Critical Mass

by Steve Martini

  During a layover in Denver, he found a bank of phones and placed the call as Thorn had directed. He dialed the cellular number and heard it ring twice before a voice answered.

  “Yes.” It was Thorn. He was breathless, his single word muffled by what sounded like industrial noise in the background: heavy equipment, and the relentless peal of a safety bell as a truck or some other vehicle backed up.

  “Taggart here.”

  “I was beginning to worry,” said Thorn.

  “I just arrived. The flight was ten minutes late getting in.”

  “Then you don’t have much time,” said Thorn. “Check inside your briefcase. You will find a key stamped with a red number. It fits a locker on that concourse. Go to the locker. Everything you need as well as your instructions are inside. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Follow the instructions precisely,” said Thorn.

  “How will I contact you?”

  “You won’t,” said Thorn. “Just follow the instructions.” The signal at the other end went dead. Thorn had punched the “end” key on the cell phone before Taggart could say another word.

  He hung up the receiver, lifted his briefcase onto the flat stainless steel surface under the phone, then spread it open and looked inside.

  The leather briefcase had not been out of his possession since he packed it the night before. But there in the bottom was a brass key, the number C-142 stamped in red plastic. Thorn must have dropped it into the case on the boat that morning, when they switched seats so that Taggart could drive.

  He grabbed the key and began searching the concourse for lockers. The first set he found didn’t correspond to the number on the key. His flight had landed twenty minutes late. By the time he got off the plane, he was down to half an hour before the connecting flight departed. The phone call to Thorn had taken time. He checked his watch. He had less than eighteen minutes to find the locker and catch his connecting flight.

  PADGET ISLAND, WA

  Two helicopters were headed back in from the sound toward the landing zone. Gideon could see them coming in low over the water. Only this time they were not the ponderous, overburdened Hueys that had landed Simmons and his troops. These were smaller, with a sleek, black profile. Gideon recognized their dark silhouettes from pictures he had seen in Jane’s Defense Weekly.

  The two Cobra gunships swept in low over the landing zone at high speed, causing the Marines on the ground to flinch and duck. The two choppers swung toward the beach and the sound of the gunfire. It was clear that somebody in authority had found a radio.

  Gideon didn’t wait to find out what would happen. He knew that if he wanted to see what was in that house he would have to do it now. The corporal that Simmons had assigned to watch him was busy getting an earload: descriptions of death down on the beach.

  Gideon picked up the Marine’s M-16 from the dirt where the panicky kid had dropped it. He slung the gun over his shoulder, grabbed his backpack of equipment, and ran through a grove of burned-out trees down a dusty path that seemed to head in the right direction, toward the house on the cove.

  In the star burst of figures fleeing the landing zone, Gideon was just one more running figure. In less than a minute, he had separated himself from the forces on the hill. He was alone, moving quickly down the dusty path.

  He rounded a bend and could see the house, this time from a different angle. He stopped behind a tree and studied the front of the building again through the field glasses that he took from his pack.

  Most of the windows across the front were shattered, blown out like the ones in the back that he and the Marine corporal had seen from the bluff above.

  What looked like flyspecks all over the white paint under the overhanging porch on the front side, on closer inspection through the glasses, turned out to be bullet holes.

  There had been a pitched battle at the house, and Gideon wondered what had caused it. Simmons had ordered the building off-limits to the gunship and its howitzer.

  He scanned the area in front of the house. A sandbagged bunker appeared to be empty, though he couldn’t see into part of it because of a corrugated metal roof.

  He dropped the field glasses back in his pack and started back down the path.

  Thirty feet down, he crossed a small creek. The path suddenly descended precipitously. His feet hit loose gravel, slipping out from under him. Gideon grabbed the rifle and managed to keep it out of the dirt, but slid on his side and began to roll down the steep incline.

