by Greg Dragon
There were the usual spill cleanup kits, body bags, decontamination supplies. She found the spare hazmat suits hanging in an upright locker near the back, but no helmets. The suits would be useless to conceal her without them. Even with a full suit on, she’d still be limited in where she could go. She was beginning to question the sensibility of her plan.
She pulled aside several large jugs of water and a stack of smaller plastic tubs of some pink liquid, which she confirmed were chemical disinfectant manufactured in East Hemlington, New Jersey.
A truck rumbled past the opening, spewing blackened dust. Angel stepped over to check and watched it disappear out of view to the right. There again were the two men with the tanks on their backs standing at the very edge of the scorched field, getting ready to spray the ground, probably with some sort of chemical neutralizer.
Angel returned to her search for the helmets. They had to be buried inside one of the other cases, but which one?
She pushed further into the gloom, once again using her phone for light. Strapped in against the back wall were a half dozen fifty-five gallon drums sealed with heavy-duty tamper-proof tape, three on either side of a sliding door which led to the cab. She almost ignored the containers, but stopped when she recognized the warning symbols for flammability, corrosion, and poison. Bending down, she squinted at the paper label affixed below them. Among the words she read were naphthenate and palmitate. She tried to remember what those chemicals might be used for. When an image did come to mind a moment later, it sucked the breath from her chest.
Napalm!
There was enough here to incinerate the entire accident scene, maybe more.
She scrambled back to the door and peered out into the daylight. The two men were working the field, slowly spraying the ground just as she’d expected. But what came out of the ends of the nozzles wasn’t liquid. Instead, it was ten meters of white-hot flame. These people weren’t investigating an accident. Nor were they cleaning it up. They were sterilizing the scene, erasing any evidence of what may have caused it.
She sucked in a sharp breath. Cheong had been right to be suspicious. This was yet another cover-up.
That didn’t, however, mean he was right about it being caused by some disease. The suits in those lockers, the same ones worn by the men outside, weren’t biohazard suits, they weren’t even strictly airtight.
Propped up on her elbows so she could hold her phone steady, Angel began to collect a video record of the scene. She started with the crane as it worked its pile of incinerated rubble and panned over to the men with the flame-throwers. When she angled back, her heart nearly stopped. A man was walking out from behind the tent. In one arm, he held her parka. He waved his other at the men with the shovels, trying to draw their attention.
In a lull in the racket she heard him shout in English, “Who does this belong to?”
Chapter Fifteen
“Americans? They are Americans?”
It explained the labels on the crates, the sources of the material.
Angel scrambled back into the darkness, quickly stuffing the phone back into her pocket.
“Merde,” she whispered. “This is not good!”
The men out there weren’t here on behalf of the railroad or the government. They were company people, and it was clear they intended to hide something. If she were found, they would first question her, maybe even torture her. Finally, after they decided they’d learned enough from her, they would make her disappear.
Don’t be ridiculous.
She could hear the crane still digging away, and the intermittent growl of the flame throwers burning the air. The bulldozer was scraping rubble into a new pile. Two more men with flamethrowers stood nearby, ready to ignite it. She still had a few moments before they realized the parka wasn’t any of their own. A few seconds after that, they would decide to search the area for its owner. It was time to go.
But how? The supply truck was right in the middle of the site, and there was too much open ground around her. Surely someone would see her.
Desperately, she pulled one of the hazmat suits out of the locker and exhaled in relief as she realized the collapsible helmets were already attached at the back. They’d just been hidden from view. She stepped into it, fumbling her fingers into the gloves and putting a small tear in the leg as it caught on one of the metal clasps of the case at her feet. Then she quickly zipped the suit shut over her chest. Peeling away the protective adhesive strip, she pressed it hastily closed, sealing her inside. Finally, she swung the helmet over her head and sealed it, too. It sat slightly cockeyed on her shoulders, probably enough to be noticeable to someone standing close by. She didn’t plan to get near enough for anyone to see.
Going out through the loading door was not going to work. It was too exposed, and anyone seeing her would be suspicious if she crawled through it. Pulling the door fully open would draw unwanted attention. She stepped back into the darkness, past the drums of napalm. Exiting through the cab was her only real option. She had to hope the crane driver would be too distracted to notice. He was the closest, and had a direct line of sight to her. She wrapped her fingers around the handle and pulled.
It didn’t move.
She tugged harder, but it was stuck. Or locked.
No, no, NO!
She bent down to inspect it, but the lighting was too poor. Her phone was in her pocket inside the suit. And there was too little room to stand aside to let in more from outside.
Looking back across the bed of the truck, she could just see the man with her parka talking with the men with shovels. One of them pointed to her right, to the men with the flamethrowers.
Angel turned back to the cab door. It was awkward moving around in the cramped space, and the helmet was too skewed and kept blocking half her view. She tried again, pushing the handle now from the lower vantage point, cursing when it wouldn’t go. Then she saw the safety catch.
