Going Dark (Thorn Mysteries)

by James W. Hall

  “My mother knows nothing.”

  “We’ll sort that out later,” Frank said. “Meanwhile, best thing you can do right now, put away the guns and we sit down, figure how to handle the next part. So far, I don’t see any major crimes committed. Nothing a good lawyer couldn’t help you out of.”

  Pauly had come back to Sheffield’s side. “Stop talking. All of you.”

  “And you, you’re Pauly Chee, went AWOL from your SEAL unit three years ago. Ripped off a stockpile of high explosives when you deserted.”

  Pauly stared into Frank’s eyes for a long moment, then raised his pistol and slashed it across Frank’s face, drove him to his knees.

  Thorn lunged past Leslie and shoved Pauly away. “Back off. No reason for this.”

  Thorn stood with his arms spread, shielding Sheffield. Chee just smiled. The first one Thorn had seen on Pauly’s lips. The tolerant grin of a grown man challenged by a child.

  Sheffield’s men threw open the rear doors and gathered at the front of the SUV, readying for a charge. Pauly turned to face them, his pistol rising.

  “They’re unarmed,” Frank said. “Don’t shoot.”

  The driver’s-side door came open and a woman, dressed like the others, stepped out and moved away from the car into the shadows beyond the dazzle of headlights. Only her white reflective armband showed her location.

  “Pauly Chee,” she called out. “Drop your weapon. You, too, Levine. Hold your arms straight out, let them fall.”

  “Nicole, stop it now,” Frank yelled at her. “Everyone, hold on. Don’t listen to Ms. McIvey. She’s unarmed. We’re all unarmed. Our pistols, they’re not loaded. This is a drill. Nobody needs to get hurt.”

  “Now,” Nicole called out. “Weapons on the ground. I’m not saying it again.”

  “She’s bluffing,” Sheffield said. “Don’t shoot the lady.”

  With his pistol aimed into the shadows where the armband glowed, Pauly took a step, then another. The emergency flashers continued to count off the seconds in red.

  Thorn angled in front of Pauly, put his back to the woman named Nicole, planted his left hand on Pauly’s chest.

  Pauly looked down at the hand and swatted it away. Thorn stepped past him and into the path of Leslie’s gaze. Her eyes were unfocused, mouth open.

  “Leslie, wake up. This isn’t what you’re about. Shooting people, no. This game is done. You tried, it was a noble cause, but it didn’t work. We have to stop this right here, right now.”

  Behind him the woman fired a single shot, and a hot tug against Thorn’s left thigh spun him around. As he caught himself and regained his balance, two more shots flared in the darkness. Then two more. The clang of metal as the rounds punctured the SUV’s fender. All misses except for the first.

  Thorn touched the edge of his thigh. A tear in his trousers, damp and warm, a numb patch spreading like melted wax toward his knee.

  Sheffield’s agents had taken cover at the far side of their SUV.

  Frank was on his feet, yelling at the shooter. “Nicole, goddamn it. Throw the weapon out. Throw it out here now.”

  “You call that unarmed?” Pauly raised his pistol.

  “Goddamn it, Nicole, throw down your gun.”

  The woman stepped into the halo of light, pistol outstretched, hand steady. A step forward, then another.

  “You’ve been bad.” Her voice was cool and vacant as if she were rehearsing a speech alone in a room, simply trying it out. “You’ve behaved badly for a long time, been dishonest and disreputable. You’ve brought shame and humiliation on yourselves and your cause. Now it’s judgment day.”

  She was blond and slender, a delicate build, her mouth gritted into a hard smile that was devoid of emotion.

  “Leslie,” Thorn said quietly. “You can do it. You can stop this.”

  “No, she can’t,” Pauly said. “We’re too far down the road.”

  As casually as one might snuff out a candle flame, Pauly squeezed off two rounds. The woman bucked as if jackhammered in the belly. Her shriek was short and faded to a moan as she sank to the ground.

  Sheffield stared down at his shoes, shaking his head.

  Beyond the glow of the headlights and the steady beat of the flashers, the darkness seemed to wobble. An unsteady flicker invaded the light. Thorn fought off the woozy spin, walked across the asphalt to Leslie’s side. The left leg was gimpy and uncertain, but it was still supporting him. No reason to explore the wound, see its extent. Not now.

