Going Dark (Thorn Mysteries)

by James W. Hall

  “Timer’s set for five minutes,” Pauly said, a calm smile in his eyes. “Might want to go find yourself a foxhole.” He looked down at the floor of the cubicle where the aluminum case was open, the device cradled in gray foam.

  “Disable it,” Thorn said.

  “Can’t be done. Fuse is set.”

  Prince and Flynn stood above them on the cement floor.

  “Five minutes?” Prince said. “Then we need to get out of here.”

  Prince’s uniform was shredded in half a dozen spots, his chest, arms. Blood seeping from each perforation.

  “No,” said Thorn. “We can’t let this happen.”

  “Pauly,” Flynn said. “You have to shut it down. You can’t do this.”

  “Decision’s made. Decision stands.”

  Thorn chose his spot; coming from below, he backhanded the flashlight, cracking it hard against Pauly’s chin, snapping his head back against the wall. Pauly somehow managed to keep his grip on the ladder.

  Thorn swung again and Pauly was too slow or too indifferent to block the blow. The heavy end of the flashlight cracked against his temple, and Pauly dropped his hold on the ladder and fell to the bottom of the pit.

  “We’ve got to get this thing out of here.”

  “Where to?”

  “Anywhere but here.”

  Thorn climbed down the ladder. Pauly was crumpled atop the suitcase. No room to maneuver. Thorn gripped him by the armpits and hauled him upright, leaned him against the cement wall.

  Thorn shut the suitcase, gripped the handle.

  As he reached for the ladder, Pauly latched his forearm across Thorn’s throat, an angled lock with his left arm levering hard against the back of Thorn’s head, mashing his head forward, crushing his windpipe.

  “Leave us,” Pauly said. “Thorn and me, we’re going to stand guard over this gadget. Make sure it goes off without a hitch.”

  Thorn thrust backward, slamming Pauly into the metal ladder, but it didn’t break the hold, didn’t weaken it. He tried a spin, then a counterspin, tried pulling at Pauly’s arm with both hands, tried whipping his elbow back at Pauly’s face. Nothing.

  “All right,” Flynn said. “Let go, Pauly. Don’t make me hurt you.”

  Pauly chuckled. “The man-child speaks.”

  “There’s no time for this. It’s your last chance, Pauly.”

  “I never thought it was anything else.”

  From the edge of his vision, Thorn saw Flynn extend his arm, holding Sugar’s pistol, the nine-millimeter he kept in his glove box. Sugarman’s gun pressed against the side of Pauly’s head.

  “Don’t make me,” Flynn said.

  “Go on, kid, you can do it,” said Pauly. “Your old man would.”

  Thorn rattled against the choke hold one more time. Shot a hand out, grabbed the pistol, twisted it from Flynn’s grasp, and aimed it past his own left ear and fired into Pauly’s face.

  The blast, so close and inside the manhole, dazed and deafened Thorn.

  Pauly’s grip fell away. Beside Thorn’s face a lock of Pauly’s ponytail was plastered to the wall. Pauly’s body lay twisted at Thorn’s feet. He rocked back against the wall. The iridescent blue light was spinning around him.

  “Three or four minutes,” Prince said. “Hand it up.”

  Thorn rubbed his eyes clear, then crouched down and pushed Pauly’s body away and took hold of the case and climbed the ladder.

  “I’ll meet you two back at the skiff. Now go, run.”

  “You’re lame,” Prince said. “I’m the fastest. I’m dead anyway.” He washed his hand over the bullet holes in his uniform. “My body just hasn’t accepted the fact yet.”

  Flynn was blocking the stairs to the exit.

  “Let’s move,” Thorn said. “I’ll take it to the parking lot, a hundred yards, big open area, minimum damage. Don’t worry, there’s time. I’ll heave it, find shelter. Now move.”

  Flynn stepped aside, looking back into the manhole. “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill him.”

  “That’s good, kid. Keep it that way.”

  Thorn climbed the stairs to the upper ramp, Prince and Flynn following. Thorn pushed through the exit door into the darkness and the whirlwind of sirens, and shouts and the screams of the injured. The smell of charred flesh and the thick haze of cement dust from the remains of the cooling tower.

