Now his concern was Pelly and his ability with a pistol.
"What do you want, Pelly?"
"Release Lina and let me take the cash. We'll call it even."
As Staub considered the offer, secretly proud that his protégé had enough intelligence to think about the cash, he jumped at the sound of several gunshots in close succession.
Staub felt the impact of the bullets in his chest, like a fist, causing him to lose his grip on the small pistol as he fell backward. Somewhere in his head he heard it clink onto the cement floor. It sounded like it echoed.
From the floor he could see that Pelly had not fired. His assistant spun and started to open up at an unseen assailant high up in the shelving, popping off three quick rounds.
Staub heard his wheezing breath and knew the wounds were serious. He fought to keep consciousness and stave off shock.
Where was his phone? He still needed to arm the warhead.
***
Alex Duarte didn't care if he had killed William Floyd. He ignored the man slumped on the floor of the truck and immediately hit the gas and pulled the Ford truck into the corner of an empty parking lot to some kind of furniture store.
He reached down and found the little SIG-Sauer in Floyd's waistband and pulled it out, tucking it in his own belt.
He checked Floyd's pulse, which was steady, although blood from several lacerations pooled on the floor of the truck.
Duarte jumped out of the truck and raced to the rear. He popped open the tailgate and tried to slide out the open crate but realized it was too heavy. Instead he crawled up into the covered bed of the truck.
He ran his hand up the front of the metal cylinder in the crate, wiping packing straw away as he moved. Near the top of the open crate, he found several wires and a cell phone attached to it. He knew immediately that this was the triggering system. The question was whether they had installed an antitampering device. If this were really a nuclear weapon and they had spent such a large amount for transportation and arming, he doubted they would have overlooked something as simple as a method of keeping someone from disarming the bomb.
He swept away the straw from the small cell phone attached to the device. He could clearly see the open hatch in the bomb and the connection to the phone. He wondered when Staub planned to detonate the bomb.
He backed out of the truck bed, bounded back to the cab and tugged the limp form of William Floyd onto the ground. He dragged him back to the tailgate, ignoring the couple of street people who had taken notice and started to stare at him and the truck.
He sat William Floyd up and checked his eyes. He appeared conscious but dazed. Duarte patted him on the face, not sure exactly what to do. He shouted, "William Floyd, wake up. Wake up." Slapping him a little harder.
The man mumbled something unintelligible, then said, "What? What?"
"What was your target?"
Floyd's eyes settled on Duarte's face. "Nevada. Nellis Air Force Base."
"How does it detonate?"
"Mr. Ortíz has to call. Once he calls and sets the code, it starts the chain reaction."
Duarte looked at him. "Do you really think he was going to let you drive all the way to Nevada?"
Floyd just stared at him.
Then Duarte felt a chill as he heard the phone on the warhead ring.
56
PELLY TWISTED HIS BODY AT THE SOUND OF THE FIRST SHOT. HE raised his pistol to acquire the target and saw the muzzle flash up high in the shelves. He adjusted his sights, saw the figure of a man crouched on the top shelf and fired three times. The man on the shelves continued to shoot at Colonel Staub as Pelly sent two more rounds his way.
The man tilted, then tumbled off the top shelf, slamming onto the cement floor.
Pelly, using his training, continued to scan the area for other threats, then spun on his heels to check on the colonel's condition. His employer lay motionless on the floor.
He moved quickly to Lina.
"Are you unharmed?"
She was panting. "Yeah. Who did you shoot?" She couldn't see from her seated position.
Pelly took another quick glance at the still form of Colonel Staub, then rushed across the open loading area, past the Audi with Professor Tuznia's body in the trunk, to the front of the shelves where the gunman had fallen. He stepped around the shelves, then nudged the body with his foot. After a second, he crouched and turned the battered head faceup. The DEA agent, Félix Baez, was dead from two gunshots to the chest and a fractured skull from the fall. He also had a days-old bullet wound to his right arm where his sleeve had been torn. Pelly touched the hole in the side of his forearm, wondering where the wound had come from.
He hustled back to Lina. "I am afraid it was your friend Félix."
"You killed him?"
"I did not know who it was, but it doesn't matter. He was going to try and kill me. At least he stopped the colonel."
Lina craned her neck to see the fallen Panamanian cop and druglord.
Pelly looked over, too, and thought his boss might still be breathing, but by the position of the bullet wounds and the blood staining his shirt it didn't matter. He looked at Lina and said, "You'll be found soon."
"What about the bomb?"
"Ike does not have the phone number. It is harmless." He stood up and backed toward the office. "I'm sorry to leave you like this, but I doubt you'd give me a head start otherwise." He leaned down and muscled-up the crate of cash. "If I call you later, would you come help me spend this?"
Lina gave him a look without one of her crooked smiles. "Sure, just give me the address where I can find you."
"A cop to the end. I appreciate that. Perhaps I'll call you in a few months and at least see if you've changed your mind."
She looked over to where Félix had fallen off the shelf. "I can guarantee it would be a waste of your time."
