Three Minutes to Midnight (36 page)

She replied,
Roger.

 

Grace spotted for Elaine.

“Okay, Petrov is the prime target. He's the one facing the other five guys. See if you can hit him.”

A few seconds later the rifle coughed, and Petrov slapped at his arm, as if he'd been stung. He looked up in their direction. Grace heard another cough from Elaine's gun, and Petrov went down to one knee.

“This sight is good,” Elaine said.

Grace heard the selector switch click and was momentarily confused, thinking Elaine was placing the weapon on safe. But then she heard three successive coughs in a row. Elaine had put the weapon on semiautomatic. She was firing into the group of men.

Grace's phone buzzed again. It was Mahegan.

“Tell her to stop. I've got it from here. If she sees someone coming after me, she can try to hit them, but she damn well better not shoot me.”

“He said good job, but cease fire,” Grace said to Elaine. “Shoot if someone gets near him.”

Elaine looked up. “I heard him.”

Grace looked through the goggles and saw Mahegan barreling toward the wounded Petrov. Then she saw a solid stream of fracking fluid disappear into the fire.

Mahegan took in Petrov's condition. The man appeared to have two wounds, one in the shoulder and one in the leg.
Not bad, Elaine
, Mahegan thought. Three of the other men were down, also, and two of them appeared dead. Another man, who was not wounded, had run toward him and past him without stopping.

He didn't waste any time on Petrov. Mahegan removed his pistol from his pocket and shot Petrov in the head. The Russian died, backlit by a fire that might kill them all, anyway.

Mahegan felt the spray from the fracking fluid slap into his back like pellets shot from an air rifle. He angled away from the fire and found the apparatus that controlled the shutdown valve that Maeve had described. There it was before him, a giant wheel, like a ship's helm. The temperature had to be at least 150 degrees where he was standing. His clothes were hot to the touch. He removed his shirt and wrapped it around the hot metal of the wheel, forming a barrier. Using his body to pivot into the device, he turned the wheel, felt it give, and pushed some more. He dug his heels into the dirt and pulled down on one of the spokes, trying to move the wheel in a clockwise direction. He felt it give, exerted more pressure, and felt it give again.

Sweat streamed from every pore of his body, only to evaporate in the intense heat. The hairs on his arms were singed. As he leaned forward, his metal belt buckle pushed into his abdomen, searing the skin beneath his navel. Again he pulled, and again the wheel responded, this time with less resistance. So he pulled with everything he had, his own lightning bolt scar screaming at him with pain, and he finally felt the wheel turn freely. The heat lessened as he pulled again. He felt something click into place and turned to see that the fire was gone.

Then he heard gunfire about a half a mile away, to the east of the lodge. It wasn't the watchers. They were to the west.

He walked toward the trailers, exhausted, and sat down against a blown-out tire on one of the big trucks. He watched the fracking fluid, which was mostly water, spray the entire gravel and dirt area that had been charred by the fire. The real issue now was at the nuclear plant. Could they get water into the pool quickly enough? His phone buzzed with a call from Grace.

“Yes?”

“Damn bravest thing I've ever seen.”

“Did you get in touch with Blackmon?”

“Yes. He was going into the pool to cover the holes.”

Mahegan thought a minute. Made sense. Then, remembering the shots just fired, he asked, “What's that shooting?”

“We saw some flashes at the lodge. My guess is the Mexicans are in a gunfight while everyone is trying to leave.”

“Try calling them on that cell phone. Then call me back.”

Within a minute Grace called him.

“Gunther answered.”

CHAPTER 40

A
T SIXTY FEET DEEP IN THE SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL ROD COOLING
pool, Sam Blackmon's handheld gamma-ray spectrometer was pegging off the chart. The device looked like a flashlight with a handle, except it read the type and amount of radioactive material present. Through his diver's mask he could see the darkened lake water rushing past him, while his legs felt the tug of the water being sucked into the drilled holes in the bottom of the pool.

Figuring he was already fried, Blackmon went to work. He let the spectrometer hang from its tie-down on his wet suit and moved the fifty-pound barbells and plywood as close to the holes as possible. The idea was to have the weights dangle in the holes. That, coupled with the force of the water, would hold the plywood in place, staunching the flow of water out of the pool. At least that was the theory.

He lifted one barbell with each hand, tugging two sheets of plywood behind him. He found the holes and had to stand about fifteen feet away from the closest one to prevent himself from being sucked into the vortex. Even then, he was challenged to fight the pull of the rushing water into the five holes, which by now had collapsed into about three. He fought the undertow as if he were fighting a riptide at a North Carolina beach, feeling the water sweep between his legs and around his body. The plywood caught the current when he held his arms out, as if he were performing the iron cross on gymnastics rings. He let go of the barbells, and one sheet of plywood slapped onto one hole, covering it perfectly, the suction centering the rectangle. The other piece of plywood got caught sideways in one of the combined holes and was sucked into the channel, reminding Blackmon that something four feet wide could vanish into the abyss.

