The Skin Collector by Jeffery Deaver
'I recommended announcing an evacuation. He ignored me.'
'DEP's calling,' Pulaski said, nodding at the caller ID box on the main monitor over a worktable.
Rhyme's mobile rang too. The area code was 404. Atlanta, Georgia.
'It's about goddamn time,' he muttered. 'You take the water people, rookie, and coordinate with Sachs. I'll talk to our friends in Dixie. Let's move, everyone! We've only got minutes!'
And he hit the answer button on his keypad hard, drawing another admonishing look from Thom.
CHAPTER 63
In his Department of Environmental Protection coveralls and hard hat, Billy Haven stepped into a cross street in Midtown, the East Side, and lifted a manhole cover with a hook, then descended partway and muscled the disk back in place.
He climbed down to a metal floor and began walking through the tunnel, under the shadow of a water main pipe glistening with condensation. This huge conduit ran from Water Tunnel 3's main valve room, in central Midtown, to the three submains that supplied water throughout Manhattan and to parts of Queens. Approximately eighteen thousand households and businesses received water that passed through this pipe.
He switched the heavy gear bag from one hand to the other as he walked. It weighed 48 pounds. The contents were what he'd removed from the workshop on Canal Street: the drill, portable welding kit, electric cord and other tools, along with the bulky steel thermos. He didn't have his American Eagle with him now. That part of the Modification was over with. No more inking with poison.
Though the Rule of Skin was still very much at work, of course.
He checked his GPS, made an adjustment and kept walking.
The plan for the Modification was complex, as befit a scheme delivered through an intermediary whom God Himself had picked.
The Commandments ...
At the last scene, at TT Gordon's tattoo parlor, the police would have found trace of explosives he'd intentionally planted and Lincoln Rhyme would immediately wonder about this anomaly. Explosives and poison? What was the relationship?
The Commandments speculated that Rhyme would then think: What if the poisoned tattoos were about something other than random killings by a psychotic?
They'd analyze the numbers in the tattoos and would come up with the flood in Genesis. He'd intentionally inked the tattoo artist in the Village with "the six hundredth" last, because it would have been too easy to find the flood passages in the Bible if he'd given them in proper order.
In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights ...
So domestic terrorists had returned to plant bombs to re-create the flood and wash away the sin of this Sodom.
Rhyme and Sachs would brainstorm about where the bombs might be and realize that, yes, of course, they were in the batteries for the crime scene lights. Since they might go off at any time and it would take awhile for the Bomb Squad to break through the sealed cases and render-safe, or extract the IEDs, the Department of Environmental Protection would take the drastic but necessary step of shutting the massive gates of Water Tunnel 3's Midtown valve, squelching the supply of water flowing to the pipe Billy was now walking beside.
As soon as that happened the pressure in the pipe would drop to nearly nothing.
Which would allow him to drill a one-thirty-second-inch hole through the iron - a feat impossible when the line was active because the pressure would force the water out of the hole at the speed and with the cutting force of an industrial laser.
With the pressure off he could then inject into the water supply pipe what he'd brought with him here, in the metal thermos. The last poison of the Modification.
Botulinum, a neurotoxin produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum, is the most poisonous substance on earth. A half teaspoon could easily kill the entire population of the United States.
While it is generally very difficult to come by the more toxic substances in the world - say, radioactive poisons such as polonium and plutonium - botulinum is surprisingly available.
And we have vanity to thank for that.
The bacteria are the basis for Botox, a muscle relaxant to relieve spasticity. It's mostly known, though, for cosmetic treatments to smooth skin (its toxic qualities inhibit a neurotransmitter that creates wrinkles).
The stockpiles of the spores are carefully guarded but Billy had located a source and broken into a cosmetic surgical supply company in the Midwest. In addition to a good selection of drugs and medical gear, he'd managed to steal enough spores to create a botulinum factory, which had been silently - and airlessly - producing a stockpile of the bacteria and the toxin and more spores.
