Fatal

CHAPTER 32

Nikki knew her ankle was broken. She had felt the crack of bone and the explosion of pain when the woman Matt was calling Tarzana — 160 or 170 pounds — blindsided her. Now she simply bit at the inside of her lip and did her best to cope with the pain. They were in a fearsome predicament with a finite air supply and no obvious way out of the cave. The last thing the others needed was to worry about her.

The newcomer, Ellen Kroft, essentially uninjured, kept pressure on Fred Carabetta's wound while Matt used his ear as a stethoscope to examine the lungs of Colin Morrissey.

"I think he's moving enough air," he said, "at least for the moment. His coma seems to be getting a little lighter, too."

"Let's hope he's sane when he wakes up."

"With his larynx swollen nearly shut, I don't think he's going to pose much of a problem. How's your leg?"

"Fine," Nikki said perhaps a bit too quickly, adding, "It aches some."

"Think you can put weight on it?"

"I… I doubt it."

"I watched you working on this man from over there," Ellen said, gesturing toward the darkness to her right. "You're both doctors?"

"I'm Matt Rutledge, an internist from Belinda, and this is Nikki Solari from Boston. She's a pathologist."

"How many others are there in here besides us?"

"Do you know of any?"

"No. I was tied up here for a time, then injected with something that knocked me out. When I came to, I was covered with dust and pieces of rock. I assume Grimes untied me while I was unconscious, then blew up the cave. He's the police chief here."

"Oh, we know who he is. You assume right about him. In addition to that guy and the four of us, there are two people — a woman and a girl — with lumps on their faces like his. They don't seem to be badly hurt, but the woman is pretty wild. We've tied her up for now. The girl's still unconscious." Matt lowered his voice. "Then there are two security guards from the mine over there. One of them's dead, the other probably paralyzed."

"And two more men who came in with us are missing," Nikki added.

"Do you know why Grimes did this to us?" Ellen asked.

"I don't know why he included you," Matt replied, "but as you can see, the local mine has been illegally storing toxic chemicals in here. We were about to expose the whole business. Grimes is in bed with the mine owners."

With Kathy's fatal prion disease not adequately accounted for, Nikki had never felt completely comfortable with Matt's contention about the mine.

"Not to muddy the water," she said, "but what Matt didn't say was that a number of people from this area have developed a syndrome of horrible facial lumps and progressive paranoia. Matt thinks it has something to do with these chemicals. I'm not as certain about that as he is. Do you have something to do with the mine?"

"No. I've never been in this area before."

"Then, why?"

"Well, believe it or not, I came because a man broke into my home in Glenside, Maryland, and swore he would kill my granddaughter unless I did what he wanted me to. I was able to learn who he might be, and traced him back here to Tullis, but I needed to get a look at him before I could be certain he was the one. Your police chief was supposed to help me do that and also take a statement from me, but we never got that far."

"I don't understand," Matt said, turning back to check on Morrissey. "Who was the man you came about?"

"His name was Sutcher. Vinyl Sutcher."

Stunned, Nikki and Matt stared at one another.

"Perhaps you'd better tell us more," Nikki said.

Fred Carabetta had lapsed into unconsciousness. His steady, sonorous breathing formed the background for Ellen's account of her place on the blue-ribbon Omnivax commission; of Lynette Marquand's politically motivated pledge to the American people; of her terrifying encounter with Vinyl Sutcher; and finally, of the fruits of Rudy Peterson's dogged pursuit of the truth behind the outbreaks of Lassa fever. For a time after she had finished, nothing was said. Matt's eyes closed as he spun through the kaleidoscope of his memories, searching to connect with something… something he knew was there.

Suddenly he looked up at the two women, his expression grim.

"The Lassa fever vaccine was tested here," he said.

"What?"

"I don't know exactly when, sometime between when I left for college and when I came back to practice. A drug company paid all the doctors in the valley for each patient they could convince to get the shot. After I came back to go into practice here, a bunch of the older docs were joking about it one day in the lunchroom at the hospital. Here none of them had ever even seen a case of Lassa fever in their lives, and now, with a bunch of the town immunized, none of them ever would. That was the gist of what they were laughing about. A couple of them didn't even know what the disease was, even though they signed up a number of their patients and gave them the shot. I actually think I remember them saying that they got a hundred dollars a head, and that some of them shared that money with the patients. It was all perfectly legal as far as I know — docs and patients are both paid all the time for participating in research protocols or drug testing. I don't know how many in the valley were given the test shots."

"Four hundred," Ellen said. "Four hundred of all ages. I saw the summaries of the field trial, but I never noted down where it was conducted."

"How many years ago?" Nikki asked.

"I don't know," Matt replied. "Maybe ten."