He fought his way back to grab two more of the barbells and had more success this time, covering the larger crevice with one sheet and then another smaller hole with another sheet, which left one more vacuuming hole to his left. Bernoulli's equation kicked in, though: the narrower the gap, the greater the acceleration of the fluid. He returned to the edge of the pool, where he had dropped the plywood and the barbells, and hoisted the remaining barbell and sheet of plywood. He trudged through the swirling water. He felt himself becoming weak and dizzy. His strength was ebbing as he felt the floor of the pool begin to tremble, as if the massive suction from beneath was going to cave in the entire structure.

Struggling over the spent fuel rods, which had been pulled toward the remaining hole, he felt his leg hit one as he tripped. His face smashed into the bottom of the pool, fracturing his mask. Water was running through the cracks. The rushing water pulled at the plywood, and he lost his grip on the barbell, which immediately wrapped around one of the fuel rods. He removed his knife from its ankle sheath and cut the nylon cord as he gripped the plywood in his other hand. Holding the sheet of plywood above his head, Sam Blackmon ran in slow motion through the swirling water toward the black hole. Upon finding it, he leapt directly into the abyss, assisted by the flowing current, and felt his fingers being crushed beneath the weight of the board as it was sucked onto the pool floor. He thought of his wife and children and the country he had served in combat as his hands eventually slipped free.

He was unconscious by the time he was pulled three thousand feet into the core of the earth.

CHAPTER 41

M
AHEGAN FOUND THE KEYS IN ONE OF THE BLACK
F
ORD
F-
150
pickup trucks that had been the standard vehicle for the EB-5 commandos. He turned the ignition and slammed the truck into gear, then bounced past the terrain scorched as black as midnight. He stopped the truck when he saw a figure about a hundred yards away walking through the smoke, like a fighter pilot emerging from a blazing crash.

Smoke still billowed from things burning: rubber tires, gasoline engines, and some of the trailers. To Mahegan, it looked exactly like a combat zone, which, of course, it was. He called Maeve on his cell phone as he stared at the figure walking toward him.

“Sitrep,” he demanded. Mahegan knew that a soldier like Maeve would understand the acronym for “situation report.”

“I've collapsed the parallel channel about sixty yards out. My drill bit is done, but I think we're okay so far. The fire actually helped underground. It melted some of the junk down there and helped firm up the stopgap I created.”

“So we're okay?”

“I think so. Good job on the fire.”

“Have you seen Gunther or Throckmorton?” Mahegan kept his eyes on the man walking steadily toward him from between the burning trailers.

“No. Place is like a ghost town. I don't hear anything except the wailing banshees down in the tunnel, where you stashed them. If they escape, I could be toast.”

“I need you to stay with the drill in case the team inside the reactor needs you. And turn off the fracking hose.”

“No problem. I said I'd make amends. Plus, I've got this pistol you left me.”

“I can't make any promises, but I'll do what I can,” Mahegan said.

“How's Piper?”

“She's with the watchers, so she's good.”

Mahegan hung up the phone. He had a decision to make: stay here and fight whoever was coming at him or go to Throckmorton's house, to which he believed Gunther and Throckmorton would ultimately return. Watching the outline of the hulking figure wade through the smoke, he thought back to that first time he had stepped into Brand Throckmorton's house.

“Everywhere I go,” he said, “I hear about two guys during the Great Recession who bought up all the land in North Carolina that might have natural gas underneath it.” Cooper said the term
Great Recession
as if he were a preacher in a tent on a humid North Carolina Sunday and was talking about the devil.

Mahegan took a deep breath as he watched James Gunther trod through the detritus like a zombie in a dystopian world. Fire leapt around him, each flame like a trumpet signaling his arrival.

Mahegan watched Gunther stop about ten yards away, Petrov's dead body the only thing separating them. He momentarily wondered what had become of Papa Diablo and Manuela, and of Throckmorton, for that matter.

Mahegan stepped from the truck, intentionally leaving his pistol in the vehicle. This was personal for both of them, and it would be a man-to-man fight.

“Your mother was a good lay, Mahegan,” Gunther started. “But killing your daddy was even better.”

“Where is he?” Mahegan asked. “In some borrow pit? One of your road projects?”

“Something like that. Doesn't matter, does it? He's dead. She's dead. You're going to be dead in a few minutes. Can't you see? I win against your kind. Your daddy killed my friend and tried to make it look like a meth lab explosion. Police couldn't figure it out, but I sure did.”

“I got two when I was fourteen, including your brother. My dad got one. And now here you are. Seems my kind is pretty good, don't you think?”

