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Mann / Terror at Marathon

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Bernard Mann 49 pp. 9,127 words

P.O. Box 21

Metulla 1029200

ISRAEL

Terror at Marathon

Above the throbbing roar of the copter, headsets enabling their discussion, three men and two women huddled together, leaning against seat harnesses.

“We can’t possibly finish the N-42 by Monday, Max, it simply isn’t …”

“I don’t want to hear that, we …”

“She’s right, you know. The dies can be ready by Sunday, but the casts won’t dry reliably for tooling until sometime Monday and then we need Tuesday for finishing and quality con– …”

“I know how casting and tooling work.”

A pause.

“How about Middletown?” another asked.

“No, transferring the work at this eleventh hour’s too risky,” the man called Max answered, “I’m going to have to call Anders and have the Subcommittee presentation postponed another week. And everything will slide. Including Pentagon approval and the start of our full-scale pilot program.”

The copter banked and dropped, eased back and touched down. The hatches opened and the six passengers disembarked, were joined by a woman with a thick clipboard, and walked briskly from the landing pad, up wide steps, past four armed security personnel, and through the double doors and surveillance cameras of the rear entrance of Building X-3.

They were now back in what most called ‘halfway house’, the ultra-security, top-secret research and development facility of the Maclean, Virginia, corporation that had no name, address, or phone number listed publicly – in any form. Though the footprint of the original small building remained on the 1968 site plan filed with Fairfax County, no subsequent improvement among the many made over time, had ever been recorded. In some unknown manner, the property’s street address in the County’s files corresponded with no actual map location within twenty miles of the site. And the recording info that noted book, page, and other documentation had long ago disappeared.

Max and his small entourage paced quickly past the security desk and into a small elevator off the lobby. In less than half a minute, he entered a code into a keypad, engaged the retina ID detector, opened the steel door, and strode with his group into a fair-sized, glazed-wall lab-and-office. Max began at once to run down the A-list of highest priority tasks still remaining on their top-secret invention, a program to protect America from terrorist attack, or at least protect its first defenders from biological and chemical assaults – and by this to enable police, national guard, firefighters, and other responders to engage in appropriate counter-measures without succumbing to anything other than nuclear discharges. The same would hold true for soldiers, marines, and allied and local forces in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world, wherever an enemy might launch biological or chemical weapons.

What Max had invented and was now thrusting toward full-scale pilot development and testing was an arm-mounted chamber containing aerosol detection and analysis units, eighteen small filled antidote syringes, and trigger assemblies. If an invisible, odorless cloud of dangerous gas reached one of ours, he reasoned, the chamber’s aerosol detectors would identify and relay the ID of the dangerous gas to the relevant trigger assembly, which would then activate the appropriate syringe, injecting the life-saving serum or other antidote into the defender’s arm. The chamber’s microprocessor would also activate a voice message identifying the mortal hazard, so that, even if the defender’s sense of smell had failed to recognize the danger, unlike the case of a mustard gas attack, the defender’s gas mask could be quickly donned.

As Max and his key staffers engaged in tense and terse discussion, with the close aide named Andrea scrawling notes on a wallboard, a man dressed in janitor’s garb slowly swept the corridor outside the long glass-paned wall. His face displayed no unusual traits. It was that of a young man born, perhaps, in any state of the Union. It did not register anger or possess creases revealing hidden hostility or discontent. It was a plain and calm face.

The eyeglasses he wore were likewise nondescript, though mounted with clip-ons. None of the several company people who passed the janitor in the ten minutes he was there paid a second’s thought on why clear lenses were mounted on clear lenses. Had anyone asked, no truthful answer would have been given. But the fact was that the extra lenses contained matrices of image-correcting microcircuits that received and unscrambled the images distorted by the specially etched surfaces of Max’s glazed lab wall, allowing the janitor to read the wallboard notes. Within the glasses’ frames, in the wide parts that mounted his ears, were micro-aural units that amplified and recorded the secret conversations of Max and his team, transmitted from a very small microphone embedded into the bottom of a desk lamp on Max’s desk. Other circuits recorded all incoming visual and aural data in storage units worn on the janitor figure’s chest.

In the lab, discussion on the arm-chamber project ended and Max shifted to the topic that mattered most to him at this moment, or at least second in importance to defending the nation. He had packed his bags and would be off in three hours, with all five of his key staff, to fly to Boston’s Logan. He would be in disguise and his aides would likewise be incognito, to mingle on the sidelines, in the crowd, to make certain he would be safe.

The following day was Patriot’s Day in Massachusetts, and he, inveterate runner, would compete once again in the Boston Marathon.

This year he was registered under the pseudonym of Bill Sanders.

When his aides exited the lab, each off to pick up his or her own gear and make ready for the flight with Max to Logan, the janitor was nowhere to be seen.

-----------------------------------

The gun’s bark carried sharply over the distance, and Max shuffled forward, he and all the thousands, treading slowly at first, then faster and faster as the stream’s current quickened the pace.

Max started near the front, about two hundred back, and was out in free traffic long before the marathon’s tail even began to twitch.

The one swift second of the pistol shot had transformed the entire field. Gone were the multitudes of disparate figures that stood and stretched, snapped knee bends and knee lifts, or high-fived with running companions or adversaries. They poured, with that magic wand of a gun, into the waters of a surging river.

The shouts and cheers lofted at runners from the sideline crowds at the start now trailed behind them. The white-maned starter had raised his pistol and offered his triggering, penetrating salute. And now thirty-three thousand or so self-directed individualists were crucibled into a unified running society.

