Mitch held up his hand for the agent to stop when he was 15 feet away. Mitch could make out the man’s face through the glass on the helmet. He had a broad grin and thinning red hair.
“
Hello, Mitchell,” said the agent. He used the informality as a way to put Mitchell at ease. “I’m not used to talking to people with a spacesuit on. I feel like I should be asking you to take me to your leader.”
Mitch stared at the man for a moment. He was about to ask if the corny jokes were a tactic to wear him down but thought better of it. “I’m not used to negotiating in my underwear.” Mitch paused. “Begging, yes.”
Agent Merritt smiled. Through his earpiece he could hear one of the people listening in on the microphone let out a muffled laugh.
“
My name is Special Agent Joseph Merritt. You can call me Joe. My job is to negotiate with you and listen to your demands. I’m empowered to make anything happen that we think is reasonable.”
“
Wait a second,” interrupted Mitch. “Demands? Demands are what bank robbers and terrorists have. I don’t want anything. I just want to know that if I surrender I won’t be torn to pieces. And that I’ll be safe from whoever is responsible for this.”
“
Who do you think did this to you, Mitchell? I’d like to help.”
The question was posed with the calm sincerity of a parent talking to a child about monsters.
It took every bit of Mitchell’s willpower not to react sarcastically or get angry. Acting defensively in either way would make him look paranoid and unbalanced. “Look, Joe, I don’t know what’s happening to me. I hear all the crazy things that people say on the radio. I see firsthand what happens when people come near me.” Mitch looked down at his body. “Look at me, man! This is real. Those bite marks and scratches happened. I want an explanation for all of this.” Mitch looked at the crowd of law enforcement officials on either side. “We need answers for all of the people who got hurt.”
“
Let me help you get some answers. What do you need?”
“
I need to know that anyone who comes near me is going to be wearing proper protective equipment.”
“
Protective of what?” asked Merritt.
Mitchell blinked. The question came out sounding like a probe. “Protective of me. My scent. Maybe I’ve got some kind of rage virus like they said.”
“
Who said?”
“
Talk show hosts. People on the radio filling airtime. I don’t know who, man. It’s just one of those things that come up when people are looking for an explanation.”
“
What else do you need?” asked Merritt.
“
I need to know that you have a safe way to transport me from here.”
“
A vehicle to keep you from getting attacked?”
“
Yes,” said Mitchell.
Merritt held up a finger as he was getting instructions through his earpiece. He looked at Mitch and nodded. “That’s not going to be a problem.”
“
OK ....”
“
We’re going to transport you in an armored truck. That way nobody can get at you and hurt you. Does that sound good?”
Mitch shook his head. “No, it does not. Ask the people on the other end of your radio how an armored truck is supposed to keep people from smelling me or getting wind of whatever makes them attack.”
Merritt held up his finger again as he got more instructions. “They’re designed to withstand tear gas attacks and are sealed tight.”
Mitchell felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. He realized that it wasn’t just the negotiator acting in a patronizing way, the people he was dealing with really didn’t think there was anything wrong with him. They had bought into some other theory about a weapon. Mitchell had to call the bluff. He leaned back on the railing and looked over the edge of the bridge for a moment.
“
Joe. Special Agent Merritt,” said Mitch. “I’m sure the people you’re talking to will promise me the world if you think it will get me away from the edge of the bridge and this stupid thing off my neck while a thousand cameras are on us. The one thing I am asking for right now is the truth. An armored truck is designed to keep things on the outside from getting in like people and tear gas. Air may be filtered on its way in but not on its way out.
“
Either the people you are talking to know that and are just trying to bullshit me because they’re under some false pretense that I’m up to something or they’re incompetent and can’t be trusted with my life.” Mitch waved his arm at the buildings and pointed at the Channel 8 camera. “Or the lives of everyone else around me. A truck that’s not airtight is a menace to everyone we drive past.”
“
Mitchell, we’re being totally straight with you,” Merritt said in his most sincere voice.
“
If you want to believe I’m acting under some kind of delusion or have some kind of sinister plan, for the sake of everyone, have the courtesy to treat my delusion with some kind of consistency.”
Agent Merritt listened for instructions. He nodded. “All right, Mitchell, here’s the deal. You’ve got a lot of people scared right now. Traffic is shut down on highways. People are afraid to go into public spaces. There’s a lot of families upset with you.
“
I’ve been doing this for twenty years and I’ve met a lot of different personality types. I had you figured out the moment I saw you standing here with the silly cord around your neck. If you were serious, you’d have a gun to your head or you’d be up someplace high. You’re just a guy that wants attention and to pretend he’s a victim in all this. Obviously it’s not on you. We’ll find it though.”
“
What?!” asked Mitchell.
Merritt reached down and turned off a knob at his waist. The suit began to deflate as the pressurized air coming from his backpack came to a stop. He reached to undo the seal under his helmet.
“
Please stop!” shouted Mitchell.
“
You can stop this any time, Mitchell. Tell us where we can find the other canisters.”
Mitchell heard a hiss as the latch opened. He looked at the rows of people on either side of the bridge. “For god’s sake! Somebody stop him!” he shouted. He looked up at the Channel 8 building, his eyes filled with desperation.
Merritt tossed the helmet aside and held open his arms. “Don’t feel like jumping, do you, Mitch?” Merritt took in a large nose full of air.
Mitchell backed toward the railing. He could feel the metal against his back.
“
I’m not going to miss that ....” Merritt’s voice turned to a snarl as he bared his teeth and ran toward Mitchell with his fingers curled into claws.
