The Poseidon Initiative (22 page)

They made their way through the park, walking against the flow of heavy foot traffic as people rushed to the bluffs to get a look at the explosion they heard.

“I feel like a salmon swimming upstream.” Liam said, shouldering past a mother towing twins who both gnawed on blue cotton candy.

They could hear people speculating that there had been an explosion or maybe a bomb. The president is here! We’re under attack! A local news reporter-cameraman team ran toward the bluff.

Tanner and Liam walked purposefully, but did not run, out of the park. They didn’t want to alarm anyone, nor did they wish to tip their hand that they had something to accomplish. Once they cleared the seafood festival the going became easier. They moved down the incline to the waterfront area, only to find that a barricade had already been put up, detouring people away from the section that had been set ablaze. It was from here that they got their first good look at the devastation.

They could heard screams of pain — agony. They heard a man wailing, “What’s happening to her?” over and over again. A line of police officers kept repeating that they had no information at this time except to stay clear of the area. They could hear sirens as fire trucks raced in to battle the blaze. The fuel-fed fire raged uncontested.

Tanner wanted to know if this had been a saxitoxin attack but they had no time to wait around and find out. They followed the detour directions, which fortunately led to a different part of the waterfront. Looking out across the harbor, he found he could no longer see Carmichael’s yacht, which made him nervous. What’s more, the entire waterfront would be locking down tight, soon.

“We need to rent a boat, quick.” He pointed to a small shop that advertised fishing trips and boat rentals and ran to it. Just as they walked up to the counter the employee started to pull down the drop-down shutter to close up shop. “Sorry, forced closure by the Harbor Patrol. Emergency. No rentals until further notice.” Tanner watched as a Harbor Patrol officer watched them to make sure a rental transaction would not occur, and then the officer moved on toward the next establishment down the line.

“Should we try that one?” Liam suggested, pointing to the rental shop the officer was heading to, maybe a couple of hundred feet away.

“No way we’d have time to do a rental before the officer gets there first. And he just saw us. But look.” He pointed at a shop three down from the one the officer was on the way to. “That one’s far enough away that we might be able to run over there and rent before the Harbor Patrol guy gets there to tell them to shut it down.”

Liam eyed the establishment. “Waverunners?”

Tanner shrugged. “They’re fast and maneuverable, and we don’t have much gear.”

Liam nodded. Each of them carried only a pistol with extra clip, a folding knife, and the binoculars. “Right, then. Let’s pretend we’re fitness freaks.”

Liam removed his shirt, revealing his toned physique. Tanner did the same. They began to jog, moving fast under the guise of casual exercisers oblivious to the tragic event that had just occurred rather than two guys running pell-mell through the aftermath of a possible attack. When they got to the waverunner place, Tanner strode to the outdoor counter with his wallet open.

“Two waverunners, please, half-day,” he said. It was possible the proprietor had already been notified via phone to close up shop, but he was relieved to see a girl of perhaps eighteen years of age, long blonde hair dyed with green streaks and a lip ring, bopping her head to an iPod with earbuds in, looking at a social network page on her phone. Decent chance she hadn’t heard yet.

She gave him a slightly annoyed look, she a year-round resident in a resort town that swelled with tourists each summer, he just another one of them. He noticed that she did give Liam a second glance, though, but still acted like she could care less about anything.

“Fill this out, sign here, credit card or cash deposit required, driver license required from both of you.” She slid a clipboard across the wooden counter.

Yes!
Tanner gave her the cards while he scribbled as quick as he could to complete the form. Liam monitored the Harbor Patrol officer, who had just completed his stop at the establishment two doors down and was on his way to the next. If he were to see them in the process of renting, there was no doubt that he’d come straight here. Tanner slid the clipboard with the form on it across the counter.

She eyeballed it more carefully than Tanner would have guessed, passing a finger over each box. The finger stopped on a blank one.

“Phone number required,” she said, passing the clipboard back to Tanner and turning once again to her smart-phone.

Tanner took a deep breath to steady his nerves and entered the phone number for his pay-as-you-go trac-phone that he kept for this type of purpose. It matched the address on his bogus driver license. “Okay.” He eased the form back her way, not wanting to seem rude, which could lead to a delay they couldn’t afford. She swiped the form back without looking at it and stood, grabbing a set of keys with a float on them. “Right down here.”

She exited the booth and trotted down to the floating dock where the waverunners sat. Thankfully she seemed to be in a hurry to get back to her phone. Tanner and Liam were right behind her. She pointed to a pair of red Yamaha waverunners, side by side. She began giving instructions on their use while the two men each straddled one of the machines, but Tanner interrupted her while starting his engine.

“That’s okay, we’ve done it before.”

“We’re good, thanks!” Liam echoed, his vehicle expelling a plume of exhaust as it roared to life.

“Yeah? Okay. Have fun!” She smiled at Liam and then bounced off back to the rental stand, where the Harbor Patrol man now approached. He had one hand raised in the air.

“Now, Liam!” Tanner put his craft into reverse in order to maneuver out of the tight dock space. Liam did the same. As they turned, they saw the officer had caught up with the shop girl, talking to her, while she pointed at her two most recent rental customers.

They watched as the officer raised an arm in their direction and started to run down to the dock.

Tanner and Liam got their waverunners turned around and ready to head out. With the patrolman pounding down the dock behind them, they gunned the throttles and sped out into the harbor.

Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, Den Hoorn, Netherlands

Boredom and familiarity bred complacency. It was something with which the members of OUTCAST were all too familiar. After hours of standing watch over the same confined space, of seeing the same things over and over again, repeating the same actions, one could easily let their guard down.

