Public Enemy Zero

by Andrew Mayne

  “Mitchell, we’re being totally straight with you,” Merritt said in his most sincere voice.

  “If you want to believe I’m acting under some kind of delusion or have some kind of sinister plan, for the sake of everyone, have the courtesy to treat my delusion with some kind of consistency.”

  Agent Merritt listened for instructions. He nodded. “All right, Mitchell, here’s the deal. You’ve got a lot of people scared right now. Traffic is shut down on highways. People are afraid to go into public spaces. There’s a lot of families upset with you.

  “I’ve been doing this for twenty years and I’ve met a lot of different personality types. I had you figured out the moment I saw you standing here with the silly cord around your neck. If you were serious, you’d have a gun to your head or you’d be up someplace high. You’re just a guy that wants attention and to pretend he’s a victim in all this. Obviously it’s not on you. We’ll find it though.”

  “What?!” asked Mitchell.

  Merritt reached down and turned off a knob at his waist. The suit began to deflate as the pressurized air coming from his backpack came to a stop. He reached to undo the seal under his helmet.

  “Please stop!” shouted Mitchell.

  “You can stop this any time, Mitchell. Tell us where we can find the other canisters.”

  Mitchell heard a hiss as the latch opened. He looked at the rows of people on either side of the bridge. “For god’s sake! Somebody stop him!” he shouted. He looked up at the Channel 8 building, his eyes filled with desperation.

  Merritt tossed the helmet aside and held open his arms. “Don’t feel like jumping, do you, Mitch?” Merritt took in a large nose full of air.

  Mitchell backed toward the railing. He could feel the metal against his back.

  “I’m not going to miss that ....” Merritt’s voice turned to a snarl as he bared his teeth and ran toward Mitchell with his fingers curled into claws.

  Vulnerable, naked, with nothing to use to defend himself, Mitchell held his hands in front of his face and knelt down. As Merritt closed in on him, Mitch grabbed him by the legs and picked him up in the air. Mitch threw his body to the left as hard as he could.

  Merritt fell on his side. The air tank on his back slowed him down as he tried to get up. He rolled over on his stomach and came at Mitchell in a four-legged crawl. Mitch’s foot hit the helmet on the ground. He picked it up and swung it at Merritt’s head so hard the glass cracked. Blood drops splattered from his broken nose.

  The SWAT team got orders on their earpieces to take Mitchell down. They swarmed past the barrier with their guns drawn. The .3 micron filters on their gasmasks provided no stopgap for the air around Mitchell. Once they passed the barrier Mitch had set up, their posture began to change.

  Millions of people watched on television as cops with gasmasks turned from highly disciplined law enforcement officers into a pack of rabid dogs. Several of them dropped their guns as they clawed out at the air when they ran toward Mitch. Two of them reflexively pulled their triggers, sending a wild barrage of gunfire that ricocheted off the bridge and hit nearby buildings and the vehicles on the other side of the bridge.

  The Channel 8 camera zoomed into the terror in Mitch’s eyes as they came at him ready to rip out his throat and tear him to pieces in a violent slaughter. The world watched as Mad Mitch pulled the noose tight over his neck and jumped over the edge of the bridge.

  46

  Driven by the rage, the SWAT team members leaped over the edge after him in their full armored gear. Not to save him but to kill him. The cord around Mitchell’s neck snapped and he fell into the water. Black armored SWAT team members rained down around him as they hit the water.

  Another wave of law enforcement officers swarmed onto the bridge. Twenty more people were overcome with the rage and leaped into the water. Bystanders were paralyzed with panic as they realized that whatever reflex it was that made people go mad overpowered every other instinct. Men thrashed in the water and began to drown as they bared their teeth and clawed out furiously trying to kill something they couldn’t see.

  As the presence of Mitchell subsided, rescuers were eventually able reach the thrashing men and pull them to shore. EMTs and police officers worked quickly to resuscitate those who had gone under.

  News anchors tried to make sense of what happened for their viewers while they watched it unfold. Expert pundits began to doubt what they had been told. What should have been a simple surrender was botched in the worst way possible.

  The FBI district director barked some orders to his subordinates and then turned to his DHS counterpart. “What the hell is going on?”

  The other man shrugged.

  The FBI district director answered his ringing BlackBerry. “Yes, sir. I understand, sir.”

  The deputy director of the FBI was on the other end of the line and was furious with what he’d seen on the news.

  “We were acting under information that this was caused by a weapon of some kind. No, sir, I believe that information is incorrect.” He looked over at the DHS director. “I think we proceed under the assumption that this is a public health crisis and not primarily a criminal investigation. Yes, sir.” He hung up and started giving orders.

  The DHS director’s phone was ringing, too. He looked at the FBI district director.

  “We’re asking the Centers for Disease Control to step in and provide assistance. We’re going to the patient zero hypothesis.”

  From his vantage point, the FBI district director had clearly seen his negotiator break down and attack Mitchell, an attack that he was sure had gone out live to millions of viewers. The response of his SWAT team confirmed, in his mind, that absent any kind of dispersant on the bridge or some other weapon, the most likely hypothesis was the one that Mitchell had been telling everyone all along.

