Going Dark (Thorn Mysteries) (37 page)

More blood and phlegm on Frank’s shirt.

Again, Sheffield slammed the door on Claude’s head, opened it and slammed it again, opened it one more time and said, “Right here, right now, Claude. This is how you want to go? Turn your brain to mush.”

He gurgled something.

“I can’t hear you.”

More nonsense bubbled from his broken face.

Frank dragged the bolo forward so Claude’s eyes were an inch from his.

“One more chance, Sellers. Enunciate this time, use your syllables. You did those two murders, didn’t you?”

Claude nodded, swallowing and swallowing, nodding one more time.

Frank pushed him backward out into the parking lot. “Good. Now let’s go upstairs and you can tell your boss and the NRC lady what you just told me.”

He hauled Claude up the stairway to the back entrance of the control-room complex. Opening the door just as another blast came, this one even greater than the one that took down the cooling tower. An explosion so immense it sent currents of hot wind roaring between the structures and hammered the concrete building, rattled its steel joints, and continued to rumble for half a minute after the blast, shaking loose cement panels from the walls and sending tiles tumbling from the roof, and setting off more screams and more sirens and more turbulence in the air than Frank had ever before witnessed in a long life of turbulence.

FORTY-THREE

THORN OPENED HIS EYES TO
the blue iridescent glow.

Rubbed the lump on his forehead, as large and rough as a peach pit, then felt his nose, which was numb and felt a few degrees off center.

He wiped the blood from his lips, came to his feet. Picked up the flashlight from the ramp a few feet away. Went to the rail and leaned out to scan the big room. It was so cluttered with cranes and tanks and control panels draped with plastic tarps and a jumble of other exotic equipment that Thorn made one pass after another without seeing any sign of Pauly. He leaned out to peer below him, but no one was there either.

As he shuffled down the ramp, heading toward the metal stairway to take a closer look at the floor below, he caught sight of Pauly, crouched on the ground floor at the far end of the pool, half-shrouded by a yellow tarp, some kind of canvas safety barrier stretched around the sides of the pool.

He seemed to be working inside a manhole, the metal cover flipped open behind him. The small bunker was hardly larger than a phone booth, cut into the cement floor, maybe five feet deep.

An access cubicle for plumbing or refrigeration repairs or perhaps an entry point for a network of crawl spaces that led into the subterranean realms of the spent fuel pool. He was bent to his work, hands making adjustments.

The physics of what he was attempting was clear. He was setting the charge as deep below the surface of the structure as possible to do the greatest damage to the uranium racks and drain the pool in an instant, along with creating the maximum likelihood of spraying those irradiated pellets into the upper zones of the atmosphere.

But after what Thorn had witnessed at the cooling-tower blast, Pauly’s work seemed a pointless precaution. The explosive he was using was so devastating, no matter where he planted it near the spent fuel pool, it would almost certainly pump a mushroom cloud into the Miami sky, poison the air for years, and guarantee endless days of blood rain.

Maybe it was Pauly’s SEAL training and that he was a compulsive purist who wouldn’t settle for anything less than perfection. But Thorn no longer gave two shits about motives. This was down to meat and bones.

He circled the room the long way around. Picking his way across the obstacle course of grates and cables and metal tubing so he could come at Pauly from behind. The water shimmered as if it were alive, as if it were exposed to the wind and the sun and the random elements, as if it were filled with fish and crabs, lobster and white darting shrimp, as if the water were real water, the stuff of life, the stuff that kept Thorn afloat in every way water could accomplish that. But it was not. It was none of those things. In this room water was simply a chemical necessity, a slave. A perversion of water, a liquid hostage in this cellblock, held in isolation until it was used up, then it was shipped back into the world, a different thing from what it had been.

Ten feet from Pauly, Thorn stopped, surveyed the surroundings, deciding on his final approach. Diagramming the path, not the shortest, but the one with the best chance for him to fling himself on the man’s back, coming down hard with the flashlight.

He believed he’d have one decent shot. With a solid skull-crusher, things might even up. If he missed that first strike, it was as good as over. Pauly wasn’t just strong and quick. He had death-stroke training. A military efficiency. No wasted movement sizing up his enemy, no thrust and parry, no feeling out. Zero reaction time.

Thorn choked up on the flashlight, cocked his arm, took two steps—and the upper door slammed open and Flynn Moss and Cameron Prince barreled onto the observation ramp. Flynn with a pistol. Cameron empty-handed.

