Critical Reaction (46 page)

Even if the authorities agreed to dig at this site, there was a chance they would not excavate a full thirty feet of rock to the level of the white train before concluding there was nothing there. And if, in the last extremity, they dug all the way down, they would find the white train demolished and crushed—and the remains so reduced as to be unnoticeable in the depths of the excavation.

Adam had made a final set of contingency plans if he was wrong: new IDs, money in multiple foreign accounts, everything that access to almost unlimited Project funding could buy. Plus, his ultimate bonus should arrive eventually. After all, the lab and successful trigger prototypes were already on their way to other Covington labs. Cameron Foote valued loyalty and success; he’d keep his promise to Adam. Given Adam’s knowledge, Foote really didn’t have any choice in the matter.

Adam took the flashlight off of the girl’s frightened eyes. There was still one piece of evidence he had to deal with himself—one that neither the security crew nor anyone else knew about.

He walked to the locomotive, half buried in the nose of the shaft, and took the half a dozen steps up to the cab. There he pulled a key from his pocket, one that opened the heavy padlock and chain that sealed the cab door. Adam heard the girl cry out—in fear, he presumed—as the padlock released. Then he pulled the chain free and opened the door.

The bagged body of Lewis Vandervork lay on the cab floor where he’d placed it last October. Inside the bag, at his side, Adam knew his rifle lay.

If this man could have been silenced in any other way, Adam would have done so. But he knew in an instant of interviewing Vandervork that that was impossible. The idiot had even called his girlfriend the very night of the explosion, ignoring orders. This was the only silence possible for a person like Vandervork. Now he had to get the body onto the cavern floor with the others.

Setting the flashlight on the floor of the locomotive, pointed to the ceiling, he grabbed the end of the heavy bag and began to drag it to the door of the cab.

He heard the sound of metal on metal.

Adam twisted in his suit. A figure stood at the bottom of the stairs, faintly visible in the moonlight through the pit opening. Someone in a hazmat suit like his own.

Adam leaned across the body bag. He cursed his trembling fingers within the Demron gloves and the limited vision of his mask. He finally grasped the zipper and pulled it toward him—revealing Vandervork’s black shoes. Alongside the shoes lay the rifle butt.

Adam slid the rifle out and stood. The mask, already sweaty, was filling with a faint sheen of fog. Adam grabbed and yanked it off his head—then turned to shoulder the weapon, struggling to steady his hands.

Ryan took the metal steps as softly as he could manage in the foreign hazmat suit. The flashlight was in his pocket. The rifle he held at his waist.

The space below was illuminated in a ghostly white reflection. Halfway down the stairs, Ryan could see the source. His eyes followed a light that was moving from left to right, its glow illuminating the side of a train car painted white. It was held by a man in a black suit and hood—an image so bizarre that Ryan felt disoriented, as though he were watching a priest tending a modern Pharaoh’s tomb.

He slowed to a stop. The man and his light began to climb up the steps of what appeared to be a locomotive. The figure bent over and for a moment grew still. Then Ryan heard metal and the sudden rattling of a chain.

In that same instant, an anguished cry of pain and fear emerged from the darkness to his left. Ryan’s heart was pierced with recognition.

He fumbled in his pocket for the flashlight, turned it on, and pointed it to the source of the sound.

Emily was illuminated, kneeling on the ground beside the open door of another white railcar. At her feet lay four gray body bags, interlaced with wiring and a dozen cubes of what had to be C4.

Ryan turned and pounded down the remaining steps. The flashlight bumped the metal banister, slipping from his hand and clattering to the lowest step—just as he reached the floor of the cavern and looked up.

The figure was above him now, the light steadily pointing toward the ceiling of the pit. The suited figure must have heard him, because he was turning, rising from a crouch to a standing position. A rifle was suddenly in one hand. His other reached up and pulled off the covering over his head. Then he raised the rifle to a shoulder, pointing it in Ryan’s direction.

Even in the weak reflection of the light against the railcar,
Ryan instantly knew the face. It was Larry Mann. It was Adam Worth.

Ryan raised his own weapon and dropped instinctively to one knee. He barely steadied the barrel at the figure before pulling the trigger.

The explosion of the rifle fire echoing in the confined chamber was ear shattering. Then Ryan realized there was more than one, that
two
echoes were overlapping, the gunshots chasing one another in a slowly fading rhapsody of sound.

Ryan felt a stinging in his side, but he ignored it as he prepared to pull the trigger again.

Except the standing figure was gone. In front of the light, Ryan could see that it had dropped again into a crouch mirroring his own, the weapon drifting down. Then it crumpled to a still mass on the floor of the cab.

Ryan picked up the fallen flashlight and turned frantically toward the source of the painful cry as the twin echoes of the rifle shots slowly faded away.

Epilogue

S
EATTLE
, W
ASHINGTON

Emily looked across her temporary desk and out of the window from the second floor of the Queen Anne house. The contractors would be there tomorrow to begin converting her father’s upstairs study back into a corner office for her. Then they would convert the rest of the second floor of the building into office space as well.

She closed her eyes and for a moment was back in the cavern. She could feel the cool air on her skin that raised bumps on her arms, see his eyes in the reflection of the flashes off the ghostly train cars, then hear the footsteps of her torturer on the dirt floor as he retreated down the side of the cars. And all the while, there were the four bags lined with explosives at her feet.

