“It’s over. We did what we set out to do. Bringing down that cooling tower, man, that’s enough for one day. Time for a pitcher of beer.”
“Still the funnyman.”
“I’m dead serious. We’re done.”
By now Thorn had seen Pauly’s moves often enough to know his mouth went slack before he attacked. So Thorn’s hand was already moving to the handle of the flashlight when Pauly drew back his hand and sidearmed his pistol toward Thorn’s skull. A recap of what he’d done to Sheffield, pistol-whipping him to his knees.
The flashlight blunted the blow and the handgun broke loose from Pauly’s grip and sailed into the pool. Thorn pivoted on his good leg, bent low, rammed the butt of the flashlight into Pauly’s crotch, and heard the satisfying sound of Pauly’s wail as he pitched back against the railing.
But Thorn was wrong. It wasn’t a wail.
It was a war whoop, for Pauly bounced off the railing as if it were the elastic ropes of a boxing ring, and he was propelled forward into Thorn’s gut, driving his shoulder deep, knocking loose Thorn’s breath, then hauling him upright, lifting him overhead, a swiftly executed clean and jerk, then carrying him two steps toward the edge of the ramp. Squirming, Thorn stared down into the irradiated blue, seeing the dark racks at the bottom lurking like a toxic reef.
Helpless in Pauly’s grip, Thorn went still and tried to pick a handhold he could swipe at on his flight toward the water. A bundle of wires looping out from a girder looked promising. Thorn focused on that bundle as Pauly made a half turn to his right and tossed Thorn headfirst against the steel ramp.
FORTY-TWO
CLAUDE WAS HAVING CHILLS. HIS pecker twitching inside his boxers. Fucking cooling tower coming down in an avalanche of dust. This half-assed attack had morphed into something else. This would go international. It would be all-time big, up there with the Twin Towers and Pearl Harbor in the annals of disaster lore. It would last for weeks on the front page, take up the full evening news. His pecker might never stop twitching.
This was the end of days, the whole, entire doomsday enchilada, best possible event a security professional such as Claude could dream of. And he was dead center. Claude the vortex. Claude the calm, still eye of the storm.
He waited silently, standing twenty yards from the loading dock that led into the control-room complex. Him and his six best. In the shadows, next to a Dumpster that was shielded by a slatted wall. Peering through the slats, watching the action. Six more guys waiting inside, his fucking pincer movement about to pince.
They stayed put, even after seeing the north cooling tower coming down, stayed put watching Leslie and Cameron Prince roll up to the loading ramp, get out, go in through the door Claude had left unlocked, he and his men watching them unload the creatures, start to carry them inside. He waited until both of them were inside the building, Sheffield still in the truck. Bound up, it looked like. Sitting there in the backseat. A gift.
“Hey, Mr. Sellers, shouldn’t we be going in?”
“Okay, boys, light ’em up. Go take these motherfuckers down.”
Claude followed his men across the parking lot, taking a detour by the Suburban for a quick hello to his favorite asshole in charge.
* * *
Claude Sellers’s men, suited up in helmets, flak jackets, and carrying AR-15s, rushed into the back door of the control-room complex thirty seconds behind Leslie and Cameron. Sheffield strained at his cuffs, trying to rip them apart though he knew damn well it was impossible. Losing it for a minute.
Then Claude was at the window looking in. A big grin. He opened the door. Giant blue stone at his throat, that stupid string tie. Yellow shirt under his Kevlar.
“Agent Sheffield. How you doing this fine evening?”
“Cut me loose, you jackass.”
“As of now, I can’t provide that service, but I tell you what I will do.”
“This is coming back on you, Sellers, gonna take a big bite out of your ass.”
“Sure, sure, whatever you say. You just rest easy now, you hear, Special Agent. I got to get inside, lead my men into battle, take care of some badass terrorists. When I’m done, I’ll be right back to settle up with you, since it appears you’re a coconspirator, possibly even the gang leader. You sit tight, now, you hear.”
Claude took hold of Sheffield’s shoulder and yanked him forward, tugged on his plastic cuffs to see they were secure, then slammed the door and jogged away, ducking into the back door. A few seconds after he entered, the door blew open again, and half a dozen civilians poured out. Men and women in street clothes, a couple in white smocks, wild looks. Several with their hands clamped over their mouths.
