Sugarman nodded. Thorn knew that Sugar had stepped outside the law once or twice, put his life on the line for one greater good or another. “And you’re in this, Thorn?”
“A hundred percent.” His lie spoken as resolutely as he could.
“Risk all this?” Sugarman motioned at the house, Thorn’s life.
“I think it’ll work,” Thorn said. “Our intentions are pure.”
“And me?”
“We’re sorry you’ve walked into this,” Leslie said. “We only ask that you don’t try to interfere or escape. Friday, we’ll be done, and we’ll be on our way, then you’re free to go to the authorities or do whatever you feel you must.”
“You try to escape,” Wally said. “We’ll cut your fucking throat.”
“That’s not true,” Leslie said. “Our group is nonviolent.”
“What group?” Sugarman said.
Leslie eye-checked with the others, getting no dissent. She told Sugarman. Earth Liberation Front.
“Yeah, I’ve read about you guys.” Sounding neutral, as if he were making up his mind. Thorn thinking this was the moment they might have to make a break. Picking his path to the woods, yank Flynn by the arm, drag him along.
“You form an opinion from your reading?” Prince asked.
Sugarman drew a breath and smiled at Thorn. “You’re not altogether bad. Well-intentioned.”
“He’s lying,” Pauly said. “He’s saying what we want to hear.”
“I believe him,” Leslie said.
“Can’t allow this,” Pauly said. “Another guy walking in, a lawman.” He edged a step toward Sugar.
“Pauly. Relax. We’ll work this out. It changes nothing.”
“No. Makes it too messy.”
Pauly moved so swiftly Sugar didn’t have time to flinch. Pauly’s roundhouse kick snapped into the side of Sugar’s right knee and crumpled him where he stood. Before Thorn could move, Sugarman was sprawled on the gravel, the right leg bent beneath him at a savage angle.
“You son of a bitch.”
“Put a splint on it,” Pauly said to Thorn. “If he’s any kind of man, he’ll be walking in a month.”
Thorn squatted at Sugar’s side. He was groaning, eyes shut hard against the pain. Thorn tried to ease the leg free from beneath Sugarman, but he moaned and rolled onto his side.
“Maybe two months,” Pauly said.
“He needs to get to a hospital.”
“We all need a lot of things,” Pauly said.
Leslie hung back, her face stricken. No longer in control.
If she ever was.
THIRTY-TWO
FLYNN AND THORN HAULED SUGARMAN into the guest room and laid him on the bed still warm and rumpled. Thorn tucked one pillow under Sugar’s head and used the other two to elevate his broken leg. Sugar was drifting in and out of consciousness, one minute telling Thorn he was fine, don’t worry about him, the pain was manageable, then sinking away into a groaning haze.
Thorn scissored off Sugar’s pant leg. The knee was bruised and swelling, turning a deep purple. He went to a hallway closet, dug out two ancient fishing rods. Skinny shafts of fiberglass he’d used as a kid, keepsakes. He broke each in half. Padding the pressure points with wads of gauze, he ran the rods along the sides of Sugar’s leg, and while Flynn held them in place, Thorn added ring after ring of adhesive tape, binding the shafts as tightly as he thought Sugar could tolerate. Then he sent Flynn to the kitchen for a bag of ice and covered Sugar with a blanket from the closet. It was all the first aid he could think of.
In a while Sugar’s breathing evened out, his heart rate resumed a steady tick. No sign of fever, no chills. Stabilized for now.
Flynn stood beside the bed shaking his head in disbelief. “Is he going to be all right?”
Thorn nodded. Sure. Sure.
“It’s just Pauly that’s dangerous. The rest of us are peaceful.”
“I know,” Thorn said.
“Are you with us? You committed?”
Thorn glanced at the open door. From decades in that old house, he knew every creak and crackle of floorboard. Someone was standing just beyond the doorway.
“Absolutely,” Thorn said. “I’m with you to the end.”
