Wounded Earth

by Evans, Mary Anna

  He drove around the block to check out the back of the house. Bingo. There was a nice convenient alley, just like his instructions had said. He decided to risk a quick drive down the alley. If questioned, he could always pretend to be lost.

  He counted backyards and paused behind the fourth one. Again, bingo. There sat a big, goofy-looking raft painted in psychedelic colors. Tonight, he would come back, park here, and haul the contraband from his car trunk to the raft, and swap it for an identical cargo that was already there. Simple. And even more lucrative than usual.

  * * *

  Cynthia passed the last Savannah River Site checkpoint and drove on into the South Carolina evening. She was glad she'd turned down Kelly's trip to Ann Arbor. She and her crew had a full day's work to do tomorrow, then it would be Friday again and she would be another week closer to the deadline for this project.

  It was a forty-five minute drive home to Aiken, the nearest town of any size. Cynthia didn't mind the drive, except for the mileage it put on her car. Most of her college friends were living in Houston or Atlanta or D.C. They spent a lot of time sitting in their cars with nothing to see but other people sitting in their cars. She enjoyed the marshy Carolina bays and had come to look forward to the annual round of wildflowers—the redbud signaling spring before winter was quite gone, the blue summer chicory, and fuzzy joe pye weed in the fall.

  She knew it would be cheaper, and more environmentally responsible, to join one of the carpools going back and forth to Aiken every day. Maybe she would get around to it, if her pocketbook or her conscience got to nagging her too much.

  She had her pick of potential carpools. The long line of commuters cruising along briskly in front of and behind her testified to that. The cars moved toward Aiken as a unit. There was no way to tell that the white Sunbird, two cars back, was following her. The most experienced cop couldn't have picked it out from the crowd.

  * * *

  The rising moon cast its unassuming light on the people gathered in Guillaume Langlois's front yard. Larabeth was one of the few who weren't wearing GAIA's distinctive blue-and-green headband, but it scarcely mattered. She wasn't trying to blend into the crowd. She needed desperately for Guillaume to see her. Many lives depended on the package in her hands. She must get a moment alone with Guillaume, so she could pass it to him safely. He, in turn, must get her tapes to the FBI. No matter what he had to say to this crowd, her message was more urgent.

  Guillaume was standing on a second-story balcony, addressing the gathering with a bullhorn that he hardly needed. She had missed the bulk of his speech, but she gathered that he was seeking their support for the "hullabaloo" he had warned her about over lunch the day before.

  “Help us, friends, get our message to the powers that be, to our senators, to our representatives, to our president. They are not evil; they just haven't heard the will of the people. Make them hear. Write to them. Work in their campaigns. And join us tomorrow, when together we will defend our mother Earth's blood, her liquid life. Her water.” He bowed, wished them good night, and backed into the house through the door behind him.

  The crowd was quiet and respectful, but it showed no signs of dispersing. Larabeth clutched her tape of Babykiller in both hands and followed J.D. as he tried to force his way forward, but progress was slow and they were both weary from pushing at the passive resistance of hundreds of human bodies.

  Guillaume re-appeared on the balcony above them. “GAIA appreciates your devotion, but I must ask you to go. It does our cause no good for you to expend even a portion of your life force on a vigil here tonight. Go, pray in the quietness of your homes and rest. We may all need your strength tomorrow.”

  As Guillaume turned to leave a second time, Larabeth realized she might have to make a commotion to get a moment with him. She screeched his name and waved her arms, trying to distinguish herself from the nameless masses who followed her friend. Guillaume would make time for her, if he only knew she was there.

  He glanced down, but he was too far away and it was too dark. He backed hurriedly through the balcony door and her heart constricted in sympathy. Guillaume lived in fear of assassination and she knew his fears were justified.

  The balcony door closed behind him, and Larabeth and J.D. were left standing among GAIA's faithful. They kept pushing upstream as the crowd obediently began walking away. Two of Guillaume's burlier bodyguards met them on the broad front porch and barred access to the door.

  “I must see Guillaume. Please tell him that Larabeth is here.”

