Breaking Point Read online

  “Should I turn it off?”

  “Leave it on. They probably already know where you are, but it’ll give them something to look for.”

  Morrison headed for the bathroom. Ventura waved, and a pair of college-aged men dressed in shorts and T-shirts and backpacks went into the men’s room ahead of him. Ventura stayed out in the corridor.

  Making sure nobody was watching him, Morrison shoved the phone into the bin under the paper towel dispenser. Then he went and used the nearest urinal.

  When he exited, Ventura said, “There’s a car waiting in front of the airport for us. Let’s go.”

  “You think they can get here that fast?”

  “They can trace the phone from the carrier sig alone if you don’t bounce it—major national intelligence services have access to some very sophisticated equipment. They’ll probably send somebody. It won’t be a trio of longfingernailed Chinese dressed in colorful Mandarin silks and sporting Fu Manchu mustaches smiling and bowing and looking like the incarnation of the Yellow Peril. More likely it’ll be a busty Norwegian blond nurse helping a little old man with a cane hobble along—the last people you’d look at and think ‘Chinese intelligence.’ Certainly they have local agents within a few minutes of most major cities. Fortunately, Anchorage isn’t that big a town. If you used a decent remailer, they won’t backtrack your e-mail for a while, though probably they’ll get that soon. I’d expect them to know who you are within a day or two at most, even if you don’t call them back.”

  Morrison swallowed dryly. “The service I used guaranteed confidentiality.”

  Ventura smiled, looking at that moment like a human shark. “Sure, if somebody calls them on the phone and asks, they won’t say anything. But confidentiality goes right out the window when somebody puts the point of a sharp knife into your remailer’s back, over his kidney, and asks.”

  “They would do that?”

  “Sure. I would.” He flashed the smile again, and Morrison was in that moment as afraid of Ventura as he was the Chinese. Thank God the man was on his side.

  “They’ll know you’re at the airport, but since the phone isn’t in your name, they don’t know who you are, so they’ll look for the phone. When they find that, they’ll look for single men traveling alone. You’re under a pseudonym, ticketed as part of a group of three passengers, including two women, so they won’t get that immediately. With enough computing power, they can strain out all the flights leaving here today, and check on every passenger. Our phony IDs will hold up under a cursory scan, but if they can dig deep enough, they’ll figure out they are fake eventually, though that won’t really help them except to tell them we were going to Seattle, and that we weren’t on the plane.

  “We could probably get to your house in Washington before they get who you are. You are dealing with some serious people here, and it’s never been a matter of ‘if,’ but of ‘when.’ ”

  “My wife—”

  “—is being watched by my people, and I’ve just sent more ops to back them up. She’ll be safe. And we aren’t going there.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To a place where I can control access for the meeting.”

  “We’re going to drive there?”

  “No, we’re going to drive to a private airstrip and rent a plane. We want to be in the air as soon as we can.”

  Now that he had been put on alert, Morrison regarded the other people in the airport hallway with a newfound suspicion. Those young men with snowboards, that middle-aged gay couple laughing over a laptop, the tall man in a gray business suit carrying a briefcase. Any of them could be armed and out to collect him.

  “Frankly, I don’t think they will scramble the A-team to grab you, yet,” Ventura said, as if reading his mind. “They know about the tests you did in their country, what the effect was on their villages, and they know you know about it, but they don’t know for certain that you caused it. They’ll have to check you out. Once they believe you, that’s when we’ll have to be extremely careful.”

  Morrison’s mouth suddenly felt very dry indeed. He’d known this was coming, but it hadn’t seemed so ... real before. The pit of his stomach felt like it did on a roller coaster. Well. There was nothing for it now. He was committed.

  “This isn’t quite what I expected,” Morrison said.

  “It never is,” Ventura said.

