Going Dark (Thorn Mysteries)

by James W. Hall

  Wally looked across at his brother, saw the cold menace in his face, took a swallow. “Whatever you say, boss. All I wanted was these assholes to see the kind of shit I can do.”

  “We’re blown away,” Thorn said. “You’re a world-class adolescent.”

  Wally glared at him for a moment, then picked up his grouper sandwich and took a sloppy bite.

  While Cameron was out, he’d run down to marker 103 and gotten take-out dinners from Sundowners—sandwiches, fries, coleslaw, and slices of key lime pie. A feast that seemed to cheer everyone up, except Pauly, who didn’t seem to have that emotional gear.

  When the meal was done, Thorn checked on Sugar again. He was awake. Thorn set a sandwich and a bottle of Red Stripe within reach on the bedside table and went into the bathroom and brought back a bottle of aspirin. He drew back the covers and took a look at Sugar’s leg. The knee was swollen double its normal size, a purple grapefruit.

  Voice hoarse, Sugar said, “I thought of something.”

  Thorn looked back at the open doorway, hearing that same faint creak, a woman’s weight on those old floorboards.

  Sugar lifted a hand from the sheets and motioned for Thorn to lean close. In a whisper so quiet Thorn could barely hear, Sugar said, “Glove box.”

  Then formed his hand into the shape of a pistol.

  * * *

  That evening, Leslie did another walk-through of the plan, using the replica of the plant, pointing out the entrance road they’d take, exactly where they would park their vehicle, the spot where the ambush would go down.

  Ambush, handcuff, commandeer vehicle. Transfer cage to the back of the feds’ SUV, talk their way through the front gate. Once inside, call Flynn to head off in the skiff, then proceed to the plant’s operation center. A rear door left open. Carry the critters inside, let them loose, clear the place out, then shut down the power.

  “And the backup generators?” Prince said. “They’ll kick on when the plant loses juice.”

  “Wally’s got that covered. Right, Wally?”

  “I’ve got the diesels programmed to stay on for exactly five minutes, long enough for you guys to finish your work, then it all goes black. That’s all you get. Five minutes of light.”

  Leslie nodded and returned to the plan.

  After the four of them enter the control room, Pauly separates, sets a diversionary explosive device at a storage shed a few hundred yards away. During the confusion the group reunites at the airboat dock behind the biology lab, takes the airboat to rendezvous with Flynn.

  “You stay with the skiff, Flynn. No matter what. Do not come ashore.”

  Flynn said, “What about the loading docks? They’re much closer to the action. Your rendezvous point is a couple of miles away. The loading docks are like two hundred yards.”

  “Too risky,” she said. “Lots of security at the loading docks. Can’t take that chance.”

  Flynn nodded.

  “If things go bad,” Leslie said, “and we’re not at the boat exactly an hour after you’ve left Thorn’s, you get the hell out of there. Half hour to get to the rendezvous point, and no more than a half hour waiting time.”

  “Just leave you there?”

  “One hour after you depart Thorn’s. If we’re not at the pickup spot by then, it’s because we were captured.”

  “Or crushed like maggots,” Wally said.

  “Nobody’s dying,” Leslie said. “This is a peaceful raid.”

  “Yeah, right,” Wally said.

  For once Thorn was tilting toward Wally.

  “After that hour is up, you get the hell out of there, return here, and wait for Cassandra. She’ll get you to safety.”

  Flynn absorbed that in silence for several moments. Captured or worse. Frowning as if this wasn’t anything Flynn had considered.

  “These explosions,” Thorn said. “That’s the aluminum suitcases?”

  No one spoke, then Leslie waved a quelling hand. Back off. “We’ve chosen targets that won’t endanger anyone. What you need to do, Thorn, is focus on your own role. Don’t worry about anyone else.”

  “Who leaves the door ajar?”

  “Our inside guy.”

  “You trust him? Seems like a lot depends on that door. What does he get out of it?”

  “He hates the place as much as we do.”

