by Ed Hurst
They headed north on a paved road, but soon left it for a winding gravel affair. After a few branches, it was one step above bare rocky desert ground, yet still rather smooth. Finally, they turned up into a draw, in which was nestled a very interesting house. It was three stories of native stone, built right into the back corner the draw. Add crenellated balustrades and it could easily become a castle. Terrell had Michael stop the truck outside a gate an eighth of a mile back from the house. As he jumped out, he told Michael to use the open space in front of him to turn the truck and towed pickup around.
Through the turn-around, Michael watched as Terrell stepped up to the gate and put his hand on something on the other side. Then he climbed over the thing, which was sturdier than it appeared. In a steady jog, he approached the house on one side where there was a pair of garage doors. At this distance, Michael couldn’t see much, but he thought a human head poked out of one window near the garage doors. The exchange was brief. Terrell walked over to one of the doors, raised it and stepped inside. A minute later, the nose of a large pickup emerged, followed by a double horse trailer. As the truck rolled up to the gate, it opened automatically. At about the same time, the garage door was closing itself. Motioning to Michael to follow, he lead the way back out. They stopped just before the road climbed over a ridge.
He waved with his hand for Michael to pull up even on the passenger side. Before Michael could get out, Terrell had the back door slid up, and began moving the boxes to the horse trailer. This was one of those fancy trailers completely closed in, but with panels that could be folded down in warmer weather. Michael began helping move the boxes. The crates stayed in the van. When finished, he looked up at Terrell with an obvious question on his face.
“Vegas is just a ruse. It’ll scare ‘em to death, give ‘em a taste of their own medicine. Listen carefully.” He pulled a fat envelope from a pocket inside his jacket, and handed it to Michael. As he spoke, he retained his grip on it. “Follow me out to the paved road. I’ll turn right, you turn left and get back to the Interstate. Drive into Vegas. Just this side of the Strip, you’ll see an old, run-down gas station. There’ll be a bunch of snowbird rigs out back in a huge parking area this time of year. Pull out to the far side, lock up the van, uncouple your pickup and drive away. I don’t care where you go, just go. I recommend you never visit California again. In fact, leave the US.” He let go of the envelope. Grabbing the backpack from the van, he slammed the roll top door down. “Thanks for your help.” Tossing the pack into the cab of the truck, he climbed in and began driving away.
Michael hustled to get in the cab of the van, trying to keep up. He was pretty sure he’d get lost in the twisting roads out here. As they parted on the paved route, Michael stared after the accelerating rig with a blank look on his face. Just like that, he’s going off to do it alone, keeping Michael out of it. Apparently there was some small risk in driving the van to Vegas, but he decided he could just about handle that.
Chapter 32
Finding things as Terrell had described them, Michael un-strapped the little pickup from the dolly and drove away. With no better idea what to do, he had left the keys in the ignition of the van. Then he remembered he was still wearing the dark brown jersey gloves, and took them off. Fingerprints, he said to himself. The aircraft and boxes apparently were going to be destroyed. The van would have only Terrell’s fingerprints, and the empty explosives containers. With the tank still full after that errand for Terrell two weeks ago, he decided not to stop until he reached Kingman, heading south.
The envelope had two grand in twenties. In Kingman, he stopped at Wal-Mart. Among other things, he grabbed a couple of sandwiches from the deli, and miscellaneous groceries. Between what he could get there and at the Home Depot, he replaced his carpentry kit. He also purchased a wide collection of items which made the work easier, but were hard to get in Mexico. There was also a collection of work clothes and decent shoes in sizes he guessed at for a certain slender young man. And for the young widow, he picked up a simple but lovely dress.
It would be dark before he reached the border at Nogales, so he decided to risk one more night in the US, staying at Patagonia Lake Park. He was irritated to find they had no regular camping spaces, but for a fee would let him park among the self-contained vehicles. In his gear was a tiny chem-stool, so he was fine with that. Most frustrating was his inability to fall asleep quickly. Finally, he pulled out his laptop, and to his surprise found a moderate wireless signal. It took about three minutes to crack the WEP key, and he read a few sites. He decided to check the Flagstand site, and was surprised to find a message waiting.
Check your weapons.
The only weapons Michael knew about were in the secret stash over his head. As soon as the panel was moved, a sheet of paper fell out. He recognized the typeface as coming from the old typewriters still used for some things at the publishing company.
You already knew the plastique would be followed. That every rental truck in the US now has locator chips only guaranteed it, so I made it a point to pick it up in the moving van. With the Ghost Clan already keeping tabs on me, I knew they’d guess I was aiming for their confab in Vegas. A little panic is good for them. Unless you were foolish enough to stop too soon, by the time you see this, the police will be swarming that van.
The horse-mover belongs to an old Marine buddy. He promised to claim it stolen, which would allow me to ditch it when the job is done. We’ll see if I can still do winter wilderness survival. I have my Merchant Marine license, though with a different name on it, so I’ll try to sign on for a voyage to some place in the Pacific.
You might even hear from me again.
