Thirst for Justice Read online

  The odometer on his handlebars indicated that thirty-six miles had passed since he left home. According to the map, he was now directly north of the reservoir. He spotted an old logging road, separated from the highway by a deep trench. Beyond the trench was a closed metal gate that sported a No Trespassing sign riddled with bullet holes. He pulled over and pretended to fiddle with his chain while checking for passing vehicles. Seeing none, he hefted the bike onto his shoulder, grunting as he dashed through the trench and around the gate intended to dissuade off-road vehicle users. Once on the logging road, Michael pedaled hard for a minute before stopping to look back over his shoulder. The highway was invisible, blocked by the thick regenerating forest, stout Douglas firs straining upwards and competing for the sun’s rays.

  He was trespassing in the no-go zone of Seattle’s primary drinking water reservoir. Keeping people out protected water quality. If caught, he could face steep fines and even jail time. He would try to play the role of the innocent mountain bike aficionado, looking for new terrain to conquer. In truth, however, today’s trip was a dress rehearsal for an event that could not be explained away so easily.

  The old logging road was in rough shape. There were no other visible human tracks—no footprints or tire tracks. There were deer droppings, and one pile of bear scat. Michael stopped and poked the scat with his foot. It was dry, old. No cause for concern. Then the hairs on the back of his neck stood erect. He was being watched.

  By whom, or by what? He stood, legs straddling the bike, eyes scanning the forest, looking for movement.

  Not more than twenty feet from where he stood, a doe and two speckled fawns had stepped out of the woods. The fawns couldn’t be more than a couple of months old. All three of them had sensed Michael and frozen, their big dark eyes watching him warily, ears pivoting like satellite dishes trying to pick up danger signals. He burst into nervous laughter and the deer bolted, springing effortlessly back into the forest and out of sight.

  Michael took a deep breath and resumed pedaling. Saplings, fallen trees, and thick clumps of salal occasionally blocked his way. Some he rode over, some he rode around. Twice he had to stop, dismount, and push his bike through a narrow gap while ducking branches. Although his watch read 9:22 a.m., it seemed like twilight because the tree canopy had closed overhead, filtering out most of the day’s weak sunlight. The road was mostly a descent, down toward the reservoir. Easy pedaling.

  He noticed a change in vegetation. More cedars, alders with new leaves unfurling, and even patches of skunk cabbage as the microclimate grew damper. As he crested a small rise, the reservoir came into view. It was beautiful. There was no fence, no patrol, nothing between Michael and the water. He dismounted, leaning the bike against the armored bark of an impressive Douglas fir. Before leaving the cover of the forest, Michael took a good look through his binoculars. No sign of security. No sign of other humans. He was struck by the gap between the government’s rhetoric and the on-the-ground reality. Municipal websites boasted that the Chester Morse Reservoir was protected by an armed security force. And yet here he was.

  Michael sauntered out of the forest for a closer look. With eighty or ninety years of growth healing the logging scars, the watershed was truly striking. Whereas old-growth forests were an unruly patchwork quilt of trees—different species and different ages—the second-growth forest was a sweeping, gorgeous blanket of fir and hemlock with the luxuriant look of velvet. To the east was magnificent Meadow Mountain, the tallest peak in the watershed. The reservoir’s water looked crystal clear, inviting. He could see the sandy bottom.

  Michael heard a low droning noise behind him. He turned and sprinted back toward the shelter of the forest. A small single-propeller airplane was zigzagging back and forth in a grid pattern, clearly patrolling the watershed.

  Chapter 11

  Michael cycled home, unsettled by the close call with the aerial surveillance. Days passed, and he could not seem to let go of his idea, which was quickly evolving into an actual plan. He avoided people, getting up before Maria to do research, ducking most of Dom’s invitations to go for coffee or runs. He needed to shock people in a manner that caused maximum effect with minimal risks to public health. That was the key. He dimly realized that he was coming to think of the unthinkable as the only way forward. On some level, he understood that he was in trouble, that he had been damaged by his experiences in Africa, but he was unwilling to seek help, stubbornly determined that he could work through his anguish himself. He threw himself into the planning for his attack, believing that he could stop and pull the plug at any time, that he had not yet reached the point of no return.

  Two weeks later, Michael was on the brink of breaking the law for a second time. This evening’s plan involved a more serious offense than merely sneaking around in an off-limits watershed. He was about to steal from the hospital where he worked.

  As an emergency room physician, Michael had a key card that allowed him to open just about any door in the hospital. When a doctor in scrubs or a white lab coat opened doors, nobody batted an eyelash. As always, Michael traveled between floors by taking the stairs. He rarely saw anyone else in the stairwell, apart from the occasional physiotherapist working with a patient, and today would be no exception.

  The hospital laundry facilities were in the basement, along with the backup generator and the main supply room. His shift was over, but he was still wearing green scrubs and a hair cap. His stethoscope dangled around his neck like a charm, not unlike the Mai Mai general warding off evil spirits with a shower­head. He slid his key card through the slot adjacent to the door of the supply room. The motion-activated lighting system silently turned on as he entered, illuminating the rows of cleaning supplies—paper towels, toilet paper, antibacterial hand soap. Michael pulled on a fresh pair of thin plastic surgical gloves to avoid putting fingerprints on anything he touched.

