Wounded Earth (35 page)

He beamed at her. “You're right. The situation is so much more amusing than I had hoped,” he said.

Students of body language said that the best way to flatter powerful people was by mimicking their actions. He was happy, so she flickered a smile at him.

“I have long since ceased to be amazed by the idiocy of ordinary men,” he continued, slicing the onion in front of him with vigor. “The General played his last trump card before the game was half begun. Those explosions were intended to punctuate the awe-inducing sight of hundreds more soldiers escorting five U-Hauls full of ANFO through the security gate. The foolish General threatened mind-boggling destruction before he had the means to carry out such a threat.”

“But you're not sending him what he needs. You already said you weren't planning to send him the truck bombs you promised him.” She was careful to keep her eyes adoringly on him, careful to focus her conversation only on him.

“You're right. Perhaps the General is doing the best he can. I have thrown him a small curve. His day of glory is over.”

Larabeth pressed on. “But why? Why would you take over a critically strategic target and not pursue your advantage? You haven't asked for money or for the release of political prisoners. You haven't even asked for a forum for your political views. You're too intelligent to agree with the ravings of that—” What had Babykiller called him? “—of that idiot, the General.”

Babykiller stroked the scar on his throat with a satisfied smile. “I do so admire brilliant women. You are right on every point. The General is now expendable. My men infiltrated his Army months ago. They have by this time broken away from the General's rabble and smuggled weapons-grade plutonium off the site. The rest of the Army of the Resurrection—the competent ones—are waiting for them at their training base in Georgia, not fifty miles away. With their manpower and their firepower and their truck bombs, and with my plutonium, we will make ourselves heard.”

Larabeth had what she needed. How long could it possibly take for the FBI to search the wedge-shaped piece of Georgia within fifty miles of the Savannah River Site? The FBI with all its resources could surely find the Army's arsenal and cut their supply lines. Even if they couldn't find it, their negotiators could pretend they had. God knew they'd bluffed successfully with far less.

Surely she could get just a moment away from Babykiller—not long enough to escape, but long enough to make a critical call. Even if he killed her for it, she must get this information to the FBI. Though she hardly dared think it, she knew this was more important even than Cynthia's safety. Heedlessly, she glanced around the kitchen, looking again for a telephone.

He noticed. “I've seen you checking around every room we enter. I'll relieve you of your suspense. This house has no phone service.” He slid a slender cell phone out of his shirt pocket and back in. “Traditional phone lines are so...traceable.”

He fixed his cold gray eyes on her and said, “’Remember that you came to me willingly, as a guest. Your daughter's safety rests on your willingness to be with me, to love me, always. Should you decide that your daughter's life is less precious than you thought, remember this. To obtain this cell phone, you will have to kill me. You are unarmed.”

He turned to the sink and made a production of rinsing his knife. As he prepared to slice the zucchini, Larabeth found that she couldn't get her breath. Her head was so heavy. The stiff scars on her abdomen ached. She laid her cheek on the counter and hoped the room would stop spinning.

She had seen it. His steady eyes told her he had wanted her to see it. The implement he had used to cut the okra, to chop the onion, to produce paper-thin slices of zucchini, was no knife. It was a scalpel.

* * *

The thugs were restless. Cynthia couldn't hear much of what they whispered among themselves, but something was wrong. Several of them were gathered around one of their trucks, listening to a radio that was only audible to her as unintelligible cracklings and mumblings.

She got the sense that the radio was not delivering bad news. It was simply not delivering the news they wanted to hear. The thugs grew more restless as the evening dusk gathered. They were waiting for something, and they expected it to happen before nightfall.

J.D. was spiking a fever and all she had in her first-aid kit to give him was aspirin. She had demanded a cup of water to help him wash it down. To her surprise, she got it. She made him drink every time he stirred.

The fever was disturbing his rest. He kept muttering nonsense about Babykiller and Larabeth. Just now, he had spoken very clearly, saying, “You should write little Cynthia and tell her who you are.”

“I'm Cynthia.” She tried to get him to look at her. “Tell me who you're talking to and I'll move heaven and earth to find her for you.”

He focused on her face. “You're Cynthia,” he echoed. “You must forgive her. She was very young when you were born. She didn't think she had any other choice.”

“Who?” she asked. “Who was very young when I was born?”

He had slipped away again, without even taking a drink of water.

* * *

Larabeth rested her head in Babykiller's lap. He had been so solicitous when she fainted, laying her across the chaise lounge and fetching her a cola. She noticed he had managed these things without once letting her out of his sight. She was oddly flattered. Even when she was semi-conscious, he was afraid of what she might do.

She had remained alert enough to keep her eyes on the scalpel. How she feared it. A quarter-century after the attack, she remembered how the scalpel had cut through her flesh like butter. It was designed to do so. It still seemed like such a perversion to use an instrument of healing to maim.

His hands were empty now, but she knew where the scalpel was. It was in a scabbard strapped to his ankle. She could almost reach it, but she would have to twist her torso to the right and he would feel the movement. He could reach the scalpel and rake it across her face before she stretched out her hand to snatch it.

He smoothed her hair away from her forehead and asked, “Are you feeling better? The sickness came on you so suddenly. I was caught off-guard.”

Liar. He knew why she fainted. He had done it on purpose, holding the scalpel up to the light and waiting for her response. She let him stroke her throbbing brow.

“I remember how soothing your hands were,” he said. “I'm glad for the chance to comfort you.”

”I don't think you give a damn about me or about anybody else.”
Careful
, she rebuked herself.
He wants you to love him. Let him keep his illusions as long as you find them useful.

