by Rick Chesler
Tanner finished off the last of his food, savoring the rich flavors. He eyed the stately Lincoln, floating serenely out on the bay.
What could possibly go wrong?
FORTY
Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, Den Hoorn, Netherlands
Stephen Shah glanced at his watch again, pacing the laboratory like a tiger. Less than six hours to go and Jasmijn was still working away. She’d moved on from the sea anemones under the microscope and now stood in front of a centrifuge, test tubes full of a special solution whirling around inside the machine at hundreds of times per second, separating the various compounds by weight.
They’d had only a single interruption so far, when a university police officer knocked on the door. Jasmijn waited until the three OUTCASTs had put away their weapons and made themselves look like they were doing some kind of lab work before opening the door. The officer had simply asked if everything was all right, giving the lab a cursory glance. Jasmijn said she was fine, thank you for checking, and the man had left, assuring her that they now had extra men on patrol around the lab.
The centrifuge wound down and Jasmijn opened it and removed one of the tubes. She stuck this tube into another machine and then stood up and yelled, “Yes! I think I’ve got it!”
Next the operators watched as she went to the freezer with the biohazard warnings plastered all over it and removed the vial of STX sample. She loaded the vial into a special mister that would produce an aerosolized plume. They noted her extreme economy of motion around the sample. She passed around respirator masks to everyone in the room and told them to put them on.
Once all of the masks were secure, she ran to a cage with lab rats and extracted one. She held the rat on its back in one latex gloved hand and sprayed it with the mister. Then she put the animal in an empty cage by itself.
“In a few minutes it will start to die.” Jasmijn eyed the clock on her computer. She moved back to the centrifuge and used a hypodermic needle to collect fluid from one of the test tubes. She held the tube up to the fluorescent lights.
“My next gen STX antidote!”
“Does it work?” Naomi wanted to know, as did they all.
“We’ll find out in a minute,” Jasmijn replied, nodding at the lab rat, which stumbled once as it walked across its cage. When it reached the end of the cage and started to turn around, it fell over onto its side and didn’t get up. It scrabbled its front paws a few times in the air and then lay still, stomach rising and falling with labored breathing.
“Down for the count,” Dante said.
“It’s time.” Moving quickly, Jasmijn picked up the syringe containing the new STX antidote and pulled the dying rat from the cage. She held the animal on its back in one hand while she administered the prospective antidote through the syringe in her other hand. The rodent jerked its head once as the needle penetrated its skin and then lay still.
Stephen shook his head. “Looks pretty dead. How long should it—” He was interrupted by Jasmijn’s yelp of surprise as the rat wiggled in her hand. She set it down in the cage.
“It’s alive!” Dante grinned.
“Wow!” The surprise on Naomi’s face was evident.
The rodent ran around in fast circles, its movements hyper-quick. “Slow down, turbo!” Dante said.
And then the lab rat did slow down. It slumped against the wall of its cage and closed its eyes. It lay perfectly still.
“Is he—” Naomi couldn’t bear to finish the question.
Jasmijn reached into the cage and gently placed a fingertip against the rat’s abdomen.
“He’s dead.” She grimaced. “Something’s not quite right. This solution had more effect than the previous one — at least it temporarily revived the subject — but obviously the effect isn’t lasting. I think I know what it is, though…” She walked back over to the computer station as if in a trance, the three OUTCASTs watching her.
She turned to them as she sat down in the workstation chair. “I’m sorry. Unfortunately it’s sort of a trial and error process. I’ve got a long night ahead. I need to do a whole ‘nother round of redevelopment before we can try the test again.”
Nay headed for the coffee pot. “I’ll fire up the caffeine machine.”
Dante looked at Stephen. “Hopefully they have some good luck in Maine.”
FORTY-ONE
Boothbay Harbor, Maine
They sat on a park bench, Tanner pretending to read a local newspaper as he overlooked the bay, occasionally directing Liam to scope out particular things in more detail with the binoculars. He flipped a page of the paper and then registered motion out of his peripheral vision. Well outside the bay, a speedboat appeared to his right, visible only as a white streak that Tanner knew was the huge wake from the craft’s powerful engines. He continued to watch the boat move from right to left.
He glanced around at the crowd in the Seafood Festival, seeing nothing that raised his internal alarm sense. But when he looked back out at the water, the white streak that represented the speedboat was oriented differently. Instead of lying horizontally, it now appeared as a vertical line, meaning that the vessel had changed direction. It was traveling toward the bay. There was nothing unusual about that, Tanner knew. Lots of fast boats plied the waters outside of the bay at high speeds. Inside the bay, though, traffic was heavier and the speeds were lower. He was sure this one was returning home after a day of boating and would slow down any minute as it approached the bay.
But as he continued to watch the incoming craft, its speed didn’t waver. When it reached the mouth of the bay and proceeded to motor toward the harbor at high throttle, Tanner nudged Liam, who had the binoculars trained on the president’s yacht.
“Take a look at the speedboat.”