  Where the fuck was that weasel Baylor? he asked.

  Baylor watched the disaster on his hotel room television. The moment he saw that Mitchell had stripped down to his underwear, he knew the current plan wasn’t going to work. If the canister wasn’t found on his person, then the allegations of it being planted were going to be too loud. He had half a mind to text Mr. Lewis and ask him to go in after the drowning men and throw the canister in the water to be discovered. The problem at that point would be that what they found in the canister wouldn’t be found in the men’s lungs.

  The FBI was going to want to do their own tests on the blood and tissue and match it to the material in the canister. It would be apparent to them that whatever caused the reaction wasn’t the same as what was in the spray can. He needed to figure out a strategy for the patient zero hypothesis that could minimize blowback and protect Great Wall.

  He called Mr. Lewis to give him instructions on how to proceed.

  After rescuers had pulled all of the law enforcement personnel from the water, the search continued for Mitchell Roberts. Rescue divers searched the bottom of the waterway in a spiral pattern moving outward around the bay and Intracoastal. The outgoing tide gave them a half-mile radius to search, and that was growing by a mile every hour.

  City and county police were sent to watch along the waterfront to see if he climbed ashore anywhere. Marine Patrol and Coast Guard boats were brought in to canvass the area while helicopters from four agencies swept the area around the bridge and surrounding city looking for any sign of Mitchell.

  47

  Naked and exhausted, Mad Mitch climbed onto the dive platform of the newly christened “Monkey’s Paw.” Two miles away he could hear the helicopters as they buzzed around the South Bay bridge and the manhunt continued. He had very little time until the search extended outward and law enforcement started stopping vessels in the water near him.

  The necessity of an escape plan came to Mitch after he listened to the paranoid Dr. Lovestrange on Rookman’s show. Up until the FBI negotiator had tried to patronizingly convince him that an armored car was going to serve as an airtight transport, he was fully committed to th
e idea that they believed him or, at the very least, were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  The attack on the bridge proved otherwise. Mitchell had been lied to. He still wasn’t sure if it was out of incompetence or the machinations of someone trying to cover up something. The effect was the same. Mitchell couldn’t trust anyone.

  The idea for the escape came to him when he was looking for a boat to steal. Originally he thought of taking a bigger yacht in the event he got stuck in a prolonged standoff. What attracted him to the Donzi was the piece of equipment that had just saved his life.

  The SBS 730 was an underwater propulsion device used by very rich scuba divers, the military and drug smugglers. Shaped like a cross between a torpedo and a jet ski, it could go up to eight miles an hour underwater and had over a twenty-mile range. What made the SBS 730 unique was that it had its own sonar system, making it possible to navigate in the limited visibility of the waterway and Intracoastal. The unit cost half as much as the boat Mitch had stolen to get it.

  Before Mitch tied the johnboat to the shore by the bridge, he found the exact middle and dropped the SBS 730 overboard tied to a weighted-down duffle bag filled with dive gear.

  When he had no other option except to jump, he made sure to land on top of his underwater stash. He hit the water after a few milliseconds of panicked freefall when he wasn’t sure if the extension cord was going to break like it was supposed to.

  Once he hit the water, he swam straight down ten feet to the muck-covered floor below. It took him a frantic minute before his hands found the propulsion unit and his duffle bag with the compressed air tank.

  He hadn’t gone scuba diving in years, but his instincts kicked in and he remembered how to clear the mask and strap the tank on underwater. He ignored the sound of bodies hitting the surface overhead and focused on getting away as fast as he could.

  Somewhere in the two miles between the South Bay bridge and the powerboat he lost his underwear in the turbulence as the propulsion unit carried him through the water. Adding just one more indignity to his plan.

  To get back to the boat while underwater, he relied on the sonar and compass as he looked for the mooring lines of boats he remembered passing on the way in. Finally he reached the Monkey’s Paw and surfaced near the dive platform. Before he struggled to pull the SBS 730 on board, he ran to a dive locker and found a diving suit to wear.

  Looking down at the skintight suit, he wished he could have worn that instead of his underwear when he tried to surrender on national television.

  Although he had narrowly escaped that time, Mitchell was sure they’d cast a tighter net the next time around. He had to make sure that when he surrendered it was to the right people. He started up the boat and had to decide which way to take it.

  He had three options. Going farther up the Intracoastal and away from South Florida meant traveling through less-populated areas. The advantage was that it was away from where he’d been. The disadvantage was that there were fewer side canals and avenues to escape.

  He could take an exit that led straight out to sea and follow the shoreline north or south. But that would put him well within the Coast Guard’s crosshairs and only give him the beach as an escape.

  His other option was to head back south. There were numerous canals and natural harbors where he could blend in and make it ashore if he decided to abandon the boat.

  It felt like backtracking. But backtracking from what? He’d never had a final destination. Heading to a more populated area might give him more options for surrendering. He felt safer knowing that millions of people would be watching from news helicopters.

