Destroyer 005 - Dr Quake

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2024-11-29 0 0 213.71KB 104 页 5.9玖币
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CHAPTER ONE
Every man owes God a life. California owes Him a disaster, payable about twice a
century.
For those people not hurled hundreds of feet in shifting earth; for those not buried
alive in their homes along with the fear-triggered refuse of their bodies; for those not
deposited deeper than any gravedigger's plan, these disasters are considered a simple
geological adjustment. A releasing of pressure.
They are the result of an earth wound called the San Andreas fault, one of the many
faults in California which make it a geological time bomb with a mutitude of fuses. All
of them burning.
The San Andreas fault runs six hundred miles from Baja California in the South to
Mendocino in the North. It is created by the Pacific Plate on the earth's surface going
northwest and the North American Continental Plate going southeast at a speed of several
inches of year. The seam between those two plates runs the length of California, and
when the two plates bump ... earthquake.
In one small area, east of Los Angeles, in San Aquino County, the plates lock together
every so often, building up pressure. When they unlock, about twice every hundred years,
nature pays its bi-centennial dues as the plates unleash their tension. For human beings
within a few hundred miles, as the earth along the fault lurches, the universe appears
to be ending.
For some of them it does.
Many geologists believe the next unspringing of the lock will make any nuclear weapons
so far devised look like spears and stones. California is due for a bloodletting
unrivalled in recorded history, so say these geologists. It will be in five minutes or
in thirty years, but it will be. The earth only waits ... with the human sacrifices
enjoying the California sun until their moment in the pit ... a moment in time known
only to God.
It was therefore considered unbelievable when official Washington was approached by a
man with a plan to harness this terror. And later, it was considered unthinkable that
anyone would purposely trigger this disaster.
Unthinkable, until a government geologist in Washington, D.C. heard a detailed account
of something he could not believe.
"But that's impossible," he said. "That's as impossible as ... impossible as...."
"Impossible as throwing people into ovens," said the harried visitor from San Aquino
County, California.
CHAPTER TWO
It was impossible. But it was happening right on time.
Birds took flight. Rabbits scurried crazily across the vine-covered fields. Three
squirrels scrambled up the dirt road, ignoring cover. Trees swayed, showering leaves
like green confetti. Thin red dust rose from the San Aquino countryside as if someone
were dynamiting the bowels of California.
Four leading citizens of San Aquino and the county sheriff looked at their watches and
groaned, almost in unison. They stood beside a well-polished Lincoln limousine at the
entrance of the Gromucci farm where Sheriff Wade Wyatt assured them they could probably
see best what would happen, while not being seen looking for it.
"We don't want to let 'em know we're scared, you know," he had told them.
So now the sun was hot, the dust-clogged air made breathing difficult and it had
happened.
"I don't believe it," said Harris Feinstein, owner of Feinstein's Department Store. "I
see it, but I don't believe it. Does your watch read 3:55 P.M., Les?"
"Yes," said Lester Curpwell IV, president of the First Aquino Trust and Development
Company. "Three fifty five. Right on time to the second." Curpwell was in his mid-
fifties, taller than Feinstein by an inch and a half, his face strong and smooth, able
to show concern but not worry, a face that planned but never schemed. He wore a dark
pinstriped suit with white snirt and Princeton tie.
Feinstein was more Hollywood, deeply tanned, his face evidencing meditation and
tenderness. He wore a blue blazer and white slacks. Curpwell's shoes were polished black
cordovan, Feinstein's soft Italian leather.
"They can do it then," said Feinstein. "Well, we know they can do this much at least,"
said Curpwell.
"If they can do this, they can do more," said Feinstein.
"That's right," butted in Sheriff Wade Wyatt. "They said they can do anything. Make any
kind of earthquake they want. A little ripple like this. Or boom. The whole works." He
waved with his hands, indicating a massive explosion.
"I just don't want to believe it," Feinstein said. "It looks like a barrage, like after
a barrage," said Dourn Rucker, president of Rucker Manufacturing Company. "You know, the
dust and everything. Like after a barrage."
"All right. There are good points. We should think about the positive points," said
Sonny Boydenhousen, president of Boydenhousen Realty and president of the San Aquino
Chamber of Commerce. He was, like Rucker, over six feet tall. Both had pleasant bland
faces and bellies going slightly potward. When they wore identical clothes, some people
mistook them for twins. Today, they wore gray suits with pink shirts.
