Deadout (42 page)

The helicopters were hovering over us now. The pilot of the jet slipped out of the the cockpit door and ran off into the darkness.

Flashing police lights appeared next to the airport buildings, a single cruiser swinging around in our direction. Jimmy Frank.

I heard a strange zipping noise, and simultaneously eight black-clad tactical agents descended on cables from two of the helicopters. They hit the ground with a slight flex of the knees, and suddenly eight assault weapons were pointed at my midsection.

They didn't tell me to drop my weapon, so I didn't, but holding it while they ignored it made me feel even more stupid. Pearce walked over to the jumbled pile of bee boxes and turned to the nearest agent. “Give me your knife,” he said. It was a big knife.

“You guys Darkstar?” I asked the guy closest to me.

His voice was muffled by his helmet and visor, but I'm pretty sure he said, “Darkstar's for pussies.”

The third helicopter landed twenty yards away. In the light from the jet I could see that this one wasn't black. It was green.

Pearce puffed the cigar furiously, blowing the smoke over the hive. Then he poked the knife into the side of the beehive and twisted, prying it open. He slid out one of the frames, then another, puffing smoke at it all the while. The third frame he pulled out had a single bee. “The queen,” he said triumphantly, to no one in particular. Then he slid the frame back into the box and repeated the process with the next box.

Jimmy screeched to a halt. As he got out of his cruiser, three of the assault weapons swiveled in his direction.

I called over to Pearce. “Now you're in trouble.”

Jimmy looked at me, and I shrugged.

“What'd I miss?” he asked.

I gestured at Pearce, standing and brushing off his pant legs, his head in a cloud of cigar smoke. “I told him he was under arrest.”

“How'd he take it?”

“First stage is denial.”

The door to the green helicopter slid open, and a chest full of medals with gray hair and impeccable posture stepped out and walked toward us. “I'm Major General Vincent Van Cleef, U.S. Army,” he said. “What's going on here?”

“He's under arrest,” I said, pointing at Pearce. “And I'm pretty sure he is not going to come quietly.”

“Hello, Vincent,” Pearce said as he returned the knife to the agent who had loaned it to him.

Vincent nodded to him, and then turned to me. “On what grounds?”

I looked at Jimmy and raised an eyebrow.

“Fraud, theft, conspiracy to murder, racketeering. Violating the harbor's anchorage rules. For starters.”

Pearce laughed and handed the cigar to the agent, as well. “Get those,” he said, pointing at the bee boxes. Then he walked back toward his helicopter, patting Van Cleef on the shoulder as he did.

Vincent nodded and cleared his throat. “Well, I'm afraid I am going to have to assume jurisdiction here.”

The agent with the cigar spoke into his wrist. A moment later a massive black canvas cargo bag descended on another black cable. The agent started gingerly loading the boxes into the sack.

“You know, these guys risked a catastrophe,” I said, loud enough for Pearce to hear. “Put millions of lives and a third of our food supply at risk, submitted falsified reporting documents.”

Van Cleef stared at me impassively. Pearce put one foot on the step to the helicopter; then he turned and gave me a little salute. I still had a gun in my hand, and I thought about using it, figuring I might be able to get off one shot before they cut me down. Then Pearce disappeared inside the helicopter.

The agents must have read my mind, or at least my face, because when I looked away I saw that three of them had my head in their sights.

“There's at least five dead bodies, Van Cleef,” I called out as the rotors started up on Pearce's helicopter. “Those bees are how most of them died.” The agent packing the bee boxes stopped and looked over at me. “You can't just let him go,” I said.

He smiled at me, sadly and almost fondly, like I was a child who had observed for the first time that life is unfair. He gave his shoulders a slight hitch, probably the closest thing to a helpless shrug a man like him could muster.

“National Security,” he said, as if that explained it all. Then he turned on his heel and walked back to his helicopter.

Pearce's copter rose into the air, and a moment later, so did Van Cleef's. Once the bee boxes were all in the cargo bag, it disappeared into the air. The tactical agents each grabbed their lines and tugged, almost in unison, rising into the air as a group.

