The First Horseman

by John Case

  ‘Goddammit!’ Frank cried out, slamming his palm against the steering wheel and falling back against the seat.

  When the light finally changed – and it seemed to Frank as if it took an hour – he floored the limo without a thought as to where he would go. A block later he turned right and began driving toward Harlem.

  ‘Why Harlem?’ Annie asked.

  ‘Why not?’ Frank replied, looking left and right, hoping to see the U-Haul.

  Three or four minutes passed that way, and then, with a triumphal look, Annie handed him the telephone. ‘I got him,’ she said.

  ‘Gleason?” Frank asked.

  ‘This better be important,’ the FBI agent replied. ‘We’re kinda busy here!’

  ‘I think someone got off the ferry who wasn’t supposed to.’

  There was a silence on the other end of the line, and then: ‘What do you mean?’

  Frank told him about the U-Haul.

  ‘And you’re following it?’ Gleason asked. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I lost it in Harlem,’ Frank said. ‘But it’s somewhere around here. Or it was. Anyway, I’m at 122nd and . . . what? Third Avenue.’

  ‘I’ll get the NYPD to help.’

  ‘What I’m worried about is whether or not there’s virus on the truck.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What do you mean, you know?’

  ‘We ran a voiceprint on the guy I’m negotiating with.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It’s not Solange.’

  Frank blinked. ‘What? Then who is it?’ he asked.

  ‘What’s the difference, who it is? It’s some frog! Or Rich Little. Or – Who cares who it is? The point is, it ain’t Solange.’

  ‘Give me your number,’ Frank said. ‘In case we find the truck.’ Gleason did, and they hung up.

  ‘Solange is loose,’ he said. ‘They’ve been “negotiating” with the wrong guy.’

  Annie rolled her eyes in despair.

  Five minutes later they saw it. The truck was parked near the corner of Madison Avenue and 132nd Street, just off the FDR. Frank pulled up behind it and stopped. He told Annie to call Gleason and tell him where they found the truck. Then he got out of the car and, cautiously, walked around to the front of the U-Haul.

  The woman was sitting behind the wheel, nursing her baby. He recognized her right away. It was the same bitch-madonna who’d jangled his chakras two weeks before, smearing the steering wheel of his car with the shit that sent him through the Looking Glass. ‘How sweet,’ he said, yanking the door open, reaching in to take the keys.

  ‘You’re too late,’ she replied, her eyes on the baby, uninterested in Frank.

  ‘Where’d he go?’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  He almost pulled her out of the truck, but his sense of priorities got the better of him, and he slammed the door instead. Then he walked around to the back, where Annie was waiting.

  ‘The cops are on their way,’ she said.

  Frank nodded, then grabbed the handle of the truck’s rear door and, yanking it upward, sent it clattering into the roof. Looking inside, he found what he’d expected: a false wall, about two feet deep, between the truck’s cab and the cargo area. A part of the wall gaped open, just as Solange had left it.

  ‘That’s where he was when they came off the ferry,’ Frank said.

  ‘Who’s the driver?’ Annie asked.

  ‘Remember the bitch who said I left my lights on?’

  ‘Really!?’

  Frank nodded. ‘She’s feeding Junior.’

  ‘But . . . where’s Solange? What’s he going to do?’

  ‘The same thing he tried to do on the ferry.’

  ‘But how? How can he?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Frank said, shaking his head and looking around. They were in the midst of a blasted urban landscape. There was a burnt-out building. A few high-rise buildings and some redbrick projects, filigreed with graffiti. Some tenements. A vacant lot. Every hundred feet or so a column of steam rose from the street, swirling out of the manholes.

  Steam.

  Frank turned back to Annie. ‘Where was it the students got sick?’

  ‘What students?’

  ‘When they ran the dispersion tests.’

  She tried to remember. ‘Madison. The University of Wisconsin. Why?’

  ‘Because we never figured out the methods they were using.’

  ‘Well, they definitely used a boat, somewhere. And a plane.’

  Frank shook his head. ‘But in Madison – how come only students got sick?’

  ‘It wasn’t just students, really,’ Annie said, correcting him. ‘Teachers got sick, too.’

