"You better be right."
With an agent on either side of them, and a sizable crowd jeering from tenement windows, Ellen and Matt were led down the sidewalk, toward the clinic.
"I can't believe we're going to make it," Matt said.
"I told you not to give up."
"No, that was me. I told you."
Ellen turned to Jill.
"Do you have any idea why the man cut the cable?"
"Like Alan said, he's a wack-job. Listen, in case you couldn't tell, we're not having a good day. If you're juicin' us about who you are or this vaccine, we're gonna cuff you to the same tree he's huggin' and leave all three of you there overnight to sample the hospitality of the neighborhood."
The agent gestured to their right, where the culprit stood, his arms shackled around a good-sized oak.
Ellen grinned as they hurried past him toward the gleaming health center.
Rudy waved with his fingertips.
"Hey, Rudy," she called out, "this is my new friend, Matt Rutledge. Matt, this is my… significant other, Rudy Peterson."
Just as they reached the clinic, a couple emerged. The woman was cradling an infant in her arms, holding her so that the child was bathed in the warm afternoon sun. Behind her, just inside the door, Matt could see what looked like more Secret Service people. At the sight of the two of them, handcuffed together, the couple took a wary step backward.
"Hi," Ellen said cheerily, her smile threatening to escape the bounds of her face. "Is this the baby who's going to get the vaccination?"
"Yes," Sherrie replied, glancing down lovingly at her child. "Her name's Donelle."
CHAPTER 38
Late afternoon shadows were stretching across the streets of D.C. when Matt finally fired up the Harley and headed back toward West Virginia. He was riding alone. Ellen and Rudy remained behind to answer more questions from the FBI and to review the evidence Rudy had brought into the city with him. The progression from the Secret Service agent in charge of security at the clinic to his counterpart on Lynette Marquand's staff to Marquand herself had been rapid.
There had simply been too much at stake for anyone to delay.
In a small conference room, Matt and Ellen were being interrogated by former Georgia Congresswoman Joanne Kramer, Marquand's chief of staff, when word was brought in that the feeder cable Rudy had severed had been replaced. It was the moment of truth. Kramer hurried from the room, leaving the two of them with a Secret Service agent. Five interminable minutes passed before the door opened and Kramer reentered. With her was the First Lady of the United States. Beneath her piled-on-for-TV makeup, Marquand was ashen. There was no warmth in her expression as she took stock first of Matt, then Ellen.
"So, Mrs. Kroft," she said, still standing, "it would seem that your abstention from the Omnivax vote did not mean you had lost interest in the vaccine."
"Hardly," Ellen said. "A man had threatened my granddaughter's life if I voted against it. I needed to buy some time."
"And now that man is dead."
"Yes. He worked for the owner of Columbia Pharmaceuticals, the manufacturer of the Lassa fever component of Omnivax."
"And there is something fatally wrong with that component?"
"Yes."
"And you are convinced it would be a grievous error for us to vaccinate the infant who is out there awaiting her immunizations."
Ellen sighed in relief at the news. The shot heard round the world still hadn't been fired.
"Yes," she said again. "I most emphatically do."
"And you, Dr. — "
"Rutledge," Matt said, clearing his throat. "Matthew Rutledge. People from my community in West Virginia who received test doses of the Lassa fever vaccine ten years ago are dying. I think the agent that is killing them is still in the vaccine."
Marquand again leveled her gaze at Ellen.
"Mrs. Kroft, my staff has informed me that you have been a financial supporter of my husband's opponent in the upcoming election. Is your miraculous appearance at this moment at all politically motivated?"
Ellen took some time before responding.
"I disapprove of your husband's position on social security," she said finally. "That is why I support Mr. Harrison. But our being here now has nothing to do with politics. I assure you of that."
For fifteen seconds, all was silent as Marquand steadily probed Ellen's eyes with her own.
"Thank you," she had said finally. Her voice was husky, her expression still gray. "And you, too, Dr. Rutledge."
Without another word, she and Kramer then turned and left the room. Fifteen minutes after that, the first of the FBI interrogators had arrived. The child had been sent home; the cameras had been shut down; and no doubt, the administration's spin-doctors had been called in for emergency work.
Before leaving for home, Matt had sat alone in one of the empty clinic examining rooms wrestling with the decision of whether to notify the police about the situation at the toxic dump site or to wait until he had the chance to evaluate things in person. When Lyle didn't return, Lewis and Frank would surely have known there had been trouble at Hal's. He was certain of that. What they would or could do about it, though, was anybody's guess. Their brother was dead. Their beloved old truck was at the bottom of Long Lake. They were several miles from their farm, and Lewis was not in the best of shape for travel. Still, the problems Matt would cause for them by sending the authorities to the scene of such carnage might well destroy them. Nikki and those inside the cave were reasonably stable when Ellen and he had left for Hal's place.
Finally, after a heated internal debate, he had decided to wait on calling for help from anyone until he could ride out to the mountain himself.
Rush-hour traffic was a bear, and Matt took many more chances than he was accustomed to in getting across the Potomac and out of the city. It was seven-thirty by the time he was first able to accelerate past seventy.
Just outside White Sulphur Springs, he glanced down at his pager, which he kept in a plastic holder on the handlebars of the Harley when he was riding, and transferred to his belt loop when he wasn't. It had been on the bike since the evening he followed Bill Grimes up to the mountain cabin. The light indicating a page was flashing. He had no idea how long that had been the case. He pulled off the highway and called the ER at the hospital.
"Dr. Rutledge," the ward secretary exclaimed, "we've been trying to find you. There's a disaster drill in progress, only it's not a drill."
Matt's pulse quickened.
"What's going on?"
"I really don't know. It's confusing. I think there's trouble at the mine. Maybe a cave-in, maybe an explosion. The first two cases are due to arrive by ambulance any minute."
"Tell whoever's in charge that I'll be there in about an hour."
Fifty minutes later, Matt swept around a wide, left-hand curve — one of his favorites to ride — and saw the lights of Belinda nestled in the valley below. So beautiful; so deceptively peaceful. Main Street was quieter than usual, but the hospital more than made up for that. One ambulance was in a bay, having just been unloaded, a second, also now empty, stood off to one side of the tarmac, and a third, flashers on, was just rolling up the drive. Matt parked the Harley and hurried over to help.
"I've never seen anything like it. Never," one of the EMTs was excitedly telling ER nurse Laura Williams. "We pulled these people out through a hole way up on this rock wall. There were flares marking the entrance to a cave and a rope on the ground leading in to where the trouble was, but no indication who put them there."
"I know," Williams said. "The other crew's still talking about it."
"And those barrels of chemicals. God, what a stench. That can't possibly be legal. What made those mine people think they could get away with such a thing?"