Darkness falls, p.23
Darkness Falls, page 23
"That's not the way the world works, Erin, and that's why you've never quite fit into it55
They fell silent again, but this time it was Erin who broke it. "So does this mean we're back together?"
Her eyes widened. "Have you been paying any attention at all to what I've done? To the fact that there probably won't be a future for any of us?" *
"Now who's being overly logical?"
She turned and looked through the sheer curtains at the lights beyond. Erin stood and came up behind her, sliding his arms around her waist and pressing against her back. The city seemed strangely bright after the electricity rationing in the U. S.
"There's not much we can do now," he said, feeling her warmth sink into him. "Maybe blowing up his place in California will stop him. Maybe it won't. Either way, it's time to think about what's next."
"Next?"
"I have a lot of money that may not be worth the paper it's printed on in a few months. We could buy a floatplane, load it up with supplies, and head to Alaska. If Teague follows through with this, then we can wait it out there for a few years."
She pulled away, but wouldn't look at him. "Until everyone's dead, you mean? Until Mark and his new family have starved or been murdered?"
"There's no reason for us to die, too." "You mean there's no reason for you to die. There's every reason for me to."
"What good would --"
She turned and pressed her mouth against his, silencing him. When she pulled away, the look of surprise on his face finally got him that smile, sad as it was.
"Maybe for one night, we could pretend none of this ever happened. Do you think that's possible anymore, Erin?"
Chapter 45.
Stepping from the relative quiet of the hotel hallway into the chaos of the commandeered conference area was disorienting. But then, just about everything felt disorienting to Erin that morning -- the sunlight that had cut through the blinds to wake him, Jenna's naked body draped across the mattress next to him. Even his own face in the mirror. Something about it seemed different, but he wasn't sure what. Maybe everything. Probably nothing.
Jenna gripped his hand as they nudged past the conservatively dressed men and women darting around the room. It seemed that overnight Beamon had managed to move his entire staff over the border to Canada. No small feat these days, and an indication that he still had the government's support, though there was no telling how long that would last.
They stopped behind a man securing computer cables to the floor and Jenna tapped him on the shoulder. "Excuse me. We're looking for Mark Beamon."
He pointed toward a storage room at the back and they started for it, Beamon's angry voice becoming audible when they were still twenty feet away.
"Jesus Christ, Jack! What are we talking about here? You said I had a free hand and I used it."
Erin slowed. "Maybe this isn't a good time, Jen. We should go."
"Go where?"
He didn't bother to resist as she dragged him forward, increasing uncertainty paralyzing him.
The problem was that he seemed to have lost his ability to read Jenna. He'd been shocked to find her still there when he woke up that morning, and wasn't sure if it was just because she didn't have anywhere to go or if it was something more.
What he was certain of, though, was that at least for a few hours, it had felt like none of this had happened. Now he just had to convince her that they had a shot at a future. Not a normal one, of course. Maybe not even a long one. But a future nonetheless.
"Jenna, we really need to think through whether there's anything we can do at this point. Could we just go somewhere and talk for a little while?"
She ignored him and continued into the tiny room where Mark Beamon was pacing around a table with nothing on it but a single speaker. He glanced up at them, but otherwise didn't acknowledge their presence.
"A free hand doesn't mean the authority to call in a fucking air strike on U. S. soil!" Jack Reynolds said through the speaker. "What the hell were you thinking doing something like that without talking to me first?"
"Talking to you about what, Jack? It's not like I killed anyone. Hell, we had the fire out in a couple hours. What's the goddamned problem?"
The concern on Jenna's face was visible as Beamon continued to circle the table, stooped in a way that made him look shorter than he was. He obviously hadn't shaved that morning and the red of his eyes suggested that the half-empty bourbon bottle on the floor hadn't been shared with anyone.
"You're asking me what the problem is? You used the U. S. military to blow up an important piece of evidence!"
Beamon rolled his swollen eyes. "We needed to make sure that Teague knew he didn't have anywhere to run."
"Then why the hell not just send video of our people going through it?"
"I thought blowing it up would have more emotional impact," Beamon said.
The next few words Reynolds uttered were unintelligible, choked with a rage that Erin couldn't figure out. He hadn't agreed with the decision, either, but there was no denying the twisted logic of it.
"Do you have any idea how complicated the economic coordination of this thing is now, Mark? And you can multiply that by a thousand if you let this son of a bitch release the modified bacteria. The government could have used that facility as a command center."
Beamon's lip curled and his face darkened to the point that Erin almost felt compelled to back away.
"If you think I'm going to watch Carrie and Emory die while you and your political cronies hole up in California with a bunch of high school cheerleaders, you're seriously mistaken, Jack."
The speaker went silent for a few seconds. "Did I just hear you right, Mark? Are you implying that you did this to keep that facility out of the hands of the U. S. government?"
Erin felt his eyebrows rise. As near as he could tell, that's exactly what Beamon had said. And people thought he had a temper.
"You can take it any way you like, Jack."
Another brief silence. "I want you on a plane back to the United States, Mark. Now."
