At the Outpost of Fate

CHAPTER 4 — AGENT PROVOCATEUR

Time lost all proportion, as though Father Chronos was mired in molasses. Dodge felt an ominous shudder as the cab scraped over the precipice and began to tilt toward the frothy river surface hundreds of feet below.

As his center of gravity changed involuntarily, the interior of the passenger compartment seemed like a funhouse tunnel, where ordinary sights no longer held the correct orientation. He tried the door handle, but couldn’t seem to figure out the correct direction to twist it to release the latch. He abandoned the effort and directed his energy instead toward the window on the opposite side. He rolled onto his back and thrust both feet at the glass, shattering it with his first attempt.

In the precious seconds lost while he fumbled for a means of egress, the weight of the engine block pulled the car almost vertical. The chassis squealed against the concrete edge and then the taxi lurched as the wheels caught for a moment on the lip. Dodge used that moment to orient himself and sprang through the narrow window frame.

His head and shoulders emerged first, to be immediately baptized in the full fury of the storm. The broken guardrail of the bridge loomed tantalizingly close, but his searching fingers could not quite make contact. He could feel the cab moving against his body, tilting and sliding, well beyond the point of no return. With a desperate heave, he thrust himself at the guard rail.

The taxi cleared the bridge with agonizing slowness, but just as Dodge’s fingers grazed the molded concrete, it cleared the last obstacle and was suddenly free. After the torturous ordeal of surmounting that obstruction, the final plunge seemed almost graceful.

Dodge’s fingertips burned across the wet masonry as an unseen but irresistible force pulled him down. He felt a sharp pain in his leg and in that bloated instant of time knew with amazing clarity that a shard of glass from the broken window had snagged his pant leg. His best efforts to escape the doomed taxi had been for naught.

The pain suddenly intensified, but in that same moment, Dodge felt a hand clamp around his wrist to arrest his fall. The glass tooth biting into his leg wasn’t strong enough to endure the grip that held him back from the abyss and it snapped in two. An inch long sliver remained with Dodge, the tip of it firmly lodged in the flesh of his calf, while the rest of the glass, along with the taxi itself, plunged into the tempest.

In the panic induced distortion of that single moment in time, Dodge got past the absurdity of his salvation and quickly turned his efforts to escaping the still immediate threat of a deadly fall into the river. The grip that had snared his wrist had most certainly stayed the Reaper’s hand, but he wasn’t clear of the old man’s scythe by a long shot. With his free hand, he clawed for a handhold on the concrete and in an extraordinary burst of strength, pulled himself up to chest level on the bridge deck.

Through eyes streaked with rain, he could only distinguish the barest outline of his benefactor; a man, but he had surmised as much, of about the same age and build as himself, wearing a sodden trench coat and a battered fedora that concealed most of his face in shadow. Only the fellow’s mouth was visible beneath the curve of the hat brim, teeth clenched in a snarl of exertion. Yet, as victory in the war with gravity became gradually more apparent, that grimace softened into a triumphant smile.

Dodge collapsed in relief as soon as his knees cleared the brink. He rolled onto his back, exposing his face to the downpour and relished the sensation of solidity beneath him, only peripherally aware of his savior kneeling beside him.

"That was a close one, Mr. Dalton."

"Call me Dodge…" His eyes flew open and he sat up, gripping the lapels of the man’s coat and pulling him close. "How the devil did you know my name?"

The man did not resist. "Easy there, Mr. Dalton. I’m one of the good guys." He held up what appeared to be a wallet that opened to reveal a glinting object shaped like a shield. "I’ve been following you from the newspaper office."

"You called my name," Dodge said, recalling the voice he had heard just before embarking on the ill-fated taxi ride.

"That’s right, but I was just a few seconds too late to stop this from happening." He gestured to an idling Studebaker Model II sedan parked a few paces away. "Let’s get out of the rain and I’ll explain everything."

Dodge searched the other man’s face for any hint of deception. Given the preceding events, he wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice, but the other man’s expression was earnest and his badge had indeed read Department of Justice. "I didn’t catch your name."

"Special Agent Fuller — Tom Fuller, Mr. Dalton. I appreciate your hesitance, but think about it; if I wanted to hurt you, I would have simply let you fall into the river."

Dodge nodded slowly and got to his feet. "All right Agent Fuller, it’s your show."