"There may be good points," he insisted. "Look, they've showed us they can make an
earthquake. But they say they can prevent them. Now if they can, that's great. It'll do
wonders for real estate values here. Do you think they're reliable, Wade?"
"I don't know," said Sheriff Wyatt. "All I know's that they did what they said they was
going to."
Wyatt was a red-faced balloon of a man with a neat Stetson and a diamond and ruby chip
American flag pin in his collar. He wore a .44 with five notches in the grip. He had put
the five notches in himself with his own hand, carving very carefully. He said they
represented five men. What they represented was a cut finger.
"Eight thousand dollars a month is not a bad price. I say eight thousand dollars a month
is reasonable," said Boydenhousen.
"Like after a barrage," said Rucker, still gazing at the dusty field. "Like after a
barrage."
"Impossible," said Feinstein.
"Two thousand dollars too much for you?" asked Wyatt, a hint of contempt in his voice.
He avoided Curpwell's angry glare. He did not want another lecture on anti-semitism.
"It's not the money. I'd give ten times that for education. I've given more than fifty
times that to the hospital. But this is blackmail money. Extortion money. Do you believe
that? Do you know what country this is, Wade?"
"Amurrica, Mr. Feinstein, in God blessed America." His chest rose when he said that and
he hoisted up his gunbelt lest the sudden loss of belly let it slip to the ground. He
had always had trouble with Feinstein, whose bleeding heart seemed always to bleed for
the troublemakers, the riffraff, the loafers. Not for businessmen or sheriffs or the
good people who made San Aquino one of the nicest little counties in the world.
They had been told they could keep it that way, too, if everyone kept his head and was
reasonable.
After all, it was a very reasonable proposition. Sheriff Wyatt had been contacted by
people over the telephone. They told him they could make earthquakes. As he related it,
Sheriff Wyatt had told them to go to hell.
They told him there would be an earthquake the next day at noon. And there was. The
smallest possible. Just a tremor. Then they called again. This time, they said, they
would give San Aquino another little gift. This time, a number two on the Mercalli
intensity scale which measures earthqiiakes. Birds and small animals would be affected
by it and you could feel it in your feet if you stood in an open field. It would happen
at 3:55 p.m.
They told Wyatt that they could also deliver the kind of earthquake that buried cities
and made civilizations disappear. But they weren't unreasonable. They could also
guarantee no earthquakes. And all it would cost was $8,000 a month-$2,000 each from the
county's four leading citizens. All very reasonable.
It was just after 3:55 p.m. and they had proved they could do it. But some people were
unreasonable.
"Blackmail," Feinstein said again. "You're right, Wade. This is America, and Americans
don't pay blackmail."
"I understand how you feel, Harris," Curpwell interrupted. "So do Sonny and Dourn. And I
think, if you simplified it a bit, so would the sheriff. But on the other hand, you
could think of it not as blackmail, but as insurance. What do you think the people of
San Francisco would have paid not to have had 1906?" He did not give Feinstein a chance
to answer. "At any rate, think about it. And we'll all meet tonight in my office at 8
o'clock. Then we'll decide."
They drove back to town, mostly in silence, ignoring Wyatt's attempts at conversation as
he drove the black limousine.
Feinstein was the last to arrive that night at the private office of Lester Curpwell.
The faces all turned to him as he entered the rich panelled office and locked the door
behind him.
He took an envelope from his back pocket, dropped it on the table. It contained $2,000
in fives, tens and twenties, none of them new.
"That's it," he said. "Two thousand. My one and only contribution to this extortion
racket. We can buy a month. I'm going to Washington tonight to tell the government."
"Do you remember we were warned?," Rucker said. "If we talk, there'll be an earthquake.
A giant one. Everyone in San Aquino may die."
"I don't think so," Feinstein said. "They'll have their eight thousand. And no one has
to know that I've gone to Washington."
"You don't think so?" said Boydenhousen loudly. "You don't think so? Well, I can't live
by what you think.
"Look," he said. "We opened up this community to you Feinsteins, way back in the 1920's
when a lot of towns just weren't too all-fired happy to have your kind. We welcomed you.