Beamon calmly lifted the speaker and held it a few inches from his face. "Why don't you come up here and get me?" Then he ripped the cord out of the wall and threw the speaker on the floor. When he turned back to them, there was a pleasant, if strained smile on his face. "So you two look well rested this morning."
Erin glanced over at Jenna and realized they were almost touching. The mandatory two-foot buffer that had existed between them was suddenly gone and it was apparently obvious.
"We're okay," Jenna said. "But you look horrible. Are you all right?"
"Couldn't be better."
He slid up on the table behind him and then lay back, his legs dangling off the side as he stared at the ceiling.
"It looks like you've got half the FBI up here," Jenna prompted. "Are you getting anywhere?"
"No."
He closed his eyes and for a moment Erin thought he might have stopped breathing. "Mark?" The alarm in Jenna's voice suggested she had the same impression. "What?"
"You've got a hundred people out there. They must be doing something."
He shrugged without moving from his position on the table. "We've gone through all the stuff we pulled out of the place in California, but there isn't anything that we can use to find Teague. Whatever you want to say about him, he's not stupid. I've got virtually every biologist on the planet trying to figure out how he's going to grow and transport these bacteria, and we're getting absolutely nowhere."
The door opened and Terry Hirst poked his head in. "Mark, I just got a call from the States. Apparently you've been fired and I've been put in charge."
"Congratulations."
"What do you want me to do about it?" "I don't care."
"Okay. I'll just ignore it. But I think everyone would appreciate it if you'd get off that table and think of something."
The door closed again and Beamon's head lolled in Erin and Jenna's direction. "The tar sands thing was a good idea, but I think he outsmarted us."
"What do you mean?" Jenna said.
"It was a red herring. They bought that facility to throw us off. And now it's too late for me to relocate my people to Venezuela or Russia. I fell for it."
Jenna crossed the small room and took hold of Beamon's hand. "We haven't lost, Mark. We can't. You understand that, right? We can't."
"I'm out of ideas, Jenna. All I can think about now is Carrie and Em. But even with everything I know, I can't come up with a way to save them."
When they finally left the room, Beamon was still lying motionless on the table, now with his eyes closed. Erin hoped that he was asleep -- he looked as if he needed to turn off for a little while. As much as he hated to admit it, the old government hack had grown on him and he didn't like seeing him sink into despair. But what could he do about it? Things had gone too far.
"He's right," Erin said, leaning into Jenna's ear as they waded back into the sea of suits outside Beamon's door. "Teague's won."
She jerked to a stop, but he'd anticipated it and put a hand on her back to keep them moving forward. "There's nothing we can do here, Jen. If there were, I'd stick it out. But there's not. We still have time to get that floatplane and set ourselves up, but we have a lot of work to do."
"I thought we resolved this last night."
"I don't think we resolved anything last night. Look, I know you don't think you deserve to survive, but have you really thought this through? It's not going to be the smart people who make it, or the compassionate ones. It's going to be the people who are willing to stick a spike in your eye for a box of stale Oreos. I don't --"
"Erin! Jenna!"
Terry Hirst jogged over to them. "How's Mark doing?"
"I'm worried about him," Jenna said. "He's just lying there on the table."
"Does he look like he's thinking?"
"He looks dead."
Hirst sighed quietly and pointed to row of boxes lined up against the wall. Each was labeled in bold letters, the one on the end marked ERIN/JENNA.
"We've got ideas on how this stuff could be grown coming in from all over," Hirst said. "I've had synopses of the most promising stuff put over there for you. Could you go through them and see if you can give me some kind of priority? A lot of them seem a little far-fetched and I can't afford to waste manpower."
"Of course," Jenna said, just like Erin knew she would.
"Great. I also threw in some stuff we got on that facility in the tar sands. Maybe you could flip through it and see if anything jumps out at you." He slapped Erin reassuringly on the back and then rushed off toward a group of Mounties that had just come through the door.
"Jenna, seriously," Erin said, hovering behind her as she dumped their box out onto the floor. "We need to get the fuck out of here."
"Then go," she said, dropping to the carpet and sorting through the seemingly endless papers and reports.
"You're a smart woman, Jen. But sometimes your judgment sucks. Staying here is as good as committing suicide."
She dropped the papers she was holding, and for a moment her eyes clouded. "You're right. You're always right."
"Let's not start that again. We --"
She put a hand over his mouth, silencing him. "I'm being serious. We both know we're not going to find Michael in time and we both know that I'm not going to run away from something that's my fault. So maybe it's time for you to get your plane. There's no reason for you to get caught up in what's going to happen."
He pulled her hand away. "No. We're staying together. If you stay, I stay."
"Why do you have to be so difficult? Why can't you just let me do what I have to do and not pile more and more on my conscience?"
He yanked a rubber band off a set of architectural plans for Teague's tar sands facility and smoothed them out on the floor. "Don't try to make this my fault, Jen. You could save me, but you're not willing to live with a little guilt. It's not worth it to you."
She swung a fist into his chest as hard as she could, but he barely felt it as he focused on the plans spread out in front of him. "What the fuck is that?"
The seriousness of his tone was enough to silence her, and she twisted around to see what he was pointing to. "What?"
