Wounded Earth (18 page)

So
this was a panic attack. Larabeth had survived physical attacks, the loss of loved ones—hell, she'd even survived a war—but she had always maintained control of her mind. Until now.

Her heart raced until the sound of it vibrated in her ears. The muscles of her chest spasmed so tightly that she could only suck in tiny gasps of air. She wasn't getting enough oxygen. There was no way she was getting enough oxygen to support life. Why was she still conscious? It would be a relief to pass out.

It might even be a relief to die. Then she wouldn't have to think about the people who wouldn't survive a catastrophe at the Savannah River Site. She wouldn't have to wonder whether she'd had the power to save them, if she had only known the right thing to do. She wouldn't have to picture Cynthia, her precious daughter, broken into bloody pieces by the blast or vomiting her life away from radiation sickness.

She had considerately waited for J.D. to go to the bathroom before succumbing to her fears, so she was in sorry shape before he returned. He found her sitting on the living room floor, as far from the telephone as she could get, resting her face against the arm of her father's old rocking chair. She had progressed from a racing pulse and faltering breath to uncontrollable head-to-toe trembling. Even her jaw trembled, crashing her teeth together again and again.

J.D. sat in the rocker and eased her into his lap. Sometime later, it seemed like a long time later, she remembered how to breathe again.

* * *

J.D. wondered whether he should let Larabeth talk, or whether he should just send her to bed. Reliving her conversation with Babykiller couldn't be good for her mental state, but maybe she was right. Maybe she shouldn't take time to collect her wits, not when Babykiller claimed he could destroy countless lives overnight.

So he sat in Larabeth's immaculately decorated living room and listened to her describe the apocalypse. The fact that he believed her showed how far he'd strayed from the workaday world. “So you really think this nut may be capable of destroying the world, one piece at the time?” he said.

Larabeth's face was paper-white and the coffee sloshed in her mug. “’The death of a thousand cuts’, he called it. That's a pretty apt description. And I'm afraid he's going to send the Savannah River Plant sky-high, along with Cynthia and thousands of other people, just to prove to me he can.”

J.D mused a minute before asking, “Why do you think Babykiller picked the Savannah River Plant?”

Larabeth waved the question away. “Babykiller made an obvious choice. It's a big plant and an old one. I don't think it's even operating right now. When you think of infamous, Manhattan-Project-era nuclear sites, the Savannah River Plant is right up there with Los Alamos and Hanford.”

“How much harm can he do, if the plant's not operating?” J.D. asked.

Larabeth shook her head, eyes closed, as if she didn't want to think about it. “Oh, plenty. How carefully do you think the DOE stored its wastes in the early days? They've got waste tanks, waste lagoons, buried waste—you get the picture. There's no politically acceptable place to put radioactive waste, so the Savannah River Site is housing nuclear garbage from all over. A few well-placed truck bombs could mess up a big piece of South Carolina and Georgia.”

J.D. twiddled with the heavy fringe adorning the sofa arm. “So, even if we got the authorities to act, there would be no way to evacuate the area. Not if we believe his claim that he could destroy the place in an hour. Did you get any information we can use to find the bastard?”

“Not much, but he mentioned his military service again. Maybe he said something I can use to narrow the search parameters I'm using with my Vietnam veteran's database. I know for sure he said enough this time to get the FBI interested.”

“Then let's call Yancey and get a tape to him right away and—”

Larabeth held up a trembling hand. “Not so quick. If Babykiller gets wind that we're working with Yancey, lots of people will die. Cynthia will die. We'll get the tape to Yancey, but we'll do it the easy way. The safe way. We used Guillaume as a message boy once, and it worked. Let's do it again. If we leave right now, we can have the tape in Guillaume's hands within an hour and, if I know Guillaume, he'll find a way to get it to Yancey before he goes to bed tonight.”

J.D. nodded. He'd be happy for the FBI to take over keeping the world safe for humanity, so he could go back to just looking after Larabeth and Cynthia.