"Goodbye" was all he said, as he turned and quickly made his way to the Chevy Impala, thinking of how he would leave the U.S. He strained under the weight of his crate and knew, however he left, it would be in style.
***
Colonel Lázaro Staub could hear Pelly's voice, but the words didn't come in clearly in his mind. He lay on the floor of his giant warehouse, wheezing lightly as he tried to maintain consciousness. Now the only thing that mattered was calling the bomb. Even if William Floyd was on the next block, it made no difference. Staub knew he was as good as dead. Even if he survived the gunshot wounds, he would be imprisoned in the U.S. for the rest of his life. He might even get stuck in the same federal facility as Manuel Noriega. That would be ironic. At least by detonating the bomb, he would be exacting the revenge he had lived for.
He tried to sit up, but pain shot through him like a lightning bolt.
"Mierda," he mumbled to himself as he relaxed and wheezed to catch his breath. He turned his head and focused on the glass of the office. He didn't see Pelly, and assumed whoever had shot him was either dead or had fled. Pelly had returned fire immediately and was deadly accurate with his firearms.
His vision seemed to come back into focus as he saw the short set of shelves next to the office. He knew his cell phone was on the third shelf. Revenge was only about fifteen feet away.
Rolling onto his side, then face down, he struggled to his hands and knees. Somehow it was easier to breath from this position. He started to crawl toward the shelf. From his peripheral vision he saw Lina still tied in the chair. She was speaking to him, but he couldn't understand what she was saying. He thought it was gurgling until he realized it was his own gurgling he heard.
His shoulder hurt and his breath came in shorter gasps as he crawled toward his phone, but now he had only one goal: detonate the bomb. He would wipe out the city of Houston. In the bargain he would catch the clever but treacherous Pelly as well as Lina.
After what seemed like an hour, he found himself at the base of the shelving unit. He used his hands to start to lift himself upright. Pulling his feet beneath him, he could stand under hi
s own strength. Breathing was much easier, too.
His hand shook as he reached for the phone.
Now he heard Lina. She was pleading. "Don't do it, Lázaro. Think about the children in the area. Please don't."
He ignored her as his shaking hand picked up the phone. He reached into his pants pocket to recover the phone number provided by the Ukrainian. His vision was blurry, but he could still read the number. His thumb mashed button after button on the small Nextel phone. He double-checked the number before he hit the "send" button.
All was in order. He glanced around the warehouse and saw only Lina in the chair and a body near the main storage shelves. He didn't even care who it was. All evidence of their struggle would be swept clean in a few seconds.
He took a second to consider his life, feeling it leak out of him as he stood with the phone. He said a short prayer, asking God for strength. Now he understood what a Muslim suicide bomber might feel like, defending his country's honor.
Staub hit "send" and put the phone to his ear. He heard one ring. Then another. His heart continued to beat, but he felt it fading. Would he even live to feel the heat of the blast?
The third ring tone came through, and he checked the paper for the code to press in: 1-2-3-4. Now his clouded mind remembered. Then, as he was about to remove the phone from his ear to enter the code, he heard a voice.
"Hello."
He was stunned. "Who is this?" His voice was weak, but he still conveyed his outrage. Had he dialed the wrong number?
The voice said, "This is Alex Duarte of the ATF. How are you, Colonel Staub?"
"Duarte! How did you…" Staub would have continued, but he felt his consciousness start to slip as he lost his grip on the shelf and headed for the cement floor like a brick.
He had failed.
57
ALEX DUARTE LISTENED ON THE PHONE HE HAD YANKED OFF THE nuclear weapon. He could tell the line was open by the sound of the other phone falling on the ground and what he took to be a few seconds of heavy breathing or wheezing, but now there was just silence.
Then, away from the phone, he heard Lina shout, "Alex, it's clear here. I think Staub is dead."
He tried to shout back but knew the tiny phone speaker wouldn't broadcast his words clearly. He knew he had to get back to her.
Duarte loaded the cowed William Floyd into the cab of the truck and drove as carefully and defensively as he ever had back toward the warehouse. He felt confident he had disarmed the weapon, but he was going to have plenty of professionals looking it over in the next hours. The warehouse sounded safe now, and it provided some cover for the truck.
***
At the warehouse he shoved William Floyd in front of him and immediately saw Lina, apparently unharmed, still tied to a chair. He ran to her and saw Colonel Staub's body near the office and the small phone on the floor near his hand. The colonel's pistol lay on the ground near Lina. He snatched it up, then started to untie Lina. "Where is Pelly?"
"Gone," she paused and said, "Félix is dead."
"Where? How?"
"He and Pelly shot it out. He's over there." She nodded toward the main shelves.
"Where'd Pelly go?"
"Don't know. He left with a crate of cash."
He finished untying her. "Call for the cavalry, then keep an eye on your Pale Girl," Duarte said, pointing at William Floyd, sitting sullenly on the concrete floor.
He spun and raced to the body of Félix Baez. Before he reached his friend, he could tell he was dead from several major wounds. Duarte checked his pulse still. As he did, he noticed the wound on his arm. The long-sleeved shirt Félix had been wearing covered it. Now the sleeve was ripped, and the wound just below the elbow was exposed. It was a gunshot that had passed through his forearm. Immediately, it occurred to Duarte how he had been wounded. It made everything fall into place.
