Wild Fire

by Nelson DeMille

  He was on a roll, so I didn’t comment.

  He continued, “On the other hand, I find this space useful. First, for my ELF transmitter—and also as a place to store a fortune in art treasures, gold, and cash.” He made a joke. “The last IRS agent who came snooping around is still locked in a room down here.”

  Good one, Bain. Actually, this place looked like the Führerbunker, but this might not be the right time to make that comparison.

  We reached the end of the passageway, which must have run for fifty yards, and Carl unlocked a steel door, opened it, and turned on the lights.

  Madox said, “Kate, follow Carl. John, stop.”

  Kate disappeared into the doorway, and I stood there.

  Carl called out, “Clear.”

  Madox said, “John, follow.”

  I was getting a little tired of these doggie commands, but it wasn’t worth mentioning now that we were so close to . . . the end.

  I entered the room and saw that Kate again was on the floor, and Carl stood against the far wall, covering her and me as I entered.

  Madox instructed, “John, down.”

  I lay facedown on a plush blue carpet. On a professional level, I appreciated Carl and Bain’s military precision, and their textbook handling of two prisoners who, though shackled, unarmed, and outnumbered by three armed men, they understood to be potentially dangerous.

  On the downside of that, these guys weren’t giving me an inch to wiggle out of this.

  Using shackles instead of handcuffs was a judgment call, and I could see why Madox had gone with the shackles up to this point.

  The only real mistake they’d made so far was not finding the BearBangers, which was why the police strip-searched prisoners and examined the body cavities. Now that we were in the dungeon, that might very well be Madox’s next move, along with handcuffs—and that would be our signal to act.

  Meanwhile, Madox and Carl seemed to be busy with something other than us, but I caught a glimpse of Luther near the door with his M16 raised and pointed, and the muzzle sweeping back and forth between me and Kate. I didn’t see the canvas bag, which Luther had apparently stowed somewhere along the way. Therefore, the only weapons in this room were the ones we saw pointed at us.

  On the subject of weapons, Carl’s choice of an automatic shotgun in confined quarters was also very professional—bullets from high-powered rifles have a tendency to pass through people and hit other people you don’t necessarily want to hit, then ricochet and become dangerous to the shooter and his friends.

  In fact, down here, Luther’s M16 was almost as dangerous to him as it was to us. Nevertheless, I didn’t want him firing it at us.

  As for Madox’s Colt .45, it was okay in confined quarters with masonry surfaces. It would put a big hole in you at close range, and its exit velocity wasn’t usually fatal to anyone on the other side of the intended victim. Also, if it hit a concrete wall, its blunt-nosed bullet was more likely to splatter than ricochet.

  Having analyzed all that, my conclusion was that Kate and I were basically fucked. In fact, the BearBangers were getting smaller and smaller in my mind.

  Madox said, “On your knees. Hands on your heads.”

  I lifted myself into a kneeling position, with my hands on my head, and I saw Kate do the same. We were about ten feet apart in the dimly lit room, and we made eye contact. She dropped her face and eyes down toward where the BearBanger was stuck, somewhere in her jeans or panties, and probably behind her zipper. She glanced at me, and I gave a slight shake of my head. Not the right moment, I wanted to say. You’ll know when.

  I looked around the room as my eyes adjusted to the dim light.

  Madox was sitting with his back to us at some sort of electronic console that was against the far wall. I assumed that was the ELF transmitter. Eureka. Now what?

  Luther was still standing near the door, covering Kate and me with his rifle.

  Carl wasn’t visible, but I heard him breathing behind us.

  The room itself was a sparsely furnished and functional-looking office. This was obviously Bain’s atomic-war headquarters, where he could spend the day making phone calls to see if anyone was alive out there after the Big One. He probably had a ticker tape, too, to see how his defense and oil stocks were doing.

  I never understood, during the ’70s and ’80s, why people wanted to survive a nuclear holocaust. I mean, other than some cans of chili and a case of beer, I never made any long-range, post–nuclear war plans.

