The 4400- the Vesuvius Prophecy Page 3

  What’s wrong with him?

  Without warning, the ground shook beneath Diana’s feet. A grinding roar, which seemed to rise up from the very bowels of the earth, drowned out the sudden shouts and screams of the people around her. Diana stumbled unsteadily and grabbed a painted iron support column to steady herself. People tumbled onto the hard tile floor. An avalanche of crushed ice and frozen fish spilled across the floor of the Market, adding to the confusion. The cold ice engulfed Diana’s shoes and ankles, chilling her feet. The slippery seafood didn’t make staying upright any easier. Hanging lamps swung wildly above the fish stand. Crashing noises came from the adjacent stalls as produce and merchandise hit the ground. Glassware broke somewhere nearby. Dust rained down from the wooden awning overhead. A neon sign exploded in a shower of sparks.

  Earthquake! Diana realized. She glanced anxiously at her partner and saw Tom lurching toward her, somehow managing to stay on his feet. He nodded at the fish market, not about to let their suspects get away from them. His jaw was clenched in determination as he waded clumsily through the spilled ice and seafood, his feet slipping on the wet tiles. The initial tremor only lasted for a few heartbeats, but seemed to go on forever. Is this the Big One?

  Satisfied that her partner was okay, at least for the moment, Diana worried about her daughter, and prayed that Maia’s school at The 4400 Center hadn’t been hit too hard by the quake. She fought a temptation to try to reach Maia via cell phone; most likely, communications networks were already being flooded by frantic residents seeking loved ones and emergency services. Instead she turned her attention back to Cooper DeMeers and the anonymous leatherneck accosting him. The two men looked just as startled by the quake as everyone else, but DeMeers regained his bearings a little faster than the stranger. Taking advantage of the unexpected tremor, the fishmonger yanked his arm free of the other man’s grip. Crew Cut fell forward against a half-empty bed of ice. He snatched again at DeMeers. “Don’t give me any trouble,” he snarled, still intent on his unknown mission despite the seismic shocks jolting the Market. “You’re coming with me!”

  “The hell I am!” Bracing himself against the other side of the counter, DeMeers grabbed a fresh halibut by the tail and swung it around, walloping the stranger in the face. The blow staggered the man, who fell backward into the reeling crowd. The initial tremor seemed to have subsided, but smaller aftershocks continued to rattle the Market. Was the worst over, Diana wondered, or was this just the beginning? DeMeers bolted from the stall and took off down the main arcade. Diana realized that she was closer to the fleeing fishmonger than her partner was.

  “I’ll take DeMeers!” she shouted at Tom. Letting go of the steel column, she stumbled after the suspected hijacker. Crew Cut, having managed to extract himself from a tangle of panicked civilians, glared angrily at Diana before dashing for the stairs leading to the lower levels of the market. Tom was already in hot pursuit of the stranger. Tom shoved a disoriented street performer out of his way.

  “Got it,” he called back to her. “Watch yourself.”

  You, too, Diana thought. She reached beneath her jacket and retrieved her Smith & Wesson semiautomatic pistol. As one of the 4400, DeMeers could very well be endowed with some dangerous superhuman ability. Not every returnee had developed an ability right away, but over the last few years she and Tom had come up against men and women who could shatter skulls with a thought, emit lethal viruses from their pores, read minds, and perform any number of other unnatural feats. Diana understood that she was taking a serious risk chasing after DeMeers. Who knew what he might be capable of? Hell, if he really was D. B. Cooper, he had once threatened to blow up an entire 727. I could be dealing with a pretty ruthless customer here.

  The tremors began to subside, but pandemonium still filled the marketplace. Throngs of terrified people poured out of the Market into the open streets. Spilled fruit and vegetables were trampled beneath the crowd’s feet. The air smelled of salt water and salad. People were crying and squealing and thanking God that they were still alive. Diana had to force her way through the disorderly exodus; she felt like a salmon fighting her way upstream.