Sheffield called out to them, but no one heard, or if they did, they didn’t glance his way and disappeared around the side of the adjacent complex.
He sat for a few seconds testing the tightness of the cuffs. Thorn could’ve left a little goddamn slack, but he hadn’t. Going along with these fuckers or seeming to. Frank’s guess, the terrorists were holding Thorn’s boy hostage, forcing Thorn to stay in line. But why Thorn? That, he didn’t know.
Sheffield hadn’t been keeping up with his yoga and he’d gained a few pounds around the middle, so doing the tuck-and-squeeze, slipping his bound wrists under his butt and down the back of his legs and past his feet, then bringing them to his front side, well, that wasn’t going to work. Two tries showed him that.
He sat for a minute thinking. From inside the control complex he heard gunfire, five shots, very deliberate, then a quick spray of automatic fire. Probably Leslie and Prince going down. Sheffield was usually a stickler for rules. The gang of elves were officially on the wrong side of this disaster, but the deeper he’d dug into it, the less true that seemed. Given the choice, his first shot would have been at Sellers before turning his firepower on the others.
Frank stopped. Firepower. Struck by the way words could pop up, carrying all their associations, like direct messages from the unconscious, solving shit.
Yeah, of course. Firepower.
Frank brought his bound wrists to his right pants pocket. Bent sideways, dropping his shoulder down, twisting his spine. Pushing a fingertip deep enough in the pocket to brush the silver lighter. His old man’s gift, a memento. The lighter that had ignited a thousand Lucky Strikes and charcoal barbecues and bottle rockets on the Fourth.
He emptied his lungs, compressed his right rib cage, and stretched harder toward the pocket, got a finger around the trigger of his vintage lighter. You saw them in fifties gangster movies, a femme fatale in an illegal casino lighting up. Press the tiny button, it snaps open, rolling the flint against the steel. On the sides there were inlaid green shamrocks. Frank’s lucky day. New flint, fresh lighter fluid. His goofy hobby. Keeping the Sheffield flame alive, by God.
It slipped out of his grasp twice before he hooked his fingertip around that trigger a third time and inched it out of the pocket.
More gunfire coming from inside the complex. One of Claude’s men stumbled out the back door, propped up by a buddy. Both of them looked to be wounded. One worse than the other. Staggering away into the darkness.
Frank clicked the trigger, got the flame. Working out the logistics behind his back where he couldn’t see a damn thing, having to do this by feel and guesswork. And right away the goddamn flame singed the inside of his wrist. He fumbled it, almost lost it in the crack between the seats. Cursing.
He clicked it again, got another flame, tried to peer over his shoulder, direct his right hand. But the tiny flame burned him again, a deep, scalding shot of hurt, Sheffield smelling his own goddamn flesh, but bearing it, because he could also smell the plastic. It was melting, giving way. If he didn’t set his fucking uniform on fire first.
Not more than a minute later the back door of the complex blew open again, and three of Claude’s finest squeezed through. Two guys holding up a fellow cop in the middle. Dude was unconscious or dead. Both supporting guys looked torn up. Blood-spattered, faces marked up. The door slammed shu
t and a second later blew open again and Claude was there. Wild-eyed, a pistol in each hand. Stomping down the back steps, yelling something to his guys.
Sirens now. A chopper circling overhead, maybe two. Frank couldn’t tell, so much commotion everywhere.
Sellers marched over to the car and flung open the door. Frank’s hands still pinned behind him, feet together. Same position.
“Sounds like your guys are making a hash of it.”
“Fuckers got away.”
“Slipped through your web. Why am I not surprised?”
“Makes you all the more important, Sheffield, taking down the boss.”
“Yeah, Sheffield the terrorist.”
“What’s that stink?” Claude sniffed at the air inside the car. “You shit yourself, Sheffield? Big, brave dude like you, you load up your shorts?”
“When you gotta go…”
“Some shithead’s going to pay for this. And that shithead’s going to be you, Sheffield. You’re going down.”
Claude was breathing hard, a Glock in each hand, a tremble in his arms.
“So it’s falling apart, huh, Claude?”
