Ground Zero td-84 Read online

  "No," Smith said flatly. "At the moment, our evidence is circumstantial. But their appearance on the La Plomo scene smacks of exactly the kind of publicity stunt they're known to indulge in."

  "My God!" the President said hoarsely. "Is that what you think this is all about-a publicity stunt?"

  "It is a theory. They were badly discredited last year when two of their members were injured in a bombing that turned out to have been the work of other members of the group who advocate using violence to protect the environment. They need to have their credibility restored. I am assuming Dirt First!! obtained the Lewisite, deployed it, and then showed up to reap the publicity benefit of an apparent chemical-storage accident."

  "The girl who built the bomb. You think she's connected with these loonies?" "Unknown," Smith admitted. "I suspect otherwise. The La Plomo event has drawn a great number of protest groups. She may have been just another of those. But her appearance was unfortunate. My best estimate is that Dirt First!! exhausted their entire gas supply on La Plomo. The neutron bomb unfortunately represents a clear substitute for poison gas."

  "You think they intend to use it?"

  "We have to assume the worst-case scenario. You see, Mr. President, it all ties together."

  "Except for one thing."

  "And that is?"

  "If these people are so committed to the environment, why the hell are they going around doing these crazy things? They say they want to save the redwoods, then drive spikes into them as if they're leafy vampires. They claim their goal is to preserve the environment for future generations, but they don't seem to give a hang about the generation trying to make a living today. Can you explain any of that to me?"

  "No, I cannot," Smith said crisply. "I will get back to you when I have progress to report on either front."

  "Thank you, Dr. Smith," said the President. "God bless."

  Smith returned to his computer and began to input commands that would be routed to the FBI as if coming from the Department of Justice.

  Within twenty minutes an FBI forensic sketch artist was parked at a drawing board, an official report tacked to one corner and an open line to a GAO auctioneer in hand. Wondering what was so important, he developed a charcoal sketch of the person described to him.

  This image was soon faxed to FBI branches nationwide.

  In Rye, New York, Smith watched his own copy of the FBI sketch come off his machine.

  The man looked to be between forty and fifty years old, with short hair and what looked to be an old hippie-style headband circling his forehead. Even the hair over his ears stuck out a little under the headband's pressure.

  The man did not otherwise look like a typical headband wearer, so Smith read over the artist's remarks in the left-hand margin.

  There it was noted that the distinct line was not a headband, but a pressure impression. The artist speculated it was created by a habitually worn headband or possibly a hat.

  Otherwise, the man was undistinguished.

  "Dirt First!!" Smith said softly, nodding to himself. He dropped the sheet of fax paper into an oldfashioned wire basket so that it settled into place with mathematical precision.

  Smith returned to his computer, wrists resting on the edge of the keyboard. He got down to work, after which not even his shoulders moved. If the wall behind him had been gray, he would have been virtually invisible.

  In a larger sense, he was.

  Chapter 11

  Fabrique Foirade was determined to save the defenseless California desert scorpion.

  After his humiliation in La Plomo-where he was all but ignored by the press because of an under-thirty gloryhound with a neutron bomb, and thwarted by other reactionary elements-he had led his troops away.

  "Where are we going, Fab?" they had asked.

  "Underground," he replied, glowering his frustration.

  "But we are underground. We're in the great tradition of Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, may they rest in peace."

  "Jerry's not dead," someone whispered.

  "He's worse than dead," Fabrique snapped. "He's a stockbroker. And I know we're underground. We're going deeper than underground. We're going subterranean."

  By subterranean, the shock troops of Dirt First!! discovered that a Ramada Inn in Kirkland, Missouri, was meant. They checked in by MasterCard.

  They would have used paper money, but they had read that paper was made from wood pulp, which came from trees. It was news to them, but the thought of contributing to the felling of one proud pine by trafficking in folding money was too much for them to bear. After a soul-searching argument, they went with the hated nonbiodegradable plastic tool of capitalism. But only after Fabrique had pointed out that if paper money was out, so were paper checks.

