Miracle Man (45 page)

Bobby did look terrible. Increasingly disheveled and unkempt, his eyes red and bleary, he was exhausted all the time. Obsessed with his AIDS research, the regimen he was following was punishing him brutally. “I’m sorry. I feel I’m getting close to something. I promise you —after this — I’m going to cut way back and we’ll lead a normal life. Maybe we’ll even move.”

Christina brushed her hand against his cheek. “It’s crazy Bobby. We agreed to start a family, but what’s the point? You can’t keep your eyes open you’re so tired and you’re constantly spaced out.”

Bobby
tried to use his charm to get over on Christina, but this time it wasn’t working. And he couldn’t blame her. This was no easier on her than it was on him. The relentless night terrors from which she had to salvage him and her struggle to pull him back to present reality when he got too far out there, were grueling for her. He was endangered and she knew it, and that destroyed any sense of stability for her in their relationship.

“I just can’t turn my back on this disease, Christina. It’s already killed twenty five million. It’s killing almost three million more every year. Thirty five million are infected and another three million get it every year. How can I slow down?”

The situation wasn’t helped when Calvin Perrone paid a visit and advised that Bobby’s TB cure and arteriosclerosis treatment had lifted him into the number one position on the crazies’ hit list, beating out the president. Perrone insisted that the security presence at Prides Crossing be increased.

McAlister and Ramirez agreed an overall time-frame for the completion of Ramirez’ assignment. Ramirez wouldn’t give an exact date nor would he tell McAlister what method he’d use. “It’s in place,” was all that he would say. Years of experience had taught Ramirez that the less clients know, the safer he was. “So how will I know when it’s going down?” asked McAlister.

“Watch CNN,” Ramirez replied.

Kurt Osmond, the operations head for RASI, stared intently at the enlarged map of Prides Crossing which was taped to the wall of the command room. Standing next to him was Ashfaq Bashir, a veteran officer of the Pakastani armed forces who had entered the United States on a visitor’s visa six years earlier and stayed on illegally. Technically skilled and rabidly anti-Western, his fundamentalist zeal had propelled him to a position of power in RASI in only two years. Osmond and Bashir reviewed every aspect of the meticulously planned assault. They examined the sleek bomb that had enough explosive power to easily obliterate the Prides Crossing laboratory. A single engine Cessna Corvalis stood ready at Woburn Airport. It could reach the lab in under twelve minutes. Prides Crossing had no defense against an aerial attack.

Standing in his office at 550 Park Avenue, Martin Turnbull gazed blankly out the window. He realized he had no choice but to cooperate with the SEC investigation. And he decided that maybe he could turn a negative into a positive. His career was in the toilet. He had already been advised by the Bushings board of directors that while they weren’t renewing his employment contract “at the present time,” they were willing to keep him on as an “at will employee” under the same terms until “they had clarity as to their long-term plans.” He knew, of course, that they were already looking for his replacement, and once it became known that he was being investigated by the SEC, he would be a pariah. He would be terminated immediately and would become unemployable. So Marty Turnbull made his decision. He needed to not only cooperate—but to make himself so invaluable that he could enter the government’s witness protection program—- a new identity, a new job, a new life and the retention of all of his assets. That’s what he needed.

Turnbull pulled Agent Thompson’s wrinkled card from his pants pocket and dialed the number on his cell phone. They agreed to meet at three that afternoon in Bryant Park at 42nd Street on Avenue of the Americas.

Shifting uneasily on a wooden bench, Turnbull’s eyes darted around as he surveyed the small park to be sure that no one from Bushings was there. Remembering something he had seen in a spy movie, he held a newspaper in front of him as he spoke to Thompson who was sitting by his side. “Let me be perfectly clear. I’m not admitting anything. I’m here to discuss possibilities that are so far reaching that a deal would have to be cut.”

“We already said that things could go easier on you if you cooperated.”

Turnbull turned radish red and his voice rose along with his blood pressure. “No. What I’m talking about is much bigger than that. You don’t know what I have. I want full immunity plus first-class treatment for me and my family in the witness protection program.”

“That’s out of the question,” Thompson replied.

“Then we have nothing to talk about.” Turnbull clumsily scrunched up his newspaper as he got up from the bench.

“Wait a minute,” Thompson said. “That kind of thing is beyond the jurisdiction of our Agency.”

“I thought it might be. So what you need to do is to involve the Justice Department—and I mean at a high level. I’ll only talk to someone with authority to cut the whole deal.”

“Do you really think you have enough value to warrant a deal like that?”

“I know I do.”

78

S
itting motionless in front of four computer monitors at 4:30 in the morning alone in the lab, Bobby was in a trance -like state that had already lasted over three hours. Then he snapped out of it. Without a moment’s pause, he began to scribble notes in his journal at a feverish pace, breaking only to type on the keyboard at maniacal speed. Page after page, equation after equation, his mental energy was blazing.

A smile crossed his face. “I got you now, you son of a bitch.”