  Covered by an awning, the arcade stretched for blocks alongside Pike Place, a long boulevard running parallel to the waterfront several stories below. Stalls packed with fresh produce gradually gave way to rows of long tables that were usually manned by a wide variety of local craftsmen and artists. Heaps of handmade sweaters, quilts, jewelry, scrimshaw, knickknacks, souvenirs, candles, snow globes, carved driftwood, and other merchandise littered the tables and floor, abandoned by dealers and customers alike. A miniature ceramic pig crunched beneath Diana’s shoes as she hurried after DeMeers, who was keeping a few yards ahead of her. His orange rubber overalls made him easy to keep track of.

  “Stop!” she called out to him. “There’s no need to run. We just need to talk to you!”

  The fishmonger glanced back at her over his shoulder, then kept on running. Because he was wanted by the FBI for hijacking, she wondered, or only because he was spooked? Unfortunately, relations between NTAC and the 4400 had hit an all-time low recently, after the former head of NTAC, Dennis Ryland, had been implicated in a plot to inject the 4400 with an untested promicin inhibitor that had nearly killed them all. Some twenty-three returnees had died from the injections, before an antidote was found. Tom and Diana had personally exposed the conspiracy, but that made little difference as far as most of the 4400 were concerned. These days the returnees regarded NTAC with suspicion if not outright hostility, which made things a good deal more complicated.

  Thanks a lot, Dennis.

  “NTAC! Coming through!” Diana hollered. Part of her wondered whether she should be pursuing a suspect in the middle of an earthquake, but what else was she supposed to do? She couldn’t shoot or arrest a misbehaving geological fault line; she just had to hope that Seattle’s Disaster Aid and Response Teams were already mobilizing to deal with the earthquake and its aftershocks. In the meantime, she had a job to do. “Give it up, DeMeers! You’re just making things harder for yourself!”

  He glanced back again to see Diana gaining on him. Gulping, he spied the gun in her hand. Bloodshot eyes widened in fear. Veins pulsed across his cranium. “Leave me alone!”

  A powerful aftershock rocked the arcade. Chairs and tables toppled over. A section of awning crashed down between them, raising a cloud of dust and debris. Coughing on the haze, Diana hurdled a heap of splintered timbers in order to keep after DeMeers. Long hours at the gym paid off as her racing legs ate up the distance between her and her quarry. She was clearly in better shape than the fugitive, who was flushed and breathing hard. Her hand held on tightly to the grip of her pistol. She had no intention of firing, except in self-defense. The shaking ground and panicked crowd made it impossible to get a clear shot, but maybe she could bluff DeMeers into surrendering. “Stop or I’ll shoot!”

  “Mommy!”

  A shrill cry yanked Diana’s attention away from DeMeers. Looking to the right, she spied a lost child crawling out from beneath an overturned handicrafts stand. The toddler, who looked no more than two years old, had obviously gotten separated from her mother in the chaos; it was a miracle she hadn’t already been trampled by the heedless crowd. Tears gushed from the little girl’s eyes. She clutched a stuffed orca to her chest.

  “Where’s my mommy!”

  To her alarm, Diana spotted a sparking electrical cable dangling from a shattered overhead lighting fixture. The live wire was sputtering dangerously close to the unsuspecting toddler, who was now tottering on two feet across the cracked tile floor. The cable hissed like a lurking serpent.

  “Hold on, honey!” Diana called to the girl. “Stay right where you are!”

  Tucking her pistol back into its holster, she rushed forward and swept the girl up into her arms and away from the lethal wire. “It’s all right,” she cooed reassuringly into the toddler’s ear. Her eyes searched the wrecked arcade for some sign of a parent or guardian
. “We’ll find your mommy.”

  To her relief, a tearful young woman came running up to them. Diana thought she recognized her as one of the street musicians who performed at the Market for spare change. “Harmony!” the mother cried out, her voice hoarse with emotion. “Ohmigod . . . Harmony!” Moist blue eyes looked gratefully at Diana. “Thank you so much! I tried to hold on to her, but . . . everyone was running and screaming and pushing . . .”

  “I understand,” Diana said, relinquishing Harmony to her mother. She liked to think that some good Samaritan would look out for Maia in similar circumstances. “I’m glad I could help.” Leaving mother and child to their tearful reunion, she turned to look for DeMeers, but, no surprise, the suspected skyjacker was long gone. Diana guessed that he had disappeared into the surrounding streets and alleys. For all she knew, he was halfway to the Space Needle by now.