  He took hold of Leslie’s chin and lifted her face to the light. Her mouth was slack. She wouldn’t meet his eyes.

  Pauly marched to the spot where the woman had fallen, stood for a moment looking down, then fired once more. He kicked at her body, then stooped and came up with a small automatic. He walked back to the four agents gathered in front of their vehicle, two with their arms raised above their heads, two others standing still, poised to make a move.

  “Need more time on the shooting range.”

  “She wasn’t FBI,” Sheffield said. “She was a goddamn civilian. She thought you guys were pacifists. Thought she could take you down with a single handgun. She wasn’t prepared for a shoot-out. She wasn’t a hero, a gunslinger, any of that. She was a fucking noncombatant.”

  Pauly brushed the back of his hand at Frank. Yeah, whatever. “Any of the rest of you assholes unarmed?”

  Pauly closed in on the four agents, holding his aim, ordering them to raise their hands, all of them.

  “Do it,” Frank shouted.

  After a moment, the two holdouts complied. Motioning with his pistol, Chee herded them into the blaze of headlights.

  “Prince, get over here. Check their weapons.”

  Cameron passed among the four agents, drew their pistols, inspected the magazines, the cylinders.

  “He wasn’t lying. They’re unloaded. Just these laser thingies.”

  “Pitch them in the water. Their cell phones, radios. Everything in the canal. And this gentleman’s handgun, too.” Pauly aimed his weapon at Frank.

  One by one, Prince hurled the pistols and phones into the water on the far side of the road.

  “Now let’s get this back on track,” Pauly said. “Thorn, cuff these guys. Make yourself useful.”

  Sheffield looked at Thorn, their eyes holding. The gash on Sheffield’s cheek was deep and ragged. “You’re with these people?”

  “Seems that way.” Thorn grabbed Frank’s armpit and hauled him up.

  “And Flynn?”

  “He’s okay,” Thorn said. “So far.”

  Thorn walked over to Leslie. She’d propped her butt against the grill of the SUV, her face smeared by confusion. She had come so far, driven by principles that were clear and defined, making a logical progression of decisions that had led her to this strip of road. It had all made sense. It had all mattered so much. The earth, saving what was left. The war she’d conceived of had cleanly drawn lines of battle, but now that illusion had dissolved and everything was scrambled. They had entered a free-fire zone. No rules. No good or bad.

  Thorn stood before her, brought his face into her line of sight, waited till she focused on him. “It’s over, Leslie. Look around you. A woman’s dead. Pauly’s out of control. We can’t go on. It violates everything you believe. This is finished. Call it off. You’re the only one who can do it.”

  She shook her head, eyes blank, turning away from him, looking off down the empty roadway.

  “We knew there’d be risks,” Prince said. “Things could get bumpy.”

  “You fucking moron.” Thorn swung to him, slammed his palms into Cameron’s chest, barely budged him. “Is that what you call this, bumpy?”

  “You two shut the fuck up and cuff these guys,” Pauly said. “Or I’ll shoot every goddamn one of you, handle the rest myself.”

  “Do it, Thorn,” Leslie said. “There’s no U-turn here. We’re going in, we’re shutting that place down.”

  Thorn glanced at Sheffield. “I tried.”
>
  “Not hard enough,” Sheffield said.

  Thorn cuffed two of the agents and Prince handled the other two.

  “Big mistake, cowboy,” one of the agents said. “Big, bad mistake.”

  “I’ve made bigger,” Thorn said. “You guys relax. You get a chance, roll in the mud, it’ll keep the mosquitoes off until somebody comes along and sets you loose. There’s not going to be any more killing.”

  An ankle in each hand, Pauly dragged the woman’s body across the road. Frank watched, groaning deep in his chest. Chee rolled the corpse into the ditch.

  Prince directed the four agents to lie on the shoulder in the weeds close beside the ditch, then he bound their ankles and left them facedown. One of them kept warning anyone who’d listen that this was a mistake. A big mistake.

