Deadly Shore, page 12
"Nothing. Not a peep from them."
"We think our perp might have some peripheral ties to them. Who do you suggest we go to around here if we can confirm that?"
"If you can find any of the FBI guys, I'd go to them. Locating them might be a problem though. They're scattered all over the Cape. They're based at Otis, but without phones and Internet, getting hold of them is nearly impossible. Maybe we can get through to the base via police band from the station, but then they have to get word out to their agents by cell phone. That part's the problem."
"Is there someone at the station who could help?" asked Sara.
"No way. Total chaos there. You can guess who's in charge, and I say 'in charge' with a whole chunk of salt. Sara, you should know that most of us never believed any of the charges against you. Frankly, I wish you were with us right now. Chandler has no clue how to handle this. He's in so far over his head, it's not funny."
"Thanks, Pete. I really appreciate that. I wish I was with you too."
There was an awkward silence, then Pete furtively looked around. "You carrying?" he asked.
"Why Pete, you know I lost my carry permit when they canned me."
"Yeah, I know." He swept his hand around to indicate the crowd. "You think I care about something stupid like a permit? What I meant is if you're not carrying, I suggest you start. Things could get really bad around here soon. Gotta go. Take care." He went running off to break up a fight between two women.
"What do you think?" asked Sara.
"Gut feeling? He's here. I say we split up and meet back here in fifteen minutes. Hopefully one of us will have him."
"That'll take some luck," said Sara. "See you in fifteen."
Five minutes later Sara had maneuvered her way close to the water, figuring a desperate Seth would want to be on the first boat out. When she saw him, she said "no way" out loud.
"No way what?" asked an older man standing next to her.
"No way I could get this lucky," she answered, not really paying attention to the man. She bullied her way through the crowd until she was standing next to an unaware Seth. She put one hand above his elbow, the other on his wrist, and pushed down on his arm ever so slightly, hyperextending his elbow. He went down on one knee and cried out, "What the hell?"
"I'm going to ease up just a little bit, just enough for you to stand, and then we're going to make our way through this crowd up to the car. If I even sense that you're going to try to escape, I'll break your elbow. I'm not a cop anymore, I don't have to play by the rules. Understand?"
Seth nodded.
"Then let's go."
Getting back to the car was remarkably easy. Had it been a man strong-arming a woman through the crowd, numerous men would have come to her rescue. But a woman escorting a man elicited a different response."
The phrases "You go, girl!" and "Way to go, lady" accompanied her all the way to the car. Once there, she pushed him to the ground, and had him turn his head toward her and stick out his arm. She knelt on the arm and pressed one of her fingers into a soft spot below his ear. He grimaced in pain and stiffened.
"This hurts like hell," she said, "as if you didn't know, but it's doing no damage and the minute I take my finger away it won't hurt. I wouldn't trust you in the back seat of the car, so we'll just wait here for Marcus. You struggle at all, I press harder, and trust me, it'll be excruciating." She looked at him and shook her head in disgust. "That was a really stupid thing to do. You didn't think we'd find you?"
Seth was in too much pain to respond.
A few minutes later, Marcus approached from the direction of the crowd wearing a smile.
"You go fishing?" he asked.
"Caught me a big one." She let off the pressure, helped Seth to his feet, and threw him into the back seat of the car. Marcus climbed in after him while Sara drove.
Seth didn't say a word the whole trip back. When they arrived at Sara's condo, Marcus sat Seth in a hard kitchen chair and stood over him. Seth averted his eyes.
"I could tie you to the chair," he said, "but I don't think it'll be necessary, do you?"
Seth just stared at the floor.
Marcus kicked his leg hard and Seth cried out in pain.
"I said, do you think it will be necessary?"
"No," said Seth, still looking down.
"There's something you haven't told us. Something pretty important. Here's your chance. You can volunteer the information or I'll beat it out of you. Doesn't matter to me. And you know I'll beat it out of you, right?"
Seth nodded.
"Good, so let's start. You know more about this operation than you're telling, right?"
Seth nodded.
"What do you know?"
"Doesn't matter now."
"Why?"
"Cuz it doesn't."
"Want me to hit you?"
"I don't care." He lifted his head and looked Marcus in the eye, a tear rolling down his cheek. "You don't get it. In two days we're all going to be dead!"
Chapter 27
"I assume you're not talking about the hurricane," said Marcus.
"Fuck the hurricane. Of course I'm not talking about the hurricane."
"So tell us what you know."
"I know that no matter how this turns out, I'm a dead man."
"Why?"
Seth just shook his head.
"If you're dead either way, then why not talk to us?" said Sara. "We might be the only people who can help you."
"That's a joke."
Marcus slapped him lightly across the side of his head, more for effect than pain. "Look, it's obvious that you're scared. No offense, but it's also obvious that you don't possess the brain power or the energy to be a major player in all this. Here's what I think: I think you got involved because someone offered you a decent amount of money. And then they filled your head with ideas of some sort of government takeover. As long as you didn't have to get involved in the nitty-gritty of this supposed takeover, you thought it might be fun. Someday you could tell people that you were there at the beginning of the revolution. But then you got more involved than you wanted, and it scared you, and now you want out. When they tried to kill you, you realized that you were just being used."