  She let out an exasperated sigh. At least the earthquake seemed to be over for the moment. That was a lucky break for DeMeers, she thought, or was it more than luck? An ominous suspicion was already forming at the back of her mind. First, Maia links D. B. Cooper to an eruption on Mount Rainier. Now a 4400 matching Cooper’s profile gets away from us thanks to a convenient earthquake? You didn’t have to be a genius like Marco and his buddies to see a possible connection there. Diana felt a chill run down her spine. This case was getting scarier by the moment.

  And who was that stranger who tried to get DeMeers away from us? Where does he fit into this picture?

  Maybe Tom had succeeded in apprehending the other man. Resisting an urge to check immediately on her daughter, Diana wheeled around and headed for a nearby ramp leading down into the lower levels of the Market. She was desperate to know that Maia was safe, but right now her duty to her partner took priority. He was counting on her for backup.

  Hang on, Tom, she thought. I’m coming.

  DOWN UNDER. 3 FLOORS—OVER FIFTY SHOPS TO SERVE YOU! read the sign above the staircase leading down to the Market’s lower levels. A large painted arrow indicated the way.

  Tom took the steps two at a time, squeezing his muscular frame past the hordes of frenzied men and women racing up the stairs. Squealing patrons erupted from the subterranean complex like lava spewing from a volcanic fissure. He struggled to keep the hefty stranger in sight; thankfully, the frenzied crowd seemed to be impeding the leatherneck’s escape as well. He and Tom appeared to be the only two people racing deeper into Down Under, instead of rushing madly toward the surface. Tom couldn’t help thinking that the fleeing civilians probably had the right idea. This old building was no place to be during an earthquake; he doubted that the historic structure conformed to modern construction codes.

  Just my luck, he thought. Of all places for this perp to run.

  The wooden floor rolled beneath his feet as he hit the bottom of the steps. His memory instantly flashed back to that last big jolt in 2001. He had been at his desk at the FBI that morning, when the entire building had started shaking like Galloping Gertie. The 6.8-magnitude temblor had caused major property damage all the way from Pioneer Square, just a few blocks south of here, to the capitol building in Olympia. It had even shifted all of Seattle five millimeters to the northeast. Miraculously, there had been only one fatality, a heart attack, and Tom had counted himself lucky that he and his family had come through the quake unscathed. Little had he known that less than two months later his son Kyle would be in a coma and his nephew Shawn would disappear from the face of the Earth. In a sense, that quake in ’01—the so-called “Rattle in Seattle”—had marked the beginning of the turmoil he’d been living through for the last five years. This quake didn’t seem quite as strong as that earlier disaster, but it set his nerves on edge nonetheless.

  Can the self-pity, he scolded himself, shaking off the unsettling memories. Keep your mind on the job.

  Down Under was a warren of underground shops lining a maze of winding corridors. Comic books, candy, used books, antique postcards, rare coins, natural foods, jewelry, carved bones, crystals, handbags, pipes, and tobacco were among the goods on sale in the varied small emporia. Chain stores were expressly forbidden, in order to preserve the unique, idiosyncratic nature of the Market. Ramps and stairwells led down to two more stories of shops and snack bars. Tom’s girlfriend, Alana, often liked to browse the Market on weekends, so he knew the layout pretty well. Still, even with everyone else abandoning the lower levels in droves, he knew it would be all too easy to lose track of the stranger in this sprawling labyrinth. His footsteps echoed through the underground tunnel as he chased after the stranger. Jelly beans, shopping bags, and other discarded possessions littered the floor. A collectible action figure had been stomped to pieces, strewing tiny plastic limbs in his path. Tom held up his badge.

  “NTAC! I’m ordering you to—”

  An aftershock shook Down Under. Dust and plaster rained down from the ceiling, joining the random debris covering the floor. Tom glanced up apprehensively. He didn’t want to get pancaked between collapsing floors.

  “You there!” he shouted at the stranger. “It isn’t safe down here. You need to come with me.”

  “That’s what you think!” the man yelled back at him. He looked more irritated than anxious about being chased by a federal agent. His ruddy face showed no sign of surrender. “You don’t know who you’re messing with, g-man!”

