Blackmail Earth (32 page)

But that wasn’t the worst part.
Oh, God no.
She could barely bring herself to look at the worst part. But how could she not? Only one thing poked out of the blood-soaked gauze hiding Birk’s hand—his index finger! The terrorists had clamped those awful wire cutters on it; any second he might clip it off.
Any second.
The tension was unbearable.

All regular programming had been canceled. Every channel was showing Birk, with lots of close-ups of his bloody thumb and those horrid wire cutters. The shows were calling it “The World Held Hostage” and “Doomsday and Dismemberment,” crap like that, and they were playing special music and running flashy graphics. You’d think people would get tired of it, but not with the gut-wrenching suspense over whether a terrorist would slip into the picture and snip his pointer right off.

But it wasn’t just Birk’s suffering. Those terrorists were hell-bent on pouring enough iron oxide into the ocean to freeze the planet. And if people thought that was seriously scary—and Forensia knew they did because there had been huge runs on winter clothing all over the world—wait till they got wind of the North Korean rockets.

Her eyes were drawn quickly back to Birk. It was like she could see all of the world’s pain and fear in the face of that poor old guy on the tanker, talking about those awful coal-fired power plants and how they should be shut down or the whole Earth was going to get “colder than a witch’s titty.” That was another of his bad jokes, which he probably shouldn’t have said, and which Forensia couldn’t help but find personally offensive. But he really did look and sound kind of delirious. And who couldn’t forgive such a brave old-timer with his thumb hanging from his shirt like a piece of rotten—

Rrrrriiiinnngg.

The doorbell interrupted Forensia’s thoughts. She tore herself from the TV and opened the screen door for Akina, the frail elderly witch from Ithaca who’d presided over GreenSpirit’s memorial service. She’d brought her daughter Magic Margaret, who was as heavy as her mother was light. Sang-mi and Richtor came out of the kitchen to greet them.

They were gathering in Forensia’s small house before heading to a sundown séance, where they hoped to make contact with GreenSpirit. With the twin calamities of the tanker takeover in the Maldives and the North Korean rockets, Forensia and Sang-mi felt like they needed GreenSpirit’s guidance more than ever.

Their first plan had been to conduct the séance at the cabin where their leader had been murdered, but that idea had been squelched when Richtor reported that the crime scene was still cordoned off. He’d seen as many investigators crawling around the place as there had been on the day that Sang-mi discovered GreenSpirit’s mutilated body.

Richtor pushed his lush dreads out of his face and quickly briefed Akina and Magic Margaret on what he’d found.

“Maybe they got a break in the case,” Forensia said, “or else they’ve got nothing and they’re desperate.”

“Can we shut this off?” Magic Margaret turned in disgust from the TV image of Birk with his bloody thumb.

“No,” Forensia blurted out. Then: “Sorry, but I just feel like the least we can do is bear witness to his suffering.”

“He’s mainstream media,” Magic Margaret said. “Who cares?”

“Yeah, really,” Richtor groused.

“I care. Okay?” Forensia was genuinely horrified at what she was hearing from her fellow Pagans.

“It would be nice,” the elderly witch said, “if they would shut down those power plants, like he’s saying.”

“Sure, but not because of this cruelty.” Forensia was still stunned by Richtor and Magic Margaret’s chilling remarks. If you cared about people, then you had to care about all people—even a decrepit old TV reporter. “I’ll turn down the sound,” Forensia said in the spirit of amelioration. Birk had been on all day and was repeating himself anyway.

She plopped down next to Sang-mi on an old couch. Akina sat across from them in a tattered armchair, elbows on her knees, chin in her hands. Her daughter, who was older than Forensia’s mother, settled on a love seat next to Richtor, and said, “The scuttlebutt at work is that they sent more forensics folks down here. They’re up to something, I guess.” She was a parole officer in Ithaca and had friends in the state police.

Forensia thought Magic Margaret affected an eccentric appearance for someone affiliated with law enforcement. She was an exceedingly large woman with blunt-cut, jet-black bangs and straight white hair. Not charming—weird. The same could have been said for her thick layer of black eyeliner with its even thicker globs of white glitter, lending her the heavy-lidded, piebald look of a basset hound–dalmatian mix.

