Wounded Earth Read Online Free PDF Page B

It was small—six or eight inches on a side—and addressed to the maintenance supervisor at the Yankee Rowe power station. He didn't put it right on the conveyor belt. Standard procedure was to put several boxes that size into a bin and send them in together. That was convenient, because he was expecting several more boxes just like it.
    They came, one by one, addressed to maintenance supervisors at power plants across the country. He filled the bin with all the small boxes. Then, when no one was looking, he slid the bin under the conveyor belt and pulled out a second bin, filled with the boxes that had arrived at his house last night. It was simple.
    He took his coffee break as the boxes in their bin traveled slowly into the post office for sorting. Later that day, six small boxes containing very, very slightly defective gauges left the main post office in Atlanta, bound for a half-dozen nuclear power plants scattered across the country. The odds were good that they would pass all routine quality assurance inspections and be installed. Into very, very critical control panels.
    * * *
    Larabeth missed her desk. She sat on her office couch and tried to work, because J.D. had commandeered her desk and her computer and her phone. She'd been reduced to balancing a month's worth of productivity reports on her lap.
    Trying to work was, of course, a smokescreen, but she was following J.D.’s suggestions to the letter. He'd picked up the photographs lying on the floor at her feet and, right away, he'd known what he held in his hands. She hadn't needed to say it.
    “Cynthia's father,” he'd said. “If he's the one doing this to you, I can find him. What's his name?”
    She had only shaken her head.
    “Larabeth. Finding missing people is what I do for a living. Tell me his name, then go take a shower. Fix yourself a hot breakfast and bring me some of it. Do some mindless paperwork. I can find this guy by lunchtime and, if he's the one tormenting you, we can make him stop. But you have to tell me his name.”
    So she did. Then she went and took a shower because she felt so dirty.
    * * *
    Mac MacGowan flew low over the cornfields. His plane sprayed a light mist behind him. He traced a precise pattern under the great bowl of the Nebraska sky, spreading his cargo as evenly over the fields as possible.
    The corn looked good. It was maybe knee-high, and its very greenness seemed to breathe. Mac amused himself during long flights by thinking of his part in growing the crops. He rained protection down on the plants like God poured rain and sun. Since nobody else seemed to think a crop duster was a very important guy, there wasn't much harm in his having occasional delusions of grandeur. He knew he wasn't God, but he did take pride in his work. Why, American cornfields fed the world and he helped feed the cornfields.
    Mac wheeled the one-seater back toward the airport. He'd delivered forty loads today, since he picked up his usual order from the Happy Farmer's Wholesale Store. Tomorrow was Friday and, if the weather held, he'd deliver another forty loads before the weekend. Not bad for a sixty-year-old man.
    The sun was low when he pulled his pickup truck out of the airport parking lot. He looked forward to the drive home. The evening before, he had seen a doe and her fawn gingerly pick their way across the braided shallows and sand bars of the Platte River. He was hoping to see them again.
    * * *
    Mac MaGowan had picked up his usual order from the Happy Farmer's Wholesale Store early Thursday morning. Forty times, he diluted the concentrated product. Forty times, he delivered his payload. Forty times, he had no idea that he was feeding "his" cornfields a different poison than usual.
    The drums had all looked alike. They had all come from the Happy Farmer's warehouse in Gretna, Louisiana. They had all held a nondescript liquid. The odor might have been different than usual, but a hangarful of agricultural chemicals can easily overcome a