The Panic Zone

by Rick Mofina

  “So? He didn’t see what I saw. He doesn’t know what I know.”

  “Take it easy, Jack,” Lyon said.

  “That drug crap is just a cover story for whoever really killed Corley,” Gannon said.

  “Jack—” Lyon searched his face “—have you told us everything that happened to you in Morocco?”

  “Yes.” He cleared his throat. “The café bombing is linked to Corley’s murder in Rabat and human traffickers and this ex-CIA guy, Drake Stinson, and some shadowy group or think tank called Extremus Deus, a scientist, and all of it is tied to some plot against the U.S.”

  While Lyon made a few notes, Delaney said, “Jack, you seem to have a lot going on there. Mel, maybe we should put more people on this story.”

  “Why waste our resources?” Wilson said. “All I see is a lot of disparate pieces to a conspiracy theory.”

  Lyon swiveled her chair to the window and the view of Madison Square Garden. The banner announcing the upcoming Human World Conference was illuminated.

  “Tell me something, George. What have Frank Archer and our people in Rio learned about the café bombing?”

  “That it’s still under investigation.”

  “Then Jack’s got the only substantial follow-up story on it, directly from the narco dealers. And that kind of confirmation goes a long way in my book. He’s got us leads on something significant. During my recent business flights, I’ve read through most of the files Jack’s sent me. Granted they do seem disparate, as you say, but my gut tells me he’s got something. And for what it’s worth, this morning I learned on the grapevine that the Washington Post has caught wind of a story about national security concerns over long-buried, secret U.S. military experiments falling into criminal hands. Maybe it’s related to this, maybe it’s not. In any event, we’re not going to get beat on what happened in Brazil. The bottom line is two of our people were among those murdered in Rio de Janeiro. I assigned Jack to find out who is responsible, to pursue the truth no matter where it leads. That’s what he’s been doing. We are not going to let someone else write the ending for us. Not after what we lost. This is our goddamn story. So, I’m going to demand all of our bureaus keep digging for anything related to the bombing. George and Al, I’m counting on you to watch your story lists and alert me personally to anything remotely connected to what Jack has discovered. It that clear? I’m going to leave Jack on this story to keep doing what he’s been doing. And we’re putting the full support of this news agency behind him. Do you have any questions?”

  No one spoke.

  Wilson picked through the wontons.

  “All right,” Lyon said. “We’re done. It’s late, go home.”

  “Hold up,” Delaney said, consulting his BlackBerry. “I just got something interesting from Nan in Miami who is checking with Butler in Atlanta. Seems a passenger on a cruise ship became violently ill and died, a forty-one-year-old man from Indianapolis. The medical examiner for Broward County alerted the Centers for Disease Control who, according to our sources, alerted Homeland Security. Seems they don’t know what caused his death, but sources say it was like something from a horror movie.”

  “Stay on that, get it all confirmed. Track down the ship’s passenger list, the ship’s medical crew,” Lyon said. “Jack, I want you to go home, rest. Tomorrow we’ll talk about our next steps.”

  “Sure, I just want to finish up what I was working on.”

  Gannon got fresh coffee, returned to his desk and went back to examining the documents concerning Big Cloud, Wyoming, the Golden Dawn Fertility Corporation in Los Angeles and the fire in Santa Ana that killed a former lab manager. There were some names… Yes, here they were—Joseph Lane, Emma Lane and Tyler Lane.

  Gannon rubbed his chin, thinking.

  Using the paper’s Internet services, he found public telephone listings for nearly 400 Joseph Lanes in the U.S., and nearly 250 Joe Lanes. They were listed by state. He scrolled through them, pleased when he came to a phone listing for Joe and Emma Lane in Big Cloud, Wyoming.

  He jotted down the number, starting with the 307 area code, then the rest, thinking he’d made a mistake because the last three numbers, 847 were familiar to him.

  Why was he repeating those three numbers? Was it fatigue?

  Gannon clicked on Maria Santo and Sarah Kirby’s files. He went to the listing, a reference to LA #181975 to Wyoming847.

