Clint Faraday Mysteries Collection 5 books: Murderous Intent Collector's Edition

by Moulton, CD

  “A complete sounding. They’ll know within a few thousand cubic meters exactly what’s here.”

  Roso nodded. “We can use the same places?”

  “To make a sonic map? Oh, yeah! I’ll have to call Genio to have sounding equipment brought in. Can you let the chopper land by the holes to set it up?”

  “I will be done, but only that chopper,” Roso agreed, then spoke to the others. The boy would stay to show them where the holes were and the two men melted into the shrubs.

  “It will wait until no earlier than an hour past noon,” Roso said and they headed back toward the village. Clint climbed the nearest hill, but there was no signal. He went to the higher point past the village and called Genio to make the arrangements. Then Clint visited with his friends until the chopper came about three thirty. He, Beto and Roso joined Ernesto and Genio for a crowded flight to the holes. They set the recorders up and Clint dropped the charge into the pipes while Genio and Ernesto took radiation background readings. They took the readings at all four places, then headed back. Beto stayed at the swamp, where Pedro came to watch the sounding. They dropped Roso off at the village and headed back to Panamá City.

  “I have studied about phosphates,” Genio said. “I found a great amount of information on the web. I now know that the supplies of the material is rapidly growing sparse. It would still seem a difficult and expensive thing that would return little. Six dollars and change per cubic meter. They would possibly construct a processing plant on the area that would contaminate everything from there to the sea and much of the nearer Caribbean. There must be more to this than that.”

  “It’s a matter of the overall amount. If it was only a meter deep, there would be about one hundred twenty thousand cubic meters. Not worth the expense. The figure they’re working on is one that takes the average depth of the deposit into consideration. If it’s ten meters deep, you’re talking a hundred thousand two hundred times ten. A million and a quarter cubic meters. Borderline. If it’s twelve meters deep, it’s profitable. I suspect it’s probably a lot more than that or they wouldn’t be taking the chances they are. The Florida deposits are more than twenty meters deep and are under twenty square miles. They’ve mined for nearly a hundred years. Billions of dollars.”

  Genio looked thoughtful, then nodded. “I don’t know how to read the sonic map, but there were some long lines.”

  “I think we’ll find the average depth is more than thirty meters.”

  “More than forty million dollars.”

  “That’s for the raw ore. If they process it they’ll get about a ton of triple super per two and a quarter cubic meters, which will sell at, the recent price, nearly a hundred bucks per ton. They’ll add their transportation fees and clear about – clear, not margin – forty five dollars per cubic meter. They’ll also produce phosphoric acid and such things that bring in another six or eight dollars per meter.

  “Consider the way the price will increase when they close the rest of the Florida mines. We’re talking a couple of billion dollars. Minimum.”

  Genio nodded. Ernesto said that seemed the kind of things those people would be after. They all agreed with that!

  “It’s an average of thirty two and eight tenths meters deep, give or take the eight tenths,” Clint declared, after printing out and studying the sonic maps. I’d say three billion dollars over fifteen years at present prices. The price’ll double in that time, so we’re talking a lot of money.

  “Yes. I’d have to work fifty years and would have that much if I were to be very frugal and inherit twenty five billion,” Genio answered. “How will we deal with this mess? They will undoubtedly try to bribe every corrupt politician and judge in the country.”

  “That means every politician and lawyer and most of the judges would get their part. Spread the money around.,” Ernesto said, with a big grin. “I wonder how much they’ll pay me not to see what they’re doing when I fly over?”

  “Maybe twenty bucks per trip.”

  “No way! I’ll get fifty or I’ll manage to see every move they make. I’m duty-bound to report it!”

  “Make it sixty. I get ten – and I’ll make your regular route four times per day over that very area!” Genio replied.

  “Make it a hundred. You’ll need that for me not to report this little conversation,” Clint added. “Seriously, we have to make some kind of plan. I don’t give a damn if the Indios shoot down everything that flies over the comarca, but I don’t want ... I have to take a couple of days to run something down. The money may be the thing that’s most important to them and to that type, but there’s something else about this that has me worried.”

  “Yeah! What the hell kind of weapon do the indigenos have and where did they get it?”

  “I think I know part of the answer to that. I just hope I’m dead wrong about it,” Clint said.

  They talked about several plans, but didn’t have enough information. The best and safest thing to do at the moment was see that no one went onto the comarca.

  “I think I’ll let Victor out of jail. I can say I hope he learned a lesson and blah, blah, blah,” Genio suggested. “I think I want to know who he contacts. That could be very telling.”

  Clint nodded this time.

  After a little more, Clint said he had to catch a plane to Bocas or David. He’d know which in a few minutes.

  His cellular buzzed. He said that might be his answer.

  It wasn’t. Roso was calling to say four men came in a three-quarter ton truck to the almacen and were threatening people with guns. He said they would be buried by dark unless Clint wanted to know who they were or something. Genio and Ernesto were staring at the phone, that Clint had put on speaker, in disbelief.

  “Keep all their stuff there. I’ll come out in a day or two, so maybe we can find something about them. I suppose they’ll be people someone hired to harass you.”