A common stride didn’t mean a common fate.

There’d be winners and there’d be losers. He had never come even close to winning a marathon, but the satisfaction of finishing a 26-mile plus run had always been savored as a personal victory. That had always been victory enough.

This time there was the possibility that that he’d be a loser. Not by his own failing, but by an assassin’s bullet.

A marathoner, tight within a running throng, has no choice but to focus on two things and two things only. Pace and concentration. A misstep – running over someone’s heel or an upper body collision – would be more than bad form and a potentially damaging accident. It could mean you wouldn’t finish the race.

And Max wasn’t about to not finish. But there was the weight of preoccupation with a monumental distraction … the unfinished business of a program that would cost billions, hadn’t yet been fully proved, could save tens of thousands of lives, and could conversely give false assurances to our side when a terrorist attack was launched to kill millions.

He hadn’t been one not to start, regardless of the threat of a bullet smashing into him. Although it worried the hell out of his staff. Not to mention Section Five down in D.C.

Peter and Andrea tried as hard as they could to keep him away, even with the alias he used for registration. But yesterday he had shaved his moustache off and Astrocuts! did nearly the same to his head, so he figured that he was as safe as anyone in Boston might be today from becoming part of the homicide record.

He forced his concentration back on the race, aware of a mass of runners gradually passing him. You’re running for yourself, against yourself. They’re on their meter, you’re on your own. But don’t let yourself fall below your own pace.

The well-wishing cheers of the sidelines were barely audible above that thrumming swell, but their presence and periodic whistles and yells punctuated the cool morning air. Heads and hands blipped by, marking his perception of the course’s boundary.

A wrist tapped his elbow. It was a runner he had seen in the New York Marathon the previous November. Good luck, he said. To you, too, fella, Max replied.

The New York had been fine. He was still relishing his 2:37 time. Not as fast as his best, his 2:30 in the 2012 Boston, but damn good enough and the second fastest he had ever run. He had basked in his success with colleagues at the lab, at two parties that Jeannie had scrambled together, and with Dad, who was, as ever, all praise and pride.

He knew he’d never win a marathon or even finish inside the first fifty. But he was a good cut above average.

Anyway, he’d only be risking a lot of exposure if he’d come in early enough to get his mug on the tube. This time he was running as fictitious Bill Sanders.

The starting gun seemed to have triggered echoes. Echoes in Hopkinton? Strange. Was his hearing off – or was this an omen? Might there be another bombing, such as that double blast which wreaked havoc on Boylston Street in 2013?

A choppy basso vibration seemed to alter the steady meter of the race. He looked up, then to his left, and saw a copter with the News 24 emblem emblazoned on its flank.

He set a new pacing goal of passing the next small cluster of runners – there were still dozens of marathoners running abreast – within the next two hundred count.

The day was a mixed weather day, one that could turn out easy on the runners, or just as easily turn hot. He had run a ten-mile in practice two weeks before when the temperature pushed up to 83˚ and he had ended up at home feeling like boiled cabbage.

It let him remember Zatopek’s training style, running in place in a tub of dirty laundry for two hours at a time when sleet or whatever kept him indoors.

Boston forecasters had predicted a race-time high of about 71˚ if the cloud cover thickened and held. Up to 76˚ if it didn’t.

The spring-green leaves of lindens spread a welcome mottled shade over sections of the pavement.

He saw two more running acquaintances ahead on his right, one a Taiwanese, the other a runner from what was once East Germany. For a while longer they stayed in sight, then gradually pulled ahead.

The arm-chamber project broke into his thoughts more often than not, poking holes in his concentration. Three prototypes completed. Two at the lab, safe in the vault. The third down at Defence’s R&D pilot production facility in Virginia. But the delays discovered yesterday and the rushed calls to Congressional aides and to Senator Arden for rescheduling a key presentation to the subcommittee almost turned him blue. And it was about to do that now, so he refocused and forced his mindset into a calmer mode.

The package, once it reached full production – and that would start next week – will turn the tables on chemical warfare, in the Middle East and anywhere else it was waged. It would give the U.S. and its allies, or any defensive force, a superior shield.

Which would increase the tactical advantages of the U.S. and its allies, and any U.N. peacekeeping force, with an ability to minimize the danger of chemical or biological attacks.

It had taken Max three years of research and another two years to build and test the first twenty-ounce prototype, which could, worn on a person’s upper arm, detect the first micro-traces of any of nine known warfare gasses and, with the help of a microchip, lithium battery, and an array of injection devices, deliver the appropriate antidote automatedly into the blood stream. And an audible alarm would sound if mustard gas or other corrosive gasses were rolling in and protective gear was needed.

As soon as he could leave Boston, he would fly down to Dulles, and then the forty-minute ride on to Vienna. The big question was whether the nine contractors could produce fast enough to meet the U.N. force’s requirements within the next three months.

The President appreciated the timing issue, he’d been told. The presumption was that, if possible, any deployments would be held off until the IPDs (Individual Protection Devices) were delivered. At least a sufficient number to equip any units deployed into the new Middle East hot sphere or anywhere else the menace might appear. And that would include our own American cities.

The U.N. peacekeeping governments had been informed of the IPD (overall, the program was named the Anti-Chemical Attack Pack, or ACHAP), but under advisement of highest secrecy, and the project was under the tightest security. Any leak would be an invitation to hostile force countermeasures, including sabotage.

