Wednesday's Child (28 page)

47.

I shook myself out of the trance I’d slipped into.  “Hoping for divine inspiration,” I joked, but I had a feeling they didn’t think I was kidding.

The others had left, and Henry and Rod looked as if they expected an oracle to begin dispensing enlightenment.  Henry was every bit the commanding figure Ilene had said he was, and Rod was a tough, resourceful loner by nature.  It seemed ridiculous that they would be willing to wait patiently for me to speak.

“William would kill me if he knew what I was thinking.” I felt a pang of guilt – Ilene would, too – but something far more compelling than logic or unkept promises was driving me.  “It’s just the three of us; we have to act tonight,” was met by silent nods.

I hesitated, grasping for the right words.  “Hell, I’m just going to say it.  Something’s happening.  I feel an overpowering presence in my head, as if something that’s not part of me has merged with my consciousness, something so inhuman my mind overloads when I try to imagine it.  I don’t believe in God, but I’ve never felt anything so staggeringly spiritual and irresistible. It transcends thought and logic, and you two are caught up in it with me.  So is Ilene.  Things I would have ridiculed a month ago, I now believe with total conviction.” 

I pointed to one of the green pins on the map.  County records described it as a farm, but when I flew over it in
Earthview
, I saw a thousand acres of open land and rolling hills.  “Farm” was just a zoning designation.  I could have rationalized a dozen reasons why it was the right place, but that completely missed the point. 

I
knew
it was the place. 

“This is where we need to be, tonight.” 

Neither of them even questioned it.  Their grim expressions spoke volumes.  God help me, the three of us actually joined hands sitting around the end of the work table, providing a conduit for the unworldly presence that had invaded my mind.  Henry’s eyes glazed over like an awestruck acolyte’s, an aspect I would have thought his face incapable of.  Rod’s hard-bitten features softened into those of an innocent child’s.  And just as quickly, IT was gone.

Henry pointed at my monitor, which still displayed a view of the farm from a height of five hundred feet. “Obviously, no one can know what we’re doing.  But I can have quick response units on call.  Twenty agents can be there in thirty minutes by helicopter, and the State Police can back us up by road, if we find something solid. 

“We’ll take the Hummer.  There’s only one road leading in, so unless they’re prepared to go off-road over open country at night, there’s no place for them to run.  We just have to contain the situation till we’re sure we know what we’re dealing with.”

It took time to get everything ready – night vision and infra-red detection gear, directional microphones, black jumpsuits.  I had my Geiger counter, a radiation suit with a filtered breathing mask, and lead-lined gloves packed in a metal case the size of an airline carry-on bag.  Our cell phone walkie-talkies were fully charged.

The Hummer was a stealth vehicle.  Its exhaust system was virtually silent, it had a black matte finish, and non-reflective glass. We reached the unpaved road leading to the Stoychko farm at 9:55, driving without lights the last half mile under a dark canopy of trees. Henry left the road to park just before the forest opened into a clearing, with the main house fifty yards away.  From our vantage point, the two-storey structure with third level dormers was a dark, squat blot on the surreally starlit landscape.

I donned my night-vision goggles and the bullet-resistant vest Henry insisted I wear, then reached for my metal case.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Henry said.  I’d neglected to mention that I had my own agenda.

“The house looks empty.  I need to look around back.  If there’s no one there, and you two keep watch out here, I can get inside and nose around.  Look Henry, we all want to get these guys, but the cesium’s more important.  If I can find it, we’ll have achieved most of what we came here to do.  Just cover me, and I’ll be fine.”

Henry didn’t like it, but he agreed.  I walked to my right, along the edge of the woods, staying within the first rank of trees, talking softly into my headset.  The limb of the forest curved gently, moving away from the house, which had a couple of acres of open land behind it.  It might have once been a mini-farm after all.

If I kept going that way, I’d be three times as far from the house by the time I could see what was behind it.  Already, I couldn’t see the Hummer from where I was. 

I came to a shallow rill. Dry after two weeks of rainless heat, it meandered across the open space near the house in the ghostly light, passing within a hundred feet of one rear corner.  If I crouched-walked the way I did in the APL parking lot, I’d be nearly undetectable dressed in black.  I wasn’t up for crawling along the trench on my belly, pushing my case ahead of me.

