The First 48

by Tim Green

  CHAPTER 62

  The kitchen in Dave’s cabin was neat and orderly. Tom found the coffee and made a pot. They sat at the kitchen table, as far away from the bloody mess on the front porch as possible. Jane found some pancake mix and made stack after golden stack. They drowned the cakes in some real maple syrup from a shiny metal can Mike found in the refrigerator. Even Jane wolfed down her food, drinking hot black coffee in big gulps.

  Jane and Tom exchanged stories about what had happened, how, and why, until most of the pieces had been put together. Mike wiped his plate with the last shred of pancake and pushed back his plate. He removed the papers from Mark Allen’s briefcase and silently spread them out on the table.

  After a few minutes, he said, “Holy shit.”

  Tom and Jane stared.

  “All these lab reports signed by Dr. Slovanich? It’s all about this Filoviridae. How it thrives in water. And check this out. This is the freaky thing . . .”

  Mike held up a map of the New York City area. Small round stickers—bright yellow ones—marked the different reservoirs surrounding the city. One site was circled in red ink. The Kensico Reservoir. A straight purple and white line ran from it into the city. The Croton Aqueduct.

  “Is this what this is all about?” Mike said. “The main water supply to New York? The truck Slovanich talked about?”

  Tom stood up and nodded his head.

  “It all makes sense,” Tom said. “If Kale Labs can start the virus, they can stop it too.”

  “People get sick,” Mike said. “Not cruise ships—the whole city. They step in and save the world.”

  “They get the government contract,” Tom said.

  “More,” Mike said.

  “Mark Allen,” Tom said. “We’ve got to stop him.”

  He looked at Mike, who nodded solemnly back at him. “Mark Allen.”

  “Kensico Reservoir?” Mike asked.

  “He’s already two hours in front of us,” Tom said. “You feel like taking another plane ride?”

  “What are you talking about?” Jane said, wiping her face on the sleeve of her baggy shirt.

  “Come on,” Tom said. “I’ll tell you while we go.”

  Tom finished his story. Rain dripped down off them and puddles bloomed on the concrete floor beneath their feet. The thin and fading beam of Tom’s flashlight passed over the gleaming white plane with burnt orange stripes backed into the corner of the hangar. The wind howled and the rain clattered against the metal roof. Sweat shone on Mike’s face beneath his headpiece.

  “Dad,” Jane said, “you’re making a mistake about him.”

  Tom shook his head, shined the flashlight up at his face, and said, “Have you been listening to me? He’s planning to do something.”

  “What about Friendly’s, Dad?” Jane said.

  Tom furrowed his brow and waved the light toward Jane. “You said yourself you didn’t trust him.”

  “When?”

  “On the deck cooking steaks,” Tom said, “when I told you about Gleason. ‘A man I met but don’t trust.’ Your words, Jane.”

  “He saved my life, Dad,” she said. “If he’s so horrible, why would he do that?”

  Mike was watching them, his head moving from one to the other.

  “He’s insane,” Tom said, clenching his fists. “He killed his own father.”

  “Why do you have to stop him?” she asked.

  “Because . . . ,” he said, straightening himself and raising his chin.

  “That must have been Randy Kapp’s plane we saw get blasted out of the sky,” Mike said.

  “With Gleason in it,” Tom said. He turned to Jane. “Maybe you should stay. This weather is bad.”

  “I’m going,” she said, pushing a wet strand of hair from her face, her back as straight as his.

  “Come on, Tom,” Mike said, tugging him by the sleeve. “Don’t. We don’t know for sure what he’s doing. We should stick together. I’ve flown in weather like this.”

  Mike walked over to the Cessna and opened the door. He reached in and flipped on the control panel.

  “Looks good,” he said. He reached into the pouch behind the pilot’s seat. “Sectionals are all here. I’ll get the coordinates.”

  Mike pulled one out and unfolded it.

  “Do you want me to pull these chocks out from under the tires?” Tom asked, bending down and grabbing the rope threaded through the thick rubber triangles.