Her sharp words didn't shake his solicitude. “You are so wrong. I give a damn about so many people. I detest zealots willing to poison people with products that nobody knew were toxic, just to preserve the life of a laboratory rat. I hate the industrialist who pours his waste in a river—a river used by whole cities for drinking water—rather than pay to have it treated. And, most of all, I abhor the government that sent its young men to fight an unwinnable war, poured poisons over their heads, and still refuses to relieve their suffering.”

“I understand now. I never did before.” Larabeth spoke without thinking. The intuitive part of her knew that this was the key. “Some terrorists—”

“Activists.”

“Okay, some activists want a forum for their outrage. I could never figure out why you didn't go public with your motives. Some activists want money, but you've never demanded it. You're different. You just want revenge. You're content to leave the world wondering why."\”

“The masses will wonder. Superior people, like you and me, will know the truth.”

“Even superior people need help sometimes. Help me get this straight.” The fog was lifting from her brain. She wished it would hurry. “You attacked the Hanford and Savannah River Sites to embarrass the government as revenge for Vietnam and Agent Orange. You poisoned Nebraska cropland and slaughtered a bunch of endangered animals as a slap in the faces of environmentalists because...explain that to me again.”

He held her head immobile in his lap while he spoke with the exaggerated patience of a schoolmarm. “Because their priorities are askew. They sacrifice themselves to save dumb beasts while human beings suffer all around them.”

“And it's okay to kill human beings to make this point?”

He took this question as a statement. “Yes. Yes, it is. This is why I chose you. You understand.”

Larabeth was silent. The part of her that remembered Vietnam did understand. She remembered when death was commonplace, when it was okay to kill to make a point. She remembered flying over vast tracts of Agent-Orange-defoliated Vietnamese forest. She remembered her anger when she discovered what Agent Orange and its kin did to the human body. In the face of all that misery, sometimes it was hard to care about the fate of one manatee more or less.

But she did care. She had left all the madness in the past. Babykiller didn't have the right to awaken it.

* * *

Babykiller had forgotten what tenderness felt like. His Larabeth lay here, where he could touch her and smell her and remind himself that beauty could be real. When they parted, he had thought she was lost to him forever. Years passed before he saw her face again, beaming at him from a magazine cover, rich, powerful. The old love had flared up again, made more poignant by his corrosive resentment.

How could she have found such success? How could she wear her beauty so easily, after all she had seen? Vietnam should have ruined her life, as it had ruined his.

Since then, he had stalked her, circling, closing the noose. He had rendered her existence a living hell but that, in its way, was his final gift to her. Since it was imperative that she die, so that they could share eternity together, chivalry demanded that he make her life so miserable that she was glad to leave it.

Larabeth
lay helpless in Babykiller's arms. She was powerless to stop him from destroying the Savannah River Plant and thousands of human beings along with it. She was powerless to save her daughter. She had already failed to save J.D. Babykiller had only left her the finest particle of power. It was time to use it.

She closed her eyes and let herself go limp. She let her hands fall open like aging flowers.

He bent over her. “Are you all right? Speak to me. Don't leave me alone.”

She opened her eyes and looked him in the face, letting him know that she was consciously choosing to leave him alone.

She watched him grab her shoulders. She clenched her jaw so that her teeth wouldn't chatter as he shook her. All evening, she had given him his heart's desire: a tender companion. All he had given her was the power to take his heart's desire away.

He lifted her torso until their faces were inches apart. “You let me think you loved me. If you value your daughter's life—if you value your own life—you will say it.” His fingers gripped her shoulder blades. “Say you love me.”

She looked into his eyes and held her tongue. When he slapped her, she heard rather than felt the blow. Her ear rang where he slapped it. She tasted blood and felt it trickle down her lip.

Larabeth reached back, past Vietnam, for strength. This man could do what he liked with her body, he could kill her, but he could never possess her, not the important part of her. Nobody knew that better than a rape survivor.

He yanked her head back by the hair and shook her savagely, but she hung on, because she knew already that she had earned her victory. She waited for him to realize that she had won, then she said, “I want my daughter. You can get her for me. I saw your helicopter.”

She knew he would do this for her. He wouldn't call off the nuclear standoff, but he would get Cynthia for her, because she could make him believe he wanted to. “If Cynthia were here, we would almost be a family.”

“A family,” he mused. His voice was rough around the edges. Perhaps she was hearing ordinary human emotion whispering through his sterile lips. Or perhaps she was hearing the roughness of vocal cords that had been silenced by an endotracheal tube for a very long time.

He gently wiped the blood from her mouth. The face-off was over. He could return to his illusion that she wanted the life he offered her—just as long as that life included her daughter.

Larabeth's plan was unfolding properly. Once Babykiller fetched Cynthia, he would be outnumbered. If she provoked Babykiller, if she let him attack her with his scalpel, it was possible that Cynthia would be able to overpower an middle-aged man with a limp. It was a pitiful plan, but it might work.

* * *

Babykiller had almost forgotten Larabeth's power play. It was sunset and he was walking through his glorious gardens with his only love. Once in a while, he stopped to take both her hands in his own. It was exhilarating to swing her around and around in a romantic ring-around-the-rosie way. More than that, dancing in circles came easily to a man with only one good leg. He could dance in circles without limping and pretend that, once again, he was a wholly complete man.

He drew her closer to him when they reached the ramps leading to his helicopter hangar. If he walked slowly and steadied himself on her arm—blinded by love, she surely wouldn't notice—why, then his limp would hardly be noticeable at all.