  But to be fair to Bain, this was mostly his ex-wife’s idea. I wondered what became of her. Wood chipper?

  Anyway, I noticed, too, that mounted on the paneled wall to the right of the electronic console were three flat screen television monitors on swing arms. They looked new and out of place in this 1980s time capsule.

  To the left of the console was a bank of six older television sets, and they were all lit, but it was hard to see the black-and-white images on them, which kept shifting. I realized these were security monitors, and I made out the gatehouse on one screen, then an image of the lodge taken from the gatehouse, which then shifted to an image of the generator building, and so forth.

  Therefore Madox would know if the cavalry arrived, and so would Kate and I. But so far, everything out there in Custer Hill land looked normal, peaceful, and quiet.

  A recurring unhappy thought was that even if the state police and the FBI busted through the gate and kicked in the doors of the lodge, no one would find us down here.

  And even if Schaeffer remembered that there was supposed to be a fallout shelter somewhere, he’d probably be looking in the basement of the lodge itself, and he might very well mistake some room down there for a fallout shelter.

  For damned sure he wasn’t going to find the hydraulic floor under the card table, and even if by some miracle he did, it would take hours or longer to get an explosive ordnance team down here to blast open that vault door.

  Wow. We were double fucked. There was only one way out of this mess, and that was the way I should have chosen this afternoon—this bastard and his buddies had to die, here and now, before they killed us, and before Madox detonated those four nukes in Sandland.

  Madox swiveled around and asked me, “Do you understand what’s happening? John?”

  “I think we established that you’re going to send an ELF wave to four receivers that are attached to nuclear detonators in four suitcase bombs.”

  “Correct.” He added, “I’ve actually begun the transmission.”

  Shit.

  He said, “Come closer. On your knees. Come on.”

  Kate and I moved on our knees closer to the console, then Carl, behind us, ordered, “Stop.”

  We stopped.

  Madox asked, “Can you see these three little windows?”

  We looked to where he was pointing to a black box on top of the console. The first window in the box was spinning a dizzying array of red LED letters, and Madox said, “I’ve sent out the first letter of the three-letter code that will detonate the four devices.” He explained, “I could have put a time clock in each of the nuclear suitcases, but then the detonation time would be preset, and out of my control. So I chose a command-detonation mode, meaning my ELF radio, which is perfect for this task, and foolproof.” He added, “I finally got my money’s worth out of this ELF station.”

  I told him, “You know, Bain, you can explore for oil with ELF waves.”

  He smiled and said, “I see you’ve done some homework.” He informed me, “I don’t need to explore for oil. I already know where it is, and the present owners are about to be nuked.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  He looked at me and replied, “Ah, the ‘why’ question.” He lit a cigarette. “Why? Because I’m fucking sick and tired of a succession of ball-less presidents kissing Arab ass. That’s why.”

  I figured he’d kissed a little Arab ass himself, and this was payback. I figured, too, I’d go along with him, and said, “You know, Ba
in, Kate and I see this shit every day in our job. Illegal Muslim immigrants being treated like they were constitutional lawyers, suspected terrorists all lawyered up and threatening to sue for false arrest.” I went on with my litany of problems on the job, but oddly, Madox didn’t seem that interested. I concluded with, “I understand your frustrations, but exploding four nuclear weapons in Sandland is not going to solve the problem. It’ll make it worse.”

  He laughed, which I thought was strange.

  Then, he swiveled around again and punched a few keys on his keyboard. He explained, “Each letter needs to be encoded with a four-letter code group.”

  “Right,” I agreed. “Can we talk about this?”

  He didn’t seem to hear me, and he appeared intent on reading his dials and listening to something on a set of headphones that he held briefly to his ear.

  I noticed that the first window in the black box had stopped spinning letters, and it was locked into a bright red “G.”