Vulnerable, naked, with nothing to use to defend himself, Mitchell held his hands in front of his face and knelt down. As Merritt closed in on him, Mitch grabbed him by the legs and picked him up in the air. Mitch threw his body to the left as hard as he could.
Merritt fell on his side. The air tank on his back slowed him down as he tried to get up. He rolled over on his stomach and came at Mitchell in a four-legged crawl. Mitch’s foot hit the helmet on the ground. He picked it up and swung it at Merritt’s head so hard the glass cracked. Blood drops splattered from his broken nose.
The SWAT team got orders on their earpieces to take Mitchell down. They swarmed past the barrier with their guns drawn. The .3 micron filters on their gasmasks provided no stopgap for the air around Mitchell. Once they passed the barrier Mitch had set up, their posture began to change.
Millions of people watched on television as cops with gasmasks turned from highly disciplined law enforcement officers into a pack of rabid dogs. Several of them dropped their guns as they clawed out at the air when they ran toward Mitch. Two of them reflexively pulled their triggers, sending a wild barrage of gunfire that ricocheted off the bridge and hit nearby buildings and the vehicles on the other side of the bridge.
The Channel 8 camera zoomed into the terror in Mitch’s eyes as they came at him ready to rip out his throat and tear him to pieces in a violent slaughter. The world watched as Mad Mitch pulled the noose tight over his neck and jumped over the edge of the bridge.
46
Driven by the rage, the SWAT team members leaped over the edge after him in their full armored gear. Not to save him but to kill him. The cord around Mitchell’s neck snapped and he fell into the water. Black armored SWAT team members rained down around him as they hit the water.
Another wave of law enforcement officers swarmed onto the bridge. Twenty more people were overcome with the rage and leaped into the water. Bystanders were paralyzed with panic as they realized that whatever reflex it was that made people go mad overpowered every other instinct. Men thrashed in the water and began to drown as they bared their teeth and clawed out furiously trying to kill something they couldn’t see.
As the presence of Mitchell subsided, rescuers were eventually able reach the thrashing men and pull them to shore. EMTs and police officers worked quickly to resuscitate those who had gone under.
News anchors tried to make sense of what happened for their viewers while they watched it unfold. Expert pundits began to doubt what they had been told. What should have been a simple surrender was botched in the worst way possible.
The FBI district director barked some orders to his subordinates and then turned to his DHS counterpart. “What the hell is going on?”
The other man shrugged.
The FBI district director answered his ringing BlackBerry. “Yes, sir. I understand, sir.”
The deputy director of the FBI was on the other end of the line and was furious with what he’d seen on the news.
“
We were acting under information that this was caused by a weapon of some kind. No, sir, I believe that information is incorrect.” He looked over at the DHS director. “I think we proceed under the assumption that this is a public health crisis and not primarily a criminal investigation. Yes, sir.” He hung up and started giving orders.
The DHS director’s phone was ringing, too. He looked at the FBI district director.
“
We’re asking the Centers for Disease Control to step in and provide assistance. We’re going to the patient zero hypothesis.”
From his vantage point, the FBI district director had clearly seen his negotiator break down and attack Mitchell, an attack that he was sure had gone out live to millions of viewers. The response of his SWAT team confirmed, in his mind, that absent any kind of dispersant on the bridge or some other weapon, the most likely hypothesis was the one that Mitchell had been telling everyone all along.
Where the fuck was that weasel Baylor?
he asked.
Baylor watched the disaster on his hotel room television. The moment he saw that Mitchell had stripped down to his underwear, he knew the current plan wasn’t going to work. If the canister wasn’t found on his person, then the allegations of it being planted were going to be too loud. He had half a mind to text Mr. Lewis and ask him to go in after the drowning men and throw the canister in the water to be discovered. The problem at that point would be that what they found in the canister wouldn’t be found in the men’s lungs.
The FBI was going to want to do their own tests on the blood and tissue and match it to the material in the canister. It would be apparent to them that whatever caused the reaction wasn’t the same as what was in the spray can. He needed to figure out a strategy for the patient zero hypothesis that could minimize blowback and protect Great Wall.
He called Mr. Lewis to give him instructions on how to proceed.
After rescuers had pulled all of the law enforcement personnel from the water, the search continued for Mitchell Roberts. Rescue divers searched the bottom of the waterway in a spiral pattern moving outward around the bay and Intracoastal. The outgoing tide gave them a half-mile radius to search, and that was growing by a mile every hour.
City and county police were sent to watch along the waterfront to see if he climbed ashore anywhere. Marine Patrol and Coast Guard boats were brought in to canvass the area while helicopters from four agencies swept the area around the bridge and surrounding city looking for any sign of Mitchell.
47
Naked and exhausted, Mad Mitch climbed onto the dive platform of the newly christened “Monkey’s Paw.” Two miles away he could hear the helicopters as they buzzed around the South Bay bridge and the manhunt continued. He had very little time until the search extended outward and law enforcement started stopping vessels in the water near him.
The necessity of an escape plan came to Mitch after he listened to the paranoid Dr. Lovestrange on Rookman’s show. Up until the FBI negotiator had tried to patronizingly convince him that an armored car was going to serve as an airtight transport, he was fully committed to the idea that they believed him or, at the very least, were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
The attack on the bridge proved otherwise. Mitchell had been lied to. He still wasn’t sure if it was out of incompetence or the machinations of someone trying to cover up something. The effect was the same. Mitchell couldn’t trust anyone.