“Babykiller can babble about his strategic reasons for targeting the Savannah River Site all day,” he said. “We both know he chose that particular location because your daughter's there.”

Larabeth didn't speak for a while. J.D. thought he might have made a mistake by stating the obvious, but it was too late, so he blundered on. “I mean, if he knows enough about Cynthia to send her to Nebraska, take a picture of you two together, then leave it on her desk, then he surely knows where she is right now.”

“We'll see about that,” Larabeth murmured.

J.D. pressed on. “How long will it take to get Cynthia out of South Carolina?” he asked.

“Already done.” She cradled the mug in her hands. J.D. swore he could see the calm settle over her as she took back control of her own destiny.

“How'd you manage it?”

“Just a simple phone call. You saw me make it. If only everything were so easy. Cynthia has had a mysterious last-minute assignment from top management. She should be on a plane to Ann Arbor by suppertime. She will spend a couple of days there at a prestigious professional meeting, then she will move on to another out-of-town assignment. Babykiller will have trouble raining disaster on her head if she's a moving target.” She took a measured sip of coffee.

“Damn, you work fast. I hope the FBI does as well.”

* * *

Cynthia laid her hardhat on the truck seat and answered the cell phone. It was Kelly, her boss. If Kelly was calling her in the field, then she wanted something.

“What do you mean?” Cynthia sputtered. “I can't go to Ann Arbor. You notice that it's way past five and I'm still here. That's because I haven't finished catching up on the work I missed while I was on that Nebraska wild goose chase. You'll have to send somebody else.”

She listened to Kelly do her fast-talking number. It wasn't her fault that Cynthia had been given the cock-and-bull Nebraska assignment. She'd been out of town and never even knew about it until Cynthia was back on the job in South Carolina. This conference in Ann Arbor was different. High-profile. It was an honor to be asked to attend. Corporate management had asked for her, Cynthia Parker. Personally.

Cynthia knocked the drill cuttings off her work boots and climbed into the truck cab. God, she was tired. It was hot and it was humid and her work crew had gotten two days behind during the one day she'd been in Nebraska. No way was she leaving again.

“Some honor. Two days of hobnobbing with stuffed shirts. Two days of listening to stuffed shirts presenting papers on subjects with no application in the real world. Two days of watching people look for ways to pad their resumes. No way, Kelly.”

She wiped the sweaty fingerprints off her safety glasses while Kelly gave more excellent reasons for her to attend this time-waster. Finally, she said, “No. Send Michael. His resume needs padding. I gotta go. If I don't ride my drilling crew, they'll never get this monitoring well installed today. Tell Michael to have fun in Ann Arbor.”

She put the phone on standby and headed back to her crew, kicking at palmettos and ferns in the underbrush as she went. The Savannah River Site was huge and, for all Cynthia could tell, she might as well have been lost in the South Carolina wilderness. She couldn't see, hear, or smell the nuclear plant and, as far as anybody knew, there wasn't anything radioactive this far out in the woods. Although the locals told tales about three-legged frogs.

You sure couldn't tell from the lush vegetation that there was a plume of groundwater contamination a mile long beneath it. Not radioactive, thank goodness, but some nasty solvents all the same. They buried drums just about anywhere back in the 'Fifties. She and BioHeal would be looking for those drums and the poisons leaching out of them till kingdom come.

* * *

Chet Dorsey thought his orders were pretty strange this time around, but who was he to ask questions when the money was good? Sometimes he wondered what was in the shipments he received. Drugs? Unlaundered money? Weapons? He never indulged his curiosity. Smart people who don't ask questions live longer. For all he knew, he was supplying crack to every two-bit addict in New Orleans, maybe the country. He didn't feel bad about it, though. It wasn't his fault people were stupid enough to mess with their heads that way.

Three fifty-pound bags and a small wooden box had been dropped off for him the night before. He had to admit that the instructions—he had found them taped to one of the bags—were odd.