  There it was. The last three numbers of the file and the Lane’s home phone number matched. All right, he’d check one more thing.

  He then went online for the newspaper for Big Cloud.

  The Big Cloud Gazette. The WPA subscribed to it electronically. He searched the paper’s archives for anything on Joe, Emma and Tyler Lane and got several hits.

  Gannon froze.

  The most recent was an obituary.

  Then he found a news story about a tragic car accident that killed a Big Cloud father and his infant son—Joe and Tyler Lane.

  The sole survivor was Emma Lane, Tyler’s mother and Joe’s widow.

  Gannon clicked on to a family picture and was drawn to Emma Lane’s bright smile and beautiful eyes.

  Something told him to call.

  He didn’t know why but something in his gut was insisting he call the number he had for Joe and Emma Lane.

  Call right now!

  Gannon double-checked the time difference, then dialed.

  51

  Big Cloud, Wyoming

  Emma tilted the bottle to shake the sleeping pills into her palm when the phone next to her bed rang.

  Startled, she didn’t move.

  It did not ring a second time because it was answered by the extension in the living room. Through her bedroom door, she heard Uncle Ned’s muffled voice involved in a conversation that included Aunt Marsha. Then someone approached her door and rapped on it softly.

  “Emma?” Aunt Marsha said.

  Emma poured all of the pills back into the bottle, capped it and put it under her pillow.

  The door cracked open.

  “Dear, I’m sorry to disturb you but there’s a call for you. It’s a reporter. I told him you were asleep but he insisted I get you.”

  “A reporter? Is it that guy from the Gazette?”

  “No, it’s a man from New York.”

  “New York? Did he say why he was calling?”

  “No, only that it was important that he speak to you. Do you want to talk to him? Or we could tell him to call back another time?”

  Is this my sign? Emma wondered.

  “No, I’ll take it here. Thanks.”

  She swept her hair back and picked up the handset.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, is this Emma Lane?”

  “Yes.”

  “Emma, my name is Jack Gannon. I’m a reporter with the World Press Alliance in New York. I’m sorry to impose on you at this time but I need to speak to you briefly. It’s important. Do you have a moment?”

  “Yes, what’s this about?”

  “Thanks, I’ll get to that, but first I need to confirm that I’ve reached the right person. Again, my apologies, but I have to ask this. Are you the Emma Lane whose husband Joe and son Tyler were in a recent car accident?”

  Emma took a breath.

  “Yes.”

  “And have you had any dealings whatsoever with the Golden Dawn Fertility Corporation in Los Angeles California?”

  A shiver rattled up Emma’s spine. She stifled a sob, covering her mouth with her free hand, feeling tears cascading over her fingers.

  “We were clients.”

  She glanced at Joe and Tyler’s picture on her nightstand.

  “Please, tell me what this is about?”

  “Your case at the clinic surfaced in a story I’m working on.”

  “Our case? How? What kind of story?”

  “It’s complex, Emma. I need to talk to you. I think you might be able to help me. Would you talk to me if I came to Wyoming to see you?”

  Emma was overwh
elmed by what was happening. After all she’d been through, was this call real? Before she answered Gannon, he asked another question.

  “Emma, have any other reporters contacted you, anyone from the Washington Post or the L.A. Times?”

  Gannon’s sobering tone cut through the haze that had nearly swallowed her. She felt Joe’s shirt, felt Tyler’s stuffed bear, felt a hand pulling her out of the abyss, felt her breathing quicken as she squeezed the handset.

  “No. You’re the only one who’s called. I’ll meet with you if you answer my questions,” she said.

  “I’ll try.”

  “If I help you, will I find out what happened to my son?”

  “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

  “I don’t think he was killed in the crash, I think he was stolen from it. Now, given what you know, is it possible someone took him? Or am I crazy?”

  She waited for his answer. Everything depended upon it.

  “Given what I know, anything is possible.”

  “I have one more question,” she said.

  “All right.”