And I'm not saying you didn't like build the hospital and everything, but I am saying,
you're a part of this community, dammit, and you don't have any right to endanger us.
That's what I'm saying."
"And I'm saying, Sonny Boydenhousen, that we weren't all that welcome, but we made some
good friends, of which there was never a Boydenhousen, which also is no great loss. What
I'm saying is I'm part of a larger community and that's every poor town in this state.
Every town that may someday be digging its babies out of piles of rock because they
can't afford to pay. That's what I'm thinking."
"And I'm thinking," yelled Sonny Boydenhousen, "how fucking grateful I am that we can
feel safe and not have to worry about that. How grateful that my kids are safe from
that. You want to kill my kids, Harris? Is that it?"
Harris Feinstein lowered his gaze to the corporate table, a glistening, polished oak
masterpiece, handed down from Curpwell to Curpwell, through generations of San Aquino
patricians. The Curpwells were good people. He knew their family well. So did his
father,
That was one of the grievously hard things about this decision. He wavered for a minute,
looking at the faces of the men around him. Friend, enemy, he did not want to endanger
one life. There were part of his life, all of them. They meant, really meant, more to
him than someone living in Los Angeles or San Francisco or any of the other California
communities that might be the next to be blackmailed for earthquake insurance.
Really, Harris, he told himself, aren't you being a bit prideful? Remember how you and
Sonny were keychain guards on the 1938 San Aquino football team, the year you beat Los
Angeles Gothic. And how when you were labelled the dirtiest football player in the
state, the whole team celebrated by stealing a keg of beer and getting drunk? And Wyatt.
Wyatt never made the football team, saying he had to hunt to keep food on the family
table. But everyone knew the reason Wade Wyatt went hunting in the fall was because he
didn't want to be accused of chickening out on football. Wade's father always put food
on the table, but Wade had seen a movie in which the young frontiersman didn't go to
school because he had to hunt for the family's supper.
And Dourn, loverboy Dourn. Dourn who got Pearl Fansworth pregnant in the junior year of
high school and how Pearl had to go away. And how Dourn got Sonny's sister pregnant in
his senior year and how he had to marry her.
And of course, Les Curpwell. A beautiful human being.
Harris Feinstein lowered his eyes to the table again and wondered why everything wasn't
as clear as when he was in school or studying the Talmud with his father. Then, things
were clear. Now, nothing was clear but that he felt very unintelligent and longed for
someone to tell him what was right and good and which way to go. But that could not be.
God had given him a mind. And meant for him to use it. So Harris Feinstein looked at his
friends, and at the jeweled flag pin on Sheriff Wade Wyatt's collar, and he said, very
sadly and very slowly:
"I must do what I must do and it is not an easy thing. And I am only sorry that you are
not doing this thing with me."
His envelope sat on the table. Sonny Boydenhousen took a similar envelope from his
attache case and put it on the table. Curpwell added another and so did Dourn Rucker.
Sheriff Wyatt gathered the envelopes together and pushed them into a small plastic
garbage bag. The four other men watched silently as he closed the bag with a red covered
wire tie. He made a small bow of it.
"Leakproof," he said. No one smiled. Harris Feinstein avoided the other men's eyes.
"Well, goodbye," he said.
"You going to Washington?" asked Dourn Rucker.
"Tonight," said Harris Feinstein.
"Oh/' said Sonny Boydenhousen. "Look. Those things I said about your family being
welcomed here in San Aquino, like we were doing you a favor ... well, you know what I
mean."
"I know," said Feinstein.
"I guess you're going to do it," said Curpwell.
"Yes."
"I wish I could say I thought you're doing the right thing," said Boydenhousen. "And I
wish I could say I would want to do it with you. But I think you're doing a very wrong
thing."
"Maybe, but...." Harris Feinstein did not finish his sentence. When he had shut the
large brass-studded door to the most hallowed sanctum of power in San Aquino, the
Curpwell office, Sheriff Wyatt made a suggestion.
He did so fingering the notches on his gun.
Les Curpwell didn't bother to answer and Dourn Rucker told Sheriff Wyatt that Feinstein
would probably pound him into dentifrice anyway, so Wyatt might as well put away the
gun.
Curpwell noted that Feinstein might be right. So did Rucker. So did Boydenhousen. But
they all agreed that they all had families, and hell, weren't they all really doing
enough-paying for everyone who lived in the town and county of San Aquino?
