Cause of Death (37 page)

"Where's HRT?- I asked him.

"Where you can't see them."

"Don't talk to me in riddles. I'm not in the mood."

I walked with purpose, and because I could not see any sign of terrorism or its victims, this ordeal seemed a drill.

Fire and refrigerator trucks and ambulances seemed part of a mock emergency, and even Fielding arranging disaster kits inside the large white trailer that was my outpost did not strike me as reality. He was opening one of the blue Army footlockers stamped with OCME, and inside was everything from eighteen-gauge needles to yellow pouches designed to hold the personal effects of the dead.

He looked up at me as if I had been here all along. "You got any idea where the stakes are?" he asked.

"Those should be in separate boxes with hatchets, pliers, metal ties," I replied.

"Well, I don't know where they are."

"What about the yellow body pouches?" I scanned lockers and boxes stacked inside the trailer.

"I guess I'm just going to have to get all that from FEMA,- he said, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"Where are they?" I asked, because hundreds of people from many agencies and departments were here.

"You go out and you'll see their trailer directly to the left, next to the guys from Fort Lee. Graves Registration.

And FEMA's got the lead-lined suits."

"And we'll pray we don't need them," I said.

Fielding said to Marino, "What's the latest on hostages?

Do we know how many they've got in there?"

"We're not really sure because we don't know exactly how many employees were in the building," he said. "But the shift was small when they hit, which I'm sure was part of the plan. They've released thirty-two people. We're thinking there's maybe about a dozen left. We don't know how many of them are still alive."

"Christ." Fielding's eyes were angry as he shook his head. "You ask me, every one of the assholes ought to be shot on the spot."

"Yeah, well, you won't get an argument out of me," Marino said.

"At this moment," Fielding said to me, "we can handle fifty. That's the max between the truck we got here and our morgue back in Richmond, which is already pretty crowded. Beyond that, MCV's mobilized if we need them for storage."

. "The dentists and radiologists are also mobilized," I assumed.

"Right. Jenkins, Verner, Silverberg, Rollins. They're all on standby."

I could smell eggs and bacon and didn't know if I felt hungry or sick. "I'm on the radio, if you need me," I said, opening the trailer's door.

"Don't walk so fast," Marino complained when we were back outside.

"Have you checked out the mobile command post?" I asked. "The big blue and white RV? I saw it when we were flying in."

"I don't think we want to go over there."

"Well, I do."

"Doc, that's the inner perimeter."

"That's where HRT is," I said.

"Let's just check it out with Benton first. I know you're looking for Lucy, but for God's sake, use your head."

"I am using my head and I am looking for Lucy." I was getting angrier with Wesley by the moment.

Marino put his hand on my arm and stopped me, and we squinted at each other in the sun. "Doc," he said, "listen to me. What's going down ain't personal. No one gives a shit that Lucy's your niece. She's a friggin' FBI agent, and it ain't Wesley's duty to give you a report on everything she's doing for them."

I did not say anything, and he did not need to, either, for me to know the truth.

"So don't be pissed at him." Marino was still gently holding my arm. "You want to know? I don't like it, either.

I couldn't stand it if something happened to her. I don't know what I'd do if anything happened to either of you.

And right now I'm about as scared as I've ever been in my goddamn fucking life. But I got a job to do and so do you."

"She's at the inner perimeter," I said.

He paused. "Come on, Doc. Let's go talk to Wesley."

But we did not get a chance to do that, because when we walked into the visitors' center, we found him on the phone. His tone was iron-calm and he was standing tensely.

"Don't do anything until I get there, and it is very important that they know I'm on my way," he was saying, slowly. "No, no, no. Don't do that. Use a bullhorn so no one gets close." He glanced at Marino and me. "Just hold tight. Tell them you've got someone coming who will get a hostage phone to them immediately. Right."

He hung up and headed straight for the door, and we were right behind him.

"What the hell's going on?" Marino asked.

"They want to communicate."

"What'd they do? Send a letter?"

"One of them yelled out a window," Wesley replied.

"They're very agitated."

We walked fast past the helipad, and I noted it was empty, the senator and attorney general long gone.

. "So they don't already have a phone?" I was very surprised.

"We shut down the phones in that building," Wesley said. "They have to get a phone from us, and before this minute they haven't wanted one. Now, suddenly they do."

"So there's a problem," I said.

"That's the way I'm reading it." Marino was out of breath.

Wesley did not reply, but I could tell he was petrified, and it was rare that anything made him this way. The narrow road led us through the sea of people and vehicles waiting to help, and the tan building loomed larger. The mobile command post gleamed in the sun and was parked on the grass, the conical containments and the waterway they needed for cooling so close I could have hit them with a stone.

I had no doubt that New Zionists had us in their rifle sights and could pull the trigger, if they chose, pick us off one by one. The windows where we believed they watched were open, but I could not see anything behind their screens.

We walked around to the front of the RV where half a dozen police and agents were in plain clothes surrounding Lucy, and the sight of her almost stopped my heart. She was in black fatigues and boots, and was attached to cables again, as she had been at ERF. Only this time she wore two gloves, and Toto was awake on the ground, his thick neck connected to a spool of fiber optic line that looked long enough to walk him to North Carolina.

"It's better if we tape down the receiver," my niece was saying to men she could not see because of the CRTs over her eyes.

"Who's got tape?"