Another thrum rose along the edge of Max’s conscious. He looked up again and to the left and saw the Channel 24 newscopter surge into view again, its cameraman clearly in view in the open hatch. The chopper settled into a parallel track, moving at the speed of the race, the camera trained on the human stream.

Max turned his attention to the runners in front of him. He spotted one or two he recognized. Zimmerman from Denver. Bragotti from somewhere in the Missouri Ozarks. They had overtaken him and were slowly pulling away. He mentally checked his own pace and decided to increase it a notch.

He looked up again at the chopper.

His brows knit for a brief moment. He turned to look ahead, then back again at the whirlybird. Something odd, but he couldn’t tell what.

Right. This copter had the Channel 24 logo painted in aqua, not the standard blue, which was a deeper, royal-type blue. Looked tacky, certainly. He wondered what had gone wrong with the painting specs, or with quality control to let that kind of ghastly paint job slip by.

Content with his deduction, Max dismissed the chopper from his thoughts and concentrated again on the runners he was tied up with. He felt slightly uneasy with the copter’s camera and lowered his gaze toward his feet and the pavement and heels ahead of him and on his pace. But not for long.

He looked up at the helicopter again. This time he noticed that the numeral “4” had been unevenly applied.

Damn! He was losing the pace. To hell with aberrant choppers!

Focus. One. One. One. One.

Focus one. Focus two. Focus three. Focus four.

He picked up the pace again slightly, but just enough to get rid of the slack. Another twelve miles or so and he’d be starting on The Hill.

In his peripheral field of view he sensed, but did not pay attention to, the aqua-painted helicopter wheeling away from the race, speeding off to the north. Behind it, as if chasing to check it out, trailed another chopper. The Channel 24 logo, painted in bright royal blue, was clearly visible on its flank.

Max passed one more runner. The new cluster’s pace felt right, so Max held with them. He didn’t recognize them, but their legs looked good, full of long, articulated muscles and sinews, and their upper bodies looked like pure lungs and titanium ribs. He figured it wouldn’t be a bad idea to hang in with their pace, at least till it proved otherwise.

Anonymity. It had such a salvational quality. Here he was, in the middle of a pack of more than twenty-seven thousand numbered bodies running pell-mell towards a blank-faced sixty-story high-rise building on the edge of Boylston Street, without more than a handful of souls knowing who he was and what his secrets were. And a handful of would-be killers were out there watching him run by. Or not. The stress of working on the ACHAP and the tight secrecy under which its development and testing were conducted, and the scheduled start of full-scale production the coming week, were now momentarily set aside, or at least subdued, within the crowd and dictates of the Marathon.

Knowing that it was only a temporary reprieve helped Max lose himself in the event. Tomorrow, after Dulles and Vienna, he would need to shuttle non-stop to each of the production facilities - Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee - over the next two weeks.

At least he didn’t have to worry about car rentals. This time it would be a Marine first lieutenant and his aircraft doing the taxiing.

The ACHAP was going to get better. Within the next year or two, with new tech formulas Max was collaborating on, it could be effective against several forms of biological warfare as well.

Maybe, if the world got lucky with ACHAP, poison gassing would someday be history. Too bad we can’t find a way to do the same to war itself.

Damn! Losing concentration with all this mental crap.

He couldn’t afford to miss a beat, if he wanted to run a good one. He had his temporary reprieve from ACHAP, in this narrow, delicious window of time, and he could run as he always loved to run. Doing his other beat, to his own Thoreauvian drum. Letting the endorphin brewing under his scalp intoxicate.

All of a sudden, Andrea appeared, as if out of another world. She was up ahead on the right, and elevated, as if standing on a fire hydrant or chair or whatever. She was waving her arms excitedly and shouting his name at the top of her lungs.

For an instant Max smiled, thinking that Andrea was cheering him on. But it was quickly apparent from Andrea’s alarmed expression that something terrible had happened, or was about to.

Max slowed down, instinctively, while Andrea jumped out onto the road and they half ran, half skipped along together.

"Max! Someone’s supposed to get killed!"

"Killed? Who?"

"I mean they’re going to shoot some guy by the name of Ross Cobbeer, or something like that, down the road, down the course somewhere". Andrea was panting hard.

"Max", she hurried, not waiting for a reply, "you’ve got to drop out of the race! We can’t lose you, Max!" Her hand was on his arm, touching lightly.

"Where’d you hear, Andrea? No police out here. This a rumor or what?" He was slowing further, but his legs seemed almost self-possessed, straining to speed ahead again.

"No! A man came around to a bunch of us standing over at the edge back at the start - I almost didn’t make it here to tell you - and he kept shouting, ’They’re going to shoot Ross Cobbeer’, or Cabbeer, or something like that, ’spread the word, spread the word!’, he kept saying".

"O.K., O.K., Andrea, but I’m not Mr. Cobbeer, or Cabbeer, and I’m going to be all right. And I’m going to finish the race. See you at the finish."

With that, Max chucked her shoulder and turned to race away.

"Max!", she shouted, "he had an Arabic accent!"

But she wasn’t sure he had heard her.

Chance in a million, Max thought to himself, as he split away and turned up his speed. I’m not going to worry about a hoax, Or some crazy. Chance in a million.

Andrea was sure she should have told Max about the Middle East accent first off. He would have taken her more seriously. She had not had the time or leisure, in racing to get to Max, to think through what had happened and why the strange man’s accent should have given her a key to the events to come, but that would unfold later. For the moment she was working on getting herself back through the crowd and finding her car on the road behind the nearby wood.