“Where’s Nicole?”
“Dead in a ditch out on the entrance road.”
“Yeah?”
“These ELF people, they aren’t the pussies you thought they were. She underestimated them, just like you’re doing.”
“Here’s what’s going to happen, agent fucking in charge of nothing. I’m going to cut you loose. Then I’m going to step back, give you a fighting chance to make an escape, and we’ll see how that plays out. See if you stand and fight or make a break. Either way’s fine by me.”
“You really think you can pin this on me?”
“Got you on tape riding into the plant, using your credentials to claim the drill was canceled, which it was not. We got a permanent record of that, Sheffield. You think I didn’t cover my ass? You’re the one’s underestimating.”
Claude holstered one of the Glocks and reached back to his utility belt and drew out a tactical knife and popped it open. Big-ass serrated edge.
“Now I’ll turn you around to face away from me, and I’ll cut your hands loose. Then I’ll step back and I’ll count to three. That’s fair. More of a chance than you fucking deserve.”
Claude leaned inside the door and stooped forward to slice through the cuffs, his stupid-ass bolo tie dangling down in front of Frank’s face.
Frank reached up with his right hand, grabbed hold, and yanked those strings hard and kneed Claude in the face. Broke his nose.
The weapons fell away. Sheffield repeated it, bolo yank, knee smash.
Blood flowing from Claude Sellers’s mouth. Blinded by blood, Sellers was clawing at Frank’s face, tearing the flesh on one cheek, nails digging into the wound Pauly Chee had given him. Frank did the bolo routine again. Getting a rhythm, putting more force behind it this time. Claude’s hands fell away from Frank’s face.
Sheffield pushed him back out the door, then held him straight up, a good strong grip on the strings.
“You did Bendell and you did Magnuson. You fried them. Tell me, Claude. It’s confession time.”
Sellers spit a bloody tooth into Frank’s face.
Sheffield hauled him down, bending him forward with the tie, dragging his head back inside the SUV, taking hold of the door handle and lining up Claude’s neck, then slamming that heavy-ass Suburban door on Sellers’s head.
Claude spit blood and more teeth onto Sheffield’s lap.
“You electrocuted Bendell and you tried to fry me, but got an NCIS agent instead, a good man. Tell me you did it and we can close up shop and go home.”
More blood and phlegm on Frank’s shirt.
Again, Sheffield slammed the door on Claude’s head, opened it and slammed it again, opened it one more time and said, “Right here, right now, Claude. This is how you want to go? Turn your brain to mush.”
He gurgled something.
“I can’t hear you.”
More nonsense bubbled from his broken face.
Frank dragged the bolo forward so Claude’s eyes were an inch from his.
“One more chance, Sellers. Enunciate this time, use your syllables. You did those two murders, didn’t you?”
Claude nodded, swallowing and swallowing, nodding one more time.
Frank pushed him backward out into the parking lot. “Good. Now let’s go upstairs and you can tell your boss and the NRC lady what you just told me.”
He hauled Claude up the stairway to the back entrance of the control-room complex. Opening the door just as another blast came, this one even greater than the one that took down the cooling tower. An explosion so immense it sent currents of hot wind roaring between the structures and hammered the concrete building, rattled its steel joints, and continued to rumble for half a minute after the blast, shaking loose cement panels from the walls and sending tiles tumbling from the roof, and setting off more screams and more sirens and more turbulence in the air than Frank had ever before witnessed in a long life of turbulence.
FORTY-THREE
THORN OPENED HIS EYES TO the blue iridescent glow.
Rubbed the lump on his forehead, as large and rough as a peach pit, then felt his nose, which was numb and felt a few degrees off center.
He wiped the blood from his lips, came to his feet. Picked up the flashlight from the ramp a few feet away. Went to the rail and leaned out to scan the big room. It was so cluttered with cranes and tanks and control panels draped with plastic tarps and a jumble of other exotic equipment that Thorn made one pass after another without seeing any sign of Pauly. He leaned out to peer below him, but no one was there either.
As he shuffled down the ramp, heading toward the metal stairway to take a closer look at the floor below, he caught sight of Pauly, crouched on the ground floor at the far end of the pool, half-shrouded by a yellow tarp, some kind of canvas safety barrier stretched around the sides of the pool.