  Who the hell is this guy? Tom wondered. He felt certain that he’d seen the man’s face before . . . maybe in the 4400 database? He reluctantly drew his gun. He didn’t want to fire at someone whose identity and motives remained unknown, but the fact that the other man had tried to snatch DeMeers away from them suggested that he was up to no good. Could he be a member of the Nova Group? The radical terrorist organization, composed of renegade 4400 members out for revenge against the government, was on its last legs since NTAC had taken their leader, Daniel Armand, into custody a few days ago, but there were probably still a few splinter groups out there looking for trouble. Did Cooper DeMeers belong to a surviving Nova cell? Was that why he ran from them? Tom wanted answers . . . pronto.

  “Freeze!” he ordered, drawing a bead on the stranger. He gripped the pistol with both hands to steady his aim, despite the lingering aftershocks. A dusty haze clouded the air between the two men. Tom’s finger tightened on the trigger of his sidearm. “This is your last warning!”

  To his surprise, the stranger merely smirked at the sight of the gun. “Don’t waste your bullets, flatfoot!” He darted to his left and Tom fired at the man’s leg. The gunshot reverberated through the subterranean warren of shops. He thought it looked like a good hit, but it didn’t even slow the stranger down. The man ducked into a jewelry shop only slightly larger than a cubbyhole, momentarily disappearing from sight. THE HOUSE OF JADE was painted on the shop’s dusty window. Tom glimpsed toppled shelves and display cases inside.

  Swearing under his breath, he hurried toward the open door of the emporium. He had his quarry trapped now; there was only one way out of the minuscule shop. He flattened himself against the wall next to the entrance, just in case the stranger was armed, but no bullets came flying out of the House of Jade. Holding his gun in the high-ready position, he spun around and charged through the door. “Hands up!” he ordered. “I want to see them!”

  But there was nobody there. The tiny shop was indeed a dead end, but all Tom found inside was the mess the earthquake had made of the business. Polished green gemstones rolled across the floor. A cash register lay overturned atop a counter. Loose bills and coins were scattered about for the taking. Tom stepped over a shattered display case. Broken glass crunched beneath his soles. Looking around, he saw at once that the cramped shop offered no place to hide.

  The nameless stranger had vanished into thin air.

  Or had he? Tom had yet to encounter a 4400 who could turn himself invisible, but there was a first time for everything. Holding his gun out in front of him, he cautiously waved his arm through the seemingly empty air around him. It wasn’
t until he had meticulously swept the whole shop, encountering no unseen presences, that he finally dropped his guard and conceded that the stranger had gotten away somehow.

  Well, that settles one thing, he thought. Either the stranger was the second coming of Harry Houdini or he was definitely one of the 4400. Tom tried to figure out what kind of unnatural talent the man might have used to make his amazing escape. Teleportation? The ability to walk through walls? Once he would have rejected both scenarios as absurd, but the last few years had drastically broadened his sense of what was truly possible in this brave new world of theirs. Since the 4400 had returned to the present, he had encountered a serial killer who could make other people murder for him, enjoyed eight years of domestic bliss in an alternate reality created by Alana, and discovered a future intelligence residing in the body of his son. He shook his head wearily. After all that, why not a disappearing Marine as well?

  “Tom!”

  Diana came rushing into the jewelry shop. A quick glance at the trashed store, and her partner’s brooding expression, told her all she needed to know. “Your guy got away, too?”

  “I’m afraid so.” He thrust his sidearm back into its holster. “DeMeers?”

  She shook her head. “I lost him in all the chaos upstairs.” She let out a heavy sigh. “So now we’ve got two missing suspects?”

  “That’s about the size of it,” he admitted. He glanced around at the scattered debris. “At least the Market is still standing.” Given that this part of Seattle was largely built on loose, soggy soil, they were lucky that the ground hadn’t liquefied beneath them.

  A window at the rear of the shop offered a breathtaking view of Elliott Bay. In the distance, the immense snowy bulk of Mount Rainier hovered ominously above the scenery like a castle in the sky.

  “Yeah,” Diana said grimly. “For now.”

  FOUR