Wounded Earth

by Evans, Mary Anna

  “So you're planning to destroy the world.” Larabeth clapped her hand over the phone. She couldn't stifle it any longer. She needed to laugh. Babykiller didn't seem scary any more, just ludicrous. He was only a lunatic who'd picked her to listen to his ravings. There was no way he was responsible for the well-organized Agent Blue spill or the animal slashings.

  “Go ahead and laugh out loud, Doc. I can tell you don't believe me. Even if you did, you couldn't stop me. No one on earth would take you seriously. If you told anyone about this little talk, they'd think you were a paranoid schizophrenic. And if you played them the tape you're undoubtedly making of our conversation, they would write me off as a paranoid schizophrenic, but I'm not.”

  “What are you then?” Larabeth said, already thinking of ways to get this tape to Guillaume so he could pass it on to Yancey. ”Are you just paranoid, or just schizophrenic?”

  “I am neither,” Babykiller said in crisp, unaccented tones. “I am a killing machine, used and cast aside by our worthy government, and I left any scruples I may once have had in Vietnam. Beside the bodies of a few hundred massacred women and children. And, though I'm exaggerating when I say I'm planning to destroy the world—the technology isn't quite in place for that—I'm not exaggerating by much. It wouldn't be too impractical to make the world a hellish place to live.”

  Something in his voice made Larabeth believe again. “Nuclear bombs?” she asked in a small voice.

  “Such an obvious answer. You disappoint me. No, my business operates in the private sector and my end-of-the-world scenario can be achieved without the military. It will simply take longer.”

  He waited for Larabeth to respond. She didn't. “Consider what happened at Three Mile Island. You remember what happened?”

  “Of course. It was an operator error.”

  “Oh, but it was so much more than an operator error. Putting it in laymen's terms, a switch malfunctioned. Have you ever had your car's thermostat stick? The car overheats without warning because nothing tells the driver that there's a problem.”

  “That's a pretty good analogy,” she said slowly.

  “It's damn good. Now, think. I just proved that I could put dead animals on doorsteps across the country. I just proved that I could get Agent Blue into ordinary pesticide drums. Don't you think I could get sabotaged parts into privately owned nuclear power plants?”

  “Well, maybe you could, but they have quality control checks and—“

  “How competent do you think the average quality control technician is?”

  Babykiller snorted. “Let me rephrase my last statement. Don't you think I have already gotten sabotaged parts into nuclear power plants around the world?”

  Larabeth stopped short. It was possible. Could it be possible? “You're hoping to trigger a meltdown somewhere. Or several meltdowns. Why? What would be the point?”

  “Think about it. A meltdown. Contaminated debris spewing into the air we breathe. Burning through the soil and into the water we drink. Radiating wide swathes of populated areas. Think about it happening simultaneously in New York, Florida, California, a few Midwestern states, France. Maybe the Ukraine. Maybe China. China would be good. It's an end-of-the-world scenario, to my way of thinking, just not a very spectacular one. Call it the death of a thousand cuts.”

  Larabeth believed him. She hated to admit it, but she did. If she went public with this, she'd be considered a raving lunatic, but she'd have to try. She heard herself say, “I'll stop you. I have connections. I can get every nuclear plant between here and Iceland shut down.”

  “But you won't. You won't be talking to anybody and you won't be playing that tape you're making for a single soul. Because people will die if you do. You will live your life precisely as if you were ignorant of my existence, because within an hour of any foolish move you make, I can blow the Savannah River Plant sky-high. You know the place?”

  Larabeth's breath left her. “I've worked there,” she whispered.

  Cynthia works there, her mind echoed.

  “There's no need to whisper when there's no one to hear you. And even if there were, who would believe a word of this conversation? Just remember—you mess up and thousands of people die. And more people downstream on the Savannah River lose their drinking water. Forever. And habitat covering countless square miles will be wiped clean, along with all its furry inhabitants. A lovely image, isn't it? I believe I'll leave you with that image. I remind you, stay away from the police, the FBI, the Royal Dogcatcher. Everybody. This is between you and me.”

