A Deeper Blue

Chapter Twenty-Five

Heather Parker was blue-eyed, 5’4” tall, with her hair colored blonde and brown in layers. Her favorite song in the world was “Breakaway” by Kelly Clarkson. She had just turned fourteen two weeks before and, as her grandmother put it, she was “blossoming.” The bathing suit that she’d bought just six months ago that fit fine up top then was, well, way too small. But while certain parts hurt, she generally didn’t mind the stares. In fact the day before, her mother had dressed her down right solid for, as Mama put it, “preening.” What Heather was paying attention to through most of the dressing down, though, was a red and white Ford GT. She wasn’t sure what exactly she’d give up to take a ride in that GT, but it was a lot.

Heather’s family was down on midwinter break from Soddy Daisy, a small town outside of Chattanooga, Tennessee. She, her parents and her two brothers had driven down all of Friday, fighting the traffic, and yesterday was the first day they’d had in Orlando. The parents had decided that they wanted to go to Wet and Wild so was it her fault if the only bathing suit she had didn’t fit?

Heather enjoyed the stares but she enjoyed swimming just as much. She wanted to be an Olympic swimmer when she grew up but since the only pool she ever had access to was the county pool in Redbank, there wasn’t much chance of that. But she loved to swim, which was why she did it every chance she got.

She’d done all the rides at this point and was just enjoying the wave pool. The water got pulled in through grates, then pumped back out, making the wave action. It caused a huge splash up against the wall, but you could dive down, get pushed out and back and just generally enjoy the water there.

It was also the main source of processed water for the entire park.

Massoud Faroud also could not be called a sleeper agent. In fact, jihadist was pushing it. “Dupe” would probably be the best word. While he, too, stood with his fellows at the end of services and shouted “Death to the Infidel,” deep down he wasn’t sure about this whole jihad thing. Yes, the Prophet had declared the will of Allah, that the whole world must submit to the shariah.

But Massoud had lived under shariah law in Afghanistan. And, given the choice, he much preferred working as a maintenance man at Wet and Wild. Yes, the Prophet had decreed that women should be decently covered but… The Prophet, blessings be upon him, had never been to Wet and Wild. If he had, he’d probably have written something like “women should always wear bikinis. Preferably ones one or two sizes too small on top.”

But Massoud was a maintenance “engineer” at Wet and Wild. And he had lived under the Taliban. So when the imam cornered him and introduced him to some rather unpleasant gentlemen, one of whom spoke Pashtun as his native tongue, he had known he was, as his American boss would have put it, screwed. It was “Death to the Infidel” or “Death to Massoud.” Looked at that way, well…

On the other hand, they’d also promised that it wasn’t, in fact, “Death” to the infidel. The material was supposedly a caustic agent. All it was supposed to do was sting and possibly hurt the eyes, thus showing that the Movement could strike anywhere and any time. Prophet’s Beard, peace be upon it, they put that in the water all the time. In fact, Massoud had tried to point out that even high molar acid in the quantities they were inserting wouldn’t do much more than make people pissed. The unpleasant gentlemen had told him to mind his own business.

But he’d gotten the two blue barrels into the injection facility easily enough; it was part of his job after all. And, using all appropriate hazardous material handling techniques, he had gotten the two barrels, which had to be mixed in transfer, set up to inject. All sorts of stuff got added to the water all the time. Chlorine, of course, but also bases, stabilizers, softeners, hardeners for when the softeners were too soft and even materials to make the water more “slippery.” One or two more blue barrels in the large room was nothing to notice.

“You’re sure about this?” Massoud asked, taking the lock off of the lock-out/tag-out switch. “It’s not going to do much. It might not even be noticed. If it’s a base, I’d need to reduce the chlorine input—”

“Just turn it on,” the man snarled in Pashtun.

“Right,” Massoud said, flipping the switch up. The material started dumping but it wasn’t going at full flow. The suction from the injector was pulling some up, but just a trickle was getting into the water which for sure wouldn’t be noticed. He’d have to start the pump to get it all dumped. And he suddenly realized that the Pathan asshole probably didn’t know that. He might not notice the material was barely draining out for a while. Possibly never if he left soon enough.

There was no such thing as soon enough to Massoud.

