Final Epidemic (19 page)

Finally, after what seemed an interminable period, Dickie pulled off the turnpike and found a place where he could stop and consider his situation. In the foreground, the brown water was marked by whitecaps from a freshening sea breeze. It rocked the small forest of masts that jutted like leafless saplings above the low buildings at the waterfront before him, raising a chorus of clanking halyards that to a less preoccupied ear might have sounded musical. To Dickie, trying to think through his dilemma, they just sounded irritating, just sounded like a bunch of fuckin’—

Boats. Of course.

It was a converted cabin cruiser reconfigured as a fisherman, complete with a tuna tower made of welded aluminum tubing. The name
Corazón
was hand lettered across the stern, in paint that once had been the color of fresh blood.

Eddie,
Corazón
’s owner and at twenty-two the elder of the two brothers aboard, squinted up at the man standing on the pier. It was tempting: with this stupid flu scare, nobody was going to be out charter fishing for a while. But he did not like the look of this one, either—the words he spoke were a little too glib, the smile a little too slick. He knew no newspaper people, but this person clearly did not fit Eddie’s notions of one.

Besides, what kind of man asks to be taken to a place where things were being done—very serious things, indeed—to keep people out?

“I dunno, man,” he said, a trace of San Juan accenting the words. “Coast Guard was pretty clear about it. They don’t want nobody crossing over to the city, or coming out of it.”

“C’mon. Five hundred bucks,” Dickie said, an encouraging smile on his features.
Fuckin’ spic’s not going for it,
he realized.

He showed Eddie a cheap plastic camera he had dug from his glove compartment. “Look—how’s this instead? You just take me over to where I can get a couple good pictures for the newspaper. Then we’re back here. No harm, no foul. Whaddaya say?”

“Six hundred.” It was the younger brother, Tomás. He was seventeen, lean and fit, and on his shoulder an ornate tattoo of a unicorn cantered sinuously as he coiled a length of line. “Six hundred, cash up front, you got yourself a boat ride.”

Dickie pretended to consider the offer. It was more than he had in his wallet. But he did not intend the transaction to be any more than temporary in nature.

“Six hundred,” he said. “Half now, half when we get back. Deal?”

He looked down at Eddie, who nodded. Tomás broke into a wide smile.

“Let’s go out on the salt,
amigo.
”

They were less than a football field’s length from the narrow shoreline of Battery Park, beneath the towering mass of concrete crags and glittering glass of the city’s skyline. On shore, a crowd of perhaps a hundred had formed, a testimony to the ineffectiveness of the prohibition against public gatherings. It had watched
Corazón
’s approach; now it was a moving, gesturing mass. Some of its members shouted words that were lost in the stiff sea breeze and the crash of waves that flung themselves headlong against
Corazón
’s hull, atomizing into high-flying spray.

“I guess they don’t want us here.” Eddie grinned, his right hand expertly jogging the throttle to keep the craft in position
against the surging currents. “Either that, or they want us to get
them
the hell out of New York, eh?”

They had left the Jersey shore, moving in a wide circle that skirted Staten Island before curling north, their speed slowed to a crawl to minimize any wake that might be spotted by the helicopters that periodically flitted across the horizon.

To port was the Statue of Liberty, torch high in what was, given the circumstances, an ironic beckon. To starboard was Brooklyn; Dickie was certain he did not want to land there. Behind the cruiser was an expanse of open bay that merged into the Atlantic, its cooler air rushing unimpeded from the south toward the upward convection of the warmer land.

Now the bow of
Corazón
pointed directly at the jutting point of lower Manhattan. Here, the swirl of currents from the Hudson River tumbled headlong into the stiffening winds from the south. Without the wind shadow of the shore as a buffer,
Corazón
danced with the stiffening breeze in a reckless tango.

“Take it in closer,” Dickie said. “I want to get a tighter shot.”

The two brothers exchanged glances.

“Can’t do it, man,” Eddie said. “We ain’t supposed to be here at all. Cops get our hull number, we could lose the boat.”

“I’m paying to get close to the action, friend.”

“You get your pictures from here, okay?”

“Closer,” Dickie insisted. “Newspaper’ll pay if anything happens.”