  14

  Friday, June 10th

  Portland, Oregon

  The boomerang championships were being held in Washington Park, which Tyrone thought was funny. They’d driven a couple thousand miles from Washington, D.C., to wind up in an Oregon park with the same name. It wasn’t like any park in his neighborhood, though. The place was a giant sprawl that contained a lot of hills, tall evergreen trees, the Portland Zoo, plus a forestry center and some other stuff. Up and away from the zoo parking, they had carved a flat field out of one of the meadows, big enough for three or four soccer teams to play at the same time. The field was covered with what Tyrone thought of as winter grass, trimmed short, like something you might find on a golf course, instead of the coarser Saint Augustine grass you found on a lot of lawns back home.

  “What a great venue,” Nadine said.

  “Yeah.”

  The contest didn’t start officially until tomorrow, and their event wasn’t until Sunday, but there were twenty or so throwers out on the green practicing. The warm summer air was full of colorful twirling ’rangs, blues and reds and oranges and greens, bright blurs looping back and forth.

  Tyrone turned to his father. “Okay?”

  His dad looked around, then nodded. “Looks safe enough. Mom and I will be back in a couple of hours.”

  Tyrone nodded back, already thinking about practice. His dad had rented a car and left the RV parked back at the hotel, a place called the Greenwood Inn. His parents wanted to go check out downtown Portland, but they didn’t want to leave Tyrone and Nadine alone until they had checked out the park. Given the numbers of families with small children, the lack of gang colors, or guys throwing beer bottles at each other, Dad had decided that Tyrone and Nadine were probably safe enough here in the middle of the afternoon.

  “You have your credit card?”

  “Yep.”

  “You got your phone?”

  “Yes, Dad.”

  “It’s on?”

  Tyrone rolled his gaze toward the heavens. He pulled the little phone from his belt and held it up so his father could see the display. “Yes, Dad.”

  What, did they think he was still a baby? This was Portland, not Baltimore. He almost said so, but realized that might not be the smartest thing, so he kept his mouth shut. He was learning that sometimes, that was the best strategy. If you don’t say it, they can’t nail you for it.

  Nadine started unpacking her ’rangs.

  “Go already, parental units, we’re fine here.”

  His mom smiled.

  Once they were gone, Tyrone and Nadine looked for a place to get started. There were circles drawn on the grass, but most of these were already taken. That didn’t matter—they had wash-away chalk; they could make their own circle.

  “Over there,” Nadine said. “Wind is from the south, but it’s almost calm, we’ll have plenty of room for hang.”

  “Hey, scope it. Isn’t that Jerry Prince?” He pointed.

  She looked. “I think so.”

  Best MTA guy in the world, the Internationals winner last year, and the world record holder. Word was, he threw eight minutes in practice on slackwind days, and had a witnessed-but-unofficial fourteen-minute flight.

  “Let’s watch him. Maybe we’ll learn something.”

  She laughed. “You will, for sure. I got style already.”

  “You got mouth, is what you got. I’m gonna be pushing three minutes here.” He waved his stopwatch at her.

  “You’re pushing a Dumpster full of horse pucky is what you are pushing. You are probably gonna trip and fall into it.”

  He laug
hed. She was funny.

  There were several events at most boomerang competitions—accuracy, distance, trick and fast catch, doubling, team throws. Like Tyrone, Nadine’s event was MTA—maximum time aloft—and the idea was to put a lightweight boomerang into the air and keep it there for as long as possible. There was no problem with judging this one—you put a stopwatch on them, and the longest time up won. They had dicked around with the rules for a while, trying different things in different competitions—you got two throws but one didn’t count, or you got three and you could pick the best—but now it was different. You got a practice throw once you were in the circle, but after that, it was one throw, period. You had to catch it when it came back, and you had to be inside the official circle for the catch, or the throw didn’t count. The record for somebody in Tyrone’s age group was just over three and a half minutes, but unofficially there were guys who had thrown into freakish wind conditions and kept a bird twirling for a lot longer. The longest unofficial time by anybody was more than eighteen minutes, though that kind of time came out of the professional adult ranks. It was hard to even imagine eighteen minutes aloft.

