“You son of a bitch.”
“Put a splint on it,” Pauly said to Thorn. “If he’s any kind of man, he’ll be walking in a month.”
Thorn squatted at Sugar’s side. He was groaning, eyes shut hard against the pain. Thorn tried to ease the leg free from beneath Sugarman, but he moaned and rolled onto his side.
“Maybe two months,” Pauly said.
“He needs to get to a hospital.”
“We all need a lot of things,” Pauly said.
Leslie hung back, her face stricken. No longer in control.
If she ever was.
THIRTY-TWO
FLYNN AND THORN HAULED SUGARMAN into the guest room and laid him on the bed still warm and rumpled. Thorn tucked one pillow under Sugar’s head and used the other two to elevate his broken leg. Sugar was drifting in and out of consciousness, one minute telling Thorn he was fine, don’t worry about him, the pain was manageable, then sinking away into a groaning haze.
Thorn scissored off Sugar’s pant leg. The knee was bruised and swelling, turning a deep purple. He went to a hallway closet, dug out two ancient fishing rods. Skinny shafts of fiberglass he’d used as a kid, keepsakes. He broke each in half. Padding the pressure points with wads of gauze, he ran the rods along the sides of Sugar’s leg, and while Flynn held them in place, Thorn added ring after ring of adhesive tape, binding the shafts as tightly as he thought Sugar could tolerate. Then he sent Flynn to the kitchen for a bag of ice and covered Sugar with a blanket from the closet. It was all the first aid he could think of.
In a while Sugar’s breathing evened out, his heart rate resumed a steady tick. No sign of fever, no chills. Stabilized for now.
Flynn stood beside the bed shaking his head in disbelief. “Is he going to be all right?”
Thorn nodded. Sure. Sure.
“It’s just Pauly that’s dangerous. The rest of us are peaceful.”
“I know,” Thorn said.
“Are you with us? You committed?”
Thorn glanced at the open door. From decades in that old house, he knew every creak and crackle of floorboard. Someone was standing just beyond the doorway.
“Absolutely,” Thorn said. “I’m with you to the end.”
* * *
Later that afternoon, while Sugar dozed, Leslie laid out the details of the assault. She stood behind the kitchen counter in a fishing shirt, long, baggy trousers, sandals. Her hair still damp from the shower. Over by the French doors, both of them flung open to the warm breeze, Wally was tapping on the keyboard of his laptop, which was plugged into his mobile phone. Pauly lounged in a cocked-back kitchen chair, bare feet on the table, staring at the pots and pans hanging from the overhead rack.
Thorn and Flynn stood side by side at the counter where a nautical chart was rolled open, held in place with beer mugs at each corner. South Biscayne Bay and the Upper Keys. Turkey Point with its long, straight miles of cooling canals clearly delineated, running south of the nuke plant.
When Leslie finished spelling out the scheme, she asked if there were questions. Everyone was silent. No eye contact, each of them waiting for someone to go first.
To Thorn, the plan sounded insane. Insane enough it just might work. “Hauling that box loaded with critters? We can barely lift it empty.”
“We’ll manage,” she said. “Cameron takes one end, the rest of us handle the other. Not far, thirty yards at most. That’s why we’ve been pumping iron. Those thirty yards.”
Flynn asked her about the handcuffs.
She drew a white plastic cable tie from her back pocket. “Flex-cuffs.”
“I don’t know,” Flynn said. “These federal agents, these FBI guys, they won’t be able to get free? You’re sure? They’re SWAT, right? All that special training. That strip of plastic is going to keep them out of action?”
She handed one of the cuffs to Flynn and he examined it.
“They work,” she said. “Want me to demonstrate?”
Flynn handed it back and made a face. Thanks, but no thanks.
Leslie turned to look at Thorn, appraising his silence. He kept his face as neutral as he could manage.
“Getting free of them would require wire cutters,” she said.
“Or a Zippo lighter,” said Pauly.
“It’ll work,” she said. “The force-on-force drill uses NRC protocol. All weapons are unloaded for safety. Lasers mounted on handguns. It’s a ho-hum, routine thing for them. Nobody’s carrying wire cutters, Zippo lighters, any of that. We cuff them, leave them in a ditch. Take their radios, phones. Even if they somehow managed to get free, they’re miles from the action, no way to stop us. They’ll be out of commission at least an hour. By then we’re gone.”