A Bomb Built in Hell

It wasn’t nearly as simple as he had represented it to the kid. But the kid had to be taught to think a few steps in advance, and this was the best way to teach him. Wesley calculated the cash he and Pet had hidden in various spots throughout the building, in stashes elsewhere in the city, and in various banks and safe-deposit boxes around the country. Wesley could put his hands on almost half a million and never leave the building, but he could hardly bank the whole thing and expect to live on the interest. Even this huge sum of money was nothing compared to what they had actually earned in their profession. Pet routinely discounted all payoffs from employers against the possibility that the money was somehow marked, in special serial sequence, or just plain bogus. The discounters charged seventy percent for brand-new money with sequential serial numbers all the way down to twenty percent for money that looked, felt, and smelled used. They, in turn, deposited the money with a number of foreign banks —banks of friendly South American governments ran a close second to those in the Caribbean. Pet had laughed out loud once before reading Wesley a Times article about the “unstable” governments in South America:

“Simple-ass educated motherfuckers! Listen to this, Wes. The fools talk about fucking predicting which countries is stable and which ain’t. Now any asshole could tell you which was which if he would just ask the discounters. Wherever they put their money, you know there ain’t going to be no fucking revolution.”

“I thought you said some of them banked in Haiti.”

“So?”

“So how about if that Poppa Doc takes it all and tells them to go fuck themselves?”

“No way. Why you think America sends troops in there like they do? So many rich motherfuckers got their money in that place, and it’s those same rich motherfuckers who bankroll the politicians. They’re all criminals.”

“Like us.”

“Wrong. Stealing to eat ain’t criminal—stealing to be rich is.”

“I wanted to get rich.”

“So’s you wouldn’t have to...?”

“Work ... yeah. Okay, old man.”

The money they got in exchange was perfect: old, used, no way to distinguish it or connect it with any job or payoff. “Steam-cleaned,” they called it. Such money always came with a lifetime guarantee—the lifetime of the laundryman.

So the half-million was clean. They could pass it all day, anyplace, without trouble. Pet had made some water-tight containers for the cash, and Wesley had memorized the locations. And the bank accounts and safe- deposit boxes all had books, keys, and papers to grease the way if necessary. So they didn’t have to kill to eat, to survive, even to live in what would amount to a certain degree of luxury and comfort. Wesley often thought about foreign countries, but never with longing. The only piece of land he would give his life to protect was an ugly old warehouse on Pike Slip.

So why kill Norden ... why meet him at all? What could another fifty thousand mean to either of them now?

But Carmine had built a bomb in hell—a bomb that had somehow learned how to explode and kill without destroying itself. Wesley sat on the roof, thinking: Is that the only fucking thing I can do now?

Carmine had spent hours examining, probing, destroying Wesley’s once-treasured genetic misconceptions. “The only color I hate is blue.” And Wesley spent still more hours wrestling with them on his own. What made Carmine hate the men who had perished in their custom-made gas chamber was easy to see. They had left him to die without a cause, without a culture—so the old man forged his own out of his hatred and Wesley’s need.

But what had made the men that Carmine hated? They weren’t born like that.

The only common thread in all the humans Wesley had been paid to kill had been their wealth or their threat to those who had wealth. That same thread ran through all the humans Wesley killed intentionally for himself and Carmine and Pet—but it wasn’t in every one of the victims. The woman on Sutton Place had died because she was a way to kill others—that she was rich was incidental. The Prince had had money—he must have had some serious money stashed someplace—but he was killed because he was an enemy. The people in the crowd on West 51st who got bombed by the grenade ... the junkies blown up by the booby-trapped bag ... whoever was within the fallout range of the building on Chrystie ... the methadone clinic ... the girl in the massage parlor...

War casualties. Very fucking casual.

When the jets strafed a village in Korea, they left everybody there on the ground, burning. Women breed children; children grow up to hunt their parents’ killers. Blood into the ground, seeding the next wave.

They hit a village way up north once, before Wesley got on the sniper team. When his squad charged the smoking ruins, Wesley was on the point. The lieutenant wasn’t shit, a ROTC-punk kid that the whole platoon hated, so Wesley just up and took the point because he wanted to stay alive. The silent backing of the rest was enough to educate even a human with a college degree on that miserable slice of earth.

Wesley crashed through first, but the place was empty. In the next-to-last hut, he heard a baby’s cry and he hit the ground elbows first, rifle up and pointed at Oriental-chest level. No more sound. Wesley crawled toward the hut ... slowly.

He saw the woman then; she looked about thirty and was coming at him with a tiny knife as quickly and quietly as she could. As he came to his knees, she launched herself at his face. Wesley spun his rifle and slammed it against the side of her head. She went down hard. He ran past her toward the hut; he got about ten feet when the woman landed on his back and the knife pricked into his upper shoulder. He rolled with the thrust—the woman went flying over his back, still holding the knife.

Wesley held the rifle at his waist and their eyes met ... and time stopped. He motioned with the barrel for her to split ... get into the fucking jungle before he blew her head off. It took her only a second to understand what he meant. The woman got to her feet holding the puny knife between herself and Wesley, as though it were a cross to a vampire. But instead of running into the jungle, she backed toward the hut.

Wesley’s ears picked up the sound of other soldiers systematically working their way through the burning