Breakpoint (25 page)

“Come on up, darlin'. Ain't gonna be no gang rapes or child killed on our island. Haven't been in over two hund' years,” the large woman said as she pulled Susan up. “You get out of here now, fast, and we'll keep him 'til our men come.”

Susan did not hesitate. She ran to the front door.

“You folks stay off our island!” she heard the first woman say as Susan made it onto the pathway outside. She was turned around. The clinic was on the north end; that would be to the left. She looked to see if Scott's associates were about and then ran again up to the main path. There was a hand-painted wooden sign where the paths met: “Queen's Highway.” She turned left on the white sand path and began running again. The sand here was loose and she slipped. It was 7:30 by her watch. There was thick vegetation and palm trees on both sides of the path, but no more cottages. She began power-walking, inhaling deeply. She started to think. They would be waiting for her at the gate, the men from Scott's team. Her BlackBerry was still in her pocket. Again, there was no signal.

The path bent and then there was a long straightaway ahead. She could see a gate and a wall at the end. Then she noticed a golf cart and two men in blue blazers. Maybe they hadn't seen her. She began to cut through the underbrush toward the beach. Maybe she could approach the clinic-villa from the beach side and avoid the men at the gate. Prickly vines scratched her and tore tiny rips in her suit jacket. She was afraid the pink suit could be seen through the trees.

Finally she made it to the beach. Unlike the southern part of the island, the beach here was rocky, coral. She pulled off the pink jacket and felt the cold ocean breeze on her back, drying the sweat. Stumbling over the coral and rock, she kept close to the edge of the trees in case someone was watching the beach. As she approached the place where the villa's wall met the beach, she moved down toward the water's edge. The sand was hard. Then she ran. Her calves were hardening up, her legs heavy to lift. She did not slow to look along the wall toward the gate, but kept running to the stairs she saw ahead. They were carved in the coral and went up to the lawn in front of the villa.

At the top of the stairs, the lawn looked like a broad green putting field. She caught her breath, ran her fingers through her hair, and walked to the first door she could find. “Oh my God!” a woman called out as Susan walked into a lounge.

“Honey, what happened to you?” a woman in a flowered dress asked as she got out of her chair and approached Susan. “You look like you just ran through a windmill. Oh dear, is this blood? Are you bleeding?” The woman backed away.

Susan stood looking at six very well dressed white women in their thirties, who had identical expressions of surprise, horror, and distaste. “I fell on the path. I—I'm late for my appointment,” Susan managed to get out. “Where is the doctor, the director?”

“Oh, you must be one of the new class, arriving today? We're the group that's flying back this morning. They all went in for the welcome lecture.” The flowered-dress woman pointed up a corridor leading off the lounge. “But you'll want to freshen up first, I'm sure….”

“No, no. I need to tell them—tell them I'm here,” Susan said, brushing past the group and moving into the corridor. Halfway up the hall on the right was a door labeled “Pharmacy.” She tried the doorknob and moved inside. No one was there. The cabinets were padlocked, but there, on the counter, was a telephone. She hit nine, hoping for an outside line, and then punched in Jimmy Foley's cell phone number.

It clicked into voice mail. “I'm at the clinic and I need to be extracted, and by guys with guns.” She hung up and started to punch in the IAC Watch Office when she heard male voices, arguing, approaching. “You can't go in there,” one man said. “She's having a suicidal incident, a breakdown. We need to get her out of here,” came the reply. The rest was drowned out by an engine roar outside. Susan peeled back part of the blinds to see out of the window, as a large white seaplane pulled toward the coast-side dock. She saw an awning-covered doorway on the outside a few windows down to the left. If she could get to that door on the inside, it would be a straight run to the seaplane.

