The Omicron Legion (39 page)

“A weather system’s distance from New York City, Boston, the whole upper East Coast…”

“Precisely. But his primary role was to assassinate the president.”

“Do you know how?”

“Only where and when. It’s tomorrow, as the presidential motorcade makes its way through Boston. But I can deal with that. A few well-placed phone calls and the president doesn’t leave Washington.”

“Which means we don’t get a shot at Abraham, risk him disappearing underground. No, Maxie. You’ll have to convince 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to go through with at least the facade of the motorcade. Leave the chief out of the limo, but make sure the limo rolls on schedule. Tell them it’s our only chance to catch a determined assassin. That’s language they can relate to.”

“Maybe.”

McCracken nodded. “Okay, so that leaves us with the Pennsylvania Yankee Nuclear Power Plant. I catch him there, and he doesn’t even make it to Boston.”

“He’s probably already
been
to the plant,” Virginia Maxwell said. “He’s had twelve hours since Williamsburg. Plenty of time.”

“And the timetable?”

“Everything was set to key off the assassination. Anytime after tomorrow morning and evening. It was left to the disciples’ discretion.”

Blaine looked at her very closely. “And now you’ve cost the operation these disciples. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that their presence at Gap headquarters was your doing. You knew they made for the only chance you’d have against the Indian and me so you took it. Now I’d say you’re an outcast in your own right. Otherwise, you would have gone to the bunker with the others.”

Virginia Maxwell’s first response was the slightest of smiles. Then she said, “A year from now we could still have an army of disciples in place. The power plant operation could be reactivated.”

“Toward what end?”

“Toward creating chaos—out of which a new order will be born. We would preside over that order, my dear. The nation would be ours to do with as we please.”

“What’s left of it, you mean.”

“All the better. We were Children born out of the worst chaos man has ever wrought. We were born to thrive in chaos, to want to make it happen simply because the remnants would belong to us.”

“A nuclear-ravaged wasteland.”

“But a land, all the same.
Our
land. A different America, one that would prosper on different terms. You have the list. You know the positions we have reached—positions from which centralized power can be wielded. The areas were hand-picked for us.”

“Too bad you can’t be a part of it anymore, Maxie. You know that. Your only hope to be
anything
is to help me. I’ll hunt them down with or without your help. Without means your name stays on the list. What’ll it be?”

“Damn you, McCracken!”

“Where’s the bunker, Maxie? Where can I find the rest of the Children?”

“Got it, Indian,” Blaine reported. He was back in the passenger seat of the car Wareagle had parked a quarter of a mile from Virginia Maxwell’s house. “Old Maxie decided to play ball.”

“Her route was chosen long ago, as ours was.”

“Well, thanks to that route, she’s going to alert the president for us. The motorcade will be staged to draw Abraham out, but the Secret Service will be ready to drop a net on him as soon as he shows.”

“I don’t think so, Blainey.”

“Let it go, Indian. We’ve got other—”

McCracken’s words were cut off by the explosion that shattered the night. The sudden brightness of the fireball forced him to shield his eyes even from a quarter of a mile away as the Hampton Roads home of Virginia Maxwell gave itself up to the flames.

“Abraham,” he said.

“A step ahead of us, Blainey. Abraham got to her. Abraham knew.”

“Which means he could have set the explosives for earlier, but he didn’t. He let Maxie talk to me. He wanted her to.”

“He wants to beat us.”

“Because of Williamsburg?”

“And something more. He wanted me to know where to find him. He wishes to face me.”

McCracken realized Johnny didn’t sound sorry. He looked back at the flames. “No help from the Secret Service now, Indian.”

“Just him and me.”

“Vision quest?”

“At last, Blainey.”

“And that’s where my father is?” Patty asked as the four of them gathered around the map placed over the coffee table. The area of the Utah Salt Flats was highlighted in red, a small
x
denoting the bunker’s position.

“According to Virginia Maxwell, yes,” Blaine confirmed.

“And what are you going to do?…Oh, go on with your planning. I didn’t mean to stop you.”

McCracken looked at Sal Belamo. “How many men did you say you can get?”

“A dozen I can trust. Another six I can kill if they fuck up.”

“You’ll need a plane to get there.”