"Hold on." ck jumpsuit reached inside a large toolbox A man in a bla and tossed a roll of tape to someone else. This person tore off several strips of it and secured the receiver to the cradle of a plain black phone in a box firmly held in the robot's grippers.his is Benton Wesley. I'm "Lucy," Wesley spoke. "T

here."

"Hi," she said, and I could feet her nervousness.

"As soon as you get the phone to them, I'm going to start talking. I just want you to know what I'm doing."

"Are we ready?" she asked, and she had no idea I was there.

. "Let's do it," Wesley tensely said.

She touched a button on her glove and Toto came to life in a quiet whir, and the one eye beneath his domed brain turned, as if focusing like a camera lens. His head swiveled as Lucy touched another button on a glove, and everyone watched in hushed anticipation as my niece's creation suddenly moved. It plowed forward on rubber tracks, telephone tight in its grippers, the fiber optics and telephone cable unrolling from spools.

Lucy silently conducted Toto's journey like an orchestra, her arms out and gently moving. Steadily, the robot rolled down the road, over gravel and through grass, until he was far enough away that one of the agents passed out field glasses. Following a sidewalk, Toto reached four cement steps leading up to the glass front entrance of the main building, and he stopped. Lucy took a deep breath as she continued to make her telepresence known to her metal and plastic friend. She touched another button, and the grippers extended with arms. They slowly lowered and set the telephone on the second step. Toto backed up and swiveled around, and Lucy began to bring him home.

The robot had not gotten far when all of us could see that glass door open, and a bearded man in khakis and a sweater swiftly emerged. He grabbed the telephone off the step and vanished inside.

"Good work, Lucy," Wesley said, and he sounded very relieved. "Okay, goddamn it, now call," he added, and he was not talking to us, but them. "Lucy," he added, "when you're ready, come on in."

"Yes, sir," she said as her arms coaxed Toto over every dip and bump.

Then Marino, Wesley and I climbed steps leading into the mobile command post, which was upholstered in gray and blue, with tables between seats. There was a small kitchen and bath, and windows were tinted so one could see out, but not in. Radio and computer equipment had been set up near the back, and overhead five televisions were turned to the major networks and CNN, the volume set low.

A red phone on a table started ringing as we were walking down the aisle. It sounded urgent and demanding, and Wesley ran to pick it up.

"Wesley," he said, staring out a window, and he pushed two buttons that both taped the caller and put him on speakerphone.

"We need a doctor." The male voice sounded white and Southern, and he was breathing hard.

"Okay, but you're going to need to tell me more."

"Don't bullshit with me!" he screamed.

"Listen." Wesley got very calm. "We're not bullshitting, all right'? We want to help, but I need more information."

"He fell in the pool and went into like a coma."

"Who did?"

"Why the fuck does it matter who?"

Wesley hesitated.

"He dies, we've got this place wired. You understand?

We're going to blow you fucking up if you don't do some thing now!"

We knew who he meant, so Wesley did not ask again.

Something had happened to Joel Hand, and I did not want to imagine what his followers might do if he died.

"Talk to me," Wesley said.

"He can't swim."

"Let me make certain I understand. Someone almost drowned'?"

"Look. The water's radioactive. It had the fucking fuel assemblies in it, you understand?"

"He was inside one of the reactors."

The man screamed again, "Just shut the fuck up with your questions and get someone to help. He dies, everybody dies. You understand that?" he said as a gun loudly went IL

off over the phone and cracked from the building at the same time.

Everyone froze, and then we could hear crying in the background. I thought my heart would beat out of my ribs.

"You make me wait another minute," the man's excited voice was back on the line, "and another one gets killed."

I moved closer to the phone and before anyone could stop me, I said, "I'm a doctor. I need to know exactly what happened when he fell into the reactor pool."

Silence. Then the man said, "He almost drowned, that's all I know. We tried to pump water out of him but he was already unconscious."

"Did he swallow water?"

"I don't know. Maybe he did. Some was coming out of his mouth." He was becoming more agitated. "But if you don't do something, lady, I'm going to turn Virginia into a goddamn desert."

"I'm going to help you," I said. "But I need to ask you several more questions. Tell me his condition now?"

"Like I said. He's out. It's like he's in a coma."

"Where do you have him?"

"In the room here with us." He sounded terrified. "He don't react to anything, no matter what we try to do."

"I'm going to have to bring in a lot of ice and medical supplies," I said. "It's going to take several trips unless I have some help."

"You'd better not be FBI," he raised his voice again.

"I'm a doctor out here with a lot of other medical personnel," I said. "Now, I'm going to come and help, but not if you're going to give me a hard time."

He was silent. Then he said, "Okay. But you come alone."

"The robot will help me carry things. The same one that brought you your phone."

He hung up, and when I did, Wesley and Marino were staring at me as if I had just committed murder.

"Absolutely not," Wesley said. "Jesus Christ, Kay!

Have you lost your mind?"

"You ain't going if I have to put you in a goddamn police hold," Marino chimed in.

"I have to," I said simply. "He's going to die," I added.

"And that's the very reason why you can't go in there," Wesley exclaimed.

"He has acute radiation sickness from swallowing water in the pool," I said. "He can't be saved. Soon he will die, and then I think we know what the consequences might be.

His followers will probably set off the explosives." I said to Wesley, Marino, and the commander of HRT, "Don't you understand? I've read their Book. He is their messiah, and they won't just walk away when he dies. This whole thing will turn into a suicide mission, as you predicted." I looked at Wesley again.