  "We're morally excused from paying the MasterCard bill," he concluded. "So there."

  At the Ramada, they subjected themselves to hot showers. Some members, long underground, had to be forcibly pushed into the stalls and held down as the sacred soil was drummed from their skins by despised filtered water.

  When it was over, they were clean. And unrecognizable.

  "Fabrique, is that you?"

  "I'm not sure. I don't smell like myself. Joyce?"

  "This is amazing. You're a girl. I thought you were a guy!"

  Acquaintances renewed, they squatted in an Indian circle to plot strategy.

  "We failed," a woman moaned. "None of the cameras were pointed at us." Her greenish teeth were bared in disgust.

  "There are other cameras," Fabrique said reassuringly. "Other events. La Plomo ultimately doesn't matter because no trees died, only farmers, and the only animals that were affected were cows. We're not committed to saving the cows."

  "But cows are good," someone pointed out. "I used to drink milk before I went vegetarian."

  "The world is full of cows," Fabrique said wisely. "We've gotta save the unprotected species first. We'll save the cows later. If they need it."

  "But what unprotected species? We've saved most of the important ones. Even those far out addled owls."

  "We haven't saved the desert scorpion."

  Squatting on the rug, the members of Dirt First!! exchanged quizzical glances. There were more than a few double takes at the many unfamiliar scrubbed faces.

  "Is it endangered?" Fabrique was asked.

  "Not yet. But soon it will be. Because of one man."

  "What man?"

  "The grinning pig we saw at the event."

  Fabrique flipped a business card into the center of the powwow circle. It landed with a heavy plop.

  Someone picked it up, curious.

  "Oh, this is one of those condom cards that goofy guy was handing out. Condominia? Is that plural for 'condoms'? I thought 'condoms' was plural for 'condoms'."

  " 'Condominia' is plural for 'condominiums,' " Fabrique said gravely. "And condos are the greatest threat to the desert ecosystem since water."

  A chorus of gasps raced around the room. Everyone knew what a terrible threat to the natural order water was. Their hair was still wet.

  "And by far," Fabrique continued, his voice ringing with indignation, "the most important species to walk the desert is the poor defenseless scorpion. Until this man, this Swindell, came along. I read about him. He's displaced the scorpion population for his stupid Condome complex. And to serve who? Mere people. The scorpion is rightful lord and master of the desert, and we're gonna put him back on his sandy throne!"

  Fabrique Foirade raised a righteous fist.

  "I move that Dirt First!! declare war on this Swindell defiler person," he shouted.

  "I second that!"

  The motion passed unanimously. But then, they always did.

  "Then it's settled," Fabrique Foirade said, standing up. "We go to California, to the high desert, to rescue the oppressed scorpion! Kilmer, you make the plane reservations. Standby, of course. Joyce, you alert the media. Karen, you have charge of the spikes."

  "But, Fab, honey. What'll we need
spikes for? We're going to the desert, where there aren't any trees."

  That stopped Fabrique Foirade a moment. His long pause held the others raptly. It meant he was thinking-always an event.

  "But they do have cacti," he shouted at last. "We'll spike the cacti! If that defiler left any standing."

  Through the miracle of nonbiodegradable plastic, the vanguard of Dirt First!! ecowarriors found themselves, a mere seven hours later, in Los Angeles, where they put in a call to their legal representative, Barry Kranish. Collect.

  "Barry, babe," Fabrique said, "you'll never guess, man. We're on the most right-on crusade."

  "Don't tell me," Barry Kranish said sharply.

  "Don't you want to hear how the La Plomo thing went?"

  "I know how it went. The six-o'clock news is full of that retro-sixties girl with the neutron bomb. I think I recognized you in the background, spiking a tree, though. Nice going."

  "What we got now is better than dead farmers. Bigger than neutron bombs. Scorpions! We're going to stop that cruel Condome project they're building out by Palm Springs."

  "I don't want to hear it," Kranish said hastily. "Just try not to get arrested. Now that we're into plastic, I won't be able to bail you out like before. Most judges don't take plastic."