Liam looked up from the glasses and immediately spotted the approaching watercraft. He lined up his spyglasses and focused the optics on the moving target. “Jet boat,” he observed, referencing a type of boat that used an unconventional engine to suck water in and expel it in order to provide high thrust, similar to a waverunner engine, but scaled up. “Only one man aboard. Don’t see any weapons.”
“Okay. Stay with him.” Tanner had the bird’s eye view of the boat’s overall direction relative to the president’s boat and the harbor, while Liam monitored activity onboard. They continued to observe in this manner for another minute, until it became clear to Tanner that something was wrong.
“I think we may have a problem, Liam. This boat’s not slowing down.”
“Oh crap!”
“What is it?”
“The pilot just put a plastic tank up onto the bow.”
Tanner’s heart sank. If it contained a liquid STX solution, it would likely shatter on impact if the boat hit anything. Yet as he watched, the swift boat veered sharply away from the Lincoln.
“Heading away from the target,” Tanner stated for Liam, who was still glued to the binoculars.
“Where to?”
Tanner assessed the view below. After the president’s yacht, he didn’t see an obvious target for the speeding boat. Was it possible that the pilot of the fast vessel was simply a recreational boater who had lost control of his craft — mechanical problems — the tank containing only extra fuel or perhaps even just water?
But then his gaze tracked inwards, all the way to shore, extrapolating the vessel’s current course. If it didn’t deviate from the heading it was on now, the boat would run into the seawall in front of a busy waterfront walkway, lined with shops and restaurants.
Damn! Tanner felt helpless as he clutched his fists. They’d been so worried about the president that they hadn’t considered the general populace, like a football team concentrating all of their defense on covering the star receiver, and meanwhile the ball is handed off to a no-name running back with a clear path to the end zone. He hadn’t known what exactly they were expecting, but he didn’t think the attack would be so open, so brazen. If that’s in fact what this was.
&nbs
p; “Ooooh!” Liam sucked in his breath. “He just ran down a paddle-boarder!”
“Accident?”
“Don’t think so. Even if for some reason you couldn’t shut down the boat’s power, you could still steer it out of the way. What are the chances that he’s lost both the ability to shut off the engine and the steering cable broke?”
“About the same as us being able to stop that boat from hitting whatever it’s going to hit.”
FORTY-TWO
Boothbay Harbor, Maine
They witnessed the speedboat convert itself into a fireball. Impacting at what must have been full throttle into a stone wall — about sixty miles-per-hour — the explosion was instant and terrifying to behold. Tanner wondered what was in that tank on the bow. Then, with a sickening realization, he understood why it had been perched atop the boat, unsecured.
When the vessel hit the wall, the tank of liquid would have shot forward with the sudden loss of forward momentum. This motion would send it over the seawall and onto the crowded oceanfront walk. There, it would shatter on impact, releasing a deadly splash of STX. Not as effective as an aerosol mist, but certainly deadly to those in close range.
Tanner pondered this. If it was an STX attack, why the shift in dispersal method? The football stadium attack had utilized a mister…Waikiki beach — same. The methods of disseminating the aerosol were different, but they were definitely mist. Here, the liquid in the tank would only be able to affect anyone who was splashed by it, who breathed in the fine droplets. Still, it was a formidable threat, but the deviation from past protocols troubled Tanner. In his experience working Counter-terrorism, once a group succeeded in creating a death toll, they pursued that method, perhaps refining it, but never abandoning it until they were neutralized.
So why would Hofstad want to go through all the risk and expense of carrying out a terror strike only to take out a handful of victims at best, when they’ve been striking en masse? Especially when the POTUS was here. Simply to cause mayhem in the presence of the president in his homeland? But surely they would try to get to him even with a high probability of failure, given the significant degree of resources devoted to protecting President Carmichael on his yacht. Those resources would make it doubly likely that this small boat attack would be contained…
Tanner felt a surge of adrenaline as the realization struck. He slapped Liam on the shoulder to get his attention away from the binoculars.
“Liam! We have to get down there!”
The ex-SEAL tore away the glasses from the view of the walkway on fire.” What — why?”
“What if this—” He pointed down at the fiery fiasco below—” — is only a distraction for the main event?”
Slowly and with mounting awareness, Liam raised the binoculars to his face and aimed them in the direction of the Lincoln.
Tanner continued. “While emergency responders are focused on this…”
Liam nodded. “The Lincoln is more vulnerable. But I don’t see any unusual activity on board yet. The party looks like it’s in full swing,” he added, letting the binoculars hang around his neck. “What’s our best bet for helping once we’re down there? We won’t have this bird’s eye view anymore.”
“Good point. But I think it’s safe to say that we want to focus on the yacht. If we can rent a powerboat, we can get out on the bay and be able to respond in short order.”
Liam made one more scan of the yacht and the bay with his binoculars, then stood up.
They made their way through the park, walking against the flow of heavy foot traffic as people rushed to the bluffs to get a look at the explosion they heard.
“I feel like a salmon swimming upstream.” Liam said, shouldering past a mother towing twins who both gnawed on blue cotton candy.
