Wild Fire (46 page)

Also, we needed to get to the ELF transmitter.

I noticed that Carl was reaching under the big, round card table. Then he stepped back. As I watched, the table began to lift, and I could hear the humming of an electric motor as the table continued to rise along with the round rug beneath it and the circular section of the floor beneath the rug. I could see now the hydraulic piston that was lifting everything, and when the table legs, rug, and floor section were about five feet from floor level, it stopped, leaving a hole in the floor about four feet in diameter.

Carl sat on the floor with his legs dangling into the hole, then disappeared. Soon, a light came out of the dark space.

Madox said, “Kate, you first.”

She hesitated, and he moved quickly toward her, grabbed her arm, and propelled her forward toward the opening in the floor.

She almost fell because of the shackles, and I said to Madox, “Take it easy, asshole.”

He looked at me and said, “One more word out of you, and
she
will be sorry. Understand?”

I nodded.

Madox held Kate’s arm and maneuvered her to the edge of the opening, saying, “It’s a spiral staircase. Hold the rails and move quickly.”

Kate sat on the floor and grabbed a rope handle hanging from the underside of the elevated floor, then descended into the hole.

Madox motioned me toward the opening. “Let’s go.”

I felt Luther give me a shove, and I realized that this half-wit was too close for his own safety, and Madox yelled at him, “Get back, you idiot!”

I said to Madox, “I won’t hurt him.”

As I started toward the hole, Madox, who was no idiot, moved away from me and aimed his Colt .45. “Stop.”

I stopped.

A few seconds later, Carl’s voice called out, “Clear.”

Madox informed me, “Kate is on the floor, and Carl has his shotgun aimed at her head. Just so you know.” He pointed to the opening. “Go.”

I sat on the floor and lowered myself, feet and shackles first, into the hole until I felt the first step. I knew that once Kate and I were down in this subterranean area, no one on the ground was going to find us.

Madox said, “Let’s go, John. I’m on a tight schedule.”

I descended the spiral staircase, which wrapped around the hydraulic piston. It was not that easy to move in shackles, but my hands were free, so I held both rails and mostly slid down.

On that subject, if Madox intended to handcuff us at some point, then I’d have to make a move before that happened. I knew Kate also understood that.

It was about twenty feet to the floor below, the height of a two-story building, and I guessed without too much thinking that this was the fallout shelter.

At the bottom of the spiral staircase was a round, concrete room, lit with bare fluorescent bulbs.

Opposite the last step, about ten feet away, was a shiny steel bank-vault door embedded in the concrete wall.

Behind me, Carl said, “Facedown.”

I turned and saw Carl at the other end of the round space, pointing his shotgun at Kate, who was lying facedown on the floor.

This might have been a good time to make a move, but before I could decide, Carl aimed his shotgun close to Kate’s head and shouted, “Three! Two—!”

I got down on the cold concrete floor, and Carl yelled, “Clear!”

I heard Madox scrambling down the spiral staircase as though he’d practiced this a few times.

He said, “John, I think one of you has to go.”

I didn’t reply.

A few seconds went by, and I heard Luther’s boots on the stairs, then the hissing sound of the hydraulic piston, and finally the table and floor dropping into place.

Luther was down the spiral stairs, and Madox said to him, “Open the door.”

I heard the vault wheel click, then a small squeak as the heavy door swung open.

Madox told me, “John, no matter what move you make, or try to make, Kate is the first to get shot.” He said to Carl and Luther, “You got that? If Corey makes a move, you shoot Kate. I’ll take care of Mr. Corey.”

Carl and Luther both replied, “Yes, sir.”

Then, Madox warned, “You’re trying my patience, and I’m running almost ten minutes behind schedule. So, you either behave and do what you’re told, quickly, or I shoot one of you so we can get back on schedule. Understand?”

“I understand.”

“Good. You’re never a hero to your wife, anyway, so don’t even try.”

“Good advice.”

The next thing I heard was Madox saying, “Kate. Stand. Hands on head.”

She stood, and Madox instructed, “Follow Carl.” Then to me, “John. Stand. Hands on head. Follow at twenty feet.”

I stood, put my hands on my head, and noticed now a big canvas bag on the floor. It was partly unzipped, and I could see the sleeve of my leather jacket peeking out. Apparently, Derek had given Luther all our things, and the last trace of our being at Custer Hill—except for Rudy’s van, which they’d get rid of—was now gone.

