Ground Truth

by Rob Sangster

  “Oh, he’s just looking for a place to lie down. I’ll go get him.”

  After shaking like a dog to rid his clothes of glass fragments, Jack gently pulled the tape from Debra’s mouth. “You all right?”

  “I am never, ever, under any circumstances, doing you a favor again. This was—”

  He lightly replaced the tape, then saw in her flaring eyes that it wasn’t a good joke and removed it.

  He unwound the tape from her ankles and said, “Wrap your legs around my waist to get the strain off your arms so I can get them loose.”

  She did as instructed. When she was free, he carried her to a chair and lowered her into it.

  Gano came in through the side door alone.

  “Where’s Montana?” Jack asked.

  “He’s lying face down at the bottom of the moat. Didn’t look like he was in the mood for conversation. Sorry about that. I know you wanted that pissant in one piece, but those 12-gauge magnum shells . . .” He shrugged.

  Yeah, he’d badly needed Montana alive, but then he pictured Gano looking in the window, seeing Montana with the sword raised.

  “Not like you had a choice,” he said. “And thanks.”

  “It’s nothing. Hey, Debra, how’d you like hanging out with the Chief here.”

  “Never a dull moment around Jack,” she answered.

  Jack walked behind the desk. “I hope his computer will tell us something.” It took only seconds to open Montana’s most recent outgoing e-mail. He read it to the others.

  “If you haven’t paid in full within fifteen minutes of receiving this, we’ll set off the rest of the bombs.”

  “After he brought us in here,” Jack said, “he was on the computer checking his Swiss bank account. Then he sent this e-mail. Let’s hope it was a final bluff to get the money without pulling the trigger.”

  “If he used timers,” Debra put in, “all the bombs will go off even though he’s dead.”

  “To use timers,” Jack replied, “they had to be set at the cave before the trucks left last night. Montana could never get drivers to do that. And to remain flexible on when each bomb goes off, he couldn’t use timers at all.”

  “You told me,” Debra said, “that his first e-mail said the trucks are booby-trapped to explode if tampered with. If he knew how to make a booby-trap, that could still happen.”

  “A tenth grader could build booby traps using a lift device,” Gano said. “That’s a simple mercury switch like the wall thermostats in old homes. It’s a glass capsule a half-inch long. When it’s tilted, which could happen if a cop opens a truck door, the mercury shifts, closes a circuit, and ‘boom.’ Or he could have picked up passive infrared from Radio Shack, like they use in home security systems and light sensors. That would be bad. Those are tricky to disarm, even for experts.”

  “I’ll call Gorton, tell him what we know, and suggest that he search Albuquerque first,” Jack said.

  “Why there?” Gano asked.

  “Because Montana told me he’d sent what he called his ‘Albuquerque e-mail’ to Gorton.”

  “While you call him, I’m going to take a look around this place,” Debra said and walked out of the room.

  “Now what?” Gano asked.

  “After I talk with Gorton, we get to the Palmer plant as fast as we can. Montana has programmed Guzman to dump the toxic waste tanks.”

  “No way.” Gano looked taken aback. “Guzman bled to death.”

  “Nope. Someone sewed him up in time.”

  “Damn, I should have used a Phillips head screwdriver. But why would Montana care about the wells? It’s way past bonus time.”

  “Montana lost his cushy job, the bonus, and his cut from the nuclear waste smuggling. He was looking at a lifetime on the run. More than anything, he wanted revenge. Right now, odds are huge that he’s going to succeed in taking it out on El Paso and Juarez. Even as a dead man, he’s using The Ape to destroy both cities.”

  RING . . . RING . . . RING.

  “Air Force One conference room.”

  Jack recognized Corte’s bass voice. “Jack Strider calling. President Gorton, please. It’s urgent.” He turned to Debra. “Sounds like a dozen people, all talking at once.” He heard Corte say, “Yes sir, and he says it’s urgent.”

  “For Christ’s sake, it better be.” Gorton sounded hostile as he said into the receiver, “Go ahead.”