  He also had to deal with a limited amount of fuel. If he ran out, he’d rather take his chances stealing another boat than getting stranded nowhere near another escape route. There was also the idea that they wouldn’t expect him to go south since his travels had all been to the north.

  Mitchell pulled up anchor and pointed the boat toward the south. He sat back in the cockpit chair and tried to look like just another boater out for an afternoon trip.

  Fifteen miles away, Mr. Lewis was planning his own afternoon trip. He’d received new instructions from Baylor. It took him a half-hour to arrange it. Fortunately, he had a number of associates in the South Florida area who could help facilitate what he needed.

  When he pulled into the hangar near the small private airport near the Everglades, his associate Mr. Travis was finishing marking up the tail letters of the helicopter. He pointed out a long case to Mr. Lewis.

  He walked over to a table covered in tools and opened the case. Inside was a sniper’s rifle with a high magnification scope.

  “It’s going to be a bitch to shoot that from the air if he’s on the water,” said Mr. Travis.

  “The current plan is to have you drop me near an overpass so I can shoot from the ground as he passes by. If that doesn’t work, we have other options.”

  Mr. Travis stepped back to look at the new lettering on the tail. “If they run it, they’ll know it’s bogus.”

  “I’m not worried about that right now. Every bird in South Florida is going to be out looking for him. I just want plausible denial about where the chopper came from,” replied Mr. Lewis.

  “Good thing. I like my job here.”

  “Never get too attached,” said Mr. Lewis as he looked through the rifle scope and aimed it at fuel truck across the tarmac and dry fired.

  Mr. Lewis was already suspicious that Mitchell had been using the waterways to get around. When Mitchell vanished after the dive off the bridge, he informed Baylor of that. Baylor was about to tell the FBI that was where they should be directing their search efforts when he realized he had an opportunity.

  When it was clear that Mitchell’s body wasn’t going to be found, Baylor had called Mr. Lewis with the new plan. If Mitchell was shot out of sight, it would point to an accomplice who wanted to keep him silent.

  Baylor didn’t care if Mitchell talked. He didn’t have anything to say. The real advantage to his death was that it would appear that he knew something worth getting killed for. If one of Baylor’s associates could get access to Mitchell’s body before any of the other agencies, he could misdirect them as need be.

  48

  Mitchell passed the inlet that led toward the part of downtown where he’d made his escape. Police and news helicopters flew around looking for a naked Mitchell hiding out somewhere around town.

  The underwater propulsion device had made his escape a practical impossibility to anyone watching. A strong scuba diver would be able to swim one mile an hour at most in no current. He’d covered the distance in 20 minutes, giving him an hour head start from the most optimistic position of where he could be. That was, of course, assuming people were thinking logically. Mitchell had little reason to think that was the case.

  Mitchell kept the boat going south on the Intracoastal and focused on what he need to do next. He set the scanner on the dashboard and turned the volume all the way up so he could hear it over the engine noise.

  As a precaution, he laid out his dive gear in the rear seats so he could get to it quickly if he needed to and checked the charge on the underwater propulsion device. It still had a half charge left. That was more than enough to take him to shore or pretty far down a side canal.

  Knowing he had some kind of backup escape cleared his head and made it easier to think. The problem he had earlier was that nobody took him seriously. He hoped the unfortunate incident at the bridge was enough of a wakeup call.

  To find out what the reaction was, Mitchell turned on the boat’s stereo and tuned it to a news channel. He still kept one ear on the scanner, periodically tuning in to make sure he wasn’t about to be surrounded.

  Mitchell hadn’t realized the unintended consequence stripping down to his underwear had on people’s perceptions. The bite marks and scratches hurt like hell when he thought about them, but he’d been too focused on moving forward to stop and get a look at himself.

>   When the public saw them, they became more sympathetic. It gave them an image of Mitchell as a wounded man trying to avoid getting hurt. When the FBI negotiator attacked him, even people defending how law enforcement agencies were handling the case found it hard to defend what took place.

  A popular discussion on several of the news stations was what should Mitchell do next. According to the reports, his @MadMitchFM Twitter handle was flooded with people decrying what happened and offering advice. One suggestion repeated by a reporter made a lot of sense: “@MadMitchFM Get a fucking lawyer on these assholes.”

  He needed a third party to negotiate for his surrender, someone who could verify that the authorities were living up to their word. He needed the advice of someone who could help him, not just find out what was wrong with him but make sure he didn’t spend the rest of his life in prison.

  Mitchell realized that if he had surrendered that morning and hadn’t been attacked and the magical armored truck didn’t put him in a riot in the middle of downtown, he probably would have walked right into their hands without any legal protection. While he bargained for his life, they would have conned him into agreeing to spend the rest of it in prison.

  For sure, he’d done some very criminal things but nothing he should go to jail for, at least in his mind. As far as he was concerned, guilty feelings or not, he was only trying to survive. Mitchell began to get angry at the thought that he might actually have to go to prison for what happened. His hand pushed the throttle forward as he fumed.

  When he realized he was making a wake big enough to get stopped by the Marine Patrol, he slowed down. The last thing he needed was to start a boat chase over a no-wake-zone ticket.