  “The truck is from Colón and the driver and one other had cedulas issued in Colón.”

  “Blacks?”

  “Yes.”

  “It figures!”

  Cooperation

  Genio said the situation was such that Ernesto would take him anywhere he had to go in the police chopper. The Policia Nacional were requesting his help and would pay for such things. This kind of crazy thing had to be stopped before it got completely out of hand. Clint said Bocas first to take care of unfinished business and see to his property and the projects in the area, then probably to David or somewhere.

  They flew to Bocas and Clint said they’d spend the night there, then go wherever they had to go in the morning. Ernesto could stay at Clint’s place. Ernesto had a girlfriend in Bocas. He’d been stationed there twice before, once every two years on rotation. That would work out well for both of them!

  Clint took care of his business, then took Judi Lum, his attractive nextdoor neighbor/helper with the projects and in his cases and all-around information gatherer extraordinaire out for a night on the town. They went to several of the places they frequented when there, such as Gringos, which was Gary’s Mexican food restaurant and the Toro Loco, Rip Tide, Refugio’s and the Lemon Grass. This case had nothing to do with the area and no one knew anything, except that the Indios were shooting down planes that flew over the eastern comarca – so don’t fly over the eastern comarca.

  “I suppose that’s an exaggeration. The Indios don’t have anything that’ll shoot down a plane!” Judi said.

  “Don’t be so damned sure. I think Dave gave them something. They are shooting down certain planes with certain company logos painted on the tail. They have damned good reason.”

  “You mean to tell me Dave’s super weapon isn’t just a story?”

  “I hope to hell it is, but don’t think so. It’s real. They are shooting down planes.”

  “Why do you think it’s his idea?”

  “Shooting them down is their own idea. He just gave them the ... whatever it is.

  “Where is he? Do you know?”
r />   “Cusapin. At least, I think so. He said he was going there, then to the coast east.

  “Why do you think it was his super weapon? I suppose he’s been in that area, but what would he give them something like that for?”

  “He gave them that old Essex guitar, they have a serious problem the government’s not going to help them with, unless they’re forced, they have something nobody can even figure that can shoot down planes, goes all the way through everything and doesn’t expand.”

  “Doesn’t expand? Meaning?”

  “It was either a very hard carbon steel or was traveling at a higher muzzle velocity than we can attain or both.”

  “A child’s marble wouldn’t do it, then?”

  “I asked about that point. It would have to be traveling at more than a hundred thousand miles per hour, but balsa wood would probably do it at that speed.”

  “It would take an atomic blast to get it that fast. An atomic blast would blow the gun up and you could hear it for fifty miles. It would also kill the Indios using it.”

  “That’s what scares me. It isn’t atomic and is something he says a ten year old kid could build with stuff you find around most houses. I thought it was one of his SF bullshit lines, but the Indios have something that’s eerily like what he was talking about. I think he mentioned it in some of his SF books. I’m going to read a few of them. I remember something ... in two books. I’ve read eight or ten of those Maita books. It was used in a place where a court was being set up on an island ... I think I can find it. It’ll give me a clue. Maybe.”

  “Maybe it’s a good thing they have it. Dave’s nuts, but not in a bad way. He wouldn’t give them something they couldn’t use with a lot of safety. He wouldn’t, Clint.”

  “That’s part of my dilemma. I know it. It’s just that I don’t want it in anyone else’s hands. Ever.”

  “Another little piece. We’re only a year and a half from the end of the Mayan calendar. I don’t believe in most of that kind of thing, but too much is adding up to, as Dave says, zero.”

  “Well, they say it isn’t the end of the world, just that it will go though drastic and unknowable change. That would do it.”

  “It would? How?”

  “What if you didn’t dare get on a plane, that no plane dared to fly? What happens to the world with only that?”

  “And it could stop everything from a donkey to the stealth bomber, according to him. It could conceivably sink any ship. Any city could be starved out by a handful of nutcases – and there’s one thing this world isn’t short on. Nutcases! There’d be no way to deliver power that one person couldn’t stop.”

  “I think most of that is SF. Enough of it isn’t that it scares the piss out of me!”

  “On the other hand, most of today’s science fact was SF a very few years ago.”

  “Shut the fuck up!”

  She laughed and gave him the bird.

  They went home a little after one. Clint got the CD with Dave’s books on it and sat to look through the list and descriptions. It was that one. Book 39. It sounded like what the Indios had, so maybe it wasn't all SF. Maybe he had actually built the thing, like he said. In 1957. He then forgot about it until writing the books and had used it in a couple. The problems he was having with his land being stolen and corrupt police and judges caused him to think seriously about building another one just to see if 1957 was an accident or remembering something that didn't happen. He was toying with the idea of using the existence to force government to crack down on that corruption more than with a little lip service.

  Apparently, it wasn't that! Crap!

  Four thirty, so why bother going to bed. He'd get a new pot of coffee on, eat a good breakfast, then go through the day. He did that, at times. It didn't bother him to miss one or two nights sleep.

