The 4400- the Vesuvius Prophecy Read online

  “Guilty as charged,” she confessed. Still, the portmanteau term, melding tectonics with telekinesis, seemed to fit the ominous theory forming in her mind. “But is a man who can trigger earthquakes with his mind any more fantastic than some of the other phenomena we’ve encountered since the 4400 came back?”

  “You’ve got me there,” Tom admitted. “So you think he might be able to stir up a volcano, too? Like in Maia’s vision?”

  Diana nodded. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  Maybe moving to Seattle wasn’t such a great idea, she thought. Before joining NTAC, she had worked for the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. Georgia got pretty muggy in the summer, but at least it wasn’t a ticking geological time bomb . . .

  It was still a couple of hours until rush hour, so they made relatively good time through the dense downtown traffic. She and Tom had already alerted their respective families that they might be working late. Alana had graciously volunteered to look after Maia. Diana was grateful for one less thing to worry about.

  “And then there’s our other mystery,” Tom reminded her. “Who was that guy who tried to get to DeMeers before us?”

  Diana recalled the beefy leatherneck with the crew cut. “He looked ex-military to me. A Marine maybe.” A disturbing idea troubled her. “You don’t think our friends in Homeland Security or the NSA are behind this, do you?” It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that another arm of the government went behind NTAC’s back to deal with the 4400 on their own. Too often the Feds’ right hand was deliberately kept in the dark as to what the left hand was up to. “Maybe some sort of black-ops attempt to liquidate DeMeers before he blows up Mount Rainier?”

  “Or an attempt to recruit him,” Tom suggested, “like they did with Gary Navarro.” A ballplayer with an unwanted ability to read minds, Navarro had been unwillingly pressed into service by the NSA, who had employed him to track down and eliminate foreign-born returnees for the sake of national security. Tom scowled at the memory. “I’m sure there are folks in Langley or the Pentagon who could find uses for a genuine human earth-shaker.”

  Sadly, Diana couldn’t put it past them. She still felt guilty over her role in exposing Gary’s telepathy. Instead of helping him adjust to his new ability, the government had exploited him instead. Did the same fate await Cooper DeMeers?

  “Well, that would explain how Mister Crew Cut knew we were coming for DeMeers,” she pointed out. “Maybe one of Nina’s bosses in HomeSec tipped him off?”

  “Possible,” Tom said. “But don’t forget: she was also sharing our info with the higher-ups in charge of the state’s emergency responses. The leak might have come from there.”

  Another explanation occurred to Diana. “What about the Nova Group? They’ve been in retreat ever since we apprehended Daniel Armand, but there are still some splinter groups out there. Look at that attack on Shawn and Isabelle Tyler this afternoon.”

  NTAC had briefed them on the events at the Seattle Center, which had taken place about the same time that she and Tom had been chasing their respective fugitives through the Pike Place Market. Tom had been tempted to check on his nephew firsthand, but Agent Garrity had assured him that NTAC already had a team on the scene. Glancing behind her, she saw the Space Needle a few blocks to the southwest. From this distance, you couldn’t tell that the top of the tower was now a crime scene.

  “I’ve got to admit,” Tom said, “I don’t like the idea of the Nova Group getting their hands on DeMeers, especially if they’re still in the assassination business.”

  Diana knew he had to be worried about his nephew. Shawn’s allegiance to The 4400 Center sometimes put him at odds with NTAC, but Tom still cared deeply about his sister’s oldest son. This was twice in two weeks now that the Nova Group had targeted Shawn.

  “Too bad we can’t question Jamie Skysinger, but I guess Isabelle took care of that.” Her acerbic tone conveyed her distrust of the arrogant young woman. Diana didn’t consider herself prejudiced against the 4400, but Isabelle Tyler always gave her the creeps. It was the way Isabelle looked at you, she had once explained to Tom: like you were ant and she was deciding whether or not to pull your legs off. And then, of course, there was the way dead bodies kept turning up in Isabelle’s wake. This makes four so far.

  “Yeah, I guess,” Tom said tersely.

  Lately he looked uncomfortable whenever Isabelle’s name came up. Diana wasn’t sure what that was all about, unless perhaps he didn’t approve of Shawn’s affair with the woman. Can’t blame him there, she thought. It was hard to forget that only weeks ago Isabelle had been a two-year-old. She doubted that Isabelle’s father, Richard, was all that happy about the relationship, either.