The words were barely out of his mouth when he felt a crushing pressure on each side of his head. The chair that he was sitting on was propelled into the air like it was an ejector seat in a jet fighter. His head slammed into what remained of the ceiling. The second blast catapulted him thirty feet across the room. He bounced off a wall and crumpled on the debris ridden floor like a broken doll. Barely conscious, he felt a freezing cold wind blow through what remained of the structure as an unearthly howling sound echoed in the ruins. His head felt as if it were clamped in a vice and being slowly crushed. He expected to hear the sound of his skull cracking at any moment. A few computer monitors still flickered as they lay on the floor not far from him. The distorted image he thought he saw on the screens was a face—the same elongated amorphous face that had terrorized him in his most recent nightmares. “You’re finally doing it, you bastard,” Bobby mumbled. “Finally, after all these years.” When the third blast hit, it sent out a shock wave that was so powerful that it ripped the mainframe computers off their mounts and sent them and anything else in their path hurling through the air. One piece of a huge computer landed inches from Bobby’s head. When a large filing cabinet and a jagged piece of the conference tabled slammed into him with crushing force his luck ran out. The last remnants of the ceiling caved in as electrical fires burned. Bobby’s limp, cut and twisted body lay buried and bloody under a mountain of rubble.

Christina ran toward the lab screaming. The shockwaves from the blasts had blown out all the windows in the guest house where she had been sleeping and the only reason she wasn’t severely lacerated was because the shades in the bedroom had been pulled down and the heavy curtains drawn. By the time she got to the lab, a dozen security guards, brandishing automatic weapons and fire extinguishers were already there. Calls had gone out to the Beverly and Prides Crossing police, fire departments and EMS, all of whom were alerted that they were dealing with a catastrophe at the Austin lab.

The head of the lab’s security detail, an undercover CIA agent, had already called Perrone, who in turn called Varneys. Varneys immediately called the president. Standing rigidly by the phone in his bedroom, his voice was uncharacteristically shaky and his face was drained of all color. “This is Orin Varneys, sir. I apologize for calling you at this hour, but you need to know that a few minutes ago, Dr. Robert Austin’s laboratory was destroyed. We have every reason to believe he was in the building.” Varneys paused as he listened. He then responded, “No, sir. We don’t know his condition yet. No, Mr. President, we don’t know who’s responsible.” Varneys paused again. He held the phone farther from his ear as the voice he was listening to grew louder. Varneys replied, “We don’t know how it was done. Yes, sir—the facility was under our protection. You’re right, sir. There is no excuse. I take full responsibility. Yes Mr. President, I’ll call you the moment I have more information.”

As soon as Varneys heard the president click off, he slammed the phone down so hard it cracked its cradle. He called Perrone. “How the fuck did this happen? This is the second time we failed to protect him. The president will have my ass.” Varneys ordered an immediate media lock-down. Perrone and eight agents sped to Reagan Airport and took one of the CIA jets to Boston.

Three members of the lab’s security force were dispatched on motorcycles to await the emergency vehicles and guide them through the labyrinth of private roads that led to the Manzini lab. Within twenty minutes from the first explosion, the facility was jammed with ten police cars, four fire engines, two ambulances and a medevac.

Over thirty police and firemen piled into what remained of the lab. Some of them concentrated on extinguishing the electrical fires while others began to sift through the wreckage looking for Bobby. Christina ran into what used to be Bobby’s office. Nothing. She then ran into the section of the main lab where he often worked.

Combing through the refuse, she yelled to some firemen, “Help me move this stuff.” Frantically, she pulled and clawed at the piles of debris and twisted fragments of equipment, furniture, walls and ceiling, but there was so much of it that it was overwhelming.

The firemen used their crowbars to move the heavy remnants as quickly as possible, but all they found under rubble was more rubble. Christina wandered around in a panic stricken daze calling out Bobby’s name in the hope that he would answer. Another contingent of firemen entered the ruins with search dogs trained to sniff out people buried in collapsed buildings. One of the dogs began to bark as it stood atop a huge heap of mess. Six firemen hurried over and began to dig. After several minutes of frantic effort, they saw one foot, and then the other. They radioed and the EMS crew came rushing in. Christina joined them, pulling at the rubble with her bare hands. Bobby’s limp body was uncovered. His clothes looked like torn rags. He was twisted, his limbs in unnatural positions. His skin and hair were thickly caked with a mix of blood and white sheet rock dust which gave him a gruesome zombie appearance.

When Christina saw him, she became hysterical and lay down in the rubble next to him sobbing, her head on his chest. “No God. Please don’t do this to Bobby. He’s been so good to you. Please no.”

The head of the EMS team yelled out, “Don’t move him. Don’t let her touch him. His spinal cord may be severed.”

One of the firemen lifted Christina away. The EMS chief administered 10 ml of adrenalin for cardiovascular resuscitation, and began to give a very mild form of CPR to Bobby because his injuries looked too extensive to risk a more forceful procedure. Detecting a weak pulse, he put an oxygen mask over Bobby’s face. He called for a thin carbonite plank that could be slid under Bobby. To immobilize the spine, a restraining device was attached to his head, and his body was fastened tightly with six wide leather straps that would keep him still. He was then given a steroid drip to reduce inflammation and prevent further damage to the cellular membranes that can cause nerve death. Once this was done, four members of the EMS team gently lifted the plank onto a gurney and rushed him to the awaiting helicopter for the trip to Massachusetts General Hospital.