  He lost control and tumbled. Items came flying from his backpack. He lost his grip on the rifle. The sling wrapped around his arm, and halfway down the hill something hit the trigger. The rifle discharged. The shot didn’t hit him, but the sound of the report close to Gideon’s head nearly deafened him. He rolled down the hill but somehow managed to get control of the rifle again. He clung to it like a lifeline.

  It wasn’t until the tumbling stopped abruptly in the hollow of a small ravine that Gideon realized that he had never checked the rifle to see if the safety was on or if it was loaded. The fact that he hadn’t shot himself was a miracle, though anybody within a half mile of the house now knew he was there. He lay there dazed for a moment, trying to recover his bearings.

  Gideon felt a burning sensation along the side of his leg and looked down. His pants were ripped, and the skin that poked through on the side of his thigh looked like raspberries that had been crushed in a blender. His right arm was scraped and scratched from the wrist to the elbow.

  He tried to collect himself, looked back up the hill, and saw items of equipment from his backpack strewn over the steep path. The pack was still wrapped around one arm, its strap twisted around his wrist. He unwound the strap from his arm and set the bag carefully on the ground to check what was left of its contents. The heavy Geiger counter was still in the bottom, though Gideon couldn’t be sure after the pounding whether it would still function.

  The binoculars and compass were gone. He looked with a pained expression back up the hill. He did not have time to go searching for them now.

  Carefully, Gideon checked for a safety on the rifle, and found what he thought was it. Even though he was a weapons designer, he had little expertise in firearms. He flipped the wedge-shaped metal catch back and forth several times, until he satisfied himself as to which position was on and which was off.

  He fumbled with the gun for a few more seconds and managed to detach the metal magazine from the underside of the weapon. He checked this for ammunition. The clip appeared to be full. He took one of the bullets out of the magazine.

  Five-point-five-six-millimeter NATO rounds. The Netherlands was one of the charter members of NATO, though Gideon knew more about its organization than its small arms.

  It was a small bottle-shaped round with a bullet roughly the size of a .22, but heavier in weight and longer. Gideon guessed that the bullet was probably fifty or sixty grains in weight and steel-jacketed. The rifle would be accurate out to maybe two hundred yards, that is, if you were a good shot, which Gideon knew he was not. Perhaps he could hit a large, still target at a hundred yards, if he was lucky.

  He hoped he wouldn’t have to use the gun at all. If he did, he would fire one shot at a time, and hopefully come close enough to discourage anyone from investigating him at closer range. He had no desire to kill anyone, and even less to be killed himself.

  He pressed the bullet back in the magazine and carefully slid the clip back into the gun. Then he checked the safety one more time, slung the rifle over his shoulder, grabbed his backpack, and stood up.

  With the first step he limped heavily on the injured leg. Blood was spreading through the material on his pant leg, though the pain told him that the injury was not serious. He had no time to take care of it. He gritted his teeth for the first few steps and slowly lengthened his stride as his limbs loosened up and the burning sensation in his leg began to pass. A few more paces, and he shook off the stiffness. He moved in the direction of t
he house. It was maybe fifty or sixty yards away, across a small meadow.

  He felt the percussion of the bullet as it passed an instant before the sound of the shot registered. Gideon hit the ground like a sack of sand.

  DENVER INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

  Taggart checked two more alcoves off of the main concourse before he found the locker with the right number stamped on the metal door. He slid the key into the lock, and it turned. Carefully, applying pressure with one hand while he pulled gently with the other, he opened the small metal door just a fraction of an inch, just enough to allow a sliver of light to penetrate into the dark confines of the locker. Then he looked to see if anyone was watching.

  The busy concourse was filled with travelers, most of them in a hurry. No one seemed to be paying particular attention to anything going on at the bank of lockers.

  Taggart peeked inside over the edge of the slightly open door. There was a piece of paper, what looked like a single sheet, folded inside on the bottom of the locker. It was a few inches back from the door. On top of it was a glass container, what looked like a classic bottle of men’s aftershave. Next to these appeared to be a closed book of matches.