  “Sir, it’s Jack Strider.”

  “I know that.”

  “It’s over. We found—”

  “Over? Tell that to Albuquerque! A dirty bomb just went off at Kirkland Air Force Base near Albuquerque. Sandia National Labs, where we build nuclear weapons, is on that base. There’s a goddamn plume of radioactive smoke. If a wind comes up it could contaminate El Paso, maybe even Phoenix or Denver.”

  Oh my God. He covered the receiver and whispered to Gano and Debra, “One of the trucks exploded in Albuquerque.”

  “We’re at Condition Red,” Gorton said. “I wired $100 million to the terrorists a few seconds after we got word. No choice. Had to keep more bombs from going off. Can’t talk now.” He slammed the phone down.

  “Gorton has panicked.” Jack dialed the number again. This time it was answered immediately.

  “General Spinner here.”

  “This is Jack Strider calling back. Listen carefully. Tell the President this was not terrorism. It was blackmail, and the blackmailer is right here, dead. I’ll hold.” He heard shouts in the background.

  Gorton came on the line. “Dead? Who’s dead?”

  “Tomás Montana. He was the blackmailer.” He wanted to add, Just like I told you. “We found him.”

  “Then how did a bomb just go off in Albuquerque?”

  It was that second call, Jack thought. The one Montana made right after talking with Guzman. He didn’t speak or leave a message because he hadn’t called a person. He’d called a triggering device.

  “He must have set it off by calling a cell phone in the truck,” Jack told Gorton. “He was killed a few minutes after that without making any other calls.”

  “Are there any more truck bombs?”

  “At least three, and they are probably booby-trapped. If anyone disturbs them, even a thief trying to break in, they’ll detonate.” He heard Gorton groan. “But I can make educated guesses about where they are.”

  “Then tell me, for God’s sake.”

  “El Paso or Juarez, Chihuahua City, and some major target from Monterey to Mexico City. Each truck will probably be parked near high-value targets like a downtown or a national monument. The trucks are large and black with ‘hazardous waste’ warning signs on the sides.”

  “I’ll get the FBI on it in El Paso,” Gorton said. “If Mexican authorities find out American-made dirty bombs are sitting in their cities, their President will rip me a new one. I’ll get DoD explosive ordnance disposal experts down there in civvies within hours. Best case, they find them, disarm the booby-traps, and sneak the trucks back across the border. Worst case is worse than I want to think about right now. Can you help in the search?”

  “No, sir. I have to get to the Palmer Industries plant in Juarez. Montana ordered his head thug to pump the toxic waste into the aquifer.”

  “Holy—” Gorton said, and then Jack heard him shout a string of names and order someone to get them on other phone lines. “I’m sending troops from Fort Bliss to pulverize that plant. No one’s dumping anything.”

  Jack shook his head. Gorton seemed to make the wrong decision one hundred percent of the time.

  “That won’t help, sir. Montana’s man is programmed to turn the valves no matter what. My friend and I will try to take him down before he knows we’re there. It’s the only way. Send your people, but tell them to keep quiet and wait outside the main gate. I
f they hear shooting, have them move in fast.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Gorton said, already distracted, clearly too rushed to argue. “Look, I have one question. You were with Montana when he blew up that bomb in Albuquerque, right? I mean, I’m sure you did your best, but couldn’t you have stopped him?” In the background, Jack heard Corte telling the President his other calls were waiting. Gorton told Jack, “Never mind, we’ll talk about that later.” He was gone.

  Ungrateful bastard—but Jack had already asked himself the same question. It was like an echo from Peck’s suicide.

  “I found the mother lode,” Debra said, bursting in from the kitchen. “There’s a Land Rover in the garage loaded with boxes. The key was in the ignition so I unlocked the cargo space and found cartons of Aztec stuff and bricks of hundred dollar bills.”

  “So Mr. Personality probably had a light cargo plane lined up,” Gano said, “maybe for a hop down to Panama.” His eyes lit up. “Look Boss, I was going to bill you for overtime, but I’ll settle for a few of those bricks.”