  Kate spoke up. “When the state police and FBI get here, they’re going to knock out your generators, and the antenna poles.”

  Madox was still playing with his electronics, and replied without turning around, “Kate, first, they haven’t even left police headquarters yet, which is over an hour from here. Second, they really don’t know what’s happening here. Third, even if they got here in the next thirty minutes, they’d be too late.” He explained, “This will all be over in less than twenty minutes.”

  I noticed now that the second window in the black box was spinning red letters.

  Madox swiveled in his chair and said to us, “The second letter is sent, and the four receivers in the suitcase nukes will pick it up in about fifteen minutes.”

  I thought maybe he was juking and jiving us about how much time we had left, so to show him we’d done our homework, I said, “About thirty minutes.”

  “No, fifteen. That’s how long each repetitive ELF wave will take to reach San Francisco and Los Angeles, and have its signal decoded in the receiver.”

  “The Mideast,” I corrected. “Thirty minutes.”

  “No,” said Mr. Madox impatiently. “You still don’t get it—which is good news for me.”

  Kate asked, “Get what?”

  “Get Project Green and Wild Fire.”

  Madox swiveled around again and read his electronic dials, commenting, “The generators are maintaining six thousand kilowatts.” He put his hand on the keyboard. “Now, all I have to do is type the encryption for the last letter in the three-letter code.”

  As he said that, the second letter on the black box froze at “O.” So now it read “G-O.”

  He noticed it and said, “We have a G and O. So, what’s the code word? I can’t remember. G-O-B? G-O-T?” He laughed over his shoulder at us. “G-O-C-O? No, too many letters. Help me. John? Kate? Please, God, let me remember . . . ah! That’s it. G-O-D.”

  The man was clearly having fun, while losing his marbles.

  He typed on his keyboard, and the last window began spinning letters.

  He swiveled back to us and said, “So, what’s happening is that my encryption software has successfully sent the letters G and O via ELF wave toward the four receivers, which is confirmed by the G and O on the black box. But, as you know, it takes a while for these repetitive waves to actually reach the receivers and for them to properly decode. Understand?”

  I didn’t think he really gave a shit if we understood, unless he was trying to see what we knew, so I said, “We understand.”

  “Really?” He informed us, “I’ve used a repeating, self-correcting code, which is continuously transmitted until the initiating sequence is received. In other words, D-O-G won’t work. Only G-O-D can make an explosion. Follow?”

  I reminded him, “Don’t forget to activate your isotopes.”

  “To . . . what?” He looked at me like I was crazy, then continued, “This is the same software system that the Navy uses for their nuclear submarine fleet. But maybe you knew that. Do you know about my little experiment back in the 1980s?”

  Kate replied, “We do. And so does everyone in the FBI.”

  “Really? Well . . . that’s too bad. But not relevant now. In any case, when that black box spells G-O-D, about fifteen minutes later, the four receivers will have the entire three-letter code in proper sequence. GOD. Then, after two minutes, if there’s no change in the continuous transmitted signal, the four receivers will send an electronic pulse to the four detonators, which are attached to the receivers, and we have four nice nuclear explosions, thanks to Dr. Putyov.”

  Neither Kate nor I responded to that.

  Madox lit another cigarette and watched the black box as the last window kept spinning letters. Then, the window read “D,” and the box read, “GOD.” Madox, who thought that meant him, said, “So, all three letters are now being sent across the country in a continuous pattern.”

  I still wasn’t understanding why he was saying “across the country,” but maybe I did understand, and I didn’t want to know.

  Madox pushed a few buttons on the console, and four green LED numbers—15:00—appeared on a big screen, then he hit another button, and the numbers began to count down. He told us, “It’s hard to say exactly how long the ELF wave will take to get properly decoded by the receivers, but about fifteen minutes is a good guess. Then, as I said, the receivers need to hold these letters for precisely two minutes to be certain they’re reading the continuous, self-correcting code correctly. Then”—he slapped his hands together—“BOOM!”

