“An exploration platform in the Arctic, once we get permission from Canada.”
“You’d rather be there now.”
Defloria laughed humorlessly. “I’m an InterOil employee, Dr. Larsen. I do what the company tells me to do.”
“Fair enough,” Eve said.
“Would you like to see the rest of the rig?”
“Just our living quarters and then you can take us back to the airport.”
THIRTY
The day after the Reverend Schlagel’s fire-and-brimstone speech about Eve Larsen and her God Project and her Nobel Prize, Billy Jenkins, thirty-four, and Terrence Langsdorf, thirty-two, had gathered a few things from their bungalow in McPherson and headed east. Driving nonstop, except to gas up, grab sandwiches and coffee, and make pit stops, they made it to Princeton’s Forrestal campus at eleven the next evening in a high state of excitement and agitation.
“God’s meth formula,” the reverend had said once, referring to his sermons. “A natural high for the work of the just.”
Terry had downloaded a map that pinpointed the GFDL building and Dr. Larsen’s office and lab. And they hoped with all their might that the bitch would be there, working late, so that they would have the blessed opportunity to teach her the real meaning of finding Jesus in your heart; the real meaning of salvation.
McPherson was simply not proactive enough for Billy or Terry, especially not for Billy who’d done three years as an Indiana Army National Guard at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The reverend’s sermons were exciting, no doubt about it, but that wasn’t enough for either man who’d worked the antiabortion Christian circuit for three years, blowing up abortion clinics, and coming within inches of killing one of the hateful, baby-killing doctors, at which time they had to go deep. Upper Peninsula Michigan at first, then Montana, and finally McPherson.
God had been talking to Billy since he was eight years old in Indianapolis. He supposed it was a defense mechanism against his drunken father who started physically and sexually abusing him about that time, and his mother who cared more about the soap operas on television and gin and tonics then her son’s well-being. But talking with God made him feel good about himself. If Jesus had been able to stand His betrayal and mock trial and torture and the horrible march up Calvary Hill hauling that terrible heavy cross and the crown of thorns and the crucifixion and even the wound in His side not to mention the nails — spikes actually — in His hands and feet, then Billy Jenkins could put up with a little abuse. Because, like Jesus, he figured that one day he too would be resurrected and take his rightful place at the right hand of God Almighty, though sometimes he got a little confused in which order and just where those blessed events might take place.
Terry was just about of the same mind, because he’d come from a very similar background, except that his drunken abusive fathers were the ones he’d encountered on his journey through the Georgia foster home system, and his military service was with the regular army in Afghanistan. He’d received an other than honorable discharge for the use of excessive force against civilian targets. Even his gung ho platoon sergeant compared it to what his old man had told him about a place in Nam called Mai Lai. He’d met Billy on the antiabortion circuit and the two had gone to ground together. Billy was called Bo Peep because wherever he went Terry was sure to follow.
Billy backed into a slot in the rear of the lab, only a few lights showing in the three-story building, and only a handful of cars in the lot. They’d spotted no campus security or local pigs and the ten-year-old Volvo they were driving fit right in.
“In and out in five,” Billy said. “Ten at the most. We’re just sending a message tonight.”
“Yessir, just a righteous message,” Terry agreed.
And sometimes Billy thought that his friend was just a few bricks short of a load. But he was loyal.
They took a crowbar and a five-pound sledgehammer from the trunk, and moving silently went to the glass door which luck would have it was not locked, something that surprised them. But then scientists had the reputation of being absentminded.
Dr. Larsen’s office was in the west corner of the ground floor, but her lab and wave tank, where they figured they could cause the most damage in the shortest amount of time, took up most of the basement. Places like this were always controlled by a computer or computers, easy targets.
The main hall was deserted, all the office doors closed, only the corridor lights showing. They’d brought balaclavas just in case they ran into someone, and they pulled them on as they started down the stairs. Terry was a short, but stocky ordinary-looking guy, but Billy looked like a linebacker, with broad shoulders and a thick, beefy neck, and a full head of thick blond hair that since the service he’d kept long as a source of pride. But it was dead giveaway in operations like these, so whenever possible he went in with at least a lid.
A long unadorned corridor, dimly lit, ran the length of the basement. Doors with frosted glass panels lined the hall, some marked only with numbers, but near the end, one was marked DR. EVELYN LARSEN, NOAA.
They stopped and Billy put his ear to the door to listen. Some machinery was running inside, barely audible, but he couldn’t hear anyone talking or moving around and he looked over his shoulder and gave Terry a nod.
“In and out in five.”
“Righteous.”
For just an instant Billy wanted to stop and ask his friend what he thought God was all about, at least in terms of what they’d been doing with the abortion clinics and now this. But he let it go and tried the door, which was unlocked. Stupid, the fleeting thought crossed his mind, but then he pushed the door open and went inside.
The lab was large, at least big enough for a dozen or more people to work at what were computer stations each at the heads of or in the middle of benches on which sat a myriad of strange-looking equipment, some of it mechanical, but most of it electrical or electronic, or in three cases on small tables in the middle of the tiled floor in front of large pieces of complicated equipment that rose to the ceiling. At the far end of the room, which measured at least one hundred feet in length, a large plate-glass window looked out on the wave pool.
“The computers first,” Billy said, and he started forward, when a young woman seated at one of the terminals halfway across the room suddenly jumped up. He’d completely missed her.
“Who are you?” the woman said, a girl actually in Billy’s estimation. Early twenties at the most.
“We’re here to set things right, in the Lord’s name, darlin’,” Billy said, striding directly toward her.
But she stood there, rooted like a deer in the middle of a highway, caught in the headlights of an oncoming car, until at the last moment she shrieked something, turned on her heel, and sprinted to the end of the room and out a door Billy hadn’t noticed into the wave pool room.
His military career and later his abortion clinic operations had taught him to beware of loose ends that could unravel the most carefully laid plan. The young woman surely fit that bill, but she stopped at the edge of the wave pool and looked through the window at him. Stared at him, and he had to sort of admire her courage, stupid or not.
He took a step forward, raising the sledgehammer, but she didn’t budge. It was as if she was taking pictures of him, and he was of a mind to say the hell with the lab and go after her. Girls like that needed lessons in humility; it’s what his dad had tried to teach his mother.
But something crashed behind him, and he turned in time to see Terry swing his crowbar into a computer CPU sitting on the floor beneath its station, then giggle like a girl. When he turned back, the young woman at the side of the wave pool was gone.
Terry smashed another computer, and Billy turned to his part of the work. “In and out in five,” he said.
“Righteous,” Terry agreed.
But in Billy’s mind it surely could have been more than righteous, it would have been fine to lay his hands on the young woman.
THIRTY-ONE
