Blood & Tacos #4 Read online

  THE SANITIZER

  in

  THE POTOMAC PENETRATION

  By Marion Hillberry, writing as Stack Grannett

  (discovered by Nick Slosser)

  Not much is known about the reclusive Marion Hillberry, who penned the popular and patriotic Sanitizer series under the pseudonym Stack Grannett, except for the controversy surrounding his death ... or rather his burial. Despite being denied enrollment in four of the five military branches due to a rare condition that caused his heart to grow upside down, Hillberry had Special Forces tattoos inked to his body anyway. Two months after he received a military burial with all the trimmings, the mistake was exposed and his body exhumed. It now resides in a nearby cemetery under a headstone that reads

  Marion Hillberry

  aka Stack Grannett

  1951–1998

  Though avidly read at the front,

  This scribe Uncle Sam did not want.

  His twenty-one gun salute,

  The subject of much dispute,

  Now Stack is a wandering haunt.

  NICK SLOSSER found a paperback copy of The Sanitizer #1 being used as a shim to level out a bookcase full of cozy mysteries at Murder by the Book in Portland, Oregon.

  The guard at the gate watched the WWII-vintage Army green Harley-Davidson WLA rumble to a halt before the barrier arm. For the millionth time he wondered how a janitor could afford those wheels. For the millionth time he decided the janitor, an expert with his hands, had probably restored the hog himself.

  The guard didn’t need ID—the man never wore a helmet—but he said, “Nice day.” The janitor nodded, saying nothing as usual, and ducked beneath the arthritic motion of the barrier arm.

  The guard watched him guide the chopper toward the parking structure, south of the main building, before hoisting this month’s Mack Bolan adventure. He settled in for another uneventful day at the Tutelo Nuclear Power Facility.

  Minutes later, a powder blue Volkswagen Bug he’d never seen before sputtered to a standstill. The woman driving squinted at the sign on the barrier, obviously unfamiliar with the facility. Peering into the vehicle, he noticed she dressed like a professional. He also noticed that several blouse buttons were undone.

  He cleared his throat. “Can I help you, ma’am?”

  “Gosh, I hope so,” she said, pouting. “This isn’t American Amalgamated Inc., is it?”

  “No, I’m sorry to say.” He moved his hand, which had been tickling his sidearm, so he could lean against her car. From above, her breasts looked supernaturally plump.

  She dropped her eyes becomingly. “You don’t by chance know where American Amalgamated is, do you?”

  “No, I don’t. But if you park over there and come inside, I’ll try to find the spot.” He pointed to the map.

  “Won’t that get you into trouble?”

  He glanced toward the facility. “Not if they don’t find out.”

  “Oh, thank you so much.”

  She parked where he’d indicated and sauntered across the road, her high heels clicking on the blacktop. This would be the last image he’d ever witness.

  As he gazed, a man who resembled him in height, build, hair color, and uniform stepped behind him, put a silenced pistol to the back of his head, and pulled the trigger twice in rapid succession. The guard fell like a tipped cow.

  The janitor strode toward the main building then turned toward the guard booth. He saw a woman holding what resembled a roadmap. Moments later, he saw the guard step out of the shelter, point at the map, and gesture down the road. Women, he thought. Never trust one to follow directions.

  The janitor entered the main building, ready to face another day of calm predictability and Zen-like meditation, of steady, rhythmic labor through a pleasant, fume-induced buzz ... which was just how he liked it.

  A boy doesn’t dream of growing up a janitor, let alone at a gray-on-gray nuclear plant like Tutelo. But a man on the run doesn’t get much choice. So he swept and scrubbed and plunged and squeegeed and smiled while doing it. For Tutelo meant peace, a place where not even his old Agency cronies would think to seek him, because here even the lowliest mop jockey gets vetted at the highest clearance levels.