Moving that way over the length of a football field was hard on my back and thighs.  I couldn’t make it all the way without stopping to stretch and catch my breath.  I’d no sooner stopped and laid down on the ground when I heard Rod’s anxious query. 

“What’s wrong, Dylan?”

“Just my back.  Men my age aren’t meant to do stuff like this.”

Time to move on.  Another thirty yards and I had a clear view of the back of the house.  It was completely dark.  A sudden noise like a motor starting up made my heart race, but it was only the central air compressor.

“What was that?”  Rod had reacted to the change in my breathing.

“Nothing, mother, stop worrying about me.”  I said it but I didn’t mean it.  “There are no vehicles parked, but there’s a large camouflage tent that’s probably invisible from the air.  I don’t think anyone’s around.”

Not wanting to waste time, I ran straight for the tent.  I heard Henry talking to Rod on the open channel.

“What are you doing?”

“We can’t leave him back there by himself.  He’s not trained for this.  I’ll take a position over there,” Rod said, presumably pointing to where I’d left the trench.

My voice was a breathless whisper as I approached the rectangular tent, which was half as long as the back wall of the house.  “It’s closed on three sides…looks like the fourth is open…about twenty feet from the house…too damn dark to see inside.”

A few more steps had me at the open edge of the tent.  I glanced quickly over my left shoulder.  Rod was moving swiftly along the path I’d taken, approaching the rill.

“I’m going to use my flash…Jesus! It’s the helicopter.”  I moved inside the tent pointing my light.  “There’s a commercial crop dusting rig bolted to the skids…looks like the tank holds about a hundred gallons.” Thick glass tubing connected the tank to twenty-four spray nozzles fanning out in a convex arc. 

I considered finding a way to disable the helicopter, but my priority was locating the cesium.  A cable ran from the rig into the helicopter’s cabin.  I climbed up onto one of the skids to reach the pressure cap on top of the tank.  It was open.  “Tank’s empty.  Either the cesium’s in the house or they have it stashed somewhere else.  Wait, there’s a storage shed.” 

When I shined my light through the shed’s window, I saw a jumble of farm tools.  It looked like the shed hadn’t been opened in years.

“I need to get into the house.”

“Get a move on, Dylan.”  That was Henry.  “You’re making me nervous.”

I shined my light in a back window, illuminating a richly furnished, beam-ceilinged great room. The left wall held a large video screen and the room opened into an immense kitchen on the right.  A sliding door was locked and barred.  The windows and a traditional glass-paned back door were locked, too.

I got out my burglar’s tools.  “Shit, Henry, the door’s dead-bolted.”

“Be careful.  There’s probably an alarm system.  What’s the back of the house like?  Can you tell if there’s a basement?”

“There are window wells with two-foot tall windows behind them.”

“They’re your best bet, less likely to be monitored, but you have to move quickly.  If you trigger a silent alarm we won’t know.”

I dropped into one of the wells and used my metal case to shatter the glass and knock out the remaining shards.  Climbing in and dropping five feet to the floor was tricky – I’m not exactly a gymnast.  All the half-windows faced the back of the house, so I turned on the overhead lights.

“I’m in,” I told Henry.

“Go upstairs and make sure you have a fast way out,” Henry said.

I did as Henry said, using my flashlight this time.  “Good call, Henry.  The dead bolts all require a key from the inside and the slider bar has a key lock.  I’ll have to worry about getting out later.”

If the cesium capsules were in the house, they were most likely in the basement.  As I started back toward the stairs, a flashing red LED caught my eye.  “Shit, I think I set off an alarm.”

“Hurry, Dylan.  The monitoring service is probably calling Stoychko’s cell phone.  He won’t want cops here, but if he’s nearby, we can expect company soon.”

I was already downstairs.  The large basement was segmented into an open area and five roughly finished rooms with several years’ accumulated clutter everywhere: paint supplies, old furniture, abandoned appliances.  One room was a well-stocked workshop with a good supply of tools. A quick sweep with the Geiger counter produced an occasional blip, nothing significant, except for a solid wood door whose edges produced slightly elevated readings.

