by Susan Dunlap
DEVON MALLOY DID NOT indulge in emotion. But if he had, he thought, he would be outraged at the puerile threat on the phone. We’re watching the tracks. As if Liza Silvestri and her male mouthpiece would suddenly have access to an army. Did they think he was born yesterday?
For an instant the specter of the police crossed his mind. The police did have an army; the police could station units at every stop of the train. If Liza Silvestri was fronting for the police—Malloy shrugged off the waft of fear. If the police were involved they would simply stop the train and check every car till they found their weapons.
The puerile threat meant nothing—nothing except an admission that this lie was the best Liza and her man had, and it was nothing. Maybe the man would hide on the railroad car with her, planning to burst out of the bathroom or from behind the seats. If he was so naive as to think anyone in Malloy’s position would come alone, the man deserved to die. And he would die. Malloy had no need for two hostages.
No indeed, no need for more than Liza Silvestri, the perfect hostage. Little enough to handle easily, pretty in that pouty little-girl way. With her out there waiting to die, the whole world would be watching.
Malloy leaned back and let his eyes close, picturing her in that skimpy little sweater, those poured-into jeans. There was a little smile on his face; quickly he yawned to remove it. This was business, an integral part of the plan. There was nothing personal in it.
An enclosure, he decided. Like the zoo. He would have one of the men find him some hurricane fencing. Orel Jasson, the retired driver, had said there was a ton of it in Hanford, lying out around Unit “B.” He would set up an enclosure like they do for the apes, small enough that there was nowhere to hide from the television cameras. He would make an announcement about the tanks, the countdown to when the tanks would blow. He would make sure she heard it, that she knew how long before she was scattered into ash. He would let the cameras record the terror on her face.
Maybe she would try to escape—there would be no way of escape, he would make sure of that—but an attempt would be good, very good. Up the ante for the viewers.
She was the crowning touch on his perfect plan. At Hanford they said no one could overrun the facility. But they forgot the human element. The combination of willing guards and a long-forgotten roadway Orel Jasson had used, would get his men to the inside before the droopy-eyed security force realized its perimeter had been broached. His big weapons unit would create a camouflage disturbance—ear shattering explosions, plumes of smoke—in the 100 Unit by the “retired” nuclear reactors. Security forces would fall all over each other getting there. He would break through the low-level security at the underground tanks and he would turn off the mixer, let the gases build inexorably, and he would blow them sky high. There was no smile of triumph on his face, no raised fist, no fast-beating heart. He had trained himself well; he felt nothing—almost nothing.
He needed only one thing—the container number. His container should be the last one on the train, the one that could be rolled off. That was the only sensible arrangement. But he could not go on trust, not and find himself at the Hanford gate with a container of baseballs or hog bellies. There was no feasible way to check the container. He had to get the container number from Liza Silvestri.
Suppose she did not have it? A chill spiked his back.
Of course she had it. Why else would she come here if not to get the container? How would she know her own container if not by number? Of course she had it.
Devon Malloy prided himself on being a realist. He knew he would never walk out of Hanford. They would pretend to bargain with him, just as they had pretended they were not emitting radioactive iodine into the air. When the waste storage tanks exploded he would go up with them. His statement would be powerful. And pure. Then he would let himself feel. He would feel pride. He was only sorry he would not be alive to see Liza Silvestri die.
Fifty-Five
LIZA’S HEAD THROBBED. BENTEC had hit her so hard when he shoved her in the car she must have blacked out. She didn’t know where he’d been or what he’d been doing or how long he’d been doing it. Her vision was blurry. She felt for the door handle.
Bentec yanked the patrol-car door open on the driver’s side, swung onto the seat, slammed the door. “Where’s the train, bitch? Which train? Where’s my shipment?” Before she could open her mouth, he grabbed her shoulder and smacked her head against the door.
The car reeked of smoke and stale vomit. His face was the color of cold cooked beef, eyes wild; he was out of control, yelling words she couldn’t make out over the ringing in her ears. She’d expected back-up cops, at least a partner in the car, but Bentec was alone.
