Cause of Death

  The robot had not gotten far when all of us could see that glass door open, and a bearded man in khakis and a sweater swiftly emerged. He grabbed the telephone off the step and vanished inside.

  "Good work, Lucy," Wesley said, and he sounded very relieved. "Okay, goddamn it, now call," he added, and he was not talking to us, but them. "Lucy," he added, "when you're ready, come on in."

  "Yes, sir," she said as her arms coaxed Toto over every dip and bump.

  Then Marino, Wesley and I climbed steps leading into the mobile command post, which was upholstered in gray and blue, with tables between seats. There was a small kitchen and bath, and windows were tinted so one could see out, but not in. Radio and computer equipment had been set up near the back, and overhead five televisions were turned to the major networks and CNN, the volume set low.

  A red phone on a table started ringing as we were walking down the aisle. It sounded urgent and demanding, and Wesley ran to pick it up.

  "Wesley," he said, staring out a window, and he pushed two buttons that both taped the caller and put him on speakerphone.

  "We need a doctor." The male voice sounded white and Southern, and he was breathing hard.

  "Okay, but you're going to need to tell me more."

  "Don't bullshit with me!" he screamed.

  "Listen." Wesley got very calm. "We're not bullshitting, all right'? We want to help, but I need more information."

  "He fell in the pool and went into like a coma."

  "Who did?"

  "Why the fuck does it matter who?"

  Wesley hesitated.

  "He dies, we've got this place wired. You understand?

  We're going to blow you fucking up if you don't do some thing now!"

  We knew who he meant, so Wesley did not ask again.

  Something had happened to Joel Hand, and I did not want to imagine what his followers might do if he died.

  "Talk to me," Wesley said.

  "He can't swim."

  "Let me make certain I understand. Someone almost drowned'?"

  "Look. The water's radioactive. It had the fucking fuel assemblies in it, you understand?"

  "He was inside one of the reactors."

  The man screamed again, "Just shut the fuck up with your questions and get someone to help. He dies, everybody dies. You understand that?" he said as a gun loudly went IL

  off over the phone and cracked from the building at the same time.

  Everyone froze, and then we could hear crying in the background. I thought my heart would beat out of my ribs.

  "You make me wait another minute," the man's excited voice was back on the line, "and another one gets killed."

  I moved closer to the phone and before anyone could stop me, I said, "I'm a doctor. I need to know exactly what happened when he fell into the reactor pool."

  Silence. Then the man said, "He almost drowned, that's all I know. We tried to pump water out of him but he was already unconscious."

  "Did he swallow water?"

  "I don't know. Maybe he did. Some was coming out of his mouth." He was becoming more agitated. "But if you don't do something, lady, I'm going to turn Virginia into a goddamn desert."

  "I'm going to help you," I said. "But I need to ask you several more questions. Tell me his condition now?"

  "Like I said. He's out. It's like he's in a coma."

  "Where do you have him?"

  "In the room here with us." He sounded terrified. "He don't react to anything, no matter what we try to do."

  "I'm going to have to bring in a lot of ice and medical supplies," I said. "It's going to take several trips unless I have some help."

  "You'd better not be FBI," he raised his voice again.

  "I'm a doctor out here with a lot of other medical personnel," I said. "Now, I'm going to come and help, but not if you're going to give me a hard time."

  He was silent. Then he said, "Okay. But you come alone."

  "The robot will help me carry things. The same one that brought you your phone."

  He hung up, and when I did, Wesley and Marino were staring at me as if I had just committed murder.

  "Absolutely not," Wesley said. "Jesus Christ, Kay!

  Have you lost your mind?"

  "You ain't going if I have to put you in a goddamn police hold," Marino chimed in.

  "I have to," I said simply. "He's going to die," I added.

  "And that's the very reason why you can't go in there," Wesley exclaimed.

  "He has acute radiation sickness from swallowing water in the pool," I said. "He can't be saved. Soon he will die, and then I think we know what the consequences might be.

  His followers will probably set off the explosives." I said to Wesley, Marino, and the commander of HRT, "Don't you understand? I've read their Book. He is their messiah, and they won't just walk away when he dies. This whole thing will turn into a suicide mission, as you predicted." I looked at Wesley again.

  "We don't know that they'll do that," he said to me.

  "And you'll take the chance they won't?"

  "And what if he comes to," Marino said. "Hand's going to recognize you and tell all his assholes who you are. Then what?"

  "He's not going to come to."

  Wesley stared out a window, and it wasn't very hot in the RV, but he looked like it was summer. His shirt was limp from dampness, and he kept wiping his brow. He did not know what to do. I had one idea, and I did not think there could be another one.