She stepped through the thin scattering of marathon watchers when she looked ahead - and there he was! That man, the one who told her Cobbeer would be killed.

And he was looking straight at her. Dark face. Steel rims.

The peach fuzz on the back of her neck suddenly tingled with a sense of dread and she swallowed hard.

And then he was gone.

She had to get to him. To ask who? why?

She walked toward the point where the man had stood, weaving through the spectators. He must be right behind the purple van, under the oaks.

Her chest beat harder, faster. Her breathing was short and fast. She stepped left, then right up the low slope. Past the last group of onlookers, a family with two girls and a boy.

She looked quickly about to find a policeman, but there was none in sight. Maybe she ought to ask that father to come along with her -- but, no, that would sound, well. like, intimidated.

Her feet flew faster as she considered that it was Max, not she, who was in real danger. And there wasn’t any rational cause for alarm. She’d yell out if she had to. (Would anyone hear?)

Suddenly she was there. Still no man with the dark face and steel-rimmed spectacles.

She circled the van.

No one.

She wheeled to scan the crowd nearby and peered carefully into the van’s cab. No one. She dropped on all fours to check the far side, but no one was standing there either. She looked into the rear door windows, but the interior was too dark to see.

He was gone.

Police. Anyone official. Where are they when you really need them? Where are they?

Aren’t they all over the place trying to find Mr. Cobbeer?

She whirled in a full circle to make sure once more that the man wasn’t there. There was the row of oaks, and red maples beyond, their young foliage unfurled and glistening out of burst buds, reddish in the midst of spring. On the Hopkinton end, a wood-row ran back from the road, then turned behind the field that faced her, and returned on the eastern side of the field to meet the road. The field was old pasture or whatever grasses and weeds replace pasture in encroaching suburbia. She couldn’t tell. The helicopter with the idling rotors sat comfortably in its center like a Buddha in a rice paddy.

She moved back in among the spectators again, standing on tip-toe to survey their faces.

Thank God! a policeman. A state trooper sat straddling his stationary motorcycle as if posed for a bikers magazine cover. He was wearing his helmet and mirror goggles. A radio crackled.

"Officer!" Andrea called as she stumbled toward the trooper.

Somewhere overhead a helicopter went chachachopping through the air.

"Officer! Did they shoot Ross Cobbeer?"

"Who?" The uniformed body stirred slightly.

"Ross Cobbeer. Someone was yelling that he was going to be killed. One of the runners. Must be." She caught her breath.

"Where’d ya hear this, miss?"

"Back at the start. Hope it’s a hoax. Can you find out where he is in the race and tell him, or, you know, protect him, if you can?"

The trooper’s face was stone still.

"I mean, if it’s not a hoax.”

"Lady, Who was yelling that so-and-so was going to be killed?"

"Some man in back of us. He kept running along and yelling ’They’re going to kill Ross Cobbeer, or maybe Cabbeer, and spread the word!’ He had a Middle Eastern accent."

"Lady, a lot of people around here have accents. Why did he say ’Spread the word’?"

"I don’t know, officer. I’ve no idea. Just want to let you know that some crazy guy is running around or some good samaritan is running around telling us that some other crazies are out there and that they’re about to blow somebody out of the race. So could you please communicate with your police system to see what you can do about it."

The trooper’s mirrored shades concealed his obvious disdain for the woman and her uncertain information, but he pressed a button on the radio mike.

"McPhail to Command." The radio crackled. "Have you had any reports of shootings in the Marathon or any threats to kill?"

Command’s answer was audible. "Negative", the voice said.

"Well we have a report by a spectator of a third-party threat. Do you have a Cobb Ear or some such name listed?"

Command struggled with the question, but after attempting to pull up every possible spelling of the name of the mystery runner on its computerized roster of the Marathon entrants, the answer was clear.

There was no runner who matched the name.

She spun around again to see if she could spot the man. Still, out of sight. Nothing other than a fun crowd under a cloud-splashed sky of blue.

"Any other name or spelling?"

"No, officer, no. I just can’t figure it."

"Well, let us know if you spot the weirdo that’s running around doin’ the shouting".

"Sure will. He’s right around here, somewhere." The last words were almost whispered as Andrea turned, confused, and headed across the field toward her car, on the far side of the still idling helicopter and the wood-row beyond. As Andrea passed the purple van, she might have turned to look back once more at its rear door windows. Had she done so, she might possibly have noticed a semi-circular glint of light. The kind of reflection that steel rimmed spectacles make when they catch light in deep shadows.

---------------------------

Max caught sight of the Turkish Olympian he had met in Denver, running along with two Japanese. He was evidently gaining, but slightly, on all three. The herd had thinned considerably, they were nearing the fourteen mile mark. He could make out the Ethiopians and the Kenyan up ahead, and a small flock of the Boston regulars.

The tough had gotten going, but the going was getting tougher. His legs were beginning to smolder and his wind was not nearly as strong as it had been in the last New York.

He had almost forgotten Andrea and her strange message. But now he recalled and began to ponder it.

What did she say the guy’s name was? Russ Cobbler? or Ross? Carpenter, perhaps. Some "they" wanted to kill him. A Mafia hit job?

He studied the number on the back in front of him.

57.

Heinz’s varieties, he mused.

Maybe I need a 911.

Maybe I need to focus. Heartbreak coming up in another three plus miles. Need better lungs. This one’s turning real tough. Need more Mg and K, losing too much through the sweat glands.

A loony with a gun. Some paranoid angry with the Marathon. Wants to disgrace it. Someone who hates Cobbler, for sure.