  As the door slammed shut behind him, a small convoy of utility vans with darkened windows rolled through the gate—its barrier arm held high in mock salute—and cruised like Blue Angels to line up against the building. A rear door swung out and the VW woman hopped down, landing gracefully on her heels. She checked her watch—they were ahead of schedule—and positioned herself to observe the open stretch between the main building and the core containment facility.

  It took twenty-five minutes for the site manager to begin his daily visual tour of the site. It took another six for the woman to pop out from behind a large pipe and sidle up next to him. Convincing him to cooperate took less than a minute and returning to the main building less than three. Including the gate, it took forty-four minutes and one dead body to penetrate Tutelo.

  The woman stamped high-heeled prints like carnivore tracks straight through the recently mopped floor. Flanked by two mercenary-types—one bald, one blonde—she guided the site manager to the door that led to the heart and other organs—lungs, pancreas, and small intestines—of the Tutelo Nuclear Power Facility.

  The janitor froze in place to avoid hitting her perfectly tapered legs and kept his eyes glued to the wet spot. The site manager took no notice of him, as usual.

  Only the bald one hesitated, uncertainty etched upon his granite face. “Who’s he?”

  The site manager searched for a name then said, “Nobody. He’s just the janitor.”

  “Leave him,” the woman said. “He poses no threat.”

  Baldy smirked and moved on.

  Peering into the reflection off the mop water, the janitor watched her deposit the mercs outside the door. He stooped for an alternate angle and observed a tight group of men stroll through the front doors and fan out to block the exits. Some carried heavy bags, others steel-gray cases. To gain a closer look he knelt as if scrubbing a stubborn spot.

  The men appeared relaxed, well-dressed and fit, diverse of nationality, and conditioned for physical combat. Several men streamed past the janitor, dragging their feet through his work, not even bothering to say he’d missed a spot; he was simply a rock parting insensate waters.

  He observed Baldy and Blondie calmly deflecting a pair of disgruntled lab coats away from the door. These men were disciplined and professional. Judging from the gear, they were also highly trained and well funded, which indicated only one possibility: a Communist plot.

  Even if these men weren’t true Reds, they would be funded by Reds. And the janitor hated Reds.

  The janitor mopped his way toward the door, head down, dragging his left foot, muttering improvised lyrics to Cyndi Lauper’s “She Bop.” He pulled his keys, but the mercs closed ranks, blocking his path. He tilted his head, giving them a cross-eyed stare, and grunted in protest.

  Baldy shoved him back. “Go she-mop over there.”

  The janitor pointed to the door, waving the keys and screeching. Clearly, he was retarded. The men looked at each other, worried that if he were not allowed to do his job, he’d throw a fit, screaming or banging his head against the wall. They hesitated then waved him through. He shuffled past, rolling the bucket over Blondie’s foot.

  Inside, the janitor tiptoed to the corner and listened. Through the open door to the site manager’s office, he heard the woman:

  “... no more heroes. The code please.”

  This was followed by the ominous phut-phut of a silencer.

  The janitor peeked around the corner to see four men standing guard. Footsteps approached from behind.

  A man addressed him: “Hey ... you.”

  He recognized the rasp of Baldy, apparently reconsidering his decision. Planting his feet and clearing his mind of all worldly noise, the janitor gripped the mop handle as he would a Japanese bokken. The shaft felt good and hard
in his callused hands.

  “Come with me,” the merc said.

  The janitor shook his head, listening for the sound of shoes slapping water, marking his moment.

  His moment came. With a backward jab, he drove the end of the mop handle straight into the man’s spleen. Wheeling around, the janitor twirled the mop and struck the man in the genitals, the chin, and the top of his foot ... in that order.

  He was careful not to splinter the mop; like the Marine and his fatigues, he felt naked without it.

  Tucking the handle into his armpit, he measured the distance and whipped the mop in a horizontal arc. He wrapped the wet tendrils around the man’s skull, instinctively correcting for the lack of hair, calculating that to rupture a temporal artery required a mere 200 psi. Dry, the tendrils would have left welts; wet, they became the bone-dry fingers of the Grim Reaper.