* * *
Later that afternoon, while Sugar dozed, Leslie laid out the details of the assault. She stood behind the kitchen counter in a fishing shirt, long, baggy trousers, sandals. Her hair still damp from the shower. Over by the French doors, both of them flung open to the warm breeze, Wally was tapping on the keyboard of his laptop, which was plugged into his mobile phone. Pauly lounged in a cocked-back kitchen chair, bare feet on the table, staring at the pots and pans hanging from the overhead rack.
Thorn and Flynn stood side by side at the counter where a nautical chart was rolled open, held in place with beer mugs at each corner. South Biscayne Bay and the Upper Keys. Turkey Point with its long, straight miles of cooling canals clearly delineated, running south of the nuke plant.
When Leslie finished spelling out the scheme, she asked if there were questions. Everyone was silent. No eye contact, each of them waiting for someone to go first.
To Thorn, the plan sounded insane. Insane enough it just might work. “Hauling that box loaded with critters? We can barely lift it empty.”
“We’ll manage,” she said. “Cameron takes one end, the rest of us handle the other. Not far, thirty yards at most. That’s why we’ve been pumping iron. Those thirty yards.”
Flynn asked her about the handcuffs.
She drew a white plastic cable tie from her back pocket. “Flex-cuffs.”
“I don’t know,” Flynn said. “These federal agents, these FBI guys, they won’t be able to get free? You’re sure? They’re SWAT, right? All that special training. That strip of plastic is going to keep them out of action?”
She handed one of the cuffs to Flynn and he examined it.
“They work,” she said. “Want me to demonstrate?”
Flynn handed it back and made a face. Thanks, but no thanks.
Leslie turned to look at Thorn, appraising his silence. He kept his face as neutral as he could manage.
“Getting free of them would require wire cutters,” she said.
“Or a Zippo lighter,” said Pauly.
“It’ll work,” she said. “The force-on-force drill uses NRC protocol. All weapons are unloaded for safety. Lasers mounted on handguns. It’s a ho-hum, routine thing for them. Nobody’s carrying wire cutters, Zippo lighters, any of that. We cuff them, leave them in a ditch. Take their radios, phones. Even if they somehow managed to get free, they’re miles from the action, no way to stop us. They’ll be out of commission at least an hour. By then we’re gone.”
“And after it’s finished?” Thorn said.
“Enter by car, leave by water, like I said. Weren’t you listening, Thorn?”
“I heard you. Take the airboat down the cooling canals. It’s dark, but you know your way. Get as close to the bay as possible, exit the airboat, cover twenty yards of open ground, cross the steel barriers, get in your skiff.”
“Exactly,” she said.
“And where then?” Thorn said.
“Back here.”
“Oh, no, you don’t.”
“Only long enough to sort things out, then we part ways.”
“They’ll track us. There’ll be cops everywhere, something this big. Coast Guard cutters, choppers in the air.”
“You’re underestimating the chaos. Even on an average day, Miami is teetering on the edge. And timing’s on our side. We’ll be gone before they know what happened. An hour max, we’re in and out. Miami’s dark, Fort Lauderdale, all the way to Boca, maybe beyond. Happens in a blink, we’re already on our way back here.”
“Where does the escape skiff come from?” Flynn said.
“You’ll bring it.”
“Me? How?”
“You stay here until it’s time to take the boat to the escape point.”
“I’m no
t coming along? Why? You don’t trust me?”
“Nobody trusts you, ass-breath,” Wally said.
“It’s just the four of us going to the plant,” Leslie said. “Thorn, Cameron, and Pauly and me. You and Wally have other roles. This is your landing spot.”
She touched the ballpoint tip to a location along the coast, the closest point to the southernmost cooling canal.
“This is bullshit,” Flynn said. “I want to go to the plant.”
Leslie seemed not to hear. Her gaze wandered around Thorn’s kitchen and the living area beyond as though her eyes were refocusing on some distant time. Perhaps it had just hit her. The house where she’d first felt safe so many years back. This place of refuge. Something else now.
“Leslie,” Flynn said. “You can’t leave me out of this.”
The long-ago look in her eyes faded and she returned. Her expression had softened from the journey.