Mike pulled the GT to a screaming stop on the same concrete pad the Orange County deputy occupied. The deputy was keying his shoulder-mounted radio with one hand and had his pistol drawn with the other. When Mike came screaming up, the radio was ignored for a two-point stance.

“Freeze!” the cop shouted. “Identify yourself!”

“Your boss is my bitch?” Mike asked. “And so are you if you don’t put down the piece?”

“Lieutenant Britney Harder,” Britney said, standing up with her ID out and her hands up. “Special Operations Command. U.S. Army SOCOM, that is,” she added since every dinkwater town had their own “Special Operations Command” these days.

The cop duck-walked forward, weapon still extended, then did a very credible weapons control maneuver to retrieve the ID. His jaw flexed, then he looked over at Mike.

“You?”

“Oh, Mike Jenkins,” Mike said, holding up his Georgian driver’s license.

When the cop walked over and took it from him, Mike waited until his eyes flickered to the license in confusion then, somewhat politely, removed the pistol from the police officer’s hand.

“Okay,” Mike said, laying the weapon between the officer’s eyes. “Here’s how it’s going to go. I don’t have time to fuck around with you. Call dispatch, tell them that we have a WMD terrorism incident at Wet and Wild and we need more response. Clear?”

“Clear,” the cop said, shaking his hand. The snatch had been lightning and his finger was nearly ripped off.

“Who I am is none of your fucking business,” Mike said, dropping the magazine, then disassembling the Sig Sauer one-handed. He held the pieces out to the stunned officer. “And there are people about to die.”

“Who?” the cop shouted as Mike started running for the entrance.

“Anyone who gets between me and where I’m going.”

“The level is not going down very fast,” the Pathan said, looking over at Massoud. “It is not going down as fast as it is supposed to. Why?”

“Hmmm…” Massoud said, frowning at the set-up through his mask. “I don’t understand it. We’re all hooked up. Injectors are open…”

“This is a pump, yes?” the Pathan said, drawing a pistol out from under his HazMat suit. “You will engage the pump, yes?”

“I knew I forgot something,” Massoud said. “Damn. The pump!”

“You will stop stalling,” the Pathan said, cocking the pistol and pointing it at his head. “You will start the pump. Now.”

VX is an organophosphate chemical and, as noted, rather stable. However, one of the things that will convert it to a nontoxic chemical is chlorine. Except at very high temperatures it doesn’t do so well, but it does do so. Thus the small quantities of VX that had been picked up had, thus far, had little or no effect. Most of the molecules were converted to an inert state, virtually harmless to anyone but a California Environmental Scientist, who would probably get cancer from them.

However, one hundred and ten gallons, dumped rapidly, was more than enough to kill anyone in the water. Especially anyone near the outlets.

Heather popped up for a breath and hocked some water out of her ear at the sound of sirens. There was a fire truck going down the side road like a bat out of hell and more sirens all around. In fact, traffic was stopped all over the place; there must have been a big wreck or something.

That was all good. Her parents weren’t going to want to leave for a while with all that traffic.

She briefly considered going for a walk, but, truth be told, the stares were getting to be a bit much. So she ducked back under the water, kept riding the waves and imagined that she was somewhere down in the Caribbean, riding around with a guy that had a red and white GT and looked just like Brad Pitt.

Mike leapt the entry stall one-handed and drew his pistol as the unarmed security guard ran towards him.

“Mike… crap what day is it?” he shouted. “CIA. You’re under terrorist attack. Where’s the place where they’ve got all the pumps!”

“Lieutenant Britney Harder,” Britney said, holding out her badge. “SOCOM Intelligence. Answer the question!”

The befuddled security guard just stared at the badge in one hand and the gun in the other.

“You’re who?” he asked.

“Oh, fuck,” Mike said, looking around for any signs of intelligence. There was one girl in uniform who was pretty wide-eyed but didn’t seem completely shut down. “You,” he said, pointing his finger at her. “Pumps?”

“This way,” she said, gesturing. “How fast should we be going?”

“Faster than this,” Mike said, trotting past her. “How fast can you run?”

“I’m one of the lifeguards here,” the girl said, speeding up.

“Good,” Mike said. “Think Baywatch fast.”

The VX traveled into a main supply pipe and most of the way through the park towards the outlets at the wave pool. From the wave pool, water was pulled in, pumped to other attractions and then, eventually, reprocessed.

