Free Shark River by Randy Wayne White Page B

done background checks on grade-school teachers that turned up more data. Oh, by the way—our people did dig out one little interesting tidbit of information hidden away. Came from an old file in Pitkin County, Colorado. Aspen, that’s a town you might know there.”
    It seemed to please him that I didn’t react. “Seems that more than a decade ago, a guy by the name of Marion W. Ford was a prime suspect in the abduction and probable murder of a political radical who lived in the mountains out there. A guy who specialized in bombing military installations. The cops detained you—this guy Ford, I’m talking about—but nothing ever came of it. Once again, you just vanished. Marion W. Ford vanished, I mean.”
    I stood, not comfortable with the direction the conversation was leading. I said, “I think the computers have me confused with someone else, Doug. That was a long time ago, but I’d certainly remember something like that.”
    “I’d think you would, too. Know what the really sad thing is, Ford? Okay, here’s what I think. The sad thing is that you should be given an award for what you did today. Or a bounty. Instead, maybe because you’re nervous about certain things you did or didn’t do in your past, you feel like you have to lie about it. Or maybe you just don’t want to be put into the bureaucratic machine, deal with all the bullshit details.”
    I said nothing, waiting.
    “There’s something else that pisses me off, too. Something not directly related to you or what went on today, but there’s bound to be a connection. Sooner or later.”
    I raised my eyebrows—what?
    “It’s those punks you chased off. Bigshot drug people when they have weapons, or political freaks like the ones who came looking for Lindsey Harrington. Sooner or later, if we don’t take them down, respond with lethal force whenever we get the chance, the day will come when they score big. I mean really, really big. They’re going to murder a bunch of us. They’re going to make a great big pile of bodies. Just watch. When it happens, the so-called peace-loving members of this society are going to be outraged all to hell. They don’t like it when their government plays rough. They won’t vote or allocate the money for us to maintain a serious defense, but they’ll sure as hell demand some answers. Why didn’t we stop it from happening?”
    I put my chin on my fist, listening.
    “Want to hear a very likely scenario?”
    “Sure. Friends keep telling me I should pay more attention to what’s going on in the outside world.”
    “You and a couple hundred million others. I wish to hell everyone in the country would get the pacifiers out of their mouths, grow up a little, and take a look down the road at what’s waiting for us out there. We presented the whole scenario to the Senate a few years ago, and the media didn’t even blink. Hardly a word went out. Okay, here’s the way it goes: A terrorist with the Shining Path or Hezbollah, or Islamic Jihad or Hamas tapes a standard one-hundred-watt lightbulb to the track of a New York City subway station. Minutes later, a passing train crushes the bulb. Contained in the bulb are spores of anthrax, one of the deadliest toxins known to humanity.”
    “Very simple,” I said. “Very plausible.”
    He answered, “Plausible? It’s inevitable. Or some equally nasty variation—sarin gas, for instance. Within hours, subway ventilation fans circulate the poison throughout the entire system. Then commuters begin dying. By the thousands they start dying, a hundred thousand or more for starters, and horrible deaths at that.
    “It would cripple the nation. Bring everything to a stop. You can’t bury anthrax victims. You have to burn their bodies. There would be funeral pyres throughout the city.
    “There are millions of fine, patriotic, law-abiding Muslims and politically active Latins in this country, but there are also a handful of very well-financed zealots on the loose who really