“We’re not terrorists,” Leslie said.
“Yeah, well, whatever you call yourselves. Nicole was going for the takedown, pulling a fast one on Claude, and my bet is, Claude has the same agenda. He’s luring you into his lair.”
Leslie reached out, plucked her cell phone from the cup holder, and punched in a number. When the connection was made, Thorn heard Flynn’s voice answer.
“Everything’s fine,” she told him. “I have eleven thirty on the dot. Remember. Give us an hour to finish and exit the plant. If we’re not at the rendezvous point by exactly half past twelve, don’t wait a minute longer. Get the hell out of there. You have to promise me.”
Thorn heard the voice speak the words she’d asked for.
“Now get going,” she said. “Let’s do this.”
In the flare of headlights, the guards had come to attention. The two with red armbands had lasers like the ones Sheffield’s men were using mounted on the sight rails. They were aiming the lasers at the windshield.
* * *
Claude and Emily Sheen watched the video screen as the big black Suburban rolled up to the front gate.
“Well, well, well,” Claude said.
Sheen asked him what he saw.
“The woman up front in the passenger seat. You don’t recognize her?”
“Should I?”
“Used to work here,” Claude said. “Always showing her pretty face in the newspaper and TV, talking up the power plant. You must’ve seen her. Ran the croc rehab program. Before she got eaten.”
“That’s Leslie Levine?”
“Apparently that croc spit her up, ’cause there she is, at the front gate. Looks alive to me.”
Sheffield’s voice came over the speaker. Giving the speech Claude had composed and laid out for Leslie. Drill postponed for two weeks. Needed to speak face-to-face with Claude. Then Claude played his part, trying to sound reluctant, but saying okay, okay, fine, come to the conference room, the place where they’d had their planning meeting, and he gave the gate guard the go-ahead. Send them in. Drill canceled. Tell his team to stand down.
When he was done, Sheen said, “Canceled? No one told me.”
“You don’t see what’s happening here? This nasty little scam.”
“What scam? What’re you saying?”
So Claude explained it to the broad, walked her through it, step by step, watching her confused face turn worried, then more worried as it sank in. The place was under attack. This was real. The croc lady and the FBI guy were in cahoots. These weren’t feds. These were rogue bad guys.
“Then why let them in the gate?”
“You ever hear of a pincer movement?”
“A what?”
You’d think the NRC would hire smarter people to monitor security at a facility as big and complex as a nuke plant. He left her standing there, Sheen already digging in her purse for her cell phone, going to call this in to her superiors, see what they wanted her to do, while Claude headed off to the john.
His last contract gave Claude access to an administrative locker room. He stashed a razor there, deodorant, change of clothes, so he could go right from work and meet the ladies, if there were any ladies to be met. Didn’t want the stink of radioactivity on him while he was courting.
Down the hall from the conference room, he stood before the mirror and touched up his Fu Manchu, using his Remington to buzz a few hairs at the tips. Then he ran the razor over his slick scalp, nipped some hairs spiking up. You never knew what would show up in flash photography. Didn’t want to spoil his front-page appearance with a few wild hairs making him look like a damn porcupine.
Claude got his bolo squared off, going with the dressy blue-agate tonight, goddamn stone big as a silver dollar, popping nicely against his canary-yellow shirt. He stepped back for the full view, front and side. Claude looking sharp, ready for his close-up.
And ready to unload on this gang of fucking ecoterrorists, bring on the heavy weapons, set his men loose, and if a special agent in charge and a bitch from the infrastructure police got caught in the crossfire, so much the better.
As he was turning from the mirror, he spotted a hair on his forehead, a photo spoiler if there was one, and he leaned close to his reflection and tried to pluck it with his thumb and first finger, getting his fingernails around it, giving it a little tug before he popped it loose. That’s when the lights went out.
Inside the plant, the big, deep hum of the turbines and the nuclear fission and the steam generators and the million volts of current droning through the walls, all those noises that got into your bones and rumbled all shift long until Claude and everybody else at Turkey Point was vibrating for hours after they got home—all that stopped.