  Tyrone himself had placed third in last year’s contest with a time of 2:41, using the Möller Indian Ocean, an L-shaped lightweight made of paxolin—layers of linen and rosin built up and then cut to shape. The winner—Nadine, which is how they’d met—had beaten him by seven seconds, using the same model boomerang as his, so he couldn’t blame it on better equipment. Some kid from Puerto Rico with a Bailey MTA Classic had slipped in between his time and Nadine’s to bump Tyrone out of second place, but since it had been his first ever competition, he had been happy to have third.

  Not this year. This year, he wanted first. And Nadine was the defending champion, and he had beaten her—in practice, anyway. Of course, if he was gonna do that, he’d have to be better, ‘cause they were gonna use the same ’rang. The new Takahashi Silk Leaf he’d bought had added ten or fifteen seconds to their best times, and the blue beast was the way to go, no question. And she had beaten him as often as he had her, so it was not a sure thing. And on any given day, the wind could be hinky, the thermals might go weird, and you could get a great throw or a bad one. No way to tell until the moment of truth.

  Nadine put her pack down and started rolling her shoulders. You couldn’t throw without warming up and stretching, that was a good way to injure a joint or tear a muscle. Even if you were real limber, you could strain something, and you didn’t want to do that in general, and certainly not when you were going to be competing in the Nationals.

  “Don’t see any Indians or wagon trains,” Tyrone observed as he used his left hand to pull his right elbow up and back over his head. His shoulder popped like cracking a knuckle.

  “Doesn’t look like it’s gonna rain, either,” Nadine said.

  “God, I hope not. That would be awful.”

  After a couple minutes, they were loose enough. The sun was shining, it was warm, but not too hot, and the wind was mild. A great day for flying.

  Washington, D.C.

  Michaels might have felt better a few times in his life. His wedding night. The day his daughter was born. Even the first time he and Toni had been together in this very bed, but this had to rank right up there with the best. Toni was back, and the two of them were naked under the sheet. That went a long way to smooth the turbulent waters he had been in lately.

  “What time is it?” she asked, sleep still thick in her voice.

  “Eight.”

  “You’re late for work.”

  “I called in sick.”

  She grinned. “I have to go pee.”

  “Go ahead. I’ll make the coffee. Meet you back here in a few minutes.”

  “Um.”

  He had already started the coffee, and was able to snatch a couple of cups and be back in bed before Toni returned from the bathroom.

  “That was fast,” she said, taking one of the heavy china mugs. She inhaled the vapor. “Mmm.”

  “So, you want to talk some more about how stupid I am?”

  “You’d have to call in sick for a few more days to exhaust that one.”

  “Okay. How about, what now?”

  “We could take a shower together.” She smiled over the top of the mug.

  “Oh, yeah, I can line up with that. But I meant something a little further ahead.”

  “We could come back to bed after the shower?”

  “Uh, Toni ...”

  “I know, I know. Let’s just let everything else wait, okay?”

  He nodded. He didn’t want to push her. But he also didn’t want her to get up and dress and leave, either.

  “Enough talk,” she said. “Actions speak louder than words, remember?”

  “Really? Maybe you better show me. I kinda don’t remember.”

  She threw her pillow at him. “You better remember!”

  Portland, Oregon

  “You think the kids will be all right?” Howard asked.

  “You want me to drive?” his wife said. “You know you can’t worry and drive at the same time. This is the village of the happy nice people, John. At least compared to where we live. They are in a crowd full of people playing with boomerangs, for God’s sake, they’ll be fine.”

  They were driving through a tunnel on Highway 26 that led into downtown Portland. The walls of the tunnel were white tile, and they were pristine. Not just white—there wasn’t any graffiti painted on them. Clean.

  “This is the cleanest town I’ve ever been in,” she said, echoing his thought. “No trash, no beer bottles, it’s like Disney World.”