  “How fast can you get here?”

  52

  “Six miles south, you got the ruins of the old wooden fort where the Eighth U.S. Cavalry was posted for a time.” Ned Fuller nodded to the sweep of flat land that reached to the sky and mountains. “Big Cloud’s just up ahead.”

  Fuller had become Jack Gannon’s tour guide after picking him up at the airport in Cheyenne where he’d held up a small sign bearing Gannon’s name in block letters. He had a firm handshake and gunmetal eyes that drilled into Gannon’s when they met.

  “This had better be for real because my niece has been through hell.”

  “It is, sir,” Gannon assured him before they left the terminal.

  Now as they drove, he listened to Fuller point out landmarks. The mid-nineteenth-century storefronts and the municipal buildings evoked the frontier. As they cut through town, Gannon reminded himself of what he was pursuing, of what he’d endured and how far he’d traveled since Melody Lyon had first put him on this story.

  Last night, after telling her that his call to Emma Lane was a strong lead, Lyon had urged him to fly to Wyoming and follow up. “We’ve just learned Reuters is sniffing around Adam Corley’s murder in Morocco.”

  The pressure for Gannon to break the full story was mounting.

  “Want me to drop you at your hotel, or do you want to go straight to the house?”

  “I’d like to get started,” Gannon said.

  After they parked in the driveway of Emma’s bungalow, Gannon grabbed his computer bag and approached the house with Fuller. Aunt Marsha met them at the door. Gannon smelled freshly brewed coffee and a faint hint of soap as he entered.

  “Welcome, Mr. Gannon. I’m Marsha Fuller, Emma’s aunt.” She shook his hand and gestured to the sofa. “We hope you had a good trip—all that way from New York, goodness! Would you like some coffee?”

  “That would be fine.”

  “How do you take it?”

  “Milk and sugar, thanks.”

  He set his bag near the sofa and before sitting, turned to a woman about his age who’d entered the room.

  “I’m Emma Lane.” She held out her hand. “Thank you for coming.”

  “Thanks for seeing me,” he said, “and please accept my belated condolences.”

  Emma sat in the sofa chair opposite him. While she took stock of his face, the fading cuts, he noticed hers, how the anguish manifested by her stress lines and reddened eyes failed to disguise the fact she was pretty.

  “After you called,” she said, “I’d thought of having my doctor and some of the local police join us. But for now, I think only my aunt and uncle need to be here.”

  “I understand.”

  “Tell me what you know.”

  He began with the bombing in Brazil, his murdered colleagues, Maria Santo’s discovery and the ex-CIA player’s link to the law firm suspected of illegal adoptions. Then he went on to tell her about the link to the London human-rights group and human trafficking, and finished with Morocco and the murder of Adam Corley and Gannon’s encounter with a U.S. agent.

  Emma took it all in slowly, while every few minutes her aunt and uncle questioned how such things could happen.

  “It’s almost too fantastic to believe,” Uncle Ned said.

  It was Emma’s turn.

  She allowed Gannon to set out a recorder and she started by recounting the details of the crash.

  “I know Joe died out there, I felt it, but I swear other people were present—that they took Tyler. The investigators here told me Tyler was consumed by the intensity of the fire. All they found were his shoes. But during our drive, I had removed them and set them aside. In my heart, I know he is alive.”

  Emma explained how she and Joe had gone to an L.A. fertility clinic, and she told Gannon about Polly Larenski’s disturbing call, how everyone had dismissed it. How she felt compelled to go to California. How she’d learned Larenski was a lab manager at the clinic and was fired. How she’d tracked her down in Santa Ana, and how, before Larenski died in the fire, she’d admitted to selling Tyler’s DNA to some shadowy corporation.

  “What corporation?”

  “I don’t know, but Polly told me that the people she was dealing with had boasted to her after the crash that Tyler was alive, that Tyler was ‘chosen.’”

  “Chosen for what?” Gannon asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “And you told police everything?”