  "Listen to me," I said. "I can't save Joel Hand, but I can make them think he's not dead."

  Everyone just stared at me.

  Then Marino said, "What?"

  I was getting frantic. "He could die any minute," I said. "I've got to get in there now and buy you enough time to get in, too."

  "We can't get in," Wesley said.

  "Once I'm in there, maybe you can," I said. "We can use the robot to find a way. We'll get him in, and then he can stun and blind them long enough for your guys to get in. I know you have the equipment to do that."

  Wesley was grim and Marino looked miserable, I understood the way they felt, but I knew what must be done.

  I went out to the nearest ambulance and got what I needed from paramedics while other people found ice. Then Toto and I made our approach with Lucy at the controls. The robot carried fifty pounds of ice while I was in charge of a large medical chest. We walked toward the front door of Old Point's main building as if this were any other day and our visit was normal. I did not think of the men who had me in their scopes. I refused to imagine explosives or the barge loading up material that could help Libya build an atom bomb.

  When we reached the door, it was immediately opened by what looked like the same bearded man who had appeared to get the hostage phone not long ago.

  "Get in," he gruffly said, and he was carrying an assault rifle on a strap.

  "Help me with the ice," I said.

  He stared at the robot with its five bags held fast in grippers. He was reticent, as if Toto were a pit bull that might suddenly hurt him in some way. Then he reached for the ice and Lucy programmed her friend through fiber optics to release it. Next, this man and I were inside the building with the door shut, and the security area had been destroyed, X-ray and other scanning devices ripped out of place and riddled with bullets. There were blood drips and drag marks, and when I followed him around a corner, I smelled the bodies before I saw the slain guards who had been gathered into a ghastly, gory pile down the hall.

  Fear rose in my throat like bile as we passed through a red door, and the rumble of combines shook my bones and made it impossible to hear anything said by this man who was a New Zionist. As I noticed the large black pistol on his belt, I thought about Danny and the .45 that had so coldly killed him. We climbed grated stairs painted red, and I did not look down because I would get dizzy. He led me along a catwalk to a door that was very heavy and painted with warnings, and he punched in a code as ice began to drip on the floor.

  "Just do as yo
u're told," I vaguely heard him say as we walked into the control room. "You understand me?" He nudged my back with his rifle.

  "Yes," I said.

  There were maybe a dozen men inside, all dressed in slacks and sweaters or jackets, and carrying semiautomatic rifles and machine guns. They were very excited and angry, and seemed indifferent to the ten hostages sitting on the floor against a wall. Hands were tied in front of them, and pillowcases had been pulled over their heads. Through holes cut out for eyes, I could see their terror. The openings for their mouths were stained with saliva and they sucked in and out with rapid, shallow breaths. I noted bloody drag marks on the floor here, too, only these were fresh and led behind a console where the latest victim had been dumped.

  I wondered how many bodies I would later find should mine not be among them.

  "Over there," my escort ordered.

  Joel Hand was on his back on the floor, covered by a curtain someone had ripped from a window. He was very pale and still wet from the pool where he had swallowed water that would kill him, no matter what I tried to do. I recognized his fair, full-lipped face from when I had seen him in court, only he looked puffier and older.

  "How long has he been like this?" I spoke to the man who had brought me in.

  "Maybe an hour and a half."

  He was smoking and pacing. He would not meet my eyes, one hand nervously resting on the barrel of his gun, which was aimed at my head as I set down the medical chest. I turned around and stared at him.

  "Don't point that at me," I said.

  "You shut up." He stopped pacing and looked as if he would crack my skull.

  "I'm here because you invited me, and I'm trying to help." I met his glassy gaze and my voice meant business, too. "If you don't want me to help, then go ahead and shoot me or let me leave. Neither one is going to help him. I'm trying to save his life and don't need to be distracted by your goddamn gun."

  He did not know what to say as he leaned against a console with enough controls to fly us to the moon. Video displays on walls showed that both reactors were shut down, and areas in a grid lighted up red warned of problems I could not comprehend.

  "Hey, Wooten, take it easy." One of his peers lit a cigarette.

  "Let's open the bags of ice now," I said. "I wish we had a tub, but we don't. I see some books on those countertops, and it looks like there's a lot of stacks of paper over there by that fax machine. Bring anything like that you can for a border."

  Men brought to me all sorts of thick manuals, reams of papers and briefcases that I assumed belonged to the employees they had captured. I formed a rectangular border around Hand as if I were in my backyard making a flower bed. Then I covered him with fifty pounds of ice, leaving only his face and an arm exposed.