  ‘But it was pretty much confined to campus. Right?’

  Annie nodded.

  ‘So how come?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Annie said.

  ‘Well, I think I do,’ Frank mused. ‘It was because of the method they used.’

  ‘And what method was that?’ Annie asked.

  Frank nodded at the fog rising from a nearby manhole.

  ‘Steam?’ she asked.

  ‘Count on it,’ Frank replied. ‘Hospitals and universities use it. They use it to heat, but also for air-conditioning. Cities, too. Half the buildings in this city are heated by steam. Maybe more.’

  ‘But . . . it’s a closed system,’ Annie said. ‘The steam doesn’t get into the building’s ventilation system. It just heats the radiators –’

  ‘It’s vented everywhere,’ Frank insisted. ‘Not in the buildings, but on the way to the buildings. It’s vented through traps on every street corner in the city. Look around you.’

  She did. Little wisps of steam were everywhere. Finally, she asked, ‘Where’d you learn about this?’

  ‘My father worked in a generating plant,’ Frank told her. ‘In Kerwick. I helped him a couple of summers.’

  ‘But . . .’ Annie looked confused. ‘How can Solange get the virus into the pipes?’

  ‘If he gets into the plant, there’s a place where they add chemicals – polishers and demineralizers. It goes right into the system.’

  ‘But aren’t the plants guarded?’

  Frank nodded. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘they’re guarded.’ Suddenly, he looked doubtful. ‘It’s just a theory. And, anyway, I don’t see any generating plants in the neighborhood, do you?’

  They looked around them. There was nothing like that. Just slums.

  Annie nodded toward the front of the truck. ‘What does she say?’ she asked.

  ‘“Fuck you,”’ he replied, then seeing the startled look on her face, added, ‘I’m quoting. It wasn’t a suggestion.’ His eyes returned to the street, searching for Solange. He knew he was nearby. He had to be.

  But there was nothing. Some bodegas. A vacant lot, this one with a chain-link fence, and some kind of shack or blockhouse. A storefront church. The redbrick housing project, its grassy public areas worn down to hardpan dirt. Kids jumping rope.

  Solange’s wastepaper basket. The shack was the same one whose picture he’d fished out of Solange’s wastebasket. The picture he’d torn into pieces.

  ‘He’s in there,’ Frank said, pointing to the building.

  Annie frowned. ‘How do you know?’ she asked.

  Frank shook off the question. ‘Just keep an eye on Mother Teresa,’ he replied, and broke into a run.

  The shack was a cinder-block cube that rested on a carpet of glass in the center of a vacant lot, surrounded by a chain-link fence that was topped with razor wire. Frank walked along the fence, looking for the opening he knew would be there. And, finding it, he slipped inside.

  He approached the shack as if he were walking through a mine field, expecting at any moment to be shot. But there was nothing. A broken lock lay on the ground, and the door was ajar. Stepping inside, he found the shack empty.

  But now he knew where he was, and he knew what the shack was. It was a ‘headhouse,’ an unheated building that enclosed a vertical shaft, whose lad
der carried utility crews into the city’s underground. This would be a spectacular, if unseen, maze of catacombs and tunnels, vaults and chimneys, sewers and watercourses, that gave access to utility lines of every kind – electric and gas, water and steam, cable and telephone. Frank knew this because all steam systems were set up more or less the same way. Also, one of the steamfitters in Kerwick had previously worked for Con Ed in New York. Just like the city it served, the system was famously huge and complex and the guy never shut up about it. He could almost hear the guy’s voice now. ‘In New York . . .’

  The entrance to the shaft was under a metal plate in the floor. Frank lifted the plate, recoiling from the sewery smell that welled up at him, sat down and put his feet into the shaft. And then, with all the care that fear could muster, he began his descent, hating every rung.

  For him, it was the worst of possible worlds – a fusion of vertigo and claustrophobia. The shaft was barely as wide as his shoulders, dimly lit and evil-smelling. He had no way of knowing how far it descended – whether thirty feet or a hundred – but it was a long way to fall, in any case. And the ladder was slick, slimy to his hands, greasy to his feet. Twice he slipped. Twice he hung on.

