Wounded Earth (28 page)

She could step out of the shower and wrap herself in a towel that flamed at the touch. She might survive her shower, then sugar her morning coffee with rat poison. Babykiller could absolutely, positively, put anything anywhere. Larabeth would only be safe if she put herself someplace he couldn't find her. Why didn't he have more faith that the FBI could provide that place?

By the end of the day, he'd have to decide whether to hand Cynthia over to the Feds, too. Larabeth had designed a complex game, but it made its own strange sense and he was committed to playing it. J.D. was willing to bet Babykiller had a spy tailing Cynthia, day in and day out, and the creep probably had her phone tapped, too. Taking the simple way out, calling Cynthia and warning her to flee, would probably just put her in more immediate trouble.

J.D. and Larabeth had unanimously nixed the idea of asking the FBI to get Cynthia out of Babykiller's reach. They had some hope that the government could protect them once they were in its grasp, but the Feds had a poor track record of interfacing with armed belligerants.

“Think Waco. Think Ruby Ridge,” Larabeth had said.

“Think ‘No way,’” J.D. said to himself as he cruised down the interstate.

They had agreed that the better plan was to get Cynthia, along with a couple dozen of Larabeth's other employees, at least an hour away from the Savannah River Site, then allow the other workers to disperse. Since Babykiller most likely had a spy on Cynthia's BioHeal team, J.D. had his trusty .38 strapped under his jacket. When the situation was in hand, J.D. would call Larabeth on her cell phone and let her know they were safe.

And then would come the hard part. Based on whether Larabeth thought the FBI was delivering what it had promised and on whether J.D. thought he had eluded Babykiller's henchmen and on whether they were both feeling lucky, they would decide whether Cynthia would be safer with the FBI than with J.D. If the answer to each of these questions was “Yes,” then the Feds would acquire another innocent prisoner.

J.D. hated like hell to think about telling a young woman to hide from life for an indefinite period. He thought he could come up with a better plan, seeing as how he had almost all day to do it.

He turned on the car radio. After a moment he turned up the volume, as if the broadcast would make more sense if he could hear it clearly. Some kind of nuclear K-basin things had been bombed at the Hanford site in Washington. The military was evacuating the nearest city, Richland, and most of the Columbia River had been closed. Nobody knew how bad it was going to get. J.D. listened as long has he could stand it, but when they interviewed the wife of the man who was killed trying to stop the bombing, he had to turn the radio off.

J.D. would have suspected Babykiller was responsible for this catastrophe in the absence of any other evidence, but there was other evidence. The lunatic had threatened Hanford, more than once. Larabeth had told him so and he had heard the tapes with his own ears. What was more, he had threatened the Savannah River Site in the same breath.

J.D. tried to concentrate on his driving. The news from Hanford was upsetting, but it changed nothing. He needed to get Cynthia away from a man who seemed to have no limit to his reach. The plan was still solid.

Only one thing had changed. He was turning Cynthia over to the FBI, just as quick as he could arrange it. He didn't care if she objected. He didn't care what Larabeth had to say, either. The United States government had its flaws, but it could damn sure do a better job of hiding Cynthia than he could, in the face of someone with such a powerful and widespread organizationg, and with no morals. He would have turned himself over to the Fed's keeping, too, but there was no need. Babykiller didn't know him from Adam. He found small comfort in that notion when he thought about the people of Richland, Washington.

* * *

Larabeth had managed to wait until she needed gasoline before she made a bathroom stop and she was proud of that fact. She figured J.D. had stopped two or three times by now, so she was gaining on him by ten or twenty minutes, easy. Except men didn't take as long to use the bathroom. Everybody knew it and time-management research had proven it. She flushed fast, ran her hands quickly under the faucet, and wiped them on her jeans.

As she hurried past the service bay, she noticed the mechanics huddled around a radio that wasn't playing the usual Top 40 country hits. She couldn't make out the words, but the broadcaster's tone was ominous. The cashier had his radio tuned to the news, too, and in the short time it took Larabeth to plunk down her cash and run back to the truck, she had heard enough to rattle her nerves.

