Fires of Midnight

by Jon Land

  “Fuchs isn’t giving up. I just got a call myself,” Thurman told him,

  “looking for specialists to take up the chase. That’s why I’m late.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “That I was already employed.”

  The fat man chomped off a hefty bite, chewed quickly and swallowed. “A pity I can’t interest you in the fringe benefits.”

  “McCracken’s isolated. We couldn’t have asked for more.”

  “Not quite.” The fat man dabbed the corners of his mouth with his napkin. “The trick now is to find him.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  To implement Johnny Wareagle’s plan, they drove virtually nonstop across the country, the landscape and the level of heat the only thing that varied. Everything else was a blur through the regular changing of vehicles and occasional calls to Sal Belamo to update him on their progress. They lived off food from rest-stop snack bars and restaurants. Thirty minutes was the longest stretch they went without driving.

  Joshua Wolfe continued to hold his own but showed no signs of any real improvement, prompting Susan Lyle to fear he had suffered some degree of brain damage. In spite of herself, she dropped off to sleep from time to time, hours of vigil lost to the exhaustion that overcame her.

  “What’s on your mind, Indian?” Blaine asked Johnny after watching Susan nod off. They’d been rotating shifts behind the wheel and Wareagle’s latest one was nearing its close.

  “Realities, specifically whether this course of action is the best one.”

  “Am I missing something here?”

  “I think you are, Blainey. This pursuit, though it seems familiar, is vastly different from our others.”

  “Elaborate.”

  “A question: what has most of our work this past decade centered around?”

  “Stopping madmen who figured they alone knew what was best for the world or the country.”

  “And their means?”

  “New technology mostly—weapons, or discoveries that could be turned into weapons.”

  “We destroy them.”

  “We have to.”

  “And this time?”

  “No one madman and no weapon, either.”

  Johnny looked from the road to McCracken. “Right on the former. Wrong on the latter.”

  “You’re talking about Josh’s discovery of CLAIR?”

  “I’m talking about the boy himself. He is a weapon, Blainey, because of what he is capable of producing.”

  McCracken grasped where Wareagle was headed. “But he’s innocent, and we also specialize in saving innocent lives.”

  “Is he?”

  “You’re talking about his mind, Indian.”

  “We cannot even begin to conceive of its reaches, Blainey.”

  “That’s not his fault. He didn’t ask for it, any more than the others we’ve fought to save didn’t ask for their lots. Any more than …” Blaine stopped himself, not ready to articulate his thoughts and glad when Johnny saved him the trouble.

  “But if he developed a formula Group Six so desperately wanted by accident, what might he be capable of developing on purpose?”

  “If he fell into the wrong hands, you mean, and it’s our job to keep that from happening.”

  “And what if we fail, Blainey? How far will he go with the knowledge he possesses if he is hurt again? His soul has been scarred now. Harry Lime is dead. He was nearly killed himself. He is becoming as we are, but with a different potential for response. His mind may be adult, but his emotions are still immature. And we cannot forget the manner by which he came into this world.”

  “Meaning …”

  Wareagle took a deep breath. “We grew into our purpose, Blainey. The boy was born for his.”

  McCracken didn’t like considering those prospects. He searched for an argument to refute Johnny’s, but as always the Indian had thought things out in a maddeningly logical manner.

  “He killed all those people in that mall,” Wareagle continued, “in the name of trying to do good. Next time it will be in the name of something else. There are many names, many opportunities, many rationales.”

  “This is a tough one, Indian.”

  “The toughest, Blainey.”

  Alan Killebrew had never been more nervous. All his attempts to reach Susan Lyle had failed and his superiors at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were beginning to get impatient with his failure to issue any reports on his findings.

  “Share whatever you discover with no one else but me. We don’t know how deep this goes or who can be trusted.”

  Killebrew was taking Susan’s last instructions to him very seriously. The most deadly force mankind had ever known lay frozen inside Mount Jackson, temperatures exceeding 98.6 degrees all it required to become active again. He was not about to release that information until after consulting Susan.

  But how to stall? How to keep any additional personnel out of the Level 4 isolation lab and the entire wing that accessed it?

  Killebrew could think of only one course of action to buy the time he needed. He wheeled his chair over to the wall and reached up for a red button, one of six wired throughout Level 4. He felt it compress and then yanked his hand backward as if the button had been hot.

  Suddenly an electronic alarm began to wail. Red lights built into the ceiling started flashing as a dull mechanical voice issued a warning throughout Mount Jackson:

  “Code Red. Level four has been contaminated. Emergency procedures are in effect. Code Red. Level four has been …”

  Right now magnetic seals would be sliding into place over all doors accessing the entire wing, cutting Killebrew off from the outside world.

  “We’re here, Blainey,” Johnny Wareagle said late Friday night from the driver’s seat of the Jeep Cherokee that had taken them the bulk of the journey west into Oklahoma.

  McCracken noted Johnny’s voice had the slightest of edges to it. Returning home after so long, apparently, was no easier for him than anyone else.