"I mean we're acting like damned philanthropists. Two thousand dollars from each of us,
every goddamned month. We didn't ask anyone else to chip in, not even the sheriff
because he doesn't have the money," said Rucker. "So shit, nobody's got any right to
point a finger at us. Nobody."
"All I know," said Boydenhousen, "is that we've got a chance to be quakeproof. Now going
to Washington may louse it up. And that's just not right. We should just pay up and keep
quiet."
"Gentlemen, you are right and Harris is wrong," said Les Curpwell. "Only I'm just not
sure how much lighter we are."
Then Sheriff Wyatt announced a plan.
"Look, I get my instructions on delivery in the morning. Suppose I go to the place,
wherever it is, and hide. You know, camouflage, like the Ranger training I picked up in
National Guard summer camp. Then, when whoever it is comes for the money, I follow. All
right. When I get 'em all, using my Ranger techniques, bam! I let them have it. Let
loose with a Carbine. Bam. Hand grenades. Whoosh! Bam! Whoosh! Kill or be killed. I give
you the word of a captain in the National Guard of the State of California."
The voting of the three leaders of San Aquino was unanimous.
"Just leave the money where they tell you."
Les Curpwell sat in his office a long time after all the others had left. Then he walked
to his desk and telephoned a close friend who was an aide to the President.
"If what you say is true, Les, they have the power to gut the whole state of
California."
"I think it's true," Curpwell said.
"Wow. All I can say is Wow. I'm going right to the top with this. I can get to see the
President immediately on this one."
The aide was shocked by the President's reaction. He had delivered the report thoroughly
and professionally, the way Les Curpwell had given it to him.
Lester Curpwell IV, former OSS agent, thoroughly-reliable Lester Curpwell. The time. The
threats. The earthquake. No guesses. Hard information.
But when the aide was through, the President said:
"Okay. Forget about it. Tell no one."
"But, sir. Don't you believe me?"
"I believe you."
"But this is something for the FBI. I can give them all the details."
"You will give nothing to anyone. You will be absolutely quiet about this. Absolutely.
That is all. Good evening."
The aide rose to leave but the President halted him.
"Leave your notes here, please. And don't worry. We're not defenseless."
"Yes sir," said the aide, placing his notes on the President's desk.
When the aide had gone, the President threw the notes into an electric wastebasket by
his desk, the basket that assured that no information would leave with the garbage. It
ground up the notes with a whir.
Then the President left his office and went to his bedroom. From the top bureau drawer,
he removed a red telephone and lifted the receiver.
Before one ring completed itself, the call was answered.
"We're on it," came the voice.
"The California thing?"
"Yes."
"That was fast," the President said.
"It has to be," the voice answered.
"These people, whoever they are, could trigger a disaster," the President said.
"Yes, they could."
"Are you going to use that special person?"
"Is there anything else, Mr. President?"
"Well, I wanted to know if you're going to use him?"
"It wouldn't do you any good, sir, to know. You might be tempted to look for his picture
in crowds if the newspapers should have something to photograph out there."
"Suppose you use that person and lose him?" the President asked.
"Then we lose him."
"I see."
"If it would make you feel any better, sir, I think we have a good line on this thing.
The perpetrators are dead meat."
"Then you will use him?"
"Good night, Mr. President."
The phone clicked and the President returned the telephone to the bureau drawer. As he
covered the phone with one of his shirts, he wondered what that special person's name
was.
CHAPTER THREE
His name was Remo and he had not read more than one of the geology books shipped to him
at the hotel in St. Thomas. He had not looked at the scale models of California's crust
for more than five minutes, and he had paid no attention at all to the tutor who had
thought he was explaining faults and earthquakes to a salesman newly hired by a
geological instruments' company.
Not that Remo hadn't tried. He read the basic college geology book, the primer, from
cover to cover. When he was finished, his memory floated with cartoons of rocks, water
and very stiff people. He understood everything he had read; he just didn't care about
it. He forgot 85 per cent of the book the day after he read it, and 14 per cent more the
day after that.
What he remembered was the modified Mercalli intensity scale. He did not remember what
it was, just that there was a thing geologists called the modified Mercalli intensity
scale.