  The smaller guard responded by crossing his arms across his impressive chest. J.D. crossed his own arms and stared back. The larger guard ignored J.D., squinted at Larabeth and said, “Nobody sees Guillaume tonight.”

  “No, I'm here on personal business. I need—”

  The bodyguard said, again, “Nobody sees Guillaume tonight.”

  Larabeth shifted her strategy. “I appreciate your efforts to take care of my friend. I understand that he needs protection from people who are threatened by what he has to say, but would you just tell him I'm here and let him decide whether—”

  The man didn't move toward her or even raise his voice. He was calmly aware that his bulk alone was sufficiently intimidating for most purposes. He politely interrupted Larabeth and said, “Of course he would agree to see you. I know who you are. You're the McLeod woman and you're here to talk Guillaume into cancelling the demonstration.”

  “No, I'm not. I swear—”

  “Guillaume trusts you, but we don't. You work for polluters. You don't belong here.”

  “If I don't belong here,” Larabeth snapped, “then why did Guillaume give me this key?” She held it out. “My friend Mr. Hatten and I are going to walk around you two gentlemen and I'm going to unlock the door and go in. If you touch either of us, I will report you for assault.”

  “And if we report you for trespassing?”

  Larabeth was already headed for the door. “Just try to get the homeowner to press charges.” J.D. kept close by her side.

  The guards looked at each other, shrugged, and followed her into the old home's front hall. The two front parlors had been GAIA's original headquarters. The environmental group's offices now consumed the entire first floor. Every downstairs room was empty and dark.

  Larabeth ascended the stairs, rubbing the ivory-inlaid newel post for luck. Guillaume's bedroom was at the head of the stairs. It, too, was empty. On a hunch, she rushed down the wide center hall. A full-length casement window opened onto the rear balcony. Larabeth stepped outside just in time to see Guillaume's car pulling into the alley.

  The bodyguards had done their job. They had stalled her precisely long enough. Her car was parked five blocks away, in the wrong direction. There was no way she and J.D. could catch up with Guillaume. She refused to look at the guards' smug faces as she ran down the back staircase in a futile attempt to catch Guillaume on foot.

  She scrambled over the wrought iron fence enclosing Guillaume's back yard. J.D., one step behind her, hurdled it and took the lead, but she matched him, stride for stride. The bodyguards were laughing and she vowed to be present when Guillaume reamed them both out for doing this to her.

  Their pursuit was brief. Guillaume's car was out of sight before Larabeth and J.D. reached the end of the alley. There was no way under the stars to find him. Larabeth didn't want to stop running. She wanted to run until her lungs screamed and her legs refused to carry her. Maybe if she kept moving, Babykiller wouldn't be able to find her.

  The thought of Babykiller brought her up short. This business of using Guillaume as a go-between would obviously work best if she kept their friendship inconspicuous, yet here she stood, sweating and heaving for breath because she couldn't outrun his moving car. She felt like her stupidity was on display for the whole world to see, but when she looked up and down the alleyway, she saw no one in the darkness but J.D.

  “What now?” J.D. asked. “Do you have any idea where he might be going?”
<
br />   “Not a clue. If the FBI is going to get these tapes tonight, they're going to get them from us.” She moved closer, so she could speak quietly in case Babykiller had someone hiding in the bushes. “Kydd said my house wasn't bugged. Do you think it would be safe to call Yancey from there? Is my cell phone safe? Or maybe we should just use a pay phone.”

  “Your office isn't bugged either, not with any device I could find. But Babykiller knew within twenty-four hours than you had spoken with the FBI. Maybe Yancey's bugged. Or maybe Babykiller's a psychic. Talking to Yancey sounds dangerous to me.”

  Larabeth had achieved a near-normal pulse and her breathing was less ragged. It was a good thing she kept up her daily workouts; otherwise, this little sprint might have killed her. “Babykiller can find me, wherever I am, even in Nebraska. He appears to know precisely what I'm doing, even down to a two-minute conversation with an FBI agent who's still wet behind the ears. The only thing—the only thing—of importance that I've done in the past week that he seems to have missed is my conversation with Guillaume. I say we don't mess with success.”

