Letters
of Transit (0/14)
***Intro
only - story begins in Part 1/14*** By Loch Ness
DO NOT
ARCHIVE. ***Not to be entered in or nominated
for any
competition or award.***
Classification:
T, RA Crossover references to the film
*Casablanca*,
but you don't have to have seen it to
understand
this.
International
readers: US4 spoilers for "Herrenvolk" and
"Tunguska/
Terma." Everything thereafter has been ignored.
Rating:
NC-17, for VIOLENCE, PROFANITY and (M/S) SEX. If
you are
under-age, please do not read this.
SHIPPERS:
Although I regard this as a romantic piece, it's
not an
MSR in the usual sense--our heroes don't ride off
into
the sunset locked in each other's arms.
Summary:
It's 1999--"The Date" has come and gone, the
"Project"
is under way, and deadly bees have been unleashed
on
North America. With the world coming apart and people
scrambling
to get away from the swarm, Mulder faces fateful
decisions
about his own role in events to come--and about
Scully.
CHARACTER
DIES: Cancer Man doesn't make it out of this one.
Couldn't
happen to a nicer guy. :-) On the other hand, in
this
timeline, Pendrell's still alive. Not a bad trade-off,
huh?
AUTHOR'S
NOTES: Although I didn't read past the
introduction
of *A Notorious Affair* (I'm not a Hitchcock
fan), I
must give a nod of thanks to Nicole Perry. About
four
hours after I read that introduction, I suddenly had a
very
vivid mental image of David Duchovny and Gillian
Anderson
dressed up in those gorgeous 1930s-'40s movie
clothes.
And thus this was born. Only - call me crazy - I
ended
up not putting them in those clothes, for the most
part.
While I
have the same reservations other fans do about the
season
four conspiracy arc - a totally separate and
distinct
creature from the conspiracy arc of the first
three
seasons - this particular story only works in the
context
of season four's conspiracy. Consequently, this
probably
won't make much sense to anyone who hasn't seen
*Tunguska/Terma*.
DISCLAIMER:
This is intended as an homage, not a rip-off.
These
characters and the X Files universe were created by
and/or
are the property of Chris Carter, Ten-Thirteen and
Fox
Broadcasting, all of whom are smarter and richer than
I.
Likewise, all references express or implied to the film
*Casablanca,*
screenplay by Julius J. Epstein, Phillip G.
Epstein
and Howard Koch. No infringement is intended.
Anybody
who sues me is wasting a lot of time and effort,
because
I'm broke and this story is actually *costing* me
money
to produce.
MISCELLANEOUS:
Do not use if seal is broken. Contains 0
calories
derived from fat. No animals were harmed in the
making
of this fanfic.
(Yes,
there is a story - it begins in part 1.)
lochness@texas.net
Letters
of Transit (1/14) By Loch Ness
DO NOT
ARCHIVE. ***Not to be entered in or nominated
for any
competition or award.***
Classification:
T, RA Crossover references to the film
*Casablanca*
International readers: US4 spoilers. Rating:
NC-17,
for VIOLENCE, PROFANITY and (M/S) SEX. If you are
under-age,
please do not read this. See Part 0 for
disclaimer,
summary and introductory notes.
***********************************************************
Letters
of Transit (1/14) By Loch Ness
"I'm
no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to
see
that the problems of three little people don't amount
to a
hill of beans in this crazy world." - Rick Blaine,
*Casablanca*
July
17, 1999
As
little as a month ago, the causeway across to Galveston
Island
would have glittered like a string of Christmas
lights
in the night-time sky. But that was before the bees
had
swarmed into Houston, and the lights had gone out all
along
Interstate 45, including on the causeway.
The
bridge was still passable. If one had the proper papers
and a
working vehicle with sufficient fuel, one could still
cross
it in either direction. But few people would want to
go
across to the mainland. The bees were on the mainland.
Getting
to the island didn't guarantee safety,
either--there
was no real safety to be had, not so close to
the
bees, not within reach of the Special Emigration
Bureau.
