Rick Mofina - The Panic Zone

Still, if Estralla learned of it, it would be disastrous.

Gannon dragged the back of his hand over his moist brow and glimpsed the driver’s eyes studying him in the rearview mirror. Gannon felt a small ache in his right hand. He was still gripping the papers, a sheaf nearly half an inch thick.

As the cab worked its way through Centro, Gannon inserted his earpiece into his digital recorder and played Gabriela’s last message, cuing up the key aspect.

“…I got a call from an anonymous woman who claims to have a big story and documents for us. I set up a meeting at the Cafe Amaldo…”

Gannon replayed “and documents for us,” several times.

If Gabriela met her source, and if that source brought records, then it’s possible the blast scattered some of them to the street.

Those documents could be in his hands now.

A few of the papers were charred. Some had burned edges.

They had to have come from the blast.

Gannon caught his breath when he stopped at one page.

It looked like it was smeared with blood.

As soon as he got to his hotel room he started working.

This wouldn’t be easy. The papers were in Portuguese. He set them out on the desk and switched on his laptop. Some papers had letterheads, some looked like spread sheets, sales records, membership lists, business correspondence.

He typed phrases into free online language services and translated what he could into English. It gave him a sense of what each record was. When he found pages that obviously belonged together, he grouped them. The documents were from computer companies, law firms, banks, churches. It was meticulous work but he kept at it until exhaustion overtook him and he went to bed.

Big Cloud, Wyoming

A continent away, Emma Lane was plunging through darkness with her eyes closed, her thinking unclear.

They’re gone, Emma.

Nooooo…

Joe and Tyler are with the angels now.

She was trapped in a nightmare.

There was a flash, a scream on a rushing wind, then her world vanished and she floated out of herself but came back to now.

Emma smelled the antiseptic smell of a hospital. A faint message echoed on the PA and she sensed laundered linen, a pillow under her head. She was thirsty, and her head ached as her mind streaked with images: of a perfect day, of driving to the river for a picnic, of Joe and Tyler laughing.

Let me stay here with them.

She struggled to hold the images but couldn’t.

Joe’s smile disappears…their SUV swerves to miss the car coming at them head-on…their SUV rolls…Emma is thrown… Tyler’s strapped inside…Joe’s hurt…Emma reaches for him, touches him, feels Joe die…then in the chaos someone’s pulling Tyler clear before the inferno…

No!

They’re gone, Emma.

The nurses.

Joe and Tyler are with the angels.

That’s what the nurses had been whispering so that when Emma regained consciousness, she would have absorbed the horror: that her husband and baby boy died in the crash.

“No! No! No!”

Emma’s eyelids fluttered open. She bolted upright, eyes bulging, her face a mask of cuts, bruises, fear, her arms reaching out.

“Tyler!”

A nurse and doctor moved to calm her. The room tensed with concern before it vibrated with a deafening keening.

“Oh, God!”

“Easy, dear, easy,” the nurse said.

“Where is my baby? Give me my baby!”

“Emma, take it easy. Lay back, sweetie,” the nurse soothed her as she and the doctor gently forced her back down on the bed and prepared a hypodermic needle. Emma saw the tubes taped to her arm, the monitor on her finger tip, felt the tube under her nose, saw the IV line. She had no physical pain, just medicated muzziness.

It did not happen.

Yes, it did.

The monstrous truth stared back from the eyes of the people in her room: the nurse, the doctor, another medical person, Emma’s aunt Marsha and uncle Ned from Des Moines?

“Oh, Emma. When the police called, we got on the first plane.” Her aunt bent down and hugged her. “We’re so sorry.”

“We’re going to get through this.” Uncle Ned, the retired Marine, who had Semper Fi tattooed on his forearm and smelled of Old Spice, patted her hand. “We’ll get you through.”

The doctor shone a flashlight in Emma’s eyes, uncollared his stethoscope and pressed it to her chest. “You were in a terrible car accident but, fortunately, your physical injuries are relatively minor. You’ve got a concussion, bruised ribs and abrasions.” He injected something into Emma’s IV. “You’re undergoing trauma. Your husband and son did not survive the accident. I’m so sorry. We’ve got someone here to help you.”

“No. I saw someone rescue Tyler.”

Silence fell over the room.

“Where are you keeping Tyler? Bring him to me.”

The doctor, the nurse, her aunt Marsha and uncle Ned exchanged glances, then looked to the other medical staff member in the white coat.

“Emma, I’m Dr. Kendrix, I’m a psychiatrist. I’m here to help you with the deaths of your husband and son. You’ve suffered a cataclysmic loss, Emma, and we’re going to help you.”

“Stop!”

Emma held up her palms, and the tubes tethered to her arms trembled. Everyone was taken aback by the unyielding ferocity burning in her eyes.

“I know Joe is dead. I know that. I held his hand. I felt him die. I know he didn’t suffer. Oh, God!” Her voice quavered, but she cupped her hands to her face then removed them and continued. “But my son is not dead!”

“Emma-” Aunt Marsha stepped closer.

“No! Someone rescued him just before the fire. I saw it happen.”

“Emma,” Uncle Ned said. “That’s not how it happened, you have to accept that.”

“No!”

“Emma-” Dr. Kendrix sat on the corner of her bed “-according to the troopers, Tyler remained buckled in his car seat. Now sometimes-”

“You’re wrong!”

“Okay. It’s okay. Your anger is justified,” Kendrix said, “but sometimes, Emma, the mind in shock, facing overwhelming trauma, denies the unthinkable when it happens.”

Emma buried her face in her hands as her aunt took her shoulders and held her.

“I want proof,” Emma said.

“Proof?”

“I want proof that Tyler died in the crash.”

Kendrix searched Emma’s face as he weighed her demand. It was not unreasonable. In fact, it was not uncommon.

“All right.”

“But, Doctor-” Emma’s aunt was apprehensive “-don’t you think it’s too soon. I mean…” She hesitated. “It’s just too soon.”

“I understand your concern,” Kendrix said to her. “These things are never easy, but in this case, given the circumstances, I think it’s warranted.”

He turned to Emma.

“All right, you’ve had a lot to deal with. We’ll take care of it after you’ve rested.”

Fairfax County, Virginia

While Emma Lane rested in Wyoming and Gannon slept in Brazil, Robert Lancer was hard at work in metropolitan Washington, D.C.

He undid his collar button and studied a file while walking down a third-floor corridor of the National Anti-Threat Center. The complex sat amid the wooded suburbs northwest of the capital.

In this building, behind the bullet and blast-proof windows, hundreds of security experts from a spectrum of government branches worked 24/7 analyzing threats to national security.

Lancer re-read his file on his way to the center’s East Africa section, hoping that this latest “urgent” interruption warranted pulling him away from his other duties.

He reached the section’s locked door, swiped his card, then punched the alphanumeric code into the keypad.