CHAPTER
THIRTY-FIVE
Irene was surprised to see George
Sparks waiting for her as she stepped off the jetway and into the
lobby of the airport. As supervisory agent in charge of the Little
Rock field office, he should have had more important things to do
than greet arriving passengers. Historically rail-thin, he looked
like he’d put on a few pounds over the years, and what had once
been a headful of flaming-red hair had receded to little more than
a graying ring encircling a freckled pate.
Irene shifted the load of her garment
bag to her left shoulder and extended her hand as she approached.
“Hello, George,” she said cheerily. “It’s been a long
time.”
Sparks shot her a knowing smirk.
“Yeah, I know,” he said, reading her look for what it was. “But you
haven’t changed a bit.”
She laughed. “God help you, George,”
she scoffed. “Haven’t you heard that liars go to
hell?”
He leaned forward and planted a
friendly peck on her cheek. “This is Arkansas, my dear. The buckle
of the Bible Belt. I’m already there.” Back in the days when they
went through the academy together, George was a proselytizing
atheist, believing in essentially nothing but the Bureau and a good
martini.
Irene introduced Paul, then let Sparks
take her bag. “I heard you were out of the country,” she
said.
Sparks nodded. “Yeah, I’ve been in
Iraq, working on my melanoma.” He rubbed the top of his head.
“Picked up quite a collection of hats over the past three
weeks.”
“Okay,” Paul said, “I’ll bite. Why was
the SAC for Little Rock over in Iraq?”
George leaned forward a bit to see
past Irene as they walked. “The world got real small,” he answered.
“Seems that what’s left of the Republican Guard has been
squirreling away chemical warheads. The U.N. inspectors stumbled
onto one of their stashes and found serial numbers traceable to the
Grant Plant.”
“You’re kidding,” Irene
said.
“No joke. Stuff was old as shit—dates
back to the sixties—but the weps experts tell me it’ll still work.
Well, not anymore. They’ve got an incinerator out in the desert
working overtime.”
Paul made a face. “That’s kind of
Twilight Zoneish, don’t
you think?” he said. “All of a sudden, Newark, Arkansas, is the
center of the universe.”
George laughed. “Clearly, you’ve never
seen Newark. Armpit of the universe maybe, but never the center.
Come to think of it, it is sort of the Twilight Zone,” he said,
enjoying his own joke.
Irene changed the subject. “So to what
do I owe the honor of such personal service?”
“I thought you’d want to know as soon
as you got off the plane,” George said, his tone becoming
conspiratorial. “Your friends have already struck.”
Irene stopped dead in the middle of
the hall and nearly got run over by a frantic woman pushing a
stroller. “You’re shitting me.”
He smiled at the frustration in her
face. “I shit you not. We got the call about a half hour ago from
Arkansas State P.D. Seems the Donovan gang cut through the fence to
raid the original bunker.”
She cocked her head, as if she hadn’t
heard correctly. “Come again?”
Sparks nodded. “Yep, you heard me.
They broke back into the magazine they blew up in the first place.”
He started laughing. “Apparently, one of the local cops startled
them, but they got the best of him. State boys found him tied to a
tree in his underwear.” The story struck Sparks as
funny.
Yuck it
up, Irene thought bitterly. You’ve still got a career.
“His underwear?” Paul said
incredulously.
Sparks gathered himself once he
realized that he was laughing alone. “Yeah. Best I can tell from
the trooper who called in the details, the Donovans were in there
to prove that they’d done nothing wrong. Don’t ask, because I don’t
get it, either. Anyway, they had their kid with them, and he must
have gotten himself exposed somehow. They stripped him naked, and
he refused to go anywhere without any clothes on. So they took the
cop’s.”
“His weapon, too?” Paul wanted to
know.
George shrugged. “Trooper didn’t say.
What difference would that make? They’re loaded for bear as it is,
aren’t they?”
They started walking again, in silence
now, as Irene tried to make pieces fit. “They broke
in? To prove that they’re
innocent.” She shook her head and looked to Paul for some help. “I
don’t get it.”
Paul shook his head. “I don’t, either.
Can’t be much left in there. Certainly not enough to risk a kid’s
life . . .”
“That’s it!” Irene said it with all
the delight of a gold prospector. “That’s how we get
them!”
