State of Emergency

CHAPTER 37


Pollard didn’t know if it was the oppressive heat or the fact that he sat three feet away from the remnants of a nuclear bomb, but he had never sweated so much in his life. His plywood hut kept off the daily rain showers but proved more of an oven than shelter. Though sweat ran down his back and stung his eyes, the humidity was so high that none of it evaporated to help cool him. At first he’d shucked off his loose cotton shirt but found he worried too much about malaria-bearing mosquitos without it.

Still on his bunk, he let his head loll sideways to study the device. It occurred to him that the shielding had degraded to the point that he was being irradiated as he sat there, but found that he didn’t care. He doubted that he’d come out of this alive anyway. The point was to figure out a way to save his wife and son—and to do that, it looked as though he was going to have to rebuild a bomb that was well past its prime.

The trunk stood on its side with the lid hinged open like a door. The thing Zamora called Baba Yaga was nothing special to look at. A metal cylinder ran diagonally from one end of the box to the other, a length of about four feet. As big around as his leg, the cylinder housed the high-explosive charge as well as the “bullet” and “target,” two pieces of plutonium that would be rammed together by the charge to achieve critical mass.

Theoretically, the metal tube was shielded enough to protect someone carrying the device from errant radiation. The rat’s nest of wires leading from an ancient battery was white with corrosion. It could have been from the atmosphere or leaking acid, but radiation was highly corrosive to electronics. Without a Geiger counter, there was no way to tell which had caused the decay. So far the capacitors looked intact, though there was something about their array that he still couldn’t quite put a finger on.

Pollard sat up to look at the bomb more closely. There was a sinister beauty about the thing—like some kind of poisonous spider. Zamora was insane. There was absolutely no doubt about that. But he was smart enough to pick the right scientist for this job.

Baba Yaga, as the name implied, was an old hag. Built by the Soviets in 1970, she had seen better days. Her battery—last replaced in 1986—was toast, some of the wiring was corroded beyond repair, and she very likely leaked radiation like Chernobyl. Apart from the physical danger posed to Pollard—and anyone else who spent any time near the device—such leakage was also highly corrosive to the fragile electronics. But plutonium had a half-life of roughly eighty million years. That component, at least, was still good to go. If the explosive charge in the initial “gun” portion of the bomb remained viable, there was a slight possibility he might be able to fix the rest.

Old as she was, it was the very age of this device that made her so appealing. In an effort to help ward off the risk of rogue generals with their finger on the launch button, the United States had shared their own Permissive Action Link technology with the Soviets sometime around 1971—two months after Baba Yaga was born.

PALs, as the systems were called, were essentially the detonation codes. In the early days, a PAL was little more than a key and a three-digit combination lock. As devices and technology improved they became more sophisticated, with later generations buried deep within the device, making them impossible to tamper with.

Baba Yaga’s lock was analog without the later fail-safe mechanism that would render the bomb unusable after a given number of tries to defeat the code. It would take time to figure out, but first impressions showed a series of wires, covered in some sort of hard resin and suspended in a set of Enigma-like rotors. In order for the bomb to activate, these rotors would have to be turned to the correct location, aligning the wires with the appropriate contact. A simple clock allowed for a prescribed delay in detonation once the device was armed. Pollard thought he could work his way through the puzzle. What he didn’t know was what he’d do once he’d finished.

Yesenia’s voice saved him from horrible thoughts. He shut the lid to the case, hoping to protect her from what radiation he could.

“I brought you supper.” She still carried the Kalashnikov, but kept it pushed behind her back, as if it was more of an afterthought than a weapon of intimidation. At first Pollard wondered why none of the other guards had anything to do with him. A few minutes with the fascinating Guarani girl gave him his answer. Zamora knew he would never hurt someone as articulate and kind as this one. A male guard might bluster and give cause for an outburst. Pollard would only see Yesenia for the fellow victim that she was.

He took the wooden tray of piranha and rice and sat back on the edge of his bunk. The heat and worry over his family pushed a fist against his gut so there was more than he’d ever eat in one sitting. He speared a piece of the flaky white fish with his fork and held it up.

