Lou aimed the gun at the back of the impressive chair.
“Okay, Bacon, it’s over,” he said. “Keep your hands where I can see them and turn around nice and slowly.”
A few tense seconds passed before the chair swiveled. When it came to a stop, Lou could only stare, struggling to process what he was seeing. The man seated there was not the stocky fellow Lou had seen through the windows. Rather, this man was old and withered. Harris, Bacon’s butler. Before Lou could react, he was startled by a voice from behind him.
“Before you move, Dr. Welcome, I’ll need you to drop your gun. The other choice is I’ll shoot you through the back of your head right now. The count begins at one and ends at two. One…”
Lou dropped his gun and raised his hands. The people on the screens in front of him had gone silent, motionless.
“Good,” Bacon said in a distinct Southern drawl. “Now, then, turn around slowly … slowly … that’s it.”
Lou turned to see the man he knew was Doug Bacon pointing his cane at Lou’s chest. The head of the cane, a resplendent, glittering gold lion’s head, was flipped down, revealing the muzzle of a rifle.
“This beauty cost me over ten thousand dollars,” Bacon said, addressing the videoconference attendees as much as his captive. “A master Swiss watchmaker put the mechanism together. It’s a mechanical marvel. Believe it or not, the magazine actually holds five bullets. But, especially at this range, I am a deadly shot with it, so I expect if that is what I wish to do, I will only have to use up one.”
These monsters are going to sit wherever they are and watch my execution, Lou thought.
“But I will add one for what I owe you for my friend, Alexander,” Bacon was saying, “and one for each of the men you killed outside, and probably one for the good fellow you murdered in my surveillance room. He is dead, isn’t he?”
“Define dead,” Lou said.
“You should be praying, doctor, not being snide.”
“I do snide better. Face it, Bacon. You’ve lost. All of you. You’ve all lost. The FBI knows who you are, and they’re on their way. Whether you kill me or not, you’re finished.”
“I don’t think so. We purposely have no cell phone signal here except for the network connected to my phone.” He patted his breast pocket. “Same with radios. If you really knew anything, you would have been here with more than just the two of you. When the cause is right and just, victory is inevitable. You’re finding that out.”
“Is that a bit of your propaganda?” Lou asked. “Because it’s crap. Hey, here’s one for you. ‘No matter how right you think you are, you’re not.’ Dennis Welcome. That’s how he used to win arguments against me.”
“I’ve heard enough,” Bacon countered, his genteel charm all but gone. “These first couple of shots will just hurt, doctor, but be patient. I choose shoulder.”
Without another word, he fired. A flash erupted from the muzzle of his gun, accompanied by a surprisingly muffled pop. Instantly, Lou felt pain explode from just above his right armpit, and also in his back. He pitched to his knees, knowing the shot had gone through and through. Blood was already flowing from the entrance hole.
“These are going to hurt you more than they hurt me, Dr. Snide. Wait, did I have that right?”
Incongruously, all Lou could think of at the moment of his death was the anatomical pathway the first bullet must have taken. He tried, but could not move his arm. Clenching his teeth, he breathed rapidly through his nose. Tears blurred his vision. But he had learned about courage and not giving up from Cap Duncan and Tim Vaill, and, anticipating a second shot, he still scanned about him for anything he could use as a weapon.
I love you, Em …
I … love … you … baby.
The Oriental rug beneath him began to swirl.
Where is my gun? Got to get my gun …
Lou knew he had only seconds to live.
Not eight feet away from him, Bacon raised his cane once more, this time, it seemed, at Lou’s face.
“Sooner or later, you people are going to lose,” Bacon said. “You’re just doing it sooner.”
Lou straightened up and locked his eyes on his tormentor.
“Go to hell,” he said.
“You, first, sir. You first. I choose groin.”
Bacon adjusted his aim lower. Lou clenched his teeth. Then, from the corner of his eye, he saw a movement from the doorway to his right, and heard a chilling scream. At virtually the same instant, Bacon pulled the trigger. Lou closed his eyes, flinching at the sound. But there was no impact … no pain. He looked just in time to see Ahmed Kazimi’s body in flight. His arms and legs were outstretched. The bullet from Bacon’s gun had struck him squarely in the chest. There was another scream, this one of agony, as Kazimi crumpled to the floor.
