by Wes Lowe
The blast shocked Steve but instead of slamming the brakes, he hit the accelerator and rammed into a large root. The Jeep got stuck and Steve could not rock it out.
“Never mind,” shouted Emil. “We can go on foot.”
Steve and Jean got out of the Jeep. Steve joined Rayna in the lead with Emil and Jean’s weapons nestled into the smalls of their backs. As they navigated through the treacherous sludge, they heard a faint din of maniacal, incomprehensible chanting, and frenzied drumming.
They circled around the corner to discover another squalid shanty encampment of tents and shacks. Smaller than the one they had left, this one had only fifty or so ‘structures.’ There were obviously no toilets or running water, but plenty of garbage, along with animal and human feces.
Studying the inhabitants milling about, the perplexed Rayna mused softly to Steve, “Why are these people so different than Malpasse? Those ones were ready to give up on life but here? They seem more confident, more sure of life.”
Steve motioned with his head for Rayna to study the faces a little harder. “That’s false confidence. It’s not hope or strength or goodwill, but aggression and savagery.”
His head swiveled in a quick motion in the direction of two trembling young girls. While they were silent, their desperate paralyzed eyes and bruised bodies spoke more loudly than words could ever express. “See that, Rayna? I’m sure they are recent rape victims. Probably multiple times.”
Looking ahead, the source of the frenetic music revealed itself.
There was a large tent. At the tent’s entrance was a bare tree where two corpses, one mutilated, the other burned, hung. Beside the tree, canopies sheltered a group of six women dressed in white gowns and white dresses. The worshippers ignored the hundreds of flies as they doused their faces and arms with the gleaming red blood of newly killed pigs in front of the tent’s entrance.
Dancing to the chanting and pounding of drums of three male musicians, the women in white dresses surrounded a young naked girl who lay twitching on the grounds gyrating in a circle to the hypnotic rhythms. From her deadened eyes and limp body, Rayna was furious, absolutely sure that the girl had been raped and that her young life was ebbing rapidly.
“Voodoo,” said Steve ominously, regretting his earlier dismissal of the Haitian religion. “In Haiti, there is much Catholic influence on voodoo. More than sixty percent of the nation practices it in some form. They are calling on their God.”
“God?” replied Rayna, teeth clenching tight as she remembered Rodrigo, the hotel keeper’s warning. “I call it the devil.”
9
Back to School
Two Years Ago
* * *
Davy and Carter decided to use Kansas City as a basis of operations to build their nuke. Although they as yet had not determined where they would strike, they did want a target that was close to the ocean. As Kansas was in the center of the United States, the Caribbean Sea, Pacific and Atlantic oceans were all reasonably accessible.
Kansas City was also an inexpensive place to operate from. An old abandoned eighteen-room school on the outskirts of the city was chosen to be their base of operations. The name plaque in the front identified itself as “Kingston Elementary 1919.” Changing economics and demographics along with declining birth rates forced the educational facility’s closure several years ago. The building had drained money for so long that city officials practically kissed Davy’s feet when he offered to rent the building. Their monthly losses were instantly cut in half.
“It worked,” said Davy on a call to Carter. The rental contract was put in the name of Donald Samuels, one of the identities created by Octavius. It was the first test of one being used, and it passed with flying colors.
“We’ll get a batch more for both of us,” was Carter’s reply.
With so much space, it not only provided ample room for the equipment and a living space for Davy, but also for any employees they would need to house. But more than saving money, they needed a space where no one would question the random comings and goings of different trucks and visitors. Carter would be an infrequent visitor, but under no circumstances did he want to be identified. Nor did they want nosy neighbors snooping around and asking about the contents of the delivery vehicles.
While Davy had technical smarts, manual labor was not in the wheelhouse of the former medical specialist.
After a careful thorough search, sixty-year-old Willie Wood was approached. The grizzled and buzz cut Willie was a machinist who’d had jobs in lumber, heavy machinery and manufacturing custom auto parts. Sadly, a heavy drinking problem prevented him from keeping a job for any length of time and he had to resort to petty theft and occasional jobs with organized crime to survive.
Like many with substance abuse issues, Willie did not accept that he was responsible for his behavior. Instead, he blamed “the man” for his failed marriages, his problems with alcohol, and his inability to keep a job.
While for any “normal job” Willie’s attitude would be a strike against him, it was this anti-societal perspective that set Willie apart from other more qualified candidates without his baggage.
When Davy described the nuts and bolts of what he and Carter wanted to achieve, Willie dove into his duties with vigor—the idea that he could get back at the system that had betrayed him with a grand gesture granted him a renewed purpose for life.
Nuke ‘em, boys.
About eight months after Willie began, Carter came for one of his periodic but infrequent visits. The vast-spaced school gym had been converted to a machine shop and Carter was more than pleasantly surprised at what Willie had accomplished.
The aging hardwood floor had been ripped out and replaced with a layer of concrete, then covered with another layer of heavy duty urethane. All the equipment had been purchased— lathes, drilling presses, furnace and shop tools—everything needed to grind, cut, and shear to shape the intended nuke.