"Oh, God," she exclaimed.

"What?"

"Matt, don't you see? Prions. The latent period between exposure to the germ and development of symptoms can be as much as ten years or even longer. That's where the Belinda syndrome is coming from — from the vaccine, not from these barrels of poison. The tissue culture cells that the virus was grown on must have been contaminated with prions right from the start. It seems likely they would have used monkey tissue. If so, maybe the monkeys that the cells came from originally were infected."

"But — "

"You were right all along about the mine storing toxic waste. You were right and you were passionate about what you believed. Grimes knew about this dump and probably sent you that note to keep pushing you in this direction so you wouldn't ever search for the truth about the cases you discovered."

"But why would he do that?"

"He must have a stake in the vaccine."

"If he does," Ellen said, "he's on the verge of becoming an extremely wealthy man. Lasaject is one of the most expensive components of Omnivax. In the next year, especially when older children and adults are immunized in addition to newborns, tens of millions of doses are going to be administered. What's this about prions? What are they?"

"The germs that cause Mad Cow disease and other neurologic illnesses as well," Nikki said. "We think they're responsible for the condition that man has, and also the woman who attacked me, and the girl over there. The symptoms don't appear for years after exposure, and there's essentially no test to see if someone without symptoms has contracted the disease."

"You think everyone who gets the vaccine will get infected with prions?"

"I doubt it. Those who get the disease probably have some sort of genetic predisposition to the effects of the prions. In Britain, despite the hundreds of thousands of people who ate contaminated beef, relatively few cases of Mad Cow disease have been reported."

"How many of the original four hundred do you think have developed prion disease?"

Nikki shrugged. "Let's see," she said. "Matt and I have encountered six cases, including these three. If, say, an additional six cases have disappeared thanks to the handiwork of Grimes and his men, that would make twelve."

"Three percent," Ellen said.

"That may be higher than with Mad Cow disease," Matt said, "but the jury is still out on the rest of those exposed, because we don't know how variable the latency period of the disease is. And the British ate the germ. These people had it injected."

"Three percent at a minimum," Ellen said. "That's terrible. Do either of you know the date and time right now?"

"The second," Matt said, checking his watch. "One-thirty A.M. Why?"

"Because later today, at three o'clock this afternoon, I think, the First Lady is going to preside over a live televised ceremony featuring the Secretary of Health and Human Services giving a four-day-old girl the first official shot of Omnivax. She's going to be inoculated at a neighborhood health center in the Anacostia section of D.C. Immediately after that first shot, pediatricians all over the country will begin giving Omnivax to their patients. The vaccine is already in their refrigerators."

"And probably none of those kids will get sick immediately," Nikki said glumly. "There'll be no warning that anything is wrong."

"Oh, some will get sick," Ellen said. "A percentage of children getting vaccinated inevitably get sick, some of their reactions are serious, some of them even fatal. The pediatricians and scientists and drug manufacturers tell us their lives are a trade-off for the greater good. I wonder how they would feel if it was their child's life. The real question now is one that has troubled me and others about inoculations right along: Who will be able to say what will happen five years after a child receives her immunizations, or ten — especially now that they're all rolled up into Omnivax?"

"These three can," Matt said. "Grimes must have realized the vaccine was flawed. With all that money on the line, rather than come clean about it or chance someone like us seeing enough cases to piece things together, he decided to eliminate everyone who has developed the prion disease. That gives him ten years before the next wave of spongiform encephalopathy and neurofibromas hits."

"A wave maybe," Nikki said, "but possibly a tsunami."

"Nikki, you told me Kathy was convinced men were following her, trying to kill her. Well, I think they might have been. I believe Grimes tracked down every single patient from the original vaccine test group. The three in here may be the last of them with the syndrome."

"We have to stop the supervaccine," Ellen said.

"Ellen," Nikki replied gently, "Grimes somehow arranged for your friend Sutcher to sign on as our bodyguard. I'm almost certain he was the one who threw the switch that blew up the entrances to this place. It's a miracle the ceiling hasn't collapsed. Clearly it was supposed to. But we're sealed in here, way inside the mountain. There's no way out."

"There is, because there has to be," Ellen countered with grim conviction.

"I hope you're right," Nikki said. "We've been around this cavern some and nothing's apparent to us. I think you can try letting up on the pressure now."

Ellen did as she was asked. Save for a small amount of oozing, the gaping wound below Carabetta's groin remained dry. In silence, Nikki packed it with sterile gauze and partially closed it with adhesive tape. The OSHA investigator reacted to the painful procedure with nothing more than a muted groan.

"Ellen's right," Matt exclaimed, his fist clenched. "There's a way out because there has to be. There's too much at stake for us just to sit here waiting for a rescue we know isn't going to happen."