In the moment Kazimi had given him, using reflexes he had mastered in the ring under Cap’s guidance, Lou pushed up from the floor and threw himself at Bacon. The rotund man did not have the reaction to respond. Closing the gap between them with startling quickness, Lou slammed his left fist into Bacon’s doughy abdomen. The pain rifling down his right arm went virtually unnoticed. The director of One Hundred Neighbors doubled over and splayed backward, flailing as he tried to regain his balance.
“Combinations,” Cap had preached. “Always think in combinations and never rely on one punch when you can get in a second.”
Lou struck again, this time hitting Bacon with a vicious jab to the chest, followed instantly by an uppercut that connected full force with the underside of his jaw.
How’s that for a fucking combination, Cap?
Bacon’s head snapped back. Lou saw a white tooth shoot from the man’s bloodied mouth and land on the floor. The cane tumbled away and bounced within Lou’s reach like a dropped baton.
With his eyes glazed over, Bacon actually managed to stagger to his feet, blood flowing from his flattened nostrils. Pivoting now, Lou delivered an explosive kick to his face. The older man dropped like a sack of sand. From the corner of his eye, Lou could see Harris cowering by the windows, and beside him, the screens.
Kazimi was crumpled on the floor, blood expanding from the wound to his chest.
Process.
Lou’s mind calmed as it so often did in the ER.
Easy does it … First things first … Deep breath … Focus.
The scientist was unconscious, but still breathing, albeit shallowly. That observation was step one. Step two was ensuring that the resilient Bacon was neutralized, but not so permanently that Vaill’s friends at the agency couldn’t use him to dissolve the Neighbors.
Ignoring the tearing discomfort in his shoulder, but aware of increasing light-headedness, he retrieved the cane and used it to help himself over to Bacon, who was on his back, moaning and dazed. Lou stepped on the heavy man’s meaty throat and retrieved the cell phone from his breast pocket. Then he fumbled with the ten-thousand-dollar cane, aiming the muzzle at the mogul’s thigh, at the exact spot where the spear of Cap’s femur had thrust through.
Irony. This one is for you, buddy.
“That’s enough, Lou!” a voice from the doorway cried.
It was a woman’s voice.
It can’t be.…
Lou whirled. The woman standing fiercely in the doorway looked like the demure, fascinating researcher he had been attracted to from the moment they met, but her eyes were ice.
The pistol held comfortably, professionally in Vicki Banks’s hand was pointed at Lou’s head.
“I told you that night in the Blue Ox I was damaged goods,” she said.
Lou continued to apply pressure to Bacon’s throat and now the big man had begun to gag and squirm.
“Vicki. This can’t be right. You’re Bacon’s scientist?”
“I don’t belong to Bacon, I belong to the Neighbors. Our cause has given my life true meaning for the first time. I have paid them back for their confidence by discovering and developing the Janus strain. And I intend to keep paying th
em back. Now, move your foot, and do what you can to save this guy so he can help us if we need him. If you don’t, I won’t hesitate to kill you. Remember, I grew up on the streets. I’ve been connected to guns since I was a teen. Look at me, Lou, and you’ll know I mean it. I will kill you and then go out for ice cream.”
It only took Lou a second to comply and turn to Kazimi. Behind him, Doug Bacon was out cold. Off to his right, the screens continued flickering—the show of shows.
“I might seem like Scupman’s lab jockey to you,” Vicki said as Lou checked Kazimi’s airway and pulses, and then tore open his shirt to expose a nasty wound just above his left nipple, “but I’m far more capable than I’ve revealed to anyone but my people. You’re really very sweet, Lou. I was deeply touched by how hard you fought for your friend. I’m just sorry you’re playing for the wrong side.”
