Chapter 3
Foggy Bottom was the Metro stop that fed George Washington University, as well as Georgetown. It was the last D.C. stop on the Blue Line west before it slipped under the Potomac and headed into Virginia. Just a stone’s throw away from the Watergate and the Kennedy Center, six blocks from the White House, it was one of the deepest Metro stops in the system, with an escalator that defied gravity and was constantly under repair. You could cut half an hour off your gym workout if you climbed those stairs.
Sam’s mind was a blur, but she processed the information quickly. She had training for these types of situations—in the post 9/11 world, all law enforcement in Nashville had been given extensive briefings and training sessions, and as head of the medical examiner’s office, she’d been a part of that. Her first inclination was to figure out how to help.
“Stay here,” she said to Reggie and Elizabeth.
“Where are you going?”
“To see what I can do to help.”
“Dr. Owens, it’s not safe.”
She turned back to Reggie and Elizabeth. “I’ll be very careful. I promise. You follow the instructions you’re given by the doctors and nurses here.”
She booked it to the exit. The scene had changed dramatically in the fifteen minutes they’d been inside the hospital. Blue and white lights flashed, and she could hear shouting. The street was littered with fire engines, HAZMAT trucks, cops, ambulances and first responders rushing purposefully toward the Metro. Crime scene tape had already gone up around the park and the roads were closed, traffic being diverted away from the scene. Techs in Tyvek suits with SCBA—self-contained breathing apparatuses—streamed down the frozen escalator. A uniform shouted at Sam, gesticulating wildly toward the medical center. The message was clear. Get the hell out of the way.
The only comfort Sam took from the scene was that it was still intact. A suitcase bomb would have eliminated the area.
So not nuclear. Biological or chemical. It could be anything, really. Her mind started into overdrive, and she could swear she was starting to itch. She hoped it was a psychosomatic response.
A first receiver, bundled in Tyvek and nearly unrecognizable as a male aside from his size, stopped her. People dressed similarly were streaming past them into the bowels of the Metro.
“Ma’am, were you in the Metro?”
“No. What’s happening? I’m a doctor, with disaster training. Can I help?”
“Not until we can be sure you’re okay. Get inside the hospital. You’ll be decontaminated and asked to stay for observation.”
“I just came from the hospital. I’m fine. I want to help.”
The receiver shook his head and pointed toward the doors. “Too bad. You’ve exposed yourself. You have to go though the process. Get inside.”
Oh, son of a bitch. She shouldn’t have gone back out until the scene had cleared. Now she was going to be stuck.
Sam was tempted to disregard him, to surge forward, but the thought was fleeting. She’d just be in the way.
She turned and went back into the hospital. A line was forming on the right side of the emergency room, snaking down the hall. Sam knew immediately what they were doing: triage for the people who were in the Metro, and triage for those who weren’t. So whatever substance this was, they were taking precautionary measures for the people who were close to the attack, and a whole different set for those actually exposed to the contaminant.
Another receiver met her, this time a no-nonsense nurse with steel-gray hair and a sharp chin. Sam tried again. “I’m a doctor. What are we dealing with? What kind of toxin?”
The woman shook her head. “We don’t know anything just yet, sugar. Now shut up and get in line, you’re holding things up.”
Nurses. The same everywhere. All dedicated to helping, and no time for bullshit.
Maybe this was just a massive false alarm. She prayed fervently that was the case, but the precautions now being taken—those that she could see, anyway—precluded that.
Sam was passed from hand to hand, interviewed briefly, and when it was clear she hadn’t been in the Metro proper, nor was exhibiting any symptoms, was sent to yet another line. People formed in behind her, more excited than scared.
What the hell was going on? Sam wasn’t used to being incapacitated like this. She felt just fine. Obviously the exposure was in the Metro. She could see people coming in on stretchers, their clothes rapidly being cut off and disposed of, oxygen applied. One man was intubated, the rest were just moaning. Sam watched the first receivers bathe his body with a solution of soapy water, getting whatever he had been exposed to off his skin.
Words were starting to float around now, from the people coming in off the street.
Respiratory distress. Coughing. Burning eyes. White powder.
Sam’s trained mind went to a different place.