Wounded Earth

by Evans, Mary Anna

  He roused himself from his contented musings. It was time. He had known she was coming, felt it in every cell before his technician traced her phone call. He had known she was here before this oaf standing before him had come to tell him so.

  “She's right outside, sir. Used her own security pass to enter the site. I guess she didn't know you had eyes everywhere.”

  Babykiller was in a rare humor and, thus, did not waste breath in reprimanding the man for talking too much. He just straightened his tie and said, “Send her in.”

  * * *

  Larabeth waited outside the security gate. She flashed her picture ID again, trying to get the guard to wave her through. She figured there was a sixty-forty chance that she had arrived in time, if she could just gain entrance to the site. There was no plausible reason for the guard to delay her any further. She had clearance to work at dozens of secured government sites. All her papers were in order.

  The guard, not satisfied with a quick ID flash, took her security pass in his hand and examined it. “Ma'am, I need you to come inside.”

  “I'm sure my security clearance is current, and I'm in a big hurry—”

  The man stepped out of the guard shack and opened her truck door. He repeated, “I need you to come inside. I have orders.”

  The sunshine nicely illuminated the weapon strapped to his hip. Electing to cooperate, she followed the man inside as he said, “I've been watching for you all afternoon. Somebody important is waiting to talk to you.”

  Yancey. How silly of her to forget that the FBI agent was waiting to take her into protective custody. Well, her plans had changed, and she hoped he was flexible enough to go with the flow. FBI agents weren't known for their flexibility, but Yancey was young. Perhaps he wasn't completely ossified.

  Assuming Yancey was willing to take orders from her, he might actually be helpful. Between the two of them, they could surely fish J.D. and Cynthia out of this mess, but there was no time to waste. If Yancey was willing to hop into her truck, no questions asked, then he could go with her. Otherwise, she would be moving on alone.

  The security guard held open a steel door marked simply “Office,” letting her enter alone. She looked around for red-headed Yancey's broad frame, but there was only one man in the room and it wasn't Yancey. She had only seen the young FBI agent once, but the man behind the desk was fifty-ish, pale, and slightly built. Whoever he was, he could wait. She turned to leave.

  “You are not free to go. Doc.”

  Her head jerked involuntarily in the direction of the cold, familiar voice, but she continued to turn the doorknob. She was making a break for it. To hell with the armed man on the other side of the door.

  “I don't think you heard me, Doc. You are not free to go. Not while I hold the safety of your daughter in these hands.” He held them up. “You see I have no weapons. I don't need them. You will cooperate with me or my prisoner will die.”

  She found her voice. “You speak of only one prisoner, my daughter. Where is J.D.?”

  “I left orders for my people to kill him. No one disobeys my orders, so I presume he is dead.”

  Her knees weakened and she lost her grip on the door.

  Babykiller checked his watch. “Come, Larabeth. I would dearly love to take a ride in the countryside with you, and I just happen to have a car waiting out back. We need to get into it posthaste and drive it out the gate, because in a few minutes it will become very difficult to leave the Savannah River Site.”

  * * *

  Agent Chao's phone beeped and he snatched it up. There was a local sheriff on the phone and Chao's heart sank, because he could tell the man was crying.

  “They've got children. A truckload of children. Some woman was keeping an illegal day-care center in her home in Martin. The bastards stormed it. They took the woman and all the babies. They're coming your way.”

  Chao looked up and there they were, a long line of late model pickup trucks loaded to the gills with armed personnel. The bed of the second truck was full of crying toddlers. A wild-haired woman crouched among the children, hugging as many of them as she could reach.

  The first truck stopped and a scrawny young man with a crisp uniform and a bad complexion stepped out of the passenger door. Two armed men hopped out of the back of the truck and followed him, one on each side. One of them held a boy, perhaps five years old, by the hand. The boy tried to pull his hand away and the man twitched his rifle. The boy froze. Agent Chao walked cautiously toward the terrorists and flashed his badge.