"You don't know the half of it."
"Then tell me."
"They're in touch with the Feds by email. Guess whose email account they're using?"
"You let them use your email?" asked Sara, amazed at the stupidity of the man.
"I didn't let them, they just took it. They have some computer geek working with them. He took over my email account, so now the Feds will think I'm involved in all this."
"You are," said Marcus. "The Internet is down, so they won't be sending anything from the Cape."
"They're not. The computer guy is somewhere else sending the demand and the follow-up emails."
"One demand?" asked Sara. "That's it? Must be a pretty big one."
"It's stupid. I didn't think so at first, at least not when they sold me on it. It almost seemed reasonable. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized it would never work. The government would never let it happen. It's one reason I was going to back away from it. Turns out it didn't matter. They were planning to kill me anyway."
"So what is it?" asked Marcus, growing impatient.
"Land. They contend that the land the government has given back to the Indians is wrong and that they don't deserve it. They want the government to break up the Indian land and give it to American groups."
"American groups?" said Sara with a shake of the head. "You mean more American than the Native Americans?"
"And money. They want loads of money wired into a whole bunch of foreign accounts. They'll use the money to fund their group."
"So what is their group?" asked Marcus.
"Citizens for a True America."
"Never heard of them," said Sara. "And trust me, I've heard of most of the fringe groups out there."
"They told me they have a couple hundred thousand members."
"Baloney," answered Sara. "If they had that many members, I'd have heard of them."
"Where do they want this land?" asked Marcus.
"Out west someplace. Montana or Wyoming, I think."
"So how does Cape Cod figure into this?" asked Sara.
"Convenience. Holding all these people hostage was a way to show they were serious about this and show how powerful they are."
"And they really think the government is just going to hand over land to them?"
"That's where I started to have my doubts. I didn't know what their demand was going to be until recently. They just talked about developing their own society out west. Sounded romantic, and, as I said, the guy I talked to was a good salesman."
"So why are we all going to be dead in two days?" asked Marcus.
"Anthrax. They've got a lot of it and if the government doesn't give in, I think they're going to use it."
"Why?" asked Sara.
"Makes sense to me. You don't have that much of something so deadly unless you are prepared to use it. Besides, if the government turns them down and they use it, think how much more powerful they would be the next time they issue a threat."
The room was silent while they considered what Seth was saying.
"Bad news," said Sara.
"Yeah. Did you see it?" Marcus asked Seth.
"I saw the case it was in. Kind of like a briefcase. It was sealed, so I couldn't open it, not that I would have anyway. That shit scares me."
"Something here doesn't make sense," said Sara, looking at Marcus. "They are making a demand that they have to know the government can't give in to. Would they really use it? If they did, they'd be hunted down. They have to know that. Especially with all the state-of-the-art surveillance equipment available."
"Unless they are strictly low tech," said Marcus. He addressed Seth again. "Do they communicate with each other using anything other than the disposable phones?"
"No. They can make a few coded calls to each other before they have to destroy the phone. Nothing has been done by computer other than the emails to the authorities—which can all be linked back to me. They don't leave any traces, which is probably why they wanted to kill me. If I had to guess, when it's all over, they'll kill the geek too."
She turned to Seth. "And why two days?"
"That was the deadline for the demand—three o'clock on July 8th. I think they are going to see if they can bring America to its knees."
"Do you believe the anthrax is real?" she asked Seth.
"The case looked official. Lots of stickers covering it saying things like 'Biohazard'. Looked real enough to me. And I saw a sticker that said D-394. I heard them refer to the anthrax as D-394 a couple of times."
"So who were you in contact with?" asked Marcus.
"A couple of people. A guy I used to know—Harry—got me into it and I went through him sometimes, especially at first. Tanner, the guy you killed, was another one of my contacts. He's the one I went through most of the time. He made me think he was my friend." He made a face. "The other one I think was the head honcho. He met me with Tanner once. He called himself Mason. "
"So here's the big question," said Marcus, "you don't happen to know where they are, do you?"
"I'm pretty sure Falmouth, but I don't know where."
Being fairly unfamiliar with the Cape in general, Marcus looked to Sara for help.
"Narrows it down a little, but it's still going to be tough. Falmouth is composed of the town itself and a few surrounding villages. Needle in a haystack territory."
"And we have three days … maybe," said Marcus.
"Two days," said Seth.
"At least three," countered Marcus. "If it's airborne, they can't do anything with it raining like this and then with the hurricane coming in on the 8th. The soonest they'd be able to do anything with it would be the day after the hurricane. So we have at least until the 9th."
"I don't know," said Seth. "Harry said Mason was real set on the 8th being the deadline."
Sara went quiet for a moment. Marcus noticed and let her have her space. A good minute passed before she said anything.