The idea of weaponizing such a delightfully deadly substance was hardly original, of course. But no one had ever done so before - for a very simple reason. Delivery was nearly impossible. The toxin must be ingested or inhaled or enter the body through mucous membranes or open wounds. Contact with skin alone is not enough. Since it is very difficult to deliver a large amount of aerosol toxin, that meant an attack would have to be via food or water.
But salt, heat, alkaline substances and oxygen can kill the bacteria. So will chlorine, which is added to New York City's water supply, along with the anti-tooth-cavity additive fluoride, orthophosphate to counterbalance lead contamination and hydroxide to increase the alkalinity of the supply.
Billy, however, had learned to grow a concentrated form of botulinum that was resistant to chlorine. Yes, some of the toxin he injected into the water supply would be destroyed, or its deadly effects dimmed, but the estimate was that enough would survive and be carried to households throughout Midtown and lower Manhattan and much of Queens. The death toll would probably be four thousand or so; the sick and severely injured would be many times that.
One group would be particularly hard hit: children. Infant botulism poisoning occurred with some frequency (often children younger than twelve months who'd eaten honey in which spores naturally resided). Billy had considered their deaths and he didn't feel troubled by them. This was a war, after all. Sacrifices had to be made.
The city would react quickly, of course, with the Health Department and Homeland Security racing to find the source of the illness. There'd be some delay as officials thought chemical nerve agents - the symptoms are similar - and with some luck medical workers would start injecting atropine and pralidoxime, which actually increase botulism's lethal strength. Some would diagnose myasthenia gravis. But then would come the serum and stool tests and finally mass spectrometry would confirm what the disease truly was.
By then, of course, the damage would be done.
A secondary consequence, which would cause even more extensive, if less lethal, damage was also predicted by the Modification: The city would soon find the source of the toxin but wouldn't know how far-flung the poisoning was. Was the Bronx in danger next? New Jersey or Connecticut?
The only thing the authorities could do - the utterly incompetent city, state and federal governments - was shut down the entire water system. New York City, not a drop to drink, not a drop to carry away sewage. Or clean. Or generate electricity (most of the city's power came from electric generator plants whose turbines used steam). The East River and the Hudson would become a Ganges, a source of bathing, waste and drinking water ... and disease.
A plague, not a flood, would destroy the city.
But the plan's success depended on the one remaining key factor: closing the Midtown valve to allow Billy to inject the poison. If that didn't happen, the Modification would fail. The upstream reservoirs and aqueducts - easily accessible - were monitored in real time for any kind of toxins; the plan required that the poison had to be introduced into the supply here, south of Central Park, where it was theoretically impossible to taint the system and was therefore not guarded.
Billy now chec
But he needed confirmation that the water supply had been shut down.
Come on, he thought, come on ...
Impatient.
Timing was everything.
Finally his phone hummed with a message. He looked down. Aunt Harriet. She'd sent him a link. He tapped the screen and turned the phone sideways to read the article. The story was time-stamped one minute ago.
TERROR ALERT IN NEW YORK
Water Supply Targeted
By Unknown Bombers
Officials in New York City are shutting down the largest mains supplying water to Manhattan south of Central Park and much of Queens, to prevent the risk of flooding, in response to an apparent terrorist plot.
Spokespersons for the New York City Police Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI reported in a joint press conference that they have uncovered a plot to detonate improvised explosive devices underground, meant to destroy portions of the water system.
Bomb Squad officers have discovered the locations of three devices and are evacuating people in the immediate vicinity around the IEDs. They are about to begin dismantling the bombs, a process called 'rendering-safe.'
It is anticipated that the water supply will be shut off for no more than two hours. Officials are telling residents that there's no need to stockpile water.
Good. Time to finish up and say goodbye to New York City.
CHAPTER 64
Amelia Sachs was pounding her Ford Torino toward Midtown.