They could hear people speculating that there had been an explosion or maybe a bomb. The president is here! We’re under attack! A local news reporter-cameraman team ran toward the bluff.
Tanner and Liam walked purposefully, but did not run, out of the park. They didn’t want to alarm anyone, nor did they wish to tip their hand that they had something to accomplish. Once they cleared the seafood festival the going became easier. They moved down the incline to the waterfront area, only to find that a barricade had already been put up, detouring people away from the section that had been set ablaze. It was from here that they got their first good look at the devastation.
They could heard screams of pain — agony. They heard a man wailing, “What’s happening to her?” over and over again. A line of police officers kept repeating that they had no information at this time except to stay clear of the area. They could hear sirens as fire trucks raced in to battle the blaze. The fuel-fed fire raged uncontested.
Tanner wanted to know if this had been a saxitoxin attack but they had no time to wait around and find out. They followed the detour directions, which fortunately led to a different part of the waterfront. Looking out across the harbor, he found he could no longer see Carmichael’s yacht, which made him nervous. What’s more, the entire waterfront would be locking down tight, soon.
“We need to rent a boat, quick.” He pointed to a small shop that advertised fishing trips and boat rentals and ran to it. Just as they walked up to the counter the employee started to pull down the drop-down shutter to close up shop. “Sorry, forced closure by the Harbor Patrol. Emergency. No rentals until further notice.” Tanner watched as a Harbor Patrol officer watched them to make sure a rental transaction would not occur, and then the officer moved on toward the next establishment down the line.
“Should we try that one?” Liam suggested, pointing to the rental shop the officer was heading to, maybe a couple of hundred feet away.
“No way we’d have time to do a rental before the officer gets there first. And he just saw us. But look.” He pointed at a shop three down from the one the officer was on the way to. “That one’s far enough away that we might be able to run over there and rent before the Harbor Patrol guy gets there to tell them to shut it down.”
Liam eyed the establishment. “Waverunners?”
Tanner shrugged. “They’re fast and maneuverable, and we don’t have much gear.”
Liam nodded. Each of them carried only a pistol with extra clip, a folding knife, and the binoculars. “Right, then. Let’s pretend we’re fitness freaks.”
Liam removed his shirt, revealing his toned physique. Tanner did the same. They began to jog, moving fast under the guise of casual exercisers oblivious to the tragic event that had just occurred rather than two guys running pell-mell through the aftermath of a possible attack. When they got to the waverunner place, Tanner strode to the outdoor counter with his wallet open.
“Two waverunners, please, half-day,” he said. It was possible the proprietor had already been notified via phone to close up shop, but he was relieved to see a girl of perhaps eighteen years of age, long blonde hair dyed with green streaks and a lip ring, bopping her head to an iPod with earbuds in, looking at a social network page on her phone. Decent chance she hadn’t heard yet.
She gave him a slightly annoyed look, she a year-round resident in a resort town that swelled with tourists each summer, he just another one of them. He noticed that she did give Liam a second glance, though, but still acted like she could care less about anything.
“Fill this out, sign here, credit card or cash deposit required, driver license required from both of you.” She slid a clipboard across the wooden counter.
Yes! Tanner gave her the cards while he scribbled as quick as he could to complete the form. Liam monitored the Harbor Patrol officer, who had just completed his stop at the establishment two doors down and was on his way to the next. If he were to see them in the process of renting, there was no doubt that he’d come straight here. Tanner slid the clipboard with the form on it across the counter.
She eyeballed it more carefully than Tanner would have guessed, passing a finger over each box. The finger stopped on a blank one.
“Ph
one number required,” she said, passing the clipboard back to Tanner and turning once again to her smart-phone.
Tanner took a deep breath to steady his nerves and entered the phone number for his pay-as-you-go trac-phone that he kept for this type of purpose. It matched the address on his bogus driver license. “Okay.” He eased the form back her way, not wanting to seem rude, which could lead to a delay they couldn’t afford. She swiped the form back without looking at it and stood, grabbing a set of keys with a float on them. “Right down here.”
She exited the booth and trotted down to the floating dock where the waverunners sat. Thankfully she seemed to be in a hurry to get back to her phone. Tanner and Liam were right behind her. She pointed to a pair of red Yamaha waverunners, side by side. She began giving instructions on their use while the two men each straddled one of the machines, but Tanner interrupted her while starting his engine.
“That’s okay, we’ve done it before.”
“We’re good, thanks!” Liam echoed, his vehicle expelling a plume of exhaust as it roared to life.
“Yeah? Okay. Have fun!” She smiled at Liam and then bounced off back to the rental stand, where the Harbor Patrol man now approached. He had one hand raised in the air.
“Now, Liam!” Tanner put his craft into reverse in order to maneuver out of the tight dock space. Liam did the same. As they turned, they saw the officer had caught up with the shop girl, talking to her, while she pointed at her two most recent rental customers.
They watched as the officer raised an arm in their direction and started to run down to the dock.