by Jude Hardin
11:42.
I punched in Juliet’s number. Days later, I would learn that at approximately the same time she said hello, Jose Arias and Vincent Faza from the LAPD bomb squad, both former military Explosive Ordinance Disposal experts, entered Studio B on the eighth floor of the studio building. They had brought a timer with an L.E.D. display so they would know exactly how much time they had. The timer said 17:39. Seventeen minutes and thirty-nine seconds until half of L.A. was blown to bits.
“Hi, sweetheart,” I said.
“You sound terrible. What’s wrong?”
“A lot. A lot’s wrong. Listen, I’m not going to be home when you get there after all. You’ll have to take a cab from the airport.”
“Why won’t you be there?”
“I’ll be in the hospital in Nashville. If I’m still alive when the ambulance gets here.”
“What happened?”
The Department of Energy had been notified, and they were on the way, but Arias and Faza knew they would never make it in time. Arias and Faza used a high-speed portable x-ray unit to scan the interiors of the Marshall cabinets, and right away they discovered a series of micro-switches on the rear panels that would cause the devices to detonate if the panels were removed. If the panels were removed, half of L.A. would be blown to bits. The timer now said 16:02.
“I got jumped by a couple of dishwashers,” I said. “They’re dead now, but they messed me up good. I never should have come back to this motel.”
“Are you bleeding?”
“Yeah. A guy named Lester cut the bottom of my feet.”
“You need to put pressure on the wounds so they’ll clot.”
“I wrapped my feet with pillowcases, but I couldn’t get them tight enough. Lester also broke my left hand.”
Her voice quivered up an octave. She was on the verge crying. “Oh, Nicholas. I’m so sorry. My poor darling. If I were only there to help you. You said an ambulance is coming?”
Since the quickest and easiest access route was obviously out of the question, Arias and Faza took a few minutes to discuss alternatives. They knew from the x-rays that the systems contained collapsing circuits with relays held open by batteries. If the batteries were taken out, the relays would close and complete the circuit to the detonators and half of L.A. would be blown to bits. They thought about shooting shaped charges through the power supplies, to cut off power from the detonators and render the devices inert. The shaped charges would have to beat the electricity to the detonator wires before the juice could get through. It was a tricky proposition, especially since everything had to be planned out by x-ray. Placement had to be precise, and they doubted there was enough time.
“The ambulance should have been here by now,” I said. “Jules, there’s some things I need to talk to you about.”
“I’m here. I’m not hanging up until I know you’re safe.”
“Do you know how much I love you?”
“I love you too,” she said.
Arias and Faza decided to try a hand entry. Very dangerous, but the only practical solution at this point. They donned night vision goggles and turned all the lights out in case the detonators were rigged with photo cell relays. Faza cut the mesh grille on the front of the cabinets with a utility knife, and they each took a screwdriver and started working on removing the speakers.
“The good news is that I didn’t start smoking again,” I said. “The bad news is I’m a drug addict now.”
“What?”
“He turned me into a junkie, Jules.”
“Who?”
“Brother John. It was the same Brother John who was at Chain of Light, only I didn’t know it because his face was different. He got me hooked on Dilaudid. Now I’m slinking around bus stations and buying heroin.”
“We’ll get you whatever help you need,” she said. “Do you hear me, Nicholas? I love you no matter what.”
Once the speakers were out of the way, Arias and Faza had twelve-inch holes to work through. Tight, but doable. The cases surrounding the nuclear devices were protected by combination locks. Arias and Faza had predicted this, and there was a career criminal named Danny “Fingers” Gibson waiting in the wings. Arias called him in. The only other choice was to explosively open the cases, which would be quicker but might trigger the detonators and blow half of L.A. to bits. Better to let Fingers give it a try, at least. Faza jammed a set of night vision goggles on his head and told him not to turn the lights on no matter what.
“No matter what?” I said.
“Yes. I’ll love you no matter what. We’ll get you into rehab, whatever it takes.”
Fingers worked his magic, and the case surrounding the first device clicked open. From there it was a piece of cake. Faza carefully removed the mercury stem generator, a red cylinder the size of a cigarette that would initiate the nuclear reaction, and watched the adjoining capacitor bleed down on an amp meter. One down and one to go.
“My addiction isn’t even the worst of it,” I said. “I cheated on you, Jules. I was with another woman out in L.A.”
Silence.
Fingers ran into trouble with the second combination lock, and there was only one minute and twenty-four seconds left on the timer. At that point, Arias and Faza decided to blow the second case open with a flexible linear shaped charge. They briefly entertained the notion of trying the waterjet disrupter, a sort of freestanding gun that resembled a two-foot praying mantis and that shot water with enough force to open metal containers, but they weren’t one hundred percent sure it would work and with time this short they needed to be a hundred percent. The shaped charge was their only chance now. Faza wrapped one of the snake-like explosives around the case and taped a blasting cap to it while Arias and Fingers heaved the grand piano onto its side to use as a shield. All this took about half a minute. Faza then unreeled the wires connected to the blasting cap and joined the others behind the piano. He stared at the toggle switch on the firing device for a few seconds, hoping they had made the right decision. The electro-explosive would either safely open the case and give them access to the second mercury stem generator, or it would trigger the detonator to the nuclear device and half of L.A. would be blown to bits. If half of L.A. was blown to bits, it would in essence mean that the world would be blown to bits.
