Final Disposition (17 page)

      Finally convinced that he wasn’t going blow himself off his feet, and destroy his ear drums and night vision in the process, Cellars slipped the successfully re-stabilized grenade into his jacket pocket.

      Then he scrambled over to the Humvee and knelt down beside MacGregor to check his pulse, concerned that the two double-doses of the Farmington-U Cocktail — in addition to the added kick of a pair of million-volt shocks — all within the span of six hours might have been more than the MP’s massive body could handle.

      Much to Cellar’s relief, his pulse felt strong and steady.

      
Good
, Cellars thought as he stood up and looked around to make sure that none of MacGregor’s fellow MPs were on an incoming vector. 
I’d hate to have to explain all of this to nurse Marcini.  Probably wasn’t quite what she had in mind by the term ‘de-railing’.’

CHAPTER 11

      The replacement vehicle MacGregor had ended up with for his one-track-minded escapee hunt turned out to be a dung-beetle-shaped military M996A1 version of the basic Humvee, consisting of the wheel frame, the engine compartment, the two front seats … and a bulbous armored rear compartment designed to protect and transport up to two litter-bound patients out of a combat zone.

      In effect, the M996A1 modification was an old military field ambulance on steroids.

      Cellars guessed that MacGregor hadn’t been happy with the replacement, but probably hadn’t had many options … if any.  He also thought the vehicle looked dangerously high-centered, and was probably a pain to drive in windy or stormy weather.

      But the odd-looking ambulance turned out to possess one crucial characteristic that made up for all its other supposed faults: a pair of small compartments thoughtfully hidden beneath the one mounted litter and second mounted gurney, each of which contained a rubberized and tightly-rolled-up body bag and two pairs of rubber gloves in Large and X-Large sizes.

      And it turned out that the little j-Connector devices had a basic clock option that provided their owners with an easily-viewed way of keeping track of the rapid passage of time.

      Having the clock option visually up and running provided a helpful incentive for Cellars to keep working, because it took him almost twenty minutes to unfold and open up one of the bags, work the sadly odorous body of Jeremiah Carter into it, seal it up, drag the bag and contents over and then into the back of the military ambulance, strap it securely onto one of the aluminum litters … and then drag and shove the much heavier MacGregor back into the driver’s seat of his old Humvee.

      
Starting to run out of time here, guys
, Cellars muttered uneasily to himself, pausing to catch his breath for a moment before grabbing his accumulated gear out of the Humvee and transferring it to the front passenger seat of the M996A1.  He had the uneasy feeling that MacGregor’s other MP buddies could suddenly show up at any moment; but he was also aware that none of his monitoring brain components — the time-keeping cerebellum specifically included — seemed all that concerned.

      
Hope you’ve got all the angles figured, guys … seems to me this is going to be a very close thing.

      The j-Connector digital clock read 02:09 — approximately forty minutes since Staff Sergeant Harthburn had given MacGregor the estimated forty-five minute ETA — when Cellars finally pulled himself into the driver’s seat of the military ambulance and emitted a loud sigh of relief.

      After strapping himself in, he switched the familiar ignition switch to ‘RUN’ … noted that the fuel gauge read just past half-full … waited another fifteen seconds for the glow-plug light to go out … started the rumbling diesel engine … reached over and disconnected the power line to the M996A1’s GPS unit … turned the unit off … and then cheerfully backed the ambulance up and turned right onto Vilas Road.

      Moments later, he heard Harthburn on the pack set radio frequency try to contact MacGregor to advise him that his GPS unit had just stopped transmitting, and to ask what the hell was going on.

      Ten seconds later, when MacGregor didn’t respond, Cellars heard an audibly furious Harthburn order his fellow MPs to step on it — to hell with the weather conditions — assuring his non-responsive senior sergeant over the airwaves, as he did so, that the entire team would be there, at the intersection, in another ten minutes … twelve max.

      
Okay, sorry guys
, Cellars thought, humming to himself as he gently accelerated the military ambulance back in the direction of Crater Lake Highway,
you were right.  Just a matter of data-gathering, synchronization and timing.  Never should have doubted the experts.

*     *     *

      Cellars estimated that the layer of snow covering the dark mountainous section of Crater Lake Highway leading up to Highway Two-Thirty and Jasper County had increased by at least a foot since he’d driven down it a few hours earlier; and there was no sign that anyone had driven on the road in either direction lately … much less thought about sending a snow plow.

      
Guess most people are smart enough to stay indoors in weather like this
, he thought morosely as he concentrated his attention on keeping the heavy — but amazingly stable — military ambulance in the center of what he hoped was still the road. 
Wish I’d remembered enough to be that smart.

      But Cellars knew he was just complaining to keep himself alert.

      The apparently well-designed and carefully-constructed rubber body bag had mercifully sealed off about ninety-eight percent of the odors emanating from Jeremiah Carter’s no-longer-functioning carcass.  And Cellars had taken a few extra seconds to toss the badly soiled gloves into the back of MacGregor’s Humvee before using a second fresh pair to wipe the exterior of the bag with handfuls of clean snow.  That had all helped too.

      So all he had to do now to keep the still perceptible odors down to a reasonable limit was to leave the windows open a crack to let in some fresh cold air … and he could even keep the heater running in the process.

      But Cellars was well aware that the heater, nice as it felt on his chilled legs, was an ever-looming hazard in the sense that he might not realize he was starting to get drowsy, and suddenly find himself driving way off the road.

      
Have to keep my mind engaged with something
, he thought, and then briefly brought the military ambulance to a stop in the middle of the road and retrieved his j-Connector.

      He’d intended to use the small electronic device as a radio, thinking that Eleanor Patterson might still be talking on the Sky Search Show and thus might provide some useful amusement — and maybe even a few more clues about what had actually gone on in Jasper Country over the past eleven days.