But the bees had not been seen in Galveston.
Not
yet. And for now the concrete-and-steel roadway still
loomed
up out of the water like the desiccated, twisted
spine
of a long-dead, giant snake, standing out dully in
the
moonlight as Alex Krycek crept toward it in the dark.
Krycek
hadn't heard any reports of bees farther south than
Clear
Lake. Still, he had taken no chances. He was wearing
a black
nylon wind-suit with all its cuffs and openings
carefully
sealed with duct tape, leather gloves, and a
beekeeper's
hood, also sealed with tape. The getup was
miserable
in the midsummer heat of the Texas coast, but
better
to be sweaty than to be hit with multiple, toxic bee
stings.
He couldn't afford the delay in his mission he'd
have if
he got stung.
He drew
his gun as he approached the darkened guard house
at the
end of the causeway. One of the sentries stepped
outside
the hut and stood there, his submachine gun
shouldered,
and glanced at his watch. Krycek threw a glance
inside,
looking for the second guard. Sitting in the hut,
eyes
half-closed, nodding in the heavy evening heat.
Drawing
a long, silent breath, Krycek set himself to his
task.
He
whipped around the edge of the hut and put two silenced
rounds
into the chest of the standing guard, who gasped and
fell,
dead before he hit the ground. The sentry inside died
without
ever waking up. Krycek took the guard outside the
hut by
the feet and dragged him into the building, dropped
him
untidily in the corner and left, the murders already
forgotten.
Krycek never killed out of malice, and he never
allowed
himself any remorse. He looked at his own
watch--ten-oh-seven
p.m. Right on schedule.
He
secured a rope harness to the bridge railing, careful to
avoid
the strands of wire strung along the
bridge, each
wire
attached to an explosive charge underneath the
roadway.
The Galveston city fathers had declared that if
the
bees reached as far south as Dickinson, about ten miles
to the
north, the road would be destroyed to keep the bees
from
being able to use it. The theory was that the bees
couldn't
fly far enough to reach the island without landing
on
something--something like the causeway--and that they
would
grow exhausted and drop into the sea before they made
it to
the island. There was no real evidence to show it was
true.
Krycek
made sure that the end of the rope hung near the
Zodiac
raft he had tied under the causeway, then turned to
wait
for the convoy. It didn't take long. After no more
than
ten minutes he felt more than heard the approaching
trucks
coming across from the island--a low rumble through
the
concrete he stood on. He smiled. They were punctual
tonight,
too. This bunch was made up of "officials"--the
city-sanctioned
pirates who drove up from Galveston to
ravage
Houston's wrecked, abandoned corpse twice a week.
Refugees
fleeing Houston had taken a lot, had burned and
destroyed
a lot. But there was still canned food in the
city,
stocks of fuel and clothing, building materials and
auto
parts, with no police to stop anyone from taking what
he
liked. At the outset of the bee invasion, somebody had
estimated
that Galveston could live off Houston's remains
for two
years. But that had not factored in that
Galveston's
population would quadruple almost overnight as
refugees
fled to the island.
Refugees
were still straggling in. The causeway from the
mainland
was closed to all but the "officials" now, but
escapees
came by boat, by raft, by every conceivable sort
of
aircraft--some just barely air- or seaworthy.
Everybody
who
could get off the mainland was leaving. Their numbers
had
begun to dwindle as the bees killed more and more who
couldn't
escape fast enough--but refugees were coming
nonetheless.
Krycek
waited, hunkered down in the dark, as the convoy
approached
him. The trucks ran without headlights
to avoid
drawing
attention, but they would stop at the barricades
before
the guard post. And though the men driving the
trucks
were city "officials" he doubted they'd risk much to
interfere
with him. Not even the local cops wasted any love
on the
feds.