Magic Margaret’s mother, who eschewed all makeup, suggested that they hold the séance where Forensia and Sang-mi had been inducted into the coven. “I can’t imagine a more sacred spot.”

The Pagans decided that as long as they were going to the clearing, they might as well set up the altar in the circle of white stones to make it as welcoming as possible to GreenSpirit. To that end, they gathered up all their supplies, including the boline, the black-handled knife with the foot-long blade, and the large pentagram of woven animal skin. After the initiation, they’d stored the heavy, rough-hewn altar itself in the nearby forest.

“I’ll ride with you,” Sang-mi said to Forensia as they were deciding which cars to take.

“Me, too,” said Richtor.

After they had been trailing Akina’s shiny red Prius for about ten minutes, Forensia noticed her friend freeze. Her dark eyes were focused on the sun visor mirror.

“Don’t anybody turn around but there’s a car following us. It’s been there since we left town. It was back two or three cars, but now it’s right behind us.”

Forensia glanced in the rearview, which was filled with the reflection of a late model green SUV, but it looked like a smaller sport utility vehicle, like a Honda or Toyota.

“Can you see who’s in that thing?” Sang-mi asked.

“No, it’s too bright.” Late afternoon sun.

“I could reach back behind me,” said Richtor, who had gallantly given up the front passenger seat to Sang-mi, “and act like I’m digging for something in my pack. See if I can get a look.”

“What do you think, Sang-mi?” Forensia found it odd to defer to her friend, who normally proved so reticent, but Sang-mi had spotted the tail, if that’s what it was, and suddenly seemed more adept at this cat-and-mouse business, probably because she’d grown up in a police state.

“Go ahead,” Sang-mi said to Richtor.

Both women listened intently as he leaned his long torso over the backseat and rummaged around in his pack.

“They look Asian to me,” he said softly, as if he feared being overheard. “Kind of like you, Sang-mi.”

“Oh, shit-shit-
shit.
”

Those were the first profanities that Forensia had ever heard from her quiet Korean friend. “Don’t worry, you’re in the U.S. now,” Forensia said.

“The North has assassins that go after defectors everywhere,” Sang-mi said, alarm bracing every word. “Even their families. They murdered the nephew of one of the Supreme Leader’s former wives. Her
nephew.
”

“They’re really that crazy?” Forensia glanced nervously at the rearview.

“They’re crazier than crazy,” Sang-mi said. “They have a Web site called
Uriminzokkri,
roughly translated, it means ‘Our Nation.’ Two days ago they called my father ‘human scum,’ and showed a photo-shopped picture of him with an ax in his face and said, ‘You must not forget that traitors have always been slaughtered.’”

“And you think those guys behind us might be assassins?” Richtor asked.

Sang-mi nodded. “From the General Bureau of Surveillance. They are really scary. After their missions, those assassins will commit suicide, anything to avoid capture.”

The young Korean defector buried her face in her hands.

*   *   *

Jason had Aly Wennerstrom snuggling by his side in his bright blue 1977 pick-’em-up truck. They’d had to rendezvous by the entrance to the state park because her father hadn’t been gulled by his daughter’s declarations of Christian chastity, much less by her shrill claim that “I’m still a goddamn virgin, Daddy.” But as Aly licked Jason’s ear, she allowed that she shouldn’t have lost her temper with her papa.

“It’s just that I’m such a passionate person,” she cooed, pressing closer and running her hand over his thighs and swelling enthusiasm, lingering over the latter for teasing, squeezing seconds. “If I like something, I can’t help myself—I want all of it, and I want it all the time. Jesus would understand, don’t you think?”

“Sure, he’d get it,” Jason mumbled.

Was she kidding? Jason didn’t know, didn’t care. But he did love the way that girl could reason her way out of her panties six ways to Sunday. Loved even more the way she unzipped him now and eased
him
out. A monster hard-on, a real barnacle boner. He’d learned in biology only yesterday that those boat-sucking scum had dicks twice as long as their bodies. About the way Jason felt right now with Barnacle Boy in her hot little hull of a hand.
Oh, yeah.
Sweet Aly was moving her fingers up and down and making him so hard. Making it hard to drive, too, but what was a horn dog to do? Stop? Slow down the momentum? Hell no.
Just keep dem rubba on dem road, mon.
He’d drive clear to Buffalo and back as long as Aly was showing her passion. Showing more than passion—sitting sideways and slipping her clingy, baby-blue top over her head. Girl had on one of those see-through bras, and Jason could see everything: her youthful perkiness; her budding excitement; and her hands holding and squeezing herself, doing things he’d like to do.