  “We’re out of here,” Jack said to Debra and Gano.

  “We’re not going anywhere,” Debra said, “unless we find the control panel for the front gate. We’re locked in.”

  “There has to be a remote control in his Land Rover,” Jack said. “We’ll drive that.”

  “What about the Explorer we drove up here?” she asked.

  “Montana shot the hell out of the back end, so it would attract cops like a magnet. We don’t need that.”

  “We’re bringing the money, right?” Gano prompted.

  That was one of the things Jack liked about him. He always kept his priorities straight—and in plain sight.

  As she approached the bars of the formidable gate a few minutes later, Debra pulled the remote control from where it was clipped to the visor above the Land Rover’s windshield. She pushed the button, but the gate didn’t move. She kept trying as she pulled closer, punching it harder. Still no movement. “I’m going to ram it.” Then the gate swung slowly toward them, and she jammed her foot down on the accelerator.

  Jack closed his eyes, trying to concentrate on what was coming up. Instead, he heard Gorton’s question again. “Couldn’t you have stopped him?” Maybe he should have gone in the front door shooting. But that would have been stupid. Montana would have killed him—and Debra—and then detonated all of the bombs. As it was, three cities had been spared—so far. He’d made the right choice.

  On the other hand, if their attack on the wells had been successful, or they hadn’t left Guzman behind, or Montana hadn’t thrown himself out of the truck, this trip wouldn’t be necessary. Should he have let Gano have his way and smoke them both back then?

  His mind kept grappling with the questions until he smelled the odor of the Rio Grande and opened his eyes. They were at the border. If the Juarez cops had put out an APB on him, he could be grabbed right here. He and Gano feigned sleep while the guard checked Debra’s ID. If he ran the license plate, he’d discover the Land Rover wasn’t theirs. If he opened the cargo space, well, it would be game over for sure. The guard took long enough that a car behind them in line started honking. With an annoyed look he waved them through.

  Minutes sped by as they raced to the plant. No one spoke. The tension in the vehicle had weight and an odor.

  “Pull over right there,” he said to Debra as they neared the entrance to the plant.

  No light shone through any of the buildings’ windows. He pointed at dim lights in the distance. “That’s Guzman at the wells,” he said to Gano. “We’ll have to run for it.”

  “Not this ol’ cowhand. That’s fifty yards in the open before we get to the first building. There could be guards watching us through those windows. I don’t do suicide missions.”

  “Debra,” Jack said, “hop out and get out of sight. I’m taking the Land Rover in.”

  “I’ll drive,” she said.

  Jack gave a hard shake of his head. “Not this time. Gorton’s troops have orders to wait outside the gate. Make sure they do.”

  She studied his face for a moment, then nodded.

  He touched her shoulder as she got out, wanting to pull her into his arms. Instead he took her place behind the wheel and drove the Land Rover in a wide arc before pulling up in front of the Admin building. They waited. No shots, so they jumped out and flattened themselves against the wall, then dashed from building to building through the faint smell from the fires three days earlier. At the last building, they stopped to get a better view of the grove of trees.

  “We haven’t seen a single guard,” Gano said.

  “Maybe Montana sent them away. He doesn’t care about the plant anymore and wouldn’t want witnesses for Guzman’s dirty work.”

  The clearing in the grove was faintly illuminated by a few bare bulbs strung on trees, shining on the wells and up the slope along the pipeline.

  Suddenly Gano swung around, aiming his .38 in the direction they’d just come from. Then he let the barrel drop. “Tough chick,” he said admiringly as Debra slid in behind them.

  “Hey guys,” she whispered.

  “Get out of here,” Jack hissed. “Guzman is—”

  “A bad ass dude,” Gano put in.

  Jack looked at Debra.

  “Let me guess,” she said, frowning at him. “You want me to stay right here and pretend to be a cactus.”

  “You got it—and this time, do it.”