  Taggart looked for wires or strings connecting the bottle to the door, any sign of a booby trap.

  He had never trusted Thorn from the inception. The man had come into the deal, firmly attached to the nuclear device as part of the transaction. Taggart had never fully understood why, only that it was an immutable condition of the transaction.

  The man had been paid a bundle of money by Taggart’s group, money they had raised by highly intricate scams and a few violent robberies, mostly banks with large cash deposits.

  For all Taggart knew, the nuclear device that his group had paid for might well be resting at the bottom of the sound, dumped there by Thorn at the first sign of trouble. He had seen the device only once, and then only briefly after being blindfolded and taken to an undisclosed location as a condition of payment.

  If things had now soured, eliminating Taggart would be Thorn’s first instinct. Why leave somebody behind who could identify him? After all, Thorn had killed the woman for the same reason.

  Taggart couldn’t see any wires or thin fishing filament connected to the door or running from the back of the locker to the bottle.

  There was one other possibility. The bottle was large enough to contain an explosive accelerant, nitro, or something else equally potent. It might be set up to detonate by a photocell. When the door opened, and enough light reached the bottle—BANG.

  Taggart carefully closed the door and leaned against it with his shoulder to keep it shut against the pressure of the slight back-spring. He took the handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the perspiration from his brow, then checked his watch. He was down to eight minutes if he was going to catch his flight.

  Quickly he lifted his briefcase and reached inside. He grabbed a thickness of pages, eight-and-a-half-by-eleven sheets from a spiral notebook, and ripped them from their wire binding.

  He dropped the briefcase and held the thickness of paper up to the edge of the locker door like a shield, then carefully opened the door, a fraction of an inch at a time.

  Sweat ran down his upper lip. Finally with the door open just a crack, he slipped the flat of his hand through, holding the thickness of paper between his thumb and his palm. He then shut the door against his forearm and tried to seal off as much of the light as he could with his shoulder.

  Feeling around inside like a blind man, Taggart inched his hand toward the bottle, careful not to jar it or knock it over. He got a grip on it and wrapped the paper around it. He tried to feel for any protrusions in the glass that might indicate the existence of a thin photocell cemented to the outside. He felt only the smooth symmetrical shape of the glass.

  Still he took no chances. Carefully he lifted the bottle out, still tightly wrapped in its paper covering. Then he grabbed the piece of paper that was neatly folded and lying on the bottom of the locker.

  Using his lips and his free hand, he opened the note and read. It was typed and very brief. His brows furrowed, and a smile curled on his lips as he digested the message. It was so simple it was brilliant. It gave him a whole new sense of appreciation for Thorn.

  He was no longer worried about the bottle exploding. He carefully unwrapped it from the paper, then checked its cap to make sure that it was sealed tight. He gingerly set the bottle into the bottom of his briefcase and propped a few items against it for safety, so that it wouldn’t break or leak.

  The last instruction in the note he followed to a tee. He placed the note back in the locker, then looked to make sure that no one was watching. He picked up the book of matches inside and without removing his hands from the locker, struck a match and set an edge of the paper on fire. Closing the door only enough to confine the smoke and look over the top, Taggart watched the paper slowly turn to ash as the flame finished its work.

  A light haze of smoke curled from the locker as he opened the door. No one else seemed to notice. He reached inside and swept the ash out of the locker and onto the floor, then checked his watch. He had less than five minutes to catch his flight. Taggart picked up his briefcase and ran for the gate. Thorn was about to make his bonus money after all.

  PADGET ISLAND, WA

  Joselyn edged cautiously toward the edge of the small grove of wind-dwarfed trees with the sound of the first shot. She had heard distant firing all morning, but this was different. It was much closer.