  “Yes. I went to the authorities in California, the FBI. I told police here. Nobody believes me. They think I’ve lost touch with reality. The doctors say I’m delusional, that I’m hallucinating as part of my grieving to help me cope with post-traumatic stress and survivor’s guilt.”

  Emma touched the corners of her eyes.

  “Jack,” she said, “do you believe it’s possible I’m not crazy? Do you believe Tyler may have been taken from the crash, that he may be alive?”

  Looking into her eyes Gannon found pain, fear, helplessness and hope, and then he told her the truth.

  “Yes, I believe he could still be alive.”

  Emma’s hands flew to her face. She gulped air and took a moment to maintain her composure.

  “Then help me find my son. Oh, God, please, before it’s too late!”

  “Let’s get started.”

  Gannon set up his laptop and turned it on. Emma went to her bedroom and returned with a collection of file folders bound by a thick rubber band. Aunt Marsha made more coffee while Uncle Ned shook his head and quietly cursed to himself before turning to his niece.

  “Honey,” he said softly. “I’m so damned sorry for not believing you. We couldn’t have known. We just—”

  Emma pressed her fingers to his mouth and hugged him.

  “At times I didn’t believe it myself,” she said.

  Hours passed and Gannon and Emma examined file after file, page after page of the information they each had.

  “Do you have any more details on who Polly Larenski was dealing with, or how she had contact with them?”

  “No. She told me they called her at home, or at a pay phone. She said she had files she was going to give me, but they were lost in the fire.”

  “Which is still under investigation by the Arson Unit.”

  “Are you thinking someone killed her?”

  “It’s possible, since someone murdered ten people in Rio de Janeiro, and someone murdered Adam Corley in Morocco.” Gannon rubbed the back of his neck then shifted his thoughts. “When Polly Larenski called you the first time and said Tyler was alive, you said police here traced the number to a pay phone in Santa Ana?”

  “Yes.” Emma flipped through her files for a document. “Here’s the number and address.”

  “And do you have Polly’s home address and phone number?”

  Emma passed him the information. As he jotted notes in his book, she pointed to one of Gannon’s computer
files labeled E.D.—Extremus Deus?

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m not sure, some shadowy group. I need to follow up on that one,” he said while yawning and rubbing his eyes. There were so many files they had not yet reviewed. It was nearly 3:00 a.m., 5:00 a.m. New York time, and he was struggling to stay awake.

  Uncle Ned drove Gannon to his motel, the Blue Sage Motor Court, dropping him off under the big wagon-wheel arch entrance.

  “I’ll pick you up around nine in the morning,” he said.

  Emma planned to take Gannon to the crash site in the morning.

  In his room Gannon took a hot shower to clear his mind. After he got into bed, he flipped through the notes he’d written in his notebook, reflecting on everything he’d learned.

  Emma Lane’s baby was “chosen.”

  Was he plucked from a fiery crash?

  Who stole him?

  Polly Larenski was the key here, and now she was dead.

  Who was she selling the DNA to?

  Polly Larenski’s phone numbers—her home number and the one for the pay phone near her house—they were the thread to the answer.

  Gannon studied them.

  He knew what to do.

  He was closer now, closer than he’d ever been.

  53

  Deus Island, Exuma Sound

  Dr. Sutsoff’s island lay among a chain of uninhabited cays stretching for a few hundred miles southeast of Nassau.

  It was a square quarter mile, ringed by white beachfront that slid into warm turquoise water and was lush with palm trees hissing in the breezes.

  Aided by her investors, Sutsoff had purchased Deus Island from a Dutch drug dealer for eight million dollars in U.S. cash. Legend held that the island’s name originated with Spanish pirates who, after a storm, thought they’d died and arrived at God’s doorstep.

  Geographically, it was within the Commonwealth of the Bahamas. But through forgotten treaties between Spain, France and Portugal, it had disappeared into a legal nether-world, giving the island’s owner the unique ability to claim citizenship with the Bahamas and the other countries.

  Sutsoff held a number of counterfeit passports under aliases.