  “Train’s leaving,” Gano said, and moved into the open like a ghost. Jack followed him. In half a minute they were both inside the grove.

  Jack saw no movement near the wells, but he heard a low sound. “Someone’s singing or drunk.”

  “Look there,” Gano whispered. He pointed up the slope at the pipeline that connected the tanks on top of the ridge. “Something’s shining. Looks like water.”

  Except it wasn’t water. Deadly hazardous waste must be leaking from some of the joints between hastily-repaired sections of the pipeline. That meant Guzman was here and had already opened the valves of the tanks on the ridge. The entire pipeline down to the pumps was full of toxic waste. When one of those joints broke loose, thousands of gallons would soak into the ground.

  “Gano, you circle to the right. I’ll go left.” He crouched low as he edged through the scrawny trees toward the singsong sound.

  In the center of the clearing, Guzman leaned against an elevated pipe where it entered the main pump. His legs looked like swollen sausages protruding from dark shorts. He’d wrapped a rag around the heavy gut hanging over his belt. Wrench in one hand, a bottle in the other, he sang to himself in a slurred voice. He tried to set the bottle on the pipe and stared at it numbly when it fell to the ground. He cursed and staggered ahead with his wrench, leaning forward in a half-crouch like a Neanderthal, determined to finish the one job he had left in his life.

  Gano sprinted straight at Guzman and launched himself in a flying body block, sending Guzman crashing into the pipe and caroming to the ground. Gano grabbed Guzman’s legs, dragged the barely conscious man across the clearing, and dropped him at Jack’s feet.

  “I figured I’d do what you want just this once. You know, bring the bad guy back alive.”

  Suddenly, a roaring “WHOOSH, WHOOSH, WHOOSH” filled the air. Sand on the floor of the clearing swirled, as if caught by a tornado. They looked up through pummeling waves of sound.

  Gano shouted, “Black Hawk attack helicopter. No other sound like it. They don’t rent those babies out, so this is one of Gorton’s toys.”

  “I told him, “Jack shouted, “to keep his backup people outside the gate.”

  “You’re missing the point. They’re not backup for us. They have orders to capture this plant. Any minute now the commandos are gonna scale down on ropes and shoot the shit out of anything tha
t moves. If we weren’t right under them, they’d already be using machine guns to turn us into ground beef. They’ve been told everyone on the ground is the enemy.”

  “We’ll identify ourselves.”

  “In a dust storm? Over all that noise? No way. They’ll shoot first and ask no questions later.”

  A machine gun overhead fired bursts, spraying the trees. Then three narrow beams of lights pointed directly down from the Black Hawk.

  “They’re coming,” Gano said, cocking his .38. “How about we hustle up the slope?”

  “No. If they see us and start shooting, they’ll rupture the pipes.”

  “I’m more worried about us getting ruptured. Let’s make them a present of fatso here and run for the nearest building.”

  He’d left Guzman behind once before and wasn’t going to make that mistake again. He shouted over the sound of the whirling blades, “Guzman comes with us. Let’s go.”

  The chopper descended a few more yards. The whine of its engine grew even more piercing. Several ropes abruptly dropped, the weighted ends slapping the ground.

  Jack hauled Guzman to his feet. “Dragging him will be too slow. I’ll take his shoulders, you take his legs.” They lugged Guzman through the grove to where Debra was waiting.

  Struggling with Guzman, Gano handed Debra his .38. As they crossed the open space, she trailed, gripping the pistol and looking over her shoulder. Jack heard the Black Hawk’s engines straining, then saw a black patch rising into the star-filled sky.

  “They’re heading for the U.S. side of the river,” Gano said softly. “That means the troops are on the ground and will be comin’ this way fast.”

  The first two buildings they checked were locked, but the padlock on the third was hanging open in the hasp. They ducked inside. From the acidic odors, the barely-visible steel vessels must be filled with chemical waste.

  Jack spotted a structure in the middle of the vast space, about 20 x 20 feet with waist-high wood walls and wire mesh rising above; maybe a supervisor’s station.