      But his frontal lobes had other ideas.

      
Let’s listen to ‘Symphonic Rock’.

      “Probably not a good idea, guys,” he said out loud, ignoring that fact that he was — apparently — talking to himself in a quite literal sense.  “You recall what nurse Marcini said about ’drifted away’?”

      
Yeah, but she was giving us drugs, too, remember?  We’re completely cold turkey now, so no problem keeping it all together.  Come on, it’s good music and we haven’t heard it for a while.  Let’s listen.

      Feeling as if he was giving in to some kind of addiction — or, more likely, obsession — that he hadn’t known he possessed, Cellars shrugged agreeably, and then swept and poked his way through the j-Connector’s menus until he found the listing for ‘
Symphonic Rock
’.

      One more poke of his finger and his ears were suddenly filled with the sound of an orchestra … playing very familiar and absolutely beautiful music.

      
Oh … wow.

      Five minutes later, Cellars found himself humming again — this time internally — while his head and hands kept time with the tempo and rhythm of the music, all the while feeling himself caught up in a swirling current of neurochemical pleasure as his mind anticipated and reacted to the harmonic shifts of the individual instruments … as if he’d heard this particular version of this particular song a hundred times before.

      
Maybe I have
, he thought, noting with satisfaction that he was having no trouble maintaining his focus on the road and the shifting weather conditions ahead.

      
Keeping it together just fine, guys … and by the way, nice music … gotta be a whole lot more pleasant to be on than all those damned drugs
.

      He didn’t have to hear any popped-up words to understand that the component parts of his mind were all in complete agreement.

*     *     *

      Ninety minutes later, Cellars found himself driving into the small, snow-covered town of Jasper Springs, disappointed in a way — because he knew he still had a half hour of ‘
Symphonic Rock’
  to listen to on his j-Connector — but, at the same time, relieved to be back in Jasper County where he hoped to start answering a lot of questions.

      This time he didn’t hesitate to stop at an open gas station to ask the attendant the way to the Jasper County Coroner’s Office.

      The young attendant at the pumps didn’t know — and seemed perfectly happy with the fact that he didn’t — but the considerably older sales clerk at the inside cash register did … and didn’t seem to be especially bothered by that knowledge at all.

      So, ten minutes later, Cellars found himself turning off onto a well-maintained entry road, and driving slowly past a large concrete sign that proudly told him that he was about to enter the grounds of the Jasper County Morgue.

      
About time
, Cellars thought with a satisfied sigh.

CHAPTER 12

      A sleepy attendant buzzed Cellars in through the main gate to the isolated and chain-link- fenced Jasper County Morgue compound, sounding as if he’d been hoping that he wouldn’t be woken up until the end of his shift.

      But he was standing outside the roll-up door to the receiving area — in a crisp white lab coat, and holding onto a sparkling metal gurney — at four-fifteen A.M. when Cellars pulled the military ambulance into the open-sided receiving bay, shut off the engine and pulled himself out of the vehicle with a soft sigh of relief.

      It had been a long night.

      “Wow, I’ve never seen one of these things before,” the young attendant said as he rolled the cart around to the back of the ambulance.

      “You don’t get many bodies delivered by military vehicles?” Cellars asked uneasily.  It hadn’t occurred to him that he might be doing something completely unusual … or worse, illegal.

      “Don’t think so,” the attendant shook his head, waiting patiently for Cellars to open the back door.  “We get an ambulance delivery from the VA every now and then, on an unattended death — but I guess they don’t have many of those on the base.  The military system probably keeps track of everybody pretty good out there.”

      
Except for me
, Cellars thought, as he pulled open the back door, and helped the young attendant transfer the not-so-heavy body bag to the gurney, and then followed him into the receiving garage.

      After rolling the gurney into a temporary holding freezer, and then shutting the heavy door, the attendant picked up a clipboard and began writing.

      “Your name?”

      “Major Colin Cellars. C-E-L-L-A-R-S.”

      “Can I see your ID, sir?”

      Cellars hand him the folded ID card.

      The attendant quickly scribbled down some of the relevant details, and then handed the card back to Cellars.

      “Any ID on the vic?”

      “Negative.”  Cellars shook his head.  “Found him alongside the road a little ways outside the base fence line.  No ID or tags on the body, so we don’t think he’s one of ours.”

      Cellars watched the attendant make a check mark on his form.

      “Probably should have just left him there, and called for a County response team,” he went on.  “But our MPs didn’t see any sign of foul play — he was just leaning there against a tree like he’d been wandering around in the storm, and stopped to take a break — and they’d already tracked up the area; so we figured there wasn’t much sense in everyone having to stand around and freeze to death in this damned weather waiting for a CSI team to respond and find nothing.  Just as easy for us to do the pickup and transporting; especially since I was already heading in this general direction.”

      “How about a general description?”

      The attendant didn’t seem to care who went out and picked up the stiffs … just as long as it wasn’t him, Cellars guessed from the indifferent tone of his voice.

      “Male, African-American, approximately five-ten, hundred and sixty.  No obvious marks or scars, but we didn’t look all that close; he was starting to smell pretty bad.”

      “Age?”

      “Indeterminate — I’d say early seventies, but the poor guy looked like he’d had a pretty rough life.  I could be off ten-to-fifteen years, easily, either direction.”

      “You want to be notified when the doctors do the post?”

      “Not necessary.”  Cellars shook his head.  “But I would like to get a copy of your autopsy report for our records.  Oh, and we would be interested to hear if you’re able to identify him by fingerprints … to make sure he really isn’t one of ours.”

      “No problem, sir,” the attendant nodded as he continued writing.  “Where do you want the report sent?”

      Cellars hesitated.