  “We’re here,” Tom said, changing the subject.

  They cruised down University Way, better known as “the Ave.” As usual, the funky neighborhood was abuzz with activity. College students, punks, hippies, panhandlers, buskers, teenage runaways, and other varieties of street people crowded the bustling sidewalks. Bookstores, coffee houses, newsstands, music stores, ethnic restaurants, art-house theaters, pubs, clubs, and vintage clothing stores faced the wide, two-way boulevard. Diana’s bohemian sister, April, would have fit right in. Diana wondered briefly where her peripatetic sibling was right now. She hadn’t seen April since their falling-out last year, after her sister had tried to take advantage of Maia’s precognitive ability for her own personal gain. Diana caught herself instinctively scanning the faces of the pedestrians in search of April.

  She’ll turn up eventually. She always does.

  Diana noted that the Neptune Theatre was showing a double bill of Duck Soup and A Night at the Opera and wondered if Maia would like to see the Marx Brothers on the big screen. Unlike most kids these days, Maia had no objections to black-and-white films. Heck, Diana thought, she probably caught the movies on their original runs.

  Tom located a parking space on a side street intersecting the Ave. Posters for obscure bands were plastered over nearby walls and lampposts, alongside political handbills and manifestos. Diana didn’t recognize the names of any of the bands, which made her feel terminally unhip. As they got out of the car, she noted a bumper sticker on the rusty VW Bug parked in front of them: JORDAN COLLIER DIED FOR YOUR SINS. She had to wonder how many supporters the Nova Group had in this neighborhood.

  DeMeers’s address led them to the front door of a basement apartment located under an Indian restaurant. The spicy aroma of fresh curry wafted down the steps. Diana wondered if the suspect fishmonger would be careless enough to return to his home after evading them at the Market. She reminded herself that they still didn’t know for sure that Cooper DeMeers and D. B. Cooper were one and the same. Maybe DeMeers was just another paranoid 4400 who had gotten spooked by the unexpected arrival of NTAC at his place of employment? If it was even she and Tom that he had fled from. For all they knew, DeMeers might have been trying to get away from Crew Cut instead.

  We’ve got too many questions, she thought, and not enough hard facts.

  Tom knocked on the door, but nobody answered. He glanced at Diana. “What now?”

  She decided that they had probable cause that Cooper DeMeers was a legitimate threat to public safety, not to mention a wanted fugitive. The courts often granted NTAC plenty of latitude where the 4400 were concerned. Too much so, according to some. She nodded at Tom.

  “Go for it.”

  The cheap lock was no match for Tom’s brawny shoulders. They burst into a darkened room, guns drawn. Sunlight filtered through a dirty window, offering a glimpse of a cluttered living room. A startled mouse squeaked and scurried for the shadows. At first glance, the rodent seemed to be the only resident at home.

  Diana located a light switch. An overhead lamp lit up the room, exposing a modest one-bedroom apartment furnished with thrift store relics. A dilapidated recliner, its imitation leather upholstery patched with swatches of duct tape, faced an unpainted, plasterboard entertainment center. Soiled dishes were pil
ed in the sink of the attached kitchenette. A half-empty bottle of bourbon rested on the kitchen counter. A framed poster of a sleek red sportscar adorned one wall. A 2006 Seattle Seahawks calendar was pinned to a bulletin board in the kitchen. Definitely a guy’s place, Diana decided. The stuffy apartment reeked of tobacco.

  “All clear,” Tom called out from the bedroom, while Diana checked out the bathroom. Working as a team, they quickly ascertained that DeMeers was not at home. Dirty laundry on the floor smelled of fish. A solitary toothbrush suggested that he lived alone, although, oddly enough, an abrasive metal file rested in a cup alongside the toothbrush. A perfumed bottle of hair conditioner, on the other hand, implied that he might have a girlfriend who slept over sometimes. The general lack of housekeeping gave Diana the idea that he wasn’t expecting company right away.

  “No wonder he lives in U. District,” she commented. “This guy lives like a college student.”