  “I'm the Chief General of the Army of the Resurrection,” the young man said, “and I guess you are in charge of those resisting us. I will stay here and deliver our demands, but I suggest that you let the rest of my Army pass.”

  The General carried himself like a cocky son-of-a-bitch, but his eyes didn't match the rest of him. Chao had spent hours in front of a mirror conducting practice negotiations with himself. The General apparently had not. His eyes were worried. Chao had seen him glance back up the road, beyond his Army of the Resurrection, looking for something that wasn't there.

  Chao didn't answer the General immediately and it made the younger man angry.

  “Shall I have my men kill this little boy?" He looked at the child. "What's your name, boy?”

  “Austin Davidson,” the child quavered.

  The General's confidence was back. Chao considered that he might have underestimated the General. “Shall I have my men kill little Austin Davidson, or will you let my Army pass?”

  Chao studied the endless row of pickup trucks, filled with heavily armed men dressed in camouflage. Something was missing.

  There were no cargo trucks carrying explosives, no paneled trucks loaded with heavy artillery. The portion of the Army of the Resurrection in front of him was composed entirely of personnel, the weapons in their hands and, perhaps, small quantities of ammunitions and plastic explosives. There was no place to hide a weapon bigger than a breadbox.

  Chao considered breadbox-sized weapons capable of doing widespread harm. If the General had nuclear devices, then he was going to take the site whether the FBI liked it or not.

  The General's eyes flickered up the road again. He didn't act like a man with a nuclear arsenal. He acted like a man who was wondering where in the hell his truck bombs were. Chao decided that he wanted to be between the General and his truck bombs. He was going to let the Army of the Resurrection drive onto the Savannah River Site.

  If things went sour, Chao knew the media would crucify him for putting the lives of a truckload of kids ahead of national security. He thought of nuclear waste and departmental regulations and little children. He considered how badly he wanted to reach over and break the General's neck.

  Then he said, “Let them pass,” and gave a hand signal so the snipers in the bushes would do nothing to stop the Army of the Resurrection from taking one of America's most sensitive targets without firing a single shot.

  * * *

  Larabeth sat on the leather passenger seat of a large, nondescript, American-made luxury car. There was only a small crowd watching the spectacle. The Savannah River Site was remote and the crisis was too new. There had not been time for rubberneckers and a camera crew to park at the gate, waiting for blood.

  Only those few people who happened to be waiting in line to pass through the security gate were privileged to see the victory of the Army of the Resurrection. The solid, encompassing steel and glass of their automobiles gave them the illusion of safety and anonymity. They were precisely as safe from the Army of the Resurrection as an ostrich hiding its head in the sand, but they were lucky. The Army and its General were not interested in them.

  Babykiller had parked his car amongst these onlookers, giving him and Larabeth an unobtrusive front-row seat. She tried to count the armed men as they passed, but she quit when the number topped a hundred.

  She saw the leader of the terrorists approach an official-looking man, probably the government's spokesperson. They talked brie
fly—too briefly—then the convoy started rolling again.

  Larabeth was stunned. She knew the strategic value of the Savannah River Site better than most people and she could not fathom any reason powerful enough to justify handing it over to terrorists. No, not even the truck loaded with toddlers sitting directly in front of her.

  Her heart went out the poor woman who sat in the pickup bed, hugging as many crying children as she could reach. She was calling out to the onlookers. Larabeth couldn't hear her over the idling engine and the blasting air conditioner, but she could read her lips. Help me, the woman said. Help me save my babies.

  Larabeth closed her eyes as the tiny prisoners rolled away. Help me, she prayed. My baby's in trouble, too.

  * * *

  A hundred yards from Babykiller's car, Agent Yancey sat alone in an unmarked van. He had weapons. He had a complete disguise for Larabeth, even enough peroxide to turn her brunette tresses bottle-blonde. He had plenty of food for a cross-country trek, more than enough to get them to the pre-arranged safe haven. He had a convincing set of papers to support Larabeth's new identity. All he lacked was Larabeth.