Krycek
didn't really care about the trucks. He was after
the
federal car he knew would be traveling with them for
the
safety of numbers. A pouch carried by the government
courier
in that car was his target. In the pouch, Krycek
knew
there were two letters of transit signed by the
governor
of Hawaii and by Lawrence Sherrill, director of
the
emigration bureau. Sherrill, the almighty guru of
escape
from the country, who in effect determined who would
live
and who would die. Letters of transit were reserved
for
diplomats, and no local authorities could prevent
individuals
carrying them from leaving the continental U.S.
on any
basis whatever.
Oh,
yeah--those letters were Alex Krycek's ticket to better
latitudes. He'd use one of them to get out himself and
sell
the other one for a fat price. He'd ship out for the
port of
Tampico, Mexico, and from there to Hawaii, which
people
said was safe from the bees. He could
do a lot
worse,
he figured, than to be stuck for life in Honolulu.
The
convoy pulled up at the barricades, the driver of the
first
truck peering warily at the guards' hut. Staying low
and in
the shadows, Krycek approached the federal car from
the passenger
side.
*Five
bucks says the dumb cocksuckers are so arrogant they
haven't
bothered to lock the doors,* he thought.
He was
right. The door swung open when he pulled the
handle,
and before the two men inside had time to register
what
was happening or shout, he had put two more
well-placed
bullets into them. He heard the "officials" in
the
trucks come toward him, but he didn't look up. He used
a third
round to smash the handcuff lock on the courier's
briefcase,
then stood up--hands in the air, the case in one
hand
and his gun in the other, held loosely to indicate he
was all
done shooting.
He'd
guessed right again. None of the "officials" wanted to
drill
him just for offing a couple of feds. They stood
there,
warily, submachine guns pointed at him, but as long
as he
made no move to harm any of them, they weren't going
to
fire.
Krycek
backed toward his rope harness, hands still up. When
he
reached the railing, he shifted the gun to his other
hand--the
prosthesis--and slid down the rope into his raft.
The
"officials" never even looked over the side. As Krycek
untied
the raft, he heard them drive off.
****
July
19, 1999
The
Galveston airport was small, and like everything else
on the
island had suffered considerably from lack of
supplies
with which to conduct maintenance work. Paint
peeled
on the steel hangars, and most of the aircraft
crammed
onto one end of the tarmac field, some wrecked or
dismantled
and cannibalized for parts, would never fly
again.
Many had never been intended to go any farther than
the
island, and in any case, there wasn't much aviation gas
to be
had any more.
It was
hot, the blinding Texas sun beating down like the
rays in
a microwave oven and bouncing off the pavement in
visible
waves. Walter Skinner, feeling slightly parboiled
in his
light gray suit, stood waiting for a plane. Skinner
had
learned in the army that physical comfort was not a
thing
to be taken lightly, and so he had found a patch of
shade
to stand in, just inside an open, broken-down hangar.
The
hangar's windows were mostly busted out, but no air
moved
inside the ramshackle building. Just heat, and the
faintly
metallic scent of engine oil. He wondered what had
become
of "ocean breezes." None blew this day, that was for
damned
sure.
*Vietnam
wasn't this fucking hot,* Skinner thought, though
he was
pretty sure it had been. He'd just been younger,
more
resilient then. And it was hard to care about the
climate
while dodging mortar shells.
Skinner
hadn't intended to come to Galveston. The bureau's
offices
had moved twice, farther south each time, to get
away
from the bees, ending up in Miami. The swarm's entry
into
Florida had been ugly, people reacting in panic
because
they were trapped between the sea and the insects.
Skinner
didn't like thinking about it. He had lost four
agents
in a riot, and the local cops had been even more
decimated
than that. Things had gotten crazier and crazier,
until
in the pandemonium, only about six of the twenty
bureau staff
in Miami had escaped.
Skinner
had made it as far as New Orleans, and then had
been
dispatched to Galveston after a visit from an older
man
smoking Morley cigarettes and suddenly brandishing the
omnipotent
authority of the Special Emigration Bureau. Then
Skinner
had arrived in Texas to find he had no staff on the
island,
no offices, no nothing. He had commandeered and
deputized
some local police officers, Old-West-style, by
simply
handing them badges.
