“You okay?”
“Never better,” Thorn said.
Leslie helped Thorn to his feet, made him extend his hand to Cameron Prince and declare a truce. Thorn said something and the hulk huffed an empty apology and lumbered off to attend to his wounds with Pauly shadowing him. Maybe Leslie sent them both away. Maybe they left on their own. Thorn wasn’t following the specifics too closely. He was concentrating on staying upright, keeping his legs beneath him, drawing breath.
Sometime later he found himself slouched on the wooden bench. Leslie and Flynn stood nearby, watching him as if he might tip over. She set the lantern on the grass.
Then Leslie dropped Flynn’s phone on the ground in front of Thorn. Raising the heel of her hiking shoe, she crushed it, splintering the glass face. Then she lifted her foot again and stomped on the phone and stomped a final time on the broken remains.
With the tip of his tongue, Thorn was exploring his mouth, going from tooth to tooth, touching the jagged edges. Three so far, a molar loose, a rip inside his cheek.
“Can I trust you, Thorn?”
He looked at Leslie. Her face a blurry shadow. He said nothing.
Flynn said, “He can barely keep his eyes open. Can’t this wait?”
“I need to know where he stands. No, it can’t wait.” She took a seat beside Thorn on the bench, brought her face close. “You’re still not with us, are you? You haven’t committed.”
“What choice is there? I’m with you, damn it.” A second molar loose.
“I want to trust you, Thorn. I want to believe you.”
“Maybe we should close up shop,” Flynn said. “Get the hell away from here. Reschedule the whole thing.”
“No,” Leslie said. “We’re on track. We’re fine. As long as you’re telling me the truth about Sheffield.” She kept looking at Thorn, trying to read him.
“It’s the truth,” Flynn said. “Sheffield’s in the dark.”
When Thorn was able to stand, the three of them walked back to the barracks tent. Somewhere along the way, Thorn laid a hand on Flynn’s shoulder to steady himself and as a gesture of gratitude for Flynn’s attempt to help. Flynn didn’t shrug his hand off, which Thorn took as progress.
Around them the breeze was picking up, stirring the fronds, heaving waves against the mangrove roots and the rocky shoreline. Out in the Atlantic a bright branch of lightning lit the blackness briefly. Then a single ragged shaft struck the waters closer to Prince Key. Thorn waited for the thunder but it didn’t come. No further sign of the approaching storm except for the rising wind that trembled the walls of the tent as one by one the three of them stepped inside and Leslie shut the flap.
TWENTY-EIGHT
SUNDAY NIGHT, JUST AFTER 10:00 P.M., all their gear was prepared and the assault plan had been laid out for both teams, critiqued, tweaked, and agreed upon. Both groups assembled at Black Point Marina. Sheffield’s guys and the NCIS bunch. Everyone seemed more uneasy about the weather than raiding Prince Key.
After stewing for a couple of days in the overheated waters south of the Bahamas, tropical storm Juanita had become a Category 1 hurricane. Tonight one of her outer bands was whipping in from the southeast, and even the mile-long protected channel that led from the marina out to Biscayne Bay had a three-foot chop.
The bay itself was a wall of six-foot swells with whitecaps that blew away like seedpods exploding in the darkness. Small-craft warnings. Not the night for a five-mile cruise in electric-powered inflatable rafts.
Magnuson raised the possibility of a weather delay, but Frank said no. He was spooked. That video clip of the reinforced-concrete wall obliterated by the experimental explosive had become in his imagination the walls of a containment dome at Turkey Point. Frank was picturing a catastrophic rupture releasing a radioactive cloud so toxic the city that was his lifelong home and where he planned to live out his days would be changed forever. Magnuson was focused on Chee. Frank was thinking about a few million of his neighbors.
The ten SWAT guys were huddled inside the marina’s enormous storage barn, an indoor boatyard where five-story racks of powerboats towered behind them. An employee from the county had been summoned to open up the facility for their use, and he stood fifty yards away across the vast cement floor smoking a cigarette and looking up at the ceiling as if expecting it to be peeled off by the heavy winds.
“The storm’s turning south,” Frank said. “Half an hour it’s out of here.”
“Not according to the Weather Service.” Magnuson, like the rest of his men, was suited in a black rain suit, his Kevlar body armor underneath.