Going Dark (Thorn Mysteries)

by James W. Hall

  “Whoever it was, we got it covered,” Claude said. “New protocols. You can’t throw a goddamn light switch in the plant without me knowing about it.”

  Frank stood, stepped around Nicole, and reached a hand out to the reactor building. Twenty-five stories tall, it was about four inches high in the scale model. He touched a fingertip to the containment building. “Boiling water to keep the lights on.”

  “It’s a hell of a lot more complicated than that,” said Claude.

  “Sure, there’s the smashing-atoms part, but that’s just to make steam to spin a turbine to keep everybody’s iPods charged, right?”

  “Nuclear energy is the cleanest source of fuel we have. Lowest carbon emissions per kilowatt.” Ms. Sheen was smiling brightly. No doubt she’d stood before hundreds of antinuke gatherings and had all the rejoinders to all the critiques.

  Sheffield glanced down at the floor of the control room. He could spend a month out there, hire a personal tutor, and he still wouldn’t grasp what all that circuitry was for. He doubted anyone in ELF would have that kind of expertise either, meaning they weren’t planning on being surgical, but probably meant to execute some kind of blunt-force trauma.

  Frank took out his silver keychain. One of two things he’d inherited from his old man. The Silver Sands Motel and a silver keychain with a small cigarette lighter attached. Sheffield didn’t smoke, but he kept the lighter operational. A corny nod to his dad. Keeping the Sheffield flame alive.

  “So anyway I’m looking at this little three-story, square building. The one that’s half-buried in the coral rock.” Frank pointed at the grayish cube that was positioned dead center on the plywood board. “I don’t think that was on our tour, Claude.”

  Claude gave him a sleepy look. “Couldn’t show you every damn thing. We’d still be out there.”

  Sheffield came around the table. Claude watched him edge closer, stiffening in his chair.

  “Last time I was out here,” Sheffield said, “doing force-on-force, our target of choice wasn’t the reactor or the diesel generators, or any red button in the control room. We weren’t trying to shut the place down. We were trying to blow it the hell up. We were doing a suicide run like the jihadists and true believers would try. Our target was the seventy-five thousand metric tons of spent fuel rods you people have been accumulating for the last thirty-five years.”

  “So what?” Claude said.

  “I’m guessing those rods haven’t moved since I was here last. They’re still crammed in pools of refrigerated water. Is that correct?”

  With some reluctance, Sheen gave him an affirmative nod.

  “I seem to remember if that water ever leaks out or stops circulating, the rods only take an hour or two to reach a thousand degrees. They get that hot, the zirconium cladding they’re wrapped in catches fire; not long after that the cement walls vaporize; next thing you’ve got is a radioactive cloud spewing out the roof like Mount Etna shooting ash.

  “Worst case, a day or two Turkey Point is in the center of a dead zone the size of Rhode Island, an area that stays toxic for centuries. Even if it’s a small leak, if the wind’s right, Homestead to the Broward line, five million souls are affected. If there’s a quick fix, very best case, a few hundred thousand are in jeopardy. Land’s contaminated for miles around, southern Biscayne Bay is off-limits the rest of our lives and our kids’ lives. That’s how I remember it from before. All that still true? Because I’ve read it’s gotten worse. Even more spent fuel rods crammed in those pools.”

  Sheffield leaned forward a little more, clicked his lighter, got a flame, and touched it to the squarish structure north of the containment building. The plastic caught and began to crinkle and give off a chemical vapor.

  “Because if this is still true, folks, this is the building we should be watching.”

  Everyone stared at the small replica burning, the fire spreading swiftly across the rest of the scale model. Claude came to his feet, hustled out the door, and was back with a fire extinguisher just as Frank was patting out the small fire with the palm of his callused hand. The domed containment structure was blackened but intact.

  “Was that necessary, Agent Sheffield?” Sheen was on her feet, waving the smoke from her face.

  “You can’t hold it in your hand, it isn’t real,” he said. “Right, Claude?”

