year ago, Hildreth was bored, or in search of distraction, and drew Danny out a
little bit. Danny told him about playing football in high school, his team
reaching the state championship in Indiana, and he could tell that Hildreth
liked that, too. “A running back, huh? You still look like one,” Hildreth had
said. “Sometime you’ll have to tell me what you do to stay in shape.”
Hildreth was a small man, but he preferred being surrounded by large men. Maybe
he enjoyed the feeling that he, the small man, commanded the large men; that
they were his myrmidons. Or maybe they just made him comfortable.
Danny Callahan glanced at the clock on the dashboard. Hildreth had said he’d be
ready to leave by six-thirty. It was quarter past seven. What else was new?
Hildreth often ran forty-five minutes behind. An hour wasn’t uncommon.
In his earpiece, Callahan heard the voice of the dispatcher. “Capricorn
descending.” Hildreth was on his way.
Callahan drove the car directly in front of the exit on the left side of the
immense glass shoe box that was the National Security Agency. A rain began to
fall, just a few small drops at first. Callahan waited until Hildreth came into
view, then got out and stood beside the car.
“Danny.” Hildreth nodded, the outdoor halogen lights reflecting off his high
forehead. His small, pinched features gathered into a perfunctory smile.
“Dr. Hildreth,” Callahan said. He once read an article in the Washington Post
about Hildreth that mentioned he had a doctorate in international relations.
Thereafter, he started calling him “doctor,” and he somehow got the sense that
Hildreth was pleased by the honorific. Now Callahan held the rear door open for
him and then shut it with an efficient thunk.
Before long, the rain started to come down harder, in sheets that twisted with
the wind and made the headlights of other cars look oddly distorted.
Mason Falls was thirty miles away, but Callahan could practically do the trip
blindfolded: off Savage Road, down 295, a quick jaunt on 395, across the
Potomac, and up Arlington Boulevard.
Fifteen minutes later, he saw the flashing red lights of a police squad car in
his rearview mirror. For a moment, Callahan expected the cop to pass him, but it
seemed that the cruiser was trying to pull him over.
It couldn’t be. And yet—as best as he could see in the rainstorm—he was the only
car around. What the hell?
Sure, he was ten miles over the speed limit, but you’d expect the traffic cops
to notice the government license plates and fall back. Some newbie with an
attitude? Callahan would take pleasure in putting him in his place. But Hildreth
was unpredictable: he might get angry with him, blame him for speeding, even
though Hildreth had always made it clear that he was grateful that Danny got him
home so quickly—appreciated his “celerity.” That was the word Hildreth once
used; Callahan looked it up when he got home. Nobody liked to be stopped by the
police, though. Maybe Hildreth would make sure the blame was clearly the
driver’s, and have a black mark put on his fitness report.
Callahan pulled over to the paved shoulder. The squad car pulled over
immediately behind him.
As the policeman, a blue slicker obscuring his uniform, appeared by his door,
Callahan powered down his window.
“You know how fast you were going?”
Callahan displayed two laminated plastic cards. “Check ’em out, Officer,” he
said. “You really don’t want to be here.”
“Oh, sorry, man. I had no idea.” The officer sounded genuinely abashed, but it
was funny—he couldn’t have been a rookie. He seemed to be in his forties, with a
boxer’s squashed-looking nose and a thin scar that ran along his jaw.
“Take a careful look at the plates next time,” Callahan said, his tone bored,
officious. “You see the prefix SXT, it means it’s high-security federal
transport.”
The officer tore up a slip of paper. “I’m scratching this from my records. You
too, huh?”
“It’s understood, Officer.”
“No hard feelings?” the officer said, sounding slightly panicked. He extended a
hand through the window. “I respect the work you guys do.”
Callahan sighed, but reached out to shake the cop’s hand—which, oddly, extended
past his hand to his wrist. He felt a sudden prick. “Shit!”
