Craig Kreident #1: Virtual Destruction (41 page)

“I don’t have to explain my reasons to you,” Craig snapped in exasperation. “Just answer me.”

“Yes, we washed up,” Aragon said, sounding miffed.
 
“Hal practically took a shower if I remember right.
 
I just washed my hands quickly, I think.
 
Do you need to know if I went pee too?”

“Which rest room did you use, Mr. Aragon?
 
It’s important.”

“There is only one in the Radioactive Materials Area.”

Craig didn’t bother thanking him as he hung up the phone.
 
It was clear now.

Michaelson, weary from his red-eye flight, arguing with Aragon, had stepped into the rest room, turned the cold water on, soaped up his hands, splashed his face.
 
Aragon, trying to make excuses, trying to calm Michaelson down, distractedly tapping the soap dispenser, daintily rinsing his hands.

But neither of them had realized that the soap dispenser contained hydrofluoric acid . . . a small amount, but sufficient.
 
Michaelson had unwittingly gotten it all over his hands and face.
 
Aragon had received only a small exposure, but enough to burn a hole in his hands and force him to have the skin excised.
 
The acid penetrated slowly to the nerves, then the bone.
 
The victim wouldn’t even feel it until much later.

But who had placed the acid in the dispenser?
 
Aragon could have planted it, hoping to lure Michaelson . . . after all, it took only a five-percent bodily exposure for a fatal dose.

But Craig couldn’t believe even Aragon would be so appallingly stupid to get the acid on his own hand if he knew it was there.
 
Lesserec had been in the Plutonium Facility, but how had he known when Michaelson would come through, if ever?
 
It didn’t make sense.

Unless it had been Lesserec, who was overseeing the sensors being installed in the Plutonium Facility for the International Verification Initiative.
 
He
would have known when Michaelson was going through the facility.

“Come on, Paige,” said Craig.
 
“You’ve got to get me back into the Plutonium Facility.”

“Plutonium Facility?
 
No way, I’m getting you some medical attention.
 
You need to rest.”

“Resting is for wimps,” he said.
 
“We’ll do that later.
 
I’ve figured out how Michaelson was killed.
 
I know where.
 
But I still don’t know who did it or why.”

“But the Plutonium Facility?” she said.
 
“That’s an Exclusion Area.
 
How did—?”

“We have to go to the rest room,” he said with a weak smile. “That’s where it all starts.
 
Goldfarb, are you coming along?” Craig turned, watching the other agent handcuff Gary Lesserec.

“I’ve got to take custody of Mr. Entertainment here,” Goldfarb said.
 
“Do you need me?
 
I could let Jackson escort him.”

“No, we can figure this out ourselves,” Craig said.
 
“It’s just a little wrap-up.
 
I want to check out a hunch I have where Lesserec might have planted the HF.
 
No wonder we didn’t find any in the VR chamber.”

“I didn’t plant any HF!” Lesserec squealed.

Craig ignored him entirely.
 
Paige looked at Craig, frowning, but he put his hands on his hips.
 
“Well, if you want me to rest, the sooner you get me to the Plutonium Facility, the sooner I can finish this up.
 
Then we’ll go relax somewhere.
 
I’ll buy
you
a beer this time.”

She forced a smile.
 
“It’s a deal.”

CHAPTER 43

Friday

Building 332

Plutonium Facility

By sheer force of habit, Duane Hopkins showed up for work the morning after Stevie died.
 
He didn’t know what else to do.

He came in at the ten o’clock break, but he felt like an iron-plated empty shell of a man, hollow and cold inside.
 
Duane made no excuses for being late, didn’t even think of any.
 
Nobody asked.

He shuffled into the changing room like a zombie, going through the motions, pulling on his booties, hanging up his street clothes.
 
He selected an orange lab coat and buttoned it with numb fingers.

As he walked past the break room, Ronald and his gorilla friends sat around the table looking bored, waiting for something to do, someone to pick on.

“Hey Beavis, it’s about time you showed up!” Ronald said, rising to his feet.
 
He looked like an orangutan with beady little animal eyes that might have held a whisper of intelligence on better days—but not now.
 
Ronald was on the prowl.
 
“What’s the matter, couldn’t your spaz kid cook breakfast any faster?”

Duane froze but found that the fires of anger turned his tears into steam before they could well up in his eyes.
 
He turned slowly with a rock-hard expression.
 
“You . . . you’re going to die too someday, Ronald, and I hope it’s soon.”

Then, in the silence of Ronald’s absolute shock, Duane slipped through the airlock into the main laboratory rooms of the Radioactive Materials Area.
 
He passed through the guard portal and then walked alone down the white linoleum hall into his own glove-box room.

The main materials vault stood open for the morning operations, its five-inch-thick reinforced door propped on its hinges as two technicians conducted an inventory of the fissile material stored inside.
 
Everything was clean and neat, polished up for the tours the facility manager would be giving in preparation for the upcoming visit of the foreign nationals.

In a daze Duane signed out every one of the parts he was authorized to work on, putting them on two levels of a rolling metal cart, separated by approved distances to avoid causing a criticality.
 