  He was only a few months into his tenure with the agency and, already, he'd broken a cardinal rule. He was personally involved. He'd never even spoken to her face-to-face, but his feelings toward Larabeth approached hero-worship.

  He admired her cleverness in warning the agency about the terrorist attack taking place before his eyes. More than that, he was awed by her courage. During the terrible attack on her friend Langlois, she'd simply plopped down, ripped off her boots, and struck out swimming. His mother was roughly Larabeth's age. She would have sat down and had hysterics.

  Yancey sat in his well-equipped, empty van and hoped Larabeth was all right.

  * * *

  J.D. followed Cynthia to the equipment shed, wishing she would open the stupid letter.

  They entered the shed at one end of a large room lined with lockers. Showers and restrooms opened off one side of the room. They looked through a window in another door at a narrow, astonishingly clean, room equipped with special sinks, a row of shallow basins of water in the middle of the floor, buckets of water holding brushes, several water hoses, and emergency showers.

  “This is where the excavation crew cleans up. I'm sure you went through a Level C decon drill during your health and safety training.”

  “Yeah,” he said, glad he still remembered what Level C was.

  She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “Let's take a look at the equipment storage room.”

  There were protective suits hanging along the walls and respirators dangling above them on hooks. A wicked row of machetes hung beside the door, waiting to hack at the palmettos and underbrush that refused to die. Rubber boots stood neatly along the walls. Boxes of smaller gear like gloves and safety glasses were stored on long shelves.

  She had been dangling two short translucent tubes from nylon rope handles since they met. He remembered she had called them bailers. She handed them to him and said, “Could you put these away while I read this letter?”

  J.D. joined her in the break room where she had peeled off her rubber gloves and begun reading.

  “Chapter 14. The ‘ultimate scenario.’ And signed by Dr. McLeod herself. Is this real or is this a drill?”

  “If you thought it was real, we wouldn't be sitting in this room chatting,” J.D. said.

  “And Dr. McLeod wouldn't have written this—in New Orleans, I guess—and sent you by car to deliver it. Ever heard of one of these?” Cynthia opened her desk drawer and slapped a cell phone laying inside. “No way do I believe that this place is about to blow.”

  “Nobody thought Hanford was about to blow, either,” J.D. said, and she blanched. “You'll have to trust me and,” J.D. gestured at Larabeth's letter, “you'll have to trust Dr. McLeod. You're in danger and the rest of your crew may be in danger, too. I'm here to help you get them off-site and, once that's done, I'm going to take you someplace safe. Probably to the FBI. Your mother sent me—”

  Damn. That was the wrong thing to say.

  “My mother? My mother is dead.”

  J.D. was silent, trying not to mess up again. He liked Cynthia cocky. It hurt to watch her wilt as she realized what he had said.

  “You're talking about my birth mother.” Her dark eyes were too big for her face, too big for her tiny body. “Do you know my mother? Are you my—” She looked him hard in the face. “You're too young to be my father.” Pointing at the BioHeal logo on the letter in her hand, she demanded, “Does my mother know Larabeth McLeod?”

  The sound of angry voices outside the shed kept J.D. from answering Cynthia's question. He rushed to the window in time to see twenty armed men dressed in camouflage begin rounding up BioHeal employees.

  “I think we now have a true Chapter 14 emergency condition,” he said.

  As if to confirm his observations, they heard a scuffle in the locker room next to them and the thud-grunt of a man being shoved to the floor. Cynthia rushed to peer through the window in the door, but J.D. grabbed her bodily and hauled her out of the exterior door, leaving it open so the intruders wouldn't hear it slam. She began to speak, but he clapped his hand over her mouth.

  “Will you whisper if I take my hand away?” Her eyes narrowed, but she nodded.

  “There were men in fatigues, lots of them, shoving my staff into the equipment room,” she hissed. “Ramon was lying on the floor with blood all over his forehead. The men were all carrying machine guns. And this is the weirdest thing: I saw them hand a weapon to Niles.”