He grabbed a styrofoam cup of liquid offered stiff-armed by a man in shorts and a Sox T-shirt at the roadside who repeated the liquid’s identity staccato - "Tang! Tang! Tang! Tang! Tang! Tang!"

He grabbed the cup, losing half its contents in the process, drew two small drafts, and dropped the cup and its remainder, splattering, upon the pavement.

A blur of associated images swirled through his mind. He could remember the clanging bell of an old steam locomotive at a western rail siding, the spigot pipe swung out stiff-armed from the bottom of the old water tank to slake the huffin’-puffin’ engine’s thirst. And hawkers hoisting bottles of pop out for the thirsty to see and salivate over in the grandstands of Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium and old Ebbetts Field.

That’s when the answer hit him.

Ross Kabeer. Ras Kabir! That was Mighty Chief in Arabic.

Mighty Chief. The code name of the ACHAP project!

He craned his neck left and right to search the sky for hostile choppers – that aqua-painted one back down the road? – and the spectator sprinklings along the edges of the road. There weren’t any whirlybirds in sight right now, but he could sense their nearby thrum. As for trying to spot a gunman in the crowd, he knew that that would be a nigh impossible challenge.

For a moment he considered withdrawing from the race. He could filter through the crowd, hitch a ride or take a taxi, end up at the Pru locker area, change, and meet Andrea and Peter at the Copley, their back-up rendezvous if they couldn’t find him at the finish line. All in one piece. No holes.

But that didn’t sound very reassuring, either.

If the ISIS agents – or whoever – were intent on snuffing out America’s leading scientist in protection against chemical warfare, the assassins sent to eliminate him had had enough planning to know how to find him in Wellesley or in Newton Lower Falls or in Boston, either on the race route or off of it. Now or tonight. Maybe tomorrow.

How did they find him? Why had they decided to nail him at the Marathon? How did they know his number? He hadn’t registered under his real name. Would they find him if they didn’t know how to recognize him?

He wondered how safe Andrea and Peter were. Then suddenly, with a flash of sweating rage, Max realized that the bastards were using Andrea to get to him. They couldn’t find him because he hadn’t registered under his own name. And he had changed his appearance – somewhat – just before the race. But his departmental secretary was accessible to the public, and they must have staked her out, listened to her conversations, discovered his Marathon plans, and – failing to find his name on the Marathon roster – circled around to get her to reveal his identity without revealing their identity to her!

Andrea’s passing the Ras Kabir threat on to him, that moment she ran alongside, was his kiss of death.

They must have been tailing her all the time. Might have been right behind her in the crowd. Damn the sonzabitches if they touched her!

He couldn’t drop out of the race now. He was, alive or dead, the only hope that they’d leave Andrea alone. And maybe, just maybe, he’d figure a way to outlast the sonzabitches.

The running masses were coming up to the Wellesley campus now, you couldn’t mistake it - from up ahead a wave of soprano cheering haloed the air, punctuated by an occasional voice from the thin chain of runners.

Max!

Peter! Peter was there at the side, reaching out to him with a Gatorade container and sprinting off with him!

"You’re doing great, man!", he burst out, "One:twenty-two!"

"Peter! Listen to me, I don’t have time to explain, but I’m a target, or at least I think I am. Likely the ISIS bunch. Get over to the lab vault and grab the ACHAP. The R-2. Then get it to me at Cleveland Circle. No, that won’t give you enough time. Kenmore Square. Or, better, between Kenmore and Hereford. Say, at Charlesgate. Charlesgate."

And with that and a casual thumbs-up high sign, Max sped off, leaving Peter slack-jawed and raised-brow in disbelief and alarm.

Max knew it was a long shot, but then, Peter was a great long shot buddy. They had climbed together. And Peter had saved his life in the Caribbean years ago, when their boat had capsized in rough surf and he was knocked unconscious by the lashing boom.

Until he bumped into Peter and his stopwatch, he hadn’t been able to deduce where it would be that these thugs would go for him. Or how. Or even why.

But all at once, the logic of his assassination became crystal clear.

No simple rub-out at Heartbreak Hill, or Cleveland Circle. Or anywhere else but at the Pru.

No reason any other American needed killing but him, to let the President and the Pentagon and the Congress – and the U.N., for that matter – know that even a small cadre of Islamist extremists could counter U.S. and allied power with cunning and weaken their defenses against Middle East poison weaponry by hitting at defense research.

No need to spot stocking-masked gunmen in the Marathon crowd, wielding Kalishnikovs or AR-15’s or tossing grenades. They would be using a weapon that no one would see.

They would hit him with poison gas. Or a poison dart. And then spread chemical or bio-poisons through the tightly packed crowds. At the Prudential. A key Boston skyscraper and emblem of the city’s urban and financial power.

That way they could snuff him together with hundreds of spectators, make the headlines, and underscore the vulnerability of Boston to terrorist attack. Hat-trick.

-------------------------------------------

Peter, dumbfounded, stared at Max as he disappeared in the fast current of the Marathon.

Damn!, he thought. His life’s in danger with some fuckin’ madman and I just let him keep on running? I should have just tackled him right out of there.

Forget that now!

How the hell am I going to get to the lab and back to Back Bay with an IPD in less than an hour’s time? In this goddam traffic?!

It is true that the part of Peter’s brain that dealt with the expression of grievances and frustration was wholly occupied at this point in time, but the remainder of his faculties were freely proceeding to deal swiftly with the course of action that Max had suggested.