“What are you going to do?” Patty angrily asked again. “My father’s in there! Do you hear me?
My father!
”

Blaine heard, and wished he hadn’t. He should have stuck with his instincts and not included Patty in this part of the plan. She had a stake in this, though. She deserved to know, and she deserved an opportunity to make her own decision.

“He’s one of them, Patty. There’s nothing I can do.”

“Yes, there is. Let me come with Sal. Let me talk to him.”

“You’d never get that far.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do, Patty.”

Patty Hunsecker backed away, as if repulsed. “Listen to you. Listen to
all
of you. It’s over. You’ve won. These people don’t have to die.”

Blaine moved next to her, easing her further away from the table. “I warned you about what letting yourself become a part of this meant. Welcome to my world. It’s not much, but I call it home.”

“You’re not a murderer. I know you’re not.”

“That depends on your perspective. I wasn’t a murderer when I helped save your life at the circus in Rio, and Sal wasn’t a murderer when he saved the lives of you and your brothers ten days ago.”

Patty realized Johnny Wareagle had crept up silent as a cat behind her. “Each deed demands its own definition,” the Indian said. “We become prisoners of those definitions, each as unique as the person who seeks it.”

“What the two of you are saying is that I won’t sanction what you want to do, even if it’s necessary, because my family’s involved. I won’t deny that. I started all this to find out what happened to my father, and I’m not about to give up now that I’ve found out where he is!”

“He gave up on you first, kid.”

She shook her head. “Shit, McCracken! Stop trying to make everything sound so simple! Things just don’t work that way. There are repercussions, accounts to be settled.”

“Yes, the proverbial moral balance sheet. I’ve been there and back a hundred times, Hunsecker, and the picture’s always the same. There is no right or wrong, only cloudy levels of both. Through the muck, though, lines have to be drawn somewhere. Your father is part of something that meant to destroy much of the United States. We haven’t won as long as the Children are still out there—as long as
he’s
still out there.”

“So you kill him.”

“We do what we have to.”

“Say it!”

“Oh, I’ve got no problem with killing, Patty, not insofar as it means millions of lives are going to be saved.”

Patty Hunsecker wouldn’t back off. “You once told me one innocent life was as important to you as a million. You were talking about a young boy who’d been kidnapped, remember?”

“Your father isn’t innocent. Neither are the rest of the Children. I’m sorry.”

“So am I,” Patty shouted, and stormed out of the motel room.

Johnny Wareagle touched Blaine’s shoulder. “You know where she will go if we don’t stop her, Blainey.”

“She’s got that much coming to her, Indian—if that’s what she wants.”

“Still, she is entering the crossfire, where bullets kill without aim or discretion.”

“She knows.”

“Does she?”

A thinly veiled smile crossed Blaine’s lips. “It’s what she has to do. That’s all.”

Sal Belamo cleared his throat. “And what I got to do is round up my team and head West. That rich bitch’ll probably beat me there, at this rate.”

“That’s my hope, Sal.”

McCracken reached the Pennsylvania Yankee Nuclear Power Plant at 10:00 the next

morning. Maxie’s death confirmed that Abraham remained committed to fulfilling his role in the operation. A roundabout route to reach the site was thus mandated, and Blaine squeezed from it all the time he could.

“Look,” the guard at the front gate repeated, “I can’t let you in unless your name’s on this list.” He tapped his clipboard. “And it ain’t.”

“Call the shift supervisor.”

“Need a pretty good reason to do that.”

“How’s this?” Blaine asked the guard, pressing the pistol against his temple.

Every guard on duty at Pennsylvania Yankee had McCracken in their gun sights as Blaine and his hostage moved for the front of the complex. The main entrance was built in the shadow of the massive white tower that housed the nuclear reactor itself. He kept the steel barrel hard enough against the guard’s head to push the blood from the area, no doubt left as to the sincerity of his intentions. A man wearing a white shirt and tie met him on the front steps, his hands raised in the air.

“Let’s try and stay calm, shall we?” he said to Blaine.

“I’ve never been calmer. Who are you?”

“Jack Tunnel.”

“Supervisor?”

“Plant manager. Let that man go. We’ll talk. I promise.”

“I’m not here to talk, Mr. Tunnel.”

