Wounded Earth (34 page)

The second time J.D. started his feverish raving, Cynthia was sure. He was calling for a woman named Larabeth, someone he apparently loved. He had said that he was risking his life to save her, for the love of her mother.

Cynthia was starting to put two and two together. She racked her brain for memories of her afternoon with Larabeth. Did Cynthia have her eyes? Her voice? Cynthia had always wondered where she got her flat feet.

She ached for the chance to get free from her captors, turn J.D. over to competent medical help, and track down Dr. Larabeth McLeod.

She thrust her hands in the pockets of her work pants. Now that she'd removed her jumpsuit, she could reach her pockets and their contents. In her right hand she held a single, tiny hope.

All her friends laughed at the dainty pocketknife she carried, but they were always more than happy to use its blade as a screwdriver and to open their beer with its perfectly functional bottle opener.

She had unobtrusively worked the pocketknife open, deep in her pocket. She couldn't imagine escaping from armed terrorists with such a modest weapon, but it was all she had. She palmed it and waited for an opportunity to present itself.

* * *

Larabeth did not enjoy the native plant garden. The garden was shady and its view extended across a cypress swamp to the far slopes of the Carolina bay's great sloping bowl. True to his word, Babykiller had cultivated the bay's natural species.

Larabeth had forgotten that those species included carnivorous plants. She was repelled by the broad expanses of pitcher plants, purplish and bright yellow flowers dancing atop their grotesquely swollen trumpets.

“It's remarkable how few insect problems we have, even here at the margins of a rather large wetland,” he said.

Larabeth nodded, imagining the insects struggling deep in the plants' conical pitchers. They had been lured to their fate by bright flowers and scented nectar, only to be digested alive.

“We've been able to cultivate longer-blooming, healthier plants by feeding them.”

Larabeth murmured wordless admiration and tried not to think about what he might feed his meat-eating plants. She hoped it was hamburger.

He called her attention to an open area carpeted with tiny reddish rosettes of leaves and miniscule flower spikes, saying, “My sundews. And over there, you'll see my Venus fly-traps.”

They picked their way through the field where sundews consumed gnat-sized insects. Larabeth had been suppressing an adrenaline rush for too long. Her legs were trembling so that she could hardly walk steadily from stepping stone to stepping stone, but walking off the stones would mean striding happily through murderous plants, as Babykiller was doing. She stayed on the path.

Looking up, she saw an enormous, non-native feature of his garden that he had failed to mention. It was a gleaming, brand-new, hangar and on its landing pad sat a four-seater helicopter. She had no workable escape plan yet, but the germ of whatever plan she developed would be this helicopter. Too bad she didn't know how to fly it.

* * *

The General was sweating all over his uniform. He had delivered the speech of his life. He fully believed that the American citizenry was, even now, rising up against the oppressive politico-economic system that had given them air conditioning and cable TV. He was ready to stop talking now, but part of his Army and most of his firepower was still missing.

Well, he'd have to improvise. He picked up the kid his bodyguards had been holding at gunpoint and held him up to the camera. “We've got some real cute hostages and we've got five trucks, each with twice the explosives that McVeigh used to bring down the federal building in Oklahoma City. We can blow this place to kingdom come and, believe me, none of you wants to breathe the radioactive dust it will leave behind.”

The kid whimpered and the General barked “Shut up.” Feeling stronger now, more in control, he handed the kid back to his bodyguards and strutted back and forth, hands behind his back. He'd seen pictures of Hitler standing that way.

“We don't want to poison the earth with the ruins of this place. We don't want to kill any kids. We do want to repeal every amendment to the Constitution except the Bill of Rights. We want the immediate establishment of an African homeland to house the descendants of slaves who never belonged here to begin with. And we want an emergency election, so the real citizens, adult, white, male property owners, can choose a legitimate government.”

He nodded to the bodyguard who wasn't holding a sniveling hostage. The guard flipped open a walkie-talkie and spoke one word.

* * *

Larabeth was about tired of fueling Babykiller's domestic fantasies. She was now helping him gather fresh veggies for their dinner.

He had fetched two wicker baskets from the greenhouse and, carrying one of them slung over her arm, she was plucking tomatoes and snap beans. She noticed that he had chosen to gather the okra himself. Harvesting okra properly requires a knife.

She listened to the crunching sound of his knife severing each okra pod. She kept her distance and took a calculated risk by bringing up a decidedly unromantic topic. In an effort to soften the effect, she couched her question with flattery.

“Your attacks on the Savannah River Plant and the Hanford Site have been stunningly successful. Before that, your animal slayings and the crop defoliation were perfectly executed. When are you going to tell the world why you're doing these things?” Kneeling among the bean plants, she looked up at him with a hint of adoration. “When are you going to tell me?”

“You already know. That's why I love you, because you do know. You know what the United States of God-bless-America did to me and all the other soldiers and all the Vietnamese. You can see that I endured all the pain our government could dish out and rose above it. When I reveal myself, the world will marvel at the power I've accumulated since Vietnam destroyed the man I used to be. And the woman I have always loved, my Larabeth, will be at my side.”

He took a step toward her. She looked for the knife but he had put it away, somewhere, as quickly as he had produced it in the first place. She maintained eye contact.

“I loved you, Larabeth, before I learned to speak again, to walk again. I knew you would respect me if you understood the reach of my power. I knew you would understand me if you could be made to listen. Once you respected me and understood me, I knew you would love me before I died. Before we died together.”

The ground trembled beneath her and she marveled at the physical depth of her fear. Then the rumbling grew and she knew the tremors were real.