  “Block the highway, ambush an SUV full of FBI guys?” Thorn said. “That’s how we’re kicking off this stunt?”

  “Trust me,” she said. “That will be the easy part.”

  Pauly bent over the replica of the plant and tapped one of the buildings. “You sure about this?” he asked Leslie.

  “About what?”

  “Storage pool for spent fuel rods. Sure this is labeled right?”

  “Absolutely. Stay away from that.”

  He set his finger atop a building—one story tall, nondescript—on the northern flank of the plant.

  “This scale model is accurate. It was done from blueprints of the plant. Your targets are the diesel backup generators and the maintenance shed. The shed’s here.” She lay a finger atop a building east of the containment domes. “Get it straight, Pauly. An explosion, or fire in the storage pool, that would be catastrophic.”

  “Hell, yes,” Flynn said. “Anybody downwind, that’d be a lethal dose of radiation. You’re talking about millions of people. Not to mention us.”

  “You got it, Pauly?”

  He glanced again at the layout, gave Leslie a bland look, then went back to his chair and sat.

  * * *

  It was close to midnight when everyone returned to their rooms. Sugar was awake. Thorn retrieved another handful of aspirin from the medicine cabinet, and Sugar slugged them back with a glass of water. He’d finished his sandwich and made a dent in the coleslaw, left the beer untouched.

  Getting him on his feet and into the john was a wrenching series of awkward lifts and swivels, groans, grunts, and gasps. Pauly watched from his bed. Shirt off, his smoothly muscled torso glowing in the moonlight.

  When Sugar was settled in bed again, Thorn lay on the floor beside him.

  “It’ll never work,” Sugar said. “Turkey Point is too secure.”

  “Go to sleep,” Pauly said. “Or I’ll bust your other knee.”

  Thorn reached up and slid his hand between the mattress and box spring. Where he’d stashed the pry bar. He felt nothing.

  Dug deeper. Still nothing.

  He drew his hand out and tried a different spot, closer to the headboard.

  “Looking for this?”

  Thorn sat up.

  Pauly was holding up the crowbar, the steel glinting in the golden light.

  “It’s for Sugarman,” Thorn said. “I’m not leaving him here unarmed, alone with your brother.”

  Pauly was silent. Handling the crowbar, testing its weight. Thumping it a couple of times into the palm of his other hand. Enjoying himself. “I’ll think about it. Now it’s lights-out.”

  For the next hour Thorn lay awake listening to Sugar’s gentle snore, listening to the possums rattling in the fishtail palms beyond the window. Trying to hear any sign of Pauly sleeping. He waited longer, then longer still. Thinking about Flynn down the hall, thinking about Leslie, how strong her body was, the heat of her skin, its sweaty shine, her hunger and his matching up so intensely. He listened to the wind. Strained to hear any sign of Pauly.

  He got up, padded into the bathroom, shut the door. He waited several minutes, eased the window open, climbed out.

  Staying close to the house, he circled to the front, checked every direction, saw nothing. At the back corner he waited. Watched a feral cat stalking something along the dock. Saw moonlight sifting through the palms, printing zebra stripes of light and shadow across the grounds.

  He heard nothing beyond the familiar night sounds. The papery clatter of fronds, the tree frogs, the distant rumble of the highway, the ocean’s restless slap and heave, the creak of boat lines straining against the shifting vessels.


  He slipped across the grassy lawn to the cars.

  With Sugar’s pistol he could end this. Take them prisoner, start with Pauly, the most dangerous. Shoot him if he had to. An unavoidable risk.

  Or maybe start with Flynn, get him out of harm’s way. Back to Leslie’s room, slip in, send Flynn for help while he took control of the house room by room. If Flynn would go along. If he hadn’t fully converted to their cause. Thorn wasn’t sure. This son of his whom he still didn’t know.

  He was at Sugar’s Honda.

  Still seeing nothing in the ghostly light, the grass and trees coated with a sugary crust of moonglow. He moved to the passenger door.