“And I got a special surprise. Even you don’t know about this Davy, and we been living and working for months now,” continued Willie. He led Davy and Carter to the old music room. When Willie opened its doors, the two masterminds’ mouths opened with pleased astonishment.
“Are you planning Armageddon?” asked Carter, hardly able to contain his enthusiasm.
Inside were three hundred pounds of gunpowder, signal flares, 500-foot spools of PETN- filled detonating cord, sixty-seven firearms ranging from a WWII Bren machine gun to AK47s, silencers, a hundred sticks of TNT, about four hundred grenades, fifty bricks of C4, SEMTEX, sheet explosives, twenty rocket launchers, zip guns, thousands of rounds of ammunition, different types of high-explosive fuses, igniters, detonators and detonator cords…
“We’re not going to need all this,” stated Davy. “And I certainly didn’t tell you to buy this.”
Willie chuckled. “No, you didn’t. I bought this out of what you been paying me just in case you need to change directions. I been mapping out in my mind what we’re trying to do and there’s all kinds of things that might screw up. If it does, we can do it the old-fashioned way,” grinned Willie.
“And what’s with all this hydrogen and acetone peroxide?” asked Davy.
“It’s stuff I experiment with. Brussels. Paris. Manchester. ISIS bombers. They all made their own explosives out of it—TATP—and I want to try that out too.”
“I think you wasted your money,” said Davy. “We won’t need that with a nuke.”
Carter was silent and hid his satisfaction at what Willie had shown them. The money didn’t come out of Willie’s pocket but his. He knew how fixed Davy was on having a nuclear weapon, but he wanted to have an insurance policy… just in case.
10
Death of a Dream
Four Months Ago
* * *
For the next year and a half, Davy and Carter investigated the former Soviet Union possibilities of acquiring Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) or any other potential fissionable material for their bomb.
/> They had to be cautious. Neither of them had a Rolodex of black market uranium dealers. The internet, even the dark web, could provide only so much intel. Some of it had to be done in person and this task fell to Carter.
Carter’s cover for his research was his wife. Marlena loved to travel to Europe for shopping, and to visit art galleries and museums. He often accompanied her, begging off occasional days where he might secretly visit Moldova, the Ukraine, Georgia, or Bulgaria. He would interview former government officials, military officers, ship captains and mobsters, in bars, restaurants, military bases and even university campuses. All claimed to have ready access to the tons of nuclear material stored in military, educational or industrial sites and it was Carter’s job to assess their legitimacy.
To a man, and they were all men, the potential sellers claimed that their weapons grade uranium came from nuclear reactors, research facilities and submarine reactors. Despite their claims, it didn’t take long to figure out that most were shysters, cheats or incompetents.
But time was becoming more of the essence. Davy, while stable, no longer had the stamina he once had, and his energy levels often sagged.
Carter was eventually introduced to “Nikolai,” who claimed to be a former Major General in the Russian Army. Nikolai claimed to have run a military defense nuclear lab in the early 1990s before the break-up of the former Soviet Union.
Several factors gave Carter confidence that Nikolai was legit. First of all, Nikolai scoffed at him when Carter told him that he would pay a million dollars for ten pounds of Uranium 235. Nikolai said that amount would cost a hundred times that if not more. Carter knew that. Other brokers he had talked to were eager to leap at the deal, disqualifying them immediately.
An enticing factor that made Carter lean toward Nikolai was that the former military general could arrange shipment to the United States without problems. One of his cousins was a U.S. licensed and permitted importer of alcohol. With a business office in Brooklyn, the cousin annually imported ten thousand cases of high end vodka. It would not be difficult for him to hide fifty pounds of high quality fissile material in false-bottomed, lead-lined storage cases.
Nikolai also demonstrated the radioactive strength of his fissile material. He brought out a small lead container, the size of a pocket-sized wedding ring box which he claimed contained two grams of his product. He took out a portable Geiger counter. Placing it next to the little box, the Geiger counter sounded the strong, distinctive clicking that alerted the presence of radiation, even through the lead shielding, Nikolai offered Carter the box so that he could bring it back to the United Sates to test. Much as he wanted to, Carter knew the chances of getting detected by airport security were extremely high so he declined the offer.
With pricing for radioactive material all over the map, Carter was still unable to convince Nikolai to reduce his price of one million American dollars of fissile material. It would not be the preferred U-235 but it would definitely make a nuclear bomb. The Russian shrugged indifferently when Carter said he needed to think about it.
While Carter remained wary, he knew that a decision had to be made quickly.
When he got back to the United States, Carter corroborated that Nikolai’s cousin was a bona-fide importer of vodka and that the two men were “close, like brothers.”
Carter and Davy discussed all of Carter’s intel. The final decision to go ahead with Nikolai was made when Davy commented, “Right now, I’m good to go. I might be good for another year, two years, five years or I might be gone in six months.”
Davy insisted on going with Carter to Georgia to personally evaluate the fissile material and that they would finalize the deal together.
The opportunity to return to Europe came faster than Carter anticipated.