“Would you like some?”

She shook her head, content to stand and smile while he ate.

“I am sorry for you,” she said, as he handed her back the tray a few moments later. He’d picked at one of the fish and forced down a few mouthfuls of rice.

“And why is that?” he asked, wiping his hands on his pants.

The Guarani girl squared her shoulders and nodded in thought. “Because you are a good man,” she said. “And I see no way out of this for you.”

She turned and left without another word. Pollard thought she might have been crying.

He fell back on his cot and looked up at the wooden crossbeams that supported the tin roof. He’d given up on the shredded mosquito netting. None of that mattered anyway. He deserved whatever diseases and misery came his way.

Yesenia was right about one thing. There seemed no good way out of this. But she was dead wrong about the other. Matt Pollard was a lot of things—but he knew a good man was not one of them.

2004

Portland, Oregon

Twitching beetles lay on the pavement under the streetlight in front of Fitzhugh Chevrolet. A black four-door Silverado was parked on the front row next to a gleaming Suburban of the same color. Flanking these like bishops on each side of a black king and queen were two slightly smaller but no more eco-friendly Chevy Tahoes. Row after row of these heavy, earth-killing vehicles covered the four-acre parking lot.

Matthew Pollard hid in the grassy shadows of an overpass, a small set of binoculars pressed to his eyes. A steady flow of traffic thumped on the highway overhead. The lithe coed beside him squirmed with anticipation. Her name was Audrey, but she went by Care. She wore formfitting unbleached cotton capris that hugged the curve of her hips and a tattered green Che Guevara T-shirt cut high so everyone could see the pair of orange and black koi fish playing yin and yang around her bellybutton.

She pushed a sandy dreadlock out of bright eyes.

“I’m, like, so nervous,” she whispered. “Aren’t you nervous? I can’t believe we’re, like, really following through. This is crazy. Don’t you think this is so crazy?”

Pollard turned to look at her for a long moment, then shook his head, saying nothing.

A doctorate in nuclear engineering, five years on a nuke sub, mere months away from a second doctorate, and he was hiding in the grass next to a nineteen-year-old dreadlock-wearing trust-fund kid—trustifarians, he called them—who thought wearing underwear and shaving her pits would somehow bind her to the evil elite of the bourgeoisie.

Crazy indeed.

Scanning the Fitzhugh parking lot one last time, he traded the binoculars for a handheld radio that lay in the grass next to his face.

“All clear from station two,” he said.

“Looks good from here,” a Hispanic voice crackled over the radio. “Listo?”

“Ready,” Pollard said, holding his breath.

He was sick of his life, embarrassed with the road he’d taken for so much of it. Doing something big seemed the only way to make amends. Sugaring a few bulldozer fuel tanks, attending some sit-ins to stop clear-cutting—all that was well and good, but the damage he’d done required a true penance.

He needed a big bang.

Thanks to a particular B-list movie starlet with enough liquid income to assuage her own guilty conscience, Pollard’s little group had the money to up the ante—call in the big dogs, so to speak. She’d put them in touch with a Venezuelan student named Valentine, also at the U of Oregon. He had slick hair, smoked hundred-dollar cigars, and was about to help them take the leap from beginner eco-terrorists using diesel bombs with Ping-Pong-ball and birthday-candle fuses to the big league of military plastic explosives.

Pollard stuffed the binoculars down the front of his shirt and moved in a low crouch toward the car lot. Care, for all her youthful nerves, stayed right beside him. It would be her job to act as lookout while he and Valentine Zamora placed the explosives at each corner of the building. It was one thing to blow up a gas-guzzler or two. They planned to bring down the whole enterprise.

Less than five minutes later, they’d set timers on six two-pound blocks of C-4 explosive. Two under the gas hogs out front and the others under the support columns of the building. Pollard had wanted to use remote detonators, but the good ones, the kind that would ensure they all didn’t get blown to hell by some idiot’s garage door opener, were out of his price range. Zamora, who seemed to be an expert at such things, had convinced him to use timers, planning the sets so they’d go off at roughly the same time.