  Twenty yards away, on the back deck, he heard the dry rustle of footsteps. So he kept walking, going past Sugar’s car to the VW.

  He went behind the VW, then began a slow meander back to the house.

  Until a metal hook caught him around the throat and brought him to a stop. The pry bar’s prong was cold and biting.

  “You’re sneaking around,” Pauly said.

  The pressure was so hard even a twitch could tear Thorn’s Adam’s apple loose. A jerk of Pauly’s hand and Thorn was gone.

  Thorn raised his hands shoulder high. “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “So you went for a walk, checking out the cars. Why? Going to hot-wire one, get the hell out of here?”

  “Hell, no. Wouldn’t want to miss the party.”

  “You lie about everything. I haven’t heard a straight word come out of that mouth yet. No wonder your boy thinks you’re a shiftless asshole. There’s nothing to you but treachery.”

  Thorn could feel a warm ribbon of blood unrolling down his chest. “Okay. Just this once I’ll tell you the truth.”

  “I doubt it. But let’s hear.”

  “Tire iron. In the trunk of the VW. So Sugar can protect himself when he and Wally are alone. That’s all.”

  “One lie after another.” Pauly removed the pry bar.

  Thorn drew a long breath. “I’m turning around.”

  Pauly didn’t reply.

  Thorn kept his arms raised as he turned to face Pauly.

  “Get going,” Pauly said. “Move it.”

  Thorn wiped the blood from his throat and cut a glance back at Sugarman’s Honda. There’d be no showdown tonight. Maybe he could bring it off tomorrow. Or the day after. There was still time.

  Still plenty of time, he thought, as he led the way back to the bedroom.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  WHEN MARTA BUSTLED IN TUESDAY morning, Frank was already at his desk.

  She came to the open door, stuck her head inside. “Oh, no, what’s happened now?”

  He reassured her that all was well, then got up and came out to the waiting room while Marta slipped her purse into a drawer and sat down in her chair and flipped on the computer.

  “Need an early start. Lots to do. Tonight’s the drill.”

  “The power plant?”

  Frank stood in the doorway of his office. “Yep, tonight.”

  “What happened? It’s scheduled for Friday, no?”

  “It’s time I started calling the shots. With everyone in panic mode, maybe somebody slips up.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know who. That’s the point. Shake the tree, see what falls. The tree’s been shaking me too long.”

  “You can do this? Change the date? You don’t need permission from these people, the NRC lady, Sheen?”

  “She’s been informed.”

  “So I should call the others, your SWAT group?”

  “Tell them we’ll meet at the armory at three,” Frank said. “I need to run a couple of errands this morning. I’ll be out for a while.”

  “You’ll visit Billy Dean? He’s at Jackson Memorial, room 403.”

  “He’s first on my list.”

  “Then?”

  “You’ve got to know everything, don’t you?”

  “This makes me bad?”

  “I’m going to see Ms. McIvey, tell her in person about the drill.”

  “You want to see her face.”

  “You got it.”

  “She won’t like it. You taking charge.”

  “And here I thought I was in charge all the time.”

  “You were wrong.”

  Frank had to smile. “You’ve only met her once, fifteen, twenty minutes.”

  “She thinks she’s the boss of everything. She won’t like this change. You tell me later if I’m wrong.”

  Marta wasn’t wrong, but it took him a few hours before he confirmed it.

  * * *

  The National Infrastructure Protection Center was housed in the same downtown office building as the Department of Homeland Security. Sheffield parked in their lot, took the employee elevator to the eighth floor, found the office. A pleasant view of the north fork of the Miami River over the shoulder of the middle-aged black lady at the reception desk. The nameplate on her blouse said she was Portia Jackson-Hibber. The name familiar.

  She was typing at her computer and didn’t look up when Frank walked in and she didn’t look up when he held out his ID. Even clearing his throat got no reaction.

  “Excuse me.”

  That slowed down her typing, but her eyes never left the screen. “Yes?”

  He gave his name and his title, and that slowed her typing to a crawl.

  “Here to see, Ms. McIvey.”