She ejected the CD and located the news on the first station she tried. As a delaying tactic, she pushed “Scan” and listened to one sober voice after another waft from her speakers.

“It's bad,” she said to herself. She deactivated the scan function and let it choose which radio station got to deliver the bad news.

“This is Ramblin’ Randy—oh, hell, I mean this is Randall Davies at WZZX, and we've suspended our regular format of classic country so we can keep you up-to-the-minute on the Hanford disaster.”

In that moment, for the first time in years, Larabeth felt her age. She wished she weren't so acutely aware what trouble at Hanford could mean.

“Since the announcement of the bombing of the K-Basins this morning, there's been no official word on the situation, except for the widespread evacuations ordered for the area. We do know that the FBI is on the scene and that the National Guard has been called out. There's plenty of unofficial words coming over the newswire from nuclear experts, though. As long as we all understand that these are not official reports and that I don't know enough nuclear science to screen them, I will read excerpts. It will give us something to do while we're waiting to hear from the government.”

Larabeth wondered if Trey Trenton was one of those experts. He was a master of self-promotion and he wouldn't miss an opportunity like this unless a nuke had fallen directly on his head.

“Dr. J. Hermann Golden, a physics professor at Berkeley, says ‘No one can accurately speculate on events in the bombed K-basin area. The severity of the initial blast is unknown. Hanford promptly established a buffer zone, so there are only a few photos shot from a news helicopter who invaded the no-fly zone shortly after the accident.’”

Ramblin’ Randy interrupted himself. “That photographer is in custody, by the way.” He continued, “Dr. Golden says there's another problem with guess-timating the scope of this disaster. Back in the ‘Forties and ‘Fifties, when Hanford was new, disposal techniques were sloppy, to put it mildly. Buried waste cells weren't marked and wastes were mixed willy-nilly, making what Dr. Golden calls ‘a witches' brew.’”

Ramblin’ Randy took a breath and continued. “Dr. T. R. Trenton, III, has been quoted as saying—”

I knew it.
Larabeth cracked a smile, even under the circumstances.
Trust Trey to smell an opportunity for publicity.

“—and I quote: “The DOE is almost certainly trying to cool the material in the K-basins, in an effort to avoid a criticality event. Even so, significant environmental damage will almost certainly result. The K-basins are known to have leaked millions of gallons of liquid, even before they were bombed out. Their location—practically on the bank of the Columbia River—virtually guarantees that groundwater contamination will enter the river and, from there, will travel downstream.'”

Larabeth counted the “almost certainlys”, “practicallys”, and “virtual guarantees” in Trey's statement. Even in a crisis, he hedged every bet.

She was glad she had kept Agent Yancey posted on Babykiller's threats to the Hanford site. She had done her duty as a citizen, but. . .but what? Babykiller had warned her that he would do this. Surely she could have done something to prevent it. She felt the bands tighten around her chest. Her heart started its irregular skittering. Another panic attack. If she hadn't been driving, she would have covered her eyes and blotted out the world.

She wasn't just afraid of Babykiller. She was afraid of the fear.

She pressed the accelerator firmly to the floor. She would have no breakdown, not today. Pulling the truck over and indulging in hysterics would cost her nothing but fifteen or twenty minutes, but the wasted time could cost Cynthia and J.D. their lives.

Babykiller had crippled Hanford, as he said he would. He had threatened the Savannah River Site, too. Even if the FBI couldn't stop him, surely she could. Even if she failed, then she was hellbound to at least pull J.D. and Cynthia out of the maelstrom before it was too late.

* * *

The Chief General of the Army of the Resurrection couldn't keep still. This was the day he had worked toward for nine years, since he got out of high school. It was excusable that he was fidgeting around like a five-year-old in church.

