He had left the navy, disgusted with the U.S. military’s blatant disregard for the dangers of radiation, and gone into civilian health care. He had treated men, women and children whose lives had been torn apart by a serial killer they could not see. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl. He had come out of retirement and flown to Japan to assist with the men and women endangered by the meltdown of Fukushima following the 2011 earthquake and tidal wave.
Nevertheless, however disgusted he was with the establishment, he couldn’t turn a deaf ear to the pleas of sick and dying U.S. service men and women either. While he was rarely given any information about the missions which had subjected them to harmful doses of radiation, he had been called in time and time again to clean up the military’s mess, even if he could do no more than make his patients final days on god’s earth a little more comfortable.
But he had been determined that enough was enough. He was retired. He was old. He was finally happy.
“The Phoenix has arisen,” one of the CIA agents had told him over the radio. The agent didn’t have a clue what his cryptic message had meant, he was merely a messenger.
But Emmett knew. The words had sent a cold chill down his spine.
Only hours later, he had been on a private jet alongside the two agents who identified themselves as Jones and Tomskin. Touching down in Baltimore, he had been whisked to John Hopkins Hospital. The staff there had been confused by his presence alongside a female patient, labelled simply 'Jane Doe'. One of the world’s leading hospitals for infectious and tropical diseases, the doctors had been forbidden to talk to Emmett. He didn’t find this unusual. As soon as the government got involved, a veil of secrecy fell upon even the most innocuous of situations.
Anyone who had any contact with, or knowledge of Jane Doe would be debriefed by government cronies, he knew, and forced to sign confidentiality agreements. If they ever spoke of what they had seen, they would be prosecuted. But Emmett knew such prosecution would never come. They would simply vanish.
The moment he laid eyes on the Jane Doe, Emmett knew that she was not suffering from any tropical disease. Her skin was red and blotchy and in a few places the redness had swelled into ulcers which the medical staff had dressed. On first sight, it did indeed look like some tropical disease.
He read the notes which had been carefully edited to remove any mention of the girl’s real name and any background information about her.
He understood how the doctors at John Hopkins hadn’t immediately recognised radiation poisoning. Her initial symptoms, reported by the medical team first to treat her on site — wherever ‘on site’ was — were nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea and high fever. The skin irritation had then developed, followed by unconsciousness. All signs pointed towards a biological agent but the doctor in charge, upon discovering hair-loss, checked her blood work for signs of radiological material and brought in a Geiger counter.
Despite it looking more and more like radiation sickness, all tests proved negative for exposure to any source of radiation.
At least, any known type of radiation.
Emmett snapped himself out of his lapse in concentration to narrowly avoid slamming his rented sedan into a speeding truck. The large vehicle’s lights flashed crazily and its horn echoed as he shot through an underpass and then circled around, speeding up as he tore onto the interstate. In his rear-view mirror he saw the flash of the black SUV but then snatched his attention back to whip around a bus.
Interstate 83 was busy, the rush hour traffic whirring all around him and he felt in a daze, trying to control the surge of adrenalin pumping its way through his body. His hands trembled as they clutched the steering wheel, while his mind hastily sought through his memories, desperately trying to think of someone, anyone, who could help him.
After he had run his tests on the Jane Doe and confirmed his findings to Jones and Tomskin, Jones had stepped out to make a call. On his return, he’d thanked Emmett for his help and told him a rental car was waiting outside and a reservation had been made in a nearby hotel.
Emmett had been shaky as he wandered through the hospital parking lot and identified his car, his mind working in overtime, absorbing what he had just discovered. Perhaps he should have known that now his task was complete, he wouldn’t be allowed to live. He had seen the two men approach, heads down, hoods up. He remembered an odd thought as he noted their shoes — black, polished, matching.
He’d quickly got in the car, started the ignition but, glancing in the mirror, he’d seen one of the hooded men look up. Recognised Jones’ face.
Without thinking, he’d slammed the car into drive and stamped on the gas, squealing away even as two shots rang out and glass shattered.
Now, he raced for his life, dodging and weaving amongst the heavy traffic. The black SUV was there again, closing fast, flicking in and out of view as its driver fought his way through the mêlée.
Emmett slammed his palm down on his horn as he braked hard to avoid smashing into the back of a slow vehicle in the fast lane. The offending car drifted out of his way and Emmett floored the gas again, squeezing through the narrow gap between the car and the centre of the road. The SUV pushed in front of the bus Emmett had already passed, and hauled between two other angry drivers to plant itself in the fast lane directly behind Emmett.
He watched through his mirror as the assassins closed the gap, their more powerful vehicle easily—
The slow moving car slammed into Emmett’s hind quarters. Panicked by the sedan’s angry order to move out of his way, the incompetent driver had swerved into the middle lane just as a large truck was pushing out of the slow lane to overtake. He panicked and swung back into the fast lane but too quickly.
It was only a glancing blow but, pushing one hundred miles an hour, Emmett instantly lost control. The steering wheel spun on its own accord and he felt the vehicle slew out, its front end intersecting the middle lane only to have the incompetent and now petrified driver scream as he rammed into Emmett’s broadside. The sedan rolled and Emmett heard the crunch of metal and the screech of rubber above his own scream as the car rolled over once, twice, three times. Each time, Emmett’s world got a little smaller as the metal of the car compressed on him. His head smashed the windscreen, the steering wheel, the roof, the chair, and the erupting airbags. He realised that he hadn’t fastened his safety belt in his haste to escape the gunmen and now rolled inside the crushed wreck.
But no safety belt or airbag could have saved him.
Even as its driver fought with the brakes, its twenty-foot-long trailer swinging out from side to side and taking out half a dozen other vehicles, the large truck which had indirectly caused the pile-up hammered into the crumbled sedan. It exploded into two separate pieces which spun away, rolling and twisting until at last they came to a stop.
Behind the carnage, Agent Jones skidded the black SUV to a halt while beside him, and for miles behind, hundreds of other vehicles did the same. Within moments, Interstate 83 was gridlocked. Car horns echoed and angry voices shouted out, indignant about the sudden halt to their journeys home.
“Did you see that?” Tomskin asked beside him. Glancing at his subordinate, Jones noted the younger man’s face had lost its colour as he stared ahead. All in all, there were about a dozen vehicles that had been caught up with Emmett Braun’s death, the wrecked hulks of cars, trucks and buses belching smoke into the sunset.
“Of course I bloody saw it,” Jones snapped without sympathy. He clambered out of the SUV and headed towards the remains of Braun’s rental car. Tomskin had the good sense to follow.