Adam Worth is dead, she reminded herself. He could never hurt her again. She forced herself to focus on Kieran’s arrival in half an hour. She imagined them looking at furniture for her new office before joining her father and Laura for dinner tonight.

The dark memories retreated. Her body began to relax.

It was so much worse at first. Now she could usually avoid the full onset of panic when the sensations returned. Her therapist was pleased and optimistic.

She’d almost worried more for her father at first. He blamed himself for that night. He shouldn’t have. It was her idea to go back onto the grounds with Heather, she reminded him. The entire case had been her idea.

But her father was getting better, too. It had really begun when she’d told him of her plan to join his practice—if he’d have her. The smile that he’d returned had hardly left his face since.

Of course, there had been a price. “I want an upstairs corner office,” she’d told him. “And new furniture.”

He’d made a show of hesitation, then agreed.

And how could he argue with her? He couldn’t pretend money was an issue. Even after reverting back to a one-third contingency with Kieran’s case, they were . . . flush. After that night on the reservation, and the capture of the security guards with the debris evidence at the rail station, Covington had offered a significant sum to settle the case—with complete confidentiality. Kieran had turned them down. “Not in a hundred years,” he’d said. “Not in a thousand.” So they’d offered more. The third sum finally came with an offer of no confidentiality. Kieran had accepted.

The Feds still hadn’t figured out everyone involved with Project Wolffia, beyond Adam Worth and the core of security guards out at the site that night. Red Whalen, probably. Hank, their guide, certainly. Most of the rest of the people who worked at LB5 the past seven years. The problem with these guys, though, was that the extent of their knowledge about the Project was still unclear. Nobody had the stomach for putting away a bunch of Hanford lifers who thought they were loyally working for the government all this time.

It would help to put all this to rest, of course, if they could recover the testing equipment for the nuclear trigger—and the
chemical trigger itself. “Give it time,” Ryan had counseled Kieran and herself. “They’ll find the trigger. And they’ll get up the food chain eventually.”

A part of Emily still feared that the nuclear trigger might surface as a bargaining chip to protect the people behind Project Wolffia. But it wouldn’t if she or her father had any say about it. And though Ted Pollock and his family had managed to stay out of sight through all this, she was sure the Yakama wouldn’t remain silent on the subject if it came to that.

All of this was helpful to Emily’s recovery. Even more so was Kieran’s move to Seattle with his mother and sister. Plus the assurance from Dr. Trân that the deeper access to Covington’s inspection data ordered by Judge Johnston had led him to conclude that Kieran had a low chance of serious health effects from the October explosion. Just as Emily had been assured the same after radiation readings were taken in the white train pit.

She looked out the window at the azure sky and the distant outline of the Olympic mountains, wreathed in broken clumps of white clouds. She still hadn’t asked her father today if he’d reached Poppy Martin to discuss Covington’s offer of settlement. The offer had come despite the fact that they hadn’t even filed the lawsuit yet. That was good. Despite everything he’d gone through, Poppy still had a love of Sherman and an abiding pride in Hanford. He’d be pleased that a fight wouldn’t be necessary.

Emily forced her gaze away from the horizon and turned at last to the most recent file that had arrived at her desk. Business had been pouring in since Kieran’s settlement. Some came from the publicity surrounding the Hanford case. Much was driven by Judge Freyling’s praise of their new firm. And her father’s reputation was still very strong, especially now that he’d signaled his full return to practice.

A file summary from Melissa was clipped to the top of the folder. It was a property dispute. A claim against an owner of an orchard. She read the summary carefully. Then she looked
out the window again, grateful for the sunlight on this late September day.

A property dispute against an owner of an orchard. Her mother’s words came back to her from the day that Emily had announced her decision to go to law school. Though already stricken with the early stages of her disease, Carolyn had smiled warmly and with obvious pride. Then she’d taken Emily’s hand.

“Never sue a teacher,”
she’d said.
“Or a farmer. And only take on the
fights truly worth fighting. ”

Emily set the file aside. They’d pass on that one. She was sure her father would agree—or if not, she’d convince him.

After all, Emily thought, there was plenty of other work to do.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to my wonderful wife, Catherine, for drawing on a lifetime of reading to share insights on character and plot; to Libby, who always has a ready ear when her father asks; to Ian for continuing to cheer me on; to Susan, who listens and reads and encourages through the many months a book takes form; and to Scott, for allowing his brother and law partner the writing time he needs.

I also wish to thank my friends among the Yakama Nation, and my consultant for his advice about the nuclear industry.

Thanks as well to my editor, David Long, for his extra work on this second effort.

And finally, a special thanks to the many readers of my debut novel, who graciously took the time to write and ask for more.

Todd M. Johnson
has practiced as an attorney for over thirty years, specializing as a trial lawyer. A graduate of Princeton University and the University of Minnesota Law School, he also taught for two years as adjunct professor of International Law and served as a US diplomat in Hong Kong. He lives outside Minneapolis, Minnesota, with his wife, his son, Ian, and his daughter, Libby.

Visit his website at
www.authortoddjohnson.com
.

Resources:
bethanyhouse.com/AnOpenBook

Website:
www.bethanyhouse.com

Facebook:
Bethany House