Wounded Earth (27 page)

Their emotion made One-Eye weary. Those among them who survived this mission would learn that fervor clouds the brain. Only the soldier who understood his mission, trained for it, and performed it dispassionately would live to be as old as One-Eye.

“Are the strike teams prepared?” the voice on the phone had asked.

“They are. They know where to be, when to be there, when to shoot, whom to shoot, when not to shoot, whom not to shoot. I believe that's all they need to know.”

“I trust your ability to keep them in line. Remember, the proper sequence of events is this: Beetle Bailey will take the main complex and evacuate it, except for the hostages. You will find the girl and keep her safe until you receive orders directly from me. Beetle will set off the explosives as a cover while he walks away with more plutonium than any one man could use. That is the mission. The Army of the Resurrection and its lunatic demands will provide ample distraction. And One-Eye—”

“Yeah?”

“Get the hell out as soon as you accomplish your mission. I'm sure your training program was more than adequate, but sooner or later, those zealots are going to mess up big-time. Don't stick around for that. I may need you later.”

“Thank you. I'll bear that in mind.” One-Eye was also bearing in mind the size of his payment for this caper. The life of a mercenary was rarely so lucrative.

“Good,” Babykiller said. “I'll be watching for you on the news.”

After One-Eye hung up the phone, he went to gather his troops and deliver the exciting news. Today was the day.

J.D.
sat behind the wheel of BioHeal's field truck and drove like hell. He wasn't driving fast—no sense in attracting the Highway Patrol—but he was driving steady at the speed limit. He stopped about daybreak to use the bathroom, but then he got right back on the road.

He and Larabeth had agreed to maintain phone silence, unless there was an emergency. Babykiller might have the power to snatch their words right out of the air and it was critical that J.D. did not give away his location. His disguise as a BioHeal employee was complete, from the ID tag hanging around his neck, to the safety gear in the back seat, to the company-issue cell phone on the seat beside him

The critical chink in the plan he and Larabeth had concocted was specific to the last years of the twentieth century. Twenty years before, cell phones weren't around and, thus, couldn't have been a linchpin of their plan. Twenty years later, technology would have succeeded in weaving the threads of technology into a single braid. The tangle of cords in every household that linked televisions and DVD players and stereos and computers and printers and faxes and cell phone chargers would be gone, winnowed down to a single gadget and a single bill. Mistakes like J.D.’s would no longer be possible, or even imaginable.

Until then, appliances—especially cell phones—would be dependent on a half-dozen varieties of chargers that weren't interchangeable. When J.D.’s cell phone beeped for more power, he plugged it into the car charger, but he did it wrong. The device plugged easily into the phone, even though it was upside down.

The phone looked like it was plugged in, but the electronics weren't mated properly. As luck would have it, it finally quit when J.D. had pulled into a truck stop and gone into the bathroom. It beeped quietly, asking for power. When no one responded, it died.

* * *

Larabeth stepped out of the shower, feeling almost normal again. She always showered at six in the morning. She usually slept first, but there was no need to split hairs. Flushed with success after finding Babykiller's military records, she had headed home to pack for her rendezvous with the FBI.

She felt a perverse pleasure when the phone rang. It was good to be waiting with a surprise for Babykiller.

“Hello, Doc,” he said.

“Hello, Trigg,” she responded.

She was rewarded with utter silence.

“Or should I call you Dickinson? What a name. Was your mother a poetry buff? Perhaps you go by Dick or Byron. But then I think you said no one had used your name since 1982. I feel so privileged.”

“I have no idea how you got my name—”

“I got it because you talk too much.”

“But,” he continued as if she'd never spoken, “even with my name, you have no hope of stopping me.”

“Are you sure? Maybe you talk way too much.”

“Your nattering bores me, so I will get to the point. I have decided to bargain for your daughter's life.”

“What do you want?” She said it slowly. Deliberately. As if she had no intention of giving him what he wanted. It was the only way to deal with a babykiller.

“I want J.D. Hatten. I have decided that I don't like him. Tell me where he is and I will have him picked up.”

“I have no idea where he is.” A literal truth. An actual lie. She knew where he was. He was two hours away, driving up Interstate Highway 59 in a truck registered to BioHeal.

“Lying is pointless. My people will find him in hours and your chance to bargain for your child's life will be gone.”

“Nevertheless, I can't tell you where he is,” she said as, for the first time, she hung up on Babykiller.

She tried to dial J.D. with no result. If Babykiller had the equipment to block calls to a cell phone, then he was doing a damn fine job. If she found out J.D. had simply left the phone turned off, she would enjoy giving him hell. If she ever saw him again.

* * *

Babykiller was distressed. His Larabeth had gotten his name—a useless piece of information, but one he considered private. Even sacred. He was afraid she thought she might beat him. She was wrong, but it distressed him that she might think so. Hope could cast out fear. So could love, perfect love.

He wanted her afraid, so he was going to have to act. He decided that it was time to have Gerald pick Larabeth up and bring her to him. And it was time for J.D. Hatten to die.

* * *

Larabeth threw a banana in a paper sack that already held an old baseball cap, then squashed them both with a pound of cheese and a can of tomato juice.

“A good consultant always eats breakfast,” she said to herself, “because she never knows when she will eat again.”

Her failure to reach J.D. by phone was disastrous. Their plan to rescue Cynthia had hinged on their belief that J.D. was more or less anonymous to Babykiller and his associates. If Babykiller had put out an all-points-bulletin on J.D., it was too risky to send him to nab Cynthia, even with his bald-as-an-egg disguise.

She threw the bag of food in her car—Sally2 was the Mustang-of-the-day—and tore out of the driveway. It was early morning and there weren't many cars moving in her semi-rural neighborhood. Larabeth wasn't surprised to see a car position itself just within sight of her rear-view mirror. Roaring up to a crossroads, she took a last-minute left. The blue Camry was lagging far enough behind that it managed to follow suit without being overly conspicuous.