  “How soon can you get those tapes to Guillaume?”

  “I'll see him tomorrow morning,” she muttered, walking quickly past Guillaume's house so she wouldn't have to look his obnoxious guards in the face. “I'll be at his stupid ‘hullabaloo’, and no one will be able to keep me from him. Then I'll give him the tapes, and he'll give them to Yancey and...”

  J.D. didn't press her to go on. She knew he could finish the sentence for her. ...and then the FBI will fix everything. She couldn't finish her own sentence because she knew how naive it would sound. Maybe nobody could fix what Babykiller had broken, but Guillaume and Yancey and the FBI were their best hope. The little package in her hands was heavier than it looked.

  * * *

  “Go to bed,” J.D. said.

  Larabeth had sat in front of her computer for hours while he watched her probing through her Vietnam veterans database. Ten minutes ago, he had watched her fall asleep at the keyboard. Rather, he had watched her fall asleep on the keyboard. When she moved her head just so, she sent a row of nonsense letters across the screen: sometimes it was hj;;jkl;;lll and sometimes it was sfdfdsafaaaaaaa.

  “Go to bed,” he repeated, hauling her to her feet and walking her down the hall. “No one with a gram of common sense would keep chasing a hopeless cause at this time of night.”

  He tucked her in, then sat down at the computer himself and started pushing the mouse around. He apparently didn't have a gram of common sense, but so what? He might get lucky.

  * * *

  “I was househunting today,” Cynthia said as she got ready for bed. It wasn't an entirely innocent comment. Ricky knew that she was moving when her lease was up. He also knew that he was not invited to join her unless he was employed.

  “Find anything?” he asked, keeping his voice vague.

  “I drove past five places and didn't see anything worth considering. The funny thing was that I kept seeing the same car everywhere I went. What's the likelihood that somebody was checking out the same five houses as I was, at the same time?”

  “You're the scientist,” he said, smirking. “You figure it out.”

  “Anyway,” she said, “about the time I got totally weirded out, the car pulled into Jerry's Barbecue.”

  Ricky listened to Cynthia talk and thought about how pretty she used to be. She was still a looker, that was true, but she was way past twenty-five by now and he could still remember her little sixteen-year-old face. Her little sixteen-year-old ass hadn't been bad, either. Nope, his taste in women hadn't changed. He just couldn't exercise it any more without going to jail.

  “I felt so stupid,” she was saying. “I thought somebody was following me, when all they wanted was a hot plate of barbecue.”

  Ricky shifted under the sheets. So somebody was keeping tabs on Cindy, even though they already had Ricky on the job. That meant they were checking up on him. He slugged back the rest of his whiskey and soda.

  * * *

  Larabeth ground her teeth in her sleep. The dream was back. She almost woke up and knew that the dream was back, but it sucked her into the past anyway.

  She was in Saigon. She couldn't really see where she was at first, but she knew it was Saigon because she could hear the sounds of mortars that were, thankfully, far away at the moment. She was walking down the street trying to look like she wasn't the tallest person in town. She was hoping that, by magic, her paper-white skin was darker, more golden, less conspicuous. She was trying her best not to look like a round-eyed, American target.

  Then she was in the hospital. She could tell she was in the hospital because no place in the world smells like a war-zone hospital. There were pieces of soldiers in the beds that lined the walls of the ward. She was confused. Why did they keep these pieces alive and throw other pieces away? Then she remembered. You keep the pieces that still have hearts and brains. The arms, the legs, the pieces that don't think and don't pump blood—those pieces you had to throw away.

  She was supposed to be doing something. She couldn't remember what, but she did remember that she couldn't stop working. One of the soldier pieces might die. It was important to keep them alive. She didn't know why. She didn't care much herself about staying alive any more and she wasn't missing any pieces.

  Then a man ran up to her. He was right in front of her, but she couldn't see him through the damnable dream-fog in her eyes. She thought at first he might be a soldier. No, he was moving too fast. Her soldiers didn't run like that. They just lay in their beds. Sometimes they moaned, but that was all. Lieutenant Doe, the nameless one, her favorite, couldn't even moan. The tracheotomy and the ventilator silenced him.