When
Fox Mulder had appeared out of nowhere, like a revisit
from a
nightmare long-forgotten, Skinner had offered to
forgive
his having gone AWOL in Washington fourteen months
earlier
and put him back to work. And Mulder had laughed.
An
insane laugh that lived somewhere in the shadows between
cynicism
and despair. Skinner hadn't asked again.
Anyway,
Mulder would've been wasted on the sort of cases
Skinner's
bureau was working now. Petty import violations
and the
occasional tax evasion would've bored Mulder
shitless,
and Skinner suspected boredom just would've made
him
unendurable. As it was, he and Mulder had established
an
unspoken, uneasy truce. And besides, Mulder had taken up
altogether
a different line of work these days.
Anyway,
there wasn't much left in the way of federal
authority,
except for the heavily protected SEB, in its
high-tech
underground bunker in Colorado. Hell, there was
nothing
left to administer on a national level...except who
got out
of the nation and why, and where they went. On
Galveston
Island, Walter Skinner was all the federal
authority
there was left. And he liked it that way. He
could
call the shots here--for once in his life, he had no
need to
check with somebody upstairs or engage in petty
internal
politics or, worst of all, play two ends against
the
middle, as it had always been in Washington.
The
arrival of the smoking man might change all that, and
all
because some son of a bitch had made a bloody mess of
two
federal couriers. Hell, it hadn't even happened on the
island,
wasn't Skinner's problem, as he figured it.
Everybody
knew going back to the mainland was a
risk--apparently
somebody in the SEB had considered that
sending
the couriers to the mainland was an *acceptable*
risk.
But no.
The smoking man was annoyed, and so the world would
stop until
he was satisfied.
Finally
Skinner heard the roar of jet engines overhead. The
parties
he was waiting for were traveling first-class.
Skinner
had never known exactly what agency, if any, the
smoking
man worked for. CIA? NSA? It had been explained to
Skinner,
long ago, that he simply didn't need to know.
Neither
had he ever known the man's real name.
But he
knew the man, all too well. His arrival boded ill,
and
Skinner was none too pleased to have him on the island.
Skinner
approached the plane, a neat, white LearJet, as it
taxied
up to the small, empty terminal. Before the plane
had
even completely stopped moving, the door opened,
dropping
a short stairway that almost touched the ground.
And off
stepped the smoking man, with an entourage of two
toadies
in dark suits and dark glasses, radio earphone
cords
curling down their necks, both of them lugging
briefcases
and computers. Skinner did not have to check out
the
tailoring of their jackets to know they had guns on
their
hips.
The
smoking man paused long enough to cup his hand against
the hot
wind stirred by the jet's engines while he rasped
the
wheel on his Zippo lighter. His heavily lined face
sagged
briefly as he bent to light his Morley. When he
straightened,
he blew a plume of smoke and got right to the
point.
"I
want those papers back," he said bluntly, as they headed
toward
Skinner's waiting car. "The classified material the
couriers
were transporting when they got hit."
"The
letters of transit?" Skinner said coolly. *What did
you
think, that I wouldn't bother trying to find out what
they
were carrying?*
The
smoking man's dark eyes narrowed. "Efficient as ever,"
he said
softly, the words coated with menace. "Do you know
who
took them?"
"Yes.
But in your honor, I rounded up twice the usual
number
of snitches," Skinner said, unable to resist the
temptation
to aggravate the smoker.
The wry
humor seemed lost on the other man. "Who?" he
demanded.
"Old
friend of yours. Alex Krycek."
The
smoking man hesitated, then chuckled. "*That* son of a
bitch,"
he murmured. "He's had it coming for a long time."
On this
point, at least, Skinner agreed. He had a score to
settle
with Krycek himself, but the little rat was clever.
Even in
the confined space of the island, Krycek had eluded
arrest.
But Skinner had him, now.
"What's
your plan?" the smoking man asked.