  “Listen,” Flynn said. “I left the skiff at the loading docks after all. It’s just beyond that building, not far.”

  Flynn stayed at Thorn’s side as he headed toward the parking lot.

  Thorn stopped, planted a hand on Flynn’s chest. “Help Cameron back to the skiff. Do it now. I’ll be there in a couple of minutes. Now go, goddamn it. Do what I tell you for once.”

  Thorn headed off to the parking lot in a clumsy jog.

  He crossed a grassy plaza, about fifty yards from the storage pool. The parking lot was only a half minute farther on, Thorn making decent time, when he was tackled from behind, thrown to the ground. He broke away as Prince wrenched the case from Thorn’s hand.

  “Okay, so you had it right, my granddad was a big deal to me, a hero. Maybe all that’s too late for me. At least I can do this.” Prince got to his feet and set off running into the dark. Thorn yelled for him to stop, but he kept going to the north, toward the bay.

  Thorn watched Prince crossing the parking lot, the dull glint of the aluminum case bobbing as he ran. Thorn got to his feet, staggered after him, cupping his hands to his mouth, yelling for Prince to drop the case. Get out of there. Drop it now.

  But Prince kept sprinting toward the water’s edge, due north as though he meant to run beyond the seawall, clear across the miles of water to the distant island where his family once lived. Prince Key. Travel back to those boyhood hours with his family on that faraway refuge. His strides were long and loping, streaking through the darkness as if he were bodiless, free of the dreadful pull of the planet.

  Prince was out of time. Making a choice, grabbing for a legacy greater than what he’d been settling for. He ran into the darkness until Thorn could no longer see any sign of him.

  Flynn was standing beside Thorn. “Oh, holy God.”

  “The skiff,” said Thorn. “Let’s go.”

  Flynn and Thorn crossed the plaza and took a winding asphalt road toward the docks.

  “Sugarman?” Thorn said. “Is he okay?”

  “Fine. He took out Wally. Wally was bragging about Pauly blowing up the spent fuel pool. That’s when I took off.”

  “Leslie?”

  “She’s waiting in the boat.”

  “She’s all right?”

  “Injured,” Flynn said. “Prince said there was a shoot-out in the control room with the plant security. I think she’ll make it.”

  A security guard blocked the entrance to the loading dock. He raised his assault weapon and came toward them. He was ordering Thorn and Flynn to halt when the suitcase detonated.

  Prince had carried it all the way to the northern seawall. The sky brightened and collapsed and sent a sonic boom echoing out to sea and back again. The earth shimmied beneath them. Across the grounds, cars and trucks and fuel tanks exploded. Chunks of pavement flew upward as ungainly as prehistoric winged reptiles climbing into an ancient sky.

  Thorn shoved the guard into the bay and hustled past.

  Leslie was propped against the front of the console. She’d been shot through the left shoulder. Her face was white. She was shivering. Thorn wrapped her in foul-weather gear and towels, cast off the lines, and pushed off from the loading dock, Flynn at the wheel, maneuvering past a Coast Guard cutter arriving with assistance. He idled out to deeper water before hitting the throttle and putting Leslie’s Whipray up on plane.

  To the north the city of Miami was totally dark. People would have a taste of the primitive life. A day or two, maybe a week. They’d have to adapt, learn to cope, get by on less. Learn a few lessons. It would last for a while.

  Flynn pushed on, flat out, n
o one speaking. A half hour later, back in Key Largo, back at Thorn’s house, Cassandra was waiting on the dock. Flynn eased the skiff up to the pilings, handling it smoothly, an expert now.

  Cassandra helped Leslie out of the boat. She was conscious, still shivering, unable to talk.

  “She needs a hospital,” Thorn said.

  “She’ll be taken care of.”

  “A hospital, goddamn it.”

  A man appeared behind Cassandra. Bearded, long dreadlocks, a bearish guy holding a shotgun at port arms. “She’ll be taken care of,” he said. “We’ve got doctors friendly to the cause. Trust us, she’ll do fine. You guys did a good thing up there.”

  “Did we?” Thorn said.