  “Yeah,” Mike said over his shoulder.

  Tom went over to the hangar doors and pushed them open. The water cascaded in, drenching him.

  After less than a minute of scrutinizing the map under the dome light of the little plane, Mike told them to hop in.

  When they were sitting together in the backseat, Mike put his foot on the step and sucked in his breath. He plunged forward and got stuck.

  “I’m okay,” he said, holding up his hand at Tom.

  He wiggled and squirmed. His face grew red. He stopped and took a couple of deep breaths. He began to wiggle again. A low growl rumbled in his chest. He twisted violently, popped through, and bumped his head on the roof.

  “Ow.”

  “Are you okay, Mike?” Jane asked.

  “Fine,” Mike said, turning his face away from them and squirming into the pilot’s seat. As he reached for the controls a groan escaped him.

  “You okay?” Tom said.

  “Yeah. Fine.”

  Mike fired up the engines and ran his fingers and eyes over the instrument panels. He put on the headset and taxied the plane out into the storm. As soon as they cleared the hangar doors, a gust of wind and rain lifted one wing, almost flipping them over.

  Tom cried out.

  Mike fought for control. The plane crashed down on its landing gear and shot forward. Mike turned and kept going down the runway. He pushed the throttles to the floor. The end of the airstrip was coming fast. The wind groaned and the rain clattered against the windshield.

  “Hang on,” Mike said.

  He pulled back on the controls. The plane lurched up and then got slammed down by a wicked squall. They bounced off the runway with a horrible grinding crash, then rose back up into the air. Tom grabbed a hold.

  Mike peeled Tom’s fingers off his shoulder. They were up and climbing steadily. The wind buffeted them back and forth as Mike wrestled with the controls. The sides of his face were slick with sweat.

  “I’ll have to fly at about fifteen hundred feet, just below the cloud ceiling,” he said, shouting back at them through the noise. “It’ll be rough, but safer, believe it or not.”

  After only a few minutes, he announced that they were over Watertown and he was switching to hone in on the signal from Syracuse. He called it a VOR.

  Tom’s forearms ached from grasping the edge of the seat. His head hurt from scowling. Mike suddenly gasped and clutched his chest. He pawed at his collar and began to shake.

  The weather rocked the plane.

  Tom grabbed Mike’s shoulders with both hands and yelled for him to hang on.

  CHAPTER 63

  Mark went north, through a little strip of gas stations, doughnut shops, and hair salons that called itself the Town of North White Plains. He looked at his map to make sure before veering off onto Route 22. The road began to rise. The landscape grew precipitous, and jagged rocks began to expose themselves beneath the dripping leaves of the trees.

  West Lake Drive came upon him fast. He took a left and crossed over the narrow bridge. The guardrail was a series of rectangular limestone slabs seamlessly set end to end. Straight ahead, the road ran through the center of a classic stone rotunda.

  It was all so perfect, coming to him like it had in the dream.

  He was Carson and Carson was him.

  He’d dreamed of this in a flood of images, like paintings he’d once seen in Greece. Why was everything so familiar?

  When he saw the cop car, it was already too late to turn around. The cop, leaning against the car door, dressed in a dark
blue jumpsuit and cap, looked directly at him. Mark waved and accelerated on by.

  He passed through the rotunda and its thick Doric columns, catching a glimpse of the thick woods through its open arches before the sky and water opened up before him. To the left, rich green hills sprawled on into the distance. On the right was the reservoir, a dark tranquil body of water bordered entirely by trees.

  Mark checked his rearview mirror for signs of the cop. Halfway across, he switched his focus to the rotunda ahead. A set of headlights spilled out of it and crept toward him. Mark strained to see if there was a rack of lights on its roof. There was something. His stomach tightened.

  A ski rack.

  Through the second rotunda, there was another cop car, this time a white Jeep, nose out to the road behind a set of orange cones. Two cops leaned against it, staring at him as he went past. Just before he lost them from sight in his rearview mirror, they were still there. He took a deep breath and exhaled.