“Sorry, man,” the police officer said. “My goddamn signet ring.” But he didn’t
move.
“What the fuck, man?” Callahan protested. All at once, he felt strangely weak.
The man in the blue slicker reached through the window and unlocked the door.
Then he pulled on the knob.
Callahan was puzzled, even outraged. He wanted to say something … but nothing
came out. He wanted to swat the man away … but when he tried to move his arm,
nothing happened. And when the door opened, he found himself slumping out of it
like a sack of gravel. He could not move.
“Easy, boy,” the man in the slicker said, laughing genially. He caught Callahan
before he hit the ground. Now he leaned into the car, lifting Callahan up and
over to the passenger seat on the right.
Callahan stared impassively, slack-jawed, as the man settled beside him in the
driver’s seat.
The intercom light flashed blue, and a voice squawked through a small speaker:
“Danny? What the hell’s going on?” Hildreth, on the other side of the opaque
“privacy window,” was beginning to fret.
The man in the blue slicker pressed the driver-override buttons so that the rear
doors were locked and could be reactivated only by him. Then he smoothly shifted
into drive and made his way toward the Arlington Memorial Bridge.
“I’ll bet you’re wondering the same thing,” the man said to Callahan
companionably. “It’s called Anectine. A neuromuscular blocker. They use it
during surgery. Sometimes people on respirators get it, too, to make sure they
don’t thrash around. It’s a strange sensation, isn’t it? You’re fully conscious,
but you can’t fucking move. Your diaphragm goes up and down, your heart pumps
away, you can even blink. But your voluntary muscles are out of commission. Plus
which, the way it’s metabolized, it’s damn hard to identify in forensics unless
you already know what to look for.”
The man pressed the window controls, lowering both rear windows partway. Another
squawk came from the intercom, and the man switched the sound off.
“Your passenger can’t figure out why we’d lower the windows when it’s raining
like a mother,” the man said.
What the hell was going on?
Callahan focused all his mental energy on the task of lifting his index finger.
He strained with all his might, as if he were bench-pressing three times his
weight. The finger trembled ever so faintly, and that was all. He was helpless.
Utterly helpless. He could see. He could hear. But he could not move.
They approached Memorial Bridge, which was almost empty of traffic, and the
driver suddenly floored the accelerator. The powerful three-hundred-horsepower
engine surged, and the car leaped forward, cutting a diagonal across two lanes
of traffic on the bridge. The driver ignored the furious hammering against the
opaque partition as the powerful armored vehicle crashed over the railing on the
side of the bridge, sailing through the air and into the river.
The impact with the water was greater than Callahan had expected, and he found
himself slammed forward against the straining belts. He felt something snap:
probably one of his ribs had broken. But the armored car provided the driver’s
seat with four-point belts, the sort used by racing drivers, and Callahan knew
that for the man in the blue slicker, the force of impact would be safely
distributed. As the car sank rapidly into the turbid depths of the Potomac,
Callahan could see him release his own belts and roll his window down. Then he
released Callahan’s belts, and dragged him over to the driver’s seat.
Callahan felt like a rag doll. Limp and helpless. But he could see. He could
think. He knew why the rear widows had been left just slightly open.
Now the cop who was no cop turned off the engine and wriggled through the open
window, shooting toward the surface.
Neither he nor Hildreth would have any such options—Callahan because he was
paralyzed, and Hildreth because he was locked in the passenger’s compartment.
The windows would be frozen in place: lowered just enough to speed the inflow of
water. Hildreth’s ultrasecure conveyance had turned into a crypt.
The car was settling to the riverbed with its front end raised, probably because
water had already filled the rear compartment, and now the water was pouring
through the window and a dozen unseen vents to fill Callahan’s compartment. It
was rising fast, to his chest, his neck, his chin. Higher.
He was breathing through his nose, now, but for how many seconds longer?
And then all his questions dissolved into another question: Who would want to do
something like this?