sir,” he said, putting down the nearly full cup of coffee and heading for the door.

  “Close it behind you, please,” Bryce called.

  “So what do you think?” The President didn’t look at his chief of staff, but concentrated on the stained glass lampshade next to him.

  Bryce slid his feet onto the table in front of him, pushing himself farther back into the chair. “It’s a difficult situation. The press is going to come out firmly against the poisoners
and are going to be more and more critical of us every day these guys aren’t caught. On the other hand, the public perceives your administration to be soft on crime.”

  The President opened his mouth to protest, but Bryce cut him off.

  “I’m not saying that it’s true—but you’re a Democrat and you’ve stressed rehabilitation over punishment. The fact is that crime’s gotten worse with every administration since Lincoln—you just happen to have the chair now.”

  “So what are you getting at, Mike?” Jameson respected Bryce’s ability to see all angles of an issue, but God knew he liked to hear himself talk.

  “I’m not sure that these guys—what do they call themselves? The CDFS? Are going to be all that unpopular.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “Look, Dan, you go talk to some guy working forty hours a week in a factory in Sheridan, Wyoming, and you ask him what he thinks about the whole thing. You know what he’ll say? Hell say that the druggies got what was coming to them. That it’s about time someone cleaned up the cities.”

  Jameson flushed. “So what are you suggesting? That we tell the media that I think it’s okay to go out and kill as many people as you want—just as long as they’re narcotics users?”

  Bryce straightened up in his chair. “No. That’s what’s so difficult. You have to go out there and say that the government is going to do everything in its power to stop these guys—but you have to do it in a way that doesn’t make our friend in Wyoming mad. The media’s on your side. They’ll focus on the most horrible and unjustified deaths. You know, high school track stars with straight A’s, cute twelve-year-olds from the projects—that kind of thing. You’re not gonna see the guy with a murder rap and six aggravated assaults. I’ll guarantee you that.”