The Dirksen Senate Office Building was in the northwest part of the Capitol complex on First Street. I was heartened when I spotted some national media trucks at the curb outside the majestic white marble building. At least we had a shot now at giving people a warning.
I also noticed some familiar faces waiting on the sidewalk beside the building's steps. I shook hands with my old professors Gail Quinn and Claire Dugard. Dr. Charles Groh was there in his wheelchair. I patted his shoulder and squeezed it.
"Go get 'em, Oz," Groh said, turning the pat into a hug. "You can do this."
Chloe and I continued into the building, where white-shirted Capitol cops manned metal detectors. In the sweeping marble atrium behind them, spiffy Senate staffers, lobbyists, and press people swarmed about like bees in a hive, making honey and royal jelly. More shabbily dressed groups of people waited in line behind velvet ropes and looked bored.
As we headed for the security desk, we had to walk around a massive public art installation, a thirty-foot-tall sculpture that looked like a stainless steel oak tree. "Hi, I'm here for the ten o'clock hearing for the Committee on Environment and Public Works," I said to the cop behind the desk. He was a big handsome black man with a shaved head and a face as hard to crack as a bank safe.
He sighed as he lifted his clipboard. "Name?" he said.
"Jackson Oz," I said. "O z, Oscar Zulu."
He tsk-tsked as he shook his head at his clipboard. "Hmm. No Oz," he said, and stared back up at me.
"There must be a mix-up," I said. "I was invited by Senator Gardner yesterday at the last minute. Could you double-check with his office for me?"
The crime dog looked at me as if I'd asked to borrow his gun.
"Please?" tossed in Chloe, sweetening the sauce.
"Fine," he said, leaning back in his squeaky leather chair and chinning the receiver of the desk phone. "Now I'm a receptionist, I guess."
He punched some numbers. Then he turned in his chair and mumbled into the phone. He had a slight smirk on his face when he hung up.
"Just what I thought. They told me to watch out for you activist crazies at dispatch. Sorry, buddy. You're not on the list, and you need to go now."
My stomach fell inside me like an elevator that had snapped a cable. I exchanged a baffled look with Chloe.
"Did they say why?" I said.
"Don't push it," the cop said. "There's the exit. Use it."
I thought quickly. "The website said that some seats are open to the public. Can't we just attend as spectators, then?"
He gave a dismissive noise through his nose, half chuckle and half snort. "How long you been in D.C.?" he said, pointing down the corridor behind him at the line of people behind the velvet rope.
"You see those folks?" he said. "Lobbyists have been paying those sorry individuals twenty bucks an hour for the last two days to wait on line in order to snag a seat for that hearing. First come, first served here, buddy, and it's been served for some time."
He turned to Chloe with a genuinely sorry expression on his face. "Sorry, sweet cheeks. A pretty face can only get you so far in this town. 'Bye, now."
Chapter 41
THE SPECTATORS WEREN'T the only ones who'd been served, I thought, fuming as we walked away from the desk.
I couldn't believe what we were being told. Was this some sort of sick joke?
On the steps outside the building I took out my phone and dialed Senator Gardner's office.
"Yes?" said a quick, impatient female voice.
Elena Wernert, the staffer who had called me the day before.
"This is Jackson Oz," I said. "There's been a mistake. Security's not letting me into the hearing."
"Yes, well. I've been trying to contact you, Mr. Oz," Wernert said. "We're not going to be able to accommodate you after all. The hearing is full."</ol>
"Bullshit," I said. "Bull. Shit!"
"Funny you should use that term, Mr. Oz," Wernert spat. "Because bullshit is exactly what we've been hearing about you. We were led to believe that you were a Columbia scholar, but we've looked into your background. You neglected to inform us of some of the more radical claims on your blog. We need some insight into the animal conservation problems we've been having, not some lunatic with a conspiracy theory about animals taking over the planet. We're sorry, but Senator Gardner doesn't need to associate with wing-nut bloggers."
I knew it. More politics, more people covering their asses rather than actually trying to understand what's happening in the real world. It was Washington at its finest.
I took a deep breath.