  After they’d stretched Leslie out in the back of a Ford van, Flynn came over. Thorn was leaning against one of the girders of the cistern. The cistern Cameron Prince had taken such an interest in. Going to build one like it himself someday.

  “I’m leaving,” Flynn said.

  “What?”

  “I’m going with them.”

  “Where?”

  “Wherever they’re going.”

  Thorn opened his mouth but Flynn reached out and touched a hand to Thorn’s lips. “It’s what I want to do. What I have to do.”

  Flynn took his hand from Thorn’s lips and opened his arms, and Thorn stepped forward into the embrace. For a long moment his son wept on his shoulder. His son who’d taken such terrible risks for his cause.

  Flynn released him and stepped back. Thorn told him good-bye. Said he loved him. Keeping it simple.

  Flynn nodded. “And I love you, too, Dad.”

  He watched Flynn walk away with the bearded man. Cassandra, who had been standing by the van, walked across the gravel to Thorn. As she approached, she reached to her mouth and pried loose the prosthetic appliance that had disfigured her face and slipped it into the pocket of her jacket with the aplomb of an actress effortlessly shedding one role for another.

  Without the misshapen mouth, she was a striking woman. Her cheekbones were sharp, skin glossy and clear, and her large eyes were dark and electric. Wide shoulders, head held high, an easy poise in her step, something vaguely aristocratic about her bearing.

  “I want to thank you for your help tonight. You acted with courage and honor in a very challenging circumstance. Don’t worry about your son. Flynn’s a tough young man. We’ll watch out for him. Bring him along.”

  Before Thorn could reply, she turned and walked back to the van. He stood watching as she climbed into it and the van turned around on the gravel drive and disappeared down the entrance lane. He listened to the engine until the van moved so far away he lost it in the night noises, the dry whisper of palm fronds, the slap and jostle of the restless ocean against the seawall.

  FORTY-FOUR

  A WEEK AFTER THE ATTACK on Turkey Point, the case was officially closed, but Sheffield was still reviewing the events of that night. In his room at the Silver Sands, while he waited for Thorn to arrive, for the dozenth time he watched one of the security videos from the night of the assault, playing it back on his TV, the view from an overhead, wide-angle camera that captured the whole control room.

  He’d turned the sound down to mute the screams and gunfire, so all he could hear were the beach sounds beyond his door, the surf crashing against the white sands, a comforting noise while he watched Cameron Prince, a monstrous masterpiece of muscle, walk bowlegged from the weight of the gator under each arm and the python slung around his shoulders.

  Must’ve been five hundred pounds of squirming reptiles, but Prince walked with a steady gait, followed by Leslie Levine, cradling a single gator of four feet, its snout duct-taped. The control room lit by a few emergency lights.

  Frank watched as Cameron and Leslie cut the duct tape, set the creatures loose, and scared the shit out of engineers and hard-hatted workers who were scrambling to get the plant back online before the uranium heated up to such a white-hot molten state that a great hole would be burned right through the earth’s core. As one hyperventilating news anchor would put it the next day.

  As Leslie and Cameron were fleeing the control room, a half dozen of Claude’s security men entered and blocked their exit. A quick, sloppy gunfight erupted. Leslie wounded, Prince hit several times but seeming unfazed.

  Dozens of workers in the big room poured out the exits, screaming and pushing each other aside, a couple of them wounded in the cross fire.

  In the dim light, those half-assed rent-a-cops somehow failed to see Leslie and Prince slip out a side door, and they didn’t recognize the other members of their team when they entered. Firing at their own. Rent-a-cop versus rent-a-cop. A couple injured. A chaotic scene of shadow men shooting at shadow men while the gators and the python roamed up and down the aisles.

  Frank ran the video back to the beginning once again, though there was nothing new to see. No clues, nothing that hadn’t already been explained and documented and substantiated by multiple eyewitnesses. It was all in the reports on his desk at work, typed up handsomely by Marta.

  It had all played out on the local TV and the national news, another Miami-weirdness story, feeding into the clownish narrative that had been established decades back. Miami, that city of eccentrics and wackos, the nation’s capital of silliness and gaudy crooks and grotesque crimes. Ha-ha. Only in fucking Miami.

