by DB Carpenter
Mike finished dealing the cards and they got down to another game. Sarah watched as Camilla and Mike finished off the wine getting louder and drunker as the night progressed.
"Let's change this music and dance," Camilla suddenly yelled as she slammed the table, stood up and started dancing over to the iPod dock. Mike laughed and got up to follow her, almost falling over his chair as he went.
Chris stumbled to the ground again, slamming his arm into the decaying remnants of a tree trunk. Pain tore through his arm. He rolled over onto his back and screamed. The dark, dense woods consumed his weak howl – nobody was going to hear him.
Brilliant patches of star-filled sky peaked through the forest canopy. The air was warm but uncontrollable tremors still shook his body. He was in shock and needed medical attention.
He lay on the mossy forest floor drifting in and out of consciousness. Everything was going wrong. The emotional rollercoaster of the past few days caught up with him and he started to cry. In shock, lost, emotionally drained, he didn't have the strength to go much further.
The faint sound of a guitar drifted through the quiet woods. Moving on pure will power, he rose and stumbled in the direction of the sound. All he wanted to do right now was lie down and sleep, but that would be the worst thing he could do.
Camilla and Mike swayed together in the middle of the floor, singing along to some pop song and laughing like teenagers. Sarah got up to leave and head to bed. A loud crash on the back porch stopped her in her tracks.
"What was that?" She exclaimed trying to peer through the window into the darkness. Mike and Camilla both giggled.
"It's probably a grizzly bear come to join in the fun," Camilla laughed.
Sarah glanced at the door that was at the back of the kitchen and led out to the porch. She couldn't see anything. As she reluctantly turned to head to her room, she saw some motion out of the corner of her eye. A man stood there, staring wildly at her.
She screamed.
Mike and Camilla both followed her gaze and saw the man there in the window. He was motionless for a moment, then fell against the door, and slid down out of sight.
"What the hell!" Mike said as the three of them rushed toward the door. Mike flipped on the light, and they looked out the window at the man lying on his back on the porch, apparently unconscious.
"What do you think?" Camilla asked.
Mike yanked open the door and stepped out onto the porch, moving cautiously. "Look at his arm!" Mike said as he tapped his foot into the man's side. "He's out."
"What should we do?" Camilla asked.
"Let's get him inside," Sarah said as she walked out onto the porch.
The three of them picked the man up, carried him into the house, and placed him on the couch in the living room.
Sarah sat down on the couch next to the man and slowly unwrapped the blood-soaked rag from around his arm.
"There's a first-aid kit in the kitchen," she said to Mike. "Can you get it?"
Sarah gasped. One of his forearm bones poked through his skin. A viscous substance, probably marrow, oozed from inside the bone. "That's not good," she muttered as Mike placed the first-aid kit next to Sarah.
He caught a glimpse of the arm as he leaned over her. "Oh my God," he said almost gagging. "That looks terrible."
Camilla watched silently, tugging on her lip.
"It's a bad break," Sarah said as she touched the man's forehead. "He's in shock. Grab me some blankets, will you?"
"Sure," Camilla said.
"What are we going to do with him?" Mike asked.
"I don't know," Sarah said. "Seth's set broken bones before, but I think a break like this is going to require a hospital and doctors."
Camilla came back into the room carrying a couple of thick blankets. Sarah poured some hydrogen peroxide on the wound and wrapped it in fresh gauze.
As she secured the end of the gauze, she said, "This is a big problem."
"I'd say it is," Camilla agreed. "I thought you said this place was so remote no one would ever stumble by. We've been here six hours and we've already got an injured stranger lying on our couch."
Sarah motioned for them to follow her into the kitchen. "Someone now knows where we are," she said. "This was obviously not part of the plan but we need to decide what to do with him."
"He doesn't know who we are though?" Mike said.
"But he knows we're here! We don't want anyone knowing that, or that I even exist. The last thing we need is attention," Sarah said.
"What do you think happened to him?" Camilla asked.
"I don't know. Car wreck maybe?" Sarah replied.
"If it was a car wreck, why was he behind the house?" Mike asked.
"How would I know?" Sarah snapped.
"Maybe he was hiking and got lost – took a tumble," Camilla offered.
"Could be," Mike said. "I wonder who he is."
"Go check if he has any ID on him," Sarah said.
Mike turned and left the room to check.
"We can't keep him here, Camilla. We have to get rid of him before he wakes up and sees where he is and who we are. Christ, he'll recognize you for sure."
"I know," Camilla replied. "So we get rid of him?"
"Definitely."
"I don't know about that."
"Why not? It's simple."
"Wait a second, are you saying we should we kill him?"
"No. Jesus, I'm not saying that," Sarah looked at Camilla amazed that she would suggest that. "What do you think I am, a monster? He needs to get to a hospital. I'm saying we drive him up to the highway and drop him off someplace where he'll get found, preferably before he wakes up and certainly before it gets to be light out," Sarah said.
Mike walked back into the room. "He had a driving license in his wallet," he said throwing it on the table.
"Good," Sarah said.
"At least they'll know who he is when we drop him on the highway to get found," Camilla said.