Sparks and Paul exchanged confused
glances.
“The hospitals!” she exclaimed. “If
their kid is injured, they’re gonna have to take him to a hospital,
right? All we have to do . . .”
“. . . is get an alert out to every
hospital in the state to be on the lookout for a sick boy?”
Somehow, when George said it, the idea sounded less
enthralling.
Paul liked it. “Of course!” he agreed.
“Except I’d include the surrounding states, too. Just in case they
bolted.”
They exchanged glances again, in
silent agreement.
“Okay, then,” Irene pronounced.
“That’s our plan.” She took her garment bag back from Sparks. “You
two go get that rolling, okay? I’ve got to make a phone
call.”
“Who to?”
“Frankel,” she said, turning away.
“I’m tired of telling him that we’ve gotten left behind. He needs
to know that we have a plan now.” As she hurried off to find a
telephone, she congratulated herself on her first big break in the
case. Faith will out, after all. She knew if she waited around long
enough, the Donovans would do something stupid.
Now, let’s
just hope that the kid got hurt. The thought
triggered a chill, and a distant pang of remorse that she could
even think such a thing.
“Come on, Nick, step on it!” The tone
of Jake’s voice had soared past desperation, to touch the outer
boundaries of panic.
“I’m going as fast as I can,” Nick
shouted back. “Wrapping the car around a tree won’t help anyone.”
And neither will getting stopped for
speeding, he didn’t say. Nevertheless, each rattling
breath from the suffering boy in the backseat brought just a little
more pressure onto the gas pedal.
“How far?” Carolyn asked.
“Last sign said twenty miles to Little
Rock. I have no idea where the hospital is from
there.”
“He won’t last that
long!”
Even though his eyes opened from time
to time, Travis had long ago lost consciousness. His skin had paled
to the point of translucence, and as his breathing became
progressively more labored, pink foam gathered at the corners of
his mouth and at his nostrils. Jake had climbed in between Travis
and the seat back, from which position he kept the boy leaning
forward just enough to let the blood and drool drain without
choking him. With little else to do, Carolyn used an ancient
McDonald’s napkin from her purse to wipe Travis’s upper lip and
chin. Every now and then, she’d lean over and kiss his
hair.
“Oh, my baby,” she said over and over
again. “You’ll be just fine . . .”
As the speedometer nudged one hundred
miles per hour, Nick tuned everything out but the business of
driving. He struggled not to hear the pitiful rattling of the boy’s
lungs or the crying and cooing of his parents. His job was to keep
the wide-bodied boat of a car on the road and between the lines.
Traffic was sparse along this ribbon of highway, and as he bore
down on the occasional car in his path, he’d flash his headlights
repeatedly, hoping they’d get the hint and move out of his way. Few
did, but none of them made any stupid driving moves, either. He
could only imagine what they had to say as he blew past them at
half again their own speed.
The plan had been to get Travis to the
nearest hospital, which everyone assumed to be in Little Rock. Now,
a half hour into their high-speed flight, Nick had begun to
question the plan’s wisdom. Judging from sound alone, the kid was
heading south fast. Without a more concrete set of directions, he
feared that they’d simply run out of time.
Under different circumstances, he
might not even have noticed the yellow diamond-shaped metal sign as
it loomed up out of the distance. He’d seen them on roadsides
everywhere, bolted securely to four-by-fours and driven deeply into
the dirt, but they’d never had any special significance for him.
But then, he’d never had such an immediate use for the service
advertised: Rescue Squad.
He hit the brakes hard, struggling to
control the speeding Cadillac as he slid into the turn. The
deceleration launched everyone in the backseat onto the floor and
ignited a chorus of angry, startled protests.
“What’s wrong!” Jake
shouted.
Nick gritted his teeth and closed one
eye as the car slid to a halt on the front ramp of the Rescue Squad
building. “Your boy needs medical attention more than he needs a
car ride,” he said.
“Where the hell are we?” Jake
demanded, but Nick didn’t answer. Instead, he jumped out of the car
and jogged up to the front door for help.
Travis had fallen in a heap on the
floor, and Carolyn struggled to help him sit up, but he had landed
facedown, and the way his legs were twisted, it was a hopeless
effort. “Oh, my God, Travis,” she cried. “I’m so sorry, sweetie.