Félix had killed Cal Linley and Forrest Jessup. Duarte should have figured it out by how the DEA man had taken his informant's death. He had seen the signs when Félix lost control at the Ryder manager in Lafayette. His obsession had gotten the best of him. His questioning had gotten out of hand. Way out of hand. On the night that Duarte had tried to see Forrest Jessup, he had fired at the man's killer. Félix had taken the bullet in the arm and kept running.
To be certain, Duarte used a box cutter on the lowest shelf to cut a small clump of hair from Félix.
As he walked back to Lina and Floyd at the office, he took an envelope from the manager's desk and saved the hair.
He sat down on a plastic chair as if he had lost all energy in his body.
The pickup truck with the weapon was just outside, and the men involved were largely neutralized. This was not his normal day at work. This would be something to tell his father.
58
THE SCENE AT THE WAREHOUSE HAD REMAINED ALMOST UNDISTURBED after more than four hours. Alex Duarte had settled into the manager's chair inside the office, answering any questions the local homicide detectives or FBI agents had. Although the FBI agents spoke mostly to Lina.
The Houston bomb techs did a lot of staring at the weapon after carefully removing it from the crate, but they were professionals and admitted they had never even seen a nuclear warhead. They wanted nothing to do with it.
Duarte had noticed several of the cops make quick phone calls to their homes insisting that their spouses take the children and start driving. One burly young man ended the conversation with a loud "Now!"
They had removed Félix and Staub, maybe because they looked like there might be a chance to revive them. There wasn't. Duarte wondered how he would handle his friend's involvement in two unsolved homicides. That was for later.
No one had touched the body of the naked female physicist in the trunk of the Audi. They had photographed her and sketched that part of the crime scene, but she had apparently looked dead enough and spooked the paramedics that they were waiting for the medical examiner's team, which was tied up on another death in a different part of the city.
William "Ike" Floyd had been sequestered by local FBI agents as soon as they arrived. He sat in a chair surrounded by young, clean-cut agents in the far corner of the warehouse. Lina supervised to ensure no one talked to him and he didn't say anything.
At the open bay door, several Suburbans pulled up, and there was some commotion. By this time, Duarte was too tired to care who was arriving but could tell it was a boss.
Out of the newly arrived crowd he saw Meg Ruley emerge. Even though it was early in the morning and she would've been traveling most the night to get here from New Orleans, she looked like a recruiting poster for the federal government. Tall, attractive, professional, with the perfect combination of business suit and hairstyle. Now she wore an FBI badge clipped to her belt, with a small automatic pistol just behind it. That was an old trick to ensure the local cops knew you were also a cop and not just some administrator here to screw things up.
Duarte could tell by the way she took command and sent one of her Department of Energy representatives over to the bomb that she was not about to screw anything up. He doubted she ever had.
She saw him through the glass and waved like they were old friends. She motioned him out.
As he reached the door, he heard one of the DOE scientists near the trunk of the Audi say, "That's Marise Tuznia."
Meg stopped her march toward Duarte and said to the man. "And she is?"
"Ukrainian physicist. I thought she taught at Rice or somewhere out here."
Duarte remembered the young man in Omaha who said the plan involved "U-cranes."
Meg said, "They must have killed her after she armed the bomb."
Duarte said, "No." Meg and the DOE man stared at him. "Staub killed her before she could do it. Lina saw the man who worked on the warhead."
Meg nodded. "Thanks. That'll help." She walked closer to him, placing a hand around his waist like they were on a stroll.
She said, "I heard that you may be privy to several things that need to
be held in the strictest secrecy."
Duarte remained silent.
Meg said, "We'll worry about that later." She looked around the busy open bay. "You did a fine job here. And I don't just mean for an ATF agent. I mean you did a bang-up job and averted a major catastrophe."
He just stared at her.
"I mean it. You did a good job."
"You, too."
"Yeah, but I expect the FBI to do a good job."
"Glad someone does."
She kept her smile, used to dealing with all sorts. He wondered at her exact position in the FBI, because this woman was a boss even if she didn't broadcast it. She looked like a pretty good boss, too.
She handed Duarte an envelope.
"What's this?"
"Just a note."
"A note?"
She smiled, revealing perfect teeth that could have been a predator's if she wanted them to be. "It's a letter saying you are not allowed to speak about this case or the sources used in this case, mainly William Floyd, for any reason."
"You can do that?"
She caressed his face. "You are so cute." She lowered her hand and looked at him, losing all sense of good humor. "I wouldn't want to see that cute face behind bars for violating the terms of that letter." She turned and nodded to Lina, who had been standing close by. She started walking toward them. As Meg walked away, she called out to Duarte, "I'll be in touch. We'll have a drink."
Duarte was impressed with how the woman had carried out her duty even if he didn't agree with the duty itself.
Lina stopped next to him and said, "I am so sorry about Félix."
Duarte nodded.
She kissed his cheek and gave him a quick hug. "Sorry about this whole mess."
Burn Zone Page 27