"If
he means to sell the letters, there's only one place
he'll
go. We'll get him there, at the
Casablanca Club."
The
smoking man held a silence for a moment. "Mulder's
place,"
he said finally.
"Yes."
"Your
boy Mulder has an appreciation of history," the
smoker
said.
"He's
not 'my boy' anymore. And the Casablanca Club is
about
money, not history. He's making a mint, and
technically,
it's all legal. Nobody can touch him."
"Have
you ever seen *Casablanca*, Mr. Skinner?"
He
shrugged. "Not in years. I don't really remember much of
it."
The
smoking man nodded. "Mulder does."
He
dropped his cigarette butt on the ground and crushed it
out
with his foot. "As long as he's still legal, you might
tell
him for me that it's a dangerous fantasy."
Skinner
had no idea what he was talking about. The smoking
man got
in the car, then looked up at Skinner just before
he shut
the door.
"Mulder's
got more lives than a fucking cat," the smoking
man
said. "But he's about used them up. And
*Casablanca*--that
fantasy's liable to get him killed."
Continued
in Part 2.
lochness@texas.net
Letters
of Transit (2/14) By Loch Ness
DO NOT
ARCHIVE. ***Not to be entered in or nominated
for any
competition or award.***
Classification:
T, RA Crossover references to the film
*Casablanca*
International readers: US4 spoilers. Rating:
NC-17,
for VIOLENCE, PROFANITY and (M/S) SEX. If you are
under-age,
please do not read this. See Part 0 for
disclaimer,
summary and introductory notes.
***********************************************************
Letters
of Transit (2/14) By Loch Ness
July
19, 1999
New
Orleans, La.
The
bees were moving in from the east, along the coast from
Mississippi.
There'd been two deaths in Biloxi the day
before
yesterday, and if the swarm kept up its usual pace,
no one
would be left alive there by tomorrow. The
Interstate
10 bridge across Lake Pontchartrain was closed,
and the
city was talking of closing the toll road from
Chinchuba
to Metairie.
It was
oppressively hot, and afternoon monsoon rains
threatened
from the west. Dark gray clouds, rimmed with
snowy
white, prickled with lightning. But in New Orleans
itself
the air hung motionless, heavy and damp as a wet
towel.
Dana
Scully lifted her auburn hair off the back of her neck
wearily,
gathered it into a thick hank and twisted a rubber
band
around it to hold it off her skin. The power company
turned
the electricity off at six every evening to conserve
fuel--only
an hour later the tiny apartment she shared with
Special
Agent Ted Pendrell was unbearably stuffy. Scully
opened
windows to set up a cross-wind through the
apartment.
Rain would be welcome tonight; it would cool
things
off at least a little. It was still light enough to
work,
though the charge in her laptop would only hold out
for
about four hours.
She
opened the computer and turned it on. She wanted the
projections,
the elaborate plots of the bees' spread that
she had
so carefully charted. She guessed they'd reach New
Orleans
within a few days, but she wanted to be sure before
having
to be uprooted. Scully and Pendrell had been working
to
develop an antivenin to the bee stings for nearly two
years
now, but it seemed every time they made a little
progress,
they had to move again. It didn't set them back
completely,
but it was disruptive, and it had slowed down
the
work. Scully was hoping the computer would tell her
they
could put off another move for a week or so.
A peal
of thunder sounded, so close it startled her. Her
hand
jumped, and when she looked at the computer screen,
what
was coming up was her old Eudora Light e-mail program.
She
hadn't used e-mail in more than a year. The delicate
network
that had been the Internet had come apart quickly
after
the bees had arrived.
Eudora
had launched before she collected herself
sufficiently
to cancel it, then a gray dialogue box
appeared.
"Error getting network address for
'pop.fbi.gov,'"
the computer reported. "Cause: requested
entry
not found (11004)." Scully clicked "OK," and the
dialogue
box disappeared. She blinked. What was left open
after
she closed the dialogue box was a mailbox she had
labeled
"Mulder," in a time that now seemed a million years
in the
past.
