“Watch it, Ben — don’t hit me!” Rheinski shouted.
Underwear Boy shoved a big slot machine, crashing it off its pallet as he dashed in another direction, weaving around and trying to get to one of the rear warehouse doors. Jackson stood up, both hands locked around his handgun in a professional firing stance. “Throw down your weapon, sir!”
But the kid shot wildly at him, sending sparks up from another slot machine. Jackson ducked out of the way, a befuddled expression on his face.
The alarm bells continued to rattle with skull-cracking volume.
Goldfarb saw the kid limping severely; one arm and shoulder had been bound and bandaged in a recent injury. Taking cover behind the squat machines, he slid from one row to another, looking for a shot. His broken pinkie throbbed like a jackhammer.
“Johnnie, look out!” a young woman’s voice shrilled. Goldfarb turned toward the sound to see a half-naked blond teenager struggling against the wall, handcuffed to one of the electrical conduit pipes that ran down a support girder.
The unexpected sight so startled him that he didn’t notice Holden until the other Las Vegas agent stepped out from behind Underwear Boy, pressing his handgun right up against the young man’s spine.
“I don’t think you’ll be wanting to resist any more, kid,” Holden said. Underwear Boy froze, his face writhing with a storm of desperate emotions — but his eyes seemed unfocused, glazed with some kind of drugs.
Panting, Goldfarb and Jackson converged on him, leveling their weapons as Holden disarmed the captive. He slid the young man’s handgun in his own pocket as the warehouse alarm bells rang and rang.
Handcuffed to the wall, the young woman continued to writhe and spit curses at them. Goldfarb ignored her — they would have plenty of time to question the girl later.
Underwear Boy was in his early twenties, his freckled skin pale and bruised. Bandages covered his arm, shoulder, and shin, but other angry red scrapes and contusions showed on his back and chest. Someone had smeared salves on the worst wounds.
“Looks like you’re pretty banged up there, kid,” Goldfarb said.
“What do you think you’re doing?” the young man said slowly. His voice was slurred and his eyes unfocused, as if he had taken massive amounts of pain killers.
Suddenly, merciful silence dropped back upon them. Rheinski came up, patting his hands together. “Couldn’t find the trip switch, so I used a wire cutter. Worked like a charm.”
“This is private property!” the girl shrieked. “You got no right! Damn Nazis!” She didn’t look older than seventeen.
Jackson put his own handgun away, then marched off. “I’ll check the rest of the premises. Maybe I can find some clothes for Cinderella,” he said.
“Or at least a gag for her foul mouth,” Holden muttered.
“Leave her alone —” the young man said, turning to go toward her, but Holden slammed him back. He winced in pain. “Watch the ribs, man! Ah, shit, that hurts!”
“Hey, I recognize you!” Goldfarb suddenly said, staring at the young man’s lean figure, short sandy blond hair, freckled cheeks, watery blue eyes. “Back at the bridge in Laughlin. You’re our friendly train bomber! Looks like you just barely walked away from an avalanche.”
“I’m not saying anything,” the young man said. “You can’t do this, breaking into a private business. This isn’t Russia!”
“No, this is the United States — and here we use search warrants.” Goldfarb displayed the paper for only a second, but Underwear Boy didn’t seem interested in it anyway. “I’m placing you under arrest for destroying the railroad bridge, conspiracy, attempted murder, reckless endangerment of life, firing upon a Federal agent, resisting arrest, felony destruction of property.” He glanced over at the half-naked girl. “And probably statutory rape.”
“Yeah, that won’t mean much in a little while,” the man snorted.
Goldfarb felt cold. “We already know about the nuclear warhead. We’ve dispatched teams to disarm it.”
Shocked, the militia man took a moment to recover. “They’ll never get all the way out there in time. They can’t get through the security checkpoints. No way. You’ve already lost.”
Goldfarb frowned. What security checkpoints? All the way out where?
Jackson came up, holding a military uniform. “Rest of the place is empty. I found his clothes, all torn and muddy from taking a long tumble into the river.”
Goldfarb shook his head in disbelief. “His girlfriend here probably picked him up from the canyon, brought him back here to do a bit of First Aid. I bet Dennison’s is some kind of a militia safe house.”
“You’ll never find the bomb,” the militia man said again. From her position on the wall, the girl began to curse again, thrashing against the handcuffs, but Goldfarb ignored her.
“Just read him Miranda,” Goldfarb said, leaning against one of the dismantled slot machines. “We sure hit the jackpot here.” He fished the man’s wallet from the pocket of the uniform slacks and flipped through the papers and ID.
He pulled out a green laminated card and turned it over. The blond man’s picture was on the front. “Department of Defense. Staff Sergeant John Marlo, United States Air Force.” Goldfarb unfolded a Leave Statement that listed the address of Dennisons Machine Repair as Marlo’s place of residence. It specified NELLIS as the sergeant’s base.
“I want a lawyer. You can’t bust in here and arrest me like this —”
“Oh, shut up,” Holden said.
Goldfarb heard the front of the store open, and the SWAT team entered in response to the gunshots fired. He took a moment to calm them, reassuring them that the facility had been secured and the situation was under control. “Get one of the women on the NEST team as a chaperone so we can let the young lady here get her clothes on,” he added. “We don’t need a sexual harassment suit on top of all this.”
Jackson reappeared, carrying a box of ammunition. “We found what must have been a weapons cache back behind the banks of broken-down slot machines — but it’s empty. From the weapon mounts it looks like it held a lot of automatic weapons. This box of ammo was all that was left.”
“You don’t know anything,” Marlo said, his words still slurred, but his eyes had brightened, as if his predicament had penetrated the fog of pain-killers. “And you don’t have any time left. We’re putting a stop to the UN shit, and it’s too late to stop us. You hear me? It’s already too late!”
“Thanks.” Goldfarb tossed Marlo’s wallet to one of the other agents. “Let’s get on the phone to Craig. Maybe that’s all the information he needs to make sense of all this.”
CHAPTER 38
With the land rover parked beyond the razor-wire perimeter fence surrounding the ominous Dreamland facility, Paige remained a captive, helpless.
Waiting.
Mike Waterloo switched off the vehicle and sat patiently in the driver’s seat. The clouds remained gray-black even in the dawn, and sprinkles of rain dotted the windshield. He spoke distractedly. “You know, the Trinity Test back in 1945 was postponed for a few hours because of a heavy early morning thunderstorm. The first atomic bomb, with a yield in kilotons… not much more than a toy compared to the warheads we make now.” He glanced at the back of the rover.
“Megatons,” Paige said. “You know that if you detonate that, even way out here, you’ll be killing millions. This storm will spread the radioactive fallout for thousands of miles, maybe even worse than if you had planted it in an underground parking garage in Las Vegas. Here, there’s nothing to stop it — how can that help our country?”