  She waited and listened. She moved out of the brush, all of her senses sharpened like a cautious deer. Clutching the small machine gun from the dead Navy SEAL in her hands, she was now down to the last full magazine of bullets. She had stashed the satchel with the pistol and grenades in the hollow of a tree in the grove. It would be her last refuge if she were forced to retreat.

  Joselyn had just cleared the edge of the small grove and was looking toward the path when she saw him, sitting on the ground a hundred yards away, looking at his pant leg, picking at it with the fingers of one hand. It was same tan pants and white shirt he’d been wearing the night before, when he left her standing on the dock in Friday Harbor.

  The ungainly figure sitting on the ground looking at his leg was Gideon. She had no idea how he’d gotten to the island, and what’s more, she didn’t care. All she knew was that he had come for her, that she was no longer alone.

  Without thinking, she dropped the gun and started to run.

  Gideon didn’t see her. He seemed focused on the backpack on the ground in front of him and the front of the house. He never looked toward the grove of trees set into the high bluff behind it.

  Joselyn edged her way around giant boulders of sandstone, and into a small ravine running with water from a creek. She lost sight of him as she dropped down into the ravine and tried to climb up the other side. She couldn’t. She kept sliding back down. She grabbed at some small roots growing from the side of the ravine, and they pulled loose in her hand. She turned and followed the ravine down, following the flow of the water, the course of least resistance.

  She ran for what seemed like a minute, but was in reality only seconds. Her head surfaced just above the edge of the ravine so that she could see Gideon once more, walking through the meadow, limping toward the house.

  Joselyn raised an arm and was about to call to him, when the shock of the rifle butt against the side of her face drove her to the ground and back down into the ravine.

  She had failed to see the man wedged in the rocks just above her. Joselyn got only a fleeting glimpse of his face, hideous and seared, as she hit the ground and rolled on one shoulder into the shallow channel of the creek. The only force keeping her conscious was the shock of the icy water and the flow of adrenaline coursing in her veins.

  Dazed, she looked up and saw him as he took aim.

  Buck Thompson was a crack shot, but his rifle had taken a beating, bouncing on the ground after the explosion had thrown him out of the bunker. He cente
red the crosshairs of the scope on the man’s chest and squeezed the trigger.

  UNABLE TO SHAKE off the effects of the blow or to crawl to her feet in the trickling waters of the creek, Joselyn heard the sharp peal of the rifle as the shot reverberated through the ravine. A second later he was on her, the barrel of his rifle waving in her face as she got to her knees, its tapered muzzle moving close to touch the side of her temple just below the hairline. Cold, hard, steel.

  He worked the bolt and ejected the round, seating another.

  “Don’t scream.”

  She tried to open her mouth, but nothing came out.

  “Don’t.” His voice issued from twisted lips, burned crisp to a hideous black at one corner.

  She knew from the way he fired and leaped from the crevice in the rocks that his shot had found its mark. Gideon was dead. The thought made its mark on her consciousness, but acceptance of the fact as reality did not.

  She began to scream. Joselyn couldn’t keep her eyes off of the man’s face. It embodied every grotesque event of the last twenty-four hours. She screamed in a pitch of fright and revulsion at the death that lay about her.

  The man’s right eye seemed to be gone, the side of his face had the texture and pallor of melted wax, part of it seared and blackened like meat that had been left too long on a spit.

  Even in this form, she recognized him. It was the man with the scoped rifle, the one she had seen in the mirror, taking aim as she lay near the open doorway. How he’d survived the blast in the bunker Joselyn had no idea.

  His one good eye darted between Joselyn and the edge of the ravine over which he could no longer see. He rapped her on the head with the barrel of the rifle, not hard, but with enough force to get her attention, to stop her screaming, which pierced his open sinus cavity like a knife.

  Joselyn looked at him in stark horror, but she stopped screaming.

  He lifted the muzzle of the rifle and grabbed Joselyn roughly by the arm, pulling her to her feet. Then he pushed her ahead of him, down toward the shallow end of the ravine, where it poured into the open meadow.