Going Dark(98)

Frank swiveled around, looked at his guys, everyone watching him. “Okay. So the Dalai Lama goes to see a chiropractor.”

* * *

Two miles from Turkey Point, Leslie Levine pulled the battered SUV onto the shoulder of the entrance road. The three gators, their snouts duct-taped shut, were flopping around inside the cage, straining the slats, probably agitated by the proximity of the python in the other side of the box.

They were small gators, two years old, the longest only four feet, snout to tip of tail. But Leslie was satisfied. They’d do the trick. Clear out the control room in a hurry and give the whole enterprise the media-friendly weirdness she was after. And the symbolism was on point. The clash of the natural world with the technological nightmare of the power plant.

Though to Thorn, the dopiness of it harked back to those yippie stunts of his youth, revolutionaries showering dollar bills onto the floor of the US Stock Exchange and mocking the mad scramble that ensued. Fine for that trippy time, but in this somber, hair-trigger era, goofing with a nuke plant, gators or not, wasn’t going to be anybody’s idea of comedy.

It struck him, as they waited in silence, that this felt like a caper concocted in a log cabin way off in the woods, a gang of twenty-year-old ringleaders all stoned and giddy, saying, yeah, yeah, gators, man, and Burmese fucking pythons, yeah, that’s fucking perfect. But out on the lonely, dark stretch to the power plant, the smell of the gators filling the car, as gamy and fetid as stagnant water, the mood was not giddy.

Leslie’s binoculars were trained on the patch of lighted roadway a few hundred yards back down the asphalt, a single streetlamp shining amid miles of utter darkness. No traffic had passed by since they’d pulled onto the shoulder. Twenty minutes of waving away mosquitoes, their whine the only thing that broke the deadly silence.

Thorn was riding shotgun, Cameron and Pauly in the backseat. Leslie standing out on the edge of the road with the binoculars.

“Maybe it was called off.” Cameron’s voice was tight.

“It’s not eleven yet,” Leslie said. “Relax. We’re fine.”

“That ditch is full of water,” Thorn said. “They’ll drown, you leave them there.”

No one answered.

The highway had narrow shoulders. The deep gully on one side, a flood canal on the other. A perfect choke point.

Leslie’s cell phone rang, she took it from her pocket, checked the screen, and answered. Listened for a minute, then said, “Okay, I understand. Loading-ramp door, it’s open? Good.” Then clicked off.

Thorn looked at the keys hanging from the ignition. Scoot over, crank the engine, race down the highway, he might get a hundred feet before Pauly throttled him. Or he could hop out here, make a dash. But even if he managed to outrun them and save himself, Sugarman and Flynn could be doomed. Sugar, immobilized, vulnerable to Wally’s whims. Flynn left dangling. No telling how any of that might play out.

Too many variables, all of them risky. He saw no choice but to ride this out a few steps further, alert for his best chance to trip them up.

“It’s them,” Leslie said. “Get set.”

She handed Thorn the binoculars, slipped behind the wheel of the SUV, started the engine, pulled across the road, angling toward the approaching vehicle, then switched on her flashing emergency lights.

“Fucking A,” Cameron said. “Let’s shut this city down.”

In the cargo hold the gators thrashed and grunted in their wooden box as though sensing the rising tension. Thorn set the binoculars at his feet and tightened his seat belt. He watched the headlights bearing down, then turned the other way toward the long stretch of highway, squinting into the darkness where they were headed, where his starry-eyed son was to meet them in an hour’s time.

“Don’t worry, Thorn.” Leslie patted him on the thigh. “Flynn will be safe. I’d never let anything happen to the father of my child.”





THIRTY-NINE





“WHAT THE FUCK?”

“Slow down, McIvey.”

Dinkins leaned forward, stuck his head between the seats.

“This part of the drill?”

“Looks like an add-on,” Frank said. “What do you think, McIvey?”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Is there a choice?” said Sheffield. “We stop, find out what the hell’s going on. Could be an accident.”

“Doesn’t look like any accident,” Dinkins said.

“Put your brights on. Roll up close. Everybody stay put.”

As Nicole coasted forward, coming to within thirty feet of a beat-up SUV, four people piled out wearing FBI uniforms and white reflective armbands identical to their own. Two of the four had weapons drawn.