“I’ll tell you. Let’s get you some help first, Pap.”
“I think I’m gonna sit tight.” Now Dick sounded angry. “Dammit Ben, why’d you move the gold?”
“I didn’t.”
His father was usually sharp, but he was badly injured and couldn’t puzzle that one through alone. He looked bewildered at all the boxes stacked against the wall. Ben realized his father wanted to talk more than move toward help. Dick’s eyes tightened with intense pain, though he tried to hide it. Ben continued explaining only as a compromise. Once he answered Dick’s big questions, Ben hoped he could then persuade his dad to get to the doctor. The ghillie coat was already saturated. Richard Willem Blackshaw’s time, with his blood, were running out.
Ben confessed, “Pap, those boxes are full of rocks and sand. Only the bomb is real.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“I shit thee not. The herons gave me the idea.”
Dick looked doubtful. “Must be going into shock. The herons?”
Suddenly Ben was the proud kid telling his dad of a coup. “Almost nobody goes out to that rookery on Deep Banks. Because of the funk, like you said. It’s the same idea. Let’s say I set off that bomb here on Spring Island. Let’s say somebody thinks the gold is here. They’d think it was contaminated.”
Dick got it. “Then nobody’d want the damn stuff! Nobody’d want to come near enough to touch it.”
Ben said, “So nobody’d even look for it. Make the few folks who’re interested in the gold believe they know right where it is. Based on what they know about this bomb, now the gold’s worthless. Lost in plain sight. Fouled in a radioactive No Man’s Land in the middle of the bay. Too dangerous to come at.”
Dick smiled at his son. “That’s why you let Chalk go.”
“Hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. But he’s our messenger back to his world. If he doesn’t leave that file, I can find him later.”
Dick’s smile went away. “Or he can find you. And the bay? Aren’t we a touch casual setting off a nuke in the middle of our bread basket?”
His father was dying, but still stubborn. Ben had to make this quick. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me. I’ve had some training. I’m a sniper like you, Pap. A good one. In the Gulf, and elsewhere. I’ve had other work in the service along the way. My recon stalks were good. I got to leave presents behind now and then. Demolition. You remember how I like to tinker.”
Dick grinned. “That I do.”
“Can’t help myself. So the isotopes in that box are spread by detonating a big wad of Semtex. I took three quarters of the Semtex out of the box this afternoon. Oh, she’ll still go off loud and pretty, but she won’t blow rads all over creation like she was designed to.”
Ben paused, turned his face toward the old hearth of the parlor fireplace. A gentle breeze, still faintly redolent of creosote a hundred years after the last embers burned there, spilled out of the flue and caressed his face.
He said, “There! The eye of the storm is here. The downdraft, it’ll limit the spread of the radiation. Or would have.”
Dick’s face twisted. He focused hard on the talk. Tried to transcend the pain. “So the yield fouls the island right enough. Keeps it hot for a while. Especially around this building. It’d be ground zero.”
“Right,” said Ben. “But the fallout wouldn’t have gone much past the shoreline. The rain would’ve settled the airborne particles even more, before they spread to the water. Weakened any contamination past the island. A little anyway. Now that’s enough talk. Please, Pap, let’s get you some help.”
Dick shook his head. “There’s a problem with your plan.”
It was true. Ben knew it. When he’d stopped the bomb a moment before, Ben realized with a sinking heart that he hadn’t thought of everything.
Ben said, “I know.”
“You still haven’t set it off.”
Ben was surprised that was still under discussion. He said, “I can’t now. That’s where I screwed up. There’re only twenty seconds left on the clock if I restart it. The timing didn’t work. Chalk pussied out when his other boat drew our fire. He took longer than I expected to hit the beach and open the bomb.”
Dick said. “Then it’s my fault, too. Chalk was chatting with me too long. But it’s not too late.”
Ben was certain blood loss was starving Dick’s mind of oxygen. He said, “Sure it is. It’ll take more time than that to get you to a doctor. No way I can start it up again. We have to get you to the boat, collect the rest of the boys, and clear off. No way we can do it now. Not even if we took care of everything first, and then I restarted the bomb, and ran like hell. We’d all be way too close when it blew.”
Dick leveled a look at Ben. “Listen, son. Anybody tries to move me, I’m dead. We both know it. I’m not going anywhere.”
Rising desperation tried to close off Ben’s throat. “So we’ll bring help to you here.”
“No. This is it. Ben, I’m proud of you. Every question I ever had about who you’d become has been answered right here. Right now. The details don’t matter. You’ve got your whole life out in front of you. And some loot to stake you. One thing: what happened to that little LuAnna Bryce? You ever figure out she was sweet on you?”
Ben was flattened. There was so much to say, and no time. “We’ll be getting married soon. You need to be there for that.”
Dick smiled. For a moment he could see into the future. “I will be. Not like I hoped. Getting a chance to talk with you has been a dream come true, Ben, but it’s best you were on your way.” Dick paused for a moment. Ben thought his father was drifting out of consciousness until he said, “Why don’t you look for the living among the dead?”
Ben said, “I don’t get it.” In extremis, his father was now misquoting Jesus.
Dick snapped back. “Hand over that bastard’s glass eye. I’ll give you the time you need. You have to go now, or that fuckwit Chalk won’t see the show.”
“I don’t even know you. I can’t ditch you here.”
“Yes, you can. You will. As for knowing me, Christ, Ben. I’m just a Smith Islander like you. No worse than most. Not perfect, doncha know. Made so many mistakes. For my best parts, look inside yourself. Remember that. Forget the rest, or forgive if you can. Now please, let me finish what I started. You can give me that. You’re a soldier, Ben. You’re my son. I won’t ask again.”
Ben slowly reached into his pocket. Closed his hand around the smooth cool eye for the final time, and clasped it into his father’s hand.
CHAPTER 64
Chalk hared down the hotel’s big staircase. Tumbled unarmed down the front steps past Pallaton’s corpse. Some Islander resumed his role shotgunning holes in the dirt around Chalk’s feet to keep him moving.
As Chalk ran, he braced for the final barrage that would knock him to into the next world. Between shotgun blasts he heard the thuds of his own footsteps. His stertorous breath whistled in and out of lungs long unused to such exertions.
As he hustled into the dunes he bellowed, “Don’t shoot you heathen bitch! It’s me! Goddammit, it’s me!”
Chalk flew over the top of the last dune, his legs pinwheeled like a running broad jumper’s. He knew he would pay for this tomorrow, if he had one coming.
There was Tahereh, still alive. She had her gun at the ready, her eyes wide with wonder. Headlong flight was a shocking new facet in Chalk’s character. In fact, hauling ass was now at the top of Chalk’s brain stem. Heedless of which arm he grabbed, he yanked Tahereh along with him.
Unlucky for her, he clamped onto her lacerated wrist. Tahereh screamed, nearly passed out from the pain. She freed her hand with a twist, but ran after him. Chalk’s poncho and rain slicker lay in the sand, forgotten.