“He may have a point there,” I said.
“Yeah, well, it’s a democracy, isn’t it. Personally, I think it’s more of a classic case of a man confusing the deterioration of his own aging faculties with the rest of the nation. You know, grumpy old men. Old guys are always saying everything’s going to hell. Not like it used to be in my day, by God, when I had to walk three miles to school through ten feet of snow, et cetera.”
“How old is Trask?”
“Mid-sixties, actually.” He saw my surprise. “I know-he doesn’t look it.”
“Where’d he get the nickname?”
“He apparently likes snakes. You know, some kind of offbeat hobby.”
We talked contract and agreed on the broad provisions of a statement of work. “I have a request,” I said when we were done with that.
“Shoot.”
“I’ve sent my people home, but right now I’d like to take a little outside tour with my vehicle. Drive around the plant perimeter. Outside the protected area, but inside the corporate zone. Get the lay of the public land.”
“A lot of it’s swamp,” he said. “About twelve hundred acres in all, including farmland and designated wetlands. Stay on the roads, and don’t mess with any protected area fences-they’re wired six ways from Sunday. If you do run into the security people, show those badges. The worst they can do is escort you back to the main gate. You work for me, not them.”
“Gosh, you think I’ll run into Trask?”
“Isn’t that why you want to go out there?” he asked with a grin.
By sundown I was parked along the banks of the inlet canal, a man-made baby river that branched off the much larger Cape Fear River. It had been built to provide cooling water for the turbine steam condensers in the generator hall. I’d driven around the fields and ponds and swamps for about forty minutes before finding the spot I wanted. It was getting dark when Trask’s people finally showed themselves. I picked up a distant tail about halfway through my excursion. It looked like a Bronco or similarly boxy SUV, but they kept far enough back that I couldn’t tell how many people were in the vehicle. Ari had given me a road map of the so-called corporate area, and I’d meandered over most of it.
I was out of my vehicle, taking pictures of the power plant in the distance, when they finally made their move. The complex was now blurring into a twinkling cluster of sodium vapor lights silhouetting the big buildings in the center when the Bronco came in, skidding to a stop from an unnecessarily high-speed approach. Three doors popped open, and three security guys piled out, all decked out in partial SWAT costumes and brandishing stubby assault rifles of some kind. I waited for the Freeze, motherfucker! but instead two of them spread out into covering positions behind the headlights while the third approached me. His clear plastic faceplate revealed white bandages on his nose and forehead, and I recognized Billy the Kid. I didn’t see Trask, and I didn’t recognize the other two guys.
“Let’s see some identification,” he said, keeping his rifle at port arms and pretending we’d never met.
I wanted to point out that I was in the public domain area of the complex, but instead I just lifted the chain with my plant ID cards over my head and handed them over. He pocketed them with one hand while keeping his weapon ready.
“Those are not valid,” he announced. He hadn’t even so much as glanced at them.
“How would you know?” I asked. “Or can’t you read?”
“Because our office didn’t issue them,” he said with a hint of triumph in his voice. “You’ll have to come with us.”
“Where we going, Billy?” I asked, just so the other two guys would know I’d recognized him. “And by the way, isn’t this the public area?”
“You were seen conducting surveillance of the power plant,” he said, coming closer to get right in my face. “We have you on camera. Turn around.”
“No,” I said, putting my hands on my hips. I was about an inch taller than he was and a whole lot bigger. “I’m authorized to be here and, for that matter, inside the protected area if I want, by the director of technical security. Your boss’s boss, as I understand it. He told me you had no authority over me unless I showed up in an unauthorized place, such as within the vital area.”
Billy was visibly angry now, so I slowly positioned myself to deflect any sudden moves. I could see that his forearms were trembling, meaning that he wanted to club me with that weapon. The other two remained in position, but they didn’t seem to be getting excited just because Billy was.
“I said turn around; do it!” he yelled.
“Make me, Billy,” I replied, and then I whistled. The shepherds came out of their hides in the underbrush from behind the other two guards. Each one grabbed a mouthful of a guard’s wrist before the men were even aware the dogs were there. They both yelled in surprise, but they also both had the sense to make no sudden moves. Billy reacted by taking one step backward and swinging his weapon around, but then he, too, froze when he saw that he couldn’t shoot the dogs without hitting his two buddies. I itched to just clock him right there and then, but there really wasn’t any need.
“This is a great time to be very still,” I announced to the other two guys. “You twitch, those two will each amputate a hand. You guys understand me?”
Both of them nodded quickly, trying not to look down into those intent canine eyes. Their faces were red in the Bronco’s taillights. Even with semi-SWAT gear on, they had to be feeling close to fifty pounds per square inch of jaw pressure, and that was just the I-got-you squeeze.
At that moment, the fourth door on the Bronco opened. Colonel Trask stepped out into the headlights and walked over to where Billy and I were standing.
“Billy?” he said.
“Yes, sir?”
“You are so fucking fired,” Trask said. “Gimme that.”
Before Billy could respond, Trask took his weapon away from him, retrieved my IDs, and told him to get into the backseat of the Bronco. Then he looked at me and bobbed his head in the direction of the shepherds. I called them off and they trotted over to me, taking up positions on either side of me and locking on to Trask. He looked down, flashed an admiring grin, and then told the other guards to take the Bronco back to the plant and wait there for him. He handed over Billy’s weapon to one of them as they left.
Once the Bronco had driven away, Trask and I strolled over to the bank of the inlet canal and stared out over the swamps at the cluster of lights around the plant. The inlet canal was a good hundred yards across, and the water was deceptively still. On the other side of the plant, where the hot water came out of the main condensers, two huge nozzles from the plant blew steaming water five hundred feet down a concrete exit channel. There had to be a big current under the surface on the inlet side.
“It’s pretty out here,” he said, handing me back my IDs. “But don’t try this in the summertime.”
“Mosquitoes?”
He fished out some cigarettes, offered me one, which I declined, and lit up. “Yeah, buddy,” he said. “They arrive in formation, take your vehicle first, eat that, and then they come back for you.”
“This a truce?” I asked.
He gave me a sideways look that was half glare, half frustration. “I’ve got the NRC, the FBI, PrimEnergy’s head of security, federal, state, and county environmental engineers, local law, and now you wandering around in my perimeter. How would you feel?”
“I guess I’d have issues with all that,” I said.
He made a disgusted noise. “Issues? Issues? I hate that fucking word. You sound like some goddamned liberal. Issues, my ass. There is no way somebody took a cesium cocktail out of this plant, I don’t care what anybody says. We would have had any number of gamma detectors screaming bloody murder before they ever got to the first fence. Not to mention the fact that the guy’s hand bones would be glowing through his skin by now. They’re looking in the wrong place.”
“Maybe it wasn’t cesium,” I said.