"This guy on the outside, the geek. Does he have any decision-making capabilities?"
"No way. Nobody has decision-making capabilities except Mason."
"How do they get in touch with him?" she asked.
"Disposable cell."
"And what if they can't contact him?"
"I don't know. He can't make any decisions on his own though. That much I know."
"With the towers overloaded," she said, "this Mason can't contact the computer geek, which means he doesn't know if the government has responded to any of his demands."
"So," said Marcus, "this guy is sitting on a pile of anthrax, he's got a threat out there to use it if the authorities don't give in, and he's got no way to be in touch with the one person who is in contact with them. My guess is, he's pretty frustrated right now, because I'll bet he didn't anticipate the phones going down."
Chapter 28
"Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!"
Mason was staring down at his dead cell phone, and then in a fit of anger, threw it against the wall. Even as angry as he was, he threw it knowing full well that he had a supply of them. Had it been his only one, he might have tempered his anger a bit. He couldn't believe it. He had thought of everything. Absolutely everything. He and Tanner had spent countless hours going over "What if" scenarios and felt they were prepared for any situation. So how did they miss this? One of the simplest of all the possible problems.
Since taking down communications wasn't a part of their plan, the possibility of them going down on their own simply eluded them. But of course it was possible. It made perfect sense. You get a half a million people in a small area all trying to make calls on their cell phones at the same time and the system is bound to crash. And that didn't even take into account the millions on the mainland who would be trying to call those half a million cell phones—and landlines, for that matter. The hurricane was one thing. There was no way they could have predicted that. The cell phone fiasco was another altogether. They had gone to great lengths to keep the whole operation under the radar: no emails or text messages between them; phone calls were short and the messages were coded; anything important was discussed in person; not too long living in one place; and all of their "recruits" had to have clean records and a probability of not being on any watch lists. In the early stages, he and Tanner had even communicated by old-fashioned letters when they were on different sides of the country and the information wasn't time-sensitive. There was no chance of any "chatter"; no idiotic tweets or Facebook posts, which seemed to be the downfall of most stupid terrorists; nothing to call attention to themselves.
And now, when they needed their cell phones to make use of—for the first time—email, they couldn't. Mason's computer guy was in Chicago and was waiting for Mason to okay the next email to the Boston outlets. He had a series of emails all set to go. In some cases, the same email had three or four different versions, all labeled uniquely. All Mason had to do was to give the guy a call and let him know which version of which email he needed sent. The whole phone call would take ten seconds. Now the guy was high and dry. He was under strict orders not to send anything without Mason's okay. It meant that the authorities had his demands, as well as his initial instructions about wiring the money (which he was under no illusion that they would actually do) and orders not to allow planes to land or take off, but now they would be awaiting the next set of instructions that would never come as long as there was no cell service.
What now?
He could continue on to his endgame and forget the rest of the plan, but the whole process of getting there was supposed to be the significant factor in all of this. The result would be the same either way, but it would lose its meaning without the buildup. No one would know why, and they had to know why. The "why" was what it was all about.
He thought back to when the plan was hatched, the result of years of anger, hurt, and humiliation. And then he drifted back even further, to the day his life ended … September 11, 2001…
*****
He was thirteen and had just begun eighth grade. A new school and a new town. His father had gotten a job in New York City at an investment firm. Mason hated leaving Phoenix, but his father couldn't find work there. His parents told him that this move would be a new start for them all, so they had spent the summer packing and moving, finally settling in a rented house in suburban Tenafly, New Jersey. The commute into the city wouldn't be a hard one for his father, and the town seemed nice. Mason had already made a couple of friends, but it was still early in the school year. He knew he'd eventually make more.
September 11th. His mom had an appointment in the city—he never did know what it was—but was going to visit his dad at work first. His dad was so proud of that office and had taken Mason there over the weekend, just a couple of days before. They were going to the Museum of Natural History—just a father and son day—but stopped at his office first. They took the elevator up to the 93rd floor of the North Tower and his father showed him his office and—even more impressive—the view. It was breathtaking. He remembered thinking that his dad must have been a pretty important man to command a view like that. He later found out that his father was just one of the many drones who worked in the office. He often wondered later whether his father was happy working there, handling someone else's money day after day. A question he'd never know the answer to.
So on September 11th, it was his mother's turn to gaze out at the stunning view. He wondered if they were standing at the window when the plane hit. Did they see it coming? Were they scared? More questions without answers. He knew they didn't suffer, not like so many others stuck on floors above and below the strike zone. No, his parents' death was instantaneous and surely without any pain. The pain was reserved for Mason.
He was sent to Cape Cod to live with his mother's sister and her three children, all girls, and all older than Mason. His aunt was a single mother who—Mason realized much later—missed her teenage years and was trying to relive them through her own daughters' lives, leaving Mason pretty much out in the cold. His aunt probably tried in her own way to be a good surrogate mother to him, but she just wasn't up to the task, and looking at Mason probably just reminded her of her dead sister.
