Deadly Shore, page 6
He had to find a house. Preferably an empty one that still had some food and water. It was changeover weekend. The people taking summer rentals by the week would be leaving today, and hopefully the people renting for the next week were still on the mainland. If he could find one of those, he'd be golden.
Five hours later, he had come up empty, which was exactly where his gas tank would be if he didn't find something soon.
The news on the radio was dire. The death toll from the collapsed bridges was in the hundreds. Homeland Security had been called in to investigate, but hadn't arrived yet. No one had claimed responsibility as of yet. Something was also happening at the airport in Hyannis, as well as with the ferries in Hyannis and Woods Hole. More explosions, he thought. But the news was sketchy. What the hell was going on? Had we just entered World War III?
Doyle was scared. This was big and he was in the middle of it. Even worse, he had a million dollars of stolen money on him with—he could be pretty sure—a pretty incensed old man pulling out all the stops looking for him. What if they broke Vincent and he gave up Doyle's name? He didn't care about it before because he'd be a long way away. Now he was practically right around the corner. This was not good. Maybe he should return the money. Nah, they'd still want to kill him. Not good at all. He had to find a house, the more remote the better.
Luckily he was in Truro now, one of the more remote areas on the Cape. He was slowly traveling down a back road, aware now that a warning light had been blinking on the dashboard for a while. Time was about to run out. And then he passed it—the perfect hiding place. A narrow dirt road—actually, more like a sand road—led off into the dunes. In the distance through the rain he saw a house. It was more like a shack, but it had been fixed up nicely. In front was parked a Jeep. Someone was living there. That could be problematic.
Problematic or not, he no longer had a choice. At that moment his car died and slowly came to a stop. He got out and looked around in the mid-evening gloom. Fifty feet up the road was a small turnout. Putting the car in neutral, he pushed it toward the turnout. Once it was safely off the road, he retrieved the knapsack of cash and headed back toward the dune house.
Like it or not, whoever lived there was going to have a visitor.
Chapter 13
President David Landau sat in the makeshift Situation Room on Martha's Vineyard. What a vacation this turned out to be, he was thinking. Frankly, he hated the Vineyard. Way too crowded for his liking. The mountains of his home state of Wyoming were more his speed. But, despite what most people thought, a president couldn't make too many of his own decisions—especially when it came to vacations.
He had two things working against him: The mansion in which he was staying belonged to his largest and most influential campaign contributor. He had promised the man two years ago that he would stay with him at his Vineyard house, and he couldn't very well renege on the promise. It was important for his … something … self-esteem, maybe … that he be seen hosting the president at his home. And you don't piss off your biggest supporter, especially if you planned to run in the next election.
The place was ugly to boot. Ostentatious to the extreme. There was nothing homey or comfortable about the house. He had been there only a couple of days, but already it seemed like a month. He almost felt embarrassed staying there.
The second thing—or person—working against him was his wife, Debra. As much as they tried to hide it, it was no secret that they were having marital problems. It had never been a marriage of love. They had both been ambitious, and ambition was a turn-on for each of them. It was more a business deal than a real marriage. Oh, there had been some times in the early days that David might have seen as love between them, but that was a long time ago. They settled on a fondness for each other, and it had worked … until recently. Debra didn't like some of his decisions and David didn't like some of the causes she supported. The fondness had begun to disintegrate, and the press was beginning to pick up on it. He didn't honestly know how he was going to survive a re-election campaign with her at his side. He thought about divorcing her—after all, they had no children—but those in his innermost circle advised against it.
So the upshot of it all was that she loved the Vineyard and had insisted that they vacation there—for the second year in a row. The first time had been nightmarish enough, staying with wealthy friends of her family. To have to suffer through it for a second year was just too much, but if he put his foot down and said no, the repercussions would have been more than he wanted to deal with.
He looked around at the crowd that had gathered in the basement of his donor's house: his chief of staff, representatives of the FBI, NSA, CIA, and who knows what other organization … the Girl Scouts, maybe? And of course, all of the military heads were there. Is this where the term "talking heads" came from? Because they were all talking and he wasn't catching a word of it.
"Is there anyone in this room," he said slowly and forcefully, and the crowd went quiet, "who has actually heard what someone else is saying? I get the feeling that you are all too concerned with getting your point across. To whom, I have no idea, because like you, nobody is listening. Does someone want to give me a quick and painless breakdown of the situation? How about the FBI?"
"Well, Mr. President," began a mousy-looking man in an ill-fitting suit, one of the only suits in the room. The usual FBI representative was out of the country on vacation, so his assistant got the honors. He was understandably nervous and cleared his throat. "An hour ago we wouldn't have had anything for you, but the terrorists have just started communicating with us by email through the Boston newspapers and TV stations. We have issued a gag order to all of the outlets involved and deployed agents to each one to enforce the gag order and to let us know the minute they contact us again."
"Why the media?" asked Landau.
"We can only assume they wanted to go through a media outlet to get their message across to us, maybe for the exposure. The Boston outlets seemed the most logical."
"What do they want?"
"The usual. Money. They want a billion dollars dispersed to a bunch of numbered accounts across the globe."