All three of them ran across the frontage road to the safety of the overpass, sliding into their hiding spot in the tall grass.

“Put these in.” Valentine held a pair of earplugs out to each of the other team members.

Pollard was in the middle of inserting the foam plugs when he felt Care tense beside him.

“Holy shit,” she whispered. “There’s someone in there.”

Pollard snatched up the binoculars.

“Where?”

She pointed with a shaking finger. “Coming out of the service area, just on the other side of that window. It’s a girl.”

Pollard’s breath balled up in his chest as he watched a young woman in a smart gray pantsuit walk from a back office into the showroom. Without thinking, he dropped the binoculars and gathered himself up to run.

“What are you doing?” Valentine yanked him back to the ground. “We have ninety seconds before twelve pounds of explosive and who knows how many gallons of gas blows that place to hell.”

Pollard jerked away, staring back at him. “We have to warn her!”

“Be still!” the Venezuelan hissed. “If you tell her about the explosive she’ll know you’re responsible. I’m not going to prison because some chica decided to work late.”

Care gave an emphatic shake of her head, eyes wide, body twitching. “Matt’s right,” she said. “We have to let her know.”

She got up to run, but Valentine was on her in an instant. He grabbed a fist full of dreadlocks and heaved, jerking her over backwards. She hit the ground with a groan, but he split her lip with a quick fist to the face to make sure he had her attention.

The fireball from the first explosion reflected off his twisted face as he pulled back to strike her again and again, turning her face into a bloody pulp.

Pollard sat motionless, trapped between the murder of an innocent dealership employee and the vicious assault of one of their own by a member of his group.

The third explosion sent the hood of the black Suburban shrieking overhead to slam into the overpass abutment. The sickening crash snapped Pollard out of his stupor.

“Knock it off!” he said, shoving Valentine off a bewildered Care.

Blood poured from her nose and lips, dripping from her chin and soaking her blond dreadlocks. Her teeth showed pink in the firelight of burning cars. “No one was supposed to get hurt,” she moaned.

“Just keep our heads,” Valentine said. “If we keep our heads, everything will be fine.”

“Oh, you mean like when you were beating the shit out of me?” Care winced. She clutched at her forehead with both hands. “You bastard, I think you broke my skull.”

“You’ll be fine,” he said, waving her off. “We did what we came to do—send a message. There is often collateral damage in this sort of action.”

“Screw that,” Care said, stumbling to her feet. “I’m going down there to see if maybe she’s alive.”

Sirens wailed in the distance.

Pollard froze. He knew Care was right. There was a chance the woman had survived the explosions. Someone should go check on her—but he couldn’t bring himself to move. Zamora pulled a pistol from his waistband and made his choice for him.

“You hear that?” he said, pointing the gun at Care. “The cops are on their way.”

“Good.” She rocked back and forth, clutching her head. “I can talk to them when they get here.”

The dealership was fully engulfed in flames now. Every few seconds a fuel tank on one of the gas hogs blew, sending jagged shards of glass and metal whirring into the night sky.

Care swayed, blinking dizzy eyes. She looked at the pistol and smirked, her bloody face backlit by the orange fireball. “Put that away,” she said. “You wouldn’t shoot me, Valentine.”

Pollard felt as if his joints were locked in place. Unable to make himself move, he watched helplessly as Valentine Zamora fired twice. The first shot hit her in the throat, the second in the shoulder.

The gun hung motionless in Zamora’s hand. For a terrifying moment, Pollard thought the man might turn it against him.

Instead Zamora shoved it back in his waistband, spitting on the ground in disgust. “Stupid bitch,” he said. “I just blew that lady to hell. What made you think I wouldn’t shoot you?”

He turned to Pollard, mistaking his fearful inaction for complicity. “Come on,” he said, already grabbing the girl’s feet. She was still moving, tragic sounds coming from the wound in her throat. “Help me drag her body out of sight.” He looked up and grinned. “Like it or not, we’re on the same team now, amigo.”