“Jules?”
“I’m here.”
“I wasn’t myself at the time. I mean, literally. Brother John brainwashed me, and induced amnesia somehow. I thought my name was Alexander Maddox. I thought my friends called me Maddog, or just Dog. I would have never cheated on you if I’d known what I was doing.”
More silence. I looked at the clock on the nightstand. 10:59, which was really 11:59. It ticked over to the top of the hour, and the phone went dead. I redialed Juliet’s number, but the call went straight to voice mail.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Tiny tornados danced across the barren landscape, filling the air with dry sand the color of lead. The sand and the dark clouds overhead made everything look like a grainy black-and-white photograph, like an unimaginably horrific and grim movie.
One of my teachers in high school said that cockroaches are among the few species capable of surviving a nuclear holocaust. Apparently, he was right.
A year after the initial blast, I lay in a puddle of my own urine as the filthy insects crawled all over me. Gone were the pine trees and the live oaks and the flowers and the fish and deer. Gone were the jays and the hawks and the redbirds and the grass and the crops and even the weeds. Gone. Everything gone.
Except the cockroaches.
My body was covered with purplish blisters, some of which had popped and were oozing a sticky clear fluid, and some of the roaches were able to enter the open sores and burrow into my flesh. They crawled in and out of my ears and nostrils as well, and I was too weak to swat them away. I was too weak to move. One of them found the path to my brain and took a big bite, and that’s when I woke up and started thrashing and shouting like a madman.
I was disoriented, and for a minute I thought I was back at Brother John’s compound. My arms and legs were strapped to the frame of a hospital bed. There was a bag of IV fluid hanging on a pole, and a heart monitor wailing an alarm with the number 177 flashing red on the display. Tubes and wires everywhere.
As horrible as my situation seemed at the moment, it wasn’t nearly as horrible as my post-apocalyptic nightmare. Thinking about it rattled my marbles back into place, and I remembered the last moments before I lost consciousness. I was talking to Juliet, and the phone went dead at precisely the time the bombs were supposed to explode.
While I wondered if my nightmare might be in the midst of coming true, a nurse ran in and fiddled with the heart monitor and told me I needed to calm down. I recognized her. It was Sharon, who had been taking care of Virgil Lamb.
“I have a bone to pick with you,” she said.
“Pick away. I’m not in much of a position to defend myself.”
“You told me you were Virgil Lamb’s son, but all your paperwork here says Nicholas Colt. You tricked me.”
“Guilty as charged,” I said. “Is that why you tied me to the bed?”
“You were combative, and we had to restrain you. I’ll take the restraints off if you promise to be good.”
“I promise.”
She unbuckled the tethers and straightened my bed and piggybacked a small bag of fluid into the main line.
“What’s that?” I said.
“It’s an antibiotic. Your PICC line was infected. We had to take it out.”
I looked at my left upper arm. The PICC line was gone. My left hand was in a hard cast, nothing but the fingernails poking through, and my feet were wrapped with white gauze.
“I need something for pain,” I said.
“Where are you hurting?”
“My hand. My feet. All over.”
I felt nauseated and my body ached from head to toe. It felt like I had the flu.
“I think you have some morphine ordered,” Sharon said. “I’ll check and see.”
“I’m allergic to that,” I said.
“You’re allergic to morphine?”
“It gives me a rash. There’s another one they always give me. Starts with a D, I think.”
“Dilaudid?”
“That’s it.”
“I’ll call the doctor and see. It might take a while to get the order and for pharmacy to get it in the computer. You want some ibuprofen in the meantime?”
“Sure,” I said.
She left and came back with the pill a few minutes later and a turkey croissant wrapped in cellophane and a carton of two-percent milk. I swallowed the tablet with some milk and unwrapped the sandwich and took a couple of bites.
“I need to change the dressings on your feet,” she said. “But I’ll wait till I get the order for your pain medicine.”
“Okay.”
“If I get it.”
“What do you mean?”
“The doctor might not want to order Dilaudid. When you came in, they tested your urine for drugs of abuse, and you popped positive for cannabis and opiates.”
“I took two hits on a joint with an old man in the woods when I was running for my life,” I said. “And they gave me some morphine when I went to the ER for chest pain. That’s all. Look at me? You trying to say I’m not really in pain?”
There was an intercom in the room, and a disembodied voice told Sharon that security was on the phone asking if it was okay if Mr. Colt had visitors.
“How many?” she said.
“Two. It’s his wife and daughter.”
Sharon looked at me. I nodded. I should have been anxious to see my family, but all I could think about was getting a fix.
A few minutes later, Juliet and Brittney stood at the doorway and gazed in timidly until Sharon waved them in.
