“If you don’t save it now,” Everon said, “we won’t have power around here for six months. That substation feeds the Trenton Water Works. Three of your fire houses too: Station Three on Broad, Number Six on South Clinton,” Everon glanced up at the man’s black helmet, “and Station Seven. That’s your company, isn’t it, Captain?”
Hunt looked at Everon, surprised.
The captain rubbed a cheek with the back of four gloved fingers.
“And no,” Everon added, “it’s not just tubes and wires. You get one of our transformers hot enough and you won’t want to be within a block of the explosion.”
The captain strode quickly to the firemen manning the pumper, grabbed the shoulder of the lead hose man. Yelled something into his ear.
The man eyeballed him back, shook his head doubtfully. But spray from his hose arced through the air until it began soaking the wall between Tony G’s and Alessandro on the end.
The lady in the light-blue housecoat was back. Where one black fire hose connected to the side of the red tanker, she was holding a silver pitcher beneath a leak.
A fireman tried to stop her. “You can’t drink that, lady,” he yelled, “That’s river water!”
“I don’t care!” She refused to move until her pitcher was full. When she finally walked off, Rani was staring after her, frowning darkly, the burn scars on his face a mask of fear.
“That’s all we can do here,” Hunt told Everon urgently. “Thanks for saving us a lot of trouble later. Let’s get over to our control center.”
But Everon’s eyes shot from Rani to one of the firemen, a walkie-talkie at his mouth, the fireman’s face contorted in violence. Men ran at the partially consumed building on the fire’s left, its roof becoming rapidly engulfed by flame. The trailing edge of a blue bathrobe disappeared through the front door.
“No!” Rani shouted, shaking visibly.
A hand appeared on the upstairs window ledge. A painting landed in the street. The hand disappeared. Two firefighters in oxygen masks ran around their truck toward the building.
“Damned fool woman poured that freezing river water over herself and ran inside!” yelled the captain.
Halfway up the front steps one of the men grabbed a handful of the other’s heavy black coat, yanked him back. They backpeddled as flames filled the front door.
“I — I wondered if she —” Rani cried to Everon, terror in his friend’s face. Since the accident, nothing got to Rani more than fire. “Can’t we get her out of there? What can we do?”
“Nothing,” the captain answered harshly. He looked more worn down than Hunt.
The building rumbled. And down it came. Almost as if the captain were speaking for Franklin, he added, “Nothing. Nothing but let it burn.”
Gold Plates To Salt Lake
Neil Bandish stood back. “It’s wonderful, isn’t it?” The words gushed out before he could stop himself. The cave had been opened by an act of God, with a little help, perhaps, from the New York bomb.
Something like intelligent design.
“An amazing find, Neil.” the older, blond-haired Dr. Hyram Millar congratulated him. “You have done well by the Church. God has chosen this time, this place. God has chosen you! Your name will go down in our books, Neil. Forever!”
The other men — church elders all — shook his hand, patted his back. The local stake president even gave him a hug. “You’re going to be famous you know, Neil.”
He hadn’t thought of that.
At first, the men Neil summoned had been afraid to touch the plates, so precious were they. They’d brought in more lights to see better just exactly what they had.
Once the lid had been carefully set aside they could see the plates lay upon two more stones — like bricks — that raised them up off the bottom of the crude box.
He was merely the first one there — so Neil felt more than honored when Dr. Millar told him he would be allowed to help raise the plates out. He was given a pair of white cotton gloves, ordered to lift one side. As he and the other man brought the stack above the box’s edge, he noticed nervously he could feel against his fingers the thin ridges of their sides! Considering the weight, the half he held in his hands, the plates felt altogether maybe sixty, seventy pounds or so.
They carefully placed the bound golden stack in a well-padded reinforced metal trunk. Two of the men hand-carried the trunk up the dirt stairs where it was gently loaded into a waiting SUV. With the government’s special permission, the Church would fly the trunk by private jet directly to Salt Lake City.