He was going to kill her.
But she had led him away from Ellen and Wes and that was what mattered. Them together—she had to clasp that picture like an amulet to get her through.
Behind her, the sky was turning dark.
“Where? Dammit, Silvestri told you. I know he told you.” Her head hit the window again; she could barely think. She wanted to cry, but she’d be damned if she’d give him that satisfaction.
“Huh? Come on, bitch, talk!” He was yanking her hair, pulling it loose from her scalp. He slammed her into the window; glass cracked. She didn’t even feel the cuts on her cheeks until she saw the red dripping on her shirt. Cold gusts blew through the broken glass, stinging the edges of her cuts.
He shoved her out of the way, reached for the window, broke off a shard of glass and poised the point against her nose. “I’ll turn your face into a map. The best plastic surgeon in L.A. won’t be able to sew you back together again.”
She no longer felt anything, even terror. She looked straight ahead through the rain-veiled windshield at the deep green beyond. When she spoke her voice was low and cold; she hardly recognized it. “My husband slid down my body and died at my feet. My life is over. There’s nothing left to threaten.” Warm drops hit her chest. She didn’t look down. “Throw the glass away. I’ll take you to the guns.” When he moved his hand she added, “For Jay’s share.”
“What, bitch, you expect me to give you a million dollars?”
“Three million.”
“Hey, even he didn’t—”
“So kill me and get zip.” She picked up a towel from the dashboard and wiped away the shards of glass on the window sill. “Take your time. But don’t take too much. The train won’t wait.”
He was staring at the blood on his hand, watching it drip. Wind poured through the window, searing the cuts on her face but she doubted he even felt his own wounds. Finally, he said, “Okay. Tell me where the guns are.”
“Drive north.”
“Just tell me, Goddammit!”
“I’d prefer to live long enough to see the money. Drive north.”
She sat, smelling the car, smelling Bentec. She’d thought she felt nothing, but now she realized that the swirling cold that filled her chest and stomach was rage. She didn’t dare speak. The windshield wipers turned the glass from mottled green to trees and sky, road and trucks. The car rattled, the wipers splatted, the steering wheel squeaked on left turns. Bentec’s breaths were thick, labored, and she could hear the maelstrom of fury in them.
A huge blast shattered the tension.
“What was that?”
There was a smile on Bentec’s face. “Sounds like an explosion to me. A mile or so back. A damn big send-off.”
Sirens screamed behind them, headed back in the direction of Wes’s house. She turned, stared out the back window, looking for patrol cars.
Bentec laughed. “That siren’s not police, Liza.”
“What then?”
“Fire engines. Sounds like two, three alarms. Ah yes, biiiig fire.”
“The house? You set the house on fire?”
“Well, Liza, how could I resist, tell me. With those piles of dry wood by the walls? So easy. And it blew so fast. Anyone inside, well…” He chuckled.
She lunged at him. He g
rabbed her by the neck and slammed her back. He was laughing, holding her at arm’s length, watching her flail and gag. His hand tightened; she couldn’t breathe. She gagged. He gave one great howl of laughter and let go.
She slumped back against the broken window, her buttocks half off the seat. She had to brace her leg to keep from crumbling to the floor next to her purse.
Her purse. She let herself slip down, reached for the purse and pulled out the gun.
“Don’t!” Bentec roared. Before she could get both hands on the trigger, Bentec swung his arm and smacked it out of her hands.
She waited for him to shoot her. But he just smiled. Not the manic laugh of a minute earlier but the relieved laugh of a man back in control.
“My nine-millimeter,” he said. “I thought this was in Silvestri’s house.” He held it in both hands like a great and fragile gift, but it was her he was watching. His smile shifted, his eyes narrowing. “I thought I’d left this under the bed in Silvestri’s house—your house—when he brought in the whores.”