  He couldn’t see any video cameras on the walls or suspended from the ceiling. Satisfied that nobody was watching, Michael walked up and down the aisles, looking for one of a series of trade names. PerSec. Perklone. DowPer. Dr. Google had provided names and images. Michael slowed down as he came to a row that housed a variety of laundry products.

  And there they were. A shelf of plastic jugs, each bearing the skull and crossbones. Perklone. Each jug contained five liters of perchloroethylene, perc or PCE for short, also known as tetrachloroethylene. An industrial solvent used as dry-cleaning fluid, a spot remover, and a degreaser. Nasty, frightening stuff. Tests on laboratory animals indicated that long-term exposure to perc caused respiratory difficulties, liver damage, kidney failure, reproductive abnormalities, and cancer. At high concentrations, acute health effects could result from breathing it, swallowing it, or allowing it to come into contact with the skin.

  Perc was one of the most toxic chemicals to emerge from a biohazard laboratory in the twentieth century. A single liter would dry-clean about ten thousand suits and dresses when diluted to proper concentrations. For years, environmental groups had called for a ban, but millions of pounds of the chemical were still produced annually. In recent years, it had started to show up in the groundwater and drinking water of a few communities, as it leaked out of contaminated industrial sites. From his research, Michael knew that the Environmental Protection Agency had established a limit for the maximum permissible concentration of perc in drinking water of five parts per billion. That meant just one gallon of perc could contaminate almost 200 million gallons of water to the point where the concentration of the chemical exceeded the EPA’s maximum permissible level.

  Sweat beaded on Michael’s forehead and stained the armpits of his scrubs. He took one jug down from the shelf and put it into his duffel bag, covering it with a ratty old Washington Huskies T-shirt. He added a second jug and stuffed another T-shirt between the jugs so they didn’t make odd noises. He headed for the door, eager to get out of the hospital and get home and stash his perverse booty in th
e garage.

  Just as his fingers touched the doorknob it started to turn. Someone was on the other side of the door.

  “Hola, señor,” said the smiling orderly who opened the door. He was a man whom Michael often saw buffing the floors and washing the walls. They had a cordial tradition of exchanging greetings in Spanish. “Hola,” said Michael. The orderly didn’t seem the slightest bit curious as to why a doctor was in the supply room. He held the door open, and Michael walked away, carrying about ten kilograms of a toxic chemical in his gym bag.

  * * *

  Dom finally convinced Michael to join him for another trail run. They met at Discovery Park. Between his work at the hospital, his obsessive efforts to launch the Blue Drop Foundation, and his chronic sleep deprivation, Michael wasn’t exactly rounding into racing shape. Once again it was more a case of meeting Dom, warming up together, and then doing separate runs along the same trails followed by a conversation over coffee and croissants.

  “Any progress on the project?” Dom asked, stirring two teaspoons of sugar into his Americano.

  “Nope. Just a growing stack of rejection letters. Let’s not talk about that, okay?”

  “Well, you don’t seem interested in small talk anymore. Football? Baseball? Basketball? Or are sports no longer interesting to you?”

  “I just don’t have time—”

  “You used to be a Mariners fanatic! You knew everything about that team, from the earned run average of Félix Hernández to the best prospects in the farm system. You loved baseball, and now you don’t have time? That’s a bit sad, my friend.”

  “Haven’t watched a game since I’ve been home. And there’s no ESPN in the Congo.”

  “Come on, ESPN is everywhere!” The sugar and caffeine were amplifying and accelerating Dom’s voice.

  “There’s just other stuff on my mind these days.”

  “No kidding! What do you want to lecture me about today?”

  “No lecture—more like questions. I was wondering what you think about terrorism.”

  “I knew it! Another light topic for our Saturday morning chat. You’re killing me, Doc! Terrorism? Really?”

  “I was just reading an article about Indigenous people in Latin America being described as terrorists for trying to defend their land, water, and culture from industrial development. So, I wonder if you think terrorism is inherently evil? Or can it sometimes be justified?”

  “First of all, those Indigenous people you’re describing are not terrorists. The real terrorists are the politicians and CEOs still inflicting genocide more than five hundred years after Columbus.”

  “I agree. But the article made me wonder where we draw the line. Was dropping atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima an act of terrorism?”

  “Nope. To me, those were acts of war.”

  “What about national liberation movements, like the IRA in Ireland or the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka?”

  “Not as clear. They thought they had legitimate causes.”

  “But they killed innocent people.”

  “That’s true. So, it’s complicated.”

  “Can you imagine an ethical act of terrorism? I mean, what if nobody really gets hurt?”

  “That seems oxymoronic. Although somebody wrote a book called The Good Terrorist. Give me a second here . . .” Dom thought for a minute. “Lessing. Doris Lessing. One of my girlfriends read it.”

  “What was it about?”

  “I don’t know. It was just a memorable title.”