The crude stone box that had held its precious contents for so long was a part of the floor itself. It and the cave were to become an addition to the museum, a Mormon shrine.
Waiting for the last of the men to ascend the old dirt stairs, Neil paused a moment to remain reverently behind.
Something caught his eye. A difference in the light? A shadow?
He walked over and ran his fingers across the tunnel’s left wall. Behind one of the portable light trees, a small clump of compacted dirt crumbled away at his touch. He knelt down, rubbed a hand along the spot. More came off easily, creating a curved shadow, like an opening, as if dug into by some kind of equipment, later refilled and smoothed over. His eyes grew large. A frightening idea.
He thought of Mormon bomber Mark Hofmann’s forged historical documents, how he’d sold them to the Church — completely fooling the church’s leader, the Mormon Prophet.
“Neil!” Dr. Millar called down to him. “You coming?”
“Be right there!” Dr. Millar will want to know —
And then, he didn’t know why, something strange shook him:
Maybe it would be better if I just put these thoughts away.
The Lie Begins
ALLAH FAWZI!” chorused a dozen male voices. “God’s victory!” a background voice translated from Arabic into English.
“Now is our turn!”
“Our turn!”
“Those bastards!” breathed President Wall viciously at the digital player. There was no more. The recording had ended. The toadlike CIA Director William Sloat reached over and shut off the wall unit.
“It’s not really conclusive though, is it?” argued Chief of Staff Marc Praeger. His sloppy dress shirt and dark pants stretched across his huge torso. “Pakistan, you say, William? It’s their coalition?”
“How long have you had this?” Wall interrupted, trying to rub away the goose bumps that ran up his forearms. It’s downright cold in this mountain. He walked over, adjusted the thermostat again. The President wore a pair of pale yellow and green striped pajamas.
“Just yesterday, sir,” Sloat answered. “It exited Processing only an hour ago.” He turned to the speakerphone on the table. “Greg?”
“From one of our drones,” the voice of Sloat’s operative explained. “Over an isolated location outside Zahedan. An Iranian city on the border of Pakistan.”
“Rude, belching sons-of-bitches, aren’t they?” Wall’s right eye twitched. “Sounds like quite a feast though.”
With his head leaned forward across the presidential desk, eyebrows narrowed, he considered the digital recorder. His neck twisted to speak into Sloat’s phone connection, to Sloat’s field op. “Any idea who was leading their little call and response?” he demanded.
“Greg?” Sloat ordered.
Not for the first time today, Sloat’s op lied precisely, “Pakistan’s Ambassador to Iran.”
Wall let out a long, low breath. “Could they be talking about something else entirely?”
“Three samples of the New York bomb’s radioactive waste,” Director Sloat added, “and three more samples from Virginia Beach confirm it. The plutonium was Pakistani.”
“So let me get this straight, William,” Wall snapped. “You’re suggesting these Muslims — these radical Muslims, brought these atomic bombs here, into our country?”
“You know, sir,” Admiral Thompson interrupted, “we’
re talking only a minor change in her tasking. We use our carriers to make a statement. Something really serious, we send in one of her class.” The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs wore a dark blue uniform, a fruit salad of metals on his thin chest. The consummate politician, Thompson also knew his stuff, technically speaking. Especially the Navy side. “Highly unlikely our boat would be detected, even that close. We begin by changing her patrol route. Now. Frankly we have little choice. Her best is about thirty-four knots. It will take her nearly two days to get on station.”
They all knew what Thompson was talking about.
A nuclear sub. War.
“This is only prelim —” Praeger began.
“Are they the ones behind New York and Virginia, Marc?” Twitch. Twitch.
“They do hate us, sir. I only wanted to point out that no matter how your numbers may be tottering a bit in the polls — Rasmussen, Gallup, MSNBC — even if some small amount of the average American’s anger might be turning to you, that sort of thing is only temporary. It’s only been two days! They can’t expect miracles!”
“FUUUUUUCK!”