Kazimi was salvageable, but would not be for long. And worst of all, there was nothing Lou could do. Clearly, the bullet had missed the heart, but there was damage to any number of structures surrounding it that sooner or later would prove lethal. He tore off a strip of fabric, and for a few seconds, applied pressure. But he knew the exercise was fruitless. There was nothing to compress.
The heavy sadness in his own chest was quickly replaced by anger. He looked up at the screens.
“Do you see?” he shouted. “Do you see what kind of people you’ve all gotten involved with? I don’t care how bright and talented you all are, or how much money you have. Everyone of you is misguided and stupid! That’s right, stupid!”
“Enough!” Vicki snapped. “I have heard all I fucking care to!”
She turned her head minutely as a machinery whine came up behind her—a whirring motor. Humphrey let go an animal-like cry as he drove his wheelchair into the back of Vicki’s legs. The impact was not hard, but it was startling, and firm enough to disrupt her balance.
Instantly, Lou was in motion. Bacon’s cane was next to his hand. He seized it by the lower end and swung a looping backhand that would have made the Slugger proud.
Good left-handed power, Lou Welcome. You gonna hit homer to opposite field like that.
The lion’s head gave him more than enough heft. Arcing in a golden blur, it smashed Vicki squarely in her jaw. There was a volley of nauseating cracks—multiple bones shattering at almost once. The force of the blow sent her spinning into the door frame. She slammed against the wood, then fell over Humphrey’s heavy wheelchair, and smacked the back of her head against the other side of the doorjamb, before tumbling unconscious to the floor.
Driven by an intense rage, Lou whirled and raised the cane at Harris. “You come at me and you die!” Lou snapped, battling back a wave of light-headedness.
Behind him, Kazimi had started moaning.
At least he was alive.
Lou leveled the cane at Harris once more.
“Get some pressure on the wound right now.”
“Yes, sir,” Harris said. “There’s an emergency medical kit under the desk. I do have some training, sir.”
Bacon was moaning now. From where he stood, Lou could not tell if Vicki Banks was breathing or not. Her once-interesting face was a mass of blood.
Damaged goods. Is that what you said you were?
Fighting unsteadiness and working for every breath, Lou opened his wallet, pulled out a card, and dialed. It only took a minute for him to get connected.
“FBI, Atlanta. How may I help you?”
CHAPTER 55
Like a splinter, the longer entitlement programs are allowed to remain in place, the more the chance that they will begin to fester.
—LANCASTER R. HILL, MEMOIR (UNPUBLISHED), JUNE 1933
The first trial of the Janus therapy—code named Phagecil for the three types of bacteriophages being used—was about to be completed. A crowd was gathered in the Great Room awaiting the big announcement. It had been three days since Lou swung the lion’s head cane that had shattered Vicki Bank’s jaw, nose, and orbit. Under guard, she had been evaluated at the hospital in Bangor, and then shipped to Portland, where two teams of surgeons had begun the series of operations that would reconstruct her face.
Kazimi was airlifted to Bangor as well, and successfully underwent seven hours of surgery. Ron Jessup, burned beyond recognition, followed along by ambulance. Lou expected Kazimi would be bedridden for days, but to his astonishment, the government flew him back to Red Cliff almost a day ago, with a tube still in his chest, so he could continue his work with “Mr. Miller,” as the formal Muslim still insisted on calling him. The scientists were both in wheelchairs now, although Kazimi could walk for short distances.
Red Cliff had gone from a secluded, foreboding fortress to a compound bustling with activity. The Neighbors’ helipad was getting frequent use, and street traffic into and away from the place was as steady as the surf. The Army Corps of Engineers erected a communications center almost overnight, giving everyone the cell phone service they couldn’t seem to live without.
For his part, Lou had been transfused three units at a small community hospital, and then medflighted to Bangor, where tests and exploratory surgery gave him only good news. Numbness in several fingers, and weakness in his right hand along the distribution of the ulnar nerve, but nothing time shouldn’t take care of. Twenty-four hours later, in a sling, he was back at Red Cliff, where he elected to stay rather than to travel back to Atlanta.