Sarah stepped forward to take a look at the license. She stared at the name on the license in shocked disbelief. "Son of a bitch."
Day 6 – Friday, July 3
7:45 am Boston, Massachusetts
It was a cold, rainy day as the FBI car came to a stop in front of Mass General and just as Arthur was about to get out of the car to meet up with the Boston team, his phone rang.
"What's up, Cecil?" Arthur asked, leaning back into the seat. Cecil was one of his best analysts.
"Lots."
"Let's hear it."
"Been working this virus. We tried tracking the people but that was a dead end so I followed up on the other clues and one of them has turned into something."
Arthur's blood pressure and heart rate increased. Cecil was fact-based and when he said he had something you could bet he did.
"Talk to me, Cecil."
"We did some phonetic –"
"I don't need to hear how you did it."
"Sorry, Ngami is a real place. A region of Botswana. Relatively sophisticated infrastructure, stable government, a success story for Africa for sure," Cecil said. "So the virus allegedly makes people infertile, right?"
"That's what the reports said."
"So I called the largest hospital and want to guess what I found out."
"Go on."
"Births have plummeted the past few months. Right now there isn't a pregnant woman to be found in any of their maternity wards."
Arthur sat upright. "What? Are you certain?"
"Absolutely. The WHO is all over the place, trying to figure it out but they can't. All they know is the sperm counts of everyone they've tested are well below normal, actually, well below viable."
"Viable?"
"Not enough of the little swimmers to realistically fertilize an egg."
"Oh my God," Arthur said as he pressed his hand to his forehead and massaged his temples. His mind was racing. The W.H.O was the best at these sorts of crisis. "Why haven't I heard about this? Did I miss something? Why d
idn't the WHO raise any alarms?"
"They didn't know what they were dealing with. It was very regional. I spoke with their director on the ground in Botswana. She was very helpful but also very perplexed," Cecil replied.
"Jesus."
"There's more."
"More?"
"So all of this is one big cluster of coincidences. We have the virus rumor and now some loose but compelling corroboration but still nothing concrete so I take a look at international travelers over the past year going to and from Botswana and correlate it to the names we know."
Arthur leaned forward again and unconsciously held his breath, knowing what he was about to hear. "And?"
"And, we've got a David Rose turning up in Botswana almost nine months ago."
"Who's David Rose?"
"The pilot who was shot down."
"Go on."
"He turns up in Botswana nine months ago and, obviously, we don't know if this David Rose is our dead pilot David Rose but I got this same David Rose arriving on an international flight from Botswana via Heathrow into Boston three weeks ago and then hopping a shuttle flight to Bangor."
"Son of a bitch!" Arthur exclaimed. "Anything else?"
"Not yet but I'm sure we're going to connect more dots shortly."
Arthur pulled out the case file and flipped through it for a moment as he considered what Cecil had just told him. It was all circumstantial, nothing concrete but he had been in this business long enough to know that sometimes you had to run with what you had and this was undoubtedly one of those times.
"Excellent work, Cecil."
"Thanks."
"I need you to put everything together and get it to me immediately. I want all of these coincidences documented."
A knock on the window brought Arthur's head up and he turned to see who it was. Carl Moscovitz. Arthur held up one finger and said, "Let me know the second you have that all together."
"Will do."
Arthur disconnected and stepped out of the car.
"Thank you for coming, Arthur," Carl said as the two men shook hands. "I'm sorry about the short notice, but he says that he'll only talk to you. I don't think we have much time."
"No problem," Arthur said as he followed Carl inside the building and toward the elevators, still trying to digest what he had just learned. It was incredible but he had to compartmentalize the different threads of this for now. Perhaps agent Pelletier could give him additional corroborative details that would be useful. People stepped aside as they crossed the busy lobby. Arthur popped a breath mint as he walked.
Irving followed the two men into an empty elevator. A woman and her son tried to follow them in, but Irving stopped them. "I'm sorry," he said. "Official business."
The woman scowled at them as the doors slid shut.
"Has anything else happened since you sent down this report last night?" Arthur asked.
"Not much. Pell came around for a while early this morning, but all he would say was that he'd only talk to you."
"That's it?" Arthur asked.
"Actually, there's one other interesting bit of information."
"What's that?"
"Chris Foster, the civilian who saw the plane go down up in Maine, has disappeared. We've been trying to find him since yesterday. He took a plane to LA, rented a car and then disappeared."
"Any ideas?" Arthur asked.
Carl shook his head. "Could be he's just freaked out by the past few days. We talked to his wife and she says they're having big marital problems so that could be contributing to him taking off."
"Is that what you think?" Arthur asked.
"It's doubtful," Carl said. "More likely it has something to do with this case."
"Like what?"
"Something he learned from agent Pelletier?"
"Could it be Sarah Burns and her people?"
"Perhaps but, personally, I'd go with the he-learned-something-from-Pell theory. He very well may have important evidence. He was hanging around with that piece of shit since he reported the plane crash incident. Those two had a weird relationship, like Pell had suddenly recruited him as his partner or something."
"Really?"