  Finally she ceased. The magic words. “She’s in a staff meeting.” Portia was staring at Frank, cocking her head to the side, a cold appraisal as if sizing him for a straitjacket.

  “This is somewhat urgent.”

  “Only somewhat?”

  Frank felt the blood heating his face. An angry flush. He was in a hurry to get to the SWAT meeting before three. It was already after noon. He’d spent too long with Billy Dean. The guy still gung ho after two surgeries, with another scheduled for later that day. Still some cleaning out of bullet fragments left to do, then another operation in a week to repair the last of the damage.

  “Let me speak to your superior.”

  She took her hands off her keyboard and crouched forward as if she might leap across her narrow desk and sink her canines in Frank’s throat. “I am my superior.”

  “Yeah? And how does that work?”

  “The way that works is that as director of the southern district of the NIPC, I hire and fire all personnel. In this office, I’m the supervisor. Special agent in charge of Ms. McIvey and the staff she’s currently meeting with.”

  “Sorry.” Clearly he’d stepped into the lady’s personal minefield. “Since you were sitting here—”

  “Yes, yes. Since I’m a woman and an African-American, you naturally assumed I’m Ms. McIvey’s subordinate.”

  “Since you were sitting at this desk instead of behind that door marked DIRECTOR, yes, I made an assumption.”

  “If that’s typical FBI acumen, no wonder we’ve got problems.”

  “Hey, could we start fresh?”

  “No,” Portia said. “We have too much history already.”

  “Yeah, well, I need to speak to Nicole about a drill she’s part of. The time and date’s been changed, and it’s urgent I let her know.”

  “So it’s Nicole now?”

  Frank looked out at the river, searching for its calming effect. “I’ve known Ms. McIvey for some time.”

  “You have a personal relationship with her?”

  Frank took a breath, reached up, and massaged the tightness in his jaw.

  “Is that a yes?”

  “If by personal you mean do I know her outside the office, then yes.”

  “By personal, I mean this.” She rolled her chair back a few inches and did two quick pelvic thrusts.

  “Jesus, what’s going on with you?”

  “So I take it that’s another yes?”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “Okay, here’s how it is. I don’t share this information with just anyone, but I know who
you are. We’ve attended the same conferences several times, but you’ve obviously never noticed me. That’s fine. I’m used to it. But since you’re a man and in a position of authority, someone who might reward Ms. McIvey’s pattern of behavior, it’s important you know some facts about that pattern.”

  Frank had put the name and face together. Conferences. Yes, he’d seen Portia give a couple of presentations on sexual harassment. Her professional sideline—enlightening her fellow employees on the subtle ways such conduct occurred in the federal workplace and its insidious effects on morale and the pursuit of justice. She was passionate and smart and told some damn funny stories that always had a serious kicker.

  “For the last decade Ms. McIvey has been using her considerable charms to maneuver her way to her current position. This has badly damaged her own reputation and the reputations of several men with whom she’s served.

  “However, now that she works for me, she will no longer be able to employ these skills. And until I see a radical change in her behavior, I consider myself her personal glass ceiling.”

  “I see.”

  “So if by knowing her ‘outside the office’ means you have succumbed to Ms. McIvey’s allure, then you should be on notice that quite possibly you are being manipulated for professional gain.”

  Frank nodded. “Screwed her way to the top, now you’re blocking her.”

  “I prefer to think of my role as educational. If McIvey is to advance any further in the federal system, then she’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way.”

  “Do a half-assed job.”

  “At least half-assed.”

  “How about doing me a favor, Portia?”

  She cocked an eyebrow at him.

  “When Ms. McIvey is out of her staff meeting, have her call me on my cell right away. I need to let her know about the change of plans for the drill.”

  “I’ll be happy to, Agent Sheffield. And I certainly hope I haven’t broken your heart. That was not my intention.”

  “No, I appreciate your directness. And good luck with your project.”

  He was still in traffic, almost to the office, when Nicole’s call came.

  “You met Portia.”

  “I did.”