“Rod,” I said, “I found a door that reminds me of your office.  Solid, heavy wood with a keypad lock.”

“What part of the basement is it in?”

I told him, then saw him run past the windows to the other side of the house.

“The room seems to have no windows,” he said.  “You sure the door’s wood?”

“I think so.”

“You can either attack it with an ax or sledgehammer, or drill around the lock.  You said there was a room full of tools.  Need help?”

I said I’d rather have him posted outside. 

I found a heavy-duty drill and an extension cord in the workshop.  The door turned out to be made of a heavy, dense wood.  It took almost five minutes with a three-quarter-inch bit to drill a ring of holes most of the way around the lock.  Not wanting to waste any more time drilling, I hit the door with my shoulder.  It gave some around the lock but I did more damage to my shoulder than the door, so I tried Rod’s other idea.  I’d seen a sixteen-pound hammer in one of the store rooms. 

My first swing almost threw my back out, but I got my feet planted properly and two swings later, the remaining wood around the lock splintered and the door swung open, causing my radiation counter to throw a tantrum.

“I think I have something,” I told Henry.

Inside, I found an arsenal of unloaded weapons, a locked chest, and a strongbox the size of a small steamer trunk with radiation hazard stickers all over it.  The chest probably held ammunition; I was more interested in the strongbox.  The Geiger counter confirmed what the stickers implied, but the readings were within tolerable limits.

I tried pushing the heavy container, but it must have been lined with two inches of solid lead.  There was no way I was going to move it.  The canisters inside were another matter. 

“I found the cesium, Henry.  I need a few more minutes.”

“That’s about all you have.  I think I see lights coming.  I’m calling for backup.”

I had no time for finesse.  With Henry’s voice in the background describing the progress of the distant headlights, I hefted the sledgehammer again.  I had to be careful to break the lock without compromising the integrity of the box or its contents.  I spared a minute to put on my radiation suit.  It wouldn’t hamper me much, and if I needed protection, I could pull on my gloves and breathing apparatus quickly.

Listening to Henry’s voice, I took aim on the lock, discovering that sixteen pounds was awfully heavy for an unpracticed precision swing.  I hefted the sledge high over my head, counting – one, two, three….  The hammer bounced off the edge of the metal box, jangling every nerve in my body and nearly splitting my head in two as it rebounded back at me.  I landed on my ass, stunned.

“Dylan, you there?”

I needed a few seconds to shake my head clear of cobwebs. 

“Right here, Henry. Give me a minute.”  I looked at the box and the sledgehammer. 
How would
Indiana Jones handle this?

Fuck it!
I took out my Walther and fired it at the lock, careful to stay out of the way of a possible ricochet. 

“Shit, Dylan.  What was that?”

“I needed to open a lock.”

48.

I pulled on my protective gloves and fastened my hood.  The Geiger counter didn’t exactly go off the charts when I lifted the lid, but it confirmed what lay inside.

“I’ve got them, Henry.”

I lifted the three remaining canisters out of their harnesses.

“You’d better do something fast, they’re almost here.  Rod, get your butt back here!”

With any hope of getting the canisters out of there dashed, I needed a way to render the cesium useless, fast.  The workshop had a utility sink, but I wouldn’t flush the cesium into the water table. There might be another way.  I put the stopper in the drain and opened the faucet, then went to search the storerooms, listening to Henry and Rod on my phone.

Rod had ignored Henry’s warning to return to the Hummer.  “I’m in the ditch Dylan used.  They won’t see me here, and I have a clear line of sight to you and to the window he broke getting into the house.” 

“All right, stay put,” Henry said.  “Dylan, you’d better kill those lights.”

I turned off the track lighting.  I was sure I’d seen what I needed in one of these rooms, but I only had my flashlight to search with. I half-heard Henry’s voice: “Back-up’s on the way.  My guys’ ETA is 11:10 – twenty-six minutes from now.  State Police might be sooner.  Rod, let’s wait until we can tell whether they just happened to come back now, or they’re responding to a call from the alarm monitoring service.”