“You in here, Thorn? Hey, it’s me, Flynn. You in here?”

Eyes on the intruders, Pauly had begun a slow ascent from his manhole. Flynn and Prince hadn’t yet seen him, though from the direction they were taking down the observation ramp, his position would be exposed in a few seconds. Flynn leading the way, searching the cluttered floor for any sign of them.

Thorn’s injured leg made a sprint impossible, so he edged closer to Pauly, keeping his eyes upward to spot Flynn and Prince. Unless Thorn reversed course, ducked behind a nearby electrical panel right away, Flynn would notice Thorn in a few seconds. A word of recognition, a shift of eye in Thorn’s direction, would alert Pauly.

Thorn made his move. A clumsy weave through a set of orange highway cones that were marking some recent construction, then across a stretch of concrete floor, along the lip of the ghostly blue pool, moving as quickly and lightly as his damaged leg allowed.

“Hey, Thorn. Up here. You seen Pauly? Hey, Thorn.” Flynn was waving an arm.

The young man had come ashore, violated the plan. An artist, a creative person, a gift for improvisation. His talent a perfect fit for this moment.

Pauly was halfway out of his bunker, gripping the orange ladder mounted to the cement wall of the cubicle. Head and shoulders emerging. Head craning slowly to track Flynn’s gaze.

Thorn leapt the final two yards, going airborne, arm raised with the heavy flashlight. Pauly seemed torn. Moving up a step, down a step as Thorn came at him, slashing the heavy club at his head. Missing. Then tumbling down into the cubicle with Pauly. Ladders on both sides. Pauly holding to one, Thorn snagging the other, scrambling to get his balance. An arm’s length between them.

“Timer’s set for five minutes,” Pauly said, a calm smile in his eyes. “Might want to go find yourself a foxhole.” He looked down at the floor of the cubicle where the aluminum case was open, the device cradled in gray foam.

“Disable it,” Thorn said.

“Can’t be done. Fuse is set.”

Prince and Flynn stood above them on the cement floor.

“Five minutes?” Prince said. “Then we need to get out of here.”

Prince’s uniform was shredded in half a dozen spots, his chest, arms. Blood seeping from each perforation.

“No,” said Thorn. “We can’t let this happen.”

“Pauly,” Flynn said. “You have to shut it down. You can’t do this.”

“Decision’s made. Decision stands.”

Thorn chose his spot; coming from below, he backhanded the flashlight, cracking it hard against Pauly’s chin, snapping his head back against the wall. Pauly somehow managed to keep his grip on the ladder.

Thorn swung again and Pauly was too slow or too indifferent to block the blow. The heavy end of the flashlight cracked against his temple, and Pauly dropped his hold on the ladder and fell to the bottom of the pit.

“We’ve got to get this thing out of here.”

“Where to?”

“Anywhere but here.”

Thorn climbed down the ladder. Pauly was crumpled atop the suitcase. No room to maneuver. Thorn gripped him by the armpits and hauled him upright, leaned him against the cement wall.

Thorn shut the suitcase, gripped the handle.

As he reached for the ladder, Pauly latched his forearm across Thorn’s throat, an angled lock with his left arm levering hard against the back of Thorn’s head, mashing his head forward, crushing his windpipe.

“Leave us,” Pauly said. “Thorn and me, we’re going to stand guard over this gadget. Make sure it goes off without a hitch.”

Thorn thrust backward, slamming Pauly into the metal ladder, but it didn’t break the hold, didn’t weaken it. He tried a spin, then a counterspin, tried pulling at Pauly’s arm with both hands, tried whipping his elbow back at Pauly’s face. Nothing.

“All right,” Flynn said. “Let go, Pauly. Don’t make me hurt you.”

Pauly chuckled. “The man-child speaks.”

“There’s no time for this. It’s your last chance, Pauly.”

“I never thought it was anything else.”

From the edge of his vision, Thorn saw Flynn extend his arm, holding Sugar’s pistol, the nine-millimeter he kept in his glove box. Sugarman’s gun pressed against the side of Pauly’s head.

“Don’t make me,” Flynn said.

“Go on, kid, you can do it,” said Pauly. “Your old man would.”

Thorn rattled against the choke hold one more time. Shot a hand out, grabbed the pistol, twisted it from Flynn’s grasp, and aimed it past his own left ear and fired into Pauly’s face.