  Tom emerged from the bedroom. “Reminds me of my old dorm room.” He surveyed their shabby surroundings. “One thing’s for sure. If DeMeers is D. B. Cooper, he blew through that two hundred grand pretty fast, if he hung on to it at all.”

  “I know what you mean,” she agreed. The rundown apartment made her own condo look like Bill Gates’s mega-mansion. “Let’s snoop around and see if we can find any answers.”

  Putting away their sidearms, the agents proceeded to search the dwelling. Diana wasn’t sure what they were looking for exactly, perhaps some clue as to DeMeers’s current whereabouts or recent activities? She wrinkled her nose in disgust; the oppressive tobacco odor made staying in the apartment a chore. Dirty ashtrays, and cigarette burns on the carpet, also betrayed the fishmonger’s unhealthy habit. Diana recalled that “Dan Cooper” had chain-smoked during that hijacking years ago, back when you could still smoke on planes. According to the FBI profile, Cooper had been a bourbon drinker, too.

  Interesting, she thought

  Playing a hunch, she fished through a waste basket until she found a crumpled cigarette carton bearing an engraved portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh.

  Bingo.

  “Check this out.” She held up the wrapper. “D. B. Cooper smoked Raleigh’s.”

  “That’s what the stewardesses on Flight 305 said all right,” Tom replied from the kitchen, where he was busy rifling through the junk drawers under the counter. He gestured at the partially drained bottle of Jim Beam. “You spot the bourbon?” He had clearly picked up on the possible significance of the booze as well.

  “You bet.” She continued to fish through the trash until she came across a wadded-up flyer at the bottom of the basket. What have we here? Her eyes widened as she unfolded the paper and perused its contents:

  FIGHT FOR THE FUTURE!

  OPPOSE THE GOVERNMENT’S FASCIST

  CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE 4400!

  FACT: The 4400 represent the next step in human evolution—and humanity’s only hope of averting a pending catastrophe.

  FACT: The U.S. Government, via its NTAC storm troopers, has systematically harassed and persecuted the 4400, their loved ones, and their supporters. They have poisoned innocent citizens via THE INHIBITOR CONSPIRACY, incarcerated numerous returnees on bogus charges, and been implicated in the death of many others.

  FACT: Kyle Baldwin, the “lone gunman” responsible for Jordan Collier’s assassination, is the SON of a high-ranking NTAC agent with a history of brutalizing the 4400. Coincidence—or proof that Collier’s death was ordered at the highest levels of the military-industrial establishment?

  A NEW WORLD DAWNS!

  The 4400 cannot save the future alone. Don’t let paranoid government officials crush humanity’s potential for the sake of “national security.” Fight back against NTAC—BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY!

  Ouch, Diana thought. The slanted take on Collier’s assassination was particularly galling; she knew for a fact that Tom’s son, Kyle, had been temporarily possessed by a hostile entity from the future when he’d shot Collier. Kyle had not wanted Collier dead, and neither had NTAC. But try convincing people of that . . .

  She walked over and handed the flyer to Tom. “Take a look at this.”

  He quickly scanned the document, his jaw tightening when he got to the part about Kyle, then looked up at Diana. “Nova Group propaganda?”

  “It sure looks like it,” she agreed. Maybe DeMeers was into more than just tossing fish for tourists? His name hadn’t showed up on any of the lists supplied by Daniel Armand, but that was no guarantee that he wasn’t affiliated with the terrorist group in some way. The Nova Group’s cells were set up so that no single individual could identify every member of the outlaw organization. “You think he’s gone from skyjacker to terrorist?”

  “Not such a big leap,” Tom observed. He returned the flyer to Diana. “Then again, the FBI always regarded Cooper’s crime as nonpolitical in nature. During the hijacking, he issued no political demands or statements, nor did any militant group ever claim responsibility for the incident. The conventional wisdom is that Cooper was just after the money.”

  Diana mulled it over. “On the other hand, DeMeers’s experiences as a 4400 could have radicalized him. Lord knows the inhibitor scandal turned a lot of the previously law-abiding returnees against the federal government. And not without reason.” She bagged the cigarette wrapper and flyer as evidence. “Even if Cooper was apolitical back in seventy-one, that doesn’t mean he has no axes to grind in the twenty-first century.”