Oh, my baby, my baby.”
Jake planted his feet on the cushions
of the backseat and tried to lift the boy, but with little success.
Somewhere along the line, his son had gained some weight, and
without a shirt to grab hold of, there just wasn’t enough room in
the cramped quarters of the seat to get the leverage he needed. In
some dark corner of his mind, Jake suspected Travis was dead;
totally limp, totally unresponsive. Yet he refused to let the
thought come fully to the surface. His son was breathing, dammit.
And as long as he was breathing, there was hope.
Jake was dimly aware of the sound of
running feet, and then the driver’s-side rear door flew open. He
jerked his head to see two people—a man and a woman—standing there
in matching white-and-green uniforms. He was a mountain; six-four, with a blond
Santa Claus beard and matching gut. She stood maybe five-two if she stretched,
and bore the concerned face of a schoolteacher.
The man spoke first. “Hi,” he said
jovially, even as he leaned in to take a look. “We’re paramedics.
I’m Bob Faylon, and this is my wife, Barbara. What seems to be the
problem here?”
“It’s our son!” Carolyn blurted. “He’s
only thirteen and I think he’s dying. He inhaled some chemical
residue and—”
Jake touched her shoulder gently and
she cut her words off, but the damage was already done. He saw the
recognition in Bob’s eyes and realized that the big man had all the
advantage on him. Recognition quickly transformed to fear, and that
was the emotion Jake worried about most.
Jake answered the question before it
was asked. “Yes, we are,” he said softly. “And you’re in no danger.
We just need you to help our son.”
Bob eyed the gun on Jake’s hip and
nodded toward it. “Then why don’t you get rid of
that?”
Jake looked down at his weapon and
then back again. “Because you’ve got a half foot on me and about a
hundred pounds,” he said, making an effort to be completely honest.
“But if you don’t do anything aggressive, neither will
I.”
Bob backed out of the car and turned
to his wife. “Barbara, go inside and call Communications. Tell them
we’ve got the Donovans here. We need P.D., ASAP.”
“I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t do
that!” Jake called past Bob to his tiny wife. She froze, clearly
not knowing what to do next. She looked to Bob for guidance, but
his eyes never left Jake. This was a man who had been in his share
of fights and clearly had confidence in his ability to win
them.
“Are you going to stop her . . . Jake,
isn’t it?”
Travis barked out a horrid cough,
distracting everyone for just the briefest of moments.
“Do something!” Carolyn
cried.
Jake looked from his son to Carolyn
and back to Bob. “No,” he said at length. “I won’t try and stop
anything. I just want you to help my son.”
Bob’s eyes softened at the sound of
the cough, and he nodded abruptly, his decision made. “Give me a
hand here, Barbara,” he instructed. He edged Jake out of the way as
he climbed further inside the car. “We need to get him out onto the
ground.”
With Bob at Travis’s shoulders and
Barbara at his feet, they made it look easy, lifting the boy right
out of the vehicle.
“Be careful,” Carolyn admonished,
worried that the sag in Travis’s back might injure him. The
enormous pants slipped a little as they moved him, and Carolyn told
them to stop while she pulled them back up to cover his backside.
Travis would have wanted it that way.
Jake and Carolyn huddled together in
the chilly night air as they watched the paramedics work on their
son. They said nothing. They just hugged each other and
stared.
Bob was definitely the one in charge,
and his face showed grave concern as he ordered Barbara to go
inside and bring the ambulance out onto the front ramp. She wasn’t
three steps into her journey before he called to her again. “Call
Communications,” he instructed. “Have them cut numbers on this
incident and tell ’em we need the state police chopper out here.
We’re gonna lose this kid if we don’t fly him out.”
Barbara disappeared at a fast
jog.
Bob turned back to Carolyn. “What kind
of chemicals?” he asked.
Carolyn shrugged. “I don’t know. Old
burned-up military stuff. You must have heard the
story.”
Bob nodded gravely as he produced a
stethoscope out of his back pocket, and he pressed the diaphragm
onto Travis’s bare chest. He listened in one spot for a moment,
then moved the instrument to another. And another. After about
fifteen seconds, he pulled the bows out of his ears, then draped
the stethoscope over the back of his neck. “You’ve got one sick
little boy here, ma’am,” he said. “His lungs are full of liquid,
and judging from the bleeding, he’s got some tissue damage down
there as well.”