He wondered about it as he stood on the cliff overlooking an outcropping of green moss-
covered rocks. Maybe he was standing on a modified Mercalli intensity scale. Well,
whether he was or not, the little grass air strip that began about one hundred yards
farther on along the edge of the cliff and cut into the flat face of the cliff top was
where at least five men would die. They would be killed very well and very quietly; in
the end no one would think it anything but an accident.
Killing, Remo knew very well.
He lounged against a gracefully curving tree, feeling the fresh salt air of the
Caribbean warm his body as it massaged his soul. The sun burned his strong face. He
closed his deep-set eyes, folded his arms over his striped polo shirt. He lifted one leg
to rest beneath his buttocks on the tree trunk. He could hear the voices of the three
men sitting near their little farm truck. They were sure, man, that no white fellow
could sneak through the jungle near them. Certain, man. They were also sure, mon, that
the delivery was soon. If there was any trouble, however, they had their carbines and
could put a hole in a mon at two hundred yards and do it right propah. Yessirree. Right
propah. Through his bloody genitals, eh, Rufus?
Remo turned his head to get sun on the right side of his neck. His face was healing and
he had been promised that this was the last time it would be changed. He looked now
almost as he had looked when he had been a living, recorded, human being with
fingerprints in Washington, a credit card, bills and an identity as Remo Williams,
policeman. He liked that face. It was the most human face he had ever had. His.
And even if someone who had known him by sight should see him and think the face was
familiar, they would be sure it was not Patrolman Remo Williams. Because Patrolman Remo
Williams had died in New Jersey's electric chair years ago for killing a drug pusher in
an alley.
The pusher was dead all right, but in point of fact, Remo Williams hadn't shot him. So,
in the spirit of justice, Remo Williams didn't die in the electric chair either. But the
whole charade was a convenient government way to remove his fingerprints from all files
and his identity from all files-to create the man who didn't exist.
The Caribbean felt good to be near, like a life force. Remo languished on the precipice
of sleep. One of the men near the truck, Rufus, told the others he was afraid.
"And if anything goes wrong, mon, I'm going to kill those white boys. This is the big
stuff we're dealing with. I'll shoot those coppers too, I will. Yessir, mon. One dead
copper what deals with Old Rufus."
Well, Rufus, if you want to shoot white men, feel free. It might even give me more
sleep, thought Remo. He listened for a far-off engine and thought he deciphered it out
of the gentle lapping of the waves below.
Rufus also had advice. He told his two companions not to worry.
"Worry about what, Rufus?"
"Just don't worry about what the old lady on the hill says."
"I did not know she said something, mon." The voices were the sing-song clipped British
of the Caribbean, the remnant of a not altogether good colonialism which was not
altogether bad, either. The Caribbean seemed to be divorced from normal morality.
"About today and the venture."
"You didn't say, Rufus, about today. You didn't say the old lady of the hill said
something about today."
"What she said doesn't matter."
Remo was sure Rufus now regretted bringing it up. No matter. All their regrets would be
settled shortly. The island smelled of the rich plants. You could taste the plant oxygen
in the air. Was that the plane? He didn't want to wait all night.
"What did she say about today, Rufus?"
"Not to worry your mind about it, mon. It will be a bit of all right."
"Rufus, you tell me now, or I am getting in the truck, my truck, and going back home
with my truck. I'll leave you and your goods here on the cliff, a good day's walk back
to the city."
"She said all would be well, friend."
"You're lying."
"All right, mon. I tell you the truth now and you'll run like a baby girl."
"I am not a coward. Talk."
Nice going, Rufus, thought Remo. He hated it when he had to go after one here and
another there. He liked them kept together. Keep 'em together by pride, Rufus baby. Like
the Marines.
"Well, friend, the old lady said that should we go on today's venture, we will meet a
force from the east, kinda like what they call an Eastern god, against whom no single
man can stand. Is what she said, all right."
摘要：

CHAPTERONEEverymanowesGodalife.CaliforniaowesHimadisaster,payableabouttwiceacentury.Forthosepeoplenothurledhundredsoffeetinshiftingearth;forthosenotburiedaliveintheirhomesalongwiththefear-triggeredrefuseoftheirbodies;forthosenotdepositeddeeperthananygravedigger'splan,thesedisastersareconsideredasimp...

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