"Good. It’s going to be a long night. I wish I could tell you it’s over, but I’m afraid this is only the beginning. "

Using a rudimentary first aid kit, Dodge stanched the flow of blood from the gash in his leg as Fuller pulled away from the damaged guardrail and continued toward Brooklyn. "I’ll call in the wreck as soon as we can get to a phone," the agent explained. "But right now we’ve got more urgent concerns."

"So you keep saying." Dodge winced as he probed the now bandaged wound. The copious flow of blood was manageable, but would require sutures to heal properly; fortunately, he was on good terms with a certain red-haired doctor.

"It’s no exaggeration. I would have thought you’d have realized that when they tried to kill you."

"You haven’t told me exactly who ‘they’ are."

It was Special Agent Fuller’s turn for a suspicious glance and he regarded Dodge silently for an uncomfortable interval that ended only when Dodge averted his stare, looking through the windshield to remind the G-man that they were in a moving automobile. Fuller gave a heavy sigh. "I had hoped you would be able to shed some light on that, actually."

"Sorry to disappoint you, but until about fifteen minutes ago, everything was dandy." Even as he said it, Dodge realized the falsity of his statement. He thought about the yellow telegram in his pocket, now likely a wad of indistinguishable pulp, from Prof. Pendleton. Urgent I see you… "But I can tell you this; the guy driving that taxi was no taxi driver. It was King Donnelly, but something tells me that you already knew that. Care to tell me why the next Babe Ruth just tried to drive me off the Brooklyn Bridge?"

"Roger ‘King’ Donnelly." Fuller sighed, evincing no surprise. "You recognized him?"

"Among other things, I’m a sportswriter. I’ve interviewed him three times."

"Mr. Dalton, I can only tell you what I know, which is precious little. I’d start at the beginning, but I’m not even sure if I know what that is. You’re right about one thing. It’s no surprise to me that Donnelly was driving that taxi. He’s one of them; the passengers from Flight 19."

"The plane that had to put down in mid-ocean? What does that have to do with anything?"

Fuller steered the car onto a side street, the first of a series of turns that put them back on the bridge bound for Manhattan. When he finally spoke, it was with the reluctance of one who was loath to reveal a secret. "The official version of those events isn’t quite the whole story.

"Flight 19 missed its arrival time in New York by almost a full day, but as near as anyone can tell, it never put down. Everything from the fuel gauges to the onboard chronometers reads exactly like the plane was right on schedule."

"Right on schedule? I don’t follow."

"The plane seems to have…" Fuller faltered as if recognizing that there was no way to explain the situation without sounding like a madman. "The plane and everyone on it lost twenty hours. According to the flight crew, it was as sudden as someone throwing a switch."

"That’s ridiculous." The words were out of his mouth before Dodge could think about them; he knew too well that there were mysteries at work in the world that could not be easily explained. Denial was the natural human response to anything that challenged the foundation of one’s reality.

"That’s not all. During the…lapse…one of the passengers vanished. In fact, he disappeared even from the memories of those aboard the plane. The travel agents in Bermuda confirm that he boarded, but he never made it New York."

Dodge bit back another denial. "Who?"

"Inspector Ian Winston, an Interpol agent. As I said, it’s difficult to know where to begin. Interpol received a tip that someone aboard that aircraft was an international criminal, some kind of agent provocateur, bent upon a mission of sabotage. The identity of the miscreant remains unknown, but certain details about his scheme have emerged, specifically the target, which is why I happened to be looking for you tonight."

Dodge was momentarily dumbfounded. "I’m the target?"

"Not you specifically, but your name is attached to the plot. The villain is after something known only as ‘the Outpost.’ Does that mean anything to you?"

Dodge knew the federal agent would be watching for a reaction and knew also that there would be no fooling the other man. Oddly enough, the news didn’t really surprise him; it was the central piece that connected all the crazy jigsaw puzzle. "The Outpost is a secret of the highest order, Agent Fuller. I wish I could tell you more, but I’m sworn to secrecy."

Fuller regarded him with curious admiration. "Sworn by whom?"

"I can’t tell you that either and that should give you an idea of how important this is."

The G-man returned his attention to the roadway ahead. "Well Mr. Dalton, somebody spilled the beans because a foreign spy is looking for this Outpost and thinks you’re the key."

"Which explains the attempt on my life, but what does any of this have to do with the passengers of Flight 19? And why was King Donnelly working for these spies?"