  "And Dirt First!! doesn't take any shit off the Man!" crowed Fabrique Foirade. "See you on the eleven-o'clock news!"

  But before Fabrique Foirade could get on the eleven-o'clock news he first had to get out into the desert. Plastic got him from Los Angeles by small plane to Palm Springs Municipal Airport and the forbidding edge of the desert.

  After that, it became tricky. To ride on the plastic magic carpet required that there be someone to honor it. Unfortunately, there was no one in Palm Springs from whom they could buy, beg, or borrow a car.

  "Look, all we wanna do in drive out into the desert," Fabrique explained to the Sure Lease rental agent.

  The agent was firm. "Sorry, we don't accept MasterCard. American Express, sure. Visa, definitely. Cash, absolutely. MasterCard, no."

  Fabrique pounded the countertop. "But we gotta get out there. It's an ecoemergency. We're here to save the scorpion."

  "I'm a Beatles fan myself," the rental agent said, turning aside and pretending to shuffle some important paperwork in the hope the dozen scruffy hippies would leave his office.

  But they didn't leave. They huddled in a corner speaking in low, increasingly violent tones. They were arguing.

  The rental agent stationed himself closer to overhear, but could not. It was very strange, he thought, the way they would argue with such vehemence without making any intelligible words.

  Finally the argument subsided and the leader-he was taller than the rest and wilder of eye-returned to the counter.

  "Are you sure you don't want to save the scorpion?" he asked in a very calm voice.

  "Not my job," the rental agent returned coolly.

  "Too bad," said the wild-eyed man. He reached out and took him by the collar.

  "Hey!" said the rental agent as he was dragged across the counter to the other side. He was so surprised that he didn't fight back. Renters had never gotten violent with him before, not here in the golfing capital of the world.

  Very quickly he was sorry he hadn't fought back, because he was slammed to the floor and the wild-eyed guy was pulling a mallet from his knapsack.

  "Okay, okay," the agent said excitedly. "Take a car. Don't hit me."

  "I'm not going to hit you," Wild-Eyes said in a steady voice as the others grabbed his arms and legs. The rest placed heavy metal objects on his throat, chest, and stomach.

  "What are those?" he asked uncomfortably.

  "Spikes."

  It was the last word he ever heard, because the mallet drove down in a sweeping overhand blow, pushing the cold steel into his throat. He died instantly. But to be sure, the hammerer drove the other two spikes into his chest and stomach.

  His dead hands dropped to the parquet floor.

  When he got to the Condome site, hours later, Fabrique Foirade's first reaction was one of disappointment.

  "There's no fence," he complained. "How are we gonna block the heavy equipment from entering if there's no fence?"

  "There isn't even any heavy equipment," Joyce spat.

  Fabrique Foirade took in the gleaming Condome complex with a grim expression.

  The great Plexiglas bubble had been finished. They could see the Spanish-colonial penthouse inside. All around the wide-open work area, construction workmen in yellow hard hats lugged prefabricated walls and other objects through an open door in the bubble. It resembled a colossal airlock.

  As they watched, one lone worker, stooping to pick up a discarded drill, gave an ear-splitting shriek. He dropped the tool.

  "Scorpion!" he yelled. He started stomping the ground with his heavy construction boots. "Damn you!"

  "He's butchering that poor bug!" Fabrique hissed.

  "Doesn't he know he should love all of nature's creatures?"

  "Let's show him how," Fabrique said menacingly.

  Shouting, Dirt First!! poured from their sheltering dune.

  The construction worker who had had the misfortune to disturb a scorpion hiding in the shade of his power drill was sick of scorpions. Truth to tell, Edward Coyne was sick of the Condome project with its never-ending problems. So he was happy to have something to take his troubles out on. Even if it was a scorpion.

  He stomped it hard. The tail curled up as if suddenly sucked dry. He stomped its head. He thought that did it, but the damned thing was still moving. It tried to scuttle away.

  "Got you now, you devil," Ed said bitingly, lifting a heavy boot to deliver the coup de grace.

