Chaingang

Royce parked and they walked to the center of the unearthed garbage and trash pit, shaking their heads the minute they got out of the vehicle. The smell was incredible.

“My God!” Mary whispered.

“Yeah.” The guards could not see them where they'd parked, and the landfill was below the slope of a bordering tree line. “You know what I keep thinking?” he said to her, sotto voce.

“Hnn?'

“Jeezus!” He saw the first of the containers. A group of colorful outer shells giving a tessellated, almost coherent pattern to the mosaic of industrial trash.

“What is it?'

“Hazardous materials—see?” He swallowed. Everything he saw only confirmed what he'd been about to say to her.

“I—” She was fighting to make sense out of this. The lettering was government-style yellow stenciling.

“When I said toxic waste—” It stuck in his throat. His mind was racing. Hydriodic acid. Potassium compounds. Sulfuric acid.

“Come on. Let's go.” He had to pull her away from the landfill.

“Toxic waste. You mean radioactive stuff? Plutonium and—” She had partially shut down. Too much information. Sam. Ecoworld. Poisons. Her system had reached Data Overload.

“Come on, Mary, move,” he said, in a voice that was several decibels louder than he meant it to be.

He was more scared than the night Happy had braced him, just easing into the ride, not slamming the door, waiting for Mary to get in, waiting for the dude to come around the nearest trees with his Steyr AUG, waiting to learn what the first 5.56-mm round would do when it tore through the door, the bullet tumbling from the expanding gasses and the punch through metal. He had a shotgun in the pawnshop—talk about being prepared! The car sounded as loud as a jet engine when he started it, and no time was wasted getting in the wind.

“What?” She demanded.

“It's a fucking drug lab!'

“Why—what makes you think that?'

“Believe me. I know. That's what those bastards are doing out here in Nowheresville—they're fixing to cook up ice.'

She was trying to re-join the conscious. She felt as if her brain had fallen asleep.

“Schmeck. Crank. Crack. Ice. Something very potent, maybe.” He shook his head as he drove. “I could never figure it out. I could never see it. It's a fucking lab! Probably the biggest ever built. Imagine—the scale of the thing. And they've brought in all the chemicals and stuff and walled it in, see, so later there's no problem starting to cook the junk. You've got guys unloading tools, pouring concrete, taking supplies off trucks every day—who's going to suspect anything if you go ahead and fill your lab? No wonder they've got armed guards.'

“But who would do it? ... What would be the point?'

“The point. What's the point every time? Money, of course.'

“I don't—'

“Mafia maybe, or the Latino families or—hell, what's the difference who? Somebody got a few business guys to front for ‘em. Found this pure virgin—” he meant the town “—carved a place out in the middle of the boonies— with nobody around to know from bupkes. Very fucking smart.'

“Why come out here?'

“Cause the people are stupid around here. Because it's a damn ghost town full of greedy business pricks and farmers. Because crank is a smelly, dangerous mess to cook—and so's some of the other stuff. Because—they came, they saw, they built. Now they can cook all the dope they want and call it chemical research and development. Probably charge tickets to watch them wash the by-products down into the water table. Jeezus fucking shit I should have known!'

“What should we do, Royce?'

“Listen. Listen to me: There's a lot I haven't told you. But this is too much. We're in too deep. You have to know. I got jammed up on a drug thing. I'll tell you the details later, when we have time. I promise. They ... the assholes I was involved with—they turned me. I had to set up a guy who was a big drug dealer, act like I was the same thing. Engineer a deal to bring down a major supplier—you follow?'

“No. I haven't followed any of this since we saw the chemicals. And what kind of drug people bury their incriminating—you know—containers in their own backyard?'

“The kind who don't really give a shit. The kind who have so much clout and such ironclad protection, they can thumb their nose at local law, for one thing.'

“But, Royce—I don't get this. You say you were setting up a drug dealer. Kerns said they were watching you—that you were a drug dealer and—'

“That fat shit doesn't know dick, okay? I'm a half-assed undercover narc, a former fuck-up who's getting over a bad cocaine dependency, and finally seeing a way to pull himself clear from a terrible situation. Just help me, baby, and don't bail. I need you. The people I work for—they gotta know about this. We got to tell them about it and get serious outside help. This could be so big—” He fell silent. Literally speechless. He began again.

“This Fisher guy—whatever his name is. Sinclair—the famous and elusive Christopher Sinclair. Fisher said he was in the Orient. What if the Japanese are behind this? Some megazillion Godzilla Megilla Gorilla consortium, backed by the Yakuza or somebody?'

“I don't see how you can know this is going to be a drug thing from finding some cans and things. Are you sure you—'

“It's what I do. This is what I do, dig?! I'm a fucking—” He could not quite bring himself to put a name on the sign he was wearing around his neck. He stopped and got coins and dialed a Memphis number.

“I'd like to talk with somebody about buying insurance please,” he whispered into the phone.

“Who's calling, sir?” A voice resonated into the other end of the line.

“A man who's insurance-poor.” He waited for the beep and gave his work number and read the dial tone off into the recording unit, hanging up. Within thirty seconds it pinged and he picked it up.

“I need to talk to Wilcox.'

“This is an insecure line, sir. Please use proper procedure,” the agent on the phones scolded him.

“I don't give a rat fuck how insecure this line is,” he seethed, “put that prick on the phone.” His poison threatened to melt the phone.

“Problems?” A familiar voice crackled in his ear.

“You'd better pray not. You got the makings of a three-hundred-acre processing lab in Waterton, Missouri. Don't say anything yet. Just get this down. Ecoworld, they call it. A construction project supposedly funded by a D.C.-area or New York-based company called World Ecosphere, Inc. Guy named Joseph Fisher. Probably bullshit front guy. Major money behind it. There's all kind of PC to bring in the Feds, a CLET and a HAMR unit—the whole works. Armed guards with H&Ks and silenced Steyrs, missing people, dead people—they—'

“Whoa. Whoa. Hold it! Take it easy. Slow down. What's this about missing people?'

Royce forced himself to slow down and run it down—every last nasty tidbit that he could remember, from the setup with Sam Perkins to the rumored serial killer.

“What about Happy and his biker pukes?” Royce asked.

“All under control.'

“You got Papa then?'

“Nailed and mailed, man. You did great.'

“What the hell was he doing with a scumball like Happy? I could never see how this punk got a rating.'

“Ruiz? He and the old man did a bit together in the joint. Happy did some chump time in ATC and Booneville, little felony-assault priors and crap—coupla voluntaries that got pled down and whatnot, and he fell on a technicality and ended up in the bucket again. Just a puke, but him and Papa became big buds, and the man set the little weenie up with some bikers. He's nothing. He's shit.'

“But have you busted him yet? He's gonna be jazzed to get me, man. What's the story?'

“I'll get right back to you on that, but I gotta go get on this. We'll send a team in—you say it's that righteous.