  After they repositioned the two SUVs back to back, they transferred the wooden cage and Pauly’s aluminum cases to the Chevy Suburban. Then Prince parked the battered SUV well off the road, a few yards from where the agents lay. In a medical kit in the back of the Chevy, Leslie found a roll of gauze. She tore open Thorn’s pant leg, flinched at what she saw, then wrapped half the roll of gauze tight around the wound.

  With every second the magical numbing agent his body produced was wearing off. She asked him if he was okay, could he make it, or should they leave him here.

  Thorn forced a smile. “It’s a scratch.”

  “I’m afraid it’s more than that.”

  “I’m in this. You need somebody sane.”

  “And that’s you?”

  Leslie climbed into the shotgun seat of the Suburban. Pauly buckled in behind the wheel. Prince, Sheffield, and Thorn crammed into the second row, Frank in the middle. Behind them the gators and python were quiet, alert, probably smelling the blood in the air.

  A half mile down the road, Thorn said, “So that was the easy part?”

  No one replied.

  He rolled his window down and drew a breath of summer air, ripe with the sour mud of the Everglades and the heavy sulfur undertone of its marshy prairie of saw grass and cypress and hummocks of cabbage palm and mahogany, all that thick air mingling with lighter tones—the honeyed bursts of sweet ferns and thousands of night-scented orchids and bromeliads breaking into bloom.

  That vast expanse was a few miles distant, but its pollen and its darting night birds and its wild immensity radiated like a beautiful fever beyond its borders, altering the air around them, enlivening their own blood chemistry with its swelling presence in ways no one could fully reckon.

  Thorn leaned forward and laid a hand on Leslie’s shoulder. “Who’s Julie?”

  Leslie turned, stared at him. Her face was strained but her eyes radiated an intensity Thorn remembered from long ago—the day she caught her first fish and began to imagine a future brighter than the grim existence she was trapped in—a look of hope. Then she turned her gaze back to the road ahead and the distant glow of the guard gate. “Julie is your granddaughter.”

  Thorn looked out his open window, at the shadows of trees, the moon half-concealed by ragged clouds, the glimmer of water in the roadside ditch. “That’s not possible.”

  “Flynn made it possible.”

  “He couldn’t.”

  “Why? Because he’s gay?”

  Pauly turned and shifted his gaze between Leslie, Thorn, and the road.

  “He made a donation,” Leslie said. “As a favor to me.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ll have to ask him.”

  “I’m asking you, Leslie. Why?”

  “For me, simple. I wanted a child. Time was running out.”

  Thorn could feel Prince and Sheffield staring at the side of his face. He touched a thumb against the bloody gauze, found the center of the wound, and pressed hard, making the fogginess in his head vanish.

  “You wanted a child,” Thorn said.

  “All right, goddamn it.” Leslie turned in her seat. In the green glow of the dashboard lights her eyes seemed to fizz with energy as if hundreds of wild emotions were colliding within them. “I wanted a child who’d grow up strong and decisive, who would never knuckle under or give up on the people and things he loved. Last year when I came to see you that day, you were so distant and out of reach, I decided Flynn was my best chance of having that child.”

  Thorn squeezed the bridge of his nose and settled back against the seat.

  “She’s a cute kid,” Sheffield said. “Got your eyes, Thorn. Blue as a January sky.”

  FORTY

  THE GUARDHOUSE RESEMBLED AN AIRPORT control tower at some rural outpost. A square pod maybe twenty by twenty mounted atop a concrete column. A dozen tinted windows gave its occupants a commanding view in every direction.

  Along the roof, spotlights illuminated at least an acre of the surrounding grounds and glittered against the heavy chain-link fence topped with razor wire. Their approach along the entrance road was brightly lit by overhead lamps, and Thorn saw surveillance cameras posted conspicuously, starting a half mile away from the steel barrier that blocked the road.

  Stationed behind the blockade were four guards, and he guessed at least that many more were manning the watchtower. Two of the four behind the barrier wore the red reflective armbands of the opposing team. They were armed with lightweight machine pistols with folding shoulder stocks.

  “Here’s your story, Sheffield,” Leslie said, swinging around to face him. “The force-on-force drill was canceled. You don’t know why. Orders came from DC an hour ago. It’s rescheduled for two weeks. You need to enter the plant, speak to Claude Sellers face-to-face, confirm the new arrangement. The NRC rep will be on the speaker and will expect to hear your voice. Cameron, it’s your job to make sure Agent Sheffield stays on script.”