"That’s something that I can’t tell you and not because of any promise of secrecy. However, given the mysterious nature of the flight’s reappearance and Inspector Winston’s evident demise, we’ve been keeping tabs on the passengers since releasing them from quarantine. It would be an understatement to say that they are all exhibiting strange behavior."

Dodge was about to ask for more information, but the sudden realization that there might be a veritable army of saboteurs running around New York awakened him to a new peril. "If they know about me, then they might know about the others."

"Others?"

"There are four of us who know the whole story. My friends Hurricane Hurley, Nathan Hobbs and Molly Rose Shannon. They might be in danger too!"

"They’re in the city?" Fuller looked over and caught Dodge’s nod. "Tell me where to go."

Dodge drummed his fingers nervously on the dashboard. "I got a telegram tonight, urging me to come to a meeting at the Natural History Museum. The arrangement among us has always been that anything concerning the Outpost should be discussed only with all of us present. I can only imagine they got the same invitation."

The sedan rolled down the incline and into downtown Manhattan. Fuller steered onto the main thoroughfare and expertly navigated toward uptown. "That seems like an odd place for a late rendezvous."

"Not really. Prof. Pendleton has an office there—"

Fuller abruptly stood on the brake, stopping the Studebaker in the middle of Broadway and turned to Dodge with a near frantic expression. "Augustus Pendleton?"

A surge of adrenaline left Dodge’s extremities numb. "Don’t tell me…"

"Pendleton just returned from an archaeological conference in Rio de Janeiro. He’s one of the passengers from Flight 19."

"I told you not to tell me."

Fuller nodded, then put the sedan in gear and resumed driving. "That telegram was a setup."

"Then why the bogus taxi ride? Why not just wait until I’m at the museum and take me there?"

"God only knows."

Dodge shook his head. "No, we’ve missed something here. Pendleton would have summoned all four of us — he would have brought us all together at the museum. If this was a plot to abduct us, that would have been the place to do it."

"Perhaps none of you were meant to arrive at the museum."

He pondered this for a moment, but then the awful truth flashed like a lightning bolt. "It’s a diversion."

"A diversion from what?"

"The one thing anyone wanting to find the Outpost would have to have." He leaned forward, holding Fuller’s gaze with the intensity of his stare so that there would be no question of his certainty. "We need to go to the Empire State Building."

They reached the world’s tallest building only a few minutes ahead of the police. The night desk operator was still fumbling with the lock to the main door to admit them when three patrol cars, casting a crimson light show into the fury of the downpour, screeched to a halt near Fuller’s parked sedan. To Dodge’s consternation, the blue-suited peace officers scrutinized Fuller’s credentials, evincing disdain at the presence of the G-man on their beat. He eventually drifted over to the man at the desk.

The young man’s shell-shocked expression spoke volumes, but Dodge wanted detail. "What happened?"

"Sammy…uh, the watchman heard something he said sounded like a bomb. Sure enough, one of the offices on the 78th floor blew up."

Dodge knew with sickening certainty which unit on that floor had been hit. "I’ve got to get up there."

"The elevators are turned off—"

"Then turn them on. This is urgent. I’m one of the administrators of that office."

The desk man’s jaw dropped. "Good heavens, I had completely forgotten."

Dodge fought the urge to grip the man’s shirtfront and demand a coherent comment. "Forgotten?"

"A priest… he was visiting that office just before the blast."

Hobbs! "Is he still up there?"

"I don’t…"

Dodge had heard enough. "Turn on the elevators. Now!"

The young man hesitated a moment longer, just long enough to get an approving nod from Fuller who had evidently resolved the jurisdictional quibbling and was now approaching with a trio of city cops in his wake.

"Do it! This is a matter vital to national security." He glanced at Dodge. "It is, right?"

"More than you can imagine." He waited for the receptionist to switch on the elevator system and then entered the express car. The flywheel speed control was fairly simple to use and he had become familiar with its operation over the course of several visits to the secret lab, but now he just couldn't make it go fast enough. An eternity seemed to pass as the floors ticked by.

The night watchman was waiting for them at the entrance to the office. "It's a mess in there, fellas."

Dodge pushed past him and threw open the door. "A mess" didn't begin to describe what he found; although the decorations had been spare to begin with, nothing recognizable remained. To make matters worse, a gale force wind was blasting through the office. Squinting, he braved the tempest and moved to the center of the room.

Despite the storm, a faint odor of gunpowder tickled his nostrils. "High explosives," shouted Fuller beside him. "Someone blasted out that window!"