  Claude cranked open a window. “The water can’t leak out, smart guy. The walls of the tank are concrete, five feet thick, lined with stainless steel. The spent fuel tank is the size of an Olympic pool. That means pumping out thousands of gallons of water. It’d take a week. Maybe a truck full of dynamite could blast a little hole in the side, but that isn’t going to happen because we got barriers on top of barriers to prevent exactly that. So your little fantasy, it ain’t going to happen. Put that one back up your ass where it came from.”

  Voice raspy from the fumes, Sheen managed some canned closing remarks about what a productive meeting it had been. How happy she was to be working with such a highly motivated group of people. Not a trace of irony.

  So it was settled.

  One week from tomorrow. On the seventeenth of August, a Friday, the drills would officially begin. Starting after midnight on Thursday, the FBI team would have a seventy-two-hour window to mount their attack: Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. The attack could begin at any time during that seventy-two-hour period. Laser weapons and sensor vests would be distributed in the next few days along with reflective armbands, white for the FBI and red for Turkey Point. Sheffield was to choose six combatants, and Sellers would select six from his security team. Any of the scenarios mentioned today were fair game, or if Sheffield wanted to improvise, that was also fair.

  “Good luck to all of you,” Sheen said. “And the NRC will be watching with great interest.”

  SEVENTEEN

  TEN MINUTES LATER, ON THEIR way out the exit drive, Frank said, “Anybody other than your superiors at NIPC know you were running Bendell?”

  Nicole shot him a dark look. Not happy with his performance. Over the top, belligerent. Sure, Frank could’ve handled it better. He’d have to work on that. Learn to keep his cool. Maybe one of these days before he retired.

  “No one knew about Bendell except the essential players.”

  “Like Claude Sellers?” Frank said.

  “I don’t like Sellers either. But he’s the power company’s security point man. We don’t have a lot of choice in the matter.”

  “So he knew Bendell was working for you?”

  “He knew I had someone in an ELF cell, but he didn’t know Marcus by name. Why? You don’t trust him?”

  “Understatement of the month.”

  They drove in silence till they were back on the turnpike. Nicole going the speed limit. A deep downdraft in her mood.

  “So what now, Agent Sheffield?”

  “Next thing is, I’d like to watch a video.”

  “What video?”

  “The one starring Leslie Levine and a crocodile.”

  “Why?”

  “If Prince wanted to get Levine out of the way so he could have unhindered access to the plant, the video might give us some idea how he pulled it off. If it does, that gives us probable cause. I bring Prince in, take a look at his island while we’re doing it. We get him in a room, mess with his head, maybe he’ll slip, blurt something, give us a reason to take down the rest of his ELF friends. Problem solved.”

  “A guy’s going to make a video of a murder?”

  “A certain kind of guy, yeah.”

  “What kind is that?”

  “One who thinks he’s smarter than anyone in the room.”

  “Except for you.”

  “Yeah,” Frank said. “Except for me.”

  They were quiet for the rest of the drive, and when she dropped him back at his motel on Key Biscayne, she kept the motor running.

  “Buy you a beer?”

  She shook her head, staring at the windshield with a stiff smile.

  �
�Or we could raid my tequila stash. I make a nasty margarita.”

  “Don’t think that’s wise.”

  “Yeah, we might get tipsy, lose control, do something we’d regret.”

  “We already did.”

  Frank sighed to himself. He’d had hopes, but she sounded resolute.

  “So you coming along tomorrow, take another look at the croc attack?”

  “I have things on my desk,” she said, distant now. All the witty banter evaporated.

  “Yeah, yeah. Got to keep that desk clear. Know the feeling.” He opened the door, got out, considered rephrasing the drink offer, but saw how rigid she was sitting behind the wheel. “I’ll let you know if I see anything in the movie. Then we should talk. Go over the force-on-force plan. I like a couple of your ideas.”

  She turned, leaned toward the open door, fixing him with a tough stare. “I’m going along, Frank. You know that, right? I’m one of the six.”

  “You good with a laser pistol?”

  “Just so you know. I want in on this.”

