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Dropping my head, I withdrew my bloodied hand.

The guard nudged my cheek with his boot. “All right, Florence Nightingale, give me your badge.”

I scraped my hand under me and pulled my badge free.

The guard took my badge. “So you’re Felix Gomez? Get up.” He grabbed my collar. “You’re coming with us.”

CHAPTER 13

TWO SECURITY GUARDS LED me to the plant manager’s office. The taller of the guards hurried ahead and opened the door. Cradling his HK submachine gun in his left arm, he beckoned us to proceed.

I entered the office and walked across a plush maroon carpet to a chair in front of a massive wooden desk.

The plant manager, Herbert Hoover Merriweather, sat in a high-backed leather chair behind the desk. This was the first time I’d seen him in person, though I recognized his face from the official DOE photos that hung about the plant. Merriweather was a retired U.S. Navy captain, a former nuclear submariner-what DOE wags called a “sewer-pipe driver.”

Merriweather’s black complexion was as dark and bumpy as the creosote on a wharf piling. He had a squat face, a low crinkled brow, and a nappy flattop haircut that made you think that at least once in his naval career someone had slammed a deck hatch on his head and squashed his skull. His flat nose and wide nostrils accentuated the horizontal impression of his features.

He wore a navy-blue polo shirt that fit snug around his broad chest. The silhouette of a submarine and the designation “SSN 42” in gold thread decorated the left breast of his shirt. Like most newly retired officers, the beginnings of a paunch swelled his belly.

On the wall over his left shoulder hung a gold submariner’s badge, two dolphins flanking the cylindrical conning tower of a submarine. To the untutored eye it looked like a couple of carp fighting over a garbage can.

A tall glass case stood against the wall, next to a large picture window covered with slat blinds. Inside the case hung a white naval officer’s uniform with four gold stripes on the sleeve cuffs indicating the rank of captain. Badges and rows of military ribbons decorated the left breast of the coat.

Merriweather’s dark pupils tracked me as I approached the pea-green leather chair centered before his desk. He nodded to the guard, who turned sharply on his heels and left the office, closing the door.

I sat in the chair, careful so as to not cause the papers tucked inside my overalls to bend and crackle.

“Do you know why you’re here, Mr. Gomez?” Merriweather asked in a voice that sounded like gravel rattling down a pipe.

He was playing with me. This theater of bringing me into his office, with a couple of heavily armed goons outside the door was an intense mind-squeeze. He knew why I was here. They had caught me stealing the file and rather than confront me outright, they tightened the psychological screws.

I could remove my contacts and use vampire hypnosis to control him, but I was certain that I was under video surveillance. One suspicious move and those two guards would rush in like Dobermans and blast me to pieces with their submachine guns.

The papers hidden inside my overalls felt as hot as plutonium. I rubbed my sweaty palms across the dirty knees of my overalls. “I’m not sure.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

His question came at me with the intensity of a magnesium flare. So certain was I that he was referring to Dr. Wong’s file that I thought the papers in my shorts would burst into flames.

“I brought you here to broaden your perspective of what happened today. I don’t want you to report the wrong information to Lawrence Livermore.” Merriweather drew a deep breath and exhaled. His nostrils fluttered. “We experienced the unfortunate confluence of two separate situations. A criticality alarm and a live-fire terrorist drill.”

“You’re talking about the shooting?”

“There was the discharge of weapons. Yes.”

“What about the guy in front of me who got hit?”

“There were three…injuries,” he elaborated.

“Injuries? The man had a sucking chest wound.”

Merriweather knit his fingers together and leaned on his desk. “Are you a medical doctor?”

“No. I’m a health physicist.”

“Then you would appreciate the need to let a medical expert render the proper judgment.”

“The man didn’t have a sucking chest wound?” I held up my right index finger that was smeared with dried blood. “I used this finger to plug the hole.”

“Your point?”

Confused, I muttered, “My point…my point is that I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”

Merriweather pushed away from his desk. “Then I’m glad that I brought you here. A layman could look at what happened today and come away with the wrong conclusion. I’m not going to let anything happen on my watch that could tarnish either my own reputation or that of the Department of Energy.”

“What happened today was a little more than tarnish.”

“How so? My guards reacted appropriately. Nothing was compromised within the Protected Area.”

“What about the three casualties?”

“Injuries,” Merriweather corrected promptly. “The last time this happened-”

“This happened before?”

Merriweather frowned at my interruption. “The first time, the results were disappointing. Even I will admit to that. Six hundred and thirty-eight rounds fired. One injury. The second time, one hundred eleven rounds fired, two injuries. This time, ninety-six rounds expended, three injuries. By anybody’s measure, that’s a big improvement, in marksmanship alone.”

“That’s not much consolation for those who got shot.”

“I hate the word ‘spin,’ but I don’t want people to draw erroneous conclusions about what happened today.”

I remained silent, stunned by his logic.

Merriweather stood and walked over to a thick steel pipe behind him. He pressed a button on the wall. There was a hum as the pipe rose until handles and a viewfinder along its side appeared from a hole in the floor.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“A Mark 4 attack periscope. A memento from my days at sea.”

“How did it get here?”

“Not that it’s any concern of yours, but since you asked, it was paid for with discretionary funds.” Merriweather folded the handles down from the periscope. He grasped the handles, closed his left eye, and pressed his open right eye to the rubber gasket surrounding the viewfinder.

“In my navy career, it was my privilege to serve four tours aboard a submarine, the last as captain.” Merriweather paced in a circle and rotated the periscope. “I learned that, above all, loyalty was the most important attribute of a good sailor. A loyalty that manifested itself in selfless devotion, discipline, and dedication. Are you following what I’m saying?”

“That I should be loyal.”

“The ultimate test of loyalty, of the trust that our government and commander-in-chief set upon me, was to execute our nuclear attack plans when that the time came…” Merriweather stopped his pacing. “Regrettably, that opportunity never materialized.”

I didn’t regard nuclear holocaust as a missed opportunity.

“You would’ve been impressed by the thoroughness of our planning. After we expended our load of twenty-four Trident missiles, do you know what our orders would’ve been?”

“I’d say cruise to the Caribbean, break out the sunscreen, and water-ski after the fallout settled.”

Merriweather shook his head, oblivious to my attempt at humor. “No. Our orders would’ve been to rendezvous with a supply ship, reload, and continue the attack.”

Attack what? By that time most of the world would’ve been radioactive rubble.

“Can you understand the depth of my loyalty?” he asked.

“I can. But the next question is-loyal to whom?”