  "What will that do?" The man called Wooten had moved closer, and he sounded as if he were from out west somewhere. d to radiation," I said. "His "He's been acutely expose system is being destroyed and the only way to put a stop to it is to slow everything down."

  I opened the medical chest and got out a needle, which I inserted into their dying leader's arm and secured with tape. I connected an IV line leading to a bag on a stand that contained nothing but saline, a harmless salty solution that would do nothing one way or another. It dripped as he got cooler beneath inches of ice.

  Hand was barely alive, and my heart was thudding as I looked around at these sweating men who believed that this man I pretended to save was God. One had taken his sweater off, and his undershirt was almost gray, the sleeves drawn up from years of washing. Several of them had beards, while others had not shaved in days. I wondered where their women and children were, and I thought of the barge in the river and what must be going on in other parts of the plant. voice barely said, and at least

  "Excuse me," a quavering one of the hostages was a woman. "I need to go to the bathroom." obody shitting

  "Mullen, you take her. We don't want n in here."

  "Excuse me, but I have to go, too," said another hostage, who was a man.

  "So do I." he was young

  "All right, one at a time," said Mullen, w and huge.

  I knew at least one thing the FBI did not. The New Zionists had never intended to let anyone else go. Terrorists place hoods over their hostages because it is easier to kill people who have no faces. I got out a vial of saline and injected fifty milliliters into Hand's IV line, as if I were giving him some other magic dose.

  "How's he doing?" one of the men loudly asked as another hostage was led off to the bathroom.

  "I've got him stabilized at the moment," I lied.

  "When's he going to come around?" asked another.

  I took their leader's pulse again, and it was so faint I almost could not find it. Suddenly, the man dropped down beside me and felt Hand's neck. Digging his fingers in the ice, he pressed them over the heart, and when he looked up at me, he was frightened and furious.

  "I don't feel nothing!" he yelled, his face red.

  "You're not supposed to feel anything. It's critical to keep him in a hypothermic state so we can arrest the rate of irradiation damage to blood vessels and organs," I told him. "He's on massive doses of diethylene triamine pentaacetic acid, and he is quite alive."

  He stood, his eyes wild as he stepped closer to me, finger on the trigger of his Tec-9. "How do we know you aren't just bullshitting or making him worse."

  "You don't know." I showed no emotion because I had accepted this was the day I would die, and I was not afraid of it. "You have no choice but to trust that I know what I'm doing. I've profoundly slowed down his metabolism.

  And he's not going to come to any time soon. I'm simply trying to keep him alive."

  He averted his gaze.

  "Hey, Bear, take it easy."

  "Leave the lady alone."

  I continued kneeling by Hand as his IV dripped and melting ice began to seep through the barricade, spreading over the floor. I took his vital signs many times and made notes, so it seemed that I was very busy in my attendance of him.

  I could not help but glance out windows whenever I could, and wonder about my comrades. At not quite three P.m., his organs failed him like followers that suddenly aren't interested anymore. Joel Hand died without a gesture or sound as cold water ran in small rivers across the room.

  "I need ice and I need more drugs," I looked up and said.

  "Then what?" Bear came closer.

  "Then at some point you need to get him to a hospital."

  No one responded.

  "If you don't give me these things I've requested, I can do nothing more for him," I flatly stated.

  Bear went over to a desk and got on the hostage phone.

  He said we needed ice and more drugs. I knew Lucy and her team had better act now or I probably would be shot.

  I moved away from Hand's spreading puddle, and as I looked at his face it was hard for me to believe that he had so much power over others. But every man in this room and those in the reactor and on the barge would kill for him. In fact, they already had.

  "The robot's bringing the shit. I'm going out to get it," said Bear as he looked out the window. "It's on its way now.

  "You go out there you're probably going to get your ass shot off."

  "Not with her in here," Bear's eyes were hostile and crazed.

  "The robot can bring it to you," I surprised them by saying.

  Bear laughed. "You remember all those stairs'? You think that tin-ass piece of shit's going to get up those?"

  "It's perfectly capable," I said, and I hoped this was true.

  "Hey, make it bring the stuff in so no one has to go out," another man said.

  Bear got Wesley on the hostage phone again. "Make the robot bring the supplies to the control room. We're not coming out." He slammed the receiver down, not realizing what he had just done.

  I thought of my niece and said a prayer for her because I knew this would be her hardest challenge. I jumped as I suddenly felt the barrel of a gun against the back
of my neck.

  "You let him die, you're dead, too. You got that, bitch?"

  I did not move.

  "Pretty soon, we got to sail out of here, and he'd better be going with us."

  "As long as you keep me in supplies, I will keep him alive," I quietly said.