Despite the fact that she and Carter had recently returned from Europe, Marlena mentioned that she wished she had another week in Europe to visit a newly re-opened art gallery in Italy. Carter was quick to suggest that he would gift the trip to her as an early anniversary present.
Carter gave Davy a call to update him. “Marlena and I are going for eight days to Italy. She, of course, is going to wander through some god-awful galleries while we can go meet Nikolai, hand the bandit our million bucks, and you can test the goods.”
As always, Marlena had no objection to Carter taking off by himself for a few days when they arrived in Rome. Truth be told, she found it annoying to explain an artist’s motives and background to her uncultured husband when they looked at a sculpture or painting together. By herself, she could experience the Borghese Gallery’s exquisite art collection, especially Bernini’s magnificent sculpture Apollo and Daphne, uninterrupted by Carter’s impatience. Even better, she wouldn’t have to put up with his impatient boredom when she went shopping for clothes.
To keep under the radar, Davy arranged for an independent air cargo company to fly them to Tbilisi, the ancient capital of Georgia, for cash.
After their uncomfortable three-hour flight on a decrepit Soviet airship, Carter and Davy were greeted by a scruffy, pock-marked middle-aged man. The guy looks more like a factory worker than the late Ashnan Khasshoggi, the suave billionaire Saudi arms dealer.
Carter frowned. “Where is Nikolai?”
“Busy,” was the man’s highly accented tobacco-laden answer. “I’m Alexander. I am Nikolai’s partner. I look after you. Everything.”
“You got the goods?” asked Davy, jittering more than he would have liked to.
“Everything,” grinned the self-assured Alexander. “You got our package?”
Carter patted his padded vest which had three thousand used one-hundred dollar bills hidden in its lining. He unzipped an inner pocket and flashed it for Alexander to see. “The rest is in here.” He lifted his metal briefcase that was handcuffed to his wrist.
A grinning Alexander gave Carter the thumbs up. “We go, now.”
The three walked to an awaiting Ukrainian-manufactured beater—a rusted black ZAZ Zaporozhets.
“This is the people’s car,” stated Davy, trying to show off his knowledge. “Just like an old Volkswagen Beetle.”
“Great,” said the uncomfortable Carter, trying hard to breathe in the vehicle that reeked not only of stale cigarette smoke, but the chemical stench of alcohol.
Fortunately, the drive was only about ten minutes before they arrived at a weathered concrete warehouse with a few vehicles of similar vintage to Alexander’s parked in the front.
Alexander drove around to the back of the building and parked by some rusted iron stairs. He waved his hand in the direction of the second floor and simply said, “Up.”
Davy looked askance at the rickety steps—he was having a hard time breathing and knew he couldn’t possibly manage them. He glanced to Carter. “You go.”
Carter had barely exited the car when from behind a dumpster, three thugs wearing balaclavas and armed with iron bars came at him.
Alexander was enjoying himself. An ugly arctic grin crossed his face as he shouted, “Stupid Yankees. You think we will give away our treasures to anybody with a dollar bill?”
After thirty seconds, he spat on the ground and ordered, “Leave him alone.”
“That was exactly what I was afraid of,” said the surly Carter as they boarded a different cargo plane to head back to Rome.
Carter had a bruised face, lacerated lips, cracked ribs, and a deep cut below his eye. The only thing that saved him from having his hand sliced off to get at the cash inside the briefcase was his quick reaction. When he saw the thugs coming at him, he immediately activated the unlocking mechanism on the handcuffs. He then opened the briefcase and threw it up in the air. The money scattered, and the goons abandoned their assault to scoop up the cash. With Davy still in the passenger’s seat, Carter leapt into the driver’s seat of the Zaporozhets and took off, hoping against hope that they could retrace the route back to the airfield.
At least they got that part right.
Now they were i
gnominiously squeezed onto a plane in between two huge cardboard boxes carrying who knew what.
Carter glanced over to his trembling friend whose eyes had lost their zest for life. No anger; no frustration; no nothing. At first Carter worried that Davy was on the brink of a seizure, but then it hit him.
Davy wanted to be alive to see the devastation and to go out in a blaze of glory.
That no longer seemed possible.
Carter had an idea but he knew this was not the time to bring it up to Davy. Dreams die hard and time was needed to mourn before there could be a rebirth.
Instead, he spent his time making phone calls and discussing his injuries with different makeup artists in Rome. There was no way that he could allow Marlena to see him in his present condition. Not because he or she cared—sure, she was an eleven out of ten, but she was also a stone-cold fish in the sack.
Carter just didn’t want her to tell her Daddy or his that he had been in an altercation somewhere, somehow.
11
The Pitch
Two Months Ago
* * *
Languishing in his own private hell, Davy had given up. Nikolai had disappeared from the face of the earth, as had his cousin in New York—if he really was his cousin. They had gotten played by Russian sharks and had no more money to stay in their pool.
For a month he had ignored all of Carter’s phone calls, emails and text messages. The only reason Willie wasn’t fired was that they didn’t want him immediately ratting them out. Davy drew a long breath. He was feeling crappier since returning from Georgia. He didn’t know if it was because his declining health was accelerating, or if it was a mental thing.