“Sir, you don’t realize what you’re doing. The penalty for unlawful entry into a nuclear facility qualifies—”

“Fuck penalties, Mr. Tunnel. An hour from now you’re not going to give a good goddamn about penalties unless you listen to me.”

“Let the man go. Then I’ll listen.”

McCracken drew his hostage closer and drew back the pistol’s hammer. “You’ll listen now, you son of a bitch. Your plant’s been sabotaged. Do you hear me? We’ve got maybe an hour to find out how and where or there’s gonna be one major hole in the ground come dinner.”

“You’re a
terrorist?
Is that what this is about?”

“Not me and not terrorism. Something much worse, Mr. Manager, and we’ve got no time to waste talking about it.”

Jack Tunnel’s eyes met McCracken’s and his expression changed. “Who are you?”

“Who I am doesn’t matter. You want to arrest me—fine. You want to call the FBI—fine. Just do it after you’ve shut down your reactors to check for explosives, to check for anything out of the ordinary.”

“Our security precautions make what you’re suggesting impossible.”

“I got through, didn’t I?”

“Not to the central core. You could shoot us all and still not get there.”

“But somebody else did late yesterday. Somebody no one here had reason to suspect.” The words came with his thoughts, as Blaine put it all together. “A surprise inspection by the NRC or Atomic Energy Commission. Noteworthy only for the fact that only a single man came out. Big. Straw-colored hair and deep blue eyes,” Blaine finished.

“Hey, chief,” said another shirt-and-tie man to Tunnel softly, “a guy from the AEC did show up around six….”

“How did you know?” Tunnel asked McCracken.

“Because it’s the way I would have done it.”

“And what else would you have done?”

Before Blaine could answer, the repetitive beep of a shrill alarm buzzed in their ears.

“
All personnel to safe areas!”
blared a mechanical, prerecorded voice. “
All personnel to safe areas! We have a Code Red. Repeat: We have a Code Red.
”

“Oh my God,” Tunnel muttered. “The control room, Tunnel!” McCracken shouted over the alarm. “Now!”

Chapter 35

AIR FORCE ONE
had come in on schedule to Logan Airport, and Arnold Triesman was counting his blessings. All things considered, the time Top Guy was in the air was the time he felt the most helpless. Couldn’t save Mr. Pres from a blown engine, a midair collision, or a missile. Nope, not even the Secret Service could do a damn thing until he was ground locked, which was when Triesman felt at least some measure of control.

Today’s agenda was simple, routine all the way. Top Guy lands at Boston’s Logan Airport, and then from the Callahan Tunnel takes the scenic route down Boylston Street to give as many locals as possible a gander en route to the Ritz Carlton Hotel for a luncheon with the governors from all the New England states. Airport time included, he’d be outside for no more than forty seconds and that was the name of the game. Rule number one: Ninety-nine point nine percent of all problems arose while Top Guy was
outside.
In a containable area or the safety of his rocketproof limo, no one was bothering.

Of course, that didn’t mean they wouldn’t try someday, and Triesman had a full complement of agents and police personnel scattered along the route—two hundred in all—as insurance. The agents didn’t bother camouflaging themselves. Indeed, they made sure everyone about could see their well-known earpieces just to create a presence. A presence made for the best prevention of all. Rule number two.

Triesman waited outside the Ritz Carlton and drank in the routine of it all. A trio of police helicopters buzzed the sky in a continuous sweep, the rooftop perimeter clear as could be. Triesman breathed easy. The mundane made for his lifeblood. The extraordinary he savored not at all.

Which was why the sudden squawk of his walkie-talkie shook him alert, making him fumble it as he raised it to his lips.

“Alley Cat, this is Stray Seven!” one of his field men called over the emergency channel.

“Come in, Stray Seven.”

“Alley Cat, you’re not going to believe this, but I think I saw him
again.
”

“Saw
who
again, Stray Seven?”

“The Indian, Alley Cat. The same damn giant Indian from Philadelphia.”

“Oh, fuck,” was all Arnold Triesman could say.

McCracken tossed his hostage aside on the way to the control room, and a number of guards converged on him immediately.

“Leave him alone!” Tunnel ordered. “He’s on our side.”