CHAPTER ONE: RUSSELL He spots the smoke off to the south, nine or ten miles away, maybe more. A dark cloud bellies out over the country clubs and subdivisions that have come to occupy the once-vacant periphery of the valley. He merges into the fast lane, lifts his glasses to his forehead, the better to see. The cloud moves swiftly, and he leans forward to follow its course, watching the interstate from the corner of his eye. High above the mountains to the east, a blue stretch of air is split horizontally by the chalk-line contrail of a jet plane. In no time at all the smoke erases the plane''s condensation from the sky, making its broad, black way toward Lake Mead and the Arizona border. Moments earlier the sound startled him, crashing like a wave, deep and resonant. It''s quiet now, and Russell listens to a headwind push steadily at the windshield, to the hollow drone of tires against pavement.
He wonders, in the stillness of the front seat, if some sort of bomb has gone off at one of the far-flung casinos of south Las Vegas. Ever since 9/11 there''s been talk of potential attacks on the city, a few resorts on the Strip still searching backpacks and handbags on New Year''s Eve and the Fourth of July, hampering their crowded entrances with metal detectors and armed guards. The glare of a mid-morning sun gives the interstate a kind of waxen luster that almost blinds him if he pays attention to it. An odor of exhaust permeates the atmosphere of his little sedan, charter buses, and eighteen-wheelers making canyons of the lanes. Russell lowers the passenger-side window and squints out at the cloud of smoke, whose proportions suddenly double before his eyes. And then he hears it again, the very same sound--like a clap of thunder, like cannon fire at a football game--followed this time by a series of pops. They keep coming: pop, pop, pop! Each one louder, clearer, than the last. He feels a throb of apprehension, then the guilty relief that comes whenever catastrophe strikes a remote region of the world, that unsavory sense of security brought about by the misfortunes of strangers: unlike those who might have already perished in the explosions or the ensuing fire, he is still alive.
He raises the window and speeds up to seventy, tailgating an old Ford Mustang, reasoning that a terrorist''s targets would be the MGM or Bellagio or the Venetian, Fremont Street or Nellis Air Force Base, places of size and prominence, not a little-known edge of the valley. It''s ten-thirty, a gusty Tuesday in May, and Russell is heading south on 515, on his way home from the All or Nothing after twelve straight hours tending bar--a shift and a half, because money''s tight. He''s a good deal stoned, as he often is during his drive back from the tavern. Weed calms him, and Russell needs to be calmed, each and every day. Sometimes, as a matter of course, it has the opposite effect, making him fearful. It seems to be doing so this morning, for he finds himself concerned about Emma, his wife, who''s having brunch with a girlfriend downtown--many miles in the other direction. She''s perfectly safe. The assumption appeases his fear, and he slows the Corolla and merges back into the middle lane.
He turned off the radio after the first explosion, and now Russell turns it back on, scanning the AM news stations until he hears mention of the fire. The exact location is unknown, a reporter explains in a slow, hardened voice. Somewhere in the desert southeast of Las Vegas, the man says, possibly a chemical plant, and before he can add another word, Russell feels a prickly tension across his forehead and around his ears, a crown of dread. Something in his stomach tautens like a cord. The WEPCO plant, where his friend Andrew works--it''s out that way, just beyond the city. He''s known Andrew since middle school, where they shared a homeroom, their friendship a constant for the past thirty years. Russell, an only child, has always thought of him as a brother. He digs around in the console for a tissue, blinking as he steers the Corolla back into the fast lane.
His left eye waters when he''s anxious, and he lifts his glasses again and dabs at it, the reporter''s voice turning soft and indistinct, held for Russell in some kind of abeyance--there and not there. The air conditioner whirs and the wind pushes harder at the windshield. Traffic zips along as if nothing has happened. The smoke continues over the mountains, drifting higher into the sky. From the pocket of his shirt he fingers his lighter and the joint he rolled the day before, a half-smoked pinner containing the last of his supply. For as long as Russell can recall he''s suffered from unpredictable panic attacks that not only start his eye watering but also cause his mouth to dry up and his hands to tremble furiously. His temples will grow slick with sweat, and for minutes on end he''ll sit wheezing as though he''s sucking air through a penny whistle. Cannabis, when it does its job, is both a neutralizer and a preventive.
He toked the first half of the joint at work, on his way out of the parking lot. Now he lights the second half and inhales. He smokes it down to a roach and then stubs it out in the ashtray. The plant produces a chemical called ammonium perchlorate--an oxidizer for rocket fuel--though Andrew has no background in chemistry or any other science. He''s a maintenance technician and has been with WEPCO, the Western Engineering & Production Company, for the past seven or so years. It''s among a small handful of chemical plants in that part of the desert, with their turbines and storage tanks and great warrens of above-ground piping, slender smokestacks aimed like howitzers at the sky, white plumes mingling above. There''s a marshmallow factory out there as well--a factory that manufactures an edible product right in the middle of a bunch of chemical plants. Russell can just imagine the range of hazardous substances stored within the confines of such places, what negligent or unscrupulous activity occurs, not that Andrew himself would ever be responsible.
Who knows to what degree their secretions have contaminated the local ecosystem? It was a matter of time, Russell supposes, before something exploded. * * * He keeps south on the interstate, his thoughts turning to Andrew''s house, which isn''t very far from the plants. Russell wonders about Juliet, Andrew''s wife, and about Maddie, their daughter. Are they in harm''s way? Juliet--an art therapist--should be at her office by now. Maddie should be in class, her high school a safe-enough distance to the north. Maybe he''s overreacting. He''s hopped up; his brain isn''t right, isn''t operating the way it''s supposed to. I''m panicked , Russell thinks.
In a state. Jumping to conclusions. He has no idea if the explosions have in fact taken place at WEPCO--or, despite the news station''s hypothesis, at any of the plants at all. Smoke has consumed much of the air above the mountains, bulking like an enormous rain cloud. Anyone in the vicinity, says the man on the radio, should take immediate shelter. No sooner has the reporter concluded his warning than Russell hears five or six more pops, accompanied by another crash of sound. He feels this one in his seat, a hard double-jouncing, as if the car has passed too quickly over a speed bump. "Andrew," he says, not quite aloud, smoke sweeping upward in a thick black column tinged with rose.
Russell exits the interstate and drives in the direction of Andrew''s neighborhood, the whole southeastern sky rolling and fattening. Clouds expanding into clouds.