go looking for—right now. The warehouses of Long Island City are right across Queens Boulevard—that’s an obvious place to start. I’m telling you, after getting irradiated, Chalker couldn’t have gone far from the scene of the accident. He was barely mobile.”
Fordyce at least didn’t say no. They reached the car, pulled off the suits, and tossed them in the back. Gideon kept the communications device, tucking it into his pocket and retaining the earbud, so that he could listen in on the chatter. Fordyce fired up the vehicle. As they moved beyond the barriers and eased through the rubberneckers—incredible they were still out at three AM—a change began to take place in the crowd. There was a movement, a wave of fear, even panic. People started moving away, slowly at first, and then faster. There were shouts and a few screams, and they began to run.
“What the hell’s going on?” Fordyce said.
Gideon rolled down the window. “Hey, you, what’s happening? Hey!”
A scruffy teenager on a skateboard careened past them, and others streamed by. A man came huffing up, face red, and seized the rear car door handle, yanking open the door.
“What’s going on?” Gideon shouted.
“Let me in!” he cried. “They’ve got a bomb!”
Gideon reached back, shoved him out. “Find another car.”
“They’re going to nuke the city!” the man cried, coming forward again. “Let me in!”
“Who?”
“The terrorists! It’s all over the news!” He lunged again at the car as Gideon slammed the door, Fordyce shooting the locks.
The man pounded on the windows with sweaty fists. “We’ve got to get out of the city! I’ve got money. Help me! Please!”
“You’re going to be fine!” Gideon shouted through the glass. “Go home and watch Dexter.”
Fordyce punched the accelerator and the car lurched out into the street; he quickly crossed the boulevard and gunned his way into a quiet industrial side street, away from the panicking crowds. It was incredible: lights were going on in all the apartment buildings surrounding them.
“Looks like the news finally broke,” Fordyce said. “The shit’s really going to hit the fan now.”
“It was only a matter of time,” said Gideon. His earpiece was starting to ramp up, voices swamping the public frequencies. The response teams were evidently becoming taxed by panicking people and emergency calls.
They were moving slowly along Jackson Avenue, amid a wasteland of old warehouses and industrial sites stretching off in every direction.
“Needle in a haystack,” said Fordyce. “We’ll never find it on our own.”
“Yeah, and once they find it, we’ll never get in, especially after that stunt we pulled back there.” Gideon thought for a moment. “We’ve got to find a lead that no one else has thought of.”
“A lead no one else has thought of? Good luck.” And Fordyce turned the wheel and headed the car back toward Queens Boulevard.
“Okay, I’ve got it!” said Gideon, suddenly excited. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”
“What?”
“We’re going to New Mexico. We’re going to look into Chalker’s past life. The answer to what happened to him lies out west. Face it—we’re not going to accomplish shit here.”
Fordyce gazed at him steadily. “The action’s here, not there.”
“That’s exactly why we can’t stay here, wrestling with all these bureaucrats. Out there, at least we’ll have a fighting chance to make a difference.” Gideon paused. “Got a better idea?”
Unexpectedly, Fordyce grinned. “La Guardia’s only ten minutes away.”
“What? You like the idea?”
“Absolutely. And we’d better leave now, because I guarantee you that in a few hours every seat on every plane out of New York City is going to be booked for the foreseeable future.”
A low-flying helicopter churned overhead, trailing detectors. A moment later a voice cut through the babble on Gideon’s earpiece.
“I got a hit! I’m getting a plume!”
It was drowned out in static and other voices.
“…Pearson Street, near the self-storage…”
“They got a hit,” Gideon told Fordyce. “A radioactive plume over Pearson Street.”
“Pearson Street? Jesus, we just passed it.”
“We’ll be the first on the scene. About time we got a break.”
Fordyce pulled the sedan into a four-wheel powerslide. A moment later they were screeching around the corner of Pearson. Several helicopters were hovering already, seeking the precise source, and sirens could be heard in the distance.
Pearson Street dead-ended at the railroad yards. The last buildings on the street were a massive, blank self-storage building, opposite a vacant lot strewn with trash, and some ancient warehouses. At the very end of the road stood a long, decrepit railroad storage shed.
“There,” Gideon said, pointing. “That shed in the railroad yard.”
Fordyce looked at him dubiously.