She fell to her hands and knees in terror. “You've blown up the plant. We're not far enough away.” She looked up, waiting for radioactive debris to fall from the sky, but she didn't care any more, because Cynthia was certainly dead already.

The tremor subsided and he limped toward her, still empty-handed. He lifted her to her feet. “The plant is still standing, dear. If you'll forget your fears, you'll realize that the ultimate explosion will dwarf this little tremor. What you're feeling now is just a warning blast. A declaration of intent, if you will. I am not ready for us to die, not now. We have a little more time yet to enjoy each other.”

The tremor had passed, but Larabeth couldn't find the willpower to stand up, so she stayed where she was, cowering in the dirt. He stood over her and stared into the distance at something she couldn't see.

“I have thought of having my underlings bury us here in this lovely spot, where the flowers would grace our graves and the vegetables would make good use of our rotting flesh. Alas, it won't be possible, because I intend to live long enough to see the witless General blast the Savannah River plant to oblivion. I doubt there will be much left of this place after the nuclear dust settles.”

Babykiller hoisted her to her feet with surprising ease, and she realized that his upper body had been compensating for his weak leg for nearly a quarter of a century. She would have to factor this strength into any escape plan that might require her to physically overpower him.

“It saddens me that this lovely spot can't be our final resting place, but no matter. I have other mansions and other gardens where our bodies can return to dust.”

* * *

Cynthia remained under her tree, under armed guard and completely ignorant of the terrorists' motives. It was hard to maintain utter terror for several uneventful hours, but she was managing it pretty well. She could feel disaster welling up like the livid thunderclouds gathering overhead.

J.D. rested fitfully, dogged by blood loss and sepsis. She wondered if they would be allowed to sleep indoors, because she doubted he would survive a night of exposure.

The ground tickled her for a moment before its tremor escalated to a full-fledged earthquake. J.D. groaned. She tried to shield him from falling pine cones and hoped the tree didn't come down on them. She glanced at the creek below them and wondered if the bluff they were perched on might crumble into the water.

She had worked at the Savannah River Plant for three years and she'd written the escape plan to be triggered if the plant blew up, but she never thought it would happen. The place had stood for half a century. Now these extremist bastards had killed them all.

As the shaking stopped, she turned her eyes in hatred on the extremist bastards. They were cheering, jumping around, waving their rifles. Surely they weren't all suicidal. She felt a tinge of hope.

Then she heard another noise, a roar that crescendoed and grew near. A brown frothing wave thundered down the creek, carrying debris and small trees ripped out by their very roots. A second wave of thick sludge rushed after it and its odor rose to meet her. Cynthia was familiar with the site layout and she knew what she was seeing.

The main part of the plant was probably still intact, which meant that she and J.D. weren't doomed quite yet. The stinking mess rushing below her meant that somebody had blasted away the dikes holding back a series of waste-holding ponds upstream, perhaps as a warning or perhaps out of sheer cussedness. The resulting contamination would be widespread and devastating. Her captors were overjoyed.

* * *

Chao had a line open to Shanks, so he had only a moment of outright terror when the sound of the blast reached them.

“The physics guys say this explosion is too small to worry about.” Shanks said. “If something major goes up, you won't have to check with us. You'll know.”

“Just a small indication of our serious intent,” the General said.

Chao wanted to spit at the screen.

The General kept talking. “Those blasts obliterated a series of holding ponds. Huge holding ponds. And what, you may be asking, were these ponds holding? This plant has been here since 1951, making plutonium and tritium. Nice stuff like that. What do you think was in those ponds we just blew up? I hope somebody knows, because there's millions of gallons of something rushing from those ponds, through the swamps, and straight into the Savannah River. I hope none of you nice folks watching this broadcast lives downstream from here.”

Chao tried to forget about the blasts and the noxious mess heading for the Savannah River, because the General had said something important just before he ordered the explosions. Truck bombs. He had bragged about five truck bombs. Where were they? They hadn't passed in front of him when the General arrived. The Site borders were sealed. God forbid they were already inside before the Army of the Resurrection arrived. If they were, then maybe the General
would
be rewriting the Constitution.

Chao went back to watching the General bluster. No, this was not a man who was certain of victory. This was a man who wanted his truck bombs, who needed his truck bombs, who didn't know where in the hell his truck bombs were.

The General was dangerous as things stood. Blowing up the dikes was a brilliant move, probably the most effective use he could find for a few breadbox-sized bombs. The bastard effectively held hundreds of Savannah River Site employees hostage, not to mention the entire enrollment of an unlicensed day care center, but the key to major, nuclear-scale destruction still dangled just beyond his grasp.

Chao knew, and the General knew, that whoever controlled the truck bombs would carry the day.

Babykiller
was amused. Larabeth could see it. He had been amused since the General's explosions rocked his vegetable garden. She sat beside him at the kitchen counter, snapping green beans and waiting patiently for a chance to ask him why.

“You're still very quiet, Doc, and I haven't told you to shut up for some time now. I've actually been more than charming. Is something on your mind? Are you thinking of something or someone besides me?”

Patience has its rewards. Here was her chance to ask an important question and, at the same time, reassure him that he was the epicenter of her world.

“I'm confused. I'd expect you to be satisfied by those explosions we felt. They gave concrete evidence of how smoothly your plan is progressing. But you're more than satisfied. It's as if you find the whole situation...well, funny.”

There. She'd worked some form of the word “you” into the conversation four times. Being an egomaniac, he should be easy enough to manipulate.