“Bullshit.” Tomás spoke up. His voice, skeptical before, was now plainly mocking. “Wha’chu up to, anyway? You ain’t no newspaper—not with that piece’a shit camera.” The younger sailor stood easily in the cockpit, shifting his balance effortlessly as the swells lifted and dropped the craft. It was an intentionally casual posture, but from a lanyard around his left wrist a stubby fish billy dangled, its sweet spot stained dark with dried fish blood.

Uh-oh,
Dickie thought.
Little bro wants to show off his cojones.

“Chill out, man,” he told Tomás. “I write the fuckin’ story, then I sell it to the paper. They pay more if I get pictures.” Dickie’s annoyance was rising steadily, but he made an effort to sound reasonable. “Look, I’ll even put your name in it. You like that? Get fuckin’ famous? All you gotta do is take me a little closer to shore.”

He shot a quick look at Eddie. The older brother was still at the controls. But something in his attitude had changed too; a message had passed between the two brothers, and Dickie had no doubt that the content involved him.

Time to stop dickin’ around with these two,
he decided.

“Look—you want a bonus, right? Hey, no fuckin’ problem. Whatddya say to a little something extra, right now?”

He smiled broadly, ingratiatingly, and reached under the shirt he wore untucked over his pants.

Tomás winked at his brother, and grinned.

Then Dickie’s hand emerged, and the smile faded on the younger man’s lips. He opened his mouth to speak just as Dickie fired, a single shot that took Tomás high in the forehead and pitched him hard over the side as if he had been thrown. There was a heavy splash that Dickie heard rather than saw as he turned toward the other brother.

Eddie had not moved, except for his head. He stared first at where Tomás had stood an instant before, then swiveled to the man who had killed him. On his face was an expression that to Dickie looked more indignant than shocked.

Before Eddie could say anything, Dickie spoke.

“You know,” Dickie told him conversationally, “it don’t look so hard. I think I’ll drive the fuckin’ boat now.” He pulled the trigger once, then again.

It was not as easy as Eddie had made it look. Without a skillful hand on her controls,
Corazón
grew balky and willful.

As Dickie knelt beside Eddie’s body to retrieve his three
hundred dollars, she swung about on her stern, then wallowed wildly as she came crosswise to the waves. It almost knocked Dickie to the deck. He clutched at the steering post while Eddie’s corpse slid across the cockpit. It thudded against the gunwale, a red streak marking its path.

Dickie clawed himself upright. When he arose, he found the craft significantly closer to the shore than it had been only a few moments before. He was near enough to easily make out individuals, some of whom were moving in his direction. Dickie had no doubt that his shots had been easily heard by those on shore, and some had probably seen Tomás go overboard. It might be only a matter of minutes before one or another of them decided, martial law or not, to try for the good citizenship merit badge.

It was time to go and find another place to enter New York.

Gingerly, he advanced the two large chrome levers on the console. Immediately, the engines that had been bubbling in idle deepened their volume.
Corazón
settled at the stern, digging in and moving forward.

A wave, its strength multiplied by the increased speed, foamed into the boat’s bow with a hard blow, staggering Dickie. He had the bare presence of mind to turn the wheel to the right, into the sea, only to have
Corazón
nose deeply into an oncoming breaker.

The craft shuddered, pitching forward and throwing Dickie painfully into the wheel. Simultaneously, a storage locker near the cockpit door flew open. Amid the fish gaffs, mops and boat hooks that crash-bounced to the fiberglass deck was the athletic bag he had stowed there, the one containing three containers of anthrax spores. It skidded across the cockpit sole, finally coming to rest against Eddie’s inert form.

“Shit!” Dickie wrestled with the unfamiliar controls, realizing that the boat was almost into the surf line.

Less than twenty yards away was the crowd, some of the
more foolhardy among them even venturing out onto the jagged concrete blocks that took the shuddering force of the crashing waves. One person, his arm locked around a wooden piling that disappeared from sight with every breaker, was only a few yards away from touching the side of the insanely pitching boat.

The bag, and the anthrax, knocked and rolled against Eddie’s lifeless body, out of Dickie’s reach. Still at the boat’s wheel, he cut it hard away from the beach and the bow shouldered hard against the now-white surf.