Madox saw what I was looking at and said to me, “They won’t even find your DNA in the bear shit.” He motioned toward the door. “Go.”

I went through the vault door, which was embedded in about three feet of concrete.

Madox, behind me, said, “Welcome to my fallout shelter.”

Luther brought up the rear, and I could hear the vault door closing and locking.

I had the sense that we were under the back terrace, deep in the bedrock, and not connected to the basement of the house. I also had the sense that there wasn’t anyone on the surface who could ever find us.

CHAPTER FIFTY

W
e were now in a wide corridor whose concrete walls were painted a light green that changed into sky blue about a third of the way up the ten-foot height. The ceiling was covered with frosted glass panels, behind which were bright violet lights that, I guessed, were grow lights, though I didn’t see any vegetation, unless you counted the horrid 1980s Astroturf on the floor.

I suppose someone was trying to create the illusion that you were outdoors in a sunlit meadow that happened to look like an underground concrete corridor.

Madox said, unnecessarily, “You’re supposed to think you’re aboveground.”

I asked, “Aren’t we?”

He didn’t answer my question. “My idiot ex-wife’s idea.” He added, “She had an irrational fear of atomic war.”

“Silly woman.”

He seemed in a better mood, and he motioned to an open door to the right, which I could see was a children’s playroom. “The children were young then, and she thought they’d thrive down here.”

I commented, “The grow lights might help, but their playdates might be somewhat limited.”

He wasn’t paying any attention to me, and he actually seemed to be talking to himself. “She saw On the Beach and Dr. Strangelove about twenty times, and I don’t think she realized one was a serious film, and the other was gallows humor.” He added, “Nuclear Armageddon movies sent her to her therapist for months.”

I had the impression that Bain Madox had some issues with his ex-wife’s obsession with nuclear holocaust, and maybe what he was trying to do now was work through that by starting a nuclear war of his own. I was sure that Mrs. Madox would be one of the first people he called after it was over.

Anyway, Kate and I moved slowly down the passage in our shackles, and every time I hitched up my pants, Luther yelled, “Hands on your head,” and I replied, “Fuck you.”

I could hear the vents blowing, but the air smelled damp and slightly unpleasant.

On either side of the passage were open doors that revealed furnished rooms—bedrooms, a sitting room, a kitchen, and a long dining room with paneled walls, heavy drapes, a coffered ceiling, and plush carpets. Behind one closed door, I distinctly heard talking, then I realized it was a radio or television—so maybe someone else was down here.

Madox, again talking to himself, said, “She spent a fortune decorating this place. She wanted to sit out the half-life of radioactive fallout in the style to which she’d become accustomed.”

He was on a roll, so I didn’t comment.

He continued, “On the other hand, I find this space useful. First, for my ELF transmitter—and also as a place to store a fortune in art treasures, gold, and cash.” He made a joke. “The last IRS agent who came snooping around is still locked in a room down here.”

Good one, Bain. Actually, this place looked like the Führerbunker, but this might not be the right time to make that comparison.

We reached the end of the passageway, which must have run for fifty yards, and Carl unlocked a steel door, opened it, and turned on the lights.

Madox said, “Kate, follow Carl. John, stop.”

Kate disappeared into the doorway, and I stood there.

Carl called out, “Clear.”

Madox said, “John, follow.”

I was getting a little tired of these doggie commands, but it wasn’t worth mentioning now that we were so close to . . . the end.

I entered the room and saw that Kate again was on the floor, and Carl stood against the far wall, covering her and me as I entered.

Madox instructed, “John, down.”

I lay facedown on a plush blue carpet. On a professional level, I appreciated Carl and Bain’s military precision, and their textbook handling of two prisoners who, though shackled, unarmed, and outnumbered by three armed men, they understood to be potentially dangerous.

On the downside of that, these guys weren’t giving me an inch to wiggle out of this.

Using shackles instead of handcuffs was a judgment call, and I could see why Madox had gone with the shackles up to this point.

The only real mistake they’d made so far was not finding the BearBangers, which was why the police strip-searched prisoners and examined the body cavities. Now that we were in the dungeon, that might very well be Madox’s next move, along with handcuffs—and that would be our signal to act.