  * * *

  Larabeth looked out her front door. Kydd's van sat, unmoved, a symbol of failure. Kydd herself was walking up the sidewalk.

  “You couldn't trace him? Why not? It seemed like I kept him on the phone for an hour.”

  Kydd placed her equipment carefully into padded cases. “I explained this to you when I first got here. Once Plan A failed, it didn't matter much how long you kept him on the phone.”

  Larabeth rubbed the aching spot over her right eye. “Refresh me. What was Plan A and why did it fail?”

  Kydd kept packing equipment as she spoke. “Plan A assumed that he was calling from an analog phone so I could pick him up by scanner receiver and track down which cell he was calling from. That part of Plan A worked.”

  “I remember this part now. Plan A must have failed because he's not calling from nearby.”

  “Right. He was calling from Florida. I caught signals from four different cells. Maybe he was in a car and just happened to cruise through parts of four cells. Or maybe he was in a private plane, moving like a bat out of hell.” She handed a couple of cases to J.D. and cradled a third in her arms.

  “You're telling me this is hopeless,” Larabeth said.

  Kydd headed for the door. “I didn't say hopeless. It may be hopeless, but I haven't said it yet.”

  “But you're leaving.”

  “I'm going home to my real computer. The local Baby Bell will have records of recent calls to your number, but I need to find them while they're still recent.”

  “And that will give you his name and number.” Larabeth picked up two heavy cases and followed Kydd and J.D. out.

  “No, that will give me a switch number I can cross-reference to the cell phone company.”

  “And you can get into their computer?”

  “Yes.” Kydd set the cases on the driveway and slid open the van's side door.

  “And that will give you his name and number?”

  Kydd stacked the cases behind the passenger seat. “Maybe.”

  A slight shake of J.D.'s head staved off an outburst from Larabeth. She just said, “What does 'maybe' mean?”

  “It means we'll see what I find when I get in there, but first I have to get started. Now. The phone companies only store their records on local drive for a day or two. Even with the size of the systems some of them have now, their drives have to be flushed pretty often. I'll call you when I know something, but I've got to get to work.”

  “Thank you,” Larabeth said quietly.

  Kydd slammed the van door and jogged around to the driver's side. “I was listening to what the man said. He's psychotic and he threatened you. He threatened a lot of people and he meant it. I could tell. If he can be found, I'll do it. But I don't have time to stand around talking about it.”

  “Thank you,” Larabeth said again, but Kydd wasn't listening. She was trying to fasten her seatbelt and speed down the driveway at the same time.

  * * *

  His computer was logged onto the AP newswire. Babykiller scanned the news of the coming day and, intrigued by one entry with a New Orleans dateline, downloaded it and forwarded the file to Gerald.

  He was in a rare mood this afternoon. His pranks with the dead animals and the Agent Blue had gotten such good press. His conversations with Larabeth were so entertaining. He only wished he could have been there to see Larabeth's face when she ran smack into her longlost daughter. In Nebraska, of all places. He was having
so much fun for a dying man, but this was only a warmup. He could hardly wait until people started to die.

  Chapter 14

  So this was a panic attack. Larabeth had survived physical attacks, the loss of loved ones—hell, she'd even survived a war—but she had always maintained control of her mind. Until now.

  Her heart raced until the sound of it vibrated in her ears. The muscles of her chest spasmed so tightly that she could only suck in tiny gasps of air. She wasn't getting enough oxygen. There was no way she was getting enough oxygen to support life. Why was she still conscious? It would be a relief to pass out.

  It might even be a relief to die. Then she wouldn't have to think about the people who wouldn't survive a catastrophe at the Savannah River Site. She wouldn't have to wonder whether she'd had the power to save them, if she had only known the right thing to do. She wouldn't have to picture Cynthia, her precious daughter, broken into bloody pieces by the blast or vomiting her life away from radiation sickness.