  He had seen a newspaper account in the White Plains paper about how patrols by Department of Environmental Protection police around the reservoir had returned to normal after a funding cutback from Albany. Normal meant almost no police presence. The local fishermen were happy. They left their boats along the shore on state property, using the reservoir as their own private fishing spot. Mark shook his head and snorted. No police to protect the water supply, but two officers stationed on an old stone dam. That was the government.

  As he rounded the bend the mist turned into a light rain, and he flipped on his wipers. Ahead at the traffic light stood a brick church with a thin white steeple that melted into the flat gray sky. To the right, up on a hill looking out over the reservoir, was the great stone filtration plant. Its flat hip roof covered a gallery of enormous arched windows. An iron fence surrounded the property and a guard gate blocked its driveway.

  At the light, Mark glanced down at his map. The plant was no longer used to filter the water. He smiled. Now it only served as offices for the Water Authority, but the intake pipe for the Delaware Aqueduct ran right through it. That aqueduct was the main source of drinking water for New York City. They’d start filtering it again after this gig. Six hundred meters into the water was the intake valve. He would row out and dump his barrel directly over it. The Ukrainian’s virus would spread like a red tide in the ocean, only this would be colorless and odorless.

  No one would know what it was or where it came from until the outbreak was well under way. Thousands of people would flood New York City’s hospitals. Hysteria would flood the entire country. Kale Labs stock would go from a dollar back up to the seventies. Maybe higher. Everyone would want a piece. And, since Dave went insane and killed everyone on the island, the leadership of the company would fall to the executive vice president. Him.

  The light turned green and he continued on past the filtration plant. The water disappeared from sight. To stay on West Lake Drive, Mark had to make a right-hand turn, and he did. The trees leaned in over the road. Large homes appeared on either side among the tall pines. Mark passed several cars, men in shirts and ties with cups of coffee. The vehicles were big, their grilles shiny, Escalades and Mercedes sedans.

  The road wound down toward the water. A yellow NO ENTRANCE sign on an iron gate warned him away from a small pump house built in the same fortress style as the filtration plant. Mark kept going, circumventing a cove and climbing up again. Black chain-link fence stretched along the guardrail just to the other side of the road.

  Mark kept going until he passed an area where two other residential drives came in on the left. A blue Cape Cod rested on a bright green lawn. Another yellow sign. DEAD END. At the end of the road was a dirt turnaround. No one else was in sight, and he stopped and got out.

  Three different paths led off into the pinewoods. Three weeks ago, Mark had had a pleasant conversation with a woman named Pat who worked in the Valhalla Town Hall. He asked about boat rentals, and she told him that there were none. Apparently, the local fishermen simply left their aluminum skiffs at the water’s edge. No motorboats were allowed on the reservoir.

  Mark stood for a moment, smelling the rich pine needles. Water fell in fat silver drops from the trees. Emerald ferns grew up among the undergrowth, giving the woods a soft inviting feel. He took a final deep breath through his nose and exhaled through his mouth. The place was heavy with solitude.

  He opened the back of the Bronco and rolled the barrel out onto the ground. Its sides were slick and the fresh paint gleamed, even in the gray rain. He slung the shotgun over his head, covering it with the poncho. Then he shut the back of the truck, chose a path at random, and set off down it, rolling the barrel before him.

  CHAPTER 64

  I’m okay,” Mike said, gasping. He shrugged Tom’s hands from his shoulders.

  “What happened?” Tom asked.

  Mike took a deep breath and exhaled.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m fine. My head hurts a little.”

  Mike shook his head the way a dog shakes a sock. He did it again, and Tom saw him squeeze his eyes shut hard, then open them. He did this several times, and Tom began to wonder if they would make it.

  “Mike, are you all right?”

  It was Jane.

  “Yes,” Mike said. He straightened his back and lifted his shoulders. A firm frown was fixed beneath his scowl as he did battle with the wind.

  Thirty minutes southeast of Syracuse, the clouds began to tatter above them. Soon stars winked down and in the light of the crescent moon, Tom could see the dark shapes of mountains. In the flats of the valleys, tiny farms and houses lay asleep beneath the halos of their light poles.