Carolyn shook all over. “Is he . . .
Will he . . .” She couldn’t bring herself to ask the
question.
Bob looked away. “I hope so, ma’am,”
he said gravely. “We’re gonna do everything we can.” He seemed
relieved when the overhead door to the ambulance bay rumbled
upward, and the engine turned over. “There’s some stuff I can do
for him here, but we’re gonna medevac him out to St. Luke’s in
Little Rock, where they can do a more permanent patching
job.”
The ambulance pulled up even with the
Cadillac, and suddenly, the darkness erupted in brilliant white
light, fueled by the halogen floods on the side of the vehicle. The
brightness only emphasized the pallor of Travis’s skin, whiter
still in contrast to the redness of his blood.
As Jake and Carolyn watched in
silence, Nick moved up quietly behind them. “Excuse me, guys,” he
said as gently and as lightly as he could, “but we need to get
moving. A whole world of cops is gonna be here soon, and I don’t
want anything to do with them.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Carolyn said
firmly. Her tone left no room for negotiation.
Jake’s breath caught in his throat.
This was it, he realized. This was the end of it all. After
fourteen years on the run, it all came to a crashing halt out in
front of a building they’d never seen, in a town they’d never heard
of. No shooting or shouting; they’d just allow themselves to be
taken. Curiously, the very notion that had seemed so horrifying
just hours before seemed inconsequential next to the loss of his
son.
“I’m staying, too,” he
said.
Nick’s jaw dropped. “You can’t be
serious.”
Jake turned on Nick like a snapping
dog. “He’s my son, Nick! What would you have me do, leave
him?”
Nick took a step back, startled by the
attack. He didn’t have an answer for that question, but he sure as
hell hadn’t come all the way to Podunk, Arkansas, just to be taken
away in a police chopper. He’d done this as a favor, not as a
sacrifice. He had his own family to worry about.
“You go with him, Jake.” It was
Carolyn. She’d found her voice again, and it was strong,
unequivocal.
“Carolyn, I can’t . . .” Jake felt
himself losing control.
“You have to. There’s no other way.”
She grasped his face in both hands and dropped her voice nearly to
a whisper. “If you stay, we’ll never see each other again. You know
that. Giving up accomplishes nothing.”
He looked suddenly like a little boy
himself. His features knotted and he shook his head. “But what
about you? What about Trav?”
To see her husband start to cry melted
Carolyn’s heart. “I’ll be with him,” she whispered, “for as long as
they’ll let me.”
“But you’ll go to jail . .
.”
“. . . and you’ll get me out.” She
smiled, even as her lower lip trembled. “You’re the only one, Jake.
You and Nick—” She stopped herself and shot a glance over to
Nick.
Nick waved off the sentimentality and
turned away.
Jake looked at Carolyn for a long,
long moment. They’d shared everything. Good times and bad. It
couldn’t end like this. They’d always been together. That’s how any of this was able to
work. How could he watch Travis be sent off to a hospital somewhere
while Carolyn was shipped off to prison? He didn’t think he could
make a go of it alone. What would happen if he failed? He realized
in a rush of emotion that he’d never see either of them again.
Never hear his wife’s throaty laugh; never rumple his son’s hair.
He pulled Carolyn close, overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness.
There’d always been options; there’d always been plans. Now there
was nothing. Now he was alone. He couldn’t . . .
“Jake, we’ve got to go,” Nick
said.
Carolyn pushed Jake away and reached
up to wipe the tears from his face, ignoring her own. “He’s right,”
she said. “You’ve got to go. I’ve got to be with
Travis.”
Jake shook his head. “Together
forever, remember?” he pleaded softly.
“Family first,” she corrected,
straightening her husband’s hair with her fingers. “This is the
only way.”
He wanted to argue. He tried to argue,
but the words just weren’t there. He allowed Nick to pull gently on
his arm, and as they stepped away, Carolyn’s face collapsed. She
pivoted quickly and headed toward the ambulance, where Bob and
Barbara were lifting Travis through the back doors.
“I love you!” Jake shouted after her,
his voice thick and raspy.
He couldn’t tell if she’d heard him
over the rumble of the ambulance’s motor.