"There is an imminent threat, ma'am," I said. "Perhaps if you'd taken time out of your busy day, you could have come by the meeting yesterday and seen for yourself. Animal behavior is changing radically and alarmingly, and people are dying. I can prove it."
"It doesn't make the slightest shred of sense," Wernert said. "Why is it happening?"
"I'm not sure. Not yet. That's one of the questions we need to figure out. But the why of it is not what's at stake at the moment, Ms. Wernert. You don't have to know why your house is on fire to run for the exit. Warnings need to be sent out right now for people to be wary of animal aggression."
"Right. I'm afraid that'll fly like a lead balloon on CNN," Wernert said. "Senator Gardner tells the public, ‘Lock up your killer Shih Tzu.'"
"Please. At least let me show Senator Gardner the film I have." I was irritated to hear a new note of begging in my voice.
"The senator has more important things to do than become involved with your fringe theory. He's booked solid for the next month. Good-bye." Wernert hung up.
I stared at my phone. To come this far just to be sold down the river was unacceptable. I didn't even care about all the time and effort it took me to put this presentation together. It was the fact that the public needed to hear what I had to say, and that the facts were being hidden by the very people who were supposed to be protecting the populace.
Senator's blessing or not, a warning needed to go out. No one else was going to do it. It was up to me.
I looked at the media people down by the door, gathered for the environmental hearing that was starting to get underway, and a plan came to me.
As I walked back toward the metal detectors, I turned and stopped. Then I climbed up on the platform base of the giant indoor sculpture, jumped up, and caught the first branch of the stainless steel tree.
Lawyers and politicians and even some real people stopped and started pointing as I scurried up to the top.
"Excuse me!" I called to everyone through cupped hands. "Excuse me. I have something important to say."
"Oz?" Chloe said, looking up at me from the lobby floor. "What are you doing?"
"The only thing left to do," I called down to her. "The people need to know."
Chapter 42
"EXCUSE ME!" I shouted. "Everyone-I am a scientist. My name is Jackson Oz, and I was invited to speak at an environmental hearing for the US Senate before I was mysteriously uninvited."
I glanced down to see the cop who'd just eighty-sixed us standing beneath the tree, his gun in one hand, his radio in the other.
I paused, swallowed, continued.
"An environmental disturbance of global proportions is happening. Three days ago, in Botswana, more than a hundred people were killed by wild animals. I believe this epidemic is spreading worldwide. Everyone may be in jeopardy. Be on the lookout for sudden aggression in animals-"
An alarm sounded. I paused. A piercing white light strobed, and the hallway reverberated with clanging bells. From deeper inside the building, I could hear an approaching herd of stomping footfalls.
I bit my lip. I thought maybe I'd grab a little attention from a reporter or two before I was arrested, but now I was worried. After 9/11, this was probably one of the best-guarded places on earth. Maybe my plan wasn't as brilliant as it sounded a moment before.
That thought was confirmed as a team of men in black fatigues appeared from an interior hallway, swinging M16s and riot shields. As the SWAT team came through the ringing metal detectors, I could see the letters CERT flashing in silver tape across the backs of their flak jackets.
"Get down from there! Now!" a mustached man in a tactical helmet called from the skinny end of a crackling megaphone as he trained the business end of his M16 at my chest.</ol>
I was doing just that, kneeling down to hang-jump off the metal branch, when I heard a boom, and what felt like an A-Rod line drive hit me in the back of my right hand. My grip faltered and I dropped to the marble floor like a bag of meat.
I looked at my hand. It felt broken. It looked like I'd been stung by a hornet the size of a kitten. I'd been shot with some type of nonlethal round. A rubber bullet, I guessed.
But that was the least of my problems. Two blinks later, there was a violent, zinging pain in the backs of my legs and my teeth involuntarily clenched as I started shaking.
"You are being Tasered. Don't move, you squirrelly little prick," said a voice so close to my head I could smell the onions on his breath.
That was easy: I couldn't move, as my muscles were being zapped into paralysis. Even after the Taser's fishhooks were ripped from my back, it still felt like someone was boring into my skull with an electric drill. My brain was numbed.