Mitchell helped them move it out while avoiding eye contact. He kept his eyes down on his “patient” while trying to scope out where he was. Four sets of work lights illuminated the area where they were unloading the van. Directly ahead was a large plastic door, the kind of thing you saw in movies before you saw the bodies of crashed aliens behind it.
In and around the work lights were several other people in spacesuits watching the proceedings. The whole area looked like some kind of improvised processing facility.
What looked like a hundred police cars with their lights still flashing surrounded the area beyond the lights in a perimeter. The police were staying inside of their cars to avoid “contamination,” or whatever they were calling it.
At first, he panicked at the thought of moving through them and then he realized all the attention was on the casket. Mitchell allowed the men pushing it to move away from him as they headed toward the big plastic door. Once they got close to it, Mitchell stepped to the side and walked between two of the huge work lights into the shadows where other people in spacesuits were watching from behind a barrier.
Acting like he had business elsewhere, he walked right past the line of police vehicles and nobody looked twice.
Past them he could see a parking lot filled with cars, various government vehicles and trucks. That’s when he realized that the processing facility was actually the Park Square Mall. Mitchell knew criminals often returned to the scene of the crime. For him it wasn’t a choice.
He moved out into the parking lot and toward a cluster of cars. Nobody stopped him, so he kept moving. Off to one side there was a small encampment of trailers with people in and out of suits walking around. Somewhere, he was sure, there was probably a decontamination booth and lockers for the suits, but since nobody stopped him, he kept walking toward the cars. There was no time to waste acting guilty.
Mitchell fumbled the key from a pouch and clicked the unlock button. A dark blue Ford Explorer’s lights blinked a dozen cars away.
He wasn’t sure how suspicious he’d look getting into the car with the suit on, but he was even more afraid of what would happen if he were approached with it off. Mitchell also didn’t know if it would be possible to drive with the bulky oxygen canister strapped to his back.
Mitchell waited until the last second as he got to the car and quickly stripped the suit off and tossed it into the passenger side on top of the laptop bag. He’d put it back in its duffel bag later. For the time being, he just needed to get out of there.
Mitchell started the SUV up and headed toward the exit. All of the entrances to the mall had police cars at them making sure that no unauthorized people entered. He hoped that they assumed anybody inside there had business in there and could leave without having to show any identification.
Even so, Mitchell’s face was the most recognizable one in South Florida. He looked around the interior and found a pair of reading glasses in the center console. Mitchell put them on as he headed toward the exit where a cop with a flashlight was standing.
Act casual, thought Mitchell. He reached down and picked up a cell phone Lovestrange had left behind. He put it to his ear and had a pretend conversation when the cop looked over at him. Mitchell nodded. The cop pointed toward the main highway and waved Mitchell on.
Mitchell pulled out of the mall for the second time in three days in a car that wasn’t his own with no idea where to go next.
Baylor couldn’t make up his mind if he wanted to follow the motorcade surrounding the ambulance or keep a careful distance away. He’d gotten Steinmetz onto the processing team. But all he could hope for from him was information. He wasn’t a team player. Steinmetz had trouble with the difficult choices. Baylor couldn’t count on him do the really hard stuff. For that he needed Mr. Lewis. By this time he should be finishing up cleaning the mess he and Mr. Travis had made.
A little arson and an incriminating letter about trying to stop “The Islamic Traitor Roberts” and they had a credible Jack Ruby in Travis. Helicopter pilots were kind of nutty to begin with. Baylor could make sure that a record of post-traumatic stress was available on the man and he’d just be an odd footnote in the Mitchell Roberts story.
The next step was making sure that story ended in the next day. The longer the CDC and others had a live specimen, even worse, a lawyered-up specimen, the more problems for Great Wall.
Baylor decided his next step would have to take place somewhere after Mitchell left the South Florida area. The CDC was pushing to have him brought to Atlanta. That would be too problematic for Baylor. If he could get the Pentagon involved, he could have Mitchell sent to an Army base where they dealt with bioterrorism. There he could count on fewer civilians and more people tied into his own network.
He pulled out his phone and called his contact in the West Wing. He would follow the motorcade back to the mall at a more leisurely pace while he strategized on how to get who he needed on the committee that would actually be overseeing Mitchell’s care.
54
The idea for everything had come to Mitchell when he realized he’d have to ditch the car sooner rather than later. He was 20 minutes north of the mall when he saw police cars behind him begin to line up on the exits on the highway. He took the nearest exit before a Highway Patrol car came to a stop in the middle of the off-ramp.
Steinmetz, aka Dr. Lovestrange — Mitchell had found the name on a letter in the console — had meant well. But even he had no idea how intense this manhunt was going to get once they realized Mitchell had slipped away.
The escape made Mitchell appear far more resourceful than he was and also more sinister. The negotiation and the surrender seemed like some kind of mastermind plot. Now that the authorities weren’t treating him like a hospital patient on the run, his actions had implicated him in something much more global.
He had to tell the world about Great Wall or else his actions would never make any sense. There was no way he would survive for very long at the center of such a massive hunt. He was in a race to get the word out before they caught him.
Everything came into focus for Mitchell when he realized he had one and only one goaclass="underline" get the word out before they got him. To do that, he needed a way to spread the message. He entertained the idea of breaking into a copy shop and holding them hostage while they printed out the contents of the computer files. But he knew that would take too long. He’d find himself surrounded before the first printout was finished collating.
Steinmetz’s computer was going to have to be his printing press, if not online then by making copies onto USB sticks and CD-ROMS. That meant one more stop before he dropped off the car and took an alternate means of transportation.
Mitchell pulled the SUV into a Walgreens several miles from where he exited. He had a bold idea, but given the state of panic everyone was in, it could work.
He donned the spacesuit and walked in through the front door. The small Indian woman behind the counter gave Mitchell a curious look.
Mitchell turned to her. “He’s been spotted in this area. Do you have a back room where you can hide?”
The woman nodded.
“Go there, but don’t touch anything electrical, like a phone.” It sounded stupid as he said it, but the woman was too scared to point that out. She ran off toward the back of the store.
Mitchell grabbed a shopping basket and walked over to the side of the store where they had USB memory sticks and blank CD-ROMS. He began piling them into the basket. Once it was full, he headed back out the front of the store and got into the car with the spacesuit still on.