The blast, so close and inside the manhole, dazed and deafened Thorn.

Pauly’s grip fell away. Beside Thorn’s face a lock of Pauly’s ponytail was plastered to the wall. Pauly’s body lay twisted at Thorn’s feet. He rocked back against the wall. The iridescent blue light was spinning around him.

“Three or four minutes,” Prince said. “Hand it up.”

Thorn rubbed his eyes clear, then crouched down and pushed Pauly’s body away and took hold of the case and climbed the ladder.

“I’ll meet you two back at the skiff. Now go, run.”

“You’re lame,” Prince said. “I’m the fastest. I’m dead anyway.” He washed his hand over the bullet holes in his uniform. “My body just hasn’t accepted the fact yet.”

Flynn was blocking the stairs to the exit.

“Let’s move,” Thorn said. “I’ll take it to the parking lot, a hundred yards, big open area, minimum damage. Don’t worry, there’s time. I’ll heave it, find shelter. Now move.”

Flynn stepped aside, looking back into the manhole. “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill him.”

“That’s good, kid. Keep it that way.”

Thorn climbed the stairs to the upper ramp, Prince and Flynn following. Thorn pushed through the exit door into the darkness and the whirlwind of sirens, and shouts and the screams of the injured. The smell of charred flesh and the thick haze of cement dust from the remains of the cooling tower.

“Listen,” Flynn said. “I left the skiff at the loading docks after all. It’s just beyond that building, not far.”

Flynn stayed at Thorn’s side as he headed toward the parking lot.

Thorn stopped, planted a hand on Flynn’s chest. “Help Cameron back to the skiff. Do it now. I’ll be there in a couple of minutes. Now go, goddamn it. Do what I tell you for once.”

Thorn headed off to the parking lot in a clumsy jog.

He crossed a grassy plaza, about fifty yards from the storage pool. The parking lot was only a half minute farther on, Thorn making decent time, when he was tackled from behind, thrown to the ground. He broke away as Prince wrenched the case from Thorn’s hand.

“Okay, so you had it right, my granddad was a big deal to me, a hero. Maybe all that’s too late for me. At least I can do this.” Prince got to his feet and set off running into the dark. Thorn yelled for him to stop, but he kept going to the north, toward the bay.

Thorn watched Prince crossing the parking lot, the dull glint of the aluminum case bobbing as he ran. Thorn got to his feet, staggered after him, cupping his hands to his mouth, yelling for Prince to drop the case. Get out of there. Drop it now.

But Prince kept sprinting toward the water’s edge, due north as though he meant to run beyond the seawall, clear across the miles of water to the distant island where his family once lived. Prince Key. Travel back to those boyhood hours with his family on that faraway refuge. His strides were long and loping, streaking through the darkness as if he were bodiless, free of the dreadful pull of the planet.

Prince was out of time. Making a choice, grabbing for a legacy greater than what he’d been settling for. He ran into the darkness until Thorn could no longer see any sign of him.

Flynn was standing beside Thorn. “Oh, holy God.”

“The skiff,” said Thorn. “Let’s go.”

Flynn and Thorn crossed the plaza and took a winding asphalt road toward the docks.

“Sugarman?” Thorn said. “Is he okay?”

“Fine. He took out Wally. Wally was bragging about Pauly blowing up the spent fuel pool. That’s when I took off.”

“Leslie?”

“She’s waiting in the boat.”

“She’s all right?”

“Injured,” Flynn said. “Prince said there was a shoot-out in the control room with the plant security. I think she’ll make it.”

A security guard blocked the entrance to the loading dock. He raised his assault weapon and came toward them. He was ordering Thorn and Flynn to halt when the suitcase detonated.

Prince had carried it all the way to the northern seawall. The sky brightened and collapsed and sent a sonic boom echoing out to sea and back again. The earth shimmied beneath them. Across the grounds, cars and trucks and fuel tanks exploded. Chunks of pavement flew upward as ungainly as prehistoric winged reptiles climbing into an ancient sky.

Thorn shoved the guard into the bay and hustled past.

Leslie was propped against the front of the console. She’d been shot through the left shoulder. Her face was white. She was shivering. Thorn wrapped her in foul-weather gear and towels, cast off the lines, and pushed off from the loading dock, Flynn at the wheel, maneuvering past a Coast Guard cutter arriving with assistance. He idled out to deeper water before hitting the throttle and putting Leslie’s Whipray up on plane.