by Jon Land
Story needed work, though. He needed to ask himself the questions the cops would ask and have enough answers to satisfy them. Boy, had things gone bad.
And then they got worse.
Jumpin’ Jack Woodrow, the Flash himself, felt something round and hard jab into the small of his back at the same time a hand closed over his mouth.
“I think we should talk,” said Blaine McCracken.
The remainder of the assault team couldn’t believe their eyes. There it was, the Winnebago, wedged diagonally across Buford Highway between the four cars that had slammed into it when McCracken had tried to run a red light just past the on-ramp to Route 285 two and a half miles down from the Flash Pot. They approached its dented shape cautiously, expecting the same type of counterattack their quarry had used back at the dealership. For this reason, a trio crashed through both access doors simultaneously, while the remaining men kept their eyes and guns on the sunroof.
The six heavily armed men burst into the Winnebago to find the driver’s seat empty and a shabbily dressed stranger spinning the channels on a television set in the camper’s rear.
“Hey,” called out the mayor of Buford Highway, “any of you guys know what station Oprah’s on?”
“Jesus,” Jack Woodrow moaned, as the man who had proven himself to be even more dangerous than he had been warned strapped Jack’s limbs into the frame-straightening mechanism. “Jesus Christ …”
Blaine gave the control wheel some torque and instantly Jumpin’ Jack’s arms and legs were drawn in opposite directions, stretched to the near full capacity of his tendons, ligaments, and muscle.
“What do you want to know? Just tell me!” he heaved.
“This is to make sure you don’t lie. I haven’t had a good morning. I’m running out of patience.”
“Jesus, anything!”
“You knew I was coming today, didn’t you?”
“Frye’s people called me last night. Said they expected you. Said they were sending some help—for my own good. I didn’t know it would be this many. I didn’t know they would do—” his eyes searched out a window “—that.”
“Then do you know what Frye’s going to do?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The hundred million dollars you invested with him … in Judgment Day.”
When Woodrow didn’t respond, Blaine worked the control wheel another full turn. The fat man’s jacket ripped and his pants split. He wanted to scream, but all that emerged was a low rasp because of the strain the stretching placed on his lungs and throat.
“I didn’t believe him!” he gasped at last.
“Didn’t believe what?”
“What you said before—Judgment Day. He never called it that, though.”
“What did he call it?”
“Just told me not to worry about the future. Told me the Key Society would be preserved when the time came.”
Woodrow tried to gaze about him, hoping someone outside may have heard something. Maybe the cops were coming now. Fat chance, he realized, with all the commotion going on. Until things got reasonably settled, he doubted they had even noticed he was missing.
Blaine kept his hand on the frame straightener’s control wheel but didn’t spin it. “Keep going, Flash.”
“Frye called it the final sowing of the fields of civilization,” Woodrow continued. “Said he was gonna plow over the dead crops and turn the soil so fresh ones can come up. Said I was gonna be one of the ones left whole.” Woodrow tensed, as if expecting the tightening wheel to be turned again. “Look, I never paid any attention to that shit. Frye’s crackers. Crazy fucking nuts, all right? That hundred mil bought me a lifetime’s worth of advertising on his Future Faith channel, got me God-fearing people from all over the South driving a couple hundred miles to one of my dealerships when they coulda gone to the one down the street from them. That’s all I was in it for, I swear!”
“Didn’t seem strange, the Reverend sending an army here today?”
“I told you, he said it was for my own protection. Told me I was on one of his enemy’s hit list, on account of my support, financial and otherwise.”
Blaine felt his spine arch. “Tell me about the otherwise, Flash.”
“More crazy shit I didn’t bother to find out about. Just another of his whims.”
“What?”
“Had me deliver a whole bunch of cars. Told me to make them different makes and models and where to bring them. Even gave me a list of people to register them to. Funny thing was, all the addresses were in the same goddamn town.”
“What town?”
“Give me a minute to think about it, okay?” Woodrow’s face crinkled in consternation as he pushed his thinking. “Something … Falls! That’s it! An animal name, I think. Badger or, or … Beaver! Beaver Falls. Beaver Falls, Arizona!”
“How many people?”
“‘Can’t tell you that, and that’s the God’s honest truth. A little over a hundred cars, though. I remember the pile of registrations … .” Woodrow managed to tip his eyes upward. “Hey, wait a minute. You don’t think Frye was serious about all this shit? You don’t think he really believes Judgment Day’s coming?”
“He does because he’s the one who’s bringing it about.”
Woodrow looked like he was about to say something, swallowed it down, and then looked at Blaine. “There’s something else,” he started hesitantly. “I never really gave it much thought, but now …”
“Go on.”
“The paperwork for the car deals, shipping invoices and all that, was routed through a company in San Diego. Van, Van, er, Van something.”
“Van Dyne?”
“That’s it!”