Her
heart thudded hard. There was one message sitting in
the
queue from "fwmulder@fbi.gov," with a subject line that
read
"Lunch on Thursday?" She didn't click on it. That was
a very
old wound, one she dared not reopen. Besides, she
didn't
have to read it--it might as well have been engraved
on her
brain.
*How
about Casper's, around 11?*
It
hadn't been about lunch at all. It had been Mulder's own
weird
code, telling her that if he hadn't made it back to
D.C. by
Thursday, she should leave without him. The bees
had
come into Washington that morning, and Mulder hadn't
showed.
She almost hadn't gotten out of the city herself.
She had
driven out of Washington at a crawl because the
bees
had swarmed so thickly around her car that even
flailing
windshield wipers couldn't sweep them off quickly
enough
for her to see well through it. With all the vents
closed
up tight, terrified that somehow one would get into
the
car. She had pulled over at an abandoned automatic car
wash in
Fredericksburg, Va., and had run the car through
the
steamy water five times to wash them all off.
Then
she had doused herself with gasoline from a can she'd
been
keeping on the floor of the front seat and run like a
mad
thing away from the car, in a panic, afraid that some
of the
bees would have lived through the car wash and would
come
after her.
She
didn't know what had happened to Mulder. She was sure
that if
he had survived, he would have tried to contact
her. He
would've found her. Bloodhound to the bone, that
was
Mulder--if it had been humanly possible for him to
rejoin
her, he would have. But he hadn't come to her.
That
meant it had not been humanly possible for him to
rejoin
her. Because he had gone to Connecticut to get his
mother.
Because he had gone where the bees were.
Because
he was dead.
Mulder--fearless,
reckless, quixotic, charismatic.
Dead.
Scully
knew the kind of torture the bees inflicted before
they
took their victims. In the two years since the swarm
had
reached Washington, she had never been able to picture
him
like the bodies she had examined. Her mind simply would
not
yield that picture, the muscles torn and the bones
broken
from the agonizing spasms induced by the bees'
venom.
The tongue and throat hideously swollen, the black
film on
the eyes. She couldn't--wouldn't--see him like
that.
She still saw Mulder in her mind's eye as clearly as
if he
were standing right before her, intensely alive. The
fine,
full mouth, the long, straight limbs. An
unmistakable,
almost feline fluidity in his motions. Clear
hazel
eyes, alternately bright green or deep brown, the
colors
of Druids and magical forests. And the last time
they'd
been together, finally, the warm, slightly salty
taste
of his mouth on hers.
Lightning
flared outside, and Scully started again. She
drew a
long breath to steady herself. What was she
thinking?
Druids? Well, that at least was a metaphor Mulder
himself
would have appreciated.
*He's
gone,* she told herself, and much had changed since
then.
Nearly everything had changed, in fact.
The
nature of her work, for one--she was still doing
pathology,
but not to solve crimes or determine what had
killed
people. She knew what had killed the people whose
bodies
she examined now: the bee stings. The only question
was
whether their experimental antivenin formulas had
changed
anything at all, whether it had had any effect.
And
though she was, technically at least, still a sworn law
officer,
the FBI hardly existed any more. Neither she nor
Pendrell
had drawn a paycheck from the U.S. government in
nearly
a year. They were living off their combined savings
and
what little she could make working at the nearby
hospital.
She'd felt strange, at first, treating the living
again
after so long, but she'd gotten used to it.
Then
there was the biggest change--she and Pendrell.
Mulder's
disappearance had hit her hard, but she'd had no
time to
dwell on it. And every time she had lifted her head
and
looked around, there'd been Ted Pendrell. He'd been a
great
comfort to her, keeping her focused on her work, on
what
there might be left to save. Working so closely with
him,
she had developed a real affection for him. And so,
when he
had proposed to her, she hadn't been able to think
of a reason
to turn him down. He was a good man. She wasn't
happy
with her life--these days, hell, who was?--but she
was
content.
She
wondered whether she would've been content with Mulder.