Michael slept poorly, and woke at first light. Wasting no time, he crossed the border as early as they would allow, and didn’t relax until he saw the highway signs for Numero Dos heading east.
Chapter 33
Just a few more months, and the old guard chief could retire and forget all about it.
He was trapped. By the time he understood the government bureaucracy’s concept of security was all theater, he had too much experience and training invested to afford another line of work. Sure, they called it “controlled access.” It always amounted to giving a real hassle to those with an honest need for access, and precious little control over those who were intent on breaching the perimeter without authorization.
He was bored out here in the middle of nowhere, on the night shift at the gate to a low population facility. Tonight the guard force outnumbered the population of the base. The domes on the buildings stood silently mocking him, since there was yet more and more effective security around them and the processing center standing nearby. That was a totally different agency, merely a partner to the one which actually owned the ground and his job.
But he knew that boredom was a particular kind, almost like a sixth sense. The first time he felt it was the night when he was at the Military Police station in Europe. The rolling gate was closed and nothing was visible on the camera displays. His mind had been wandering in that peculiar, odd sense of boredom. He looked up just as a shadowy figure darted away from the fence line at the far back corner of that compound hidden in some tiny village.
He almost didn’t move, then realize it might have been a test. So he stood and walked to the door of the station building and physically looked down toward the motor pool where the camera had caught the fleeting hint of movement. In the bright flood lights shining down on the vehicles, he saw brilliant paint smears on the largest vehicles. Garish bright colors against the gray-green government paint job offered anti-military slogans in English and the local tongue.
He almost lost his rank over that one.
It was also when he actually took an interest in the glaring disconnect between official procedure and actual security. Hoards of senior officers made all the decisions and wrote all the manuals, but not a one had ever done any security on the ground. While his efforts did gain him some feeble positive notice, he realize
d too late it was only a trap. At least, so it seemed. They took his written recommendations and acted like it was such a wonderful thing, and promised in all sincerity to examine and ask more questions later.
Once or twice, they actually did send someone who barely outranked him and they discussed things. Again, there was a warm and positive interaction. It was mentioned in his promotion packets. And not a darn thing changed, not simply because bureaucracy was slow, but because the people who actually decided these things simply tossed it all in the trash.
By the time he figured that out, he was locked into the system. Sure, he could just quit, but he was by then too old to learn a new career, and really wasn’t interested in anything else. So he stayed, promoted and transferred with bureaucratic regularity and efficiency, until he found himself here, guarding the outer perimeter of one of the highest security installations in the US. He was totally unneeded except in the bureaucratic imagination of some policy dweeb at the Pentagon.
And it was that weird sense of boredom, which his mind recognized as a warning there was almost surely something brewing out there, outside the fence and buffer zone of bright stadium lights shining on the ground. He didn’t trust the cameras. As the senior man on shift, he stepped out into the night air and scanned the darkness beyond the nearest edge of the lighted area.
That’s when he heard the first explosion. Running around the edge of the building, he spotted the flames coming from one of the domes. He froze. There was nothing he could do, except yell for someone to notify the other end of that closed phone system, and watch so he could file an accurate report. Also, he was waiting in case anything exploded or fell into the area outside the inner perimeter.
He watched with every fiber of his consciousness, but a part of his brain just could not believe it as explosion after explosion shook first one, then another dome, and then the processing building. Nothing he could hear or see indicated the source. This was not military ordinance, but something much more effective, with some odd-colored flame signature. He counted a dozen. He was nearly deaf, ears ringing by the time the explosions stopped, so he didn’t hear the yelling. Not that it mattered, because there was still nothing he could actually do except note every detail visually as he stared at the smoking ruins of two communications domes.
Not that it would necessarily protect his retirement from the impotent rage of bureaucrats, but at least his conscience was clear. Whatever it was causing the explosions, he knew with all the certitude of the earth and sky themselves there was nothing he could have done to prevent it.
Chapter 34
The homecoming in Juarez was spectacular. No, there was no cheering, no singing or dancing. But there was a minor feast, hastily arranged, since Michael arrived late in the afternoon. His friend, Hermanito, was there, and was even more speechless than usual when Michael gave him the bags of gifts. The young man put on the shoes immediately, and it appeared they were a reasonable fit. Everyone helped him celebrate, and commented Hermanito had been working quite hard while Michael was gone.
He didn’t wait for Juanita to finish in the kitchen. He called her to the doorway, then handed her the dress, neatly folded. She blushed, and looked at him with a depth in which he was completely lost for just a moment. Then she turned and went back into the kitchen. Had he been wrong? No, for the next day she wore the new dress, and came to show him before starting her day in the mission’s kitchen. His heart was gone, never to return. A proper courtship would take awhile, but he had time – all the time in the world. She wore the dress proudly that day, and told quite a few people where she got it, he was sure. All day long he dealt with smug looks and broad hints about a future marriage. The mission pastor reminded him marrying a citizen made permanent residency much easier.