The man behind the wheel had passed the first test, so Larabeth delivered the bonus question. She led him over a series of rutted roads so winding that they must have been paved-over cowpaths. After the fourth left turn, she emerged onto the main road roughly a quarter-mile from her front door.

There was no plausible reason for anyone to take the particular route she had just traced, but the Camry was still a discreet dot in her rearview mirror. Well, at least she knew who the enemy was. She took a direct route to BioHeal and hoped the surprise waiting there was sufficient to shake this guy.

Larabeth had a long commute to work every day and she usually used the quiet time for planning. Today was no different.

J.D. had left at four a.m. If he averaged sixty-five miles-an-hour, she figured he should arrive at the Savannah River Site by two p.m. He was to grab Cynthia and her crew at three p.m., so he had an hour to play with. She had a couple of stops yet to make, but she would be leaving by seven a.m. In order to intercept him at the Site, she had to average, oh. . .eighty-one point two-five miles-an-hour. Mental arithmetic was so relaxing.

The Camry was still back there when she and Sally2 drove onto the Mississippi River Bridge. She could see downtown New Orleans, skyscrapers and Superdome, and she knew BioHeal was minutes away. Time to lose the tail.

She descended into the business section and scooted into BioHeal's parking garage, just a shade faster than usual. Mr. Camry followed. She turned Sally2's steering wheel hard left and punched the gas. Larabeth and her baby-pink Mustang spiraled up four levels. The Camry was no match for a classic muscle car; the tail quickly fell behind.

Larabeth left the ramp and sped through BioHeal's private parking area, hell-bent on making the exit ramp before her pursuer came into view. In her parking place, conveniently marked "Reserved for Dr. Larabeth McLeod", sat Sally1, right where Jean-Pierre the mechanic always left her after her monthly maintenance check.

If all went well, Mr. Camry would be in too much of a hurry to notice the change in license plate. There were no other differences between the Sallies. It was a good thing she'd kept her anonymous, randomly numbered plates. Even a dolt might have noticed the Mustang switcheroo if she'd considerately labeled her cars for them.

* * *

Mr. Camry couldn't believe he had tailed someone doing something so prosaic as going to work at dawn. The woman was a workaholic. He congratulated himself on his good luck. At this time of the morning, he could grab her right out of her own office with no witnesses. He parked beside her noxious pink car and hurried into the building.

* * *

Larabeth parked Sally2 on the parking garage's third level, where BioHeal stored its field vehicles. She opened a locker and pulled out a set of keys for a particular Ford Bronco. Three of her employees had earned whopping speeding tickets driving that vehicle. Apparently, it could go.

She moved the bag of food from the Mustang, then she went back and unhooked her radar jammer. Retrieving her favorite cassette tape from the passenger floorboard and patting Sally2's pink fender as she rushed back to the Bronco, she removed the BioHeal magnetic signs from its doors. As she roared out of the garage, she hoped tucking her hair up in a baseball cap was a sufficient disguise. It was the best she could do on short notice.

* * *

Mr. Camry was pissed off. He'd found BioHeal's offices. He'd found Larabeth's personal office. There was no one there. He waited. No one came.

He'd searched the parking garage, just in case. Her car was right where she left it, in her own personal parking place. But one floor below was another one just like it. The two Mustangs made him mad, just sitting there empty, so he had taken his pointy-toed cowboy boots and kicked in their sissy pink fenders. Sally1 had made him particularly mad, sitting there in Dr. Larabeth McLeod's own private parking spot, so he had taken his pocket knife and slashed at its black ragtop as he stomped to the elevator.

He needed to go back to the bitch's office to think. Gerald had told him that failure was not an option.

Larabeth
stood in the parking lot of Audubon Park Zoo, hooking up her radar jammer. She could hear the howler monkeys making their early morning racket. The park was closed, but she had paid a custodian to meet Yancey at the giraffe's cage with a package containing a copy of J.D.'s videotape, an audiotape of Babykiller's last call, and a note.

She ran her hand over the jammer in silent blessing. J.D.'s friends at the Spy Stop said it would make a car invisible to police radar. It had an alternate function that would notify her when she was near a patrolman using radar so she could slow down. She didn't activate that mode because she couldn't afford to slow down.

Back on the road and up to speed, she tore the package of cheese open with her teeth and bit off a hunk. Then she slipped a CD into the stereo and listened to the opening bars of her favorite guilty pleasure.

The Bronco headed northeast with Larabeth behind the wheel, rocking to the strains of “Mustang Sally.”

“All you wanta do is ride around, Sally. Ride, Sally, ride.”

* * *

Yancey met Lefkoff at the hotel after his solo trip to Audubon Zoo. The custodian had promptly delivered Larabeth's package, complete with tapes and note, but there was no need for Lefkoff to know that.

“She's gone,” Yancey said.

Lefkoff, who had known for at least an hour that Larabeth had eluded Babykiller's man and disappeared, nodded gravely.

“I need you to stake out BioHeal, Lefkoff. I'll watch her house,” Yancey said, planning to head for his room to check out Larabeth's audio and video tapes as soon as he ditched his lying partner. Then he was going to call Chao and tell him he needed a private jet to take him to South Carolina because, according to the note in his hand, Larabeth McLeod, the agency's star informant, wanted to meet him that very afternoon at the south gate of the Savannah River Site.

* * *

J.D. checked his watch. Ten o'clock. He hoped Larabeth was safe in the hands of the FBI by now. She didn't like the idea of turning herself in for protection. Neither of them did. But they'd both seen what happened to Guillaume and they both knew there was no defense against an attack like that.