  She had considerately waited for J.D. to go to the bathroom before succumbing to her fears, so she was in sorry shape before he returned. He found her sitting on the living room floor, as far from the telephone as she could get, resting her face against the arm of her father's old rocking chair. She had progressed from a racing pulse and faltering breath to uncontrollable head-to-toe trembling. Even her jaw trembled, crashing her teeth together again and again.

  J.D. sat in the rocker and eased her into his lap. Sometime later, it seemed like a long time later, she remembered how to breathe again.

  * * *

  J.D. wondered whether he should let Larabeth talk, or whether he should just send her to bed. Reliving her conversation with Babykiller couldn't be good for her mental state, but maybe she was right. Maybe she shouldn't take time to collect her wits, not when Babykiller claimed he could destroy countless lives overnight.

  So he sat in Larabeth's immaculately decorated living room and listened to her describe the apocalypse. The fact that he believed her showed how far he'd strayed from the workaday world. “So you really think this nut may be capable of destroying the world, one piece at the time?” he said.

  Larabeth's face was paper-white and the coffee sloshed in her mug. “’The death of a thousand cuts’, he called it. That's a pretty apt description. And I'm afraid he's going to send the Savannah River Plant sky-high, along with Cynthia and thousands of other people, just to prove to me he can.”

  J.D mused a minute before asking, “Why do you think Babykiller picked the Savannah River Plant?”

  Larabeth waved the question away. “Babykiller made an obvious choice. It's a big plant and an old one. I don't think it's even operating right now. When you think of infamous, Manhattan-Project-era nuclear sites, the Savannah River Plant is right up there with Los Alamos and Hanford.”

  “How much harm can he do, if the plant's not operating?” J.D. asked.

  Larabeth shook her head, eyes closed, as if she didn't want to think about it. “Oh, plenty. How carefully do you think the DOE stored its wastes in the early days? They've got waste tanks, waste lagoons, buried waste—you get the picture. There's no politically acceptable place to put radioactive waste, so the Savannah River Site is housing nuclear garbage from all over. A few well-placed truck bombs could mess up a big piece of South Carolina and Georgia.”

  J.D. twiddled with the heavy fringe adorning the sofa arm. “So, even if we got the authorities to act, there would be no way to evacuate the area. Not if we believe his claim that he could destroy the place in an hour. Did you get any information we can use to find the bastard?”

  “Not much, but he mentioned his military service again. Maybe he said something I can use to narrow the search parameters I'm using with my Vietnam veteran's database. I know for sure he said enough this time to get the FBI interested.”

  “Then let's call Yancey and get a tape to him right away and—”

  Larabeth held up a trembling hand. “Not so quick. If Babykiller gets wind that we're working with Yancey, lots of people will die. Cynthia will die. We'll get the tape to Yancey, but we'll do it the easy way. The safe way. We used Guillaume as a message boy once, and it worked. Let's do it again. If we leave right now, we can have the tape in Guillaume's hands within an hour and, if I know Guillaume, he'll find a way to get it to Yancey before he goes to bed tonight.”

  J.D. nodded. He'd be happy for the FBI to take over keeping the world safe for humanity, so he could go back to just looking after Larabeth and Cynthia.

  “Babykiller can babble about his strategic reasons for targeting the Savannah River Site all day,” he said. “We both know he chose that particular location because your daughter's there.”

  Larabeth didn't speak for a while. J.D. thought he might have made a mistake by stating the obvious, but it was too late, so he blundered on. “I mean, if he knows enough about Cynthia to send her to Nebraska, take a picture of you two together, then leave it on her desk, then he surely knows where she is right now.”

  “We'll see about that,” Larabeth murmured.

  J.D. pressed on. “How long will it take to get Cynthia out of South Carolina?” he asked.

  “Already done.” She cradled the mug in her hands. J.D. swore he could see the calm settle over her as she took back control of her own destiny.

  “How'd you manage it?”