Mahegan scanned Gunther, who looked solid and strong. He remembered the man as being heavy, even though in a rage as a child Mahegan had once tossed him through a plate-glass window. Then he thought about his father's last visit to him in the juvenile detention center, where the authorities had placed him.

The picture he had found a few weeks ago in Throckmorton's third-story library—that first time in Throckmorton's Ridge Road home in Raleigh—was of his full-blooded Croatan Indian father tied naked to a tree, gutted and flayed. Gunther was in the picture, smiling and holding his father's lifeless head up, as if he had just killed a trophy buck.

“My mother put up more of a fight than your kid did when I killed him,” Mahegan said. “Guy was just a weakling when it got right down to it. And there is only the one son. Gunther and Sons may have been wishful thinking, but your seed is gone from the earth.”

With all the thoughts racing through his mind, he didn't need memories clogging his efficient fighter's mind-set. He needed to assess what he was seeing and what he wasn't seeing. What was present, and what wasn't present?

The state appraiser had mentioned Throckmorton and Gunther, as if the two were partners, like Bonnie and Clyde. Which left the question, where was Throckmorton? He hoped the watchers were still watching, as he got the sense that Gunther was stalling him, deceiving him into believing this was the ultimate showdown that he had been seeking.

As if to emphasize his point, Gunther said, “Then this is what you wanted, isn't it, boy? Come driving into our compound like you own the damn place. Dump Griffyn on the ground like he's a sack of garbage. That was you, wasn't it?”

“You know it was.”

His mind raced as he pulled in the thick, smoky air. Mahegan was an athlete, and he needed oxygen for this face-off. Like in a western gunfight, the two men were squared off thirty feet apart, with a dead body between them. What was missing? Where was Throckmorton?

Then it came to him.

“You attacked my mother with three other men. You and Throckmorton killed my father when he found you at a construction site. You never operate alone, do you?”

Gunther was silent for a moment, and that was all it took for Mahegan to know that Throckmorton was somewhere on the ridge, most likely in finely stitched riding britches and top-of-the-line hunting apparel.

“Just you and me, boy.”

“You know it isn't. But you're not the only one with backup,” Mahegan said.

“Your Mexicans ain't going to be much help, son. Sorry about them two.”

Mahegan saw the phone in Gunther's left breast shirt pocket. It was a rectangular bulge with a green light, indicating it was operational. He was talking to Throckmorton, or at least Throckmorton was listening to what he was saying. What was the cue to shoot? Mahegan wondered. How much time had Throckmorton needed to get into place? He guessed that Gunther had come along only after his partner had told him he was in position to shoot Mahegan. The watchers had most likely not seen Throckmorton.

Which meant he had to make Throckmorton miss once. He felt confident that the watchers could find the muzzle flash.

Gunther threw his hands up in the air, ostensibly as a gesture of exasperation, but Mahegan saw it as a signal.

“I guess there's nothing left to say,” Gunther said.

Mahegan took that comment as the second half of the signal, like “Ready” and then “Aim.”

The arms came down.

Mahegan stepped forward.

A rifle bellowed from the eastern ridge.

A bullet snapped past Mahegan's body at supersonic speed approximately three feet behind him. He felt the whoosh of the gun's round as it zipped through the air and heard the crack as it broke the sound barrier. The valley echoed with the sound of the first bullet.

“Missed,” Mahegan said.

As he charged Gunther, he saw the man retrieve a knife from his belt. Mahegan still had his own knife on his shin. Two more thunderous booms rattled the valley. Two more bullets missed.

As he closed on Gunther's heavy frame, Mahegan heard the barely audible
cough, cough, cough
of his own silenced weapon. The watchers had his back.

Gunther was larger than he remembered. The man had hands the size of baseball mitts. His forearms, which showed beneath his rolled-up shirtsleeves, were bulging. He was barrel-chested, with arms equally as long as Mahegan's. The details of the memory of tossing him through the sliding glass door had evaporated like the fringes of a puddle in summer heat, leaving only the core behind. Now, those details came back to him with stunning clarity.

Mahegan had been a man possessed and had functioned beyond his fourteen-year-old capabilities, the same way a mother was moved to lift a three-ton car that was crushing her child. He had experienced a superhuman rush of adrenaline then, and now he felt a similar surge—though this time more controlled—coursing through him.

As he approached Gunther, Mahegan's first goal was to reverse positions with the man. He needed to move him away from the burning trailers and toward the gaping hole fitted with concrete pipes that went down three thousand feet into the earth. There was a steaming metal plate a hundred yards below the surface, and it had just smothered the gas fire. Mahegan thought this would be a good final resting place for a demon like Gunther. He visualized Gunther roasting there, as if atop a frying pan heated by the flames of hell.

But plans always changed, Mahegan knew, at first contact with the enemy. “Get inside your enemy's decision cycle and stay there,” had been Mahegan's motto.