It was warm that night, and a breeze blew through the open window of his camper. The door was latched open, too. He reminded himself to see if Ernesto could add screens to the camper windows before it got too warm. Maybe an awning, too, strapped to one side. On the glowing laptop screen in front of him, he read numerous different sites. While none of the wire services carried it, he found reports on a couple of radical Green forums celebrating the fireworks outside Yakima, to the east. There were postings asking if any of the activist cells had done it. In spite of the high security, one activist had managed to climb a hill and use binoculars to see at least two dishes were completely gone, and smoke still rising from the main building.
There were several mainstream media write-ups on a bomb scare in Las Vegas. The word “terrorist” featured prominently, and some public figures made a lot of noise. The “bomb-making materials” got mention in a few places. Vegas took a major income hit from emergency evacuations, and he could just picture the panicky feds running all over town.
Meanwhile, there was a news item about a raid on a child pornographer’s house. There was a photo of FBI agents carrying a desktop computer and boxes of video tapes out of a suburban home. It was Terrell’s house – the house which was sparsely furnished, had no desktop computers, and no video equipment. There had been no videos or photos hidden on Terrell’s laptop, which was probably with him, anyway. Michael wondered how many other kiddie porn arrests, and other attention-grabbing allegations, were based on planted evidence, when the real reason for the arrest was totally otherwise. It occurred to him some of them were pure vendetta, with no crime committed at all.
Nothing changed. Tyrants continued in tyranny until they died. Michael had decided their end was none of his concern. As long as God had a mission for him here on this hill west of Juarez, it was just as well all that stuff stayed north of the border.
Part Three Epilogue
Chapter 35
For the fifth time in the last hour, his eyes strayed once again to the package. Thick brown paper wrapped around a hard object, it was roughly the size of a small cigar box. The pretty stamps were from some Asian country, and the US Customs declaration said “Personal effects.” There was no return address. It had come to the mother church across the border in El Paso, in care of his name. He picked it up the day after Valentine’s.
He couldn’t focus on the computer game on his laptop. It wasn’t Juanita’s purposeful movements in the kitchen distracting him, either. Nor could he blame it on the twin infant boys, for they were sleeping quietly after their lunch. He stretched his legs, rather stiff in the room which he purposely kept cool. Placing the computer in suspend mode, he closed the lid. Very deliberately he slid it back toward the wall on his very clean desk. With a will, he turned to look at the package. Reaching over slowly, he pulled it toward himself.
He never got packages addressed to him individually, and got no mail at all delivered via the mother church. They had no record of him there, his name not written anywhere on a single scrap of paper. This was by his request. The package was obviously from Terrell, and he was pretty sure the customs declaration was absolutely truthful.
They had discussed the dilemma of a change in conscience. If either of them later regretted the whole thing, neither could talk about the other. Of course, they both knew that meant no one could discuss their mission unless the other was dead. Michael wondered if Terrell had carried the same seeds of doubt that haunted his own mind the past two years. Both were sure they had to do something, even if it meant getting caught – even if getting caught meant one day turning themselves into the authorities. Yet both were sure none of that mattered, because they couldn’t stop themselves, couldn’t abandon the mission. That Michael had only a peripheral part in it didn’t change his culpability. So sending the package to Michael at the church in El Paso was Terrell’s permission for Michael to confess the whole thing. The package would surely alert them to look for Michael in Ciudad Juarez.
And the US could have as easily gotten to him on either side of the border, once they knew where he was.
That was part of the reason for his delay in opening the package. He was a little surprised he hadn’t heard anything by now. Might as well s
ee what Terrell wanted him to have. After cutting the tape seal, he unwrapped the brown paper slowly. Inside was a wooden box, finely crafted with Native American carvings on the top face. It was a very tight fit and only slowly the two halves separated. In the bottom half, a folded letter lay on top – a single sheet.
“Typical,” Michael thought to himself. Opening it, there were two sections, obviously typed at different times, on different typewriters. The paper was perfectly clean, and not the standard US letter sized. It was longer and narrower.
Michael
I didn’t tell you about my heart condition. It was the result of some fever I got during a visit to the Middle East, and was why I didn’t stay in the Marines longer. I was never able to get the evidence it was the result of some intentional bio-warfare agent, one of ours which got in the wrong hands.
. . .
It seems rather anti-climatic to end my life this way on board a cargo vessel. I’ll be gone before we make the next port. Enjoy the exotic stamps. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t even make the hike to port in Seattle, but felt fine. It was the combination of long dreary hours loading and unloading this scow for two years in tropical heat, and bad food, that seems to have finished me.
I’m glad for the quiet days, for once not looking over my shoulder, not having to think of every angle, every detail. God is Semper Fidelis.
Terrell
Underneath was an old pocket Bible, well worn, tattered, and marked up by all manner of writing implements. A stack of large bills fell out from between the pages, scattered throughout the Bible. It was several thousand dollars. One of them had a small sticky note, and the words “mission support” scribbled on it. On one end of the box was a lump wrapped in athletic tape. Unraveling it, Michael stared at what he felt sure were Terrell’s original issued dog tags from Parris Island.