  “Just a simple phone call. You saw me make it. If only everything were so easy. Cynthia has had a mysterious last-minute assignment from top management. She should be on a plane to Ann Arbor by suppertime. She will spend a couple of days there at a prestigious professional meeting, then she will move on to another out-of-town assignment. Babykiller will have trouble raining disaster on her head if she's a moving target.” She took a measured sip of coffee.

  “Damn, you work fast. I hope the FBI does as well.”

  * * *

  Cynthia laid her hardhat on the truck seat and answered the cell phone. It was Kelly, her boss. If Kelly was calling her in the field, then she wanted something.

  “What do you mean?” Cynthia sputtered. “I can't go to Ann Arbor. You notice that it's way past five and I'm still here. That's because I haven't finished catching up on the work I missed while I was on that Nebraska wild goose chase. You'll have to send somebody else.”

  She listened to Kelly do her fast-talking number. It wasn't her fault that Cynthia had been given the cock-and-bull Nebraska assignment. She'd been out of town and never even knew about it until Cynthia was back on the job in South Carolina. This conference in Ann Arbor was different. High-profile. It was an honor to be asked to attend. Corporate management had asked for her, Cynthia Parker. Personally.

  Cynthia knocked the drill cuttings off her work boots and climbed into the truck cab. God, she was tired. It was hot and it was humid and her work crew had gotten two days behind during the one day she'd been in Nebraska. No way was she leaving again.

  “Some honor. Two days of hobnobbing with stuffed shirts. Two days of listening to stuffed shirts presenting papers on subjects with no application in the real world. Two days of watching people look for ways to pad their resumes. No way, Kelly.”

  She wiped the sweaty fingerprints off her safety glasses while Kelly gave more excellent reasons for her to attend this time-waster. Finally, she said, “No. Send Michael. His resume needs padding. I gotta go. If I don't ride my drilling crew, they'll never get this monitoring well installed today. Tell Michael to have fun in Ann Arbor.”

  She put the phone on standby and headed back to her crew, kicking at palmettos and ferns in the underbrush as she went. The Savannah River Site was huge and, for all Cynthia could tell, she might as well have been lost in the South Carolina wilderness. She couldn't see, hear, or smell the nuclear plant and, as far as anybody knew, there wasn't anything radioactive this far out in the woods. Although the locals told tales about three-legged frogs.

  You sure couldn't tell from the lush vegetation that there was a plume of groundwater contaminati
on a mile long beneath it. Not radioactive, thank goodness, but some nasty solvents all the same. They buried drums just about anywhere back in the 'Fifties. She and BioHeal would be looking for those drums and the poisons leaching out of them till kingdom come.

  * * *

  Chet Dorsey thought his orders were pretty strange this time around, but who was he to ask questions when the money was good? Sometimes he wondered what was in the shipments he received. Drugs? Unlaundered money? Weapons? He never indulged his curiosity. Smart people who don't ask questions live longer. For all he knew, he was supplying crack to every two-bit addict in New Orleans, maybe the country. He didn't feel bad about it, though. It wasn't his fault people were stupid enough to mess with their heads that way.

  Three fifty-pound bags and a small wooden box had been dropped off for him the night before. He had to admit that the instructions—he had found them taped to one of the bags—were odd.

  First, he was supposed to slap a label on each bag and put them and the box into his car. Then tonight, he was to take them to a big fine house smack in the middle of the Garden District.

  Chet was cautious, so he drove past the house by daylight to get the lay of the land. He didn't know who his orders came from, but they sure knew what they were doing. Talk about details. The address checked out, no problem, and the house looked just like the description. Huge and old and white, with a porch that went all the way around.

  Chet liked to build things and he had painted many a house in his day. He could spot a restoration a mile away. There's a big difference between a piece of wood that's a hundred years old but immaculately maintained and a piece of wood that's simply new. This house was the real thing, down to the fancy balusters and the little carved fans under the porch roof. It had the look of something that had been in one family for generations.