by Peter Sexton
“I didn’t use that food,” Miranda said. “I wasn’t sure I could trust you; I wasn’t sure I could trust anyone.” She paused. “I wanted to play it safe, so I was feeding her Faber’s brand.”
Trammel brought his hands to his face, covering it almost completely as he continued to fight back the tears. “Fuck!” he shouted, slamming both fists down on the table.
Lawrence lurched to his feet. The waitress and the other patrons stopped what they were doing and turned to gawk in Trammel’s direction. Miranda raised her left hand to stop Lawrence and keep him where he was.
“I’m sorry you had to find out this way,” Miranda said. “I should have called you, but I didn’t know what to say.” She chewed on her pain and guilt. “I still can’t believe this is all even happening.”
“I loved Maren,” Trammel said. “I loved you both. I would never do anything to hurt either of you. That’s why I brought you the food. I didn’t want Maren to be at risk.”
Forty-Four
Miranda sped the Town Car along Highway 40, as Lawrence listened to his voicemails. He started to punch a number into the phone.
“What are you doing?” Miranda asked.
“Calling your mother. I need to let her know we’re okay. She sounded pretty worried on the messages she left.”
Miranda took her eyes from the road and consid- ered him for a moment with a concerned look.
“What?” he asked.
Miranda feared making such a call was a bad idea.
“Okay,” she said finally. “But don’t tell her where we’re headed.”
She was about to say more but Lawrence cut her off with a raised palm. He listened for a moment, rolled his eyes and frowned.
“That’s why I left you the note,” he said into the phone, “so you wouldn’t worry.” A pause. “Yes.”
He shot a quick glance toward Miranda.
“We’re both fine,” he said.
Lawrence was quiet for a long time, listening.
“What’s she saying?” Miranda whispered.
Lawrence covered the phone with his hand. “That she’s afraid. That this is getting much too dangerous and we should both come straight home.”
To Gillian, Lawrence said, “I told you we’re fine. Neither of us is hurt.” A beat. “I’m not sure where we’re headed. Somewhere safe.” There was a long silence before Lawrence added, “I’m not sure when I’m coming home. As soon as I’m certain Randi’s no longer in any danger.”
Miranda looked at Lawrence.
He said, “I know it’s not like one of my books. But she needs my help, and I don’t know what else I can do. I just need to stay with her as long as she needs me.”
Lawrence covered the phone again and whispered to Miranda. “She wants to talk to you.”
Miranda shook her head without looking away from the road.
“She’s driving right now,” he said into the phone. “She can’t talk.”
Then Miranda suddenly reached over and snatched the phone from Lawrence. “I’m all right, Mother. Please try not to worry.”
“I don’t think I’ll be able to stop worrying until you’re both home safe and this is all over,” Gillian told her.
Miranda didn’t know just how to respond. Her mother’s concern sounded genuine.
“You’re in Oak Hill, aren’t you? You had Larry bring you the box key. It isn’t where I left it.”
Miranda didn’t answer, and several long beats of silence passed between them. Then she said, “The box was empty. I know there was a package. Do you know anything about it?”
Miranda listened to her mother for a moment. Then: “What? Please tell me you’re joking.” She waited for several moments, then closed the phone and handed it back to Lawrence.
“What?” Lawrence said. “What is it? What hap- pened?”
Miranda shook her head. She couldn’t believe what she had just been told. She glanced back toward Lawrence. “It’s gone,” she told him.
“What? What’s gone? What are you talking about?”
“The package. She said she drove down to Oak Hill yesterday and picked it up. She told you she needed to go in to the gallery to make some calls and arrange to have some time off. She was actually driving to Your Postal Partner.”
Lawrence looked surprised. “That explains why she was gone so long.” He took a slow breath. “But the key was still at the house.”
“She said the guy gave her the package, she just needed to show a valid photo ID.”
“Did she tell you what was in the box?”
“No. She said she never even opened it. Just picked it up, took it home, and threw it into the fireplace.”
Forty-Five
While en route to California, Major Toni Lee used her secure cell phone to call the general from the cabin of the Black Hawk and update him on the events of the previous evening.
“The target has been eliminated,” Lee told him.
“Collateral damage?”
“Minimal, sir.”
“Did you find August’s daughter? Was she at the house?”
“Negative. She wasn’t there.”
“Where are you now?”
“In the air. There was some trouble at Your Postal Partner this morning. One of Anderson’s crew was shot. Not sure who yet. Looks like the girl was there. I’m on my way to evaluate the situation.”
“Did they eliminate her?”
“Negative.”
General Foster said, “I just got off the horn with the President.” He coughed. Lee could picture him sitting at his desk with a Cuban cigar hanging from the corner of his mouth, the rich, spicy aroma of the tobacco filling the room. “He wants to make sure we’re on schedule with the operation.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him what he wanted to hear.” There was another cough before the general said, “Don’t make me look like a horse’s ass here, Major. Heads could roll before this is all over and done. Including yours. Take care of what needs taking care of. And call me when it’s done.”