"You want us to dig out? Matt, some of those chunks of rock weigh hundreds or even thousands of pounds. I can't even walk without help."

"Well, then, Ellen and I will do it. Maybe the girl when she comes to, and even Tarzana if we can get her to calm down. What choice do we have?"

"Maybe there is one," Nikki said. "The stream back there. It's coming from someplace and going someplace."

Matt latched on to the notion immediately.

"I think it enters right by the cleft where we came in," he said, a hint of excitement in his voice, "but that's a hell of a long way underground, and most of it steeply uphill from here. I doubt anyone could make it."

"Maybe the way out is in the other direction, then."

Matt looked from one of the women to the other as he tried to imagine what such a journey might be like — and how it might end. He recalled the gut-tightening panic he experienced crawling through the low tunnels. What would it be like being carried along through a narrow, pitch-black, water-filled tube? What if he got stuck? What if the passage became too small and he couldn't back up? Could there possibly be a worse way to die than to drown, pinned between rock walls in an underground river? How long would it take before he finally lost consciousness?

"Let's go take a look," he heard himself say.

Without asking permission, he bent down and lifted Nikki in his arms. Then, with Ellen carrying a lantern, and another one left illuminated to comfort and orient the others, they made their way through the rubble, around the barrels, to the river. Nikki wrapped her arms around Matt's neck and pressed her cheek tightly against his.

"Thanks for the lift, stranger," she said as he set her down on her good leg and she braced herself against the railing of the bridge.

' 'Tweren't nothin', ma'am."

He tipped an imaginary Stetson, then knelt and peered down at the inky, churning water. To their left, the river entered the cavern through a narrow opening — a foot and a half at the most between the surface and the rock. Ten feet toward them were the remains of the other bridge. On the downstream side, to their right, the opening was even smaller, maybe a foot. He reached his hand down and confirmed what he already knew — the water was damn cold.

He cast about for some way to measure the depth and settled on one of the railings from the shattered bridge. The piece, between three and four feet long, struck bottom just before the end would have vanished — a good sign.

"I can do this," he said, aware of the ball of fear that was materializing in his chest.

"I should go," Ellen said. "I'm smaller than you are and I swim at the Y four times a week."

Even after just a short time together, Matt had little doubt that Ellen Kroft had the tenacity to give the escape attempt a hell of a go. But he was younger and stronger and no less motivated.

"These woods and mountain people can be pretty inhospitable," he said, "especially in the middle of the night. You may still get your chance. If there's no sign of me in three or four hours, you might want to try going the other way. That'll be up to you. But I'll have you know there is little to worry about. I was a junior lifeguard at the Y."

"In that case, I'll wait," Ellen said. "You're going to make it."

I am.

Matt put his arms around Nikki and held her close.

"You want me to carry you back to your patients?" he asked.

"Ellen and I will get back to them okay," she said, sniffing back some tears. "Matt, I'm frightened. I… I don't want you to go."

Matt kissed her — at first gently, then with intensity.

"I can think of a few things I'd rather be doing myself," he whispered. "But like Ellen said, I'm going to make it because I have to."

He sensed there wasn't as much conviction in his voice as he had intended. The knot of fear beneath his breastbone was nearing the size of a bowling ball. He stared down again at the river, then over at the slim opening above the surface where it reentered the mountain. In college, a mind game he and his roommates had played from time to time centered around what they would do, what they would feel, if somehow they learned precisely when they were going to die. Now it felt as if he might actually be in a position to know.

Again the questions rattled through his mind.

Was there any other way — any other reasonable possibility of escape for them? If he became wedged, how much time would it take before he lost consciousness? How long could he hold his breath? What did it feel like to drown?

The revolver he had taken from Grimes's massive associate was nestled in the pocket of his sweat pants. The weapon might prove helpful if he ever made it out and then got into trouble. He knew enough about handguns to feel confident it would fire after being submerged for a short time, provided he remembered to empty the water out of the stubby, two-inch barrel before pulling the trigger. If he got trapped, it was doubtful he'd get the chance to use it on himself.

More questions…

Was there anything else that might be useful to take? Better to remove his shoes or leave them on? Hyperventilate or just go for it?

Matt knew that he was stalling. He galvanized himself by imagining the terrible loss of life down the road should their suspicions about Lasaject and spongiform disease be true. Holding that thought, he slipped over the rocky edge and into the chilly water. Nikki leaned down and touched her fingertips to his.

"I'll see you soon," she said.

He walked chest-deep toward the opening in the rock. Once there, he took several deep breaths and looked back over his shoulder.

"You bet you will," he said.

With that he took a final, lung-filling draught, ducked below the surface of the ebony river, and pushed off downstream.