Jimmy and I watched as they rose and the helicopters holding them banked away into the night sky.

“What just happened?” he asked as the sound of the helicopters faded away to nothing and the lights disappeared over the treetops.

“Same thing that always happens.”

 

78

In the flashing red light of the approaching fire truck, I saw Nola running toward me across the tarmac, and in that moment I knew she was all that really mattered. She almost stumbled when she saw Sumner's body from the corner of her eye, but she didn't slow down, not a step. She kept coming until she wrapped her arms around my neck, holding me like she was never going to let me go. I hoped she never would.

“Is that Sumner?” she asked, her eyes darting toward his disfigured body, then away as she buried her face against my shoulder. She was wearing an extra large Martha's Vineyard T-shirt with the tags still on it. Her hair was damp and she smelled of cheap soap.

“It was,” I said, stroking her hair.

She pulled away from me, suddenly panicked. “What about the bees? Where are they?”

“They're dead,” I said. “Sucked into the jet engine.” She looked over at the burned-out engine, at the front of the jet pressed up against the truck. “Or most of them are.”

She looked up at me. “What do you mean?”

“Archibald Pearce was here,” Jimmy said. “He showed up with some ninja SEAL Delta Force Texas Ranger types and the blessing of the U.S. government.”

She looked up at me, and I nodded.

“He did that to Sumner,” I said. “Then he left with the queens.”

“Are you serious?”

Jimmy nodded. Then so did I.

She thought about it for a second, then said, “I'm glad you're okay,” burying her face against my shoulder, holding me almost as tight as I was holding her.

Eventually, she pulled away. “What about Sumner?” She gestured at the crumpled body without looking at it. “We should tell the authorities what happened.”

I looked around at the jet, flames licking out of the engine, then at the smashed truck and the approaching fire units. “I'm pretty sure they already know.”

 

79

A bee hovered in front of my face and I froze, resisting the urge to swat it away. It meandered over to the tomatoes and then settled on some cucumbers. It was late July, and the garden was exploding. I knew Nola had a knack, but I hadn't fully appreciated it until the salads started appearing every night, all produced in our own little garden.

The bees still made me jumpy, but I was getting over it. Seeing how hard they worked, I had to admire them.

The events on Martha's Vineyard caused enough of an uproar that the special exemption was rescinded, and the pilot program on the island cancelled. All the Bee-Plus bees were removed from the island and returned to isolation at Stoma's facility on Samana Cay. More than a dozen feral hives were found on the island and destroyed.

We had stopped the bee-pocalypse. Hooray.

It was a victory in a lot of ways. But not in every way.

Sumner took the blame, posthumously, for everything that happened. Stoma said he had falsified documents and misled them, which was true. Archibald Pearce and Stoma Corporation effectively distanced themselves from the entire thing. They were victims just like everyone else, if not more so, defrauded of millions of dollars by a dishonest business partner who preyed on their desire to help America's farmers and save the world's food supply. Luckily, they were able to salvage enough of Sumner's research that they could continue their efforts to do something about the terrible scourge of colony collapse disorder. By something, of course, they didn't mean stopping it, they meant cashing in on it.
Stoma Corporation: Technology to feed the world today, and tomorrow
.

The unintended aggression of the bees was a footnote to the story, part of what Sumner had been irresponsibly trying to hide until he could fix it. But while Sumner did try to hide it from Stoma, Pearce knew. And if playing dumb and letting Sumner try to work things out was the price of cornering the pollination services of a third of the world's agricultural sector, Pearce was willing to go along, as long as things remained under control. But where Sumner only saw a setback, Pearce recognized an opportunity, as well. And his high-placed friends in Washington were only too happy to fund research into a new class of bio-weapons.

