by A S Bond
Scott said, “It’s all right, I’m here.”
Mike hand was jerked out of Scott’s as another convulsion struck, and the paramedic injected something into Mike’s arm. Scott didn’t like the color of his friend’s face, an awful gray. The doors were shut then, and they raced through the streets to the hospital in Foggy Bottom.
Barely fifteen minutes later, Scott stared through the window into the quarantine room of the hospital. Mike was barely visible beyond him; the machinery and tubes making him look like some futuristic Frankenstein experiment. A doctor left the room through two-stage isolating doors and, after scrubbing thoroughly, emerged to speak to Scott.
“How bad is he?” Scott feared the worst. Chemical attacks were becoming more common in the current war on terror, and he was well aware of their effects.
“It’s too early to give an accurate prognosis,” the doctor said, in the usual tones of hopeful caution. “Your friend was clearly given a large dose of what we suspect was Novichok, one of the cold war nerve agents, courtesy of our Russian friends. We’re waiting on toxicology now for confirmation.”
Russian, Scott thought. The Russians were known to have used chemical weapons in Afghanistan during the 1980s. There was a good chance some of their stocks had fallen into the hands of the Taliban after the Russians’ hasty withdrawal from the war in 1989. Until a leaked report in 1992 by one of the Russian scientists involved in its production, Novichok hadn’t even been detectable to Western methods.
“If you hadn’t ordered the Atropine, then he would never have made it this far. Although I must say you took a big risk in administering CPR.”
“Does he have a chance?”
“He does, but like I said, it’s too early to tell, and there could be some neurological damage. A chance though, nonetheless, thanks to you.”
“Thank you.” Scott left Isolation and stopped in the small waiting room to comfort Gail and pass on what he could tell her. The kids were at her mother’s; she hadn’t told them yet.
Outside, he could see Sykes and someone he didn’t recognize, almost certainly CIA. Other agency staff had closed off the entire floor and a solemn government scientist entered, wearing a chemical warfare suit, carrying the hooded visor. He spoke briefly to Sykes and the CIA man, and then walked past Scott, pulling on the hood and entering the quarantine area, the doors making a sucking noise as they opened.
“Sir.” Scott approached Sykes, who stopped talking to his companion.
“Jensen. Thank God you’re okay.”
“I assume you have been checked?” said the CIA man.
“Checked, tested, washed down and double checked,” Scott said. The man nodded, with no indication of concern.
“This is a nightmare scenario, Jensen,” Sykes said. “The area where he was he was hit is in chaos; FEMA and the police have set up cordons and people are being given emergency screening in tents on the Mall.”
“Any more casualties, sir?”
“So far, no. But after the sarin attacks in Tokyo a few years ago, we’re taking no chances.”
An agency flunky came up and spoke quietly into Sykes’s ear. The CIA man, who hadn’t introduced himself, spoke directly to Scott.
“There will be an official investigation, of course.”
“I would hope so.”
“It was almost certainly connected to something he was working on.”
“Well, you would know about that better than me, sir.” Scott replied. The man’s eyes narrowed.
“Maybe you might have some inf - “
“No, sir.” Scott could see a mob of reporters at the far end of the hallway. This was going to get messy, fast. A nurse led Gail out of the waiting room.
“I’m going to go tell the boys,” she whispered to Scott. “There’s a car waiting.”
Scott saw his chance.
“Let me take you, Gail. We’ll slip past these guys and use the back stairs. He glanced up; something had distracted the press pack. Every single one of them was on the phone, and the number of government flunkys had suddenly multiplied, running around like windup toys. Without even a glance in Scott’s direction, Sykes hung up and rushed out, the door banging against the wall from the force of his exit. The CIA man was nowhere to be seen.
Scott was relieved. He didn’t want to be answering questions, not until he’d figured a few things out. He didn’t know who he could trust and right now, invisibility seemed like the best defense.