“Consider it done, sir.”
Lee closed her cell phone and dropped it into her small duffel. From the same bag she removed her civilian clothes. She stripped down to underwear, heedless of the pilot and copilot in front of her, and pulled on blue jeans and a black T-shirt. When she was finished, she made another call, this time to Puckett.
“Relax,” Lee said after a moment. The young man sounded frantic and upset.
“Relax, my ass,” Puckett snapped. “I’ve fuckin’ been pepper sprayed and shot.”
“I heard. What about Trammel?”
“I don’t know. He’s gone. I think he went after the girl, but he’s not answering his phone.”
“What the hell happened out there? What went wrong?”
“I don’t know, man. She had help. Someone else was there with her.”
“Who?”
“Looked like Lawrence Blackwell.” A beat. “You know, if you hadn’t fuckin’ bailed on us, maybe they’d both be dead right now and we’d have the item.”
Damn! Lee thought. He had just answered her next question. She asked it anyway. “So you didn’t intercept the package?”
Puckett’s answer came in his silence.
Forty-Six
Robert Anderson opened the door to what had once been Edward August’s home away from home, the lab where he had spent nearly eighteen hours a day working on the formula alteration that would give Earth’s Own products a desperately needed edge over their closest competitor. Anderson stood just inside the door of the muggy and vacant room for several moments, remembering what had been here only days before.
The desk now sat absent of computer, copier, and supplies. The filing cabinets that had once lined the back wall were all gone. The room had remained unoccupied and empty since the day before Edward August had died.
Anderson allowed himself the luxury of believing that everything might still work out, that the oper- ation would be salvaged
and followed out to its successful completion, and that Earth’s Own would dominate the baby food market with the new, altered formula.
He was ripped from his optimistic thoughts, however, by a soft knock on the wall next to the door.
“Mr. Anderson,” Puckett said.
“Close the door behind you,” Anderson said.
Puckett did as instructed, then walked in and stood next to the naked desk.
“So tell me everything that happened in Oak Hill,” Anderson prompted.
Puckett gave him a full briefing of the failed oper- ation from the moment they parked near Your Postal Partner to the sight of the Town Car speeding away, with both Trammel and Lee MIA. “And what the fuck’s up with Lee?” Puckett added.
“You tell me,” Anderson said, “you were there. Who did she get the call from? Where did she rush off to?” Both were questions Anderson now desperately required the answers to.
Puckett shook his head. “I need you to tell me what the hell’s really going on here. Cuz this is some serious bullshit, man.” He paused. Then: “I’m not stupid. There’s more that you’re not telling me.”
Anderson took a long look at Puckett. The young man could hardly stand still, fidgeting nearly out of control. He kept tugging at the sleeves of his dark-gray Armani suit. And he had been sniffing and gently rubbing his nose nonstop since his arrival, obviously flying high on a fresh cocaine buzz.
The edges of his eyes were red, no doubt the lingering effects of the pepper spray. He was favoring his left arm.
“And just what are you talking about?” Anderson asked.
“I’m not a dumbass, Mr. Anderson. I call Lee in cuz I don’t want to ‘fuck up’ like you said. Then you tell me to keep her under control cuz you’re not happy that I brought her in. Next thing I know, I walk into your office and find the two of you chatting like old buddies.”
Anderson said nothing as he watched Puckett continue to play with the tip of his nose.
“Well?” Puckett snapped.
Anderson smiled. He wondered what it would hurt at this point to come clean and tell the young man everything he wanted to know. It probably wouldn’t hurt a thing.
“Lee and I met about ten years ago,” Anderson said. “We were involved for a while, romantically, then drifted apart when our lives took us in different directions.”
Puckett, surprise on his face, remained absolutely quiet, no longer wiping at his nose or sniffing.
Anderson continued. “She contacted me about a year ago, said she had something she thought I might be able to help her with, something she believed would be beneficial to both of us.” Anderson sat down behind the desk, put his feet up and leaned back. “You know what an MRE is?”
Puckett shook his head and shrugged.
“Meals Ready to Eat,” Anderson said.
“Meals what?”
“Meals Ready to Eat,” Anderson said again. “Instant meals. It’s what soldiers eat when they’re in the field. Just add about a dozen packets of hot sauce and it almost passes as food. Almost edible.”
“They sound great,” Puckett offered.
“All sarcasm aside, you know there are even people who choose to eat them when they go camping.”
“Good for them,” Puckett said.
He started sniffing again, wiping at the end of his nose with the back of his hand. “So what do these MREs have to do with anything?”
“Earth’s Own Flavors has been manufacturing MREs for the United States government since World War II.”
Puckett still looked lost. “I don’t understand,” he admitted. “We’re not even at war right now. Are we?”
“No,” Anderson agreed, “we’re not. And that’s part of the problem. It’s getting harder by the day to justify the military budget to the American people. Why should we be spending so much money on de- fense when there appear to be no viable threats?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Do you have any idea how big of an industry war is? If not for WWII, the U.S. would have pro- bably never pulled itself out of the depression.” Anderson took a long breath. “What do you think the American people would say if the President addressed the nation to alert them to a biological weapon threat from overseas?”