For the first three seconds of shock, Peter’s motor coordinative section put his long legs and sneakered feet into a fast jog, setting course for the Wellesley MBTA commuter line station, where he had parked his car. And in the cranial compartment where intuitive skills are lodged, the thought was batted about that if he only might find a helicopter, the challenge could possibly be met. So by the time his cognitive matter dealt with the question of "how to get to the lab and back into Back Bay in an hour or less", the answer was already there. A helicopter.

And one seemed to be landing next to the MBTA station, right on his path, almost as if his wish had been granted in heaven, or wherever it was that helicopter wishes are processed. It was a solid blue craft bearing its company name, ’Massachusetts Aerial Photos’ and the acronym, ’MAP’ on its side.

Would they give me a lift to MIT? Peter wondered.

With that he broke into a fast run and headed towards the copter.

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Eduardo Palacio Kovacs shoved off the MIT dock and raised sail on the Lightning class boat. The sail luffed, then spanked tight with the breeze, and Eduardo pulled the mainsheet to his right for his first tack to starboard. Holding the line down with his foot and steadying the helm with his arm, he bent and filled the pipe he had held clenched between his teeth for the past ten minutes and lit it with long, grateful, passionate draughts.

Sailing on the Charles was a near daily sacrament for the Harvard professor of music. The pipe was part of that ritual. And this wonderful Patriot’s Day weather had all the makings of a grand passage. Respighi came to mind (though he considered the Italian romantic a lightweight), and strong, surging strings and winds filled his head. A mild, snappy breeze and long, serried ranks of cumulus clouds marching across the blue May sky assured him that his two hour break away from Paine Hall would be a rewarding one.

There was nothing more soporific, more soul-restoring than messing around in boats (recalling Greene’s and Morrison’s beloved phrase) on this lowest reach of the Charles River Basin. The Charles was a true oasis, a sanctuary of calm and beauty in the heart of the city, and Eduardo, like many on both sides of the river, drew upon its soul-restoring waters as often as they dared.

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What beautiful luck, Peter mused as the blue helicopter wheeled over the Newtons and West Roxbury and then the Charles to the MIT campus. Below, a few boats were out catching breezes. The entire scene, as peaceful and recreational as it was, contrasted so surrealistically with the lethal circumstances of Max’s plight that Peter had to chew his lip to restore his grasp of the mission.

"O.K., Captain Carla, swing this ship just a tad to port and head for the top of the parking structure on the far side of the tower with the funny bubble on top. Yeah. The one near Lechmere Canal."

Carla smiled and obliged with several deft maneuvers of the joystick until the copter pounced softly on the garage concrete. Mike, the co-pilot, opened the hatch and Peter scrambled out.

"I’ll be ten minutes on the nose. Don’t move! I need you!"

Carla answered, "We’ll be here, don’t worry", but Peter hadn’t stopped for an answer. He was already racing as fast as his legs could take him across the deserted roof parking level to the staircase and down to the third-level crossover to the lab building.

Time was passing quickly. He inserted his passcard and opened the steel outer door. He ran swiftly down two corridors. He produced his I.D. to the vault security guard and quickly signed in. He removed R-2 in its carrying case, leaving R-1 on its shelf, and was back onto the garage roof before the ninth minute had elapsed.

Only this time the roof had two helicopters.

The new arrival was a newscopter, the Channel 24 logo on its side in messy aqua paint.

Two bodies were sprawled on the concrete next to the blue copter. Carla and Mike. They were either unconscious or dead.

In front of the newscopter stood two figures. One was Andrea. The other was a man in a brown jersey wearing steel-rimmed glasses. He was holding a large-caliber pistol to Andrea’s head.

"Your case!" shouted a second gunman who had been crouching near the bodies at the blue helicopter and now sprang toward Peter. He held a semi-automatic attack rifle. "Hand it over quick!" His voice was strident and maniacal and was grained with a strong Middle Eastern accent.

The wheels in Peter’s brain were now spinning faster than the speed of thought. He was being confronted by a hostile gunman at a distance of nine feet and closer on a deserted parking roof level, with an accomplice, holding a lethal weapon to the temple of his departmental secretary. All of which was taking place in the context of a savage plot to kill his best buddy and partner in research, Max Browne. Which had already taken two innocent victims who lay prone and silent upon the concrete surface.

"Now! Or you’re dead!" The gunman had halted a long arm’s length in front of him.

One more flicker of recognition sparked across Peter’s synapses - these madmen obviously wanted him as alive as they wanted Max dead. Otherwise they would have already smashed him to the concrete, as they had Carla and Mike, and simply snatched the IPD.

"How much are you willing to pay for it?". He was stalling, searching for a chink in the armor.

"FOOL!" The gunman lunged at Peter with the rifle, aiming the weapon bayonet-like at his ribs. But just as he began his thrust, his attention was diverted by Andrea’s scream of "NO!" and, in the same instant, an almost as audible pained groan from the steel- rimmed spectacled gunman, whose groin had received the swift, strong back-kick of Andrea’s right heel.

The diversion was enough for Peter to sidestep the rifle thrust and smash the aluminum IPD case into the face of his off-balance, distracted attacker.

The gunman grunted in pain and shock as he fell and rolled on the concrete, his hands over his face. Peter quickly looked up at Andrea, simultaneously scrambling to reach the rifle and hearing her shouting his name over and over. A third figure had emerged from the chopper and was pinning Andrea’s arms from behind. The groin-maimed gunman had regained his pistol and part of his posture.