  The Sioux had taken a huge stretch of acreage in the rolling hills and plains here and turned it into a self-sufficient community. They suffered none of the painful stereotypes that plagued other reservations because they had stubbornly clung to the old pride and the old ways. The only compromise the tribe had made with modern times, Blaine saw, was in the construction of their cabinlike homes. Sturdily built structures dotted the landscape along the road that led through the reservation’s center, visible through the night’s darkness. There were no stores or shops; the government-sponsored one was a boarded-up relic.

  Ceremonial tepees frequently rested near the more modern homes. There were lean-tos as well and a number of outdoor cooking stoves that were little more than grates propped up over a wood fire. McCracken figured the reservation could support a village of five hundred or so, people attracted by the prospect of living the old ways.

  Johnny eased the Jeep to a halt not far from the largest tepee Blaine had seen. An old man who looked nearly as scorched as the earth itself was standing outside in front of the flap, arms by his side, smiling slightly. The layer of dust on his clothes indicated he’d been standing there for some time.

  Wareagle dropped out of the Jeep, gazing back at Blaine. McCracken nodded and joined him on the ground, but didn’t follow as Johnny approached the old man.

  “I expected you sooner, Wanblee-Isnala,” greeted Johnny’s spiritual father, Chief Silver Cloud. “I hope you have brought rain with you.”

  “We saw some early today back east,” Johnny responded. “Not since.”

  “Even if it had followed you, it would have skipped right over us. The spring was too wet, the summer too dry. Our spirits are close to broken. I’m glad you are here.”

  “I had no choice.”

  “Home is not a place you need to choose to come.”

  “You do not understand.”

  “I think I do.”

  “There is great trouble.”

  “That was
as clear to me as your coming, Wanblee-Isnala. And there will be more following in your path; I saw them, too. Their souls were sallow. I have known them before; not these, but others like them.”

  Wareagle gazed briefly back at McCracken, standing by the Jeep. “Warriors?” he asked.

  “The vision was not sharp enough to be sure, but some assumptions are safer to make than others.”

  “I am sorry to bring this upon you.”

  “Bring what upon us? What we have so often brought upon you? I am glad you have come, Wanblee-Isnala. You have fought many battles for us. Now we may have a chance to stand with you and …” He stopped abruptly, ancient eyes turning to McCracken. “This is the white face you have so often spoke of?”

  “It is.”

  Silver Cloud smiled. “I feel we have met before. He is welcome here.” “There are two others, a woman and a boy.”

  “The spirits told me of their coming, too.” He set his stare back on Johnny, suddenly somber. “That boy troubles me, Wanblee-Isnala.”

  “He troubles me as well.”

  “His aura is very mixed and difficult to read. The light and the dark are jumbled as one, instead of battling for control. You know what this means.”

  Johnny nodded. “He is capable of evil without meaning to cause it.”

  “There is something more. A chasm in his soul the essence of his aura has retreated to. The chasm is wide, Wanblee-Isnala. It is nearly open enough for the rest of his essence to fall in. You understand?”

  “Loss of hope.”

  “A bad thing for someone of so mixed an aura. His essence sits on the edge. Should it ever slip over, there will be no retrieving it.”

  “Can he be pulled back?”

  The old chief seemed to have no response, but suddenly a distant knowing glint showed in his eyes. “In the vision of your coming, I saw the boy as a black sparrow. You know of this symbol?”

  “In some of our myths, the transporter of a man’s soul to its final resting place.”

  “And the omen of the sparrow’s nesting?”

  “Foreboding, a warning of bad tidings it brings with it. The transformation of order to chaos, and perhaps death.”

  “Where has this boy made his nest, Wanblee-Isnala?” When Johnny made no reply, Chief Silver Cloud turned toward the tepee just to his side. “Will Darkfeather, our medicine man, is waiting inside. I told him you’d be coming.”

  “What are you saying, Doctor?” Fuchs demanded, rising out of his chair.

  Haslanger looked up at him in front of the desk. “That the formula on the chip from the fax machine is not the CLAIR organism that the boy released in Cambridge.”

  “Meaning he tricked us yet again?”

  “I don’t think so. He faxed it to Harry Lime’s apartment for his own benefit, not ours. Why would he hold something out? And if it was incomplete, why not just hand it over earlier?”

  “What does that leave us with?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “But you are saying there is no way we can recreate CLAIR now.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying at all. You see, there are two equally important stages in the creation of this form of organism. The first is its construction. The second is devising an agent, an enzyme of some sort usually, which induces it to divide or replicate. Remember, after all the construction atom by atom, you’re still only left with a single cell. But identity the activating agent and that cell becomes two, and two becomes four, and four becomes eight. The formula he gave us does identify this activating agent.”

  “I fail to see what—”

  “The last words the boy said before McCracken’s untimely appearance was that he had another sample of CLAIR, obviously hidden somewhere. If we were able to obtain that sample, inducing replication through a polymerase chain reaction would produce a potentially inexhaustible supply for us.”

  “Joshua Wolfe was searched in Orlando. The hotel room was searched. No vial, test tube or anything of the sort was found.”

  “But the investigation was suspended after we learned he was at the Hyatt. Where else might he have been? Find out and we find the missing vial.”