Too slowly. Now more of the crowd had clambered down the slope of the rip-rapped shoreline, some shouting what could have been warnings or threats. The latter, Dickie had no doubt: he was certain they intended to swarm on board, whether to seize the boat or to wreak some vigilante justice.

For an instant, he had an image of being pulled away from the wheel, beaten and kicked, thrown into the churning waters to drown.

Near panic, Dickie reached under his shirt, his fingers clawing at the butt of the heavy Taurus automatic, clearing it just as the boat hit a deep wave trough and bounced, hard and viciously. The black automatic slipped from his grip, skidding out of sight under the bench seat.

He bellowed in anger and fear; no longer tentative, his hand slapped hard at the throttle quadrant.

Immediately, the engines roared, belching black exhaust as
Corazón
muscled itself from under the punishing seas. The boat pounded ahead for several seconds before Dickie looked toward the stern. He was out of range, safe for the moment from both the jagged lee shore and the New Yorkers.

“You crazy fuckheads!” Dickie Trippett screamed at them, his rage and the residual fear making his voice break like that of an adolescent. “You—” He found himself unable to speak. He looked furiously around the cockpit sole,
intending for a moment to recover his pistol and empty it at the mass of humanity.

At that moment another wave hit
Corazón,
rocking the boat madly and sending the half-opened athletic bag skid-ding within Dickie’s reach.

If he momentarily thought of all Anji’s patient instruction, he gave no outward sign.

The wind was blowing inland, toward the objects of his rage.

“Hey, all of you!” he shouted. “Breathe deep, you motherfuckers!”

Trippett peeled back the tin disk that sealed the metal can that held the light, dusty power he had been told to expect inside.

Instead, the can hissed loudly in his hand.

For the briefest part of an instant, he felt a cool moistness on his face that evaporated immediately in the wind. Startled, Dickie dropped the canister to the deck, where it sprayed its contents for a moment more.

“What the fuck—” He stared at the red-and-white container as it rolled with the pitching of the boat.

Unseen, the atomized particles rode the wind—ethereal as they spread upward and outward. Some certainly drifted harmlessly onto the ocean. But much of it would hang in the air for a long time, weightless, moving with the salty smells of the ocean through the crowd.

Even beyond.

In that moment, Dickie understood.

At that instant he heard the helicopter, overhead and closing fast.

12,000 Feet over Chesapeake Bay
July 22

Beck Casey had long since lost track of how many time zones he had circumscribed in the past two days.

By now, the sense of exclusivity that came from having a forty-eight-million-dollar taxi at his disposal was long gone. In its place rode the mother of all jet-lag headaches, which not even the pure oxygen he was breathing could burn through. Despite the discomfort, he had slept most of the way back from Moscow deeply and profoundly, even missing two of the F-15’s in-flight refuelings. There had been five on the return leg, reflecting the headwinds that are routine in east-to-west transatlantic flight.

Still, he snapped to consciousness when Frankel’s voice crackled in his earphones.

“Sorry to wake you, Dr. Casey. We’re ten minutes out of Andrews AFB, and it looks like we part company when we land.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Casey said, wondering when sensation might return to his feet, “but if I never fly again, it will be too soon.”

Frankel chuckled, a deep baritone rumble over the intercom.

“Sorry to hear that, ’cause it looks like you won’t be on the ground long. You’re heading out to Montana, Doctor.”

“Montana?” Beck repeated, wondering if he had heard Frankel correctly. “Why would I want to go to Montana?”

“I was hoping you could tell me, Dr. Casey,” Frankel replied. “Got the word while you were back there sawing z’s. Sorry. I’m just the messenger here.”

Beck’s inner ear felt the F-15 tip forward for the descent.

“Tray in the upright position, please. And on behalf of your flight crew, thank you for flying Eagle Air.”

Andi Wheelwright was waiting when the fighter eased to a stop at the ready-line in front of the airfield hangar. She waited while the ground crew disentangled Beck, relieved him of the flight equipment and deposited him on the tarmac. When she approached, Beck was eyeing a nearby Learjet with CDC markings.