Fat chance that they just happened to return, I thought.  Where the hell was…there, in the corner.  A pile of eighty pound bags of concrete.  Eighty pounds!  I started dragging one, my back complaining loudly.  I’d heard stories about people finding super-human strength when they needed it.  Trust me, they’re mostly lies.  I managed to get the sack to the sink and cut the top open.  Kneeling on the floor, I got my hands under it and levered it up until it rested on the edge of the sink, which now held about eight inches of water.  I had no idea what the right amount was, but that looked like a lot.  Balancing the bag precariously, I turned off the tap and reached in to pull the plug, letting some out.

I lifted the lower end of the bag and dumped half its contents into the sink, grateful that I’d thought to seal my hood first or I’d have choked on concrete dust.  What next?  Think.  Forty pounds of concrete yielded about a cubic foot.  I found a hoe in another room and began mixing, straining muscles I hadn’t used in far too long even more, thankful that I was only trying to create a sinkful of dense mud.

“Pickup coming fast,” Henry shouted.  “Stay down, Rod.”

I didn’t need the phone to hear the truck skid to a stop in the gravel on the side of the house, probably less than a hundred feet from where Rod was concealed in the darkness.  Someone was in a big hurry.  I made sure my gloves and hood were sealed and ran to the back room for one of the canisters.  At the sink, I unscrewed the seal and carefully poured its contents into the concrete slurry.  Breathing mask or not, I didn’t want radioactive dust in the air.  Once the mess in the sink hardened, the cesium would be unusable.

“It’s Johnston,” Rod reported.  “She’s out of the truck sprinting toward the helicopter.  Someone’s with her.  Looks like he has a gun.”

Through the broken window, I heard Johnston shouting into her own cell phone that the helicopter appeared untouched, and its tethers were still in place.  “Check the house,” she ordered her companion, as I struggled with the cap on the second canister.  It wasn’t easy working with thick gloves on.

With Johnston and her friend out there, I had to see by starlight.  I was about to go for the third canister when I saw a hulking silhouette outside the window I’d smashed. 

“There’s a window broken out here, Farah.”

I couldn’t move.  Even in the dim light my white suit might be clearly visible.  The man outside the window was aiming his gun into the darkened basement when I heard Johnston run by and shout to him to follow her around to the front.  If they made for the basement door, I was in trouble.  I had to make a choice.  I couldn’t use my gun with the gloves on, but taking them off near the cesium was dangerous. 

“More headlights coming,” I heard Henry say.

“You’ve got to keep them out of here a little longer,” I said into the phone.  Rod and Henry wouldn’t be able to hold off a carload or more of armed men, and I didn’t have twenty minutes to wait for backup to arrive.

“I’ll handle them,” Rod said, and I heard gunshots shatter the still night air outside the window, then more from further away.  Rod and Henry must be trying to catch Johnston and her companion in a crossfire.  Damn, they were going to get themselves killed. 

I forgot the third canister for the moment as Henry called out, “Gunman’s down, but there’s an SUV coming up the road.  Johnston’s running toward it talking into her phone.  Hurry, Dylan.”  Then, a few seconds later, “Stay the hell back, Rod.  The SUV drove right up to the house.  Six armed men got out.”

I didn’t relish the idea of defending the basement against a small army.  I needed a way to keep them out.  I was desperate.  My brain shifted into overdrive, cataloguing what I’d looked at earlier.  There’d been a couple of gallon cans of paint thinner in the room with the paint supplies.  I ran and got them.  One was full, the other already opened.  I rushed up the basement stairs, splashing the highly flammable liquid against the door and emptying the half-full can onto the commercial grade carpet on the upper stairs. 

As I pulled off my gloves to worry open the cap on the second can, Henry’s voice boomed through the Hummer’s loudspeaker.  “FBI.  Stand where you are and lower your weapons.  The property is surrounded.  Drop your weapons or we’ll open fire.”

That must have made them pause for a few seconds.  They couldn’t be sure how many of us were there.  The delay was long enough for me the get the second can of paint thinner open and finish saturating the carpeted stairs.  Noxious fumes were filling the air.  I would have been overcome without my breathing mask. 

Henry’s bluff didn’t delay them for long.  I heard them at the front door, and someone shouted, “Get down there and check the canisters.”

