“I’ve been asleep.”
“You’ve been asleep for three days?”
“Correct.”
“Where?”
“At the Motel 6. Real nice place.”
“Sir, no one sleeps for three whole days.”
“I do. I get these dang migraines. Once I get ’em, I just pop a bunch of Dalmane pills and nod on out. If I wake up, I take another handful.
“And what exactly are you doing?”
“Delivering doughnuts.”
“To an empty town?”
“Well, see, here’s my thinking on that. Are you familiar with the franchise system?”
“Franchise system.”
“Yeah. My thought is this. I’m a baker. I bake the best damn doughnuts west of the Mississippi. And my business plan is to take my product direct to the consumer. I’ve delivered product in Junction City, Wichita, hell, all the way to Topeka. Don’t charge a nickel. I just deliver the boxes and let folks discover them for themselves. Now, I’ve got my Web-site address right on top of every box. People eat them, like them, and want more. That’s my strategy. Right now, I’m a one-man distribution system. But pretty soon, hell, folks are going to be knocking my door down. I’m going to open up a string of Happy Baker Doughnut Shoppes from here to Canada.”
“They do smell pretty darn good back there.”
“You see? That’s just what I’m saying! And you know what? They taste better than they smell. I’ve got some fresh glazed back there, you and your partner want to try a couple.”
“Hey, Gene, you want a warm doughnut?” the young cop said to his older, and much fatter, partner.
“Damn right I do, Andy,” Gene said. “You can smell them things a mile away.”
“There you go,” Paddy said with a smile. “Let me go around and open up the truck. We’ll have us a nice hot breakfast up here on the hill. I got a thermos of steaming black New Orleans French Quarter coffee back there, too.”
“Well, I guess we can do that. Not much else we can do. Andy, go back and get on the radio, will you? Tell them we’ve got a gentleman up here needs assistance, and we’ll be standing by in case, you know, anything happens.”
Happy climbed out and opened up the back. He slid the loading platform out and opened up a box of glazed, a box of cream-filled, and a box of jelly.
The two cops dug in, and while they did, he poured all three of them steaming cups of black coffee.
“Dang!” Andy said, polishing off a glazed in two bites. “That is one hell of a doughnut.”
“You feel happy, Andy?”
“I sure do.”
“Good. ’Cause that’s my new advertising slogan. ‘Eat Happy.’ You like it?”
“Love it. Can I have another one of the cream-filled?”
Ten minutes later, they were all sitting on the platform, talking football, whether or not the Chiefs would make the playoffs, and, of course, the war on terror. Andy said he thought the whole evacuation thing was a crock. Something dreamed up to scare ordinary Americans and make a laughingstock out of a whole town. That was the town consensus, he said.
“Yeah?” Paddy said. “Well, maybe you’re right. Will you excuse me a sec? I got to get my smokes. Call me crazy. I can’t drink my morning coffee without my smokes.”
“Go ahead. We’ll hold down the fort back here. See if the town blows up,” the young cop, Andy, said.
“Yeah,” Gene said. “I can hardly wait. What a damn deal we got here. If she blows, we’re screwed. If she doesn’t, we’re a national joke.”
It was five-fifty-five A.M. when Paddy unlocked the glove compartment and took out the rectangular black plastic box that had been sent from Moscow, through Iran, and delivered to him by courier in Miami a week ago today. It represented the very latest in remote-detonation technology. Every Zeta machine built had a GPS broadcast device built in, as well as the eight ounces of puttylike explosive called Hexagon. The machines also broadcast an ID number, much like the squawk system used by aircraft. So you always knew which machines were where before you decided to arm them or detonate them.
The box Paddy held in his hand contained dual microprocessors in addition to the radio-signal command that would cause the Zetas to explode. The system was currently preprogrammed to detonate only those devices now inside the city limits of Salina, Kansas.
“Hey, Happy,” Andy called, “c’mon back. You’re going to miss her if she goes.”
“Yeah, right,” Gene said, laughing, “Miss the whole shebang. The whole damn shooting match.”
It was five-fifty-nine A.M., coming up on six A.M.
“I won’t miss it, Andy. I can’t find my damn smokes, that’s all. You got any?”
“Hell, no. Cops can’t smoke for insurance reasons. Besides, my wife’d up and kill me she thought I was puffing on them cancer sticks. Why, she’d-”
Paddy was walking back toward the rear of the truck with his finger on the button, eyes glued to the red digital display that was spinning down to zero.
You could feel the ground shaking, even up here on Hickory Hill. The three men stood and stared down in wonder at the little town as it exploded. It was like watching a movie of a building coming down, only it was all of the buildings, all of the neighborhoods, and they were all coming down at once, sending a huge cloud of smoke rolling skyward as the noise and sheer force of the blast came rolling up the hill and rocked the truck, spilling the coffee from all three cups and sending the doughnut boxes flying off the back of the truck.
“Holy shit!” Andy screamed, walking out to the edge of the overlook. “They freakin’ did it! The goddamn A-rabs blew up our whole goddamn town!”
Fires broke out everywhere. Power lines sparked, ignited, and came down, writhing like angry snakes in the streets. Underground gas lines exploded up through asphalt intersections, the power station was sparking into yet another inferno, and every last filling station in town had turned into a brilliant fireball that climbed into the dawn sky and lit up what used to be Salina like the Fourth of July fireworks every summer up at Hickory Hill.
Paddy had his snubbie out, was looking down the barrel at the backs of the two Kansas policemen. He could easily put a bullet in each of them, shots to the back of the head, walk away. He raised the pistol, put a pound of pressure on the trigger…and then changed his mind.
Having admired his work from afar, Paddy climbed up into his truck and stuck the key into the ignition. He had a long way to go and a short time to get there. He was catching the next thing smoking out of Topeka to Miami. There was a lot to be done before
He left Officers Andy and Gene standing there at the edge of the bluff, looking down at what was left of the town they’d both grown up in, tears already drying on their cheeks.
Happy had mixed emotions about sparing the lives of Officers Andy and Gene of Salina PD. But, but, but. He was a professional. He didn’t kill people for fun. Only for money. Or for a good reason. And he could see no good reason to off these two guys. If the two cops identified a crazy baker delivering doughnuts to a deserted town, so what? He’d be long gone before anyone could tie him to the multiple explosions that had flattened the place. And he seriously doubted anybody ever would.
Anyway, by the time anybody had a clue what had blown Salina to smithereens, the world would be an entirely different place. A lot of America might look like the blackened ruins smoldering at the bottom of the hill. And Happy? Hell, he’d be sailing the skies above the blue Atlantic, enjoying the many pleasures of the floating pussy palace on what promised to be a very interesting voyage to Stockholm.
The Happy Baker, his mission accomplished, silently rolled away, gone in a flash.
Taking care of business, baby.
TCB.