His throat quivered as if he was salivating. He was waiting for a shriek or moan, an oath, some sign that he’d delivered the final outrage. They sat unmoving for a moment before she saw the disappointment in his eyes. By now, her dead husband screwing another woman in her bed was not worth a shrug.
Bentec focused back on the gun, turning it over, smiling. “I thought this would send me to jail. But here back in my hand, it’s going to get me my money.” The desperate red was gone from his skin. When he pulled her purse from the floor, dropped his gun back in, and slid the purse between his hip and the driver’s door he had the look of a man revitalized.
She slumped, ignoring the flames of pain in her hands and shoulders and throat. The throbbing in her head shoved out thought. But through it, somehow—she had no idea how—she vowed she would do one thing. Whatever it took, she would make sure Frank Bentec never saw his money.
Fifty-Six
CAPTAIN RAYMOND ZERON PULLED up near the suspect house. The place was a blackened shell. Flames shot out the windows. Despite the downpour, branches of the nearby pines and eucalypts were sparking. The pulsar lights on the fire trucks turned the macadam brick red and the fire fighters looked like they’d been roasted alive. Engines raced, men yelled orders, incoming sirens screamed in the distance. It was all Zeron could do to find the captain in charge. He’d worked with Jake Mason before. Eugene was a small town.
“Arson,” Zeron stated. No need to pretend it was a question.
“Oh, yeah. Blew like Vesuvius. Owner had nice dry woodpiles on the porch. Convenient for him. Fucking invitation for any arsonist driving down this road.”
“Nah, Jake, no spur-of-the-moment ignite here. This is the house where the L.A. love nest wife was hiding out. Anybody alive in—”
“Not a chance. See that black twisted lump by the door?”
It took Zeron a few moments to make out which particular blackened item Mason meant. “Yeah?”
“That’s a fake leg—prosthesis. Was a plastic leg before the blast shot it out the window. Guy doesn’t leave home without his leg.”
Zeron nodded and started back to his car. This was one big, messy case and there were going to be a lot of loose ends to tie up. Feds would be demanding everything and in triplicate. Then there’d be Bentec.
Zeron settled in the car and stared sadly at the cataclysm. He’d deal with Bentec and the Feds when he damned well got around to it.
Fifty-Seven
LIZA’S HEAD THROBBED AND the buzzing in her ears was like an army of leaf blowers. She’d always prided herself on not thinking ahead; now she couldn’t even figure out how to move her head to a less painful angle. Bentec was being careful not to exceed the speed limit, but he jerked the car at every turn and she caught him glancing over to see her wince. He’d be in hog heaven if she moaned or screamed. She gritted her teeth and settled in for the ride to Portland.
She never planned, but she did observe. Bentec’s watching the speed limit said he was a maverick now. He’d stolen this Eugene patrol car but he wasn’t taking back roads, worrying about the local cops; he just didn’t want to force the issue. By the time the locals focused on Bentec, she’d be dead. Like Ellen and Wes.
Wes and Ellen. She saw them again, on the sofa, sitting so close their breath came in unison. Ellen with that soft, awed smile Liza couldn’t have imagined on her square face. Wes pushing the button to call the Household Local Line. She shut her eyes tighter and listened to the Household Local chugging in from the kitchen. She saw Felton’s cute little black and white head, his pink nose wrinkling eagerly as he rooted in the bend of her elbow. Poor little…
Bentec slammed to a stop.
Liza looked up and saw tracks, overhead wires. The railroad station was at the other side of the parking lot. Rain splatted hard on the metal roof almost blocking out the sounds of a train. She squinted her ears, trying to hear only the train, chugging louder, slower, coming nearer.
“That’s the train, right, Liza?”
She looked over in time to spot a freight coasting in on one of the middle tracks. “Should be.” Metal jammed into her ribs. His gun! Oh, God, now that he had the train, he didn’t need her anymore. He’d parked at the farthest possible spot not so no one would help her, but so no one would hear the shot. “Malloy will be expecting to deal with me. He insisted I come.” She was amazed at how calm she sounded.
“Who’s Malloy?”