A pre-Civil-War rocking chair hit the curved wall. Its delicate back shattered into kindling. Chief Executive of the United States Christopher Wall was having a presidential tantrum. “Just shut up a minute, Marc!” Wall screamed, right eye doing the conga.
Years of Praeger’s handling are catching up with the poor bastard, observed Sloat almost sympathetically.
CIA Director William Sloat was so old, so well entrenched, they could never get rid of him. He knew everybody’s secrets, gathered in one by one with the long sticky tongue of his agency; gulped down, hidden away until they were truly needed. But Marc Praeger was up to something. What, exactly, Sloat hadn’t figured out. And things he hadn’t figured out worried him greatly.
“What ordnance,” Wall swallowed, “will you have available, Admiral?”
“Well,” Thompson began, unflustered by Wall’s temporary lack of restraint, “the Tomahawks are pretty slow, sir. Cruise at 500 miles an hour. They do offer us two hours of flight time in a low-profile mission. But a standard unit won’t do the range.
“We could use the Extended Cruise. Goes up, achieves Mach 5, small wings pop out. At 3800 miles an hour, there’d be some glow on the way down. Damned difficult to spot. But they’re still experimental . . .
“’Course, there’s always the old standby: the ICBM. Only burns for a few minutes after launch. Some heat trail back to its origin. More glow coming back down through the atmosphere at the end. But they’re fast. Poor steerability — not a problem if the chosen yield is high enough. Multiple targets — multiple warheads. No problem.”
“But they’re politically risky, aren’t they?” Praeger argued. “The Russians, the Chinese may mistake one for an attack on them —”
“What are the chances the Pakistanis can shoot one down?” Wall interrupted.
“Nine thousand miles an hour, eighty miles up?” Admiral Thompson scoffed. “Very, very small.”
“Collateral damage?” Wall asked.
“Two, maybe three.”
“Two or three what?” said Wall.
Thompson frowned, momentarily confused. “Two or three million dead — you know, sir, sending her in now is not an absolute commitment. We simply want to keep our options open.”
“But sir,” Marc Praeger began, “even if you combine the plutonium data with the desert recording, I don’t think . . .” Praeger watched a single tic shoot through Wall’s right eyebrow. “ . . . I don’t know, Mr. President. Maybe we should wait. If —”
“All right!” Wall shouted, cutting Praeger off.
The President shook back his pajama sleeve, exposing the timepiece on his left wrist. “Eight o’clock. We’ll meet back here in one hour.” He opened a curved, nearly invisible door behind him. “I’ll give you my decision then.”
He reached The Bedroom, as he’d already begun to call it. Closed the door. Lay down on the cool sheets, breathing fast and hard. Only now, where no one else could see, did he allow a hand to massage his tired right eye.
“Jack?” Wall called out plaintively, “Are you here, Jack?”
A golden glow coalesced before him.
They were all assembled. Director Sloat and twelve others including Secretary of Defense Scanlon. Admiral Thompson checked his watch. They’d been waiting more than an hour.
“With all due respect, Marc,” the Joint Chiefs Chairman broke the silence, “where in hell is he?”
The chair behind the Roosevelt desk was still empty.
But Marc Praeger knew. He licked his lips, raising his massive bulk from the chair his ass barely fit into, “Maybe —”
The desk phone rang.
Praeger shifted smoothly to lift the receiver. “Yes sir. Just a moment.” He punched a button, placed the receiver back on the desk unit.
“Gentlemen, please excuse me,” President Wall’s voice crackled from the speaker. “I’ve been detained.
“I want to compliment you and your team on an excellent job, William. This is what the people have been asking for. Progress! We’re going to release this to the press!”
“Thank you, sir.” Sloat sat there vacantly in his rumpled brown suit, a fat toad searching for its next fresh and juicy fly.
Wall continued: “Get Press Secretary Stubin lined up on this, Marc.” Stubin was still in D.C. “And Willows,” he said raising his voice to the FCC Chairman, “I want you to be ready in case there’s any smoothing required at the networks.”
“Are you sure —” Praeger began.