Meanwhile, Madox and Carl seemed to be busy with something other than us, but I caught a glimpse of Luther near the door with his M16 raised and pointed, and the muzzle sweeping back and forth between me and Kate. I didn’t see the canvas bag, which Luther had apparently stowed somewhere along the way. Therefore, the only weapons in this room were the ones we saw pointed at us.

On the subject of weapons, Carl’s choice of an automatic shotgun in confined quarters was also very professional—bullets from high-powered rifles have a tendency to pass through people and hit other people you don’t necessarily want to hit, then ricochet and become dangerous to the shooter and his friends.

In fact, down here, Luther’s M16 was almost as dangerous to him as it was to us. Nevertheless, I didn’t want him firing it at us.

As for Madox’s Colt .45, it was okay in confined quarters with masonry surfaces. It would put a big hole in you at close range, and its exit velocity wasn’t usually fatal to anyone on the other side of the intended victim. Also, if it hit a concrete wall, its blunt-nosed bullet was more likely to splatter than ricochet.

Having analyzed all that, my conclusion was that Kate and I were basically fucked. In fact, the BearBangers were getting smaller and smaller in my mind.

Madox said, “On your knees. Hands on your heads.”

I lifted myself into a kneeling position, with my hands on my head, and I saw Kate do the same. We were about ten feet apart in the dimly lit room, and we made eye contact. She dropped her face and eyes down toward where the BearBanger was stuck, somewhere in her jeans or panties, and probably behind her zipper. She glanced at me, and I gave a slight shake of my head.
Not the right moment,
I wanted to say.
You’ll know when.

I looked around the room as my eyes adjusted to the dim light.

Madox was sitting with his back to us at some sort of electronic console that was against the far wall. I assumed that was the ELF transmitter. Eureka. Now what?

Luther was still standing near the door, covering Kate and me with his rifle.

Carl wasn’t visible, but I heard him breathing behind us.

The room itself was a sparsely furnished and functional-looking office. This was obviously Bain’s atomic-war headquarters, where he could spend the day making phone calls to see if anyone was alive out there after the Big One. He probably had a ticker tape, too, to see how his defense and oil stocks were doing.

I never understood, during the ’70s and ’80s, why people wanted to survive a nuclear holocaust. I mean, other than some cans of chili and a case of beer, I never made any long-range, post–nuclear war plans.

But to be fair to Bain, this was mostly his ex-wife’s idea. I wondered what became of her. Wood chipper?

Anyway, I noticed, too, that mounted on the paneled wall to the right of the electronic console were three flat screen television monitors on swing arms. They looked new and out of place in this 1980s time capsule.

To the left of the console was a bank of six older television sets, and they were all lit, but it was hard to see the black-and-white images on them, which kept shifting. I realized these were security monitors, and I made out the gatehouse on one screen, then an image of the lodge taken from the gatehouse, which then shifted to an image of the generator building, and so forth.

Therefore Madox would know if the cavalry arrived, and so would Kate and I. But so far, everything out there in Custer Hill land looked normal, peaceful, and quiet.

A recurring unhappy thought was that even if the state police and the FBI busted through the gate and kicked in the doors of the lodge, no one would find us down here.

And even if Schaeffer remembered that there was supposed to be a fallout shelter somewhere, he’d probably be looking in the basement of the lodge itself, and he might very well mistake some room down there for a fallout shelter.

For damned sure he wasn’t going to find the hydraulic floor under the card table, and even if by some miracle he did, it would take hours or longer to get an explosive ordnance team down here to blast open that vault door.

Wow. We were double fucked. There was only one way out of this mess, and that was the way I should have chosen this afternoon—this bastard and his buddies had to die, here and now, before they killed us, and before Madox detonated those four nukes in Sandland.

Madox swiveled around and asked me, “Do you understand what’s happening? John?”

“I think we established that you’re going to send an ELF wave to four receivers that are attached to nuclear detonators in four suitcase bombs.”

“Correct.” He added, “I’ve actually begun the transmission.”

Shit.

He said, “Come closer. On your knees. Come on.”

Kate and I moved on our knees closer to the console, then Carl, behind us, ordered, “Stop.”

We stopped.

Madox asked, “Can you see these three little windows?”

