Chapter 36.
Reaching the ground floor, Cavanaugh saw that the door was open, people rushing past. Taken aback by the chaos, he heard a window shatter in an office to his left.
"Go that way," he told Jamie, indicating the open door. "I'll take the side!"
He rushed into the office in time to see Carl leap through the window and charge into the crowd. Immediately, Cavanaugh followed, shouldering past men and women, straining to keep Carl in sight. Another distant shot increased the crowd's panic. "Bomb!" he heard somebody say. The hysterical need to get away was so powerful that, for a moment, Cavanaugh was actually lifted off his feet by the crush of people around him. It was like being swept along in a flood while he tried to break free of the current and maintain a direction.
Ahead, he saw Carl struggling to go sideways through the crowd. But that didn't make sense. Where Carl seemed determined to go--to the right--was a dead end. He couldn't escape there. Abruptly, Cavanaugh realized he was mistaken. What he thought of as a dead end was actually the Mississippi River. The river. That was how Carl planned to get away.
Chapter 37.
One minute to ten.
No matter how hard Carl strained to break free from the crowd, it caught and squeezed him, carrying him with it. The force was so great that he had trouble breathing. Jabbing with his elbows, ramming with his shoulders, he managed to clear a space and thrust closer to the river.
He was too confined to be able to look at his watch. But he sensed that ten o'clock was almost upon him. Any second, the few remaining members of the team would pull the cords on their knapsacks, the police radio frequencies would trigger the detonator, and black clouds filled with nerve gas would drift across the remaining demonstrators.
Vaguely aware of a building on his right, he jabbed harder with his elbows and cleared enough space to draw his pistol, firing into the air. The deafening shots made people scream and run faster. Several fell, others piling onto them. Carl scrambled over them.
Ahead, part of the crowd raced across train tracks, up steps, and into a tunnel. He fired several more shots to keep the crowd hurrying and charged into the shadow of the tunnel. When he broke into sunlight, a wide expanse of concrete ended at the water. Barges and tugboats chugged along the Mississippi. He vaulted a waist-high fence and dove past a paddle wheeler moored at the shore, plunging beneath the surface.
Chapter 38.
Racing after him, Cavanaugh saw Carl sprinting toward the river. He stretched his legs to their limit and sped closer, but not enough. There wasn't sufficient time to close the gap. As Carl vaulted the fence, Cavanaugh didn't have time to stop and try to control his exertion-trembling body enough to aim. In a blur, Carl dove past a paddle wheeler into the river. Three seconds later, Cavanaugh vaulted the fence. Afraid of being weighed down, he dropped his gun and the knife on his belt. He threw off his jacket, tugged his claw knife from its neck sheath, gripped it securely, and dove.
The river was cold. Gritty. Greasy. Submerged in the weight of the muddy water, he heard the muffled vibrations of engines. The water was so murky that when he opened his eyes, he couldn't see. All he could do was keep kicking with his heavy shoes, blindly sweeping his arms, following the course that Carl had taken into the water. As he thrust with his hands, he gripped his claw knife, slicing, hoping to wound Carl's legs. Already short of breath from running, he felt pressure in his chest, his lungs demanding air. He kept thrusting, his clothes weighing him down.
Caught in the current, no longer hopeful that he was on Carl's trajectory, he thrust again with the knife. The engine vibrations were louder. Then he realized that what he heard was the pounding of his heart. Lungs feeling as if they'd explode, he kicked upward, pawed through the water, broke the surface, and gaped at a tugboat looming toward him. It was so close that he had to shove his feet against its hull, thrusting his body away before he was struck. Nonetheless, the suction of the current pushed him back against the hull. The propeller, he thought.
A row of tires hung from the tug's side, buffers that kept it from banging against a dock. Stretching up, Cavanaugh snagged a hand into one of the tires and felt an agonizing strain in his shoulder as the tug carried him along. Staring back, he saw Jamie standing at the side of the river, helplessly watching his struggle.
In the distance, a black cloud rose.
Farther over, so did another.
Suddenly understanding Carl's plan, he prayed that Jamie would realize what she needed to do. As a third black cloud rose, he raised his free hand, the one with the knife, waving insistently that he was all right, urging her to go. She returned his wave, and with a frightened look behind her toward the isolated black clouds, she broke into a run.
*
PART EIGHT:
THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE KNIFE
Chapter 1.
"So far, we know almost one thousand people died," Dawn Finch told him, "including forty Federal agents and fifteen GPS operators."
Cavanaugh was too overwhelmed to reply. He sat in a Coast Guard office, where a patrol boat had brought him after he was transferred from the tug. Although he clutched a blanket wrapped around him, he shivered--only partially because of his wet clothes.
Jamie brought him a steaming cup of coffee. "At least, another two thousand needed medical care, enough to fill the emergency wards in every hospital in the area."
"But it could have been significantly worse," an FBI agent said. "The canisters were so carefully sealed, none of the toxin detectors in the crowd registered what was in them. If the conference had occurred, if all the protestors had remained in the area, if all the knapsacks had been detonated and all the gas released . . ."
"The preliminary estimate is that at least fifteen thousand protestors would have died, plus the thousands of tourists and business people in the downtown area" another agent explained. "Lord knows how many others would have needed medical attention. This came close to being the worst--"
Outside the office, boat engines rumbled. A door opened. Everyone turned toward a Coast Guard officer who entered. Rutherford and Mosely followed, neither of them looking happy.
The Coast Guard officer reported, "No luck finding him. We're beginning to think he might have been hit by boat traffic on the river. Perhaps he was knocked unconscious and drowned."
"He didn't drown," Cavanaugh said.
"One of our men saw you chase him," an FBI agent reported. "Our man was too far away to help, but he managed to see both of you go into the water. Only you came up."
"Maybe he struck his head on something under the water. Maybe his body's caught on something down there," the Coast Guard officer hoped. "We're dragging the area. We sent for divers."
"And you're searching the banks all the way up and down the river?" Cavanaugh asked. "Using helicopters as well as boats?"
"Of course."
"Still think you're running things?" Mosely demanded.
The hostile interruption made everyone turn.