"Benton," I said, "where is Lucy?"
He did not reply, so I knew. My worst fears were confirmed right then.
"Kay, all of us have a job to do." His eyes were kind, but he was unequivocal.
"Of course we do." I set down my coffee because my nerves were bad enough. "I'm going out to check on things."
"Hold on," Marino said as he started his second doughnut.
"I'll be fine."
"Yeah, you will," he said. "I'm going to make sure of that."
"You do need to be careful out there," Wesley said to me. "We know there's someone in every window, and they could start shooting whenever they want."
I looked at the main building in the distance, and I pushed open the glass door that led outside. Marino was right behind me.
"Where's HRT?- I asked him.
"Where you can't see them."
"Don't talk to me in riddles. I'm not in the mood."
I walked with purpose, and because I could not see any sign of terrorism or its victims, this ordeal seemed a drill.
Fire and refrigerator trucks and ambulances seemed part of a mock emergency, and even Fielding arranging disaster kits inside the large white trailer that was my outpost did not strike me as reality. He was opening one of the blue Army footlockers stamped with OCME, and inside was everything from eighteen-gauge needles to yellow pouches designed to hold the personal effects of the dead.
He looked up at me as if I had been here all along. "You got any idea where the stakes are?" he asked.
"Those should be in separate boxes with hatchets, pliers, metal ties," I replied.
"Well, I don't know where they are."
"What about the yellow body pouches?" I scanned lockers and boxes stacked inside the trailer.
"I guess I'm just going to have to get all that from FEMA,- he said, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
"Where are they?" I asked, because hundreds of people from many agencies and departments were here.
"You go out and you'll see their trailer directly to the left, next to the guys from Fort Lee. Graves Registration.
And FEMA's got the lead-lined suits."
"And we'll pray we don't need them," I said.
Fielding said to Marino, "What's the latest on hostages?
Do we know how many they've got in there?"
"We're not really sure because we don't know exactly how many employees were in the building," he said. "But the shift was small when they hit, which I'm sure was part of the plan. They've released thirty-two people. We're thinking there's maybe about a dozen left. We don't know how many of them are still alive."
"Christ." Fielding's eyes were angry as he shook his head. "You ask me, every one of the assholes ought to be shot on the spot."
"Yeah, well, you won't get an argument out of me," Marino said.
"At this moment," Fielding said to me, "we can handle fifty. That's the max between the truck we got here and our morgue back in Richmond, which is already pretty crowded. Beyond that, MCV's mobilized if we need them for storage."
. "The dentists and radiologists are also mobilized," I assumed.
"Right. Jenkins, Verner, Silverberg, Rollins. They're all on standby."
I could smell eggs and bacon and didn't know if I felt hungry or sick. "I'm on the radio, if you need me," I said, opening the trailer's door.
"Don't walk so fast," Marino complained when we were back outside.
"Have you checked out the mobile command post?" I asked. "The big blue and white RV? I saw it when we were flying in."
"I don't think we want to go over there."
"Well, I do."
"Doc, that's the inner perimeter."
"That's where HRT is," I said.
"Let's just check it out with Benton first. I know you're looking for Lucy, but for God's sake, use your head."
"I am using my head and I am looking for Lucy." I was getting angrier with Wesley by the moment.
Marino put his hand on my arm and stopped me, and we squinted at each other in the sun. "Doc," he said, "listen to me. What's going down ain't personal. No one gives a shit that Lucy's your niece. She's a friggin' FBI agent, and it ain't Wesley's duty to give you a report on everything she's doing for them."
I did not say anything, and he did not need to, either, for me to know the truth.
"So don't be pissed at him." Marino was still gently holding my arm. "You want to know? I don't like it, either.
I couldn't stand it if something happened to her. I don't know what I'd do if anything happened to either of you.
And right now I'm about as scared as I've ever been in my goddamn fucking life. But I got a job to do and so do you."
"She's at the inner perimeter," I said.
He paused. "Come on, Doc. Let's go talk to Wesley."
But we did not get a chance to do that, because when we walked into the visitors' center, we found him on the phone. His tone was iron-calm and he was standing tensely.
"Don't do anything until I get there, and it is very important that they know I'm on my way," he was saying, slowly. "No, no, no. Don't do that. Use a bullhorn so no one gets close." He glanced at Marino and me. "Just hold tight. Tell them you've got someone coming who will get a hostage phone to them immediately. Right."
He hung up and headed straight for the door, and we were right behind him.
"What the hell's going on?" Marino asked.
"They want to communicate."
"What'd they do? Send a letter?"
"One of them yelled out a window," Wesley replied.
"They're very agitated."
We walked fast past the helipad, and I noted it was empty, the senator and attorney general long gone.
. "So they don't already have a phone?" I was very surprised.
"We shut down the phones in that building," Wesley said. "They have to get a phone from us, and before this minute they haven't wanted one. Now, suddenly they do."
"So there's a problem," I said.
"That's the way I'm reading it." Marino was out of breath.
Wesley did not reply, but I could tell he was petrified, and it was rare that anything made him this way. The narrow road led us through the sea of people and vehicles waiting to help, and the tan building loomed larger. The mobile command post gleamed in the sun and was parked on the grass, the conical containments and the waterway they needed for cooling so close I could have hit them with a stone.
I had no doubt that New Zionists had us in their rifle sights and could pull the trigger, if they chose, pick us off one by one. The windows where we believed they watched were open, but I could not see anything behind their screens.
We walked around to the front of the RV where half a dozen police and agents were in plain clothes surrounding Lucy, and the sight of her almost stopped my heart. She was in black fatigues and boots, and was attached to cables again, as she had been at ERF. Only this time she wore two gloves, and Toto was awake on the ground, his thick neck connected to a spool of fiber optic line that looked long enough to walk him to North Carolina.
"It's better if we tape down the receiver," my niece was saying to men she could not see because of the CRTs over her eyes.
"Who's got tape?"
"Hold on." ck jumpsuit reached inside a large toolbox A man in a bla and tossed a roll of tape to someone else. This person tore off several strips of it and secured the receiver to the cradle of a plain black phone in a box firmly held in the robot's grippers. his is Benton Wesley. I'm "Lucy," Wesley spoke. "T
here."
"Hi," she said, and I could feet her nervousness.
"As soon as you get the phone to them, I'm going to start talking. I just want you to know what I'm doing."
"Are we ready?" she asked, and she had no idea I was there.
. "Let's do it," Wesley tensely said.
She touched a button on her glove and Toto came to life in a quiet whir, and the one eye beneath his domed brain turned, as if focusing like a camera lens. His head swiveled as Lucy touched another button on a glove, and everyone watched in hushed anticipation as my niece's creation suddenly moved. It plowed forward on rubber tracks, telephone tight in its grippers, the fiber optics and telephone cable unrolling from spools.