He seemed to be working inside a manhole, the metal cover flipped open behind him. The small bunker was hardly larger than a phone booth, cut into the cement floor, maybe five feet deep.
An access cubicle for plumbing or refrigeration repairs or perhaps an entry point for a network of crawl spaces that led into the subterranean realms of the spent fuel pool. He was bent to his work, hands making adjustments.
The physics of what he was attempting was clear. He was setting the charge as deep below the surface of the structure as possible to do the greatest damage to the uranium racks and drain the pool in an instant, along with creating the maximum likelihood of spraying those irradiated pellets into the upper zones of the atmosphere.
But after what Thorn had witnessed at the cooling-tower blast, Pauly’s work seemed a pointless precaution. The explosive he was using was so devastating, no matter where he planted it near the spent fuel pool, it would almost certainly pump a mushroom cloud into the Miami sky, poison the air for years, and guarantee endless days of blood rain.
Maybe it was Pauly’s SEAL training and that he was a compulsive purist who wouldn’t settle for anything less than perfection. But Thorn no longer gave two shits about motives. This was down to meat and bones.
He circled the room the long way around. Picking his way across the obstacle course of grates and cables and metal tubing so he could come at Pauly from behind. The water shimmered as if it were alive, as if it were exposed to the wind and the sun and the random elements, as if it were filled with fish and crabs, lobster and white darting shrimp, as if the water were real water, the stuff of life, the stuff that kept Thorn afloat in every way water could accomplish that. But it was not. It was none of those things. In this room water was simply a chemical necessity, a slave. A perversion of water, a liquid hostage in this cellblock, held in isolation until it was used up, then it was shipped back into the world, a different thing from what it had been.
Ten feet from Pauly, Thorn stopped, surveyed the surroundings, deciding on his final approach
. Diagramming the path, not the shortest, but the one with the best chance for him to fling himself on the man’s back, coming down hard with the flashlight.
He believed he’d have one decent shot. With a solid skull-crusher, things might even up. If he missed that first strike, it was as good as over. Pauly wasn’t just strong and quick. He had death-stroke training. A military efficiency. No wasted movement sizing up his enemy, no thrust and parry, no feeling out. Zero reaction time.
Thorn choked up on the flashlight, cocked his arm, took two steps—and the upper door slammed open and Flynn Moss and Cameron Prince barreled onto the observation ramp. Flynn with a pistol. Cameron empty-handed.
“You in here, Thorn? Hey, it’s me, Flynn. You in here?”
Eyes on the intruders, Pauly had begun a slow ascent from his manhole. Flynn and Prince hadn’t yet seen him, though from the direction they were taking down the observation ramp, his position would be exposed in a few seconds. Flynn leading the way, searching the cluttered floor for any sign of them.
Thorn’s injured leg made a sprint impossible, so he edged closer to Pauly, keeping his eyes upward to spot Flynn and Prince. Unless Thorn reversed course, ducked behind a nearby electrical panel right away, Flynn would notice Thorn in a few seconds. A word of recognition, a shift of eye in Thorn’s direction, would alert Pauly.
Thorn made his move. A clumsy weave through a set of orange highway cones that were marking some recent construction, then across a stretch of concrete floor, along the lip of the ghostly blue pool, moving as quickly and lightly as his damaged leg allowed.
“Hey, Thorn. Up here. You seen Pauly? Hey, Thorn.” Flynn was waving an arm.
The young man had come ashore, violated the plan. An artist, a creative person, a gift for improvisation. His talent a perfect fit for this moment.
Pauly was halfway out of his bunker, gripping the orange ladder mounted to the cement wall of the cubicle. Head and shoulders emerging. Head craning slowly to track Flynn’s gaze.
Thorn leapt the final two yards, going airborne, arm raised with the heavy flashlight. Pauly seemed torn. Moving up a step, down a step as Thorn came at him, slashing the heavy club at his head. Missing. Then tumbling down into the cubicle with Pauly. Ladders on both sides. Pauly holding to one, Thorn snagging the other, scrambling to get his balance. An arm’s length between them.
Going Dark (Thorn Mysteries) Page 29