The President cut him off, “Conspiracy after the fact, Marc! Admiral Thompson?”
“Yes, Mr. President?”
“You have a go, Admiral. A green light. Send the sub. Send in the George W. Bush.”
The White House Press Briefing Room was downright chilly that night. The furnace seemed to be out. “EMP from the second bomb, most likely,” ran the general agreement among those reporters present. The room was being illuminated by several temporary industrial light trees.
But tiny sweat bubbles reflected off Press Secretary Stubin’s bald head, across his upper lip as he stepped to the podium before the hastily assembled Washington press corps.
“On behalf of the President tonight, I have for you this brief statement:
“Unfortunately, mounting evidence points increasingly to fundamentalist religious extremists. So far, everything gathered by FBI and CIA operatives appears to link the New York and Virginia Beach bombs with Pakistan.
“However, the President firmly believes we must avoid any rush to judgment. Until we can be certain, no action can or will be taken. We are planning no military action at this time. Thank you.”
“What is this, Stu? Just an update?” called out a typically stylish female reporter in a wrinkled white blouse with a small tomato soup stain above the second button. Her short cream skirt had a smudge on it. Her cream pumps were scuffed. Her brown hair hung down lank, in desperate need of a good shampoo. “Where is the President?”
“Is President Wall in or out of the country?” yelled the rumpled, pot-bellied old news hack next to her.
But to everyone’s dismay, Press Secretary Stubin backed away from the lectern and stepped behind the curtain.
Arresting Everon
When Hunt’s three white Suburbans tracked into the snowy Williams complex thirty miles northwest of Philadelphia, the first thing Everon saw were the thirty or so people gathered outside the front building’s front doors — which were open. There were more inside.
Excellent, he thought. Finally. Hunt’s people, ready to work, needing only a little direction.
But there was no guard at the guardhouse. The security arms were up and as they pulled though the unshoveled snowy parking lot crammed with sports cars, trucks, SUVs, even a Prius or two, he began to suspect he was wrong.
“Hey! There he is!”
“It’s Hunt Williams!”
; They weren’t workers. They were disgruntled customers. Pissed off customers.
The crowd ran at them, surrounded the Suburban. There were three or four oldsters but most of the people who had found Nicola-Juniata were pretty young. And aggressive.
“Turn us back on!”
“Get the power fixed!”
“How much longer do we have to put up with this crap?”
They pounded on the glass. One young woman slammed the truck’s hood with her purse. Angry faces glared in the windshield. Everon didn’t want to get out of the truck.
“Keep your doors locked,” Hunt said. He rolled his window down halfway and the noise grew louder.
“Please, people!” Hunt shouted.
The crowd grew quiet. Like stillness before a storm.
One red-faced man in a white winter parka standing near the truck’s left front door was glaring straight at Hunt. He lifted an eyebrow and said: “Well?”
“We’re working as fast as we can,” Hunt started. “I know you’re cold, and things are bad, but you have to give us a little time.”
“Time? Time?” someone shouted. “Go to hell!”
“You try it!”
“No lights, no furnace.”
“Freezing your ass off in bed at night. No TV.”
“I’m in the same boat,” Hunt tried to explain. But the mob wasn’t listening. People slid around in the icy parking lot, shoving each other, trying to get at the Suburban. Outside the truck, fists flew. A pair of hands reached in through Hunt’s window and grabbed the executive by the collar. Everon had seen enough.
He reached over and pushed the window button, trapping the man’s arms against the ceiling, which immediately released Hunt. Before Hunt could react, Everon’s left foot snaked over to the driver’s side and hit the gas as he dropped the Suburban into reverse. He didn’t care who he hit. He heard a couple of thumps as they shot backward out of the mob, narrowly avoiding the other two white Suburbans. They were in the clear, forty feet from the pack when he hit the brakes. He hadn’t run over anyone. A couple of guys had been knocked away from the truck’s sides and were on the ground. Everon threw it into park, pulled his leg back and hopped out.
Search For Reason (State Of Reason Mystery, Book 2) Page 14
