Greenberg smiled. “Not unless you had a speedboat.”
27
Cushing didn’t like any of it and he said so.
None of them liked Greenberg’s plan. What they wanted to do was quit wasting time and get on that speedboat of his and get out to the Sea of Mists and see what the compass showed them. The idea of letting Greenberg commit suicide for the sake of science was just unthinkable. Even the instinct to save their own asses wasn’t enough to make them jump at it, to leave this poor old man at the mercy of that… horror.
Even Elizabeth didn’t like it. “Please Mr. Greenberg… this is all ridiculous. You have to come with us.”
But Greenberg would not hear of it. “If there was a chance for me, dear, I would do just that. But… well I rather doubt this body has more than a few days left in it at most. I’m sick and you all know that. I’m terribly sick. Look at it this way,” he said sincerely. “I’m staying either way. If George can rig this bomb of his, then my death will be quick and painless, I won’t suffer anymore. Given that the alternative is the Fog-Devil turning my bones to liquid and my brain to soup, I’d say it’s my best chance. My death will be quick and maybe we can cancel that creature out of existence at the same time.”
After that, there was no more arguing.
“Let’s do this,” Menhaus said.
28
“Jesus,” Menhaus said when he saw the speedboat, “it’s a fucking cigarette boat. A racing boat.”
George thought it looked like a rocket. It was long and red and streamlined. It had to be nearly thirty feet in length and most of that was its nose which looked like a missile. Menhaus was real excited about it. When they got the lifeboat up to it, he jumped into the cigarette boat’s cockpit without hesitation.
“Drug runners use these babies in the Florida Keys,” he told them. “They can outrun Coast Guard cutters. I bet this baby can break a hundred miles an hour at full bore.”
Cushing just had one question as he looked at all the gauges in their anodized trim rings on the dash: “Can you pilot it? Can anybody pilot this sled?”
Menhaus was nodding. “Yeah, I think so. I’ve been on a few of these as a passenger, but, yeah, I can can make her go.”
George was thinking that the boat looked to be in nice shape. No encrustation or weeds as yet. It looked pretty new… save for a bloodstain on one of the white leather seats that he did not want to speculate on.
Menhaus was popping hatches, checking things out inside.
“You looking for drugs?” Cushing asked him.
“No… Jesus, look at that engine. A five-hundred horse Mercruiser coupled to a Bravo. Damn.”
Menhaus explained that when you raced these boats, you generally did it with three people. One guy doing the steering, another on the throttle, and another doing the navigating. He said it had a V-hull which made it plane over the top of the water.
“Okay,” he said, once the others were aboard and their equipment was loaded. He turned the key and punched the starter. The boat shook, sounded like it would never go, then the engines kicked in and all that power beneath them was thrumming.
“You feel up to playing navigator?” he asked Greenberg.
Greenberg honestly didn’t look up to playing anything, but he nodded.
When everyone was in their seats, they cast off the lifeboat and Menhaus took them through the weeds and fog. In ten minutes they were out into open water.
And their destiny.
29
Getting the satchel charges was child’s play.
The fog was still thick, it never really thinned much, but sometimes it was more transparent than at other times. In the glow of the fog and what passed for daylight in that place, George and Menhaus and Cushing quickly unpacked the crates of satchel charges. They went about it in a very business-like manner, trying not to think about Gosling or Marx though feeling them everywhere in the C-130 like maybe their ghosts had chosen this spot to haunt until time itself ground to a withering halt. Inside the crates there were thirty cases of satchel charges with two satchels per case, giving them a grand total of sixty charges.
“Hot damn,” George said. “This is going to be fireworks like you’ve never seen before.”
He told Cushing, out of range of Greenberg’s ears, that this much explosive… and he planned on using it all… would not only blow those drums of waste wide open and spit their poison for a mile in every direction, but it would probably turn that freighter into matchsticks at the same time.
When it was loaded, they ventured first to the Ptolemy where Greenberg had extra fuel. They filled the cigarette boat’s 100 gallon tank up and siphoned off another thirty gallons into plastic tanks. By that time, there was very little room to sit or stand in the cigarette boat.
Next stop, the freighter.
As they brought the cases of satchel charges up the boarding ladder, George was struck by a queasy feeling in his stomach. Part of it was that ship, he knew, and everything that had happened there. Even without it, that derelict was like a floating tomb. But it was more than just the ship or any of that.
And you know what it is, he told himself. You know damn well what it is. Things are going too smoothly here. Everything’s fitting into place like it’s pre-arranged and you’re just waiting for the bottom to drop. Because in this goddamn place, the bottom always drops sooner or later.
But he tried not to think.
Thinking was not a luxury he could afford at that moment. Night was coming soon and there was a lot to be done before the light faded. So he did not think of the Mara Corday and the positively bizarre chain of events that led him to this place on this day, because if he had… he figured he might burst out crying or start laughing. Maybe both at the same time.
“That’s the works,” Menhaus said. “Let’s rock and roll.”
They unpacked the individual satchel charges and respective priming assemblies. Then they got down to work. The satchel charges – M183 demolition charges, in army-speak – each contained some 16 blocks of C4 and five feet of det cord. The real work was breaking open the orange plastic crates that contained the drums of radioactive waste. That was a job unto itself. An hour later, they had some sixteen containers opened, thirty-two neon-yellow barrels ready. George and Menhaus went about arming the satchels, wiring them with primercord and blasting caps. When they had all sixty satchels ready, they attached them to the barrels using duct tape and rope, something the freighter had no lack of. After that, George connected six-inches of time fuse to each of the priming assemblies, leaving the time fuse and fuse igniters hanging outside the satchels. They they wired all the fuse igniters together with wire and tied a rope to that.
When Greenberg was ready, all he would have to do is pull the rope
… that would fire all the igniters simultaneously.
“And scratch one Fog-Devil,” George said. “Hopefully.”
“And one old man, too,” Cushing said.
“Try not to think about it, man.”
But Cushing was thinking about it. They were all thinking about it and trying not to, trying to turn their hearts very hard because how else were you going to get through something like that? How would you live with yourself