She tried a connecting door to the next room. It opened into a storage room filled with blue boxes. Something on the boxes attracted her. “First Year” it said in large yellow letters. Under that, she read: “Special Baby Formula, not to be used by children for whom it is not prescribed. This formula has been created to enhance your baby's special condition. It will be FedEx-ed to you every two weeks. If for any reason a shipment is late, call 888-800-BABY.” It meant something. She tried to bring back the memory.

It was Jimmy's notes of his first and only meeting with TTeeLer in the pool hall, in California. What was it? TTeeLer had said formula. She opened her BlackBerry and scrolled to the notes and the recording Jimmy had made during the meet. She advanced through the conversation, listening on her earpiece. Then TTeeLer's voice, from the grave: “No, I left when I heard the talking about needing to hack in somewhere to change the formula on something. He said ‘It'll kill 'em all, hundreds, maybe thousands.' Listen, whatever your real name is, Jimmy, I will steal from you in cyberspace if you are stupid enough to let me, but I am no killer. Nobody's giving me the needle in some state pen. So I waited for the next cash disbursement and left the reservation.”

They didn't know the addresses of the families with the extra-chromosome children, Susan thought, but somebody did, somebody who shipped the formula every two weeks. You don't need to get their addresses if you hack in and alter the formula in a lethal way during its manufacturing, inserting some gradual poisoning. The clinic will ship the children the poison without knowing it. When had the altered formula started being shipped? She couldn't just bolt for the seaplane; she had to tell the doctors immediately.

Susan opened the door to the corridor and found a man in a white medical lab coat slumped on the floor. She turned a corner. Two men in blue blazers were holding another man against a wall.

“It's her!”

“Stop!”

She ran for the door to the dock. The seaplane's engines overrode any other sound. She charged toward the plane. Over the roar, she thought she heard a gunshot. Turning, she saw a man in a blazer point a gun at her from the steps of the clinic. She rolled onto the dock. Maybe she could get to the water before
…FWHACKKK!

Another shot. But it also missed her. She lifted her head up to look toward the clinic. The man in the blazer was sitting on the ground, up against the door, blood pouring from his head. Susan rolled onto her back and looked straight up at the sky. Set against the deep blue was an incongruously red-orange helicopter, with a man sitting outside while the helicopter flew, sitting on a landing sled, holding a rifle.

The noise of the helicopter merged with the roar of the seaplane surrounding her and piercing through to her bones, but through it she could make out a few words: “United States Coast Guard…Royal Bahamian Police…shut down…do not attempt…” The helicopter hovered in front and above the seaplane until the larger aircraft shut down its engines. Susan stayed flat on the dock. The helicopter landed on the lawn. And then it was quiet.

0800 EST
Washington, Virginia

General Bowdin's Hummer H3H, powered by its hydrogen cell, turned off the state highway and onto the road into the town. “I didn't know there was a Washington in Virginia, except the real one, the big one. I guess it's kind of in Virginia,” the driver said, taking advantage of being alone with the big boss, chatting him up.

“This is the real one, Todd, not that swamp up north. George Washington himself surveyed all around here before he joined the Army. Folks here named the town after him long before the Feds set up camp on the mosquito-ridden shores of the Potomac.”

As they entered the town, the driver pulled to the side of the road. “Sir, my orders don't say where to go in the town. And they just say to take you to the inn. No name for the inn.”

“Hell, Todd, it's not a big town. Just drive around—it ain't enemy territory.”

The H3H got some stares as it slowly moved down Gay Street, past quaint shops, past tiny brick cottages that housed the county government, past two theaters, including one that had been a church. At the corner, the General spotted a building with both French and American flags. “That's got to be it,” he told the driver.

“Gee, sir, the street name, what they did to that church, and now a frog flag—what kind of town is this? You sure this ain't enemy territory?”

A uniformed doorman had appeared and was trying to open the Hummer's door for the General. “Park in that lot over there,” the General spat out to Todd, “and don't get out of your vehicle.”

Striding into the foyer, the General was quickly met by a greeter. “Good morning, sir. I'm sorry to inform you that we do not serve breakfast to the public. Only dinner.”