Insubordination, however, was inexcusable. He had overheard Brosky comment, “Looks like the General is about to pee in his pants,” and acted promptly. Brosky was a private once more. The General hoped that Brosky's cronies had observed punishment, swift and sure, and that they would henceforth treat him with the respect he was due. And he would be due a lot of respect after today, after his army had taken the Savannah River Site, terrorized the citizens of South Carolina and Georgia, and brought down the United States government.

He tried to look busy, so he could be an inspiration to his men, but there was really very little for him to do. Beetle Bailey (that couldn't possibly be his real name, but mercenaries could call themselves what they liked) was leading the initial assault. Beetle and his men would be securing the plant and evacuating Savannah River Site workers.

They would also be planting explosives in the dams holding a series of waste lagoons in place while he, the Chief General, was negotiating with jack-booted thugs. When he gave the signal, Beetle's men would blow up the lagoons, sending a slug of awful stuff downstream and generally making a big mess. That should get everybody's attention.

While the primary assault team was wreaking havoc, One-Eye would be leading a small, elite squad deep into the woods that covered most of the Savannah River Site. (It was a damn big site, too. Somebody had said it covered three hundred square miles, but the General wasn't sure he believed that.) He wasn't real clear on what One-Eye and his men would be doing in the woods, but he didn't like to let the men know when he didn't understand something. It was bad for morale.

The General's morale was incomparable today. On a day like this, he could pretend that he had planned every detail of today's attack. He could forget that some dude with a scary name and a scarier voice had called him six months ago and told him what to do. He could pretend that he had recruited Beetle and One-Eye. They were the cream of his outfit—decorated Vietnam vets, both of them—and he wanted to believe that they would have followed him, even if Babykiller hadn't sent them.

He put Babykiller out of his mind and concentrated on victory. He could smell victory. He threw his head back and produced what he imagined to be a blood-curdling war cry. It was a good thing his war cry drowned the snickers of his loyal troops. The Army of the Resurrection had all the privates it could use.

* * *

Patricia O'Quin had lived in the shadow of Hanford all her life. Like every other Richland native, she'd done the only reasonable thing: she ignored the problem. She ignored the stories about secret releases of radioactive gas in the 'Fifties, because she hadn't been born yet. She didn't read the feature stories in the newspaper, documenting buried waste cells so hot that the snow melted over them, leaving bare rectangles scattered across the open ground.

It was harder to ignore the cancer rumors. She had two kids. But she didn't know any sick children personally. Old Sam Calhoun died of throat cancer, but he always had been bad to drink. He smoked, too. The government said there was no statistical proof that the Hanford site had harmed anybody's health, but then the government owned the place.

Patricia wasn't sure she could trust their word on the matter, so she didn't think about it at all, not a bit, not until the siren blew and she turned on the TV. The word “Emergency” was crawling across the bottom of the screen. The broadcaster was calmly explaining what to pack and where to go, but she was too distracted to listen.

She woke Lily and Paul and told them to choose one toy, a small one. She emptied their schoolbooks and toys out of their backpacks and replaced them with nightclothes and underwear and a change of clothing. She threw toothbrushes and soap and shampoo and a hand towel into a zip-lock bag, then she went to pack her own things.

She got the emergency cash she kept in the back of her closet, in the breast pocket of a sportcoat her ex-husband left behind. She stuck the money and her engagement ring in her bra. She had meant to save the ring for one of the kids, unless she had to sell if for an emergency. Perhaps the emergency had come.

She packed granola bars and boxed drinks in everybody's bag and filled the trunk with canned goods, just in case. She even remembered to throw in a can opener. Then, having taken care of the necessities, she gave herself five minutes to save her treasures. It was enough time to pack the children's baby pictures and her father's Bible. It was not enough time to box up her grandmother's china.

She hustled the children into the car and buckled Paul into his car seat, then she went back to check things one more time. The lights were off. The ceiling fans were still. The stove and the iron were off. Patricia stood in her house, the one she struggled every month to keep. Every month, she totaled up her cashier's salary and the child support check, and she subtracted the day care bill and the grocery bill, then she prayed. She had managed for a year and a half, so far.