Dodge nodded, but the destruction of the window was not his primary concern. He turned to the right-hand wall and saw the shattered wallboard that had once served to conceal the secret door. The explosion had completely removed the facade, but the passage through to the laboratory was nonetheless sealed; the steel security gate had dropped, probably jarred loose by the shockwave. Dodge groped for the crank handle mechanism — part of an elaborate system of gears and pulleys that was the only means of raising the guillotine-style barrier — and began the laborious task of winding in the cables. The door crept up by miniscule increments and after raising it slightly more than one foot above the threshold, he locked the crank in place and crawled underneath.

In the sparse light, it was difficult to discern the details of the room, but everything seemed to be in place. The laboratory had been spared the full force of the explosion, but a quick survey revealed that a much greater catastrophe had occurred; the artifact was gone. Dodge was still staring in disbelief when Fuller played the beam of his handheld flashlight on the display case.

"That's the work of a professional," observed the G-man, pointing at the strange contraption affixed to the glass container.

"Anyone you know?"

Fuller gave a terse nod. "Another one of the passengers on Flight 19 has long been suspected of being one of the world's leading cat burglars."

Dodge sighed. "There's no sign of Hobbs. Do you think he…?"

"If they fell out the window in this storm, there's no telling where the wind would blow them. They might have landed several blocks from here… if they fell out."

Dodge felt numb. The white-haired Hobbs had been a regular fixture in his weekly syndicated feature for more than three years. Though he had only known the taciturn priest for a few months, he felt as though he had lost a brother.

"He might still be alive," Fuller continued. "The bomb would have knocked him back, away from the window. Perhaps he continued the pursuit. Believe me when I say this thief would have planned out every detail of the operation, including the escape plan."

"Then they might still be in the building?"

"Possibly, but I would hazard to guess that the reason that window was blown in the first place was to create an alternative exit. I think we have to face the possibility that our enemy, whoever he is, has won this round."

"So what now?"

Fuller angled the beam of his light so that Dodge could see his expression and vice versa. "That depends on whether or not you're going to trust me. I still don't even know what exactly was stolen here."

"It was the key to the Outpost."

"The key? Then they'll be going there next?"

"I don't think it will be quite that simple. God, I wish the Padre was here; he'd know what to do." Dodge swiped a hand through his hair in an unconscious gesture of frustration, then abruptly snapped his fingers. "Hurricane must have gotten the summons as well. He'll be walking into a trap at the museum."

Fuller nodded. "Let's go."

The elevator descent took longer than the car ride from the Empire State Building to the American Museum of Natural History. Fuller drove like a madman, but there was little danger to himself and Dodge or to any innocent bystanders; the city seemed deserted. The G-man only touched the brakes once during the trip and that was as he screeched to a stop directly behind parked car on Central Park West — a familiar red sports car. Fuller did not fail to notice Dodge's look of chagrinned recognition. "That's Hurley's car? I wouldn't be too worried, Mr. Dalton. I've read your stories often enough to know that Hurricane Hurley is a match for anything."

Dodge nodded, but the sentiment brought little comfort. This night was turning into a disaster of epic proportions and the avalanche of woe had yet to complete its dire cascade. Steeling himself for a grisly discovery, he disembarked once more and hastened toward the museum entrance.

The fortress-like structure was dark and seemingly abandoned, but both men were wary as they pushed through the revolving glass entrance. Dodge noted that Fuller’s hand was resting on the butt of a holstered sidearm. "I don’t like this one bit," the G-man confessed after scanning the empty foyer.

"Well, if Hurricane was here and there was trouble, I have a feeling we’d see some pretty obvious signs. He doesn’t exactly tread softly."

"Speaking of treading, look…" Fuller pointed to a track of wet spots leading from the entry and straight ahead into the maze-like exhibition area and directed the beam of his flashlight along the path delineated by the trail of moist footprints.

Dodge seized on the discovery and hastened into the depths of the museum, ignoring Fuller’s hoarse whispered warning, for he had seen something in the tell-tale puddles that had escaped even the FBI agent’s notice. There were two distinct tread patterns, moving side by side, but at decidedly different gaits; the quick, short steps of the person with small feet could only belong to Molly Rose Shannon and that realization had awakened Dodge to a whole new spectrum of anxiety.