Now her fingers were working the single clasp in front, where the cups came together in true sartorial inspiration. She paused to caress herself one more time, keeping those doorbells of hers ringing. Jason’s eyes were darting back and forth so fast—road to breast, road to other breast—that he might have had money on a Chinese table tennis tournament.

Oh mon, you see dem puppies?
She was peeling off that filmy fabric and,
Yes,
he could see dem puppies. When she pressed his hand up against them,
he
could have yelped. Or howled. Or hooted like a screech owl.

“I’ve got to pull over,” he gasped. He thought he’d explode.

But she moved his hand over her breasts, letting him feel both of them, then said, “No-ooo. I like it like this. You do your job behind that big wheel, and I’ll do my job with something pretty dang big, too.”

She put his hand back on the steering wheel and slipped off her skirt, a short denim number that hadn’t hidden much anyway. The girl was killing him. All she had on now was a white thong that he could have flossed with, and she didn’t have it on for long. Then she had her hand back on him, pushing her naked, nubby nipples against his arm. “Ever had a BJ,” she whispered, “while you drive?”

Time to lie,
Jason advised himself. “Nope, never done that.”

Without another word, with only another wet kiss to his ear, she disappeared into his lap, and all that thick curly blond hair fell like sprinkles on his legs and belly and balls.

Jason closed his eyes in gratitude, might have said a word or two of prayer, like, “Thank ya, Jesus.” Or maybe something along the lines of “Oh, God. Oh, God.” Direct and to the point.

Then his pick-’em-up truck flew off the road at sixty miles an hour, and whatever mumbles of appreciation might have been passing from Jason’s lips were lost to oblivion, just like the hundreds of millions of tiny sea creatures exploding from Barnacle Boy.

*   *   *

“Jason Robb, you’re under arrest.” The very first words that Jason heard as he came to, and they hailed directly from Sheriff Walker himself, who had bent all the way over to look in the open driver’s side window. To Jason, the sheriff’s head looked odd—suspended in space.

Aly was already out of the cab. Jason peered past the sheriff and spotted his honey’s feet first, then her legs, and a strange-looking dress that he knew she hadn’t been wearing before. No, it was a blanket. Looked like an Army surplus thing. He looked up and saw her face. Kind of banged up—and not the kind of banging they’d been working on.

He kept staring at Aly, who didn’t seem pleased to see him, and wondering how the hell they went from having such a good time to this mess. Nothing made sense. Least of all Sheriff Walker: Under arrest? For
what
?

It slowly came to Jason that most likely it was against the law to drive with a naked girl going down on you. Not just any naked girl, either, but a naked underage girl. The next instant, the word “sodomy” came a’calling, chilling him to his … bone.

He gradually became alert enough to spot Aly’s thong, skirt, and bra on the ceiling, which made no sense whatsoever till he finally realized that he’d flipped his pride and joy upside down. The sheriff’s head was starting to make sense, too. It was still hanging there, studying Jason like he was some kind of strange barnyard animal, a five-legged lamb or a two-headed chicken. Something nature spit out and wouldn’t take back.

“Anything broke, near as you can tell?” Sheriff Walker asked it like he had to.

Jason grabbed his crotch in raw panic, remembering a fine old movie in which a guy was getting a really cool BJ when his car was rear-ended—and the woman bit off his dick so fast that she might have been a snapping turtle foraging in his lap. But Barnacle Boy was starting to get hard as hickory again. Go figure.
Down, boy, down,
he commanded, to no avail. His dick always did have a mind of his own.

Not only that, Jason’s balls ached. How the hell do you still have blue balls after being knocked out? But then he glanced at Aly and recalled her efforts seconds before the crash.

“Why’d I close my eyes?” he mumbled to himself.

“Because you’re a murdering sex maniac,” Sheriff Walker answered. “Now get out. Unhook that safety belt carefully so you don’t die on us before we can fry you. And make yourself decent.”

Jason bent Barnacle Boy back into his pants, zipped up, and unsnapped the seat belt, lowering himself to the ceiling of the truck’s cab. A few seconds later he crawled out the window.