and me as I entered.
Madox instructed, “John, down.”
I lay facedown on a plush blue carpet. On a professional level, I appreciated Carl and Bain’s military precision, and their textbook handling of two prisoners who, though shackled, unarmed, and outnumbered by three armed men, they understood to be potentially dangerous.
On the downside of that, these guys weren’t giving me an inch to wiggle out of this.
Using shackles instead of handcuffs was a judgment call, and I could see why Madox had gone with the shackles up to this point.
The only real mistake they’d made so far was not finding the BearBangers, which was why the police strip- searched prisoners and examined the body cavities. Now that we were in the dungeon, that might very well be Madox’s next move, along with handcuffs-and that would be our signal to act.
Meanwhile, Madox and Carl seemed to be busy with something other than us, but I caught a glimpse of Luther near the door with his M16 raised and pointed, and the muzzle sweeping back and forth between me and Kate. I didn’t see the canvas bag, which Luther had apparently stowed somewhere along the way. Therefore, the only weapons in this room were the ones we saw pointed at us.
On the subject of weapons, Carl’s choice of an automatic shotgun in confined quarters was also very professional-bullets from high-powered rifles have a tendency to pass through people and hit other people you don’t necessarily want to hit, then ricochet and become dangerous to the shooter and his friends.
In fact, down here, Luther’s M16 was almost as dangerous to him as it was to us. Nevertheless, I didn’t want him firing it at us.
As for Madox’s Colt.45, it was okay in confined quarters with masonry surfaces. It would put a big hole in you at close range, and its exit velocity wasn’t usually fatal to anyone on the other side of the intended victim. Also, if it hit a concrete wall, its blunt-nosed bullet was more likely to splatter than ricochet.
Having analyzed all that, my conclusion was that Kate and I were basically fucked. In fact, the BearBangers were getting smaller and smaller in my mind.
Madox said, “On your knees. Hands on your heads.”
I lifted myself into a kneeling position, with my hands on my head, and I saw Kate do the same. We were about ten feet apart in the dimly lit room, and we made eye contact. She dropped her face and eyes down toward where the BearBanger was stuck, somewhere in her jeans or panties, and probably behind her zipper. She glanced at me, and I gave a slight shake of my head.
I looked around the room as my eyes adjusted to the dim light.
Madox was sitting with his back to us at some sort of electronic console that was against the far wall. I assumed that was the ELF transmitter. Eureka. Now what?
Luther was still standing near the door, covering Kate and me with his rifle.
Carl wasn’t visible, but I heard him breathing behind us.
The room itself was a sparsely furnished and functional-looking office. This was obviously Bain’s atomic-war headquarters, where he could spend the day making phone calls to see if anyone was alive out there after the Big One. He probably had a ticker tape, too, to see how his defense and oil stocks were doing.
I never understood, during the ’70s and ’80s, why people wanted to survive a nuclear holocaust. I mean, other than some cans of chili and a case of beer, I never made any long-range, post-nuclear war plans.
But to be fair to Bain, this was mostly his ex-wife’s idea. I wondered what became of her. Wood chipper?
Anyway, I noticed, too, that mounted on the paneled wall to the right of the electronic console were three flat screen television monitors on swing arms. They looked new and out of place in this 1980s time capsule.
To the left of the console was a bank of six older television sets, and they were all lit, but it was hard to see the black-and-white images on them, which kept shifting. I realized these were security monitors, and I made out the gatehouse on one screen, then an image of the lodge taken from the gatehouse, which then shifted to an image of the generator building, and so forth.
Therefore Madox would know if the cavalry arrived, and so would Kate and I. But so far, everything out there in Custer Hill land looked normal, peaceful, and quiet.
A recurring unhappy thought was that even if the state police and the FBI busted through the gate and kicked in the doors of the lodge, no one would find us down here.
And even if Schaeffer remembered that there was supposed to be a fallout shelter somewhere, he’d probably be looking in the basement of the lodge itself, and he might very well mistake some room down there for a fallout shelter.
For damned sure he wasn’t going to find the hydraulic floor under the card table, and even if by some miracle he did, it would take hours or longer to get an explosive ordnance team down here to blast open that vault door.
Wow. We were double fucked. There was only one way out of this mess, and that was the way I should have chosen this afternoon-this bastard and his buddies had to die, here and now, before they killed us, and before Madox detonated those four nukes in Sandland.
Madox swiveled around and asked me, “Do you understand what’s happening? John?”
“I think we established that you’re going to send an ELF wave to four receivers that are attached to nuclear detonators in four suitcase bombs.”
“Correct.” He added, “I’ve actually begun the transmission.”
He said, “Come closer. On your knees. Come on.”
Kate and I moved on our knees closer to the console, then Carl, behind us, ordered, “Stop.”
We stopped.
Madox asked, “Can you see these three little windows?”
We looked to where he was pointing to a black box on top of the console. The first window in the box was spinning a dizzying array of red LED letters, and Madox said, “I’ve sent out the first letter of the three-letter code that will detonate the four devices.” He explained, “I could have put a time clock in each of the nuclear suitcases, but then the detonation time would be preset, and out of my control. So I chose a command-detonation mode, meaning my ELF radio, which is perfect for this task, and foolproof.” He added, “I finally got my money’s worth out of this ELF station.”
I told him, “You know, Bain, you can explore for oil with ELF waves.”
He smiled and said, “I see you’ve done some homework.” He informed me, “I don’t need to explore for oil. I already know where it is, and the present owners are about to be nuked.”
“Why are you doing this?”
He looked at me and replied, “Ah, the ‘why’ question.” He lit a cigarette. “Why? Because I’m fucking sick and tired of a succession of ball-less presidents kissing Arab ass. That’s why.”
I figured he’d kissed a little Arab ass himself, and this was payback. I figured, too, I’d go along with him, and said, “You know, Bain, Kate and I see this shit every day in our job. Illegal Muslim immigrants being treated like they were constitutional lawyers, suspected terrorists all lawyered up and threatening to sue for false arrest.” I went on with my litany of problems on the job, but oddly, Madox didn’t seem that interested. I concluded with, “I understand your frustrations, but exploding four nuclear weapons in Sandland is not going to solve the problem. It’ll make it worse.”
He laughed, which I thought was strange.
Then, he swiveled around again and punched a few keys on his keyboard. He explained, “Each letter needs to be encoded with a four-letter code group.”
“Right,” I agreed. “Can we talk about this?”
He didn’t seem to hear me, and he appeared intent on reading his dials and listening to something on a set of headphones that he held briefly to his ear.
I noticed that the first window in the black box had stopped spinning letters, and it was locked into a bright red “G.”
Kate spoke up. “When the state police and FBI get here, they’re going to knock out your generators, and the antenna poles.”
Madox was still playing with his electronics, and replied without turning around, “Kate, first, they haven’t even