  Leslie handed her revolver to Prince. He smiled and jammed the barrel into Frank’s ribs.

  “So my buddy Claude,” Frank said, “he’s your double agent.”

  Leslie turned back to the road ahead. Silent.

  “And you think you can trust Sellers?”

  “Where did this come from?” Pauly said, glancing over at her. “This wasn’t the plan, taking this fed along.”

  “Special request,” she said. “From Claude.”

  “Oh, that’s sweet,” Frank said. “You people, man, you need to ask yourselves why the head of security is letting you inside his facility. You consider that? What his angle is?”

  “Keep quiet,” Pauly said. “I’m not telling you again.”

  They were a few hundred feet from the guardhouse, slowing down. The two containment domes and cooling towers loomed a half mile deeper in, and a ten-story building sheathed in elaborate scaffolding and pipes and stairways and an array of exterior ductwork. Transmission lines crisscrossed the grounds in every direction. What looked like fuel-storage silos flanked the guardhouse.

  “What I think,” Frank said, “the woman you killed back there, Agent Nicole McIvey, she and Claude cooked up this scam. They’re a team.”

  “Team of losers,” Pauly said.

  “Hear him out,” said Thorn.

  “They worked together to set you guys up. Nicole had her reasons, Claude his. But Nicole was double-crossing Claude, trying to grab the glory herself for taking you terrorists down.”

  “We’re not terrorists,” Leslie said.

  “Yeah, well, whatever you call yourselves. Nicole was going for the takedown, pulling a fast one on Claude, and my bet is, Claude has the same agenda. He’s luring you into his lair.”

  Leslie reached out, plucked her cell phone from the cup holder, and punched in a number. When the connection was made, Thorn heard Flynn’s voice answer.

  “Everything’s fine,” she told him. “I have eleven thirty on the dot. Remember. Give us an hour to finish and exit the plant. If we’re not at the rendezvous point by exactly half past twelve, don’t wait a minute longer. Get the hell out of there. You have to promise me.”

  Thorn heard the voice speak the words she’d asked for.
/>   “Now get going,” she said. “Let’s do this.”

  In the flare of headlights, the guards had come to attention. The two with red armbands had lasers like the ones Sheffield’s men were using mounted on the sight rails. They were aiming the lasers at the windshield.

  * * *

  Claude and Emily Sheen watched the video screen as the big black Suburban rolled up to the front gate.

  “Well, well, well,” Claude said.

  Sheen asked him what he saw.

  “The woman up front in the passenger seat. You don’t recognize her?”

  “Should I?”

  “Used to work here,” Claude said. “Always showing her pretty face in the newspaper and TV, talking up the power plant. You must’ve seen her. Ran the croc rehab program. Before she got eaten.”

  “That’s Leslie Levine?”

  “Apparently that croc spit her up, ’cause there she is, at the front gate. Looks alive to me.”

  Sheffield’s voice came over the speaker. Giving the speech Claude had composed and laid out for Leslie. Drill postponed for two weeks. Needed to speak face-to-face with Claude. Then Claude played his part, trying to sound reluctant, but saying okay, okay, fine, come to the conference room, the place where they’d had their planning meeting, and he gave the gate guard the go-ahead. Send them in. Drill canceled. Tell his team to stand down.

  When he was done, Sheen said, “Canceled? No one told me.”

  “You don’t see what’s happening here? This nasty little scam.”

  “What scam? What’re you saying?”

  So Claude explained it to the broad, walked her through it, step by step, watching her confused face turn worried, then more worried as it sank in. The place was under attack. This was real. The croc lady and the FBI guy were in cahoots. These weren’t feds. These were rogue bad guys.

  “Then why let them in the gate?”

  “You ever hear of a pincer movement?”

  “A what?”

  You’d think the NRC would hire smarter people to monitor security at a facility as big and complex as a nuke plant. He left her standing there, Sheen already digging in her purse for her cell phone, going to call this in to her superiors, see what they wanted her to do, while Claude headed off to the john.