Painkiller

42

Once the mainframe’s reboot sequence began for the day, Hiram and the wino returned to the cart they had hidden in the tunnel the afternoon before. If the cart’s motor and the wino’s measly muscles cooperated, it would take them just over one minute to pilot the warhead-laden cart down the length of the tunnel. Hiram had done this before, and the key was the morning rain: when the rainfall was light or nonexistent, the tunnel was dry, and transport relatively easy. Following a storm, it took some serious muscle to move the cart through the mud. Gibson had sunk over two hundred grand into sump pumps and other contraptions, but nothing seemed to work.

Today had been a dry morning, so Hiram was optimistic-he figured he wouldn’t need to use the cattle prod more than half a dozen times on the minute-plus journey.

Though Gibson preferred his own label of “cargo cave,” Deng had originally called the island’s secondary freight cavern “the Lab” for fairly self-evident reasons. The Lab was less than half the size of the primary missile cavern and significantly less organized, strewn with industrial equipment, spare parts, and the six defunct C-4 Trident I missiles that had yet to pass inspection. A dust-free, sterile laboratory, built in the cavern’s back room early on, had been used by Deng’s scientists for adjustments to the barometric pressure units serving as the detonation triggers for the W-76 warheads, earning the cavern its nickname.

Gibson had used the cargo cave as a clandestine freight entrance during Operation Blunt Fist’s construction phase, and while only substandard-size submarines could access the cave, due to the lesser dimensions of its docking bay, much of the operation’s more important cargo had been delivered here. Gibson, for instance, had seen no need to expose the arrival of shipments of enriched uranium, explosive caps, or completed warhead-MIRV replicas to the mercenary guards and construction staff working in the main cavern when, at times, crews there had numbered as many as fifteen or twenty men. Most of these workers had already been or would soon be killed, but Gibson never saw reason to take undue risk.

Standing this afternoon on the catwalk that rimmed the cargo cave’s underground lagoon, Gibson touched a button on his wristwatch to check the time under the dim illumination of the safety lights. The reboot sequence had begun almost a minute ago; if Hiram and the slave arrived on time, he would have just over six minutes and twenty seconds to fulfill the day’s objective.

Just past the 1:05 mark, the door connecting the transport tunnel and the cargo cave eased open and the overloaded golf cart emerged, its suspension dragging with every bump.

Gibson climbed into the control seat of a squat yellow crane positioned in the corner of the cavern. A miniature version of the sort found at container terminals, the crane’s body formed a cube of some twelve feet in width. It stood on a set of rails beside the dock; with its long arm, the crane was capable of accessing nearly any portion of the cave from its home on the rails. A hook was affixed to a cable that dangled from the arm.

Gibson fired up the crane’s two-cylinder diesel engine and steered the machine to one end of the rails, where a series of spare rods, struts, and storage boxes lay against the far wall of the cavern. As Hiram brought the cart to the same spot, Gibson rotated the crane, dipping its hook until it bumped against the roof of the cart. Hiram grabbed the hook and secured it to the harness he and the wino had wrapped around the warhead earlier.

With a surge of its engine, the crane lifted the warhead as if it were a pillow, and at Gibson’s direction maneuvered it out across the field of equipment. Hiram leashed the wino to the side of the golf cart with a dog chain; after yanking on the chain to make sure it held, he walked through the debris to the rear wall of the cavern, where the largest of the room’s cargo boxes sat in apparent disrepair against the wall. He crouched before the first of the box’s eight locks and waved to Gibson. On his cue, Gibson punched a lengthy code into a remote control device, and the first in the sequence of locks clicked open in Hiram’s hands. He removed it, hooked it around his belt, and moved to the next. Once all eight locks had been remote-unlocked and removed, Hiram flipped aside a pair of latches and, feet planted, clean-and-jerked open the box’s thick lid. This act exposed the contents of the box: two W-76 warheads, resting side by side in protective foam padding. The warheads looked like stretched versions of the standard bombs portrayed in Road Runner cartoons-long, rounded, bullet-shaped projectiles with a four-spoke fantail at the rear. There were two remaining warhead-shaped spaces in the padding that filled the crate.

With the help of Hiram’s guiding hands, Gibson worked the controls in the driver’s seat of the crane and lowered the third warhead into one of the slots. Hiram released the hook and unbuckled the harness from the warhead; the bomb rolled into its nook. Hiram replaced the crate’s lid, snapped shut the eight locks, and began his return trip through the mound of industrial debris.

Gibson was off the crane and aboard his private golf cart when he noticed something and motioned to Hiram.

“Looks like we lost another one,” he said. “Toss him in.”

Hiram came around the corner of his cart to see the wino collapsed on the cavern floor. Still leashed to the cart, the former occupant of the alcove on East Queen Street had nonetheless fallen hard on the lava rock floor, which fall seemed to have resulted in the puddle of blood beneath his head. The blood had drained from his ears.

Hiram unleashed the body, dragged it to the edge of the underground lagoon, and heaved it into the water. He hung back a moment to watch as the water roiled in a froth of bubbles and blood, then jumped aboard his cart and drove out on Gibson’s heels.

He cleared the surface exit of the transport tunnel with twenty-five seconds to spare.