“You don’t know? Let me tell you then, Frank. Malloy is the lunatic head of a survivalist cult you’re arming. How do I know that, that’s what you’re going to ask, isn’t it? I called him. From Eugene. I got his phone number off the web page just like you could have done if you hadn’t been so busy killing people.” He couldn’t have, not without the password, but he didn’t know that.
He rammed the gun into her stomach. She struggled not to throw up, forced herself to breathe so shallowly she barely moved. Sweat coated his face; he was crazed, mouthing words without sounds, but he hadn’t shot her and she knew she had him—for the moment.
“We don’t have…all day, Frank. The train’s pulling out.”
Fifty-Eight
DEVON MALLOY DROVE WEST. The wipers squeaked on the windshield. He turned them off, waited to see if the dredges of the storm coated the glass. The glass stayed clear. Malloy nodded. Broaching the Hanford defenses would be easier in a downpour but Malloy was glad the sky was clearing. When the Hanford tanks blew he did not want the explosion curtained by rain. And he certainly did not want a wall of rain blocking shots of Liza Silvestri in her cage, screaming with panic.
He was careful to keep the speedometer just above the speed limit. His white pick-up was standard issue, nothing to draw attention. In it he carried only the registration and a bottle of water. No fake plates, no phony license, no weapons. If he should get stopped he was just an Idaho lawyer on his way to Spokane to shop. He did not indulge in emotion but it warmed him to think of the twenty trained men in trucks heading to the Richland grade, one of them in an eighteen-wheeler ready to take on the container. He would have more weapons than men, but for this operation more men would only mean more danger of leaks. Twenty men armed to the hilt was plenty.
It had not taken Malloy long to discard the option of boarding the train in Oregon or some spot well before Richland. He needed to shunt the container car onto the siding in Richland. This was no time to go hunting for alternate sidings miles from Richland and Hanford. Even if he found a suitable one, that would mean carting a container of highest-grade weapons over hill and dale. More exposure. And the scene in the passenger car itself—what was he going to do, shoot Liza Silvestri’s accomplice and ride for hours with his corpse? Toss it out and have a kid walking his dog discover it? And Liza Silvestri? He would have to deal with her whining and begging the whole way.
No, he would do just as the guy said, get on the train at the top of the Richland grade, and be gone before the vermin’s body rolled into the station
. One small adjustment. There was a spot the train stopped, more of a pause than a stop—he did not know why, did not care why. That spot was not at the top of the Richland grade, but at the bottom, two miles before. That spot—his spot—was where he would get on.
Fifty-Nine
LIZA MADE A POINT of not sitting as far away from Frank Bentec as possible in a passenger-train seat. He had shoved her in the window seat and put her purse with his gun on the seat across the aisle from him. She stared out the window into the dusky woods. Sundown came so much earlier this far north.
The passenger car, the only one on the train, was six down from the engine and empty except for them. It was cold. The floor was covered with a thin sticky dust that suggested the car had been sitting on a siding in some desert and the dust had blown in around the window seals and settled onto the amorphous goo of neglect. A couple of lights had burned out and the whole car resembled a sepia-toned photo. The train swayed back and forth, back and forth…
There wouldn’t be anything to see till they came to the grade before the bridge in Richland and the train stopped—in eight hours! But Bentec would start in on her long before that.
The train crossed the Columbia River. They were in Washington now and somehow that seemed like a big step, into the state of the Hanford nuclear waste site. She could feel Bentec tighten up. The train picked up speed.
He shifted to face her. “Okay, Liza, where do we meet the buyer, this Malloy?”
“I don’t know.” She expected his slap but that didn’t help. His hand smashed into her jaw and she couldn’t keep her head from hitting the window.
He grabbed her shoulders shaking her till her teeth actually rattled. “You answer me, you bitch.”
She didn’t say anything; she couldn’t—he was shaking her too hard.
“Don’t you stonewall me like that shifty little shit of a husband of yours. Think about him. Remember how he died. You tell me the truth! Where do we meet Malloy?”