No way
to know. Not now.
She
exited out of Eudora. She clicked on the folder that
contained
her projection program and began typing in the
newest
reports of bee activity.
The
program was still running when she heard the front door
open.
"God," Pendrell's voice called, "how can you be
working
in this heat?"
She
smiled up at him as he came in and kissed her forehead
lightly.
"It's not as bad now as it was before I opened the
windows,"
she said.
He sat
at the table beside her, then noticed something
lying
next to the computer and picked it up. Her wedding
ring,
the plain gold band he had put on her hand six months
ago.
"You're
going to lose that," he complained good-naturedly.
"I
can't type with it on," she said. "It gets in my way.
And I
won't lose it. Anything new?" She suspected there was
good news
tonight--he was in a playful spirit; she could
see it
in his eyes.
"I
think we're close, Dana, really close. One of the test
cases
from Hattiesburg is still alive, and the other two at
least
died peacefully."
"No
spasms?"
"No."
She
frowned, thinking hard. "I'm still not convinced we
have
the dosage right," she said. She glanced back at the
computer
screen and drew a sharp breath. "Oh, my God," she
said.
"What
is it?"
"I
don't think we're going to be able to wait for the test
case
from Hattiesburg."
The
computer projection showed the bees would reach the
outskirts
of New Orleans in less than forty-eight hours.
Pendrell
sighed heavily in resignation. "Where do we go
now?"
he asked.
"Galveston,"
Scully said. "There's still one ship that
sails
for Mexico once a week."
He
inclined his head, his look skeptical. "We need lab
equipment--we
can't take everything with us. And we haven't
got
much money left. How are we going to arrange that in
Mexico?
The exchange rate'll kill us."
"We'll
have to find a way across to California. We can't go
straight
west--the bees have already cleaned out Houston.
It was
drier there; they made good time on their way
south."
"So
we can't go by land," he said.
"No.
We go by sea."
****
July
20, 1999
Scully
had planned their escape from New Orleans well in
advance,
knowing the bees would drive them out eventually
and
wanting to be ready when the time came. She had hidden
the twelve-foot
power boat, the same one they had used to
get out
of Miami with A.D. Skinner and four other agents,
in a
dark branch off a bayou well to the west of the city.
She had
kept the gas tank empty and the engine partly
dismantled
to discourage anyone who accidentally happened
on the
boat from stealing it.
There
wasn't much in the apartment that was worth taking
with
them, and in any case, they needed the space in the
boat
for the lab samples and what equipment they could
take.
All she had to pack was a little clothing, a little
food,
bottled water. She had calculated the trip would take
them a
good eighteen hours if they could make thirty miles
an hour
during the night, if the weather held and the sea
wasn't
too rough. She would hug the coastline as much as
she
could--the boat wasn't really designed for the open
sea,
and if they wandered too far out they would attract
the
unwelcome attention of a U.N. blockade standing off the
coast
to keep escapees from carrying the bees to other
nations.
The sun
had dipped toward the horizon. Scully made a last
sweep
of the apartment, making sure she hadn't overlooked
anything.
As she turned through the kitchen, out of the
corner
of her eye she noticed a man standing in the shadows
between
two old storefront buildings across the narrow
street.
Powerfully built, he had light brown hair and dark
eyes.
He was looking straight at her, and when he noticed
her
looking back at him, he turned away and stepped farther
back
into the darkness.
Scully
froze. She'd seen that man before, earlier in the
day,
when she had gone to the lab. He had been lounging in
front
of the closed-up convenience store, reading a
newspaper.
She hadn't thought anything of it at the
time--there
were a lot of people in New Orleans these days
who
didn't have much to do but lounge around. But every
fiber
of her now screamed that this man wasn't watching her
because
he had too much time on his hands.
She
left the two small suitcases where they were on the
floor
beside the front door and slipped downstairs, out the
back of
her building, circled around through the alley to
come up
behind him. She reminded herself that she had to
conserve
ammunition. After Miami she had only two magazines
left
for her service weapon. But when she got to where the
strange
man had been standing, he was gone.