It would take two minutes for the first of the load to reach the wave pool…

Massoud hooked up the last circuit and the pump began throbbing.

“Now it is going down,” he said, pointing to the barrel. “And I’d really prefer not to be a martyr, thank you.”

“You have grown soft,” the Pathan said. “You have let the infidel women infect you.”

“Seriously, dude,” Massoud said, dropping his hands in resignation. “You need to get over yourself. Have you seen those bitches? Wait, don’t shoot. We just walk up to the top of the pump station and you can see for yourself. Holy Allah, seventy-two virgins? There’s about a thousand of them out there in these little yellow bikinis that are sooo tight…”

“You make me sick,” the Pathan said, lifting his pistol.

Mike was barely panting when he reached the door of the pump room. The lifeguard had gasped directions to him halfway across the park and he could hear she was still back there somewhere. Britney, the dear, was right on his ass. She was also unarmed.

“Back,” Mike said, cursing himself for not getting God-dammed MOPP gear. Again. He took three breaths to steady himself and snatched open the door.

Massoud ducked and covered as gunshots rang out. He felt his body, gingerly, wondering where the bullet had gone, then looked up. A man with a smoking pistol was standing by the Pathan’s body.

“If you don’t shut this shit down, right now, I’m going to feed it to you,” the man said.

Massoud scrambled to his feet and pulled the connections for the pump in a spiral of sparks, then dropped the input to the injectors.

“I don’t know how much got in,” he shouted. “I am not jihadist! I spit in all jihadist’s faces! This is not the religion I was born in!”

Mike looked at the barrels, then at the big pump room. He had no fucking clue how to run any of this shit.

“We need to stop it,” Mike said. “And suck back any that got out.”

“Back-feed,” the man said, nodding. “I can do that.”

He turned to a big control console and began hitting switches. Mike backed up, just in case any of the VX was in the air. But the barrels were well sealed. This had been a professional operation, probably because of the guy at the console.

“What happens when you back-feed?” Mike asked.

“It is a way to wash the filter system,” the man shouted through his mask. “It will pull water in through the main outlets and flush it back through the system then into the sewer system. What is this, really?”

“VX gas,” Mike said. “What did they tell you?”

“A caustic agent,” the man said, shrugging. “I wasn’t going to try to fuck with Taliban.”

“You’re Afghan,” Mike said.

“I’m an American citizen. Have been for three years. This really wasn’t what I was planning on doing today.”

“We keep anybody from dying and I’ll see what I can do,” Mike said. “Wait, you’re going to suck water back in from the outlets?”

“Yeah,” the man said. “Anybody by them better watch out. It’s really gonna… suck. I’ll add some agents to neutralize the poison, too.”

“Shit,” Mike said, running out of the room and brushing past Britney. The panting female lifeguard had just reached the entrance to the pump room when he leapt down the steps.

“Main outlets for the water?” Mike said. “Where?”

“Wa… Wave po…”

“Wave pool,” Mike said, running past her. “Get on the horn. Everybody out of the pool.”

Heather frowned and popped up again as the wave action stopped. There was some sort of oily slick over to her left and she instinctively avoided it. But she was the only one up by the outlets so nobody else was near it.

She considered, again, getting out, but the waves were probably going to start up again any time now. She leaned back and floated on the surface for a bit. That had gotten easier lately and she wasn’t sure why.

Then she felt the water shifting around her and went vertical again, holding herself up by fanning her hands. The wave generator sucked in and then pushed back out and she felt the suction, riding it down to the grates. But it wasn’t blowing back…

“Heather!” the woman screamed.

“Ma’am, you need to get back,” the lifeguard said. They were all getting people out of the pool and driving them as far back as they could. The news had been all over the VX story with lurid details of what it did and when they got the news and saw the oil slick on the surface… Well, they didn’t get paid enough to die.

“My daughter is in there!” the woman shouted. “She was down by the wave thing!”

The guard looked over his shoulder and could see where whirlpools had formed as the massive pumps reversed. The pressure would be enormous; if there was anyone down there they weren’t coming out.

“Ma’am, I’m sure she’s not down there,” he started to say as the crowd surged forward and parted.

A heavy-set guy was head down, pushing through the crowd and panting hard as if he’d been running. As he passed the guard he looked at the woman.

“Where?” the guy panted.

“On the right, I think,” the woman said.

“On it,” the man said, diving into the water.