  Somebody honked, just like somebody always seemed to do in a long tunnel, just to hear the sound it made. He nodded in the direction of the honker.“Yeah, too bad they can’t get rid of the morons.”

  “Stay in the center lane,” she said as they exited the tunnel.

  It was a pretty city. There were more buildings than he remembered from his last visit, and the views of the mountains were not quite as open. Mount Hood still had snow on it, even in June, and to the left Mount Saint Helens did, too. He’d talked to people who’d lived here when the volcano blew its top off, back in the spring of 1980, and it had apparently been quite impressive.

  The initial blast had not only blown powdered rock upward, it had spewed outward, knocking down trees, a “stone wind” that had scoured everything in its path. The explosion created ash and snowmelt pyroclastic flows that had filled lakes and rivers, knocked out bridges, buried a tourist lodge—empty, fortunately, save for the old man who ran it and refused to evacuate. Most of the people who died had been inside the safety zone established by the state, and it could have been a lot worse.

  According to an old staff sergeant Howard knew who had been in town when it blew, the volcano had looked like a nuclear blast, great clouds of pulverized rock boiling into the stratosphere. The wind hadn’t been blowing toward the city that day, so they’d missed the big ash fall, though they got some in subsequent eruptions. It was like living next door to a concrete plant when that happened, the sarge said, fine clouds of gray dust swirling in the streets like powdered snow. Jets had to detour around the city when the ash was at its heaviest; it would eat up the engines otherwise, and car air filters clogged and had to be changed within a few hours. People wore painters’ masks to keep from choking on the stuff. It was hard to imagine it.

  And you couldn’t tell by looking at it now.

  “Stay in this lane.”

  “I heard you the first time. Who’s driving this car, me or you?”

  “You’re driving. I’m navigating. Clearly the more important job.”

  Howard grinned. Was there anything more wonderful than a bright woman? Even if she was shining that brightness into a place you’d rather keep dark sometimes, that didn’t detract from her radiance.

  “Yes, ma’am, you are the navigator.”

  She smiled back, and looked at the car’s dash-mounted GPS. The little computer screen
showed a map.

  “Stay on this street—Market—until you get to Front Street, then turn left. Immediately get into the right lane, and turn right on the Hawthorne Bridge. The restaurant we want is called Bread and Ink, and it’s thirty blocks east of the Willamette River.”

  “Begging the navigator’s pardon, ma’am, but that’s pronounced ‘Will-lam-it,’ not ‘Will-uh-met.’ Accent is on the second syllable.”

  “Ask me if I care.”

  “Just trying to keep the navigator honest, ma’am.”

  Howard’s virgil chimed. He pressed the receive button. “Yes?”

  “Hi, Dad. This is Tyrone. Just calling to check in. We’re fine here. Everybody is fine, no problems, and how are you?”

  “Nobody likes a smart-ass, Tyrone.” He shook his head. “But thanks for calling.”

  Tyrone put on his airline pilot’s voice: “Ah, roger that, parental unit two-oh-two. We’ll, ah, be standing by here for, ah, your return. That’s a discom.”

  “He’s a good boy,” Nadine said when Howard shut off the virgil.

  “Yeah, I know. Too bad he’s turned into a teenager.”

  “You survived it.”

  “Once. I don’t know if I can do it again.”

  “I have great faith in you, General Howard. You are, after all, a leader of men. One boy, how hard could it be?”

  They both grinned.

  15

  Friday, June 10th

  Coeur d’Alene, Idaho

  A pair of armed guards—heavily armed guards—stepped from a cedar planked and shingled kiosk and waved the cars to a stop at a big wood-and-wire gate. The men were in camouflage clothing, and one of them kept his assault rifle trained on the ground right next to the car as the other man approached. Aside from the rifles, they had sidearms, big sheath knives, and some kind of grenades strapped on.

  They must be burning up in that, Morrison thought. It was in the high eighties out here, even in the woods.