"Isn't that how you saw it, Irving," Carl said to Irving who nodded then Carl continued, "We just don't know where he is. He simply vanished overnight."
The elevator doors opened, and the three men stepped out into the hallway of the ICU. Arthur noticed the unnatural silence of the floor – as if the patients' struggles to cling to life somehow muted the normal sounds of the busy urban hospital. Doctors and nurses moved about purposefully, but the actual noise-to-activity ratio was out of whack.
Carl strode toward Pell's room. He had a cocky swagger for a little guy.
Agent Strange stood outside the door. His gaze darting from man to man as they approached.
"Anything?" Carl said as he walked past Steve.
"No," he replied.
"Can we go in?"
"No, the nurse buzzed Dr. Epstein while you were on your way up."
"Is he on his way? Arthur doesn't have all day," Carl said.
Arthur peered into the room at Pell asleep on the bed. He was a calm man, but the one thing that sent him through the roof was when an agent went bad. It didn't happen often but every once in a while it did. Agents were human beings just like everyone else – they suffered from the same personal problems, insecurities and weaknesses as the average Joe. That was ok. As long as they didn't let it affect their job or their loyalties. The Bureau tried to create strong character but people are all wired differently. His method of dealing with the ones that did turn bad had varied – jail was okay, but generally he liked a more quiet, permanent approach. Something out of the public eye – an accident while they were in the field, drug bust gone bad, heart attack, something that could really happen on any given day on The Job. They could make it look like a person died any number of ways. To him that was justice. Anyone who endangered his fellow agents, or was feeding the wrong people information, deserved the harshest punishment.
His days as a SEAL taught him many things – he could, and had, killed people in any number of ways and he was an expert in both explosives and covert ops but most importantly, he had learned the true meaning of "I got your back". His team members had been what it was all about – the ability to trust someone beyond any doubt, to trust them with your life. This was a concept that most people would claim to understand but they didn't. Not unless they had a friend – a guy whose kids and wife you knew, who you drank with, who you sweated in the muck and shit of the jungle with – take a fatal one for you. Go through that and you learn about loyalty, honor and trust.
He placed his briefcase on a chair outside the room, opened it up, and pulled out his case file. Then he sat down, crossed his legs and relaxed as he flipped through the report and waited for the Doctor.
"Maurice Andleman, the retired professor in New Hampshire, died this morning," Carl said.
Arthur nodded. "That's too bad."
"It certainly is. We don't know if he told Pell anything or not."
"We're going to find out soon enough," Arthur said. "I still don't understand why you talked to those doctors, Carl."
"They had already heard some of it with their own ears."
"That doesn't matter. It's still a clear breach of protocol. You know what type of trouble there could be if word of this got out. We could have pandemonium in the streets."
"I thought that if they completely understood the urgency of the situation, they'd brush their Hippocratic Oath under the carpet for a bit and help us."
"It still wasn't a good idea," Arthur said. "There're always other ways. Less dangerous ways."
Carl nodded as the two doctors appeared at the nurse's desk then approached them.
"Gentlemen," the older one said as he walked confidently up to Arthur and held out his hand, ignoring Carl.
"Doctor Epstein?" Arthur said standing up. "I'm Arthur Kent, Assistant Director for Criminal
Investigations. I believe you're already acquainted with my colleague SAC Moscovitz."
"Yes, we've met. This is Lasu Mogisha," Dr. Epstein said pointing to a wide-eyed Indian intern.
"Nice to meet you," Lasu managed to say through chattering teeth as he feebly shook Arthur's hand.
"You know why I'm here," Arthur said as he stepped closer to Dr. Epstein. Arthur was one of those men whose very presence demanded attention and he found that being in someone's personal space always got it. It's all a game – people are, for the most part, all the same. The outliers, the unpredictable nonconformists were the ones that worried him. Dr. Epstein didn't appear to be one of them.
"We need to urgently debrief our Agent and I understand he will only talk to me," he said as he shot Carl a quick, disapproving glance before continuing. "And I also understand that Carl has told you what he might know."
Carl opened his mouth to say something but Arthur shook his head softly indicating the floor was his. Lasu and the doctor both nodded. Lasu's thick dark hair, cut in a Larry Fine, framed his dark skinned face that had a glistening oily sheen. His dark eyes were surrounded by even larger darker circles. He needed a shower and some sack time.
"Actually, before you answer, step in here please," Arthur said as he walked into Pell's room. Once everyone was inside Arthur motioned to Agent Strange to close the door.
"We understand the situation," Dr. Epstein said. His voice was polished, as were his shoes and his Rolex. Hell, from what Arthur could see the guy could be made of plastic. He looked like a goddamn Dr. Ken doll. "And we'll help you out as much as possible. But in a case like his, twenty-four hours can be the difference between life and death."
"I appreciate that and respect your dedication," Arthur said.
"Thank you," the doctor replied. "I think that Agent Pelletier is out of the woods now. Yesterday was a different story, though. We put him in a medically induced coma to help him recover but, given the extenuating circumstances and that he told my nurse that he wanted to speak to you no matter what, I'm prepared to bring him out of it."
"Good," Arthur said. "Your loyalty to the patient is admirable, doctors."