First, he was supposed to slap a label on each bag and put them and the box into his car. Then tonight, he was to take them to a big fine house smack in the middle of the Garden District.

Chet was cautious, so he drove past the house by daylight to get the lay of the land. He didn't know who his orders came from, but they sure knew what they were doing. Talk about details. The address checked out, no problem, and the house looked just like the description. Huge and old and white, with a porch that went all the way around.

Chet liked to build things and he had painted many a house in his day. He could spot a restoration a mile away. There's a big difference between a piece of wood that's a hundred years old but immaculately maintained and a piece of wood that's simply new. This house was the real thing, down to the fancy balusters and the little carved fans under the porch roof. It had the look of something that had been in one family for generations.

He drove around the block to check out the back of the house. Bingo. There was a nice convenient alley, just like his instructions had said. He decided to risk a quick drive down the alley. If questioned, he could always pretend to be lost.

He counted backyards and paused behind the fourth one. Again, bingo. There sat a big, goofy-looking raft painted in psychedelic colors. Tonight, he would come back, park here, and haul the contraband from his car trunk to the raft, and swap it for an identical cargo that was already there. Simple. And even more lucrative than usual.

* * *

Cynthia passed the last Savannah River Site checkpoint and drove on into the South Carolina evening. She was glad she'd turned down Kelly's trip to Ann Arbor. She and her crew had a full day's work to do tomorrow, then it would be Friday again and she would be another week closer to the deadline for this project.

It was a forty-five minute drive home to Aiken, the nearest town of any size. Cynthia didn't mind the drive, except for the mileage it put on her car. Most of her college friends were living in Houston or Atlanta or D.C. They spent a lot of time sitting in their cars with nothing to see but other people sitting in their cars. She enjoyed the marshy Carolina bays and had come to look forward to the annual round of wildflowers—the redbud signaling spring before winter was quite gone, the blue summer chicory, and fuzzy joe pye weed in the fall.

She knew it would be cheaper, and more environmentally responsible, to join one of the carpools going back and forth to Aiken every day. Maybe she would get around to it, if her pocketbook or her conscience got to nagging her too much.

She had her pick of potential carpools. The long line of commuters cruising along briskly in front of and behind her testified to that. The cars moved toward Aiken as a unit. There was no way to tell that the white Sunbird, two cars back, was following her. The most experienced cop couldn't have picked it out from the crowd.

* * *

The rising moon cast its unassuming light on the people gathered in Guillaume Langlois's front yard. Larabeth was one of the few who weren't wearing GAIA's distinctive blue-and-green headband, but it scarcely mattered. She wasn't trying to blend into the crowd. She needed desperately for Guillaume to see her. Many lives depended on the package in her hands. She must get a moment alone with Guillaume, so she could pass it to him safely. He, in turn, must get her tapes to the FBI. No matter what he had to say to this crowd, her message was more urgent.

Guillaume was standing on a second-story balcony, addressing the gathering with a bullhorn that he hardly needed. She had missed the bulk of his speech, but she gathered that he was seeking their support for the "hullabaloo" he had warned her about over lunch the day before.

“Help us, friends, get our message to the powers that be, to our senators, to our representatives, to our president. They are not evil; they just haven't heard the will of the people. Make them hear. Write to them. Work in their campaigns. And join us tomorrow, when together we will defend our mother Earth's blood, her liquid life. Her water.” He bowed, wished them good night, and backed into the house through the door behind him.

The crowd was quiet and respectful, but it showed no signs of dispersing. Larabeth clutched her tape of Babykiller in both hands and followed J.D. as he tried to force his way forward, but progress was slow and they were both weary from pushing at the passive resistance of hundreds of human bodies.

Guillaume re-appeared on the balcony above them. “GAIA appreciates your devotion, but I must ask you to go. It does our cause no good for you to expend even a portion of your life force on a vigil here tonight. Go, pray in the quietness of your homes and rest. We may all need your strength tomorrow.”