BeeWatch got funding to hire a few more people to make sure the Bee-Plus mites were eradicated before the beekeepers brought their bees back. Moose stayed on the island to help them, and to keep us posted on other developments. Chief Wilks stepped down to spend more time with his family, and Jimmy stepped in as acting chief. According to Moose, the conventional wisdom was that the job was Jimmy's to lose, and most people thought that's what would happen. But Moose said Jimmy was doing good, drinking less, taking care of himself. A new girlfriend will do that to you.

I was happy when I heard he and Annalisa were an item, but I'd felt a pang of something else, too. Jimmy was a lucky guy.

Darren Renfrew wasn't quite as lucky. He tried to take on the big guys, gambling everything on a political maneuver to take Stoma's place in the ASSP program. He'd gone into hock to buy the political favors to do it, then leveraged himself even further, consolidating as much Thompson Company stock as he could get his hands on to maximize his profits when the windfall came. When the bid failed, the stock tanked. He lost everything.

Hell, I even thought about giving him his money back. But then I thought about not giving it back, and decided that was the way to go.

After all, he still had family he could stay with. Teddy got out of jail after a few more days, with probation and community service. I liked the idea of Renfrew sleeping in one of Teddy's cabins, his feet sticking out of the bed. Who knows, maybe they could bond over the experience. If they didn't kill each other first.

Things on the island weren't all that had changed. Nola had changed, too. We drove to see her specialists in South Carolina almost as soon as we got back.

We told them about her exposure to massive amounts of pesticides. “That's not very smart,” the doctor said. “You shouldn't do that even if you don't suffer from chemical sensitivity.”

I told him we were quite aware of that fact. I didn't tell him she had done it to save the world, including his sorry ass, that despite her history of chemical sensitivity she had exposed herself to a torrent of chemicals that very well could have condemned her to a life of sickness and isolation. But I did tell him it was the single bravest act I had ever witnessed.

Nola shushed me. She can be quite modest.

They ran a battery of tests over the course of several days, and at the end of it, they said she seemed fine. Still a good idea to be careful around chemicals, and no one would say the word “cured,” because maybe she wasn't. But she was better.

We moved anyway, but not because we had to.

“No, Doyle, I don't want to live in a place that's regularly doused with poison,” Nola had said, “but I also don't want to live in the kind of dump where the landlord feels he needs to.”

Hard to argue with that.

I told her about the money I had put away, enough for a down payment on our dream house. She gave me a big wet kiss, then cupped my face in her hands and said, “I love you, Doyle Carrick. But maybe we should rent for a while first.” Then, as she led me into the bedroom, she added, “Besides, I could learn to enjoy city living.”

She took that job at Greensgrow Farms after all—farming in the city, a ten-minute walk from our new house. Her new boss had friends who were renovating a place, and they had gutted it but not finished it. They liked the idea of a nontoxic house, so we signed a lease and helped them finish the place, virtually chemical-free.

Nola said it was the first time since she left Dunston that she felt at home. A week after we moved in, her friend Cheryl came to visit. The one with the severe chemical sensitivities.

The two of them cried for the first half hour. But after that she seemed really nice.

*   *   *

I flipped the burgers and walked to the edge of the garden to wait, pausing as another bee buzzed past, drawn by the row of big yellow squash blossoms. It hopped from one to the other. Then apparently it had enough, because it flew in a straight line—a beeline—to the roof across the street. Don Shump, the neighborhood beekeeper, was over there tending his rooftop hives. No veil, no gloves, just him and his bees.

Nola had talked about getting some hives. I cupped her face and told her I loved her. “Maybe some day,” I said. “But not just yet.”

It was ten after five, which meant Nola would soon be home. I liked to watch her walking home. I like to watch her most of the time, but something about watching her walking up the street—tired after a full day of work but with a spring in her step because she is happy—makes me love her a little bit more each time. I looked over the edge of the roof, and there she was, right on schedule, wearing shorts and a T-shirt, her arms and legs strong and browned by the sun.

She gave me a big wave and that smile. And I thought, yeah, Jimmy Frank is a lucky guy. But I'm luckier.