  He called Ernesto at eight to say they were headed for Cusapín as soon as he could be ready. It seemed he was at the chopper to check it out, anyhow, so Clint threw a few things in a bag and headed to the airport. They were landing in Cusapín a few minutes after nine. Clint met with Basilio and Silvio, who was visiting there from Rambala, and found that Dave was somewhere to the east, no closer than fifty five kilometers, because that's where he left off last time. They took Nando's boat, so it would be easy to find them from the air. The boat would be on the beach and they had those blue tents.

  Twenty five minutes later they spotted the tents and boat, so landed on the beach a few hundred meters away. Dave was running a small gas generator to recharge his camera and laptop batteries while he worked on downloading the pictures and putting tags on the photos. He greeted them and said he'd be through in about half an hour. Coffee in the pot.

  Nobody, and that was nobody, distracted Dave when he was working. He'd go ballistic!

  They chatted with the two Indio boys helping Dave until he was through with the comp and had put the recharged batteries back in the camera and put the used ones on the charger. He asked Clint what he wanted that was so important he flew all the hell the way out there.

  "Do you think it was a smart idea to give the Indios that electronic sling?" Clint asked.

  "They won't let it out of their hands and they won't try to figure how it works. I made a few things in it that means they'll mess it up if they try to get inside.

  "They're using it?"

  "Twice ... three times."

  "Over the strip mine?"

  "Over a strip mine. One that a bunch of greedbags want to open near Green Water. Phosphate."

  "Hmm. I kind of wondered about that area. It's a lot like Riverview was in the late forties and into the early fifties. I was born in Lakeland and we used to swim and fish in the pits. We did for years. It wasn't until the seventies that we found out we were all supposed to have died from ten different cancers. There's radium in phosphate, you know.

  "That area's a big wasteland that's supposed to be poisoned for the next few thousand years – so they're putting some big developments on it.

  "The sling's safe enough, for now. I suppose they'll eventually take it apart and it's obvious what it is, if they do."

  "You only gave them one?"

  "Uh-oh? They've already taken it apart?"

  "Uh-huh. They have several."

  "They'll keep the deal, Clint. It's still safe."

  "Until someone else gets their hands on one. Welcome to the end of the Mayan calendar!"

  "Could be! I'd recommend, pointedly, that you and our friends manage to come onto the comarcas if that happens. It'll get pretty rough in the, you might say facetiously, civilized places."

  "You aren't worried?"

  "I didn't do anything. The damned thing's so obvious I'm totally amazed nobody thought of it a hundred years ago! It's like trisecting the angle. They hadn't done it because it can't be done, so there! It took me all of fifteen minutes to figure that one. Big fucking deal. Anything anybody does with it's because they're what they are. It'll be people wanting revenge for some reason or other, ninety percent understandable and maybe justified by karma or something. It'll make this research pointless."

  "So. You might as well give it up."

  "No. I'll do it, because it's what I do. Screw the world and its problems. They're self-imposed. Prisoners of their own device, as The Eagles said."

  Well, Clint had that answer. He was damned if he had a clue about what to do with it. They chatted awhile, then Dave and the kids went off into the rain forest and Clint and Ernesto headed for Panamá City.

  “I’ll go to the comarca and try to convince them that this is too big for anyone to handle. I won’t have much luck, but they’ll be a lot more careful. They know I wouldn’t do anything to harm them in any way.”

  “If you’re serious about this thing ... I think I’ll want to make my friends in the comarcas or, at least, a long way from the cities. If we didn’t have those holes with no expansion – I spent ten hours learning what that was about. The more I learned, the more scared I became – I’d say go fuck you
rself. Tell it to someone stupid enough to believe the crap on the net.

  “Clint, do you think it’s possible to stop it? The Indios can be the most stubborn people in the world when they think they’re in the right.”

  “That’s the trouble here. There’s no way I can believe they’re not in the right. Can you picture what this world would be like if the Israelis or the Arabs or Afghans or whatever found the thing first, say fifty years ago?”

  “Did they have the technology then?”

  “According to Dave, we’ve had the technology since the early eighteen hundreds. According to him, there were probably thousands of ways this or that person tried to make one and it wouldn’t work because of a basic law of the universe or something. He calls it reactionary repulse and that it’s the thing that makes electric motors work. I don’t begin to understand it, but he says the only reason no one’s been able to do it was because they looked at it from the wrong end.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “I don’t have a clue.”

  “Do you think they can make more without him?”

  “He gave them one and warned them not to try to take it apart. He put something in it that would make it fail if the thing, whatever it is, was opened – but just looking at it would tell anyone with a brain what it was and how it worked.”

  “But ... they have several.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Shit! Fuck! Oh, Christ!”

  “That pretty well covers it.”

  “I suppose all we can do is try. I also studied a little about phosphate mining. It can be pretty hard on an area.”

  “Yeah. That’s precisely why I can’t argue that they’re wrong. They aren’t. They’re only trying to protect their land and themselves. They’re only trying to keep the greedbags out. The trouble is, I can’t think of any way phosphate can be mined that isn’t your basic strip mine that’ll leave pretty permanent destruction of a whole area.”