"A billion dollars?"
"Yes sir. They also want land."
"I assume they don't want Cape Cod."
"No sir. We are still evaluating it, but it seems to be some land in Wyoming and Montana."
"And if we don't give in to their demands? I'm sorry, what's your name?"
"Merle Wiggins, sir."
"Okay, Mr. Wiggins. What are they threatening?"
Wiggins looked more uncomfortable. "They say they have anthrax."
"Aw, shit," said the chief of staff. "Not anthrax again. Can they prove it?"
"They don't have to," answered Wiggins, gaining a little confidence. "In a period of about an hour, they just isolated Cape Cod from the rest of the country. They've already killed hundreds of people. I think we have to take the threat seriously."
Landau turned back to Wiggins. "What kind of time frame are we talking about?"
"That's the interesting part. We think the email, the initial one anyway, was pre-written, written to be disseminated at a certain time. We've only received the one so far, so we don't know if any future ones will be more real time."
"Why do you think that?" asked Landau.
"The time they gave. They said they would let it loose into the air on July 8th."
"And?"
"The 8th is when Hurricane Chad is supposed to hit. Assuming you're going to distribute this by air, you can't let anthrax go in the rain … and it will be raining hard. It'll just get washed into the soil."
"It's raining now. What's the forecast for the next few days?"
"Rain, rain, and more rain. This front came in ahead of the hurricane. Chad will eventually push it out, but I doubt if we will see any break in the rain. It will just go from steady rain to hurricane conditions. Thursday, the 9th, looks to be the next clear day. Being the day after a hurricane, it stands to be windy, which would be optimal to disperse the anthrax."
"Can it be delivered any other way?"
"Through the drinking water supply, but we don't think that will happen. They specified the air in the email. Also, it would be harder to do that on the Cape, since most of their water supply comes from wells. The smart money is on an airborne release."
"Smart money … right," he mumbled. "So do we have the source of the emails?"
"Yes and no. It's coming from an email account associated with a man named Seth Wakeby, but it's going through so many servers in so many countries, we can't track it. They could have made up an email address, but they used one linked to a real person. We're not sure why. We've tracked down Wakeby—or at least we've discovered some things about him. He's the nephew of Peter Singleton. If that name doesn't ring a bell, it should." Wiggins was beginning to enjoy his moment in the sun. "Singleton is a billionaire who runs a half a dozen corporations. As far as we've been able to determine, he's clean. Seth Wakeby is his nephew and he works for Singleton in some pretty lowly positions. I just got off the phone with Singleton a few minutes ago. He was suspicious of Wakeby and hired a P.I. to track him down and find out what he was involved in. He heard from the P.I. last night that he had found Wakeby and that he had to kill a guy who was about to kill Wakeby. The FBI field office confirms that they got an anonymous call from an untraceable phone telling them where the body was and that the person might be involved in planning some sort of terrorist attack. Agents found the body, but so far haven't gotten very far."
"So the terrorist could be dead?"
"An operation of this size would require a lot more than one," said Wiggins. "We do think we know who called it in. The P.I. assigned to find Wakeby is ex-CIA." He looked at the CIA representative. "And from what we have gathered, quite a star in your agency."
The CIA rep took over. "His name is Marcus Baldwin. He retired with honors a few years back and became a hot-shot P.I. He only works for the richest and most secretive clientele and has an excellent reputation. If we can contact him, he'd be a good asset on the ground. But getting in touch with him is a problem. Already, cell phone service is being affected with the towers being overloaded. We figure by tonight they'll all be down."
"Something I don't understand," said Landau. "An operation this big, why didn't we get wind of it? Was there no chatter? And who is it? ISIS?"
"Not a word," said Wiggins. "Not even an inkling. And no, we don't think it is ISIS or any Middle-Eastern group. There would have been something out there. Our best guess is home-grown. Whoever they are, they've avoided social media and electronics of all kinds. They did this under the radar, so to speak. Low-tech. And that makes them that much harder to find."
"Well, I suggest we use the military airfield on the Cape and start bringing in troops. Maybe we can even start getting some people out…"
"Excuse me sir, but we can't do that," said Wiggins.
"Why?"
"The other part of their message. If we attempt to land troops at Otis—actually, if we attempt to land anything anywhere on the Cape—they said they would start killing mass numbers of people."
"How?"
"They didn't say, but if they use anthrax, they can target individual buildings from inside and not have to worry about the rain. And again, we've already seen what they can do with explosives."
"So we can do nothing?" said the president. "What about the local authorities?"
"The State Police are almost nonexistent on the Cape today. All the local police departments are trying to deal with the mobs and the looters. They'll be of no help."
President Landau felt paralyzed. He thought back a year to a terrorist situation in a mall. He authorized an assault and ended up with thirty innocent people dead. It was the low point of an otherwise illustrious career. Now he was faced with a similar situation, except that the potential death toll could be exponentially higher.
"Suggestions?"
"I suggest we hold off making any provocative moves for now," said Wiggins. "I'm sure we can get a few agents onto the Cape secretly somehow, but anything we plan to do has to be well thought out."