  “Obviously, he was the spy,” J.D. whispered, as if colleagues sold each other out every day. “We can't stay here.”

  He had already taken stock of their options; there was one. The single road leading in was blocked by armed intruders, leaving them no choice but to run for the woods, fifty yards away.

  Cynthia took his measure. “You're not who you claim to be. I just watched you handle two dirty bailers without gloves, then you laid them on the shelf with clean, deconned equipment. To me, there's just one difference between you and those guys. You haven't pulled a gun on me. Yet.”

  “And I'm not pulling a gun on you now,” he said, unzipping his jumpsuit and ripping off his shirt buttons to reach the concealed .38. “I'm here to help you, but I don't have time to prove it. You have to decide for yourself whether or not to trust me.”

  Cynthia never acknowledged the presence of the gun. Her eyes never left J.D.'s. He saw that she understood that knowing her adversary was far more important than knowing the location of a mere weapon, and he was impressed.

  J.D. pointed to the woods. “If you want to escape, there's your only option. It's where I'm headed. Come with me. Please.”

  Cynthia slowly nodded and the two of them sprinted for the woods.

  * * *

  One-Eye stood in the corner of the BioHeal locker room and watched his wing of the Army of the Resurrection force their prisoners inside. It was a small room and the prisoners could only get through the door single-file, so it was taking awhile. The group had turned docile when a soldier in the Army of the Resurrection cracked a prisoner over the head.

  He, One-Eye, wouldn't have done that, not until somebody got really out of line. Even then, he wouldn't have beaten the guy. He would have just shot him, as an example to the rest. There was no harm done, though. The prisoner was regaining consciousness and his “team”—although calling them a team was pushing it—was doing a pretty good job of keeping the other prisoners in line.

  The boss, the one they called Babykiller, had chosen him for this job because of his Vietnam experience as an Army Ranger. He had been ordered to make an assault team out of this pitiful tribe of malcontents. He had done his best. This job would have been easier without them, but they had the firepower and they had the warm bodies, so it had been necessary to whip them into shape as best he could.

  He scanned the group of prisoners. One of them was special. He w
as supposed to hold her, alive and unharmed, until he heard from the boss. It shouldn't be hard to find her. There was only a handful of women.

  The last few prisoners were escorted through the door. He hadn't seen any women that fit the description—petite, dark-haired, twenty-something.

  “Is everyone here?” he demanded. He didn't have to shout over the nattering of his assault team. His voice had the authority that only life experience could provide. “Is there a woman named Cynthia Parker here?”

  The prisoners looked around them and shook their heads.

  “Lying would be stupid at this point. If you're lying, I'll know soon enough.”

  He checked the restrooms and showers, entering each room gunfirst, then he looked into the decontamination room. No luck. When he went into the equipment room and saw the back door open, he knew where his quarry was. Within a minute, One-Eye and three of his men were in pursuit of Cynthia Parker and anyone stupid enough to be with her.

  Chapter 24

  Babykiller had treated Larabeth to a long drive deep into the countryside surrounding the Savannah River Site. She'd seen no sign of human habitation in half an hour. If this was the end—if he killed her out here—would anyone ever find her body?

  She hardly cared. It was unpleasant to think of her body decaying, melting into the earth, providing food for carrion-eaters and worms, but at least the pain would be past. She would be beyond the fear for Cynthia that had dogged her like a hungry animal. She would be out of Babykiller's reach forever. And she would never have to face the bleak emptiness of life without J.D. She'd had only a day to feel complete in his love, but it was enough. She was ready to die.

  But she couldn't even give herself the peace that comes with accepting death, not yet. All her life, she'd heard the ghost stories about spirits trapped on earth by their unfinished business and now she understood them. If she died now, if she left Cynthia alone in the world with Babykiller, she would be leaving her most pressing business unfinished. Better to die later, when her only baby was safe.