She'd blown seven red lights after leaving Rhyme's. Only one slowed her down. The angry horn blasts and stabbing fingers were not even memories.
Times Square was around her, the huge planes of high-def video billboards, the preoccupied locals and the marveling tourists, the timely Thanksgiving decorations and the premature Christmas ones, the bundled-up vendors, rocking from foot to foot to jump-start the circulation.
Bustling innocence.
She sped east to Lexington Avenue, then skidded to a stop as blue smoke from the tires wafted around her. It was here that she'd been instructed to pause and await further instructions.
Her phone rang and a moment later Pulaski's voice was pumping through her earbud. 'Amelia. I've got DEP on the other line. They're checking ... Hold on. The tech's back.' She heard some mumbling as he turned away from the speaker to a second phone. Then his voice rose. 'The hell does that mean, "The sensors aren't that accurate"? What does that even mean? And anyway it's not my problem about the sensors. I want the location. Now!'
She laughed. Young Ron Pulaski had come into his own under Rhyme's tutelage. A moment later he was back with her. 'I don't know what the problem is, Amelia. They're-- Wait. I'm getting something now.' The voice faded again. 'Okay, okay.'
Looking around the streets. Innocence, she thought again. Businesspeople, shoppers, tourists, kids, musicians, hawkers, hustlers, street people - the astonishing, unique mix of humanity that is New York City.
And under their feet, somewhere, one of the worst terror attacks in New York City history was being carried out.
But where?
'Okay, Amelia, DEP has something for us. They've cross-referenced flow rates - I don't know. Anyway, I have a location. An access room a quarter mile south of the Tunnel Three valve station. It's at Forty-Fourth and Third. There's a manhole about fifty feet to the east of the intersection.'
'I'm close.'
She was already popping the clutch and skidding away from the parking space in the same way she'd arrived, though this time leaving the blue smoke behind her. She cut off a bus and a Lexus. They might have collided, avoiding her. She kept right on moving, headed south. Insurance issue, not her issue.
'I'll be there in one minute.' Then corrected: 'Okay, two.' Because she was forced up onto the sidewalk again and braked to nudge a falafel cart out of the way.
'Fuck you, lady.'
Unnecessary, she thought, since he'd escaped light; she might've knocked the cart on its ass. Had considered it.
Back on the street with a grind of metal versus curb. Then she was speeding on once again.
After Lincoln Rhyme had concluded that the unsub and his domestic terror group were planning on blowing up the water mains, he'd grown thoughtful. Then dissatisfaction bloomed in his face.
'What?' Sachs had asked, noting his eyes straying out the window, his brow furrowed.
'Something doesn't feel right about this whole thing.' He zoned in on her. 'Yes, yes, I detest the word "feel". Don't look so shocked. The conclusion's based on evidence, on facts.'
'Go on.'
He'd considered further, in silence, and then said, 'The battery-bombs are packed with gunpowder. You know guns, Sachs, you know ammunition. You think that'd blow up iron pipes the size of the water mains?'
She'd thought about this. 'True. If they'd really wanted to rupture the pipes they'd use shaped charges. Armor piercing. Of course they would.'
'Exactly. He wanted us to find the bombs. And - with the Bible verses - wanted us to believe the target was the water mains. Why?'
They'd answered nearly simultaneously. 'To shut down the supply.'
Shutting off the water flow by closing the main valves would be only temporarily disruptive.
'Who cares? That couldn't be the motive,' Rhyme had said.
Then he'd offered: But what would make sense was to trick the city into shutting off the supply to lower the pressure. Which would allow their unsub to drill into the pipe and introduce a poison into the line. He'd then plug the hole; Rhyme had reminded the team about the welding material evidence found at the Chloe Moore crime scene.