“I’ll let y’all visit,” Sharon said. “Give me a call if you need anything.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Brittney walked to the bed and gave me a hug and looked me over with teary eyes.
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” she said.
“I’m so glad you’re okay, too,” I said. “I’m taking it California is still intact.”
“What do you mean?”
“I figured it would have been on the news by now.”
“What?”
I glanced at Juliet. She seemed to be deep in thought. She wouldn’t make eye contact with me.
Two men, one in a gray suit and the other navy blue, darkened the doorway. Navy Blue was holding a briefcase. Gray Suit told Juliet and Brittney to please excuse them. He said they needed to talk to me in private and it would only take a few minutes.
“We’ll be in the waiting area,” Juliet said.
She and Brittney left the room. Gray Suit closed the door.
“What’s going on?” I said. “That was my family. I haven’t seen them for a long time.”
Navy Blue pulled out a tri-fold wallet and showed me a silver badge with the letters NEST stamped on the crest.
“Nuclear Emergency Response Team,” he said. “Department of Energy. Have you told anyone about the situation in Los Angeles?”
“Not that I know of,” I said. “The nurse told me I was combative. They had to restrain me. I don’t remember any of that. I guess I could have said a lot of things while I was in that state.”
“We’ll check it out. But to your knowledge, you haven’t told anybody?”
“Correct.”
“We have some papers you need to sign.”
“What papers?”
“It’s imperative that you never, as long as you live, utter a word of your knowledge of the nuclear event in Los Angeles to anyone.”
“The bombs exploded?”
“No. The Los Angeles Police Department’s bomb squad got there in time, but it’s still what we call an event. It was a close call.”
He told me about Arias and Faza and the safecracker named Fingers.
“Knowledge of such an event could cause widespread panic,” Gray Suit said. “One of our jobs is to prevent that. You’re going to be tempted at some point to tell a friend, or your wife, or someone else who doesn’t have the need to know. You’re going to be tempted to sell the story to a publisher for seven figures. Don’t do it.”
“And what happens if I do tell someone?” I said.
“You don’t want to know.”
Navy Blue snapped open the briefcase and handed me a clipboard with a single sheet of paper on it.
I read the short contract. Navy Blue handed me a pen, and I signed the paper.
“Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Colt. Hopefully this will be our first and last meeting. Here’s one of our business cards. Keep it in a safe place. If anyone besides a United States agent tries to communicate with you regarding this matter, or if you need to talk to us for any reason, call the number on the card. We’re available twenty-four-seven.”
He shut the briefcase and Gray Suit followed him out the door.
I’d dealt with government agents before, but these two were the strangest ever. It was as if any semblance of personality had been completely erased. I wondered if they had been to one too many nuclear test sites.
A couple of minutes later, Juliet came in alone.
“Where’s Brittney?” I said.
“I sent her downstairs to get a soda. I figured we could use a few minutes to ourselves.”
“Okay.”
“When you told me that you had been with another woman, my initial reaction was anger. To me, that is the ultimate betrayal. That’s why I hung up on you, and why I wouldn’t answer when you called back.”
“I understand,” I said. “But like I told you, I wasn’t myself at the time.”
“I’m still trying to wrap my head around that,” she said. “I find it hard to believe that you—”
“Don’t you trust me, Jules? I di
dn’t have to tell you about it at all.”
“So why did you? Are you in love with her?”
“Of course not. It meant nothing. I wasn’t myself, and it meant nothing. I told you because I thought I was on my deathbed. It was a dying man’s confession. I didn’t think I would ever see you again.”
“But you’re here, and I’m here, and now we have to deal with it.”
“We need to put it behind us,” I said.
Brittney walked in with two cans of Pepsi and a Mountain Dew. She set all three on the bedside table and popped the tops and handed me the Dew. She knew it was my favorite.
“Thanks,” I said. I took a sip and looked at my broken hand. “I guess I won’t be able to open my own soda for a while. I guess I won’t be able to do a lot of things for a while.”
“That’s what we’re here for,” Brittney said.
She smiled and looked at me with those big blue eyes and my heart melted and I knew everything was going to be all right.
I pushed the call button and asked Sharon if she’d gotten the order for the Dilaudid yet.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
For the first time in my life, I remembered what The Potato Man had told me in my dream. The writing’s on the wall, he’d said.
Only the wall he was talking about was spelled W-A-H-L.
For whatever reason, Donna had purposely shoved me headfirst into an intricate maze of unimaginable horrors. I was almost sure of it. Maybe she had been threatened by Derek and Brother John. Maybe she thought betraying me was the only way to save herself. Or, maybe I would never know her true motivation. Maybe she would take the secret to her grave. Maybe, but I was counting on that not being the case.
Six weeks after I left Nashville, I drove to Gainesville and climbed the steps to her front porch and rang the doorbell. My .38 was holstered on my right hip, hidden by the tails of my Hawaiian shirt. Donna answered the door with a plastic cup in her hand filled with ice and a clear liquid.