  And then he was on the ground, listening to his heart race as he stood at the end of a low, dank tunnel that reminded him – ludicrously – of an old horror movie. The Thing. Where the bad guy turns out to be a carrot.

  Pay attention, he told himself. You don’t want to get killed in here. You don’t even want to get lost in here.

  Slowly, he began to move forward. And then, as his eyes adjusted to the twilight around him, his pace quickened, a rush of urgency overtaking his fear. He had to get Solange before Solange got to the plant.

  Fortunately, he didn’t have to decide which way to go. The tunnel was a straight shot. There were a handful of galleries on either side, but he quickly saw that each was a dead end – so there were no decisions to make.

  He was jogging now, slapping through pools of water, fearful that he was already too late. But it was noisy going, and it occurred to him that if Solange heard him, he’d be dead.

  And, for a moment, he thought he was. A burst of submachine-gun fire exploded through the tunnel, obliterating the watery drip that was all around him. He froze, waiting for the pain to hit, then realized he wasn’t hurt. Either Solange had missed, or he was firing at something else.

  Frank squinted into the darkness. He could hear Solange, and a few steps farther on, he could see him. His back was to Frank as he yanked at the iron door to the generating plant, whose lock he’d just riddled. The Ingram was on the floor beside him, leaning against Solange’s backpack, and Frank could hear him, swearing in French as he jerked at the door.

  There wasn’t time to think. All Solange had to do was get to the boiler feed pump, and that would be the end of it. However many guards there might be outside the plant, there wouldn’t be more than one or two workers inside. That was all it took to keep a generating plant running for a single shift.

  Which meant there wasn’t anything to decide. It was a straight shot, for him and for Solange. So he took off, running on his toes, wishing he had the 4.8 speed he’d had in high school, but knowing that he didn’t. There were twenty yards between them when Solange heard his footsteps and, turning, saw Frank bearing down on him like someone who should have had Peterbilt written on his forehead.

  It’s too far, Frank thought. I’m too late.

  Solange lunged for the Ingram, and came up fast, fingers splayed on the barrel. It only took a second, less than a second, to shift the gun from one hand to the other, fumble for the trigger, raise the barrel, fire –

  There was a flash of pain, and two loud pops as Frank slammed into him. The gun jumped out of Solange’s hands and the air burst from his mouth as he backpedaled into the wall, the back of his head thudding against the concrete. Frank stepped back, then rolled forward with a looping overhead right that swept a row of teeth out of Solange’s mouth.

  Then he hit him again, and again, until, tiring of that, he drove his forehead into the bridge of Solange’s nose.

  The guru was out on his feet when Frank drove a forearm into the red pulp at the center of his face, sending a spray of blood flying through the air. Then he spun him around and, taking him by the hair, slammed Solange’s face into the edge of the door. Once, twice, again. Solange staggered away, as if he were looking for somewhere to fall. Frank helped him, driving the edge of his hand as hard as he could into the knob at the back of Solange’s neck. There was a crack like a popsicle stick snapping, and Solange sprawled.

  Frank could hear the police now. They were running down the tunnel. And a couple of steamfitters were standing in the doorway, gaping. Frank took a step back, looking for a bit of room so he could put his foot through Solange’s chest – when he realized that something was wrong. He was weaker than he should have been and, for some reason, he couldn’t seem to get his breath. And his chest was wet. Soaking wet. He looked down.

  Jesus Christ, he thought. I’m dying . . .

  EPILOGUE

  AND, IN FACT, he almost bled to death.

  He’d been shot twice in the chest, and one of the bullets had tumbled, tearing through a tangle of blood vessels and soft tissues to lodge about a quarter of an inch from his spine. For nearly a week, then, he’d lain in the intensive care unit at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, breathing bottled oxygen and taking nourishment through a tube. After two operations, a doctor had finally pronounced him on the mend, and ordered him moved to a private room on the VIP ward.

