by Dom Testa
“You worked on both sides, correct?” I asked.
He nodded.
“So the command portion would simply be an app on his phone or tablet. What about the other side?”
“Yeah,that was the tricky part,” Guy said. “We had to develop software that would work with a specially-built valve. See, most of the stuff we’ve talked about is all digital. Simple electrical signals tell your thermostat to kick on, and the thermostat does the real work along with the air conditioning system. For this project we had to work with a set of physical valves that Mr. Parks supplied so that it would produce the mechanical work, not just an electrical signal.”
“And I assume you’ve made delivery of all this to Parks?”
He looked sheepish. “Yesterday.”
“Do you have any of those valves still around?”
Guy hesitated, and I raised a threatening eyebrow.
“I’m sure we do,” he said. “We took a handful of them to mess around with.”
“Get me one,” I said.
While he picked up a phone and placed a call to someone in his office, I stood and walked to the window. But I paid no attention to the view. My mind was on a valve system that Steffan Parks could now use to exploit a water treatment center. It wouldn’t be salt water he released into a community’s fresh water. It would be a derivative of tabun, the Nazi nerve agent. The same chemical used to murder three people in Santa Fe and one Q2 agent in Scottsdale.
Me.
Chapter Nineteen
It didn’t look like much, but how many valves do? I went from the AppaDabba offices to a pack-and-ship store, carefully swaddled the device in way too much bubble wrap, and overnighted it to the geniuses working on the second floor of the Q2 building in Washington. Inside the package was also every scrap of information about the phone app that would trigger the release.
Every few minutes I found myself checking my phone, holding on to the belief I’d see a message from Jonas.
By one o’clock I was inside San Antonio’s quaint but efficient airport, boarding a plane back to Phoenix. I had no proof that’s where the dirty deed was going down, but I stood a better chance of digging up something there than I did in Texas.
At least the conversation with Guy, the preppy techie, had delivered some good intel. Parks was bent on introducing poison into a city’s water supply, and now we at least knew the equipment he’d be working with. After buckling my seat belt and lowering the window shade, I put on the noise cancelling headphones I’d picked up in the concourse and settled in to think.
One thing that kept nagging me was the notion that additional players were involved. The fact that a third person may have poisoned the Marquart Labs employees in Santa Fe was a jolt. We’d assumed that Parks and Pradesh worked alone, two deranged scientists and lovers intent on murder and mayhem. If there was at least one more involved, who could say there weren’t more?
Which brought me back to a sickening thought: How could we be sure we were dealing with only one target? Maybe it would be one to start, and then another, then another. The app developer had provided Steffan Parks with all the technical know-how he needed to employ his deadly chemical expertise. Would one major blow be enough to satisfy his lust for revenge, his insane demand for professional respect?
I didn’t ponder the question for long.
The answer was no. Once would not be enough. Santa Fe had been an experiment, one with the secondary benefit of striking down an academic foe. The next event would be larger, deadlier, and worthy of every news source in the world.
Would a third, decisive blow cement his legacy? Just one brief meeting with him convinced me he wouldn’t stop anytime soon.
Then I began mulling over my odd-couple pairing with Jonas Aiken. I’d taken him by gunpoint on a 900-mile joy ride and spent the majority of that time trying to understand his association with Parks. And then to finally crack the shell and discover his motivation was an obsession with Jayanti, an almost embarrassing puppy love? Strange. Even when faced with the harsh truth that she’d used him the entire time, he’d doggedly remained smitten.
He’d tipped off his crush that I — posing as Department of Defense rep Ed Phillips — might be on her trail, and we all know how that ended for me. So why the hell I was sitting here, on a Boeing 737, worried about him? I’d grown attached to him like you would to a pet, and I feared he was about to be put down. And yet when the time had come beneath that dark underpass, letting him go with Parks and Pradesh seemed like the right call. It was a supreme hunch, one I shouldn’t second-guess. But I was anyway.
I still had confidence Jonas would come through. Maybe I had to have confidence because I’d placed so much faith in him.
The plane barreled down the runway and lifted off. Before a quick layover in Dallas I had an hour in the air to puzzle out other components of this case.
Assuming I was right, and the target city — at least the first one — was in Arizona, then what would it take for Parks to pull off his plan? He had his valves and he had the app to remotely operate them, and he had a homemade batch of poison. What he needed was access to a water supply.
But how would one go about gaining access to a facility like that? Security would be tight enough that they wouldn’t let just anyone wander in and poke around.
At least I didn’t think so. Who knew how those places operated?
I made a mental note for my first visit in the morning: A water treatment plant. No sense just guessing. And I’d have Poole arrange for every plant in Arizona to quietly step up their security measures for the time being.
The quiet aspect was important. If I’d learned anything in my years with Q2 it was the need to keep our investigations on the down-low. All it took was one copycat to hear an idea like this and they’d wanna see if they could get their names on the 24-hour news channels, too. It happens more than you think.