"Can we assume they won't do anything on the 8th?" asked the president. Wiggins nodded. "So best case scenario is that we have until the 9th. He looked around the table. "I want a plan in my hands by tomorrow morning, because, by God, no terrorists are going to hold this country hostage. Not while I'm president."
Well, that sounded good, he thought as he left the room, but he was troubled. The incident at the mall had shaken him, and now he questioned if he had the courage to make the right decision.
The mall situation wasn't even supposed to be his call. The final decision should have been the FBI's to make, and they certainly wanted to make it. His chief-of-staff, however, saw it as the perfect opportunity for the president to show that he had the ability to make the tough decisions, a criticism of him since taking office. And so he bullied his way into the situation, citing all kinds of legal precedents. The mall was a large one outside of Washington D.C. that was taken over by a street gang trying to prove something. He forgot what exactly what it was. He had some memory of other members of their gang being in jail on what they said were trumped up charges. Until they were released, they would hold the mall hostage. Frankly, their demands weren't of interest to him. He wanted to make a point, the point that he was done letting the scum in this country run things, especially in the cities. Besides, they would never have the nerve to carry out their threats. He ordered the mall taken.
It turned out that the gang did have the nerve. When the siege was over, thirty men, women, and children were dead. The FBI was assigned the blame—Waco all over again—and he managed to skate through with only minimal damage. Psychologically though, it did a job on him. Now in front of him he had a real crisis, and one he couldn't hide from. He was going to be seen as front and center in this.
The lives of a half a million people rested in his hands, and he didn't know if he was up to the task.
Chapter 14
Marcus looked at his watch. Well, that was smart, he thought. He didn't intend to leave so late. It was Seth who made them late. He had been awake all night in the bathroom throwing up. He said he must have picked up a bug, but Marcus knew better. He had had too much experience with death and how it affected people. Sometimes the reality of a situation didn't show up until long after the incident. Seth's brush with death hit him late in the evening.
They were still sitting in traffic somewhere west of Hyannis, with Seth still looking a little green around the gills. During the night he had asked Marcus a half dozen times how he was able to kill someone so easily. Marcus changed the subject a half dozen times. Now Seth was silent, exhaustion having set in. Marcus hadn't slept either, but he was used to it, having spent much of his adult life catching sleep in bits and pieces. Other than Seth's becoming intimate with the toilet bowl, it was an uneventful night, with no uninvited visitors. Marcus wasn't surprised. Getting rid of Seth was nothing more than taking out the garbage, tying up loose ends. If it didn't work the first time, there was no way they were going to chance it a second.
He wondered how many were involved in the mess Seth had made for himself. Were they terrorists? It looked that way, but who was to know. It could be that the guy Marcus shot was the ringleader and it would now fade away. That would be the ideal situation. Well, it wasn't his problem. He gave the information to the FBI and he saw online that a body had been found in a bog in Mashpee. It was up to them now.
He thought about Sara. Cool, capable, smart, attractive, and obviously hurting. Her career and passion were ripped out from under her. It wasn't going to be easy to come back from that. And it didn't appear that she had anything else in her life. It was clear that she wasn't in a relationship. He sensed that she was a private and solitary person. She had a hard road ahead and he felt for her.
A police car passed them in the breakdown lane, siren screaming. It was followed a minute later by several fire trucks and ambulances. Add an accident to the Sunday traffic and it was going to be an excruciating drive. He would turn around and try it again later, but with Seth by his side it would be just as bad. A lose-lose situation.
His phone rang. It was Sara.
"Hey," he said.
"Where are you?" No preamble.
"Stuck in traffic just outside Hyannis. Got a late start."
"So you haven't heard the news." She said it as a statement.
This didn't bode well.
"No. Our friends?"
"Seems so. They've just brought down the bridges to the Cape."
Holy shit.
"Can you turn around?"
"Looks like I'll have to," replied Marcus. "When did it happen?"
"Just a few minutes ago."
"Okay, we're turning." Marcus saw his opportunity up ahead, a crossover with a sign: Official vehicles only. No one would care at this point. Word must have been getting out. A number of cars were doing the same thing. Marcus rode up the narrow grass area alongside the fast lane—that was a misnomer today—and turned at the crossover. Traffic on the other side was light, but the cars heading back to Hyannis were traveling at faster than normal speeds. Panic. Another half hour and it would be sheer chaos.
"Done," he said. "Thanks." He may have sounded calm on the phone, but he had no doubt that this was just the beginning of a disaster in the making.
"Need a place to stay? I assume you checked out. You'll never get back in there now."
"I guess we do. You offering?"
"I am."
"Appreciate it."
"No problem." She gave them instructions to her condo, then said she was going to see what she could get from the news.
They saw the beginnings of the panic on their way to Sara's: lines outside the gas stations, parking lots of the supermarkets already full, fender benders at an alarming rate, and people ignoring red lights. Not good. Marcus thought about some of the hotspots of the world he'd seen. In many of those places, bombs would be going off every day and people would be calmly going about their business. Here, in a place not known for its everyday violence, at the first hint of conflict, they lose all sense of civility. He couldn't blame them, though. It must be frightening for them. An hour earlier they were on vacation. Now their lives were completely turned on end.