I had maybe five seconds to grab the long butane lighter lying beside the gas water heater that they must have kept there for re-starting the pilot light.  I ripped the thick paper warning card off the water heater, crumbled it in my hand, and ignited it with the two-inch flame that shot out of the lighter, then ran for the stairs with my makeshift torch just as the door at the top opened.  Bright light poured down the staircase followed a second later by a gun-wielding Farah Johnston.  I’m not sure what she thought she was looking at, but the sight of me in my white radiation suit startled her just long enough to enable me to toss my flaming brand onto the bottom step and leap out of the way.

The vapors that had accumulated erupted into an oxygen-sucking inferno that instantly engulfed Johnston and the staircase.  She must have died within seconds of inhaling her next breath, but not before she fired wildly down the stairs.  My suit protected me from the worst of the heat blast, but one of the shots pierced it in two places, before and after the slug passed through my right thigh just below my hip.

The pain was excruciating.  I don’t know how I kept from passing out.  The bullet hadn’t hit bone; I could only hope it hadn’t severed my femoral artery.  I dragged myself to the third canister as the fire raged behind me, only subliminally aware of the gun battle that had erupted outside the house.  It took everything I had to focus on getting the canister to the sink, pulling myself up, and pouring its contents into the slowly setting concrete.  I was able to upend the bag of concrete, which still rested on a corner of the sink, and deposit the remainder of its contents on top of the radioactive sludge.  I turned the water on again until a puddle formed in the top layer of powdered concrete, then left it to harden as it would.

The radiation didn’t worry me; the setting concrete would shield a lot of it. My hands had only been exposed briefly, and the bullet holes in my suit wouldn’t make much difference. The fire was something else.  The wood frame house must have ignited like a tinderbox.  Air howled through the broken window as the fire turned the stairwell into a roaring chimney.

The only reason I was still alive, aside from the fact that I apparently hadn’t bled out, was that fire burns from bottom to top. I doubted that there were hydrants around.  The whole structure would be consumed before it burned itself out.  It wouldn’t be long before what was left of the house collapsed, and I knew the smoke was highly toxic.  The filters in my breathing apparatus would help, but for how long?  And then what?

I crawled as far from the fire and the radioactive concrete mix as I could, reaching the broken window, where the mini-gale prevented smoke from accumulating too badly.  Knowing I’d never be able to climb to safety, my impulse was to smash the other windows to the let the smoke out, but that would only increase the chimney effect and make the fire hotter.  I took my phone out my pocket.  The line sounded like it was still open but there was only dead air.  Where were Henry and Rod?  If the fire looked the way I thought it must from outside, no one in his right mind would approach the house, but I knew that wouldn’t stop them from trying to get me out if they could.  I didn’t want to consider the alternative.

My leg was killing me, and my thoughts were becoming less coherent.  It might have been shock, blood loss, radiation, or the effects of the toxic smoke.  I should have been terrified, but I felt oddly detached.  If I lay still and let my mind drift, I didn’t hurt as much.  Knowing I’d saved thousands of lives and prevented chaos from taking over New York and possibly the whole country helped mask the pain.  Damn, I’d done it.  Ilene would be so proud of me.

Oh, shit.  Ilene.  I’d promised her I wouldn’t do anything crazy.  But she’d told me to do whatever I had to, hadn’t she? 
God, Ilene, I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean for it to end this way.
  I pictured her raging at me for getting myself killed here, and I cried, knowing how that would hurt her.  I wanted to hold her and tell her I loved her.  My phone was on the floor beside me.  If my head had been functioning, I might have thought to call her, but I was too far gone, by then.  I’d forgotten about it.

I cried until I was barely conscious and beginning to hallucinate.  I talked to the Übermensch. 
Are you happy, now?  Who the hell are you, anyway?  Why did you pick me?

I thought about the irony of dying there, being crushed by the collapsing timbers, and it was finally clear to me.  It must be God who’d been manipulating me.  Wasn’t that the way He operated?  Recruiting heroes and rewarding them by making martyrs out of them?  Was that how I was supposed to get my message out, by being remembered for making the ultimate sacrifice?  Maybe He’d even invent a resurrection myth after I was dead.

I was right about you, wasn’t I?  You really are a psychopath, and an asshole to boot.

I think I smiled at having the last word.