And the poison, Rhyme had concluded, would be botulinum - since they'd found traces of the material from cosmetic surgical supply houses and the Botox syringes. Rhyme had thought the plastic surgery evidence meant their unsub was planning on changing his appearance. But it was possible too that the purpose of the break-in was to steal botulinum, whose spores were maintained by medical operations specializing in plastic surgery products and supplies. He'd decided botulinum had to be the poison; no other toxin was powerful enough to cause widespread devastation.
Rhyme had called his FBI contact, Fred Dellray, and City Hall and explained what he suspected. The mayor and police chief had in turn ordered the DEP to announce that it was shutting down the water supply for a few hours. In fact, they kept the system fully operational - which because of the pressure would prevent anything from being introduced into the pipes. The DEP would use the grid sensors to pinpoint any leaks, telling the NYPD exactly where the unsub had cut into the line.
As she sat impatiently behind the wheel of her car, the engine growling, Sachs's phone rang once more. It was Rhyme. 'Where are you, Sachs?'
'Almost at the spot DEP gave us.'
'Listen to me.'
'What else would I be doing?' she muttered. And concentrated on avoiding an idiot of a bicyclist.
Rhyme continued, 'I've just been on the phone with the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. We conferenced - forgive the verb - with Homeland Security and the bio-chem weapons people at Fort Detrick. It's worse than I thought. Don't go into the access room. We're getting a tactical hazmat team together.'
'I'm here, Rhyme. Now. I can't just sit around and wait. The unsub's right underneath me.'
She pulled the muscle car up on the sidewalk, scooting pedestrians out of the way. They complied; she looked far too fierce to argue.
Rhyme continued, 'I just realized that this isn't ordinary botulinum.'
'Now, that's a phrase you don't hear every day, Rhyme.'
'It's been modified to be chlorine-resistant. That's why we found the undiluted hypochlorous acid - what he was using to alter the strain. We have no idea how potent it is.'
'I'll be wearing face mask and coveralls.' She ran to the back of her car, popped the trunk and yanked out her crime scene kit.
'You need full biohazard gear,' h
She hit speaker, set the phone down and called, 'The unsub knows we haven't cut the supply yet - the water'll still be spurting out of the hole he drilled. He's waiting for the valves to close but he's not going to wait very long. He'll rabbit, with who knows how much of that shit.'
'Sachs, listen. This isn't arsenic or snakeroot. You don't have to drink it or eat it. One ten-thousandth of a gram in a mucous membrane or wound'll kill you.'
'Then I won't pick my nose or scrape my knee. I'm going in, Rhyme. I'll call when I've cleared the scene and got him in metal.'
'Sachs--'
'For this one I need to go in quiet,' she said firmly and clicked disconnect.
CHAPTER 65
Amelia Sachs easily found where the unsub had gone underground: the manhole on 44th Street, near Third, which Pulaski had told her about.
She dug the tire iron out of the trunk of her Torino and used it to muscle the heavy metal disk up and then managed to push the cover to the side. She aimed her Glock into the pitch-black hole. She peered down, hearing a powerful hissing noise - the leaking pipe, she assumed. She holstered her weapon.
Well, let's get to it. Go and go fast.
When you move, they can't getcha ...
Thanks to the recent medical procedures, she now felt lithe as a thirteen-year-old as she turned and began down the ladder.
Thinking: I'm in bright white coveralls, lit from above and behind.
A perfect shooting solution for him.
One way to put it. The other was: sitting duck.
Climbing into hell. Practically sliding down the rails as she'd seen sailors do on some TV submarine movie, going from deck to deck.
She hit the floor of the spacious tunnel - open and without any cover whatsoever. Natch. Drawing her gun fast, she lunged to the side, where at least it was darker and their unsub would have a harder time placing a lethal shot. There she crouched and spun the muzzle 180 degrees, squinting to spot threats.
That she hadn't pulled any fire didn't allay her concern; he might still be near, aiming her way and waiting for any other officers to enter the target zone before he began squeezing off rounds.
But as her eyes grew accustomed to the dark, she noted that this portion of the tunnel was unoccupied.