Mike Lawson - Dead on Arrival

‘You wanna head on home?’ Ellie whispered into his ear. She sounded both tired and sexy at the same time.

‘You bet,’ DeMarco said.

‘You’re late,’ the little Mormon shit said to him, as soon as he stepped into the guard shack. ‘And you’re drunk.’

Eddie was still trying to get his belt buckled, the belt that held the gun he’d never fired and the can of Mace he’d never used. Finally, he got the damn thing through the hole in the belt; if he didn’t lose some weight he was gonna have to get a bigger belt.

‘Shut up,’ he said to the Mormon kid. Before the kid could say something else, he said to Billy, ‘I saw something funny tonight, on the way here.’

‘Oh, yeah,’ Billy said.

‘Yeah, this El Camino.’

‘El Camino. You mean one of them cars that’s-’

‘Yeah, one of them weird Chevys. My dickwad brother-in-law, he owned one. Anyway I seen this-’

‘Billy, it’s your turn to patrol,’ the Mormon kid said.

‘Shut the fuck up!’ Eddie said. ‘I’m talkin’ here and it might be important. Anyway,’ he said to Billy, ‘I seen this same car parked around here, two-three times before the strike.’

‘On our shift?’ Billy said.

‘Yeah, but there’s something else. I saw this kid gettin’ outta the car, and there’s something about this kid, this little scrawny hook-nosed kid, but I just can’t put my finger on it.’

‘Have you seen the kid around here before?’ Billy said.

‘I don’t know,’ Eddie said. ‘There’s something about him, but I can’t remember what. And when I saw him tonight, I think he was holding something in his hand, but-’

The Mormon kid said, ‘You say you’ve seen this car, this …’

‘El Camino,’ Eddie said.

‘You’ve seen it near the plant a few times on our shift?’ the Mormon kid said.

‘Yeah, that’s what I just said. Clean out your ears!’

‘We should call this in,’ the Mormon kid said.

‘No way!’ Billy said.

‘I dunno,’ Eddie said, talking more to himself than the other two guards. ‘There’s just something about this kid.’

‘We should hit the button,’ the Mormon kid said, and Eddie looked over at him. The kid’s eyes were all bright, all lit up, like he’d just seen Jesus.

‘Are you outta your goddamned mind?’ Billy said.

There really wasn’t a button, it was just an expression. Hitting the button meant they’d make three phone calls. The first one would be to the foreman of the guys working in the plant, telling him there was a potential security problem and to get his guys assembled in case they had to evacuate the plant. The second call was to one of the big bosses. But the third call went to the sheriffs. The company had a deal with the sheriffs that if they had a potential security problem on the backshift, the sheriffs would send some patrol cars, lights flashing, sirens blaring, and they’d start searching the plant with the guards. The last thing Eddie wanted was to be talkin’ to some boss — or some deputy — smelling like a damn brewery, then telling them that the reason he’d hit the button was that he’d seen something funny, but he didn’t know what.

Goddammit, what was it about that scrawny kid he’d seen next to the El Camino?

‘If you even think we have a potential security threat,’ the Mormon kid said, ‘the manual says you’re supposed to hit the button.’

‘Aw, shut the fuck up,’ Eddie and Billy said at the same time.

Maybe he’d just patrol with Billy but really patrol. Just walk around a little and check things out. Plus the walk was a good idea, it’d sober him up some.

‘I’m making the call,’ the Mormon kid said.

‘You touch that phone, and I swear to God I’ll break your arm,’ Eddie said.

DeMarco got out of bed, trying not to wake Ellie, who was a shapely mound under the sheets, one tanned leg sticking out. DeMarco smiled. He was a lucky man.

He went to the bathroom, took a quick shower, and put on shorts, a faded Redskins T-shirt, and flip-flops, and then made a pot of coffee. He looked out at the lake through the kitchen window and then up at the sky. Perfect. The lake was flat and the sky was cloudless. It was going to be another good day to go jettin’ around in Ellie’s aunt’s boat.

He went outside and got the paper, then took the paper and his coffee out onto the deck. He wished he had a big house with a deck on a lake. He slipped the rubber band off the paper and saw the headline: TERRORIST ATTACK FOILED AT LAKE ERIE REFINERY.

‘Jesus Christ!’ he said out loud, then read the article.

Last night, security guards at the Sheffield refinery on Lake Erie foiled a terrorist attack that could have resulted in hundreds and possibly thousands of deaths. According to FBI spokesperson Jerome Hickson, the terrorist was a fourteen-year-old American Muslim from Cleveland named Javed Khan, who is now in police custody .

At approximately 1A.M ., Khan dug a shallow hole underthe refinery’s security fence, entered the refinery, andattached three explosive devices to tanks and pipes containing hydrofluoric acid. According to Dr Matthew Trace, a professor of chemistry at Ohio State University, inhaling even small amounts of hydrofluoric acid can be fatal or cause permanent damage to organs .

Khan also had a fourth bomb attached to his clothing. The FBI believes that Khan had intended to wait until refinery workers were entering the facility on Tuesday morning, and then he would have gotten as close to the refinery’s main gate as possible and exploded all four bombs simultaneously, including the one on his person. By doing this he not only would have released the hydrofluoric acid to the atmospherebut would also have killed or injured numerous refinery workers and made it more difficult for the refinery to deal with the catastrophe. It is unclear how many people would have died if the bombs had been deton ated, but experts said that if the acid had been released, it could have affected people as far as ten miles away from the refinery .

Two security guards, Edward Kolowski and William Horton, were making a routine patrol of the refinery’s perimeter when they saw Khan crawling under the secur ity fence. He had already planted his explosives and was attempting to leave the facility. When Khan was captured, the remote control for detonating the bombs was in his jacket pocket, but because Kolowski and Horton seized the terrorist as he was crawling under the fence, Khan was unable to reach the remote. Had he been able to reach it, the FBI believes that he would have exploded the bombs at that time, killing the guards and himself and releasing the acid to the atmosphere. The FBI spokesperson stated that Khan had an accomplice, a man driving a pale green Chevrolet El Camino; all law enforcement agencies in the area are looking for the vehicle .

Mr Hickson noted that the possibility of terrorists attacking refineries has been a concern for some time and that Congress has held hearings on the subject. John Tolliver, plant operations manager for the refinery, stated that such concerns have been overstated and last night’s events showedthat refinery security procedures were effective. Tolliver said, ‘We have state-of-the-art security equipment at our refineries, but our primary line of defense is highly trained, alert security personnel like Ed Kolowski and Bill Horton .’

The Cleveland Plain Dealer discovered that Javed Khan’s late father, Ishaq Khan, had been detained by the FBI approximately a year ago for possible links to al-Qaeda and speculated that Khan may have been carrying on his father’s work. Attempts to contact Khan’s mother …