  “Seems to me you earned it.”

  “Damn right I did. Damn right.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “That stunt with the lighter, Frank, that was childish.”

  “Yeah. I got carried away.”

  She looked across at him, things happening in her eyes, some kind of struggle he couldn’t decipher.

  Then she reached out and switched off the ignition. “Okay, tell me.” She released a long breath. “What’s the best tequila you have?”

  She had to use the john. While she was in there running water, Frank hummed a tune to himself, broke some ice out of the trays, and measured the limeade and the Patrón and the Grand Marnier. Margaritas were like a lot of things: the difference between a good one and a great one came down to money. The expensive stuff was expensive for a reason.

  His room was the only efficiency in the motel. A half-assed kitchen behind a rattan counter. A small living area that he’d furnished with secondhand art deco chairs, a couch, and tables made from some variety of blond wood and fashioned with smoothly curved edges. He’d painted the walls a pale salmon, kind of adventurous for a bachelor pad, but it seemed right because the color came from the same palette as the sunrises that woke him every day.

  He’d hung some Haitian watercolors on the walls. Not the bright, garish ones the Haitians were famous for, but muted blue and white with some darker blues. Scratch paintings. Layers of different-colored paints were applied to the board, and the artist scratched them away delicately to create the outlines of fishermen and birds and a few primitive sailboats plying the smooth waters, and the mountain ranges overlooking the harbor at Port-au-Prince. He was proud of those paintings. He knew the Haitian taxidriver who’d painted them, a guy who’d finally started selling enough of his stuff to quit cabdriving and paint full-time.

  When he finished making the drinks, Nicole was still in the bathroom.

  “Salt or no salt?” he called out.

  She opened the door a crack and peeked out at him. Through the slit he saw she’d shed her clothes and was showing a glossy sliver of her right leg.

  “You like yours with salt, Frank?”

  “Sure. Salt’s great.”

  Nicole opened the door an inch, Sheffield holding his breath. Then she stepped into the room. She had a much better physique than he’d imagined, and he’d imagined it a lot. Lanky with wide shoulders and narrow hips, long legs that were muscled like a distance runner’s. Her clothes disguised the taut heft of her breasts. Her nipples were strangely tiny and as dark as chocolate chips, and a fine dusting of golden down around her navel was lit by a slant of afternoon sunlight. Her flat, athletic stomach sloped down to a triangle of feathery wheat.

  “If you’re really into salt, Frank, maybe you could try licking the dried sweat off my arms.” She held her right arm straight ahead like a sleepwalker.

  Frank set the two margaritas back on the side table. “I guess I could start with your arms.”

  EIGHTEEN

  FOUR TIMES, OR WAS IT five? Frank lost count in the blur of flesh, thrust and counterthrust, his groans and hers, his cotton sheet knotting around his ankles, even the fitted sheet breaking loose from the mattress, at one point the mattress slipping off the box spring, tipping both of them onto the floor, which didn’t stop their grappling, didn’t slow them, in fact helped them discover fresh angles, new and surprising pressures, both bodies slippery with sweat, her fingernails digging at his shoulders, holding on, jabbing his lower back to keep the lock tight, thigh to rump, loin to thigh, Frank noting the pain in passing, thinking he’d tally it all up in the morning, the bruises, scrapes, and long, ragged scratches, then diving back into the unthinking convulsions, the wrestling match, every hold and variation Frank knew and some he’d never thought possible, Nicole slithering away, Frank pursuing, staying inside her, and with a sudden grinding thrust she was letting go, completely letting go, she twisted, hammered her hips and thighs against his, and rolled on top, arched into the cobra pose, carnal yoga, her spine bowed forward, shoulders thrown back, yipping until the throaty cowgirl scream came again.