What if Parks had already figured out his access point? What if he had gallons of his poison already positioned, just awaiting the technology pack to make it all go?
And where would one store that much killer potion? It would take an awfully large supply to contaminate that much water.
Or would it?
Even through my headphones I heard the frustrated sigh escaping my lips. So many questions.
And there was still this potential third person on the opposing team. I doubted if Steffan Parks could actually recruit someone off the street into his plan; it would be another person who felt wronged. It might not even be a scientist, but just some other soul who had a beef with America and wanted to make a statement. A sick, repulsive statement, but a statement nonetheless.
After I’d joined Q2 one of my first official meetings with Quanta consisted of a long discussion about this very subject. She prepared me for the never-ending, relentless onslaught of people with grudges. Everyone has a grudge, a slight they can’t forgive or forget, she said. Most people live with it, bury it, or simply ignore it.
But then, she told me, there are a few who are pathologically wired to seek their own warped form of justice. And when that justice involves the killing of large numbers of innocent people, Q2 must step in. Some might say we defend the defenseless, but that’s not it exactly. It’s more like we defend the unsuspecting.
We’re not infallible, but the general public would freak out if they knew how many times a Q2 agent had prevented a catastrophe. Let’s just say it happens several times a year. Sometimes with help from our buddies at another agency, like the FBI or NSA, sometimes through sheer, dogged determination to not let the bastards win.
Quanta once revealed that the psychological profile of an agent candidate must include one critical component: A maniacal competitive streak. The other law enforcement groups may or may not appreciate that quality, but at Q2 it’s a requirement. You can be the at the top of your class in every other category, but if you don’t have an innate desire to crush your competition at all times, then go peddle your resume to the CIA o
r your local state patrol.
And that’s no knock on those guys; they’re probably badasses in their own way. But there’s competitive and there’s competitive. You’ve probably known a few people in the latter category. Never enjoyed playing ping pong with them, did you?
It helps that in our case we’re basically replaceable parts. Being hell-bent on winning is easier when you know you can always come back later to complete the job. That doesn’t mean we’re irresponsible with our host bodies, but knowing you have a spare sure takes some of the pressure off. Maybe juices that competitive spirit a touch more.
Apparently it was in my file somewhere that after not getting any scholarship offers to play football, I’d walked on at my university and tried out. With a hairline fracture in my leg. Taped it up, went out, and impressed the coaches enough to get an invitation to play.
Until my first practice two days later, when I creamed our star quarterback with a vicious — but legal — hit after he talked shit to me across the line of scrimmage. Hitting your own quarterback is frowned upon. I was kicked off the team.
It was just as well. I used the extra time to learn martial arts and take some advanced science classes, both of which later helped when I joined the military. And that specialized training, combined with an impressive combat record, led to my interview with Quanta.
So smearing that asshole QB with the big mouth ultimately got me this job.
Of course, he was drafted in the 2nd round and played seven years in the NFL, so he came out all right, too. He probably forgot that hit an hour after practice.
I never will.
That, my friend, is competitive.
I knew the next steps as soon as the plane touched down at DFW airport. With a quick plane change I’d be back in the air in 45 minutes. That left enough time to call Quanta.
“I’m sure there’s at least one more person involved,” I said, walking down the concourse to my new gate. “Maybe two. I doubt there’s more than that, or Parks wouldn’t be able to keep a lid on everything.”
“Santa Fe?” she asked.
“Yes. That person probably didn’t stick around town, though. Finding them might be too difficult right now. But the other one . . . we might have a shot there.”
“What are you thinking?”
“If Parks is going to pull this off, he’s going to need more help than Jayanti. He’s going to need someone on the inside.”
Quanta mused over this. “There are several water districts in Arizona, assuming you still think that’s the target. And each district must have dozens of employees.”
I’d spotted my gate, where people were just lining up to begin boarding. “Yeah, I know, it’s a lot of people. But maybe Poole and some helpers can cross-check all of them against anyone who’s had a beef with a funding organization, or someone who’s written anything combative about the government, or maybe been fired from a university lab.”
“That’s a tall order.”
“Stopping this nut job is an even taller order. Any little break could make the difference.”
There was a pause, and then she said, “And what about your friend, Aiken? I don’t suppose you’ve heard from him, have you?”
I resisted the urge to respond with all-out snark. So far Quanta was right, and I had nothing substantial to show for my gambit with the skinny scientist. He was still on the loose, still embedded with the enemy, and, for all I knew, was toying with me.
“One vague text,” I finally said. “But he’ll come through.”
“Hmm,” was all she said in response. Once again, the disappointed parent.
“All right, I have to board in a minute. Tomorrow morning I’m going to start going door-to-door with water treatment plants in the Phoenix area. The sooner we can get on that cross-check of names the sooner I’ll be able to narrow down the search on my end.”