In a corridor leading away from the common area, Dodge found unmistakable evidence of Hurley’s deft touch. An office door swung open on its hinges, innocent enough, but the doorjamb has splintered away from the latch bolt. Directly on the threshold of the room, Dodge also spied a dark circle the size of a half-dollar coin. In the glow of Fuller’s flashlight, its crimson hue confirmed his worst suspicions.

"The trail splits here," Fuller pointed out. "Which way?"

"The footprints leading into the office are almost dry, but the blood is still…" The statement caught inexplicably in Dodge’s throat. He gestured weakly into the office and then continued along that path, following the spattered trail. More than a few of the droplets had been smeared by the passage of another set of footprints; Hurricane and Molly had been running and their pursuers had not been far behind. Yet, for all his dire premonitions, he was still ill-prepared for the discovery of the body lying prone on the floor of the Hall of Ocean Life. The unnatural cant of his head confirmed what Dodge somehow already knew.

"It’s Pendleton," Fuller observed, kneeling beside Dodge.

Something about the tone seemed faintly accusatory and Dodge knew why; it would have taken extraordinary physical strength to break the Professor’s neck this way — the sort of strength he had attributed to Captain Falcon’s number one sidekick. "None of us have ever met him," he answered. "If Hurricane did this—"

But Fuller wasn’t listening. He sprang erect and in a fluid motion drew his pistol and stabbed its muzzle into a shadowy corner of the room. "Hold it right there!"

Dodge recoiled instinctively as a figure emerged from the dark, wielding a pistol almost identical to Fuller’s police special. Not surprisingly, Dodge barely saw the gunman; his eyes were fixed on the revolver. The weapon was held indifferently, as if the man was barely aware of the lethal power in his hands.

"I said ‘Stop!’ Drop it."

Dodge’s heart thumped once in his chest as the man took another step forward, then a thunderclap exploded beside him. Fire spurted from Fuller’s hands, then repeated twice more. The gunman staggered back with the first impact, but otherwise seemed unaffected. Only the third shot, which struck dead center in the man’s forehead, halted the relentless advance. Fuller, breathing rapidly, kept his gun trained on the fallen foe as he moved closer. He gave a sigh of recognition as his flashlight beam illuminated the man’s face.

"Another one of the passengers from the Bermuda flight?"

The G-man nodded. "What happened to them, Dalton? What in God’s name happened to them?"

Something moved in the same spot from which the gunman had emerged and Fuller quickly shifted the flashlight to expose another stranger, this time a woman in a simple sundress and floppy hat; but for her vacant stare, she might simply have been a tourist on her way to the beach. There was no menace evident in her demeanor; in fact, she seemed completely unaware of her environment. Nevertheless, she ambled forward like an automaton bent on destruction.

"Stop or I’ll shoot," Fuller warned, but once more his threat was ineffectual.

"Fuller, she’s unarmed!" Without thinking, Dodge knocked the lawman’s arm aside and interposed between them. His forbearance did not go unpunished. Without even breaking stride, the woman grasped his shoulders and lifted him bodily over her head. He had only a moment to ponder the impossibility of the situation before the marble floor rushed up at him and the breath was driven from his lungs.

Fuller did not hesitate. His pistol discharged twice at point blank range and the woman in the sundress was punched backward as two .38 caliber rounds blasted into her torso.

Dodge pushed up to his hands and knees, gasping for air. In the corner of his eye, he saw Fuller make a quarter-turn and then the gun sounded once more. The G-man deftly flipped out the cylinder and dropped his spent brass onto the floor, but before he could reload, yet another assailant had emerged and tackled him to the floor.

Dodge felt a breath enter his semi-paralyzed lungs, just enough to get him up and moving again. He dove onto Fuller’s attacker and began raining down punches at the base of the man’s neck. The first few blows seemed to bounce off impotently, but then a lucky strike caught a nerve cluster and the man collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Dodge rolled the motionless form off the FBI agent and helped Fuller get to his feet. In the darkened recesses of the room however, the shadows continued to stir and resolved into a host of expressionless faces.

Dodge retreated a step, then half turned to locate the exit. "How many people were on that flight?"

"Passengers and crew?" Fuller knelt and groped for his pistol. "Thirty altogether. Why?"

"Looks like we’re missing a couple."

The FBI agent looked over his shoulder and saw what had prompted Dodge's comment. In addition to the crowd materializing from the recesses of the exhibition hall, more than a dozen dull-eyed vacationers stood between them and freedom. And then, as if driven by a single mind, they began advancing.