  Four, five, six. Who could count? Why bother? He didn’t. Only found himself considering it much later as she was dressing in the dark, how many times he’d come and she’d come, how many times they’d gotten close and pulled away, in the three hours—or was it four?—they’d been together, just something to consider while he watched her dress, Nicole not showering, saying she wanted to take a little bit of Frank Sheffield home, his smell, his dried fluids, his DNA, maybe scrape some off, run a lab check on him, see what came up in the National Crime Information Center, joking as she dressed, doing all the talking with silent Frank, exhausted Frank, propped up against the pillows trying not to plead, Do you have to go? Stay a little longer.

  He knew how the back-and-forth would go: she had to leave, damn it; and, yes, he understood. It was late. It was tomorrow already. She had work. They both had work. Jobs to do. It was already Friday, for christsakes, practically the weekend. Hey, didn’t she take off the weekend? And she’d ask him, Do you think those ELF guys are taking off the weekend?

  No, he couldn’t possibly blow off work for time in the sack with Nicole and her yips and her clawing nails and the lip-bruising kisses. None of that he said out loud, but he was thinking it, wanting to convince her, goddamn it, to stay there beside him, cuddle a little, milk the afterglow, but knowing that would be a mistake with a no-bullshit broad like her, Frank admitting he liked to snuggle, a tough hombre, special agent in charge, admit he was an inveterate cuddler. Spoon him just for ten minutes while they drowsed, all he wanted. But when Nicole was done, she was done and she was up and getting dressed, and who was Frank to judge?

  She was over in the dark by his dresser, fumbling around, then went into the bathroom again, shut the door, switched on the light. In there for several minutes. Frank wondering, What the hell? Then she came out, the light turned off again, went back to the dresser.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Everything’s fine,” she said. “Better than fine.”

  On the way to the door she came over, stooped, kissed him once more, her right hand pressed hard and flat against his hairy chest, then her fingers closed, gripping, tugging on the hairs, Nicole a little more into pain than he was used to, but he accepted it, enjoyed the novelty of it, didn’t question it.

  “Do you have to go?” he heard himself say as she got to the door.

  “You need your rest, Frank. You’re not as young as you used to be. You were huffing, heart racing, I thought I might have to call the paramedics.”

  “Your heart wasn’t racing?”

  She was at the open door. The room dark, the sound of the surf. He could only see her from the bathroom light, not enough to read her face. He could’ve gotten up and tried to coax her back to bed, but she was right, he had nothing left. Who was he trying to kid? But it bothered him that her heart might not have been racing. B
othered him a little, but not so much he mentioned it aloud, that she’d even noticed he was out of breath, because he’d noticed nothing like that about her, noticed only the sounds she made as she climbed up the octaves to that high note she hit and hit and hit.

  In the dark she said, “What exactly are you concealing?”

  “What?”

  “About Turkey Point, this operation. There’s something you’re hiding.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Oh, yes, you do.”

  Frank was quiet for a moment, considering, then said, “You’re good.”

  She stayed in the doorway, a hazy moonglow behind her in the tall pines that bordered his property.

  “What it is, I’ve got a guy. An informant. I didn’t recruit him. He called me. He’s gotten involved with these people, the ELF group. There was something bothering him about it all.”

  “What was bothering him?” She wasn’t angry. Sounding neutral, patient.

  Frank was relieved. “Nothing specific. He called last week. I haven’t heard from him again.”

  “Which guy is it?”

  Frank was silent, thinking. Taking too long.

  “You don’t trust me, Frank.” Half statement, half question.

  “Can we talk about this tomorrow? I’ll lay it all out, everything, okay?”

  “Sure. I understand. You don’t want to spoil the afterglow. Don’t want to mix business with pleasure. Sure.”

  “Now you’re pissed.”

  “Not at all. Get some sleep. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  Then she backed out the door and was gone.

  * * *

  No one spoke to Thorn. Flynn kept his distance. At suppertime Flynn walked off and sat by the obstacle course with his Subway sandwich. Wally tagged along and planted himself a few yards away.

  Thorn got the last sandwich in the ice chest, turkey with Swiss, so soggy he could’ve eaten it with a spoon. He sat by himself on the rocky soil on the western side of the island. A small gap in the mangroves with a sunset view over the mainland. His minder, Pauly, stood ten yards away watching him eat.