Her gloved hands were too clumsy to work it. The catch was just a small tongue of metal, dangling on a swivel and preventing the handle from inadvertently opening during driving. But she couldn’t get her fingers behind it to move it out of the way. The damn thing just kept falling back!
“Damn it damn it dammit!” she growled.
She realized she couldn’t hear the flamethrowers anymore and quickly scurried forward to check. The men digging in the field had stopped their careful pacing and were looking off toward the right, watching something. One of them suddenly turned around and pointed at the supply truck before throwing his shovel over his shoulder and moving off to the left.
“Oh no. No no no. Please!”
Angel tried the latch again. But still her gloves were too bulky, too stiff to pull the safety clasp away.
Spinning around again, she could see that the remaining digger had now been joined by the man with her parka and one of the napalm burners. They were marching across the field toward the bulldozer operator.
The second burner was heading her way.
Chapter Sixteen
”Hey! Stop!”
The man with the flamethrower making his way toward Angel’s hiding place turned stiffly around to face the shouter. The tank on his back tugged heavily on his shoulders, and despite the chill in the air, Angel knew that he must be sweating inside the thick plastic of his chemical hazard suit. He lifted his hands in the air, as if to say, “What now?”
“Norstrom says we got less than four hours to wrap this up and get over to the other site, so pick it up!”
“Four hours? What the hell happened?”
“Aston’s got a bug up his ass as usual,” came the reply. “He wants it to look pretty.”
“Screw that rat bastard!”
The first man waved a gloved hand in Angel’s general direction. “Just get what you need and finish up over there ASAP!”
He turned around and started heading for the other end of the field, Angel’s parka in his hand. What he intended to do with it was pretty clear to her: He mea
nt to find out who had left it stuffed behind the command center tent and probably chew him out. It wouldn’t take him long to figure out it didn’t belong to any member of the work crew. And when he did, he’d realize the site had been compromised and everyone here would drop everything to come looking for its owner.
The man with the tank jogged a few experimental steps before resuming his slow plod across the field.
Angel threw herself forward onto the floor of the supply truck and reached out with one of her gloved hands. She could feel the blunt pressure of the hasp of the closest container press against her wrist, and she jerked it quickly back. The tough plastic of her own chemical suit caught, just as she’d hoped it would, but it didn’t tear.
She tried again, leaning closer and hugging the box against her chest so that her arm pressed painfully against the metal. But the result was the same. The material was too thick and smooth. It resisted tearing just as it was supposed to do.
Precious seconds ticked away. The man coming toward her would reach the truck in another minute or so. She edged forward another half meter, risking exposure through the open gate, and tried again. If it didn’t work this time, she’d have to unzip the suit and peel it off. The sound of the adhesive separating would probably be loud enough to catch someone’s attention.
The man had crossed another seven or eight meters. If he happened to raise his head, there was no way he’d miss her.
Angel focused on the container. Once more, the sharp corner of the hasp dug into the meaty part of her forearm. This time she felt the unyielding edge bite into the muscle. She pressed as hard as she could, putting all of her weight into it and squeezing with her other arm. The plastic caught, snagging on a fold. She yanked, uttering a soft, desperate cry as pain tore into her arm.
The plastic scored but still didn’t tear.
No no no! she whispered, and tried again. Then again. She was near tears.
On the fourth attempt, the metal finally pierced the rubbery plastic and the material began to split.
Her breath was a hurricane inside the helmet, a harsh, humid, terrible roar that deafened her and fogged the plastic window. With shaking hands, she repositioned the new edge of the plastic on the metal and tugged, now bracing the container with her feet. Sweat dripped into her eyes, further blinding her, and the tears she’d been holding back now gushed out.
It was too late. She had been too slow and was going to get caught. Why the hell hadn’t she just waited at Jian’s house back in the village?
The material split suddenly, nearly pulling the sleeve in half. Scurrying back into the shadows, she jammed a thumb into the opening and pushed on the lower part with all her strength. The rip expanded around her arm. But the sewn seam refused to separate, preventing her from freeing her hand from the glove.
Hurry!
She kept expecting to feel the truck rock beneath her as the man mounted the ramp . . . the loud rattle of the chain as the gate pulled all the way up . . . the flood of sunlight. She could imagine the look on his face when he saw her sitting there. The confusion. Then alarm. Then the realization.
Hurry up, damn it!
She might be able to jump up and knock him out of the truck. She might be able to run.
And then they’ll shoot you in the back before you even reach the edge of the crash site.
Or mow her down in one of the vehicles.
There was nowhere inside the back of the truck to hide. The cab had been her only hope, but without her fingers free of the glove, the door’s tiny safety clasp may as well be a kryptonite lock; she just couldn’t manipulate it out of the way to open the sliding panel.
Slithering further back, she tugged one last time at the compromised sleeve, putting all of her might into it. With a reluctant snap! the rubber-coated stitching finally gave. She yanked the glove off and spun around toward the door.
The clasp lifted easily out of its notch. She pried it up and out of the way, simultaneously pulling on the door handle and releasing the metal to prevent her fingers from getting pinched. But the tiny flange slipped and fell back into place too soon. The handle jammed against it with a thud. She forced the panel back closed with her shoulder and tried again.