  “You’ve got a point there,” Tom admitted. “What the 4400 have gone through would change anybody.” He extracted a small black address book from a drawer by the phone. He flipped through its pages. “I’m not seeing Armand or any of his chief lieutenants listed here, but we can check this against a full list of Nova Group members and sympathizers when we get back to the office.”

  “Sounds good,” Diana said.

  She decided to give the bedroom another pass. The unmade double bed had room for two, but Diana found only masculine attire in the nearby chest of drawers, which supported the idea that any lady friends lived elsewhere. The ubiquitous stink of tobacco competed with the fishy odor emanating from an overflowing laundry hamper. A small bookcase held a couple of shelves of paperback books. Scanning the titles, she found mostly Westerns and spy thrillers. Nothing too controversial there, she conceded. Granted, DeMeers also had a hardcover copy of Jordan Collier’s bestselling 4400 and Counting, but who didn’t these days? Most returnees had probably checked out Collier’s tome at some point. She owned two copies herself, one for home and one for the office.

  Not exactly a smoking gun.

  A peek under the bed didn’t reveal anything more incriminating than a stack of men’s magazines. She rolled her eyes as she saw that the top magazine was the issue of Playboy featuring a special pictorial on “The Women of the 4400.” Diana had been appalled when the issue first came out, even as she’d realized that it had probably been inevitable. Although most of the returnees wanted nothing more than to blend inconspicuously back into society, a few of them had invariably tried to cash in on their newfound notoriety. For instance, the magazine’s cover model: Zora Lynn Zounek, a Bettie Page lookalike from 1961, who now possessed the ability to selectively vaporize items of clothing. Last Diana heard, Zora now had an act in Vegas and a highly profitable website. Diana shook her head. Sometimes she had to wonder what on earth the future had been thinking . . .

  More promising was the locked foot locker she found tucked away in the bedroom closet. The corrugated steel trunk looked big enough to hold an encyclopedia or two. “Tom, over here.” Joining her in the bedroom, he helped her drag the locker out of the closet. Ignoring the padlock, he used a Swiss army knife to unscrew the hinges connecting the locker to its lid. He looked like he’d done this before; Diana decided she needed to invite Tom over the next time she had some Ikea furniture to assemble.

  As they flipped open the lid, Diana half expected to find stacks of unmarked twenties, left over from the $200,000
the hijacker had made off with over three decades ago. Instead they found a treasure trove of souvenirs relating to the incident: the original FBI “Wanted” poster bearing the sketch artist’s portrait; scrapbooks bulging with news clippings and magazine articles; a VHS copy of The Pursuit of D. B. Cooper, starring Treat Williams as Cooper; a handful of true-crime books on the hijacking; a hardcover novel titled simply D. B., videotaped episodes of In Search of . . ., Barnaby Jones, NewsRadio, and Prison Break; CDs, cassette tapes, and a few old vinyl records; a program for last year’s “D. B. Cooper Days” festivities; a matchbook from the Ariel Store and Tavern in Cowlitz County, and hard copy printouts from various websites, including a complete listing of the serial numbers of all ten thousand of the twenty-dollar bills paid out to D. B. Cooper in 1971.

  It was quite the collection.

  Tom whistled appreciatively. “Looks like we’ve hit the mother lode.”

  “Tell me about it,” Diana said. Suddenly, the theory that D. B. Cooper had been one of the 4400 was looking a lot more plausible. She sifted through the telltale memorabilia.

  Marco was just going to love this . . .

  SIX

  “D. B. COOPER never hurt no one, but he sure did blow some minds. . . .”

  Tom caught a snatch of a lyric from Diana’s iPod. His partner was quietly humming to herself as she checked the names in DeMeers’s address book against their lists of suspected Nova Group associates. He looked up from the screen of his laptop. After calling it quits last night, they were back on the case this morning. A photo of Cooper DeMeers was pinned to the bulletin board in their office, next to a schematic diagram of the Nova Group. DeMeers’s extensive collection of hijacking memorabilia was currently on ice in an NTAC evidence locker.

  “What’s that you’re listening to?” he asked.

  “Wha—oh, sorry.” She turned down the music and slid the headphones away from her ears. “Marco downloaded some Cooper-related songs for me.” A rueful smile lifted the corners of her lips. “Now I can’t get this silly ballad out of my head. Is it bothering you?”