The information sent a slight quiver through Blaine’s stomach. Van Dyne was an international pharmaceutical giant, the biggest in the country, if not the world. But how was it connected to Harlan Frye?
“Frye be mighty pissed off he ever finds out what you told me,” Blaine advised Jack Woodrow. “Means it would be a real bad idea to run straight to him about our little talk.”
“Count on that, mister,” the Flash said gratefully as Blaine turned the wheel toward him to release the pressure. Jumpin’ Jack felt the pain in his joints replaced by numbness. His limbs felt wobbly and weak. “I never knew about any of this Judgment Day shit. Damn, if he’s half as nuts as you say he is, I wouldn’t’ve given him the change in my pocket.”
The chains around his legs rattled off and then Woodrow felt his arms being unlaced. Slowly, very slowly, he tried to stretch the life back into them.
“Only wish I could get my money back,” he said. “Only wish—”
Jack Woodrow looked up and stopped. The body shop area was deserted.
Blaine McCracken had disappeared.
Wayne Denbo knew what he had to do. He had known it for the long hours recently he had pretended not to be aware of anyone else in the room. They couldn’t help him. No one could help.
Only he could help himself.
Even the darkness no longer helped. Every time he closed his eyes, Beaver Falls appeared as he had last seen it: wasting away in the desert and missing its people. He saw himself driving the patrol car in, Joe Langhorn bitching and Frank McBride starting to stir in the backseat. The stop at the sheriff’s station, the restaurant, the post office, the bank, and finally the school. People just up and vanished in the middle of their lives. For a time when they got him to the hospital, Wayne Denbo was convinced it was only a matter of time before it happened to him. He was pretty sure now that wasn’t going to happen, not with a highway patrolman in his room at Tucson General at all times. But that didn’t mean he was safe. Sooner or later, they’d be coming.
The figures from the dust.
Wayne Denbo could explain all this to the people who filled their days hanging over his bed, could describe the men in weird suits driving space-age trucks with all kinds of steel sticking up from their roofs. But then the doctors would move him up into the
crazy ward, where getting out when the time came would be much, much harder.
Where the darkness had been his refuge, now it became his ally. He used it to map out a plan in his mind. First he stayed calm and quiet so they’d keep the needles away. Needed to be sharp, needed to be quick. No funny juice to slow him down, at least no more than was already pumping through his system. Then he laid the plan all out so he could see. Ran it over and over again just like the Beaver Falls videotape, so when he finally got to it, it wouldn’t seem like the first time. Wasn’t really going to be that hard, once he got round to making things happen. Hightail his ass out of here and get back to where it started.
Back to Beaver Falls.
Jack Woodrow was still trying to ease the feeling back into his limbs and joints when the two figures entered the body shop area. A boy and a girl, barely old enough to drive.
Woodrow watched them swing their stares about in unison, paying him little heed and seeming disappointed. The boy advanced his way ahead of the girl.
“Where is he?”
“Who?”
“McCracken.”
“Never heard of the guy,” the Flash said, hoping the police and fire police were still looking for him. “You must have—”
And before he could finish the sentence, the boy had him by the soft flesh of the throat. Kid moved like a cat, the girl already right behind him.
“I’m going to ask you again,” the boy said, so calmly it scared Jack Woodrow. “Where is Blaine McCracken?”
The pain in his throat was worse than anything he’d felt on the frame straightener. He just wanted it to end. “Gone,” he choked out. “Just before you got here.”
The boy and girl exchanged glances.
“Where?” the boy asked. “Where did he go?”
“’Ow the fuck should I—”
The next burst of pain made him gasp, filled his eyes with tears. Jack Woodrow sank to his knees, sick to his stomach.
“I know who you are,” the boy said from over him. “I know what you’re a part of. McCracken knew and I know too. You told him something. Tell me what.”
“Beaver Falls,” Jumpin’ Jack whispered, because that was all he could manage. “Town in Arizona. Told him about a bunch of cars I shipped there, a hundred of them … . Let me go. Please.”
“My pleasure,” Woodrow heard the boy say.
A popping sound followed as a final squeeze severed the cartilage lining his throat and sent the Flash writhing to the floor.
Jacob turned away from the dying man beneath him and faced his twin. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER 22
Hank Belgrade was waiting when McCracken climbed the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at two o’clock Wednesday afternoon.
“I missed my lunch on account of you, McNuts,” he jeered.
“It’s good for your diet, Hank,” Blaine said, sitting down next to him.
“And fuck you, too.”
Belgrade was a big, beefy man who, like a select few in Washington, drew a salary without any official title. Technically, both the Departments of State and Defense showed his name on their roster, but in actuality he worked for neither. Instead, he liaised between the two and handled the dirty linen of both. He had access to files and information few in Washington had any idea existed. Blaine had once saved his career back in the Cold War days by bringing a Soviet defector safely in after a leak had been detected. In return Belgrade was always there for McCracken when he needed information. They met here on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial every time, Belgrade wearing his perpetual scowl, never looking happy to see him.