  The janitor keyed another door and dragged the dead man inside, discarding his soiled, useless body like a worn condom. The janitor could have searched him for a gun, but knew he wouldn’t need one ... no, preferred not to have one.

  Down the hall, the woman’s heels clacked a telegraph message. He cracked the door to watch her strut by, swinging a sawed-off shotgun, her hips pounding an inaudible bongo rhythm. Following her, the two lab coats—nerds by profession—looked smitten, ready to either drop their pants or wet them on command. At the computer control room door, the lab coats tripped over themselves trying to be the one whose keycard filled the slot.

  Backing out of his makeshift morgue, the janitor slopped mop water toward the same door. Through it, he heard the woman speak:

  “Okay, boys, you know what I want.”

  Drs. Ormond and Menefee found suavity difficult under normal circumstances, let alone staring down both barrels of a sawed-off. It didn’t help that the woman aiming from her smoothly rounded hip had leapt straight out of their comic book–addled dreams.

  “You’ve seen my authorization,” she said, brandishing the shotgun with authority. “If you’re good, maybe you’ll see my credentials, as well.”

  This woman could read a report on the plight of Ethiopia and make it pornographic. With tinted glasses, blood red lipstick, and long, dark hair pulled back and secured with a #2 pencil, she epitomized the modern woman: the career-minded professional in sheer hose, shoulder pads, and shotgun.

  By contrast, Ormond and Menefee, in clip-on ties, button-down short-sleeves, and corduroy pants, perfectly embodied the overeducated, underpaid government drones they were. Ormond the physicist studied computers; specifically, the ins and outs of meltdowns. Menefee was a policy analyst whose expertise was power plant security. Used for evil, their combined knowledge could cripple a nuclear facility like Tutelo ... or worse.

  “Of course, I could start pressing buttons until I caused a chain reaction,” the woman said. “But then I wouldn’t need you, would I?”

  Panicking, Menefee said, “Well, if—if it’s clear we were under duress ....” Ormond nodded agreement.

  “Oh, that’ll be most clear,” she said. “Remember, the computer will only think there’s a meltdown.”

  The PhDs got to work while she watched the monitors, her face bathed in their amber glow.

  “There,” Ormond said. “Only one command left to type.”

  She licked her lips, making them glisten. “Type it,” she said, “but save that final stroke for me.”

  Ormond typed.

  “Good,” she purred. “You know what turns me on more than thrusting one tiny atom into another, splitting it, and spewing its pent-up energy all over the other atoms until a catastrophic, earth-shaking, toe-curling meltdown?”

  Ormond blinked. Menefee swallowed.

  “What turns me on more are the boys who command such cosmic power.”

  The men were dumbfounded. They had no reference point for this.

  “Don’t worry, boys,” she said, “let mommy drive.”

  Setting the shotgun across a keyboard, she dropped her skirt and stepped out of it, simultaneously unbuttoning her blouse. The combination of movements was both erotic and efficient. She peeled her bra downward to reveal two glistening red nipples adorning two perfectly round globes, each massive enough to bend light even as she bent men to her will.

  “You want?”

  Was she kidding? Hastily, lest she change her mind, the two men circumvented the console.

  “Ah-ah-ah,” she chided. “First, show me the goodies.”

  At speeds conceivable only to a Fermi or an Oppenheimer, they stripped to their tighty-whities.

  She crossed her legs and pulled on a pair of purple rubber gloves, snapping each one into place. She beckoned them forward, her gloved fingers running through their hair to the backs of their skulls.

  “Easy now, there’s enough for everyone.”

  Gently, she drew them toward her, their eyes wide with passion and panic, until she had each one latched on like a newborn babe.

  “That’s right, boys,” she cooed, “knock yourselves out.”

  Slowly, her hands became fists gripping wads of hair, at first ardently, then sadistically. Ormond stiffened; Menefee followed suit. They gasped, muscles tensing, eyes bulging, backs arching, fingers clawing, feet kicking the climate-controlled air.