Scott and Gail slipped out the service entrance past the ambulance bays, and into the waiting sedan. Scott immediately raised the glass partition between them and the driver so they couldn’t be overheard, but Gail seemed incapable of saying anything. Instead, she sat huddled next to him on the wide leather seat, her face twisted by distress. He put his arm around her, a little awkwardly, and she gripped his other hand.
They drove that way the few miles to her mother’s house in Bethesda. They passed through a city in chaos; sirens wailed at every corner, and police stood guard at every intersection. Yet their government car and its single motorcycle cop riding ahead were waved through. Maybe further evidence of the nerve agent had been found, thought Scott. Either way, it was being treated as a full terrorist alert, that much was obvious. Still though, it seemed a little odd, given that it was such a targeted hit. It was professional. Personal.
But he didn’t have time to think about it. The car pulled into the driveway of a two-story brick Colonial. Fortunately, there were no press waiting, and he helped Gail out. The front door opened then, and he could see an older woman and two small children in the doorway. Gail looked up at him and spoke for the first time since the hospital.
“Just find who did this to my Mikey, Scott. Can you do that for me?”
“I will, Gail. Count on it.”
She nodded and walked unsteadily up the path.
Chapter 31
It was late the following night when Dex felt the ship slowing. He was sitting with his back against the side of the tender, facing out across the stern. No one could see him from above, and he would have plenty of warning if anyone came out onto this part of the deck. They hadn’t in the past three days, though.
He was waiting for the ship to make the turn around the end of Point Charles, and into the vast estuary of Chesapeake Bay. Brooke had told him to watch for the bridge, which would be the one reliable marker in an otherwise black night, and he’d been sitting on the open deck since dusk, watching for it.
It was close to midnight when the ship began a wide, slow turn. The wind swung around and he felt its cool insistence against his left cheek. Were they there?
Facing away from the direction they were traveling, Dex heard the bridge before he saw it; a double string of light and noise that suddenly swung above his head as they passed beneath. They were now on a branch of the busy Intracoastal Waterway, and life was about to get a lot more interesting.
Up ahead were the military installations, including Dahlgren Naval Base and, closer to D.C., the Marine base at Quantico. Dex couldn’t imagine how the ship was going to get past all of those to reach the part of the Potomac River where it narrows and flows barely six blocks from the White House itself.
For now, though, they were still in the lower reaches of the bay, where marshes and low, tree-covered spits reached out into the water. Prettily painted clapboard houses dotted the islands, facing outwards into the salty breeze, each with its own dock of weather-worn planks that, in the daytime, would be adorned with pelicans and wading birds. These were good fishing waters for humans and birds both.
Dex took off his shoes and padded across the deck and into the crew’s quarters. No one was around; presumably they all had other duties in these, their last hours.
Dex put his ear to the door to the engine room. Only the mechanical throb could be heard, no voices. Stepping slowly through the door, he once again slid along the wall and peered around the corner. What he saw made him pull back in alarm.
The door to the en
gine room was wide open, and the bomb wasn’t just guarded, it was the center of attention of a group of armed men. It seemed likely that the weapon was going to be primed very soon.
He jumped as the door opened at the top of the stairs, but it was Brooke. She beckoned to him. He went back up, and she murmured in his ear.
“Two on the bridge, one patrolling on the decks.”
Dex nodded. No hope of getting to the radio, then. It also meant they had to put Brooke’s plan into action.
Dex looked at her, and she nodded encouragingly. He knew there had to be at least three armed men below, plus the scientist. Together, Brooke and Dex went down the steps again. Dex peered around the corner towards the engine room. Now, the door was shut. Had someone left? If so, where were they?
He took a breath and gave a thumbs-up to Brooke, standing just behind him, then walked quietly to the door of the control room and opened it. Behind him, he felt Brooke turn left into the equipment room to carry out her part of the plan.
They just needed that door to the engine room to stay shut for two minutes.