It was obvious that a shootout would find Andrea or Peter or both of them dead. And Max’s life would still be in danger as well – there was no certainty that this ugly trio was the only assassination unit.

There was only one thing that Peter could do.

Run.

He yanked open the steel door and flew down the steps four at a time. If he could regain access to the maze of interconnected buildings and corridors of the MIT campus, he could evade the killers and somehow get to Max in time.

And maybe they’d let Andrea live.

He reached the same third-level skywalk he had entered before when he heard the roof-level door burst open and the shouts of his pursuers. He tucked the IPD under his left arm and shoved his hand into his right pocket for his passcard.

NOT THERE! Did I drop it upstairs?! I’m a DEAD MAN!!

But maybe it’s in my other pocket??

The resounding crash of booted gunmen bounding toward him down the stairs grew louder with each passing second.

Here it is! He fumbled with the card and finally inserted it into the electronic reader. The door latch clicked and he pulled the door open. As he pivoted inside he pulled the door shut behind him, ran down the entry corridor, then ran sharply around the corner down the first corridor on the left. No sooner had he managed the turn when he heard an explosive blast of bullets penetrating the door’s locking mechanism.

He decided to run even faster.

A second and third burst of ammunition smashed metal and finally he heard the sound of running boots. Two men.

He found the next staircase and plunged into it, half-tripping on the first step and wrenching his back as he struggled to keep his balance and avoid dropping the IPD. He couldn’t do anything now but move slowly and quietly, holding his breath to allow his ears to do their work. He paused for a half second and listened as the menacing shouts and scattered bootfalls mingled with other shouts and footsteps as frightened researchers (and hopefully the lab guard) reacted to the invasion.

Peter picked up speed again, found Level 1, and raced for Building K. The shouts and bootfalls had died away.

The going had gotten a lot tougher for Max. He had reached the top of the Hill without much damage – had actually fared better than several of the front runners – but passing Cleveland Circle a stitch developed in his right side and bothered him almost as far as Coolidge Corner. And the agony of the marathon had set in with a vengeance. His legs felt as if each new step wanted to be their last, and they would sing ’good riddance’ if it was. His lungs were working hard, damn hard.

Yet he was moving, and moving at a good pace. Each time his thoughts focused back on the events of the day and the dangers to which Andrea and perhaps Peter were being put, Max doubled his resolve to finish the race and beat off the attack he was certain would await him. Whether he would actually survive it was a question he really didn’t want to deal with.

With his thoughts split between bodily agonies and the dangers from without, he had scarce time to observe that he had passed all but the first four frontrunners. He had sensed he was running a good race. But he didn’t know just how good.

The Boston crowds were thick and lively, as usual, along this stretch of Beacon Street. They cheered one and all, no favorites, as much out of ignorance of the runners’ identities as out of expression of a genuine sporting instinct, an affection for the athlete who tried his best. And here at the head of the race, the lead runners were getting the most spirited cheers of all.

He was past Park Circle and climbing the street’s arching rise over the Turnpike. Fenway Park sailed above the low buildings on the right and ahead the CITGO sign, his favorite Boston landmark, hove into view. Also ahead, barely beyond his sight, a squad of Boston Police outriders were vanguarding the frontrunner, or runners. From the muffled sounds of their rumbling engines, Max figured they were right at Kenmore Square, now.

He had to catch up and pass him. Pass all of them.

He had known it needed doing from halfway up Heartbreak Hill, six or seven miles back, and he had been inching forward ever since. If the terror crew was going to hit him with lethal gasses, he didn’t want any other runners to be around. And there was only one place that there would be no other runner. Way out in front of them. If he could get there in time, he might even be able to alert the police that they ought to move the crowds back. (Hell, who am I kidding?). Well, maybe people will run fast enough once the gas shell hits my feet. Damn. It’s not going to be pretty one way or the other.

If Peter is there at Charlesgate (will he? won’t he?) he might be able to save his own skin. And maybe no one else would get hurt.

He just had to move up. Come in first.

Had to.

Andrea’s face floated back into his vision. He wondered whether she had been taken by the bastards. Hoped she hadn’t been. He pictured her at the finish line. Modigliani face with soft hazel eyes belying her deep intelligence, framed by long curls, ecstatic with joy, pride. His number one fan.

Win. First time the actual word came on his mind’s screen.

He had never finished earlier than 107th.

The Kenmore Square crowd was cheering madly, all eyes on him, all mouths open and shouting encouragement. Then turned to cheer with equal fervor the runners behind him.

He passed Ngotange as he crossed Charlesgate West and ran beneath the parkway viaduct.

Up ahead on the left, Peter came suddenly into view, breaking the police line.

They ran together briefly, relay-like, as Peter passed the IPD to him.

"Trouble getting it?", Max asked.

"Just a few diversions", Peter answered.

"Andrea?"

"Hope she’s all right. Max, you’re doing terrific! GO FOR IT!"

And with that, he dropped off to the side, watching as Max set the ACHAP device, with its self-clasping grip, on his upper left arm. Max was running near a Japanese and seemed to be gaining on him as they moved towards Mass Ave.

Peter squeezed back through the crowd and broke into a fast scramble along the scant free sidewalk space over to Charlesgate East, then turned left toward the Charles, retracing his route back to the MDC Police patrol boat. He looked up as he raced, scanning the sky for the aqua 24.

He would never have reached Max if the boat hadn’t come alongside the Lechmere Canal quay just as Peter run out of the north end of Building L, dodging under trees and building entry canopies to avoid detection and looking for any boat that he could have begged or borrowed. Peter hid beneath the fore tarp while the sarge and his partner ignored the aqua 24 chopper as it buzzed low, then turned away to check out other craft.