Bowdin looked around at the elaborate decor. “Looks like a damn New Orleans whorehouse.”

“I wouldn't know, sir.”

“I bet you wouldn't,” General Bowdin sneered. “I am not the public. I am joining Mr. Gaudium for breakfast, if that's all right with you.”

“Oh yes, very good, sir. He's expecting you in our Mayor's House suite, across the street. Please follow me, and if you like, we can go through the kitchen.” They walked through a small bar, where a member of the staff was playing with two Dalmatian dogs. In the large, sunny kitchen, Gregorian chants played. The kitchen staff wore white pants with a Dalmatian pattern of black splotches. The General passed other Dalmatian-patterned staff doing Chinese stretching exercises in the herb garden. Across the street, they came to a two-story red house. “Let us know if there's anything you need, sir.”

“General, please come in,” Will Gaudium shouted from the rear of the house. “We have breakfast set up in the courtyard.”

General Bowdin moved quickly through the richly adorned room to the courtyard. “Kind of a frilly place, Will.”

“Tremendous food and service, Frank,” Gaudium enthused. “Better than The French Laundry.”

“Never ate in a laundry,” the General said, seating himself under the outdoor heater.

“I flew in last night, but got here in time for a great dinner. I flew in to talk with you, Frank. There's so much going on, and I just thought we should compare notes. I have some questions,” Gaudium began.

“There is a lot going on. And it's working, they think it's the Chinese. My guys in the Pentagon say they're working up options for a meeting with the President,” the General asserted. “Pass the bacon there, Will. Thanks. What are your questions?”

“Well, Frank, we said we would avoid fatalities and yet people have died in the blackout out west, and others would have died if the truck bomb had made it to the Globegrid node at Moffett Field. Then there was the pancake house.” Gaudium spoke haltingly, deferentially, to the man he employed.

“That wasn't us, Will. We didn't do the pancake house. Speaking of which, do they do pancakes at this place?” General Bowdin answered, chewing his bacon, looking at the food he had piled onto his plate.

Gaudium ignored the question. “But people
have
died in our operations, Frank.”

Bowdin raised his eyes to look at the man opposite him. “I said I would
try
to avoid fatalities, and I have tried. But you can't go 'round blowing shit up without someone gettin' hurt. I told you that going into this. How else do you think we're gonna stop these godless perversions? Did you think that in the Final Days there wouldn't be a struggle, even before Armageddon? We don't know how long this struggle period will be. Could be generations.” He reached across the table for the bowl of grits.

Gaudium sat, watching the General eat, then tried again: “I think we should back off now until the election. Things are getting too hot between America and China. It could get out of hand. And if Senator George can get elected, he'll stop all of these technological excesses, peacefully, with laws and executive orders, international treaties.”

“Will, that ain't gonna happen and you know it,” Bowdin said, putting down his knife and fork and looking straight at his employer. “George can get the nomination, but he's not going to unseat the incumbent. Even if he did, the Congress, the courts, the bureaucracy would set up hurdles, slow things down. Anyway, this stuff is going on offshore, overseas, more and more. And international treaties, Will? Like the ones against nuclear weapons? Did they stop Pakistan, India, North Korea, Iran?”

Gaudium did not answer, and the General continued. “Yes, Will, things are heating up with China, and it looks like this President of ours might actually do the right thing for once, go protect Taiwan and let it announce its independence. Taiwan is on our side. China persecutes Christians, like Rome did to Saint Peter and the early church. It's just like that over there now—secret bishops, underground churches. We have to stand up to them.”

Gaudium stood and walked around the courtyard, his hands deep inside his pants pockets. He stared at the brick patio floor. General Bowdin got up from the table and walked over to him. “Will, look, you are doing the right thing and history will say that. You will be a national hero a generation from now. You have spent over two hundred million of your own money on this operation because the government wasn't doing its job.”