Dex wasn’t sure who was more surprised; him, or the man sitting at the electronics panel. The man clearly wasn’t expecting anyone; he was bent over and half crouching, as he checked connections in the lower half of the panel. Dex wrenched the fire extinguisher off the wall and swung it. In the narrow space, he couldn’t miss, and it caught the man on the chin as he stared up at Dex in astonishment. Metal connected with bone, and blood spurted as the man’s teeth went through his tongue. His eyes rolled back into his head and he slumped sideways.
Dex dropped the extinguisher and turned to the electronics panel. New connections had been wired in to accommodate the extra generators, he supposed. It made no difference. He closed down all power, using the manual override lever to switch off the engines, then the generators. Dex barely noticed the gradual decrease in noise as he picked up the fire extinguisher again and smashed the panel. Sparks flew with every blow. There was no way any of it would work again, anytime soon. The whole system now lay mangled before him.
Stepping over the unconscious man, Dex pulled the Magnum out of his holster and shoved it into his own pocket. It was heavier than he expected.
The absence of engine noise had been replaced by a rising tide of panicked shouting from the engine room. Dex grabbed the small canister of Jet Ski fuel Brooke had placed outside the control room door, but he paused for a second as he looked at the unconscious man. An image of Max’s charred body in the woods came into his mind, and, instead, he turned and splashed the fuel into the equipment room.
Throwing the can and what was left of its contents into the middle of the room, Dex pulled out his box of matches. Just two were left. With shaking fingers, he scrabbled at the box. One dropped onto the floor. He cursed. Every second felt like hours. Then the match was in his hand and, with a firm strike, it flared into life. His eyes focused beyond the flame where the door to the engine room had opened. Three armed men stood in the doorway. Their eyes met, and Dex tossed the match. They disappeared in a flare of orange.
He didn’t hang around. The fire wouldn’t delay them long, but it would be enough for him and Brooke to get off the ship. He found himself up the steps and on the crew deck with no memory of how he got there. Brooke was waiting for him by the door to the aft deck by the tender.
“Did you do it?” Dex shouted as he ran towards her.
“Yes, I - “ The rest of her words were lost as bullets rattled into the deck in front of them from above. Brooke screamed and flung herself backwards into the passageway. Dex pulled the heavy metal door shut.
Brooke was already running down the passageway. At the T junction, she turned right and bolted up some steps to the main deck, where she pulled open a door on the starboard side. Dex grabbed her before she could run out. Pulling the weapon from his pocket, he cautiously scanned the deck. There was no one around, but before they could make a run for it, Brooke leaned forward and did something to the gun. The safety catch. Dex didn’t have time to feel like a fool, because the shouting from the equipment room became louder. Those men would be up the steps and onto them in seconds. He slid out of the open door onto the deck with Brooke close behind him. They flattened themselves against the side of the ship and moved towards the stern, the tender, and their escape route.
More bullets splintered the deck at their feet. They came from the bridge, but Dex aimed his weapon not upwards, but at the man standing twenty feet away, blocking their escape route. He shouted something incomprehensible at them and pointed his gun at Dex. Then, with a slow smile, he moved it to the right, so that he was aiming at Brooke. Dex wasn’t aware of any decision to squeeze the trigger, but he felt the Magnum go off. The power of the kickback caught him by surprise and he almost dropped the gun, but the man was down and screaming.
More bullets from above chewed up the deck, and the sound of feet running came from above, down the ladder.
The injured man tried to crawl towards his weapon. There was no way they would reach the tender, Dex knew, so he grabbed Brooke’s arm and dragged her with him in the opposite direction, towards to the bow. The bulk of the top deck kept them out of view of the gunmen above, and they stopped at the rail, panting. The ship was dead in the water and drifting. In the weak moonlight, Dex could see a promontory ahead. The current was washing them towards it, but it would still be quite a swim.
Another spray of bullets made up his mind.
Dex turned and fired simultaneously. The windows on the bridge shattered, and the returning fire stopped long enough for him to grab Brooke.