“Hey!” the guard shouted. “No diving!”

Mike knew he was fucked. Those were big fucking pumps, designed to drive masses of water like son of a bitch. Then there was the VX, which was probably in the water somewhere.

But he also could see a figure pinned against the grates. The figure’s arms were up but the person couldn’t reach the surface. They were caught like a spider in a web, only a few feet from air.

But inches from air could kill you.

He could feel the suction of the inlets, now, drawing him in. He rode the current, his feet forward, and slammed with both feet onto the grate. The grating was small specifically to keep people from being sucked in by the waves. It wasn’t actually hard to stay “upright” sideways.

He crouched and walked, carefully, to where the figure, a girl naturally, was pinned in a rather charming spread-eagle. But at that point he was sort of stuck. He couldn’t figure out how to get her unglued.

Up was the only rational choice but it was going to hurt like hell. Especially since the only thing he could get ahold of was one arm and her hair.

He grabbed both, crouched and yanked her upwards. He gained a few inches, stepped forward and tried it again. So far so good. Now if she just wouldn’t die on him.

He kept yanking until he felt the flow was pulling him down instead of sideways. He could see a slight shelf just above water level. He lunged for it, got one hand on the ledge, then pulled the girl upwards against the lighter flow.

Heather had been sure she was dead. When she felt the water irresistibly pulling her under she’d taken a big breath of air. Surely they would stop the flow as soon as they realized what happened. And there were all these lifeguards and stuff around. She wasn’t going to drown!

But as time went on, as she felt that screaming craving to breathe, pinned against the intake, all she could think was that it was a lousy way to die. She was too damned young to die such a lousy way. It made her want to curse. It was just so unfair. She’d never seen anything. She’d never… done anything!

She hadn’t had much time so she’d prayed. She hadn’t cried, though, cause she couldn’t afford the air. She just hung on, fighting the will to breathe, letting out a bit of air from time to time, a trick she’d picked up in swimming class. She could feel her vision getting darker when somebody grabbed her by the arm and the hair! Oh. My. God! That hurt! But she hung on. Then she started being dragged across the concrete and that hurt. But she was being dragged up. That was good.

She was half unconscious when her mouth cleared the water but she let out what air she had left and took a big glorious drink.

“Oh,” she said, taking another breath.

“Air’s great when you haven’t had any in a while, ain’t it?” the man holding her hair said. He let go of the hair and pulled her up into a little ledge were water usually flowed out. “You okay?”

“I am now,” Heather said, breathing deeply.

“Not too much,” the man said. “Calm it down. Or you’ll hyperventilate. And, uh…”

Heather looked down and realized that her bikini had… Well, it was hanging around her neck and covering her top about as well as a necklace.

“Oh,” Heather said, blushing and tying it back up. “Thank you. For both.”

“You’re welcome,” the man said. “I’d ask for favors, but you’re much too young. And you shouldn’t argue with your mother; she really loves you, you know?”

“How do you… ?” she asked then she ducked her head. “You’re the guy in the GT, right?”

“Right,” the man said. “And you’re the girl with the belly.”

“What?” Heather asked, looking down. “I don’t have a fat belly!”

“I didn’t say ‘fat,’ ” the man said, chuckling. “Wave for your mom to tell her you’re okay.”

Heather dutifully waved, then looked at the crowd. Everybody was out of the water and they were staying way back.

“What’s happening?” she asked. She felt weird. She’d nearly died and now she was chatting with some stranger while perched up on an outlet in full view of a big crowd.

“Somebody dumped poison in the water,” the man said.

“That’s why they were sucking it all out,” Heather said.

“Correct,” the guy said, looking over at her. The look gave her butterflies in her belly.

“Wha… who… why… Did somebody stop them or what?”

“Yeah,” the man said, standing up. The whirlpools were gone. “Somebody stopped them. Time to take a swim.”

“Okay,” Heather said, jumping into the water. She must have cut up her back because it really hurt. “Ouch!” she said as she surfaced.

“Pain is weakness leaving the body,” the man said, then followed her in.

“Whatever,” Heather said, frowning. “Hey, can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” the man said, breast-stroking towards the side of the pool.

“Can I get a ride in your GT?”

“Not today, I’m a little busy,” the man said. “But I’ll find you tomorrow and you can then. If your mother says it’s okay.”

“What is it with adults?”