  I saw that coming, but poor Luther almost wet his pants.

  Madox thought that was pretty funny, so he did it three more times. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! But the surprise was gone, and no one jumped.

  I mean, this guy was out of his fucking mind, and I hoped that Carl and Luther were getting it. I was sure that Harry had gotten it at some point, and maybe Carl and Luther would remember what happened to Harry.

  I focused on the countdown clock, which now read 1:36, then :35, and so forth, on the way to nuclear ecstasy for Bain Madox.

  Madox chain-lit another cigarette, looked at his watch and then the countdown clock, then checked some of his instruments, then glanced at the six security monitors.

  Madox seemed to be in a manic state, and I could understand that this was his payoff moment for years of work and planning.

  I, on the other hand, didn’t have much to do except kneel with my hands on my head, watching and listening. I mean, I wasn’t exactly bored observing a nuclear event unfolding, but I’m more of an action guy.

  On that subject, Carl was still behind us, so going for the BearBanger, which had dropped a bit south in my tightie whities, was not an option. I might get the BearBanger out, but I’d be dead before I could figure out which way was up and press the button on the other end of it.

  Kate had a better chance of reaching into the front of her jeans and pulling the thing out before Carl or dim-witted Luther noticed. And I could see she was getting tense just thinking about it.

  She was watching Luther as much as she could get away with it, but we couldn’t watch Carl, and I had no idea how closely he was focused on us. Plus, just when Luther’s dim brain seemed to be wandering, Madox would suddenly swivel around and chat with us.

  In fact, he now turned toward us. “You probably think I’m crazy.”

  I replied, “No, Bain, we know you’re crazy.”

  He started to smile, but then realized his troops were present, and he didn’t want to put any ideas into their heads, so he got serious, like he was sane, and said to me, “There’s not one major figure in the history of the world who has not been called crazy. Caesar, Attila, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Hit—. Well, maybe he was a little unbalanced. But you understand what I’m saying.”

  “I understand that if you think you’re Napoleon, you may need to speak to someone.”

  “John, I don’t think I’m anyone except who I am.”

  “That’s a good start, Bain.” />
  He informed us, “I don’t think you appreciate what I’m doing.” He thereupon went into a whole riff about great men who changed the course of history, including some guy named King John of Poland, who saved Vienna from the Turks and didn’t get anything out of it. I mean, who gives a shit, Bain?

  Meanwhile, the countdown clock read 11:13, and counting.

  Kate took advantage of Madox’s pausing to light a cigarette and asked him, “What is Wild Fire?”

  He blew a few smoke rings, then answered, “It’s a top secret government protocol that goes into effect if and when America is attacked with a weapon or weapons of mass destruction. It’s the only good and sane thing we’ve ever done since MAD—Mutually Assured Destruction.”

  Kate followed up with, “What does that have to do with . . . with what’s happening now?”

  He looked at her through his smoke and asked, “So, you really don’t know, do you?”

  I had the impression that if we answered some of these questions wrong—if he thought we were really clueless—then we’d be joining Putyov and the IRS guy sooner rather than later, so I replied, “We were briefed, but—”

  “Good. Tell me.”

  “Okay . . . well . . . Wild Fire is a secret government protocol that goes into effect—”

  “John, you’re such a bullshitter.” He said, “I’ll tell you.” He launched into an explanation of Wild Fire, which I found scary but at the same time strangely reassuring. The scariest thing was that Bain Madox knew the intimate details of a secret that was right up there with the most sensitive national secrets in the country, including where the Roswell aliens were hidden.

  Meanwhile, the countdown clock read 9:34, and as I watched while Madox spoke, it went to 9:00, then 8:59.

  I was catching most of what Madox was saying, and when he began to recite the cities in the world of Islam that were going to be nuked if Wild Fire was ever triggered, I thought the guy was going to have an orgasm.

  I mean, he was in total ecstasy, and I sort of hoped he would swoon or something.