  Which was good and bad. Good, because the room was large, bright, and well-appointed, with a couch and sitting area next to a broad expanse of windows. Which would be perfect for Annie, if he was ever allowed visitors. But it was bad, too, because the room didn’t have a telephone. And it was strange, because he knew his insurance would never pay for a room like this – never in a million years – and knew that the hospital knew. Also, and not incidentally, he wasn’t a Very Important Person – except, perhaps, to Annie.

  And yet . . . here he was.

  He asked his doctor what was going on, but all the doctor would say is, ‘Don’t worry about it. Call it an upgrade.’

  ‘Okay,’ Frank replied, ‘but do I get a phone with my upgrade?’

  This made the surgeon hesitate, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘not just yet.’

  ‘And visitors?’

  ‘Of course. Very soon. When you’re stronger.’

  This was fine with him, at first, because he was so zonked out on painkillers he didn’t know where he was half the time. But after four or five days he began to realize that something was wrong, or if not wrong, up. And he would probably have tried a wheelchair escape if the doctor hadn’t opened the door one morning and said, ‘There’s someone here to see you.’

  Frank smiled and, still tender from the stitches in his chest, pushed himself up against the pillows. But his smile faded when he saw that it wasn’t Annie who’d come to see him. It was an Air Force colonel named Fitch. ‘Taylor Fitch,’ he said, extending his hand.

  ‘Hi,’ Frank replied, suddenly wary. They shook hands, and Frank asked, ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Well,’ the colonel said, taking a piece of paper from his attache case, ‘before we have our little talk, I was hoping you’d sign this. It’s just a technicality.’ He handed the paper to Frank and, with a hopeful look, took a pen from his pocket.

  Frank glanced at the page. It was a ‘nondisclosure’ agreement. ‘Not for me,’ he said. ‘Thanks,’ and handed it back.

  The colonel returned the agreement to his attaché case. Then he sighed, but not heavily. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  Frank shrugged. ‘I’m a journalist. I get paid to write. And it’s a good story.’

  Fitch nodded. ‘Hey – it’s a helluva story. No question.’ Then he frowned. ‘But you can’t publish it.’

  Frank squinted at him. ‘Do I know you?’ he asked.

  Fitch shook his
head. ‘No.’

  ‘But I’ve seen your name.’

  It was the colonel’s turn to feel uncomfortable. ‘Maybe,’ he suggested. ‘I’m pretty active in Scouting.’

  Frank shook his head. ‘I don’t think that was it.’

  ‘Well,’ Fitch said, signaling a change in subject. ‘That’s neither here nor there. I –’

  Frank turned his head toward the window, his brow furrowing. ‘It was on a manifest,’ he said.

  ‘What was?’

  ‘Your name.’ He thought about it some more, and then it hit him. ‘Now I remember! You flew back from Hammerfest with Annie and Gleason.’

  ‘Who?’ Fitch asked.

  ‘Neal Gleason.’

  ‘I don’t think I know him,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ Frank replied, suppressing the little laugh that threatened to move through his chest like a razor blade. ‘I don’t think any of us really knows Mr. Gleason. I don’t think any of us really wants to. But that’s who your seatmate was.’ He paused and cocked an eye at his visitor. ‘I was gonna look you up, but – I got busy. Is that really your uniform, or is it just a costume?’

  Fitch grinned. ‘I’m in a Reserve unit.’

  Frank looked away again. ‘CIA, huh?’

  Fitch shrugged. ‘Let me show you something,’ he said, removing a kind of plain-paper newsletter from his attaché case. He handed it to Frank. ‘I turned the page down,’ he said.

  Frank looked at the cover: The Federal Register. He opened it to page thirteen. ‘You want me to read this?’ he asked.

  ‘Just so you get the drift,’ Fitch replied.

  Under the heading ‘Declaration of National Emergency’ was a letter to Congress from the President of the United States.

  Because the actions and policies of the Government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) continue to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States, a national emergency is declared, pursuant to the National Emergencies Act 50 U.S.C. 1622(d) . . .

  Frank looked up at his visitor. ‘So?’

  ‘I’m trying to save you a lot of trouble.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Well, before I get into that, I want you to understand that everyone’s very grateful for what you did. I mean that.’