"Dammit,"
she murmured. Whatever he was up to, it looked
like he
was getting away with it. God, what if he had drawn
her off
so that he could break into the apartment? Suddenly
fearful
for what few possessions remained to them, she
hurried
back upstairs. But nothing had been touched.
She
sighed heavily, holstered her gun again, then picked up
the
cases and headed for the lab, locking the door behind
her for
the last time.
Pendrell
was waiting for her, sitting on the big case he
used to
carry the microscopes. "I was starting to worry,"
he
said, his voice ringing with relief.
"There
was somebody outside the apartment. I don't think he
was
just hanging in the 'hood."
Pendrell
had never been a field agent; it took him a moment
to get
it. Then he frowned and asked, "What do you think?"
"I'm
not sure what to think, but the sooner we're away from
here,
the happier I'll be. Let's go."
They
finished loading the car. "How much gas have we got
left?"
she asked.
"About
half a tank. Just enough."
She
nodded and got in, and they were off.
They
could only drive to within about a quarter mile of the
boat.
Beyond that, it was back into the thick trees that
lined
the bayou. Rooting around in the bush, Pendrell found
the
sledge he had used to unload the boat when they had
first
arrived from Miami, and they hefted the suitcases and
lab
equipment onto it before setting off into the forest.
Scully
pulled her flashlight and her gun, and went ahead of
him.
She wanted to be ready if they had the bad luck to
encounter
an alligator or a Louisiana panther back in the
bush.
A
little fog rose. The forest sang to them out of the
trees,
out of the mucky ground--frogs, crickets, cicadas,
the occasional
mournful call of an egret. Mosquitoes whined
in the
air. She heard something splash in the water ahead
of them
and hoped it was nothing more threatening than the
slap of
a fish biting on an insect. Scully was tired, and
the
dank darkness of the bayou weighed on her. The quarter
mile
seemed like an endless, exhausting trek. She knew how
early
explorers must have felt, venturing into God knew
what
with nothing to protect them but a flickering torch.
She
walked on, claustrophobic, following the small circle
of
light from her flash.
Finally
she reached the water line and froze in horror. No
boat.
She swung the flashlight. God, where was it? Had
someone
stolen it after all? Had it taken some damage she
hadn't
noticed on the way from Miami and sunk in the bayou?
"There,"
Pendrell whispered, pointing off to her right. She
turned
the flash, and sure enough--the boat's dirty white
side
gleamed dully about fifty yards away.
They
slogged over. Scully climbed aboard and took the gas
can
when Pendrell handed it up. She filled the boat's tank
while
he transferred the equipment, then went to work on
the
engine, carefully replacing the parts she had removed.
"Ready?"
Pendrell called breathlessly. He scooped a
bullfrog
off the rail and stood poised on the bow to cast
off.
There
was a loud pop, back in the trees, and suddenly, the
glowing,
hissing tail of a flare going up. Another pop, and
a
blinding light bathed the whole area. "Freeze!" a voice
shouted.
"This vessel has been impounded by the Special
Emigration
Bureau!"
Scully
drew her badge and flipped it open. "We're federal
agents!"
she shouted back. "FBI! We have clearance to move
about
freely."
"All
clearances canceled by order of Executive Director
Sherrill!"
She
couldn't see the man calling to them; the light was too
bright.
With her free hand, Scully flipped on the switches
for the
boat's engine and prepared to turn the key.
"Why?
Since when?" she yelled.
"Come
out of the boat! No one is to leave the parish, by
order
of Executive Director Sherrill!"
"You
don't have that authority," Pendrell called to the
unseen
voice back in the trees. Scully glanced at him and
caught
his look--he had finished untying the line on the
boat.
*Oh,
well done,* she thought. *Beautifully done.* She had
only to
hope he wouldn't lose his balance when she started
the
engine and swung the boat around. If it started--it had
been
sitting out here for almost a year. She turned the