“They wouldn’t buy it.”
“Maybe not,” Anderson said. “But what if, for dramatic effect, twenty or thirty thousand soldiers died suddenly and mysteriously? The military would conduct the autopsies on the dead soldiers, so they could blame the deaths on whatever they wanted to: flu outbreak, Agent Orange, Mad Cow Disease, or maybe...a secret biological warfare weapon some Middle Eastern country has been developing with the intention of using it against Americans here at home.”
“You saying we’d kill our own soldiers just to keep our military budget from being cut?”
Anderson simply shrugged and turned his palms up.
“That’s some fucked-up shit!” Puckett said. “They’d never get away with it. Someone would realize the soldiers were being poisoned. Sooner or later they would check the food.”
“Of course they would,” Anderson said. “But what if the poison was disguised? You’d have to know exactly what you were looking for, and know how to detect it.”
“That’s fuckin’ crazy.”
“Crazy?” He stared at Puckett for a time. “Four thousand cases of altered MREs are scheduled to be shipped to our troops overseas within a week. With all the catsup and hot sauce they smother on those things, they won’t have a clue there’s anything wrong with them until it’s too late. And each MRE has enough caffeine in it to stop the heart of a three hundred pound man. Within minutes they’ll begin to convulse, then suffer from acute myocardial infarc- tion.”
“Huh?”
“Severe heart attack,” Anderson said.
Puckett’s face darkened with a frown. “You’re talking about mass murder, man.”
“Don’t act so surprised, Puckett. It would be a small sacrifice, a small price to pay for the defense of the greater good.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Just that there are things our government does, in the name of national security, that the public will never know about. They simply can’t be trusted to understand.”
“Understand?”
“It comes with being the most powerful nation in the world.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Believe whatever it is you need to believe,” Anderson said.
“Why didn’t you tell me about any of this government shit before? I’m supposed to be your head of security. I’m supposed to be your right-hand man.”
“The details of our operation were ‘need to know.’”
“And the girl knows what you’re really up to, that’s why you need her out of the picture.”
“It’s possible her father told her enough about the operation to make her a liability, yes.”
“Operation,” Puckett uttered, more to himself than Anderson.
“Operation Shelter From the Storm.”
“Nice name,” Puckett offered sarcastically.
“The government seems to like names with the word ‘storm’ in them.”
“Great,” Puckett said. Then: “So you must be getting something out of this.”
“Ten million dollars,” Anderson said. “A little nest egg for when I’m ready to retire.”
Neither man said anything more for a long time.
Then Anderson said, “So what else do you want to know?”
“It wasn’t actually August who did the stuff with the tainted baby food, was it?”
“I’m afraid he had the misfortune of stumbling onto our plans. Then he threatened to go to the newspaper with what he had learned. He had to be stopped. His, uh, usefulness had reached its expir- ation date.”
“So why not just kill him? Why this big scheme? Why do all this stuff with the baby food?”
“Killing him outright was the original plan. We were supposed to do it at his home,
quickly and quietly. Obviously, that didn’t go as planned. Then Lee suggested that if we handled the situation just right, we’d be able to blame everything on him. If the integrity of the operation was ever breached, August would be the perfect fall-guy. As far as anyone knows, he tainted both the baby food and the MREs before he killed himself. If anyone does happen to figure out the truth once the soldiers begin to die, it will all be traced back to August.”
“CYA,” Puckett said.
Anderson smiled. “It’s all about covering your ass these days, Puckett. It’s how the world works. You should know that.” He smiled at the next point he was going to make. “Earth’s Own still has August’s research. We still plan to use the minute quantities of caffeine in our own product. We will dominate the market.”
“So what now? What are we doing here at the lab?”
“Now we have to start cleaning up the mess we’ve made for ourselves before it’s too late.”
“Right. We need to find the girl, recover the evidence, then terminate her,” Puckett said.
“Cleaner than that,” Anderson said. “The girl, her mother, her mother’s husband, and anyone else who could possibly jeopardize the operation.” Anderson let a long beat of silence stretch out between them. Then he said, “I really liked you, Puckett. I saw big things in your future.”
“What are you talking about?”
But as the words were leaving Puckett’s lips, Anderson drew a Springfield 1911 from under his coat and pointed it at the young man. Puckett didn’t move, didn’t pull his eyes from the barrel of the .45 caliber pistol. Finally, he managed to say, “What the fuck are you doing?”
“I’m sorry,” Anderson said before putting two bullets into Puckett’s chest and one into his head. “But ten million dollars is a lot of money.”
Forty-Seven
Sarah’s house on Whistler Street was gone. It had been reduced to a pile of charred rubble and ash amidst scattered support beams. Yellow crime-scene tape told people not to trespass on the devastated property. Miranda pulled the Town Car to the curb and killed the engine. She stared at what little remained of her friend’s home, before finally climbing out of the car.