“Van Dyne Pharmaceuticals, Hank.”
“Boy, you got some sense of timing, you know that? What the fuck you into here?”
“Why?”
“I make a couple calls to get you your background check and all of a sudden my other line’s ringing off the hook. You musta found your way into another bee’s nest, McNuts.”
“My specialty.”
“For starters, Van Dyne’s got an eighteen percent market share of the domestic business, making it the biggest drug company in the country. Did almost twenty billion dollars in business last year.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah, the company’s protected, McNuts, all the way to the top.”
“How high, in this case?”
“High as I can reach. Lots of people down Pennsylvania and Constitution didn’t like you snooping around.”
“You tell them why I was interested?”
“What, tell ’em some nutty preacher’s got dreams of Armageddon? I like my job. Thing is, the FDA ended up with dibs on you. They got a man waiting now as we speak. Dupont Circle.” Belgrade checked his watch. “You’re already late.”
Dupont Circle was Washington at its lowest. A neatly trimmed, grassy park located at the edge of Georgetown, it was a known gathering point for drug dealers and purveyors of other assorted merchandise. Several homeless called the circle home during the day and loitered there atop the garbage bags containing their life’s worth. Many of the benches were occupied by other unkempt figures drinking the day away out of paper bags.
McCracken had remembered that much about Dupont Circle. What he had forgotten was the striking absence of women on its grounds. He could see only men mingling amidst the trees and statues as he entered, was instantly conscious of the interested stares cast his way. Blaine met none of them and just kept walking for the monument in the circle’s center, where the man from the Food and Drug Administration was supposed to be waiting. Cutting across the grass, he had to step over a huge, sprawled shape with its face covered by yesterday’s Washington Post.
The figure pacing impatiently before the monument was the only one in the park wearing a suit. An overcoat was draped over his left arm. He looked extremely uncomfortable. Blaine stopped a yard from him.
“I really like your suit,” Blaine greeted with a wink.
“You must be McCracken. I’m Maggs,” said the small, fidgety man with nervous, beady eyes and dark, oily hair.
Neither bothered extending a hand.
“Come here often, Maggs?”
“As little as possible. Look, I want to make this quick, if you don’t mind.”
“Important plans this afternoon?”
“I’m not from the FDA,” Maggs admitted.
“I know. This wouldn’t be their style. Then who would you be from, exactly?”
“Let’s say our concerns closely parallel those of the Food and Drug. You opened a door you shouldn’t have.”
“Bad habit of mine, Maggs.”
“Anyone else, we would have ignored it. But your reputation precedes you. Whenever you start asking about something, that something is usually in for trouble.”
“And rightfully, in almost every case.”
“Not this one,” Maggs said flatly, folding his arms before him around his overcoat. “Van Dyne’s protected.”
“That’s what Hank Belgrade said. He didn’t say why.”
“Because he doesn’t know. We’ve kept it under wraps, and that’s the way it’s got to stay. There’s a lot at stake here.”
“My point exactly.”
“I need to know what your interest is in Van Dyne.”
“Maybe they’re involved in more than you think, Maggs. Maybe you’re protecting them for all the wrong reasons.”
Maggs nodded dramatically, stretching the gesture out. “You like saving lives, McCracken?”
“Some would say that’s what I do best.”
“So is Van Dyne. In fact, they’re on the verge of being able to save millions. If we leave them alone. That’s my job.”
“To leave them alone?”
‘To make sure people like you do.” The little man took one step closer and lowered his voice.”I’m talking about something the government has an extremely important interest in. I’m talking about an AIDS vaccine Van Dyne is on the verge of submitting documentation to gain FDA approval for.”
&
nbsp; Blaine tried not to show his surprise. “And you’re worried that’s what I’m threatening?”
“Van Dyne doesn’t need any attention, any exposure. That’s what you always threaten. Look, I don’t know what trail brought you this far, but it stops right here in this park.”
McCracken looked at Maggs suspiciously. “Why is the government so interested in the workings of a pharmaceutical company? No, don’t answer that. Just let me guess. Under the new AIDS research coordination and funding policies, you would have been involved with Van Dyne’s progress every step of the way. Bedmates.”
“We prefer to call it partners in a newly defined democratic-capitalist system.”
“Whatever you call it, this is about AIDS, an international epidemic that has merely brushed this country, while it ravages and decimates others. And that makes everything come back to power, and the government wants a piece of the action. Imagine, taking charge of dispensing and allocating a vaccine that—”
“That’s enough!”
“Am I close? Of course I am. Whoever in our illustrious government sent you here today must see Van Dyne’s vaccine as a bargaining chip, a means toward other ends.” Blaine shook his head, a humorless smile of disgust traced across his face. “It figures.”
“It’s the way the world functions today, McCracken. Like it or not. And we can’t let you screw this opportunity up by fucking with Van Dyne on one of your crusades.”