Maggie noticed that nothing else moved. His fingers didn’t flex. His legs—though twisted into a knot beneath him—did not budge. No part of him attempted to fight or stretch or even press against the barbed-wire restraints.
She scanned one more time, looking for anything that resembled electric wire and checking for burn marks. None, that she could see. Yet the smell of singed hair and burned flesh and the apparent paralysis all seemed to support her suspicions. The boy wasn’t only in shock. He had also suffered an electrical shock.
EIGHT
PHIL’S DINER
WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Colonel Benjamin Platt ordered a cheeseburger, ignoring the raised eyebrow and disapproving look from the diner’s most senior waitress. To test just how far he could push her, he asked for mustard and extra onions. The waitress, named Rita, had known Platt since he was a med student at William and Mary and pulled all-nighters slinging back lukewarm coffee, hunched over his textbooks.
Back then his attempt at flirting would sometimes win him a piece of stale pie. On a good night the pie came with a scoop of ice cream. Platt couldn’t remember when they both had given up all pretense of Rita being his Mrs. Robinson. Instead, she became a sort of mother hen who watched over his heartburn and kept his arteries from clogging.
“Visiting in the middle of the week?” Rita asked as she poured coffee into the mug without looking, keeping her eyes on his, trying to detect his emotional state. Weird thing was, she could. And what still fascinated him most was that she knew exactly when to stop pouring, right when the scalding-hot coffee reached within an inch of the mug’s lip.
“I’m meeting someone,” he said. These days he didn’t get back to the diner very often except when visiting his parents, who were retired.
She raised an eyebrow.
“No, not that kind of someone.” He grinned.
“I would hope not with those extra onions.”
Then she turned around and left him, and he swore she added a bit more swing to her hips leaving than she had when she approached.
He smiled again. She could still make him feel like that awkward college boy. Didn’t help matters that tonight he wore blue jeans, a faded gray William and Mary sweatshirt, and leather moccasins with no socks. He ran his fingers over his short hair realizing the wind had left it spiked. Just as he glanced at his reflection in the window he saw Roger Bix getting out of a rented Ford Escort. Platt didn’t know the man well, but he knew enough to guess Bix wasn’t happy about driving a compact anything.
In the glare of the diner’s neon sign Bix’s shock of unruly red hair looked bright orange, suddenly reminding Platt of the comic-book character Archie. Only Bix was the cocky version, unaware that his paunch hung over his belt. Evidently he thought himself inconspicuous despite the pointed-toe cowboy boots and Atlanta Braves jacket. He looked nothing like a cowboy or an athlete.
Platt waved at him as soon as Bix came in the door. He watched the man scrutinize the surroundings with pursed lips, emphasizing his disapproval. Bix had asked to meet somewhere discreet and totally away from D.C. politicos. Close to Norfolk, where Bix said he had spent the day, and two hours outside the capital, Phil’s Diner met the criteria, despite it not being up to Bix’s personal standards.
“William and Mary?” Bix said in place of a greeting, pointing at Platt’s sweatshirt and letting his slow Southern drawl elongate his sarcastic disgust as he slid into the booth. It seemed there was no pleasing the man tonight. “I took you for a tough guy. Big Ten. Like Notre Dame, maybe. Certainly not William and Mary.”
“Notre Dame’s not part of the Big Ten. It’s a free agent.”
Bix shrugged, lifted his hands palms up as if to say college sports was not his thing.
Platt had met Bix several years ago at a conference on infectious diseases. Both were young for their titles, Platt as the director of USAMRIID (pronounced U-SAMRid—United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases) at Fort Detrick and Bix as CDC’s (Centers for Disease Control) chief of Outbreak Response and Surveillance Team in Atlanta. A year ago they worked together on an outbreak of Ebola, a case that pitted both men against their superiors. The fact that they had retained their positions spoke volumes. That neither man celebrated his victory by making the talk-show circuit or in any way acted like a celebrity revealed a dedication to integrity that couldn’t be quantified by a job title. It was, perhaps, the only thing these two very different men had in common.
Rita appeared at their booth again.
“Just coffee,” Bix said without even looking up.
“Anything else?”
“Just coffee,” he repeated, now with an air of dismissal.
Rita slapped a mug down in front of him and started pouring. Soon Bix realized Rita was staring at him instead of where she was pouring. Platt watched Bix’s eyes dart between Rita’s and the mug. He was sitting up and preparing for an overflow. Rita lifted the pot without a drip. A sigh escaped from Bix.
“Sure you don’t want a slice of peach pie?”
This time Bix glanced up at her and without hesitation said, “That sounds great.”
Platt smiled. Rita must have witnessed Bix’s entrance, sensed his disapproval, and set things straight the way no one else could. Leveled the playing field in a matter of seconds.
It seemed like a good time to ask, “Why did you call me, Roger?”
Platt waited for the CDC chief to spill one, then two more packets of sugar into his coffee, taking his time, to regain his cocky, self-assured composure. When he finished he planted both elbows on the table, gathered the mug in his hands, and sipped.
There was no hint of levity in his voice when he leaned in and said to Platt, “I called you because I need someone I can trust. I need someone I know can keep his mouth shut.”
NINE
NEBRASKA NATIONAL FOREST
Maggie didn’t think it possible, but the floodlights made the forest scene even eerier. Stark shadows appeared where none had existed in the darkness. The fallen pine needles and dried leaves came alive. Animals that had been otherwise invisible suddenly became alert, threatened by the light and skittering away. Hank had mentioned something about cougars and bobcats, and Maggie could swear she saw one stalking them from the ridge up above.
Maggie watched as Hank and one of the paramedics gently lifted the boy wrapped in barbed wire onto a stretcher made from a tarp. Rather than carry him up the trail, they had cut the fence that separated the pasture from the forest. They’d take him over the dunes in the back of an ATV to deliver him to a rescue unit waiting on the other side. It was the closest they were able to get a rescue vehicle and they could barely see the halo of the headlights.
Maggie walked with them through the narrow paths of tree trunks, pretending to help carry a corner. She knew the two men could do so easily but she couldn’t break the connection with the boy. Earlier, as soon as she started to trail out of his line of vision his head started pivoting around, frantically searching for her. But the paramedic had given him an injection to relax and sedate him and now the boy finally closed his eyes. So she escorted them to where the cattails grew taller than her, to where the ATV idled. One short climb over the sand dune and she knew he’d be safe.
She hurried back and started helping Donny prepare the next of the wounded when she saw a man appear at the top of the dune. Backlit by the headlights behind him, he looked larger than life.