  The coup de grace was never delivered because out of the desert came a horde of . . . Ed Coyne didn't know what the hell they were. They looked like atomic-blast victims with their dusty skin, matted hair, and wild red-rimmed eyes.

  Whatever they were, they were shouting, "Dirt First!! Dirt First!!"

  "Dirt?" he muttered. "We're in the desert."

  Then they were all over him.

  Ed Coyne was a big man, six-five and 225 pounds, with case-hardened hands like wooden mauls. He laid the first wave out cold. After that, he had a rougher time of it. They attacked him with the rounded ends of railroad spikes, banging on his hard hat with a vengeance and howling, "Spike him! Spike him!"

  One lifted a mallet behind a spike, coming toward him looking like a crazed version of Dracula's Van Helsing.

  That was enough for Ed Coyne. Struggling with the ones who were straining to pull him to the ground, he reached down for the electric drill. He hoped no one had kicked the cord loose from the generator plug.

  No one had. His fingers closed around the trigger, and as he squeezed, he heard the reassuring high-pitched whine of the drill bit.

  Ed brought it up like a pistol and waved it in the face of his attacker.

  "Who's got cavities that need work?" he taunted. "The dentist is in!"

  That did the trick. They changed their minds about spiking him. In fact, they changed their minds about everything.

  "Retreat! Retreat!" the one with the mallet and spike shouted.

  They slunk back into the desert. One stopped to gently gather up the wounded scorpion with two tender hands. He was stung for his pains. Howling, he dropped the insect and followed the others, crying that he loved the scorpion. Why couldn't it love him back?

  The commotion brought the rest of the crew running from the Condome, where they were stowing tools for the night.

  "Who the hell were they?" Ed was asked.

  "I don't know. They kept yelling 'Dirt First!' Mean anything to you?"

  "Oh, hell, it's those ecocrazies. You know, the ones who are forever trying to save every halt-and-lame subspecies of useless pest in the forest."

  "But we're in the desert."

  "I guess the forest got too hot for them," Ed Coyne remarked, gathering up his drill and cord. "Come on, we'
d better tell Mr. Swindell. He's gonna love this."

  Chapter 12

  Connors "Con" Swindell was not having a good day.

  In truth, he wasn't having a good year. The way things were going, he was well on his way to having a terrible decade.

  It had all been so different back in the seventies and eighties, when he had been one of the giants in condomania.

  As if it were yesterday, Con Swindell remembered those halcyon days. Especially the forever-golden moment the cabalistic word "condominium" had been whispered in his ear.

  "Condoleum?" he had sputtered, perplexed.

  "No, condominium."

  "Condolonium," Swindell repeated, blinking.

  It had been a real-estate conference in Phoenix. The man who whispered in his ear added, "It's the greatest thing to hit real estate since the thirty-year fixed-rate mortgage."

  "Condomonium?" Con said, still struggling with the unfamiliar word.

  "Condominiums," Morgan Mullaney repeated, a slight edge creeping into his usually smooth salesman's voice. He was in the high end of the residential market. Strictly penthouses and mansions. Nothing less than six-figure transactions.

  "Why don't we just call them cons-just to get through the conversation?" Swindell had suggested, wondering if this guy was trying to snooker him somehow.

  "How about condos?" Mullaney suggested. " 'Cons' sounds a little shady. No offense, you understand."

  "None taken," said Connors Swindell, who had made a lateral career slide from used cars into real estate. He happened to have been sucked into buying some worthless Florida land back in the early sixties. Then Disney World had been hatched and Connors cashed in his worthless land for big bucks. He got out of used cars and traded up to fine homes. He had been trading up ever since, feeding the voracious public appetite for the American dream's ultimate aspiration, a home of one's own.

  "So," he asked on that long-ago day, "what exactly are condos?"

  Connors Swindell found himself being led to a display booth. There was a scale model of a Spanish-style apartment house tended by a busty blond. He had trouble keeping his eyes on the model.

  "Nice," he said. "But I'm in private homes. Rentals are a pain. I like to sell 'em and walk away. Let the banks worry about whether the suckers are good for the mortgage."