“Be sure to upload when you get in tonight.”
“God, you’re starting to sound like Poole.”
We hung up. I walked over to the large floor-to-ceiling window and studied the plane parked at the gate, watching the frenetic activity going on around it. A squadron of workers, all with a specific task, each one critical to the success of the overall mission of the airline, moved in a choreographed dance of duty. Each individual unit had to be executed precisely or the plane would never even take off.
That was what Steffan Parks faced in his mission, too. His team of worker bees might be smaller, but their jobs had to be done to perfection for him to succeed.
I got the impression he was ready to taxi.
Chapter Twenty
A mix-up at the car rental counter in Phoenix had me in a minivan. That was a first. The attendant said the mistake could be fixed in a few minutes, but I was tired and instead just went on my merry minivan way. It was okay as long as none of my spy friends saw me.
On the way to the hotel I checked my phone several times. No message from Jonas. That bastard. If he let me down I might shoot him before I took out Parks.
Exhaustion came on quickly. After sleepwalking through the hotel check-in, I pushed through the door of room 512 and barely got out of my clothes before collapsing onto the bed.
Quanta would have to wait until the morning to get her upload.
I was just falling asleep when my phone rang, startling me wide awake.
It was Jonas.
“You son of a bitch,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “Where the hell are you?”
“I’m in Phoenix. Where are you?”
“I’m at a cemetery ordering your plot. What the hell took you so long to call?”
“What are you talking about? You think I can just excuse myself and say I have to call the Feds? Don’t be stupid. I’m glad you got away from the beast, though. I wasn’t really sure you would.”
“He wasn’t either, which is why he ended up in the river. If you’re here, then—”
“Here?” he said. “You’re in Phoenix, too?”
“Yeah. And that means we can meet. Tomorrow.”
“I don’t know . . .”
“I do. Tomorrow. Figure something out. If they went to the trouble of hauling your carcass back to Arizona they’re not gonna kill you right away. At least for a while. You have news, right? Something?”
“I think so. All right. I’ll get away. I’ll say I have to go try to make things good with my wife.”
I chortled. “That’s actually pretty good. They won’t wanna be anywhere near that mess. I have things to do, too, so let’s say 11.”
“Yeah, okay. But I need to get a new phone first, so my text will be coming from a different number.”
“Why?”
He let out a long breath. “Because, secret agent, a couple of times I’ve thought they wanted to use my phone for something. Probably just to check things out. And if it’s some third-grader’s phone without Internet or anything—”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Fine. Text me by 10:30. And don’t be late.”
I lay back on the bed but now I was wired. He thought he had something. Of course, that was more than what we had.
After a few minutes I realized I’d now be up for a while. I got out all my digital paraphernalia, curled up with the latest People, and uploaded.
The call from Poole came at 6:15, right in the middle of a dream where I was being poisoned again, this time by Quanta. I’ll let professional psychotherapists work that one out.
“Did I wake you?” she asked.
“Of course you woke me. Jesus, do you live at the office, Poole?”
“What? No, I have an apartment.”
I had to laugh. Struggling to my feet I made my way to the bathroom, turning on the light and grimacing at the horrid sight in the mirror. This particular face would never really become comfortable to me. And that ear was disgusting.
“Okay, I’m gonna put you on speaker while I splash my face and try to return to the living. What do you have?”
She was obviously settling in before a co
mputer screen. I distinctly heard clicks.
“We spent the night running down all of the science professionals working at various water treatment facilities in Arizona. There are many, as you might expect.”
I began brushing my teeth.
“We still have a lot to run down, but so far six of them have conflicts in their background. Nothing extreme, but there. We’ve basically eliminated half of those because their work is pretty hands-off within minor water systems. The other three are more interesting.”
“Okay,” I mumbled through a mouth of paste.
“There’s a man named Hart. He filed suit against his former university for loss of lab privileges. That was settled. He also sued his former employers for wrongful termination, and they also settled. He currently has a lawsuit pending against one of his professional organizations.”
I spit into the sink. “What a pain in the ass. But probably not our guy.”
“Why not?” Poole asked.
“His M.O. isn’t violence. He uses lawyers as a weapon instead of poison to strike back at people. He may be a candidate here, but probably not a strong one. Who’s next?”
“A woman named Oosterhaus. Censured by her university for what they called “injudicious conduct,” and later fired from a government lab in Virginia.”
“Oh, you know how much injudicious conduct turns me on,” I said. “What’d she do? Pants the Dean?”
“The documents are sealed. So it’ll take some digging.” She paused. “What’s ‘pants the dean’?”
You had to love Poole. “Let’s just say it’s injudicious. Google Pantsing after we hang up. I’m interested in Ms. Oosterhaus. And the third?”