He ran a finger along a line that led south from the building to the edge of the page and then flipped forward to a drawing of a partially buried half-meter pipe topped with a valve wheel. "We went over every inch of that place. Did you ever see this?"
Chapter 46.
The Canadian streets hadn't emptied like in the U. S., forcing Mark Beamon to drive up onto the sidewalk to get around a slow-moving minivan. Jenna grabbed the dashboard and glanced into the backseat where Erin was hunting for a seatbelt.
"Carl!" Beamon shouted into his cell phone. "We're headed your way. We're going to need a flight to the tar sands and some of your special forces guys. Yeah .. . no, I'm serious. Hold on."
He handed the phone to Jenna and turned to concentrate on driving into oncoming traffic.
"Hello? Mr. Fournier? This is Jenna Kalin."
"What's happening there, Jenna? Are you in a car?"
The sound of a siren started behind them and she twisted around to see a police cruiser closing in. Beamon thumbed toward it and then pointed at the phone.
"Uh, yeah, we are. There's a police car trying to pull us over and I think Mark wants you to do something about it."
"Hold on."
The phone went silent for a moment and then he came back on the line. "Can I assume you've found something that might help us?"
"We think so," she said, raising her voice to be heard over the wail of the siren. "We just got a copy of the original plans for the building in the tar sands. There's a pipeline that runs south from it for a few hundred miles before connecting to one of the major lines going into the U. S. It was probably abandoned when the company folded."
"So? You went over that building -- we all did. No one has been there in --"
"The inlet for that pipe is gone," she said, cutting him off. "Why would someone bother to remove the inlet to an abandoned pipeline?"
"You tell me."
The siren suddenly stopped behind them, replaced by the sound of a horn. Beamon slammed on the brakes to let the patrol car pass and Erin reached around the seat to grab Jenna before she could be pitched into the dashboard. She flashed him a grateful smile, but he didn't look happy -- as though he was angry about having to save her again. Or was she just reading too much into everything he did now?
"Jenna?" Fournier prompted. "Are you still there?"
"I'm sorry . * ." The police car passed them and the siren started again, cutting a swath through the traffic in front of them. "When they bought that building, we think they capped off the pipe, filled it with oil, and then hid the outlet. That's their incubator. All they have to do is dump in a bunch of bacteria, let it fill the pipe, and then somehow perforate it where it goes through the tar sands."
"How long would it take?"
"I don't know," Jenna admitted. "Maybe they've already done it. But maybe not. We need your patrol planes to fly along the route of that pipeline. We're guessing that they built some kind of structure over the point where they've cut into the pipe -- a place where they could introduce the bacteria and wait for it to spread."
There was a long silence over the phone. "Mr. Fournier?"
"Why should I do this, Jenna? The more I'm involved with you, the more I wonder if you're still working with Teague -- if you...
Chapter 47.
The gun cabinet was wide open and only ten feet away, but it might as well not have existed at all. As Teague pulled hopelessly against the chain locked around his neck, he felt the rough metal coax a little more blood onto his stained collar.
He looked at the bottled water and energy bars Udo had left him, at the pipe he was locked to, at the metal walls that separated him from the cold, empty miles of Canadian wilderness. And finally, he looked through the open door of the room he was trapped in
Udo had been sitting in full view for most of the day, but a little over an hour ago he disappeared. Teague could still hear him, though, and strained to decipher the sounds, to understand what was happening. Was the German preparing to blow the pipeline charges? Had it already been done?
Teague pulled on the chain again, but his strength was gone. Even if he could free himself and reach the weapons, Udo was armed as well and undoubtedly only feet from the detonator button.
The sound of approaching footsteps prompted Teague to stand, ignoring the leg cramps brought on from sitting so long on the concrete floor.
"You don't have to kill me," he said as Udo took a position in front of the weapons cabinet. "I'm not a threat to you. I swear I
He fell silent when the German pulled his pistol from his waistband and threw Teague the key to the lock around his neck.
"What do you want?" Teague said, looking down at the key and wondering what it represented. Freedom? Death?
"I want you to do what you set out to do, Michael."
Teague turned the key in the lock and the chain fell to the floor, but he didn't move.
"I'm not going to kill you, Michael. You're afraid, and that is understandable. I feel these same things. As did Jonas. But we must master our fear, yes? We mustn't let it control us. Have you thought about this?"
Udo motioned toward the door' with his pistol and Teague walked slowly, feeling the muscles in his thighs beginning to loosen.
The German's tone suggested that he hadn't yet released the bacteria, and that meant there was still an opportunity stop this. But how? There was a time when he would have been certain he could overpower the unassuming biologist, but now he was certain the opposite was true. Now he knew that it was Udo and not Jonas who had been the strong one.
"You have worked so hard and given so much to this cause, Michael. What you said before is true -- without you, none of this would have been possible."
They skirted around the wall dividing the room and Teague stopped in front of a laptop resting on an otherwise empty table. At the bottom left of the screen was a square representing the building in which they were standing. A red line ran from it, crossing a narrow green band depicting the forest and then traveling into the murky brown of the tar sands.