  At this moment it was hard to believe they had nearly crashed—but the pleasant weather was short-lived. Soon there was nothing to see out the window but a thick gray soup, illuminated by the plane’s flashing lights. Nearly two hours later, Mike told them they were close and began to talk to someone at the tower. Tom thought he detected a quaver in Mike’s voice as he received his instructions. When they finally came down onto the runway, Tom felt light-headed. Mike exhaled and turned his head to show them his smile under the hearty claps that Tom smacked down onto his back.

  Jane gave a little cheer, and Mike’s cheeks went red again.

  Tom was already dialing his phone.

  “Who are you calling?” Jane asked.

  “The police,” Tom said.

  He got through the dispatcher to a sergeant. Tom told him who he was and demanded a full-scale operation.

  “I’m talking about a terrorist plot,” Tom said.

  The sergeant asked for his driver’s license number and put him on hold for a minute. When he came back, he said, “Okay, Mr. Redmon, I know all about you, sir. Why don’t you just come down to the station and we can talk this over.”

  “This is an emergency, Sergeant,” Tom said. “Every second counts.”

  “I know it does, Mr. Redmon,” he said. “I know all about it. You have a very impressive past and I’d love to talk with you, but you’ll have to come down here. How about eleven-thirty?”

  “You dumb-ass,” Tom said. He snapped his phone closed and shook his head.

  Tom was still shaking his head in disbelief as they taxied to a stop. He climbed out of the plane and onto the wet tarmac. A small jet raced down the runway beyond, deafening him.

  “What now?” Mike said, squeezing out after Jane.

  “We go it alone,” Tom said.

  The woman at the car rental desk eyed Mike suspiciously. Tom put his credit card down and looked at his damp, mud-stained pants and boots. He tried to tug the worst of the wrinkles out of his shirt. The few other people who were in the small airport wore business suits.

  Mike was a disaster. Hair flat on his head. Eyes red and sagging. Pants smudged with dirt and his black T-shirt looking and smelling like it was ready to walk away on its own. Jane also seemed suddenly conscious of how she looked. She hitched up her tan trousers and held her hair back with one h
and.

  The credit card was good, though, and the woman behind the desk said it was easy to get to Kensico Reservoir.

  “120 North takes you right to 22,” she said. “Go left and you can’t miss the dam. You go over that and you’ll see the water plant on the right.”

  Tom asked for a map. Outside, he got behind the wheel. Jane scooted in back, so Mike took the other seat in front.

  “Locked and loaded?” Tom asked Mike.

  “Okay,” Mike said, patting the bulge of the Taurus on his waist.

  “I’ve only got two shots left,” Tom said, feeling for his snub nose.

  “Will you two stop it?” Jane said. “You’re going to feel stupid after I talk to him.”

  Tom looked from Mike to his daughter, then back to Mike.

  Mike shrugged and cast a guilty sidelong look at Jane.

  In about fifteen minutes, they came to the old dam at the head of the reservoir.

  “What about them?” Jane said, pointing at the white cop car.

  Tom set his jaw and kept driving.

  “Dad?”

  “They’ll think we’re loony,” he said. “Did you see the way people looked at us in the airport? You should have heard the cop on the phone. Like I was a nutcase. By the time we get someone to believe us it could be too late.”

  “It could be the right thing to do either way,” she said.

  “That’s not what my gut tells me,” Tom said. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Mike looking straight ahead, but nodding his head in agreement.

  They passed the cop and crossed the long narrow dam. The wind was picking up again. Rain spattered the windshield.

  “There’s another,” Mike said as they passed through the rotunda.

  “Just don’t look,” Tom said.

  The two stone-faced cops were just climbing into their white Jeep and out of the rain.

  Soon they saw a church, then the old filtration plant.

  “As far as I can tell,” Mike said, tugging the map from Mark Allen’s briefcase out of the big pocket on his leg, “the pipe will go straight out into the reservoir from here.”