“Somebody always drives the getaway car. It’s as essential as any other piece of this.”
“You’re trying to protect me. Giving me this bullshit role.”
“I’m not going to argue. The decision’s made.”
He heaved a disgusted sigh and stalked to a chair across the room.
“Using my house,” said Thorn. “That was always the plan, wasn’t it? That day Cameron came, he was checking the place out. You were already familiar with it, but Cameron had to have a look, a scouting mission. Checking out its strategic value.”
“I didn’t think you’d mind,” she said.
“You were just going to show up here, the bunch of you, no warning, middle of the night, walk in, and you thought we’d have a big happy sleepover?”
Leslie traced a fingertip along the grout between the countertop tiles. She looked at him and gave a so what? shrug. “We’re here. And so far it seems to be working out.”
“And separating Flynn and me, that’s insurance, to keep me in line.”
She held his gaze. “Why should we keep you in line if you’re as committed as you say?”
“Hey, ass-wipe.” Wally’s hands were on the keyboard, head turned toward Thorn. “What mile marker are we at?”
“Why?”
“What’re you doing, Wally?” Leslie asked.
“I’m writing code, boss. Doing my job. So what mile marker is this?”
A remnant from the days of the Overseas Railroad, the small, green markers ran the length of the Keys, counting down each mile to Key West.
Thorn gave Leslie a questioning look and she shrugged. So tell him.
He gave Wally the number of the closest mile marker, and Wally turned back to the computer and resumed typing. “Okay. So where’s the pipeline run around here?”
“What’re you talking about?”
“The water line. Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority. Pumped from a well field near Florida City down here to the Keys.”
Leslie went over to the desk where Wally had set up his laptop and looked over his shoulder. “Why’re you playing around with that?”
“I finished all the jobs you gave me. Everything’s set. Ready to pull the trigger. So I’m goofing on something else.”
“Pipeline is about a hundred yards west of here,” Thorn said. “Runs along the side of the Overseas Highway.”
“Good,” Wally said. “So we can see it.”
“It’s buried.”
“I’m not talking about the pipeline, ass-face, I’m talking about the water runs through it.” Wally’s fingers flew across the keyboard for several moments, then he turned around and smiled at them, lifting a single finger over the keys. “And away we go.” He plunked his finger down. Stood up, walked through the open doors onto the porch. “Which way is it?”
Thorn pointed west.
Leslie came over and stood next to him, Flynn and Thorn drifting outside, everyone staring out at the hummock of slash pines and wild tamarinds and spice and mahogany.
“What’ve you done, Wally?”
“Hold on. It’ll take a minute. You got a 130-mile transmission line, water pressure at 250 pounds a square inch, pipe begins at thirty-six inches, narrows to twenty-four, then south of here goes to eighteen. Eight-hundred-horsepower electric motors suck it out of the ground and shoot it south. When there’s a power outage, they got two-thousand-horse diesels that kick in.
“Then two miles north of here you got a booster pump station, and another one down in Long Key, Marathon, Ramrod Key, they’re jacking up the pressure every thirty, forty miles. Got thousands of gallons a minute flowing inside that pipeline. A few million gallons every day sucked out of the ground.
“So it’s like this. Say the Key Largo booster station, just up the road, it keeps pumping its ass off, but south of here at the pump station in Long Key, they got a malfunction and have to shut down. Their power just switches off. Some kind of computer glitch. Software goes haywire. Their pumps quit.”
He turned around and gave them an impish grin. “Hey, something happens like that, where’s all that water go? Well, they got a half-assed safety system, shut-off valves every few miles to prevent backflow. And they got a com network, it sends a message up to the Key Largo pump station, warns it to shut down.
“But say some hacker, he overrides that com network, the Largo station keeps pumping water, pumping and pumping. Then that hacker tells the Key Largo station their fucking water pressure is dropping and they need their pumps to work harder. What do you get? Anybody want to guess?”
“You idiot,” Thorn said.