  Michael made a mental note to read the book. “What about eco-terrorism? Disabling logging equipment or pounding spikes into trees in order to protect old-growth forests?”

  “I think those kinds of actions often do more harm than good, but so-called ecoterrorists only cause property damage, they don’t kill or hurt anyone. To me, that’s still a crime, but I wouldn’t call it terrorism.”

  “I guess it boils down to your definition. What the president sees as terrorism may be different from what Congress views as terrorism. And the courts may have an entirely different interpretation.”

  “Uh-oh, now we’re talking about lawyers and legal opinions. Out of my league, but you could ask Maria about it. Wait a minute. You’re not planning something crazy, are you?” Dom winked but Michael missed it.

  “No fucking way! Of course not! Don’t be an idiot.” Michael rubbed the side of his face.

  “I was just kidding. Lighten up! Sheesh.”

  “All right. Sorry. Enough about that.” Michael forced a smile and said, “So what about those Seahawks, anyway?”

  “Well, they’re undefeated so far.”

  “Opening day is next week, wiseguy.”

  “Exactly.”

  Dom started talking about the team and its promising outlook, but Michael was thinking about whether his plan constituted terrorism. Was he planning something crazy? A terrorist attack? Not by Dom’s definition, because nobody was going to get hurt. Except, according to a small voice in the back of Michael’s brain, Maria. Louder voices, however, drowned out that dissenting opinion, clamoring for justice and the interests of millions of African children.

  Chapter 12

  Over the next few weeks, Michael continued to probe his plan for weaknesses. He found a series of helpful documents on the internet to guide his planning and ensure his threat was taken seriously. The Environmental Protection Agency had published a “Response Protocol Toolbox: Planning for and Responding to Drinking Water Contamination Threats and Incidents.” Knowing the other side’s strategies in advance was useful.

  He was confident that he’d chosen the perfect chemical for the job. While perc was extremely toxic and capable of causing terrible health effects if consumed in large quantities or over a long period of time, the amount of perc he planned to put in the Chester Morse Reservoir was too small to cause any significant short or long-term health impacts. The chemical would be too diluted. He wanted to shock, not harm.

  He still had moments when the old Michael resurfaced. Then he would recoil from the prospect of committing what would be widely viewed as a terrorist act against the people of the United States. He recognized that many would see his actions as reprehensible. If caught, he’d potentially spend the rest of his life in prison despite not actually harming anybody. Even if he wasn’t caught, his life would never be normal again. Every phone call, every knock on the door would ignite a brushfire of fear. Yet he kept coming back to his conviction that it was the only effective means he had to force the government to act to save children’s lives. One person’s freedom, even if it was his own, seemed a small price to pay for the prospect of saving the lives of millions of kids.

  But what about Maria’s life? What would his actions do to her? He was able to rise out of his obsession enough to see that their relationship was already in deep trouble. He’d told her nothing of his plans, justifying his secrecy by telling himself that it protected her, prevented her from sharing any criminal responsibility, should that arise. Would she be frightened? Horrified? Appalled? Would it in fact, be the thing he did that finally drove her away?

  The morning after he stole the perchloroethylene, before Maria awoke, Michael slipped out of bed and went to the kitchen. He picked up his phone and dialed the number. It felt predetermined, inevitable.

  * * *

  “Hello, Dr. MacDougall. I’m pleased that you called back. Can you join us again?”

  “Yes, count me in. I passed my physical, took my shots, and my passport is good for another three years.”

  “Fantastique! That is wonderful news. Thank you so much.”

  “Will I be working in the Congo again?”

  “I cannot say for certain just yet, but it appears quite likely. And you can stay how long?”

  “How long do you need me?”

  “Well, Doctor, you know Africa. Perhaps forever.”

>   “Forever seems a little long. How about a couple of months?”

  “Two months? Three?”

  “Let’s start with two, for now.”

  “Okay. You can start how soon?”

  “I need a few days, to sort things out at home and finish a few shifts at the hospital. Oh, and can you make the same arrangement as last time for my bike?”

  “Ah yes, of course. Dr. MacDougall and his bicycle. We’ll make your flight reservations, email the details to you, and await your confirmation before finalizing the booking.”

  * * *

  He had no choice but to tell Maria that he was leaving. He steeled himself for an unpleasant breakfast. He ground some super dark coffee beans and prepped the Italian stovetop espresso maker. Maria would be coming into the kitchen any moment for a bagel with cream cheese and an Americano.

  Michael put his empty bowl and spoon in the dishwasher. “Good morning. Coffee’s on and bagel is in the toaster.”

  “Thank you. Looks like I’m actually going to be on time today.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s something I have to tell you.”

  Maria added hot water to her espresso and sat down.

  “I need to go back to the Congo. A volcano near Goma erupted, buried part of the city and messed up the water supply. There also appears to be an Ebola outbreak. IMAF needs me.”

  These were words that Maria had dreaded, yet anticipated. “If you go back again, the Michael MacDougall that I know and love may never return.”

  “That’s a bit melodramatic. Of course I’ll come back.”