Jeff Abbott - Trust Me

‘Mom! It hurts!’ Kevin started to cough, started to rub at his eyes.

‘What?’

‘Throat… my throat,’ Kevin moaned and then Ashley felt it too, a terrible burning in the back of her throat, her eyes. Her eyes, her throat, burned like matches had been jabbed into the skin. A heavy smell, like an ocean of bleach, swamped her. The children clawed at their eyes, their mouths.

Get out of here, Ashley thought. Something awful had been freed from the broken jumble of rail cars. A haze blanketed the ground, coiling, the green-yellow of a snake’s scales.

Oh my God. Not my kids, no, she thought. She managed to shift gears, her eyes and nose and throat aflame. Nausea gutted her stomach. Her upper airway constricted like a fist closing. She jammed the accelerator to the floor. Blinking and gasping through the agony Ashley saw the turn to her house, half a block away. Best sight in the world. Get home, call 9-1-1, wash the kids in the tub, everything would be okay, it would have to be okay.

She was dimly aware of people running on the streets, running from the rail yard. Collapsing as she roared past them.

Just get away, get away, get the kids inside, this can’t happen to us.

Ashley Barton took the turn too soon and far too fast, fueled by her blind panic. She missed the street and plowed through the front of a small liquor store. She went through the windshield and she thought not happening not happening and then the pain was gone, the screams were silent.

The explosion wasn’t as loud as he thought it would be; but then the bomb had to be calculated to precision. Big enough to rupture the chlorine tanks, but not so powerful for extreme heat to oxidize the chlorine, rendering most of the gas non-toxic or to burn up much of it. The shape of Snow’s charge was designed to puncture the tanks. Derailment was a given.

He could imagine the chaos in his mind’s eye: everything within a thousand feet of the derailment site would be enveloped in a choking cloud of chlorine. The cloud could expand, if lucky, to a mile and a half in width, and with the boost from the wind, carry close to eighteen miles.

Twenty thousand people would be within the cloud’s path.

The Beast would of course order evacuations, fight like the wounded giant that it was, but the death toll could easily be in the hundreds or even the thousands. He smiled.

He hoped, as a first shot, this would prove a great success.

He drove fast on the empty road, heading toward Houston. He had a gas mask but he didn’t feel he needed it; Ripley was far enough behind and he was driving into the prevailing wind.

He drove south back to Houston, to Snow’s house without calling, because he thought the Beast, with its thousands of eyes, would be tracking every cellular call made near Ripley as part of the town’s postmortem. He listened to the radio, the music interrupted by a news bulletin, the increasingly frantic coverage, and the order for immediate evacuation.

When he got back to Snow’s house, the yards were empty. He saw cars filled with families, heading out, even though the cloud was far away and the wind wasn’t moving the poison in this direction. People panicked so easily.

He got out of the car, breathed in the cool air, and walked inside the house.

Snow sat on her couch, watching CNN, eating pretzels and sipping a congratulatory beer.

He watched the coverage, the panic, the horror, thinking, I did that. Good for me.

She looked up at him. ‘I guess my baby delivered.’

Mouser had a sudden hunger to touch her throat, feel the taste of her skin. But he barely knew her, so it would be wrong. The mission first, the mission always. He went and got a glass of water.

‘Only one car punctured by the blast,’ she said, watching the TV coverage. A satellite image of the derailment was on the screen. ‘The cloud is going to be big. They’re evacuating everyone within twenty miles.’

He could see the dead by the rails, on the streets of Ripley. He counted a dozen bodies as the camera’s eye moved along the main drag. He saw a wrecked minivan, halfway in a storefront close to the rail yard, a flipped pickup truck. The chattering experts said the chlorine cloud was not likely to move south toward Houston and heavy rain pushing in from the Gulf would help ground the chlorine. But the situation was already being labeled a chemical attack. Not simply an accident, and the words al-Qaeda and terrorists were already on the commentators’ tongues.

‘Al-Qaeda. They always think of them first,’ Snow said.

My God, Mouser thought. That was simple. And cheap. What blows to the Beast could he inflict with real money, money to last him for years, now that he had proven his worth. He nearly laughed in joy.

The doorbell rang. Snow glanced up at Mouser. ‘You expecting anyone?’

‘Maybe my ex. We broke up, he might come here begging.’

Mouser pulled the gun, went to the window. ‘Answer the door. Move out of the way if you don’t know ’em.’

‘If it’s police…’

‘I’m not being taken. You?’

She shook her head without hesitation.

Mouser positioned himself. Snow answered the door.

‘I thought you were in Washington,’ Snow said.

On the porch, Henry Shawcross said, ‘We have a serious problem.’

‘Please tell us you’re here to celebrate,’ Mouser said. He knew it wasn’t the case but he wasn’t ready to let go of the euphoria he felt.

‘No. My stepson has been kidnapped.’ Henry stood against the living room wall, arms crossed. Exhaustion marked his face.

Mouser sat on the edge of Snow’s couch. ‘And I care why? That’s not our problem.’

‘Wrong. Luke’s kidnapping affects everything – the first wave and the Hellfire attack.’ Henry told him about Luke, the demands of the kidnapper. ‘They want the fifty million for his safe return.’

‘Then no safe return. They can’t have it,’ Mouser said. An absolute statement, no room for discussion.

‘I am not going to let them kill my kid.’

‘I’m not going to let them have our money,’ Mouser said. ‘And he’s Warren Dantry’s kid, right?’

A long pause, a curled lip that told Mouser Henry was uncomfortable with Mouser’s knowledge of his family. Mouser studied the professor in front of him. Henry always looked like he was running late for a lecture and he looked the same now, except in his gaze an intense anger steamed.

‘Yes. He was Warren’s son.’ Henry folded his arms. ‘I think of him as my son now.’

‘Answer me one question. Do you have our money, Henry?’

Henry stared at him, as though anticipating the sight of a gun or a knife. ‘No. I tried to access the accounts; the passwords have been changed.’

All of Mouser’s pride, all his excitement over the mission well done, the blow against the Beast, turned to ash.

‘You can’t access the money?’ Snow asked, as though she didn’t understand.

‘Not for you. Not for anyone in the Night Road.’ Henry crossed his arms. ‘I rushed back here as soon as I could, so we can figure out what to do…’

‘No. No.’ Mouser lurched forward, to seize Henry. Henry raised a gun from under his own jacket. Mouser stopped.

‘Stop. We can’t fight amongst ourselves. What’s done is done. Listen to me. We’re going to fix this. We have to move forward with the first wave. And Hellfire stays on schedule.’

Mouser stopped himself. He wanted to strangle the life out of Henry Shawcross at that moment. Another betrayal, that’s all this was, just like every other moment in his life where he approached greatness, only to see his glory snatched away. He forced calmness into his breath. He felt the pressure of a hand on his shoulder; he glanced behind him.