  But for Frank, watching the video again, the thirty seconds of those two souls staggering under the weight of their reptilian burdens, there was nothing funny, nothing ironic or goofy. These two were carrying out an honorable, principled mission. The newswriters had fallen into the easy clichés and had made the group seem bizarre and cartoonish, and ultimately, in the interests of entertainment, they’d undermined the statement the ELF guys had risked their lives to make. Leslie’s miscalculation.

  Any publicity was not necessarily good publicity.

  Because the media had turned ELF’s deeds into a trivial exercise, a fraternity prank gone terribly wrong. The reconstruction of the cooling tower was under way. The lights were back on. The chargers were recharging, the downtown skyscrapers were twinkling their art deco patterns again, the pulse was pulsing.

  Hearing the grumble of Thorn’s VW outside in the parking lot, Frank shut off the TV and sat for a moment staring at the blank screen.

  * * *

  Thorn stayed seated in the VW, admiring Frank’s view, the blazing white sands through the row of palms. An old motel that Frank was fixing up, staying true to its origins. A side of Sheffield most people never saw. The builder, the preservationist, the beach bum.

  The natural kinship between the two of them was strained at the moment because Thorn refused to discuss Flynn’s actions the night of the raid or anything that happened afterward. Thorn had described it all to April Moss, Flynn’s mother, and if she wanted to relay the information to the authorities, that was her call. So far she’d remained as mute as Thorn on the subject.

  Despite that lack of cooperation, Frank had covered for Thorn, testifying that he was an unwilling participant, basically a hostage. A father trying to protect his son. Claiming Thorn had wandered into the middle of this stunt and was an innocent bystander to the events. Thorn was grateful for Sheffield’s half-truths, but not grateful enough to tell Sheffield about Flynn’s decision to join the ELF warriors.

  Frank came out of the door of his motel room and headed over to the VW.

  Thorn took another look at the postcard in his hand. A panoramic scene of the West Virginia mountains. With careful penmanship she had written, F doing fine. L didn’t make it. Thought you should know. Sorry, C.

  Cassandra staying in touch. Leslie was gone, Flynn was some version of okay. Thorn hadn’t told Sheffield about the card. Surely the FBI had ways of collecting evidence from it. It might reveal clues that would lead to Flynn.

  Sheffield was at his open window, bent down, looking in. “Everything okay?”

  Thorn reached over and flipped open the glove box and slid the
postcard inside and shut it. “So where exactly is this Motel Blu?”

  “Edge of Little Haiti,” Frank said.

  Thorn got out, walked with Sheffield over to his old Chevy.

  They drove in strained silence through the midday traffic, up Dixie Highway to I-95, then picked up speed.

  “Sugarman doing okay?”

  “Few more weeks of therapy, he’ll be fine. Barely a limp.”

  “And you, your leg?”

  “A ding,” Thorn said. “It’s healing.”

  “What he did, Sugar, disabling Wally Chee like that in the condition he was in, flat on his back, that’s pretty goddamn amazing. I’d like to hear the whole story sometime. The blow-by-blow.”

  “There’s no story. He hit Wally in the head with a crowbar.”

  “How’s he come by a crowbar, lying in a bed?”

  “I’m not much of a housekeeper. Things get misplaced.”

  “You’re a terse son of a bitch. You know that, Thorn?”

  “I do.”

  Frank parked in the lot of Motel Blu and they sat for a minute looking at the venetian blinds of the small apartment attached to the back of the place. “Little River runs behind there. Kind of polluted, but you can picture how it used to be. A pretty place once upon a time.”

  Thorn nodded.

  “Neighborhood’s getting safer,” Frank said. “Motel’s got twenty-four-hour security. The girl should be fine here. You don’t need to worry.”

  “I only want to see her. See her and go. I’m not going to try to adopt her.”

  “She’s your granddaughter. It’s your right to see her. Anyway, Geraldine says she wants to meet you, wants to thank you for what you did.”

  “What did I do?”

  “A long time ago you saved Leslie’s life, that’s how she remembers it.”