And then a small car—its headlights were off—lunged out of the darkness by the road. Samuel sensed the car’s approach at the last second and turned to face it just as the car drove him into the chain link. Samuel’s arms were thrown out wide as the gate bulged inward beneath the thrusting force of the car, but the chain held and Samuel’s legs were pinned against the mesh by the car grill. He pitched forward from the waist and sprawled across the car’s hood. Arlette watched in stunned surprise, her mouth open in a cry that went unheard beneath the clanging alarm.
Then the driver’s door flung open, and a crop-haired man lunged for Arlette and seized her arm. She tried to wrench free, but he brought his other hand up, with a small pistol. He shoved the barrel into Arlette’s throat, and she froze, her mouth still wide in a frozen scream.
Jason stared at the scene, the heavy plastic container still hanging from his arms. The ringing alarm filled his skull. He couldn’t seem to move. Astonishment and terror froze him to the spot. The driver was one of the deputies, Jason saw. He remembered seeing the little man during the deputies’ attack yesterday.
The little deputy was shouting at Arlette. Jason couldn’t hear the words over the urgent alarm. But when the deputy swiped Arlette across the face with his little pistol, hot rage surged through Jason’s veins. He dropped the heavy container on the ground and ran for the gate.
The deputy backed Arlette to the side of the van, was pressing her against the driver’s door. Jason crouched behind an old Allison-Chalmers tractor parked near the fence. He saw headlights reflect off the little black gun in the man’s hand, felt helplessness jangle through his mind like the clap of the bell. He looked for a weapon, saw nothing in the darkness.
Jason saw a violent movement, the deputy punching Arlette with the pistol, and he heard Arlette scream over the clamor of the alarm. Jason’s nerves wailed. He clenched his fists. All he had to do, he thought, was get the man to let go of her for just a second.
He climbed the tractor, crossed over the seat and stood on the big rear tire next to the fence. The wind flurried at him, whipped his hair. The deputy was twenty feet away along the fence. He had Arlette pinned to the van with his left hand around her throat; the right hand brandished the pistol in her face. He was turned away from Jason. “Where are they, bitch?” The demand was barely audible above the clattering alarm. “Where are they all hiding?” Arlette cringed away from the pistol. There was blood on her face.
Jason took a giant stride into space, landed on the top rail of the fence. For a moment he balanced wildly, pigeon-toed on the rail, arms spinning like windmill blades, and then he managed to shift one foot and gained a firm purchase. Weird triumph sang through his soul.
Clicked in!
He took one step along the pipe, then another. Then a third. The deputy kept howling questions, prodding Arlette with the barrel of the gun.
Landfakie, Jason thought as he took another step. Landfakie and mule-kick the son of a bitch. The deputy must have seen Jason out of the corner of his eye, because he turned and looked up just as Jason took his last, swift step. Jason pivoted on the rail, saw little pebble irises in the wide, astonished eyes as he hurled himself into space. Jason saw the little gun swing toward him as, spinning in the air, he lashed backward and downward with both feet. “Run!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. Run. Everybody run.
It felt like a giant hand slapping him out of the sky. Suddenly he was on the ground, amid moist grass, teeth rattling from the impact. He’d brought the deputy down, too, because the man was lying there with a half-dazed expression on his face. Arlette stood over them both, staring. “Run!” Jason screamed again. He saw the hand and the gun outflung on the grass and launched himself at the weapon, putting his weight on the deputy’s arm. He sank his teeth into the man’s wrist. The flesh had a strange, metallic taste. The deputy gave a shout and punched Jason in the body with a fist. Agonizing pain crackled along Jason’s nerves. He tried to hang on, but he felt himself growing weaker, weaker with each clang of the alarm, with each impact as the man’s fist hammered into his side. When the arm and the gun slipped out of his grasp at last, it felt like trying to hold flowing water in his two hands. Concussions slapped at Jason’s ears. He felt himself wince with each shot, felt tears squeezed from his eyes. He couldn’t seem to breathe. Couldn’t breathe at all.
Jason blinked tears away. To his surprise he was looking at the deputy again. The deputy was lying on the ground. And he was dead, small blank irises staring at the sky from his white, startled eyes.
“Well, excuse me, then, General,” the towboat captain barked. “I was told to pick up a barge filled with nuclear waste that had got loose during the quake. Well that’s what I come for, so when I was directed to a barge filled with nuclear waste I picked it up. And now this guy says it was the wrong barge of nuclear waste, and acts like it’s my fault.”
The towboat captain was a red-faced man in a baseball cap. His chin bristled with gray unshaven whiskers. He glared at Emil Braun, the power company executive. Braun glared back through his thick spectacles.
“This is the empty barge,” Braun said. “Those containers haven’t been filled with waste yet.”
“Why is that my fault?” the captain demanded.
“Wait a minute,” Jessica said. “The radwaste is still missing?” Emil Braun had been sent by the company to take charge at Poinsett Island in the absence of Larry Hallock. The towboat and its captain had been near Poinsett Island before the quake, on their way to retrieve the barge of nuclear waste that had just been unloaded from the Auxiliary Building. On the night of the quake, when the few people remaining on the island had finally realized that the barge was missing, Jessica responded by sending out helicopter patrols to scour the river downstream from the power station. A drifting barge had been located toward morning, and remained in the choppers’ spotlights until the towboat could take it in charge.
Now Emil Braun, having checked the numbers, was assuring everyone that the wrong barge had been rescued.
“The captain picked up the wrong barge,” he told Jessica.
“I picked up the barge y’all told me to,” the captain said. Jessica reached for her cellphone. “Can you give me the numbers of the barge we’re looking for?” Braun looked at a clipboard filled with computer printout. “You bet,” he said. Jessica gave the orders for a complete helicopter sweep of the river between Poinsett Island and Baton Rouge. Then she told the towboat captain to get his boat on the river and be prepared to undertake another rescue.
“I picked up the boat y’all told me to,” the captain said. “I don’t got to pick up another till my company gets another contract.”
“You picked up the wrong barge!” Braun insisted. “The contract wasn’t filled!”
“Enough!” Jessica said in her major general voice.
There was silence. Jessica looked at Braun. “Okay,” she said. “What happens if this radwaste gets into the river?”