Please. Please please please!
Her whole body was trembling. She couldn’t seem to make her hands do what she wanted them to do, couldn’t seem to control them. One pried, the other pulled. Everything seemed to catch and nothing worked and—
The door slid an inch. Pain exploded in her hand and shot up her arm. She jerked her smashed fingers out from between the metal teeth and stifled her cry. But the door was open! She threw her body into the cab, spun around and rolled it shut again, pressing her back up against the panel and sobbing with relief.
A flash of blue in the side mirror caught her eye, and for a split second as the man appeared beside the truck her heart nearly stopped. What if his destination was actually the cab?
But then he disappeared around the back, and a moment later there came a series of thumps as he stepped up onto the ramp. This was followed by a rattle and a very loud bang when the gate slammed fully open.
Ouf, she whispered, slowly letting out her pent-up breath. Already, her trembling was starting to subside as her sense of self-preservation once more took control.
In her four years of freelancing, she had done some terribly risky things, some even downright stupid. She had gotten herself nearly imprisoned on a half dozen occasions and actually tossed into a cell once. She’d gotten caught between stone-throwers and shooters firing rubber bullets. She’d been tear gassed, wrestled to the ground by a city gang member in Atlanta. The boy had probably not even been old enough for middle school, much less know any better what he was doing. She’d been accused of libel. But none of those situations had ever had the potential for harm as this one did. Never had she been as scared for her life as she was at this very moment.
The idea that she should consider giving up the assignment should she manage to escape crossed her mind. But she immediately dismissed the thought. It made no sense to plan for a contingency when the chances of even having the option seemed so remote.
Une chose à la fois. One thing at a time, Angel. First, get the hell away from here.
She pushed herself away from the door, her senses once more on high alert. She tried to calm her breathing, tried to slow her racing heart.
To the right, the crane was just visible through the passenger window, the crook of its long metal arm sweeping back and forth as it lifted a load and dumped it and returned to scrape at the scorched piles of rubble and earth for more. From his elevated position, the crane operator had a direct line of sight to her inside the cab. If he were to turn and look over his right shoulder, he’d see her.
Angel whispered a silent prayer that he didn’t. The crane released another clawful of the sterilized material into the bed of the dump truck. The burnt metal and rock rained down with a clatter.
Are they going to bury it? Where are they dumping it? Why?
What were they trying to hide, that was the question. What clues were these people so meticulously trying to erase?
For a moment, she wondered again about Cheong’s claim of a disease, but almost immediately dismissed the idea. The hazard suits these men were using were the wrong type. They were meant to protect against physical contact with solids— possibly even, if at least transiently, against splashing fluids, such as corrosives. But they were totally inadequate against inhalation threats. The helmet wasn’t airtight and lacked any sort of self-contained rebreather or filtration system. And all the activity here would undoubtedly raise enough dust to suspend an infectious agent into the air.
Unless it’s unstable when aerosolized. Or inactive when inhaled. Or . . . .
She shook her head at the various possibilities. If there was one thing she’d learned from all the assignments she’d covered, it was that cleanup crews tended to err well on the side of caution when it came to disease agents and aero
solized hazards. The suits told her these men expected neither.
So what were they afraid of? What were they incinerating?
Her crushed fingers throbbed. She raised her hand to the faceplate of her helmet, flexing them distractedly as she tried to make further sense of her predicament. The tips of the first and second fingers were an angry purple, and her whole hand pulsed angrily. She was surprised to see blood on her palm, but the skin on her fingers was unbroken. She traced the blood up a long scrape to a triangular-shaped and discolored puncture wound. She’d cut herself trying to tear the suit.
A drop fell to the floor, splattering into a fat red asterisk.
Could’ve been much worse. If I hadn’t been able to get the damn glove—
She jolted upright, the blood freezing in her veins as she remembered the glove on the floor on the other side of the door. It was right there for the man to find. How could she have been so stupid!
Her heart was beating so loudly that it drowned out everything else in her mind. Another truck rattled past, not three meters in front of her, but she didn’t hear it, didn’t notice it until it eclipsed the windshield and its shadow darkened the cab. Angel shrunk down as far as she could go while it passed, her gaze skimming wildly over the interior surfaces of the cab for a solution to her dilemma.
It came to rest on the keys in the truck’s ignition.
Drive away! Just go!
But no, she couldn’t. Not while that man was still inside the truck. Not with the ramp hanging off the back; driving off with it down would draw the others’ attention faster than anything else. And even if on the off chance the man were somehow to leave without seeing the glove and stowed the ramp and pulled the door shut as he left, the moving truck would almost certainly raise someone’s alarm. Who was driving it? Where was it going?
By then, they’d probably already know the parka didn’t belong to any of them. They’d spare no effort to come after her. She had spied several other vehicles on the site that were considerably faster and more capable of moving over the rough terrain. It wouldn’t take them long to catch up with her, even with a head start.