“Ready to swim?” he shouted
“Hell, yes!” Pulling away, Brooke ran past him and with one hand on the rail, swung herself over in a single fluid movement and dropped from view. A moment later, there was a splash.
More shouts came from the deck above him, and Dex fired in their direction until the gun clicked. Empty. He swung himself over the rail.
The cold water hit him like a block of concrete, and he burst to the surface, gasping. He spun around in the black water, looking for Brooke, but he couldn’t see her. Bullets began raining down around him then, and he took a deep gulp of air and dove down until his lungs felt as if they would burst. As he came to the surface again, he saw a shape, a shadow, up ahead. With a couple of strong kicks he was close enough to see it was Brooke. And she had something on her face.
As he got closer, he could see that she was gripping a regulator in her teeth and holding a small auxiliary air bottle. She pulled the regulator out of her mouth and handed it to him. He took a breath, and Brooke gestured to him to take it slowly. Forcing himself not to panic, Dex took three or four more slow breaths, and then handed it back to Brooke.
The shots that had been darting into the water all around them like demented gannets suddenly stopped.
He pointed in the direction he thought he had seen the promontory and started to swim in that direction, but Brooke grabbed his arm and pointed behind him.
Dex turned and saw the hull of a much larger ship, pulling up close to the Marie Louise. They cautiously moved away from the arc of this new ship’s lights. Large letters along the side of the ship told him that Brooke’s plan to activate the emergency locator beacon stored in the equipment room had worked.
The Coast Guard had arrived.
Chapter 32
Brooke trod water as she watched a rigid-hulled inflatable slip from the cutter and power towards them. Floodlights played over the Marie Louise, but she could see no signs of the crew. A loudspeaker blared a warning that the yacht was about to be boarded. Dropping the regulator and air bottle, Brooke drew on the last of her reserves and broke into a strong crawl towards the inflatable, reaching it just after Dex.
“Ship is stolen...men armed.... bomb...” She gasped out a warning to the two crewmen, but, even as they were pulled from the water and the warning was transmitted by radio to the Coast Guard vessel, a shot was fired from the yacht. It hit the bo
w of the cutter with a clang.
“Get down!” The crew forced Brooke and Dex onto the floor of the inflatable as they put the engine into maximum drive and roared into the cover of the cutter’s stern.
“This is crazy,” Dex whispered to Brooke as they lay face down in the bottom of the boat. “Fighting back. These Coast Guard vessels are fully armed, for Christ’s sake.”
“Crazier than trying to blow up Washington?” she whispered.
At the top of the ramp, the brightly lit interior of the cutter temporarily blinded Brooke. The cold water had numbed her limbs, and she struggled to step out of the little boat. Strong hands half lifted her, half carried her through narrow passageways inside the vessel. Someone wrapped a blanket around her, guided them into a small, plain room, and placed a cup of coffee into her hands.
She was beginning to get some feeling back into her hands and feet when a member of the crew came and took a seat next to them.
“I’m Andy Pearson, first mate of this vessel,” he said.”Can you confirm that you activated the emergency locator beacon?” He looked young, but there was a steadiness in his manner that reassured her.
“Yes,” she said. Her voice surprised her; it sounded husky and cracked, like it belonged to someone else. She realized she had probably done a great deal of shouting in the past couple of hours.
“Go on. “
“We were trying to warn you about the bomb.” Dex explained who they believed was on the ship and what it was carrying. Pearson nodded and scribbled some brief notes.
“You are sure the weapon is disabled?”
“As long as she’s dead in the water, it can’t be detonated.”
Pearson nodded and got up. He paused at the door, his face pasty under the fluorescent lights. “We do not have time for a full debriefing right now; you’ll have to do that at the National Response Center as soon as possible. Officially, you’re being treated as witnesses, not suspects. Securing the area has to be our priority. Is there anything else about this situation or the ship that I need to know right now?