For a moment he pondered just stacking up the pieces; maybe all the radioactive material together in one place would unleash a burst of radiation, killing everyone in the building.
 
It would wipe out Ronald and all his bullies and everyone else who had picked on him for so many years.

Everyone who had caused Stevie’s medical problems.

But that was too uncertain.
 
He didn’t know if this was enough plutonium to cause a nuclear explosion . . . or whatever happened when you brought too much of the stuff together.
 
Duane didn’t understand it, but he knew enough to be afraid.
 
And besides, he wasn’t sure if the radiation burst would reach all the way to Ronald in the lunch room.
 
If he was going to hurt the bully, Duane wanted to make sure it worked.
 
Unlike the first time he had tried.

He hated every one of his coworkers—and with good reason.
 
Even Mr. Lesserec had been his friend just to learn more about Stevie’s condition.
 
Only Stevie had given him unconditional love, and now that his boy was dead, Duane didn’t know what he was going to do without that love.
 
His life was a shadow, and Stevie had been the only ray of hope.

But that light was snuffed out in a hospital emergency room.
 
Why not let the darkness fall over everything?

Duane wheeled the cart into his glove-box laboratory and let the doors swing shut behind him.
 
They thumped, just like the hospital doors in the emergency room the night before.

He had four quart-sized cans, each containing a single plutonium button.
 
The stainless steel containers shone bright silver under the fluorescent lights.
 
On the sides of the cans, the part numbers had been scrawled with a black magic marker.
 
Out of habit Duane had spaced the cans properly on opposite corners of the cart, diagonally separated, a pair on top and a criss-crossed pair on the bottom.
 
Work safely.

Duane touched the first stainless steel can with a twinge of superstitious fear, knowing that a dragon’s egg slept inside.
 
The can had been sealed on top, tied through with a metal wire and clamped with a soft lead disk, like a fisherman’s sinker: a Tamper Indicating Device.

Duane pulled out a pair of wire clippers from his tool compartment on the side of the nearest glove box and snipped off the disk.
 
He did the same with the Tamper Indicating Devices on the other four cans.

He would do some tampering all right, show that Ronald.

Duane popped open the top and raised the lid slowly, nervously.
 
He thought he could see the evil radioactive rays spewing out of the can, like the air out of a balloon.
 
Trembling, he opened all four cans and then reached in to take out the hot metal lumps, still warm from radioactive decay.

Normally he would have bagged the cans, taken them through the access port at the end of his glove box, then reached through with thick black gloves to manipulate the nuclear pieces.
 
But now he was holding the bare metal with his naked hands—and he didn’t care.

The radiation felt purifying.
 
He could sense it burning through him, cleansing the darkness from his life.

He picked up two of the dull metallic hemispheres in each hand, holding them like gems.
 
He knew that plutonium was far more valuable than the most precious jewel on Earth.
 
More than gold.
 
More than silver.
 
Even more than the Hope Diamond.
 
But the special thing about this plutonium was that it surrounded him with a deadly cloud of radiation.
 
Everywhere he walked, he would sear his co-workers, drown them in the radiation . . . even as it killed him, too.

Duane’s heart pounded, but his eyes were dry.
 
He felt the skin on his hands crackling.
 
His palms were very hot and burning.
 
How could these plutonium buttons have been so hot and not melted their way through the cans?

He saw the big round clock hanging on the cinderblock wall.
 
The morning break would be over.
 
Ronald and his friends would be going back to their workstations.

And Duane knew where to find them.

He had to hurry, because the radiation was tearing him apart.
 
Duane wondered if he would go blind first.
 
Even sightless, though, Duane thought he could still find Ronald Cobb just by the smell of his aftershave.

Stevie was already gone, and Duane would be gone soon—but he would be a flaming angel of vengeance, just like those Sunday morning preachers said on the church shows he watched.
 
He would be like a kamikaze.

Stevie had been an innocent child, a loving little boy, but Ronald was not innocent, he deserved this.

Duane straightened and walked slowly.
 
He could feel the poisonous rays creeping up his arms, through his ribcage.
 
He had probably received a fatal dose already, but as long as his legs kept functioning—long enough for him to find Ronald—nothing else mattered.

He heard activity out in the hall, bustling movement, loud voices.
 
And Duane saw his chance.
 
He could encounter as many people as possible, spread the radioactive cloud.
 
He could touch and taint many of those who had hurt him.
 
Then it would all be over.

Carrying his plutonium prizes, Duane strode out of the swinging doors.
 
As he passed the room counters and the alpha radiation monitors, squealing alarms went off,
 
startling Duane.
 
But he smiled.
 
That only proved how far the radiation was spreading.

He kept walking, turned the corner, and emerged into the long corridor, holding his plutonium in front of him like a weapon in each hand.

But instead of Ronald and his companions, Duane came face to face with a large group of young children.
 
Innocent children and their sponsors from the Coalition of Family Values, along with two Lab managers, touring the facility.

The children turned to Duane and stared as he stood with the deadly metal in each hand, frozen.

He screamed in despair.

CHAPTER 44

Friday

Building 332

Plutonium Facility