He communicated with Cap several times a day, but only for a few minutes each time. According to Dr. Win Carter, the head of Arbor General, Cap’s condition was heading steadily downhill, and each minute brought Lou new fears that a treatment, assuming one was even successfully developed, could arrive too late.
Lou awaited news about the Phagecil experiment near a makeshift memorial of flowers and cards dedicated to Agent Tim Vaill that had been put together at the base of the now boarded-up window. The Coast Guard had recovered Alexander Burke’s shattered corpse, largely eaten by fish and the sea, lodged between two barnacle-covered boulders near the shoreline, but Vaill’s body had yet to be found.
Beth Snyder had flown to Red Cliff to meet the “saviors,” as she had dubbed Lou, Kazimi, and Humphrey. When news came from the Coast Guard that they were abandoning the search for Vaill, she, Lou, and Chuck McCall held a brief vigil of silence, lit a candle, and threw it off Red Cliff into the charging waves. According to Snyder, Vaill and Maria would be memorialized at the FBI headquarters in D.C., and at all of the field offices, joining the thirty-six agents who had preceded them as Service Martyrs.
Lou was on his third cup of coffee, alone by the window farthest from the crowd, when Humphrey wheeled over. Despite the stresses of performing almost any task, Humphrey had been working around the clock, and had supervised installation of two air-conditioning units so that the temperature of the lab could be kept at below sixty—the temperature for keeping his CP under optimum control. Kazimi, who thrived in warm temperatures, showed his mettle and spirit of cooperation by wearing a parka.
Now, though, fatigue was starting to show in both men—mostly about their eyes. But soon, they hoped, their exhaustion would have proved worthwhile. Over the days before Kazimi’s return, since the moment he entered the lab with a skilled assistant to begin his experiments, Humphrey had gotten the attention and encouragement lavished upon him that a lifetime of living on the fringes had failed to provide. And Lou was more than pleased to see him finally getting the recognition he deserved.
Thankfully, at least according to Humphrey, a live antibacterial treatment could be put together and tested in a matter of days. In a show of unprecedented solidarity, standing by waiting were the chiefs of antibiotic research at most of the largest pharmaceutical houses in the country, all of which had pledged to speed any breakthrough into production.
“You seem nervous, Lou,” Humphrey said.
“Aren’t you?”
“Little, I suppose. Been working years for this test. Phage Banks brought were in excellent condition. I’ve
always believed myself. This first time others believe in me, too.”
“I understand. I’m sure glad I believed in you, Humphrey. Cap will be excited, too. So will a lot of people for that matter.”
Humphrey looked beside himself with glee. “Scupman from CDC called. He’s on way here later today. Says he has place in lab for me.”
“That’s wonderful, Humphrey,” Lou said. “Really terrific.”
Before Humphrey could respond, Lou’s cell phone rang. He glanced at the number and his chest tightened when he saw it was Win Carter from Arbor General. They had spoken once this morning and Cap was still listed in critical, but stable condition. Something must have changed.
Lou cleared his throat, took an anxious swallow, and answered the call.
“Win, what’s going on?”
“Lou, I’m afraid I’ve got bad news to share.”
Lou’s knee-jerk reaction was that Cap was dead, but he quickly realized there was another possibility.
“Go on,” he said, bracing himself against the back of a leather chair.
“Hank’s temp shot up a few hours ago, and his pressure began to drop. Ninety systolic, then eighty. Clearly he was septic. Lou, there was nothing his surgeons could do but amputate. They tried everything they could to forestall this, but time just ran out. I’m sorry, Lou. I’m so terribly sorry, for Hank and for you.”
Lou’s knees became Jell-O. He braced himself more firmly against the chair.
“How is he doing now?” he asked.
“Actually, that’s the good news. I just heard from his surgeon, and for the moment at least, his temp is down, his pressure is up, and his kidneys are functioning well.”
Lou could barely speak. He had failed. He had let down his best friend and there was nothing he could do to change that fact.
“How high up?” he managed to ask.
The hesitation from Atlanta all but answered his question.
“They chose to go as high as they could,” Carter said. “Just below the pelvis. They elected to try leaving the hip joint itself, because a prosthesis would be technically easier that way.”
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