  Then the strange man, the only other soul in the room with control over his own body, started stabbing her, cutting her, and she knew it would be over soon, the pain, because he would either stop or she would die. One of these things had to happen very soon.

  She woke herself screaming, with the blue-white flash of pain still in her eyes. She heard herself calling for J.D., then her conscious brain kicked in. J.D. had been a high school kid when she was in Vietnam. Calling for him was ludicrous.

  Her unconscious brain wasn't so easily brought back to reality. Her animal self, unconvinced, was ripping at the buttons of her nightgown. Her hands groped over her torso, looking, feeling for the wounds, after all these years.

  The bedside lamp teetered under her frantic hands, but she managed to turn it on without breaking it. She groped at her abdomen. The evidence was there. No blood. No gaping wounds. Just scars, and not fresh ones. They had been an angry red but now they were simply white.

  Her rational self continued its soothing drone. It was a dream. It's over. It happened a long time ago. She knew it was true and she relaxed some, but it was nearly dawn before she slept again.

  * * *

  Chet Dorsey was thinking. He had completed his assignment easily. Nobody heard him park in the alley. Nobody heard him messing around in the back yard of the big white house. Everything was perfect, except one thing. How was he going to get rid of the stuff stashed in his trunk?

  He drove around a while, thinking maybe he'd throw them in the river or find a dumpster, but it bothered him that someone might be watching. He finally decided it made the most sense to just take them home, so he did.

  He had a nice house, really comfortable considering he lived there alone. It hadn't taken him long to scrape up a healthy down payment, not when he had the opportunity to do these little mystery tasks on the side. He always made sure that he could make the payments on his salary alone, though. You never knew when a gravy train might jump the tracks.

  He took the bags from his trunk into the house and stared at them for a while. Then he took them in the bathroom, got a knife, and ripped the first bag open.

  Chet didn't know what he was expecting, but it wasn't sugar. Of course, he couldn't be sure. There could have been drugs cut into the sugar. Or it c
ould have been some bizarre chemical that looked like sugar, but had some other purpose. Chet didn't know, but he wasn't about to touch it.

  He went to the garage, got a hand trowel and a pair of Playtex Living Gloves his last ex-wife had left behind, and started scooping the stuff, whatever it was, into the toilet. He stopped now and then to flush. It took him an hour, but finally he had sent the contents of the first bag into the New Orleans municipal sewer system.

  About halfway through the chore, it occurred to him that the stuff could be explosive. He shrugged. If it was, he was damn lucky, because he hadn't blown himself up yet. And if it blew up an underground sewage main or two, it was too late now for him to do anything about it. He kept shoveling.

  When the bags were empty, he went to his truck and fetched the wooden box, which he found contained only a colorful cotton cloak. He put the box and the cloak and the bags in his fireplace and poured lighter fluid on them. The paper outsides of the bags burned, but the plasticky linings just smoked and withered. Finally, he was satisfied that they were unidentifiable.

  He scooped up the ashes and the remains of the linings and put them in the trash compactor, along with a generous load of kitchen garbage. He pressed the start button and, finally, started to relax. Whatever the reason for the caper he had just pulled, he was fairly well satisfied that the cops would have a hard time tracing anything to him.

  He began to think of the money he had earned so quickly and easily. He wasn't sure yet what to do with it, but maybe he would spend it on the house. He had been thinking about building a deck out back.

  Chapter 15

  Thursday morning broke in Richland, Washington, with a surreal half-light. Buzz couldn't shake the feeling that he was back in Vietnam. Nam had been a surreal place, all right, bombs and blood and destruction loosed on a tropical paradise. It was the Garden of Eden, completely overrun by snakes.

  This was no garden he was standing in. This was Richland, an isolated spot on the high empty desert of eastern Washington. The Cascades were far to the west, but their rain shadow covered Richland. All the water that the air had managed to steal from the Pacific was dumped on the cool flanks of the Cascades. Nothing was left for the unfortunates on the other side of the mountains.