Now he had to clamber across the grassed verge and back across Storrow Drive again, waiting for a window in the flow of cars and nearly being smashed by a horn-blasting silver Accord. He smoldered inwardly at the stupidity of the MDC for having built the Charlesgate viaduct without providing for any safe foot passage between the Fens and the Esplanade. You had to take your life into your hands getting from one to the other. And the banality of the viaduct plugging up Olmsted’s historic linkage to the Charles.

The patrol boat was still there, idling alongside the Muddy River tidegate. Peter ran up the path and jumped in.

"They just headed back over Beacon Street again", said the sarge.

"Give me your flare gun and a couple of smoke flares and let’s head under Mass Ave as fast as you can rip ’er open."

In rapid succession, Peter fired two smoke flares, each arcing a stream of dark brown smoke high in the air over the Esplanade. The patrol boat whooshed under the third span of Harvard Bridge and reduced speed, fishing for the right tactic, without a plan or armament, for an adversary that had a good deal of both.

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Andrea spotted the smoke flares over the Charles while her three captors’ attentions were directed toward the Marathon’s final stretch on Boylston Street. Was it Peter? She knew she had to think fast.

She did.

She also knew something seemed to be amiss with the murderous operation her three tormentors were brewing. She didn’t know more than a handful of words in Arabic, but the consternation and heated anxiety of the leader (steel-rimmed specs) as he conversed with some other party by radio (a spotter on the ground? someone who would finger Max and guide the helicopter to its human target?) left the unmistakable impression that they had lost track of Max.

"Has your Doctor Max dropped out of the race?", the leader suddenly shouted to her face, pivoting abruptly in the front seat.

"I - I don’t know! How could I know?" she countered.

Then she took a carefully furtive look out the window at the flare smoke, and turned quickly back to face Steel Rims again, as if she had been caught toying with secrets.

"How could I possibly get a signal from Max? I’ve been your ’guest’ all this time".

Her voice played overtones that suggested the contrivance of innocence.

Steel Rims and his cohorts turned to look at the flare smoke, now gradually dissipating with the midday breezes.

"Those smok’kes. They are a signal for you, are they not, hmm?"

"What do the flares mean?" asked the man in the back seat, at her left. Six canisters (gas-filled?) and two launchers lay at his feet.

"I know what it is", the leader said. "I have studied your American history and I know what your clever signal is. It is ’one if by land and two if by sea’! This is your very well-known saying. It means that the route is across the Charles River". He snapped his head forward on the last word for additional emphasis and self-congratulation.

Quickly the copter heeled and circled toward the Basin.

"Now, tell me, where is your Doctorr Max? On a boat? On Storrow Drive? WHERE!?!" He had grabbed her hand and was twisting it in a steely grip.

"Aaah! Let go and I’ll tell you!" she cried in pain.

He let go.

"He said he’d be out on a boat but I don’t know which one. He said he’d find me, I didn’t need to know which boat he’d be on."

That was about as bad a concoction as anyone could ever pour.

But he appeared to swallow it.

A rapid command and the chopper swept lower and over the Charles, barely above the masts of the sailboats. Steel Rims seemed to have taken Andrea’s bait. Assumed that the flares had come from the MDC patrol boat and that Max was in it.

The boat was now again beneath them, moving slowly toward the Beacon Hill end of the Basin.

The leader motioned with his hand and the copter swung over toward the launch, slowing to move in tandem with it. He opened the side hatch and raised a megaphone. He shouted, "Show us what you have beneath that cover, that sheet!" And he pulled out his pistol and slowly aimed it at the policemen.

But it was too late. A new smoke flare was on its way into the open hatch, fired by the elusive Peter from under the corner of the very valuable tarp. It hit the assassin square in the chest, punching him into a stumble against the pilot. The craft yawed immediately to port, out of control, but as it did, Andrea scrambled out the vacated opening and performed the best high platform dive of her life. The erupting flare instantly filled the cabin with roiling smoke – Andrea heard it go off as she sliced down toward the Charles.

As she penetrated the cold river water, she maintained her rigid form, stroking to dive as deep as she could dare, then planed in the direction she believed would be opposite to the helicopter’s crash point and in a half dozen powerful strokes that only a national masters class swimmer would manage, distanced herself by about sixty feet from her point of entry. She rose and broke the surface with both a gasp for air and the broadest smile ever seen on a former Olympian.

"That’s a beautiful smile, miss", said the professorial sailor, teeth clenching an old, unlit pipe, "let me give you a hand. But I’m afraid your friends in the helicopter have hit the drink".

"Thank you", Andrea said with a shiver, "but they’re no friends of mine".

"I surmised as much. Your true friend is the fellow in the MDC launch who popped them one with the smoke flare. Here he comes right now".

Not a very relaxing sail today, Kovacs reflected, but it’s having its compensations.

"By the way, you must have missed it with all your recent preoccupations, but a total unknown has won the Marathon – picked it up on the radio just a couple of minutes ago – a certain Bill Saunders. Seems he disqualified himself! Stripped off both his front and back numbers – back at Hereford Street, evidently. He was wearing some strange medical contraption on his upper arm, which of course would disqualify him in any case. And to top it all off, he said he really didn’t care about winning, anyway, and simply walked away from the finishers chute!

Can you believe all that?"

"I can", Andrea whispered, her eyes brimming with happy salt tears, "I really, really -- really can".

finis