7
ANYONE WHO SET off the Geiger counters was shoved into the vans like cattle. The partying rubberneckers had fled, leaving their funny hats and beer cans strewn about. Teams of monkey-suited hazmat people were going door-to-door, moving people out of their homes, sometimes forcibly, creating a scene of both pathos and chaos, with weeping elderly shuffling along in walkers, hysterical mothers, and wailing kids. Loudspeakers droned on about staying calm and cooperating, reassuring everyone it was for their own protection. Not a word about radiation.
Gideon and the rest squeezed together on parallel benches. The doors slammed shut and the van started up. Fordyce, opposite him, remained grimly silent, but most of the other people stuffed in the van looked shit-scared. Among them was a man Fordyce identified as the psychologist Hammersmith, whose shirt was bloodied, and a member of the SWAT team who had shot Chalker at point-blank range and who was also now decorated with his blood. Radioactive blood.
“We’re f*cked,” said the SWAT team guy, a big beefy fellow with hammy forearms and an incongruously high voice. “We’re going to die. There’s nothing they can do. Not with radiation.”
Gideon said nothing. The ignorance of most people about radiation was appalling.
The man moaned. “God, my head’s pounding. It’s starting already.”
“Hey, shut up,” said Fordyce.
“F*ck you, man,” the man flared. “I didn’t sign up for this shit.”
Fordyce said nothing, his jaw tightening.
“You hear me?” The man’s voice was rising. “I didn’t sign up for this shit!”
Gideon looked at the SWAT team member and spoke in low, measured tones. “The blood on you is radioactive. You’d better strip. And you, too.” He looked at Hammersmith. “Anyone with the hostage taker’s blood on any article of clothing, take it off.”
This set off a frantic activity in the van, the sense of panic rising, a ridiculous scene in which everyone was suddenly stripping and trying to get blood off their skin and hair. All except the SWAT guy. “What does it matter?” he said. “We’re f*cked. Rot, cancer, you name it. We’re all dead now.”
“Nobody’s going to die,” said Gideon. “Everything depends on just how hot Chalker was and what kind of radiation we’re dealing with.”
The SWAT guy raised his massive head and stared at him with red eyes. “What makes you such a radiation rocket scientist?”
“Because I happen to be a radiation rocket scientist.”
“Good for you, punk. Then you know we’re all dead and you’re a f*cking liar.”
Gideon decided to ignore him.
“Lying peckerwood.”
Peckerwood? Exasperated, Gideon looked up at him again. Could he be crazy from radiation poisoning, too? But no, this was simple, mindless panic.
“I’m talking to you, punk. Don’t lie.”
Gideon combed his hair out of his face with his fingers and looked back down at the floor. He was tired: tired of this jackass, tired of everything, tired of life itself. He didn’t have the energy to reason with an irrational person.
The SWAT team member rose abruptly from his seat and seized Gideon’s shirt, lifting him out of his seat. “I asked you a question. Don’t look away.”
Gideon looked at him: at the engorged face, the veins bulging in his neck, the sweat popping on his brow, the trembling lips. The man looked so utterly and completely stupid, he couldn’t help himself: he laughed.
“You think it’s funny?” The SWAT guy made a fist, getting ready to strike.
Fordyce’s punch to the man’s gut came as fast as a striking rattler; he gave an oof! and fell to his knees. A second later Fordyce had him in a hammerlock. The agent bent over and spoke into his ear, in a low voice, something Gideon did not catch. Then he released the man, who collapsed on his face, groaned, and—after gasping for air—managed to rise back up to his knees.
“Sit down and be quiet,” said Fordyce.
The man quietly sat down. After a moment he began to cry.
Gideon adjusted his shirt. “Thanks for saving me the trouble.”
Fordyce said nothing.
“Well, so now we know,” Gideon went on after a moment.
“Know what?”
“That Chalker wasn’t crazy. He was suffering from radiation poisoning—almost certainly gamma rays. A massive dose of gamma radiation scrambles the mind.”
Hammersmith raised his head. “How do you know?”
“Anyone who works up at Los Alamos with radionuclides has to learn about the criticality accidents that happened there in the early days. Cecil Kelley, Harry Daghlian, Louis Slotin, the Demon Core.”
“The Demon Core?” Fordyce asked.
“A plutonium bomb core that was mishandled twice. It went critical each time, killing the scientists handling it and irradiating a bunch of others. It was finally used in the ABLE shot in ’46. One thing they learned from the Demon Core was that a high dose of gamma radiation makes you go crazy. The symptoms are just what you saw with Chalker—mental confusion, raving, headache, vomiting, and an unbearable pain in the gut.”
“That puts a whole new spin on things,” said Hammersmith.
“The real question,” said Gideon, “is the form that craziness took. Why would he claim they were beaming rays into his head? Experimenting on him?”
“I’m afraid that’s a classic symptom of schizophrenia,” said Hammersmith.
“Yes, but he didn’t have schizophrenia. And why would he say his landlord and landlady were government agents?”
Fordyce raised his head and looked at Gideon. “You don’t think that poor f*ck of a landlord was a government agent—do you?”
“No. But I wonder why he kept talking about experiments, why he denied having lived in the apartment. It doesn’t make sense.”
Fordyce shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s starting to make sense to me. A lot of sense.”
“How so?” Gideon asked.
“Put it together yourself. The guy works at Los Alamos. Has a top-secret security clearance. Designs nuclear bombs. Converts to Islam. Disappears for two months. Next thing, he shows up irradiated in New York City.”
“So?”
“So the son of a bitch joined a jihad! With his help, they got their hands on a nuclear core. They mishandled it just like that Demon Core you mentioned, and Chalker got his ass irradiated.”
“Chalker wasn’t a radical,” Gideon said. “He was quiet. He kept his religion to himself.”
Fordyce laughed bitterly. “It’s always the quiet ones.”
There was a silence in the entire van. Everyone was listening intently now. Gideon felt a growing sense of horror: what Fordyce said had the ring of truth. The more he thought about it, the more he realized the man was probably right. Chalker had the personality for it; he was exactly the kind of insecure, confused person who would find his calling in jihad. And there was no other way to explain the intense dose of gamma rays he must have been exposed to, to make him so very hot.
“We’d better face it,” said Fordyce as the van slowed. “The ultimate nightmare has come true. Islamic terrorists have got themselves a nuke.”