But as Stephen Shah looked out the window again, he never would have guessed that this truth applied to scientists as well.

Jasmijn checked the readout on a mass spectrometer and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Almost time for the next phase in the experimental antidote development. More coffee would be good, though. She glanced over at the coffee machine where Dante was brewing another batch.
First prep the solution.
She was nearly ready to try an intermediate stage on a test subject, another lab rat. This time, though, she would infect the rat by injection rather than aerosol cloud, to see if that made a difference. She glanced at the spectrometer again. A couple of more minutes.

She opened the STX sample vault, reminding herself that only two of the precious vials remained. After the terrorists stole her vat supply, these tiny vials were all she had left with which to experiment in order to create an STX antidote. She pulled one of the clear glass tubes from its secure holder and lay it on the lab bench. She did a syringe pull, emptying the contents of the deadly neurotoxin into the hypodermic. Then she moved to the rat cage and withdrew one of the lab specimens. It wiggled in her hand and she clamped down on it. She walked it over to the lab bench where the STX hypo waited.

Picking up the syringe, she clutched the rat tightly in her gloved right hand. It was a procedure she’d done literally hundreds of times before. The muscles in her hands knew what to do. She flipped the rat onto its belly and in slid the thumb of her other hand up the syringe. The rat kicked its hind legs once and she squeezed it gently, cooing at it to calm down, this will all be over in a second. When it stopped, she brought the needle close to the animal’s skin.

The room was quiet, and she concentrated on the task before her while listening to the clock tick on the wall. It reminded her of the depressing deadline she faced. Only a few hours until more innocent people died, unless she could make this work…She depressed the plunger on the syringe.

“Coffee’s ready!”

Whether from shock or coincidence, the rat squirmed at the sound of Dante’s voice, struggling mightily in Jasmijn’s hand. It flopped over to one side as Jasmijn glanced over for a split second at Dante. When she looked back down she was horrified to see the needle plowing through the thin latex of the glove into the palm of her hand.

She gave a little yelp of surprise on feeling the prick of the needle penetrating her skin and jumped, shaking her hand as if she could undo the needle stab. The rat went flying onto a lab bench and the coffee pot crashed to the floor as Dante drew his weapon, thinking that some kind of enemy tactic was playing out. Naomi and Stephen also raised their guns, heads on a swivel as they looked around for threats.

All three OUTCAST operators converged on Jasmijn, slowly circling her while she stared at her open palm. The syringe lay on the floor. Jasmijn’s mouth was slightly open, her eyes wide as she gaped at a tiny speck of blood that bloomed in the center of her left hand. Meanwhile, the rat scrabbled away on the lab bench.

“Do we need to get the rat? Is it contaminated?” Naomi asked.

“N-no.” Jasmijn stuttered, now holding her hand upside down and squeezing it. “I’m contaminated. I—” She couldn’t finish her sentence.

“You stuck yourself?” Stephen eyeballed the syringe on the floor. No fluid seemed to be leaking from it.

“Yes!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes!”

“What can we do?” This from Dante.

No one said anything. At length, Stephen asked, “What’s the status of the antidote?”

She shook her head. “Not ready! This injection for the rat was supposed to be an intermediate step to clarify something by using injection rather than aerosol as the delivery method.”

The trio of operators stared at her, stymied. There was not a single person on the planet who could help her now, except possibly herself. Worse, from past STX exposure cases they knew that without a successful antidote she only had about ten minutes to live.

Just then Stephen’s earbud crackled with Danielle’s voice. “Situation developing in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. Tanner and Liam on scene. Small-scale STX attack confirmed. President Carmichael’s yacht as yet unharmed. Update only, no action required. Requesting Euro sitrep, over.”

Shah turned away from Jasmijn and spoke softly into his transmitter. He didn’t want his reply distracting her at this crucial moment — which may be one of her last.” Copy that, home base. Internal situation developing here, do not require assistance as of yet. Will report back, over.” It felt strange for him to say they didn’t need any help when a key member of their team was dying, but the sad truth was that no assistance could be provided for Jasmijn.

Dante implored the scientist with his eyes.” Dr. Rotmensen. You’ve got to try it anyway. There’s no other way.”

“You’re right.” She bent down to pick up the syringe but Naomi stopped her. “Doctor. Please. We can take care of that for you. Focus on administering yourself the antidote. Anything at all you can tell us to do — anything — just tell us and we’ll do it.”

“Okay.” Jasmijn moved to the spectrometer and eyed the readout. She took a deep but shaky breath. “I can feel it,” she said. “The STX taking effect.”

“Is your dose of antidote as ready as it can be?” Stephen asked.

The scientist shook her head, a gesture of helplessness. “No. But it’s already becoming harder to breathe. Legs feel wobbly…” She sat on a lab stool in front of her workstation. “I need to make it now and take it, while my symptoms are still manageable. Looks like injecting it rather than breathing it in didn’t slow the onset.”

“What can we do to help?” Naomi inquired.

She instructed the OUTCAST team on what equipment to gather in order to prepare the antidote shot. They moved efficiently and in three more minutes the dose was ready.

Dante handed Jasmijn the hypodermic and she took it, but her hand was shaking so badly that she couldn’t hold it steady.

“Let me give you the shot,” Naomi offered, taking the syringe.

Jasmijn bared her shoulder to her.

Naomi plunged the needle into her skin.

Boothbay Harbor, Maine

“Circle the yacht — give it a wide berth!” Tanner called over to Liam. They rode their waverunners only a few feet apart as they raced out into the harbor. They could already see the president’s ship just beyond the harbor in the bay. The cocktail party was in full swing on the main deck.

“Not too close, don’t want them to think we’re on offense!”