“Okay, no guesses. So the answer is, all that water pressure is building up in that twenty-four-inch pipe. Building, building. Then, hey, suddenly for no reason, the relief valve at this very mile marker opens wide, and badda bing. I’m tearing that relief valve a new asshole.”
“Wally. Undo it right now. Put it right.” Leslie was staring helplessly at the computer screen, the rolling lines of code.
“Too late.”
“We don’t need this,” she said. “This’ll bring heat. And for no reason.”
“Hey, is that it?” Wally pointed off at the tree line. “Yeah, I think we got ourselves a gusher.”
About a half mile away, a silver-blue geyser of water was shooting straight up, maybe a hundred feet into the blue afternoon sky. A fountain of pure aquifer water appearing in the middle of the native forest that separated Thorn’s property from the Overseas Highway.
“See,” Wally said. “That’s the kind of shit I do, ass-breath. That’s what I bring to the table.” Speaking to Flynn, then glancing at Thorn. “So lay the fuck off me, or I’ll blow your shit up, too. Don’t think I can’t.”
“Shut it down, Wally.”
“No can do. Has to be fixed by hand. Wrenches and shit.”
A car rolled into the drive. Nobody Thorn knew. A ten-year-old SUV with dark windows. It was covered in dust and the grill was badly dented as if the car had collided head-on with a telephone pole. An out-of-state license tag was mounted on the crushed bumper.
Cameron left the porch and trotted over to the car, stood by the driver’s door, and waited till it opened. Since Thorn had seen her last, her red hair had been cut pixie short. It blazed scarlet in the afternoon sunlight as she marched across the lawn, following Prince toward the house.
Same uniform as the day they’d spent together in Leslie’s boat, counting the croc population. Fatigue jacket, scruffy jeans, hiking boots. She cast her gaze around the premises, surveying the layout with an almost mathematical precision. Pretty eyes, but a misshapen mouth with awkwardly protruding teeth. Still, something about her was fierce. The fiery resolve of a field commander on the eve of battle.
“You stay here,” Leslie told the group. “This doesn’t concern you.”
She went down the steps and crossed the lawn, and the two women shared a stiff embrace, touched cheek to cheek. More ritual than personal.
Leslie spoke to Prince and he edged away, giving them privacy.
When their conversation was finishe
d, Leslie waited while the red-haired woman walked back to her SUV, opened the rear hatch, and hailed Prince. She handed Leslie a liquor box, and from the cargo hold Cameron dragged out a large sheet of fiberboard covered by a white sheet. With both hands he raised it above his head and carried it to the house.
The red-haired woman handed Leslie a set of keys, turned, and headed back down the drive on foot. In the distance, the geyser continued to spew. Sirens were screaming out on the highway.
Prince angled the fiberboard through the French doors and laid it on the dining-room table. The long, rectangular oak table where Thorn had eaten his first meals, learned what table manners he knew, and later on, when the house became his, shared countless dinners with friends and lovers.
Leslie set the liquor box on a counter and walked over to the fiberboard.
“What’s in the box?” Wally said.
“Uniforms. FBI.” Leslie took hold of the end of the white sheet and drew it away.
In all the years Thorn had passed the place offshore, he’d never paid much attention to the Turkey Point nuclear plant, so he hadn’t realized how vast it was, how numerous were its domes and smokestacks, cooling towers and guardhouses and office buildings, roadways and transmission lines. An industrial city. Twenty cooling canals shot straight south for about ten miles, the crocodile breeding grounds that Leslie once patrolled.
This scale model was meticulously crafted with plastic windows in the office buildings and runty trees lining the entrance drive and half-inch hard-hatted workers scattered around the site. Each structure had a printed label attached. Cars, trucks, earthmoving equipment, even an airboat docked beside a small, rectangular building that was labeled BIOLOGY LAB.
Pauly and Cameron stood on one side of the table, Flynn and Thorn and Leslie on the other. Even Wally broke away from his laptop to take a look.
Leslie lifted the lid off one of the structures. Inside were more handcrafted details. An enormous control room full of electronic hardware with sweeping desks and podiums and a wall of computer screens.
Going Dark (Thorn Mysteries) Page 22