  She dropped them both and watched with cool detachment as their bodies strained against the deadly tropical venom coursing through their veins and arteries. Drs. Ormond and Menefee died within seconds.

  Gloves on, she peeled off the thin layer of latex that guarded her own skin from the poison. She scooted her chair toward the console and typed.

  Alarms sounded: first in the computer control room, then throughout the facility. Using the backdoor provided by Ormond to a system-monitoring sub-program, she inserted a polynomial equation into a threat recognition algorithm, tricking the computer into thinking that the water level had dropped and the cooling rods were exposed, causing core damage and steadily rising core temperatures.

  In short, she’d just faked catastrophic meltdown. Curling and uncurling her toes, she languorously sucked down a cigarette.

  Bogus meltdown? What the hell was she up to? Push too hard and Uncle Sam might say, ‘To hell with it,’ and nuke the place ... or worse, nuke the Russians. The janitor hated Russians, but he did so objectively. While cool logic dictated fiery hatred toward all Reds, bombing them would be madness.

  The janitor needed a telephone.

  Scanning the cleaners in the janitor’s closet, he dumped a whole bottle of bleach into the bucket. Then he put on rubber gloves and a gas mask. Finally, he grabbed a Walkman, zeroed the volume, and hit ‘play.’

  Whistling “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” the janitor pulled the mop and bucket toward the site manager’s office. The four men were still there, palming their weapons.

  One of the men addressed him: “Hey ... you.”

  He continued his backward shuffle.

  “Hey, buddy, turn around.”

  The janitor slopped bleach over a wide swath. Head bent, eyes down, he covered an area about ten-feet square before looking up and acting startled. They stared at him. He pointed to his ears. Fiddling with the Walkman, he backed across his work and waited for the men to approach. They did, guns raised.

  When all four had reached the centroid of the wet square, he hit ‘stop.’

  “You scared the shit out of me, man,” he said, his voice muffled by the mask. “Who are you guys?”

  “Shut up and come with us.”

  “Got to mop the floor. Can’t lose this gig.”

  “Never mind the floor. Just come with us.”

  “Are you cops? You sound like cops.” He pulled out a bottle of window cleaner and unscrewed the cap.

  The man who’d been speaking cocked his weapon. “Come with us ... now.”

  The janitor dropped the window cleaner and raised his hands. The bottle hit dead center, blue liquid splashing over the bleach.

  The men stepped back, but not far enough. Death was
in the air. The janitor breathed calmly behind the mask. He had only one concern: that he’d slopped enough bleach.

  Mix bleach and ammonia proportionately, and the reaction produces toxic gases called chloramines. But leave a surplus of ammonia to react with the chloramines, and it produces another toxic compound called liquid hydrazine, also known as rocket fuel, which can boil, spatter hot liquid, or even explode.

  The men coughed and wiped their burning eyes, while the janitor kept his hands high above his head. Before they realized he’d tricked them, they were doubled over, unable to breathe.

  Panic set in. Dropping their guns, they staggered around, trying in vain to fill their lungs. One slipped and fell in the middle of the mix, dead in less than a minute. The others lurched down the hall ... but it was literally a dead end.

  Impassively, the janitor watched them die before keying himself into the site manager’s office.

  The janitor glanced at the site manager slouching in his desk chair, a half-inch diameter hole punched between his eyes. A crater in the back of his head sloshed blood and brains into a lumpy goulash on the floor. The janitor realized he was missing lunch.

  “Mind if I borrow your phone?” he asked the corpse.

  He found a phonebook and a flask of vodka and punched the number for the FBI switchboard in Baltimore. Vodka: the official liquor of Soviet Russia. He tilted the flask and grimaced. No wonder Soviets were so bass-ackwards, drinking rotgut like this. To win a war, even a cold one, men need something worth coming home to—a good woman, good TV, and good liquor. Fermented potatoes didn’t qualify.

  Baltimore answered, and he told the operator he had information on the Tutelo situation. She patched him directly into the situation room.