We looked to where he was pointing to a black box on top of the console. The first window in the box was spinning a dizzying array of red LED letters, and Madox said, “I’ve sent out the first letter of the three-letter code that will detonate the four devices.” He explained, “I could have put a time clock in each of the nuclear suitcases, but then the detonation time would be preset, and out of my control. So I chose a command-detonation mode, meaning my ELF radio, which is perfect for this task, and foolproof.” He added, “I finally got my money’s worth out of this ELF station.”

I told him, “You know, Bain, you can explore for oil with ELF waves.”

He smiled and said, “I see you’ve done some homework.” He informed me, “I don’t need to explore for oil. I already know where it is, and the present owners are about to be nuked.”

“Why are you doing this?”

He looked at me and replied, “Ah, the ‘why’ question.” He lit a cigarette. “Why? Because I’m fucking sick and tired of a succession of ball-less presidents kissing Arab ass. That’s why.”

I figured he’d kissed a little Arab ass himself, and this was payback. I figured, too, I’d go along with him, and said, “You know, Bain, Kate and I see this shit every day in our job. Illegal Muslim immigrants being treated like they were constitutional lawyers, suspected terrorists all lawyered up and threatening to sue for false arrest.” I went on with my litany of problems on the job, but oddly, Madox didn’t seem that interested. I concluded with, “I understand your frustrations, but exploding four nuclear weapons in Sandland is not going to solve the problem. It’ll make it worse.”

He laughed, which I thought was strange.

Then, he swiveled around again and punched a few keys on his keyboard. He explained, “Each letter needs to be encoded with a four-letter code group.”

“Right,” I agreed. “Can we talk about this?”

He didn’t seem to hear me, and he appeared intent on reading his dials and listening to something on a set of headphones that he held briefly to his ear.

I noticed that the first window in the black box had stopped spinning letters, and it was locked into a bright red “G.”

Kate spoke up. “When the state police and FBI get here, they’re going to knock out your generators, and the antenna poles.”

Madox was still playing with his electronics, and replied without turning around, “Kate, first, they haven’t even left police headquarters yet, which is over an hour from here. Second, they really don’t know what’s happening here. Third, even if they got here in the next thirty minutes, they’d be too late.” He explained, “This will all be over in less than twenty minutes.”

I noticed now that the second window in the black box was spinning red letters.

Madox swiveled in his chair and said to us, “The second letter is sent, and the four receivers in the suitcase nukes will pick it up in about fifteen minutes.”

I thought maybe he was juking and jiving us about how much time we had left, so to show him we’d done our homework, I said, “About thirty minutes.”

“No, fifteen. That’s how long each repetitive ELF wave will take to reach San Francisco and Los Angeles, and have its signal decoded in the receiver.”

“The Mideast,” I corrected. “Thirty minutes.”

“No,”
said Mr. Madox impatiently. “You still don’t get it—which is good news for me.”

Kate asked, “Get what?”

“Get Project Green and Wild Fire.”

Madox swiveled around again and read his electronic dials, commenting, “The generators are maintaining six thousand kilowatts.” He put his hand on the keyboard. “Now, all I have to do is type the encryption for the last letter in the three-letter code.”

As he said that, the second letter on the black box froze at “O.” So now it read “G-O.”

He noticed it and said, “We have a G and O. So, what’s the code word? I can’t remember. G-O-B? G-O-T?” He laughed over his shoulder at us. “G-O-C-O? No, too many letters. Help me. John? Kate? Please, God, let me remember . . . ah! That’s it. G-O-D.”

The man was clearly having fun, while losing his marbles.

He typed on his keyboard, and the last window began spinning letters.

He swiveled back to us and said, “So, what’s happening is that my encryption software has successfully sent the letters G and O via ELF wave toward the four receivers, which is confirmed by the G and O on the black box. But, as you know, it takes a while for these repetitive waves to actually reach the receivers and for them to properly decode. Understand?”

I didn’t think he really gave a shit if we understood, unless he was trying to see what we knew, so I said, “We understand.”

“Really?” He informed us, “I’ve used a repeating, self-correcting code, which is continuously transmitted until the initiating sequence is received. In other words, D-O-G won’t work. Only G-O-D can make an explosion. Follow?”

I reminded him, “Don’t forget to activate your isotopes.”