  Fuchs hit the intercom button on his phone. “Please send Mr. Sinclair in.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  Almost to the tepee, Wareagle took Josh from Blaine’s arms and parted the opening.

  “I’m going in, too,” Susan insisted, and placed herself in Johnny’s shadow.

  Johnny glanced at Chief Silver Cloud, who hesitated, then nodded stiffly. Wareagle let Susan follow him inside.

  “Wanblee-Isnala has told me much about you, Blaine McCracken. I feel you are one of us.”

  The old chiefs words caught Blaine by surprise. He hadn’t been aware of Silver Cloud moving up next to him. “If Johnny told you the truth, you wouldn’t want me to be one of you.”

  “Not according to him. He says your spirit is worthy of our people. He says you have the soul of a warrior.” The old man smiled. “But, most important, he says you are starting to grasp what he teaches you.”

  “I’m a slow study.”

  Silver Cloud gazed at the tepee. “Wanblee-Isnala is troubled.”

  “I know.”

  “The boy troubles him.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “Does the boy trouble you?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  The old chief nodded knowingly. “You must understand that my spiritual son was raised under the old ways and lives by their code today. That means he still recalls the tale from long ago of the warrior from another tribe who learned to use fire as a weapon. Enemy tribes feared him, hatched plots to kill him at all costs. They never had to. Do you know why?”

  “Because his own people killed him first.”

  “Very good. Why?”

  “He turned the fire against them.”

  “By accident? Maliciously? Out of desire for power?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Blaine told him. “They felt they had no choice.”

  Will Darkfeather helped Johnny ease Joshua Wolfe atop a blanket he had spread across the hard ground inside the tepee. A pleasant-smelling fire was burning in its center, sending reddish flames climbing for the vent at its top. He reached behind him for a black medical bag and seemed to notice Susan Lyle for the first time.

  “I don’t remember inviting her,” Darkfeather said to Johnny. Compared to Wareagle, he was a small man who barely resembled a full-blood Sioux. His hair was cut short and neatly combed. His shade of skin looked more vacation-tanned than naturally bronzed. His eyes bounced about furiously, intensely.

  “I invited myself,” Susan told him.

  “Did you?”

  “I’m a doctor.”

  “So am I.”

  “I mean a trained physician.”

  “So am I. Now, make yourself useful and tell me this one’s name.”

  “Joshua Wolfe.”

  “Wolf?” Darkfeather gazed at Josh’s figure. “He’s no wolf. He’s barely a cub. I think I’ll call him Cub.” He pulled a stethoscope and blood pressure gauge from his bag. “Yes, that’s a good name for him.”

  “His vitals are stable. I just checked them. Pulse a little low, though. Pupils reactive. I think there may be some brain damage. He hasn’t had any seizures but—”

  Darkfeather pulled up Josh’s left eyelid and lowered a small penlight toward it. “No brain damage.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I’m a medicine man, remember? Kind of thing they can’t teach you in medical school.”

  “This boy needs more than a medicine man,” Susan snapped, sliding closer and ready to take over.

  “Chief Silver Cloud believed our tribe needed more than one, too.” Darkfeather finished the left eye and moved to the right. Then he lowered his stethoscope over Josh’s heart. “So he sent me to Johns Hopkins Medical School. The government paid. I finished third in my class.”

  Susan stopped and held her ground.


  “And you know what I learned at Johns Hopkins, Doctor? I learned that sometimes the old ways of our people are more effective than modern medicine can ever conceive of. I learned that what I was born with and what was handed down to me combined for more than I could ever be taught.”

  He opened Josh’s shirt and found a pair of twin black and blue marks where the shock prods had wedged against his torso.

  “Any idea how many volts?”

  “No. Enough to kill, though. Based on his response to—”

  “I’ll take over from here, if you don’t mind.” Darkfeather was fingering the skin around the prod marks. “Here’s the thing, Doctor. Goes back to modern medicine versus the old ways. Now, I know what the book says about how to treat severe trauma resulting from electric shock, and I’ve got everything we need to follow through with it at my clinic. Trouble is I think the cub here’s gonna go comatose on us while we wait for it all to work.”

  “You have an alternative to propose?”

  “I don’t propose, Doctor, I cure. Good thing for the cub we’ve got the old ways working for us as well.”

  Johnny smiled from the entrance to the tepee, then turned and went out as Darkfeather reached behind him for a medical bag of a different sort in the form of a rucksack of cleverly woven wool held tight at the top by thin rope laced through the stitching. He undid the rope and flattened the sack out to reveal its contents.

  Susan Lyle recognized none of them. All were contained in plastic Ziploc bags of varying sizes, one of Darkfeather’s concessions to modern times. There were powders, one the color and texture of wood ash, another an equally fine brown. There was a bag of a chalky substance the shade of charcoal. But Darkfeather reached for the Ziploc containing a reddish substance that looked like ground-up dirt.

  “This is a rare bark from the echinacea family,” he explained to Susan. “Grows only in the Pacific Northwest. I harvested this batch myself.”

  “What does it do?”

  “Makes people better.”

  “Who’ve suffered severe electric shock?”