Deadly Waters (13 page)
Authors: Theodore Judson
8/7/07 16:21 MDT
After he had spoken to the DuPrees at Lake Powell, Wayland Zah had climbed back up the sandstone bluffs from where he had first observed the Colombians. Trailing the Colombians’ U-Haul truck at a discrete distance, he drove the new Impala Mondragon had given him east to the first phone booth in Page. He did not make a call this time. Instead he timed himself as he read the speech Mondragon had written for him to make sure he would be in the booth long enough during the real attack.
He returned to his car and drove one hundred and seventy-seven miles on Highways 98 and 163 to Bluff, Utah, a small settlement a few miles north of Arizona and the gigantic Shiprock Reservation. On the east side of the small town, where the road turns north to Blanding, Wayland parked the Impala and walked through a vacant garden to an abandoned house made of native stone. Mondragon and Taylor were waiting for him on the ground floor.
“Very good,” said Mondragon, checking his wrist watch. “Compared to the Colombians, you are perfection itself, my boy.”
“Those old folks ate it up with a spoon,” said Wayland of the DuPrees.
“Do you think they called the police?” asked Taylor.
“Whether they did or not is unimportant,” said Mondragon. “The seed has been planted. If they contact the authorities, good. If they don’t, they will remember when the time comes. Here is your money, my friend. Don’t spend it all in one place.”
He handed Wayland a package containing $20,000, twice what the individual Colombians had gotten. Wayland Zah then drove back to the west, while Taylor and Mondragon went north to Salt Lake and Interstate 80.
8/9/07 12:19 Eastern Daylight Time
Two days after the Colombians--with the exception of the Strawberry team--had completed their trial runs, Earnest Gusman hurried to the mailbox on the first floor of his Cartagena tenement building. As Mondragon had promised him, there in his box was a small package Earnest knew contained $30,000 American in very large bills. He quickly put the package under his arm and sped up the creaking stairwell.
So happy was Gusman he did not walk on the balls of his feet when he went past the door of his prying neighbor. Inside his own dingy apartment Earnest ripped open the layers of brown paper and snapped the heavy twine holding the money in a lovely solid block. The wonderful green pieces of paper spilled onto the floor and over his brown, scruffy shoes the instant he cut the twine with his knife. The cash smelled like rum and narcotics and like painted women in the Street of Sorrows.
“I can look into the piles of green and see days of easy living. I can order liquor that comes in labeled bottles and everyone must be friendly to me. Margarita, the vicious whore lingering around the Painted Bird, will let me sniff cocaine off her breasts.”
The aromatic cloud of pure joy wafting upward from the piles of money brought Earnest’s hands into the air and brought from his lungs a squeal of unmitigated delight.
“Quiet in there!” a voice from the flat below him called out.
Earnest cringed behind his table like a frightened rat trapped in a cellar after the lights have been switched on. He gathered the money into a pile and stuffed it bill by bill into a pillow case he hid in his kitchen cupboard. That night, after an evening of alternating between elation and hand-wringing worry, Earnest crept to a pay phone outside a local saloon and made a collect call to the United States.
“The sun is down,” said Earnest in English and hung up.
*
“Not quite yet,” said Mondragon as he put his cell phone down. “This Blue Mesa business has screwed the pooch for a while.”
“Not to mention the capture of the Strawberry team,” said Taylor, who was sitting in Mondragon’s office across the huge mahogany desk from his old friend.
“That’s no problem,” said Mondragon. “Like the Glen Canyon team, we want them to be compromised.
“Is Blue Mesa really that important?” asked Taylor. “You’re always saying the Glen Canyon Dam is the one that will do the real damage. What would we lose if we don’t get the Gunnison complex? Some agricultural land?”
“That’s not the point,” said Mondragon, looking over the map of southwestern Colorado he had laid on the desk top. “We now have a team designated for that site, and we have to do something with them. The idea behind these secondary dam attacks was to create chaos. I never intended these smaller attacks to do much economic damage.”
“What will you do?”
“Harris will have to build something to take out the Point Marrow Dam,” said Mondragon. “Something smaller than the other torpedoes. We can’t do much about the diversion tunnel. To destroy that would require nothing less than a nuclear device. The water from Blue Mesa and Marrow will create enough down river flooding to distract the government. It will swell the Colorado, eventually, probably later than we expected.”
“We are set to go in the spring,” said Taylor. “That’s when the melt-off comes.”
“We’ll have to delay,” said Mondragon. “Send the Colombians home while Harris and Abe Wilson build the new devices. Don’t despair, Jack. If the men talk about the project while they’re home, that will be so much the better. We want the rumors to fly. Another year of waiting won’t present that big a problem.”
8/10/07 09:54 Pacific Daylight Time
Charles Corello--the real Charles Corello--was at work at the halfway house in California when the secretary told him he had another phone call from that deputy sheriff in Arizona.
“This may sound odd, Mr. Corello,” said Bob Mathers on the telephone, “but you were not in Arizona this week, were you?”
“I don’t make the kind of money I need to travel,” said Charles.
“Neither do I,” said Mathers. “You may remember I told you there was someone posing as you. I’m afraid he’s turned up again. I think I should tell you this business is getting serious. By the way, how are old you, sir? I just need to confirm some things I have in your file.”
“Thirty-six,” said Corello.
“I see,” said Bob Mathers and made a note in his casebook. “The man claiming to be you is much older. Let me impose on you another question, Mr. Corello. There is a young man, a Navaho named Wayland Zah. He’s mixed up in this somehow. I can’t say how exactly. Does the name mean anything to you?”
“Wayland Zah, Wayland Zah,” repeated Corello. “No, I don’t know him. Wait, there was a Navaho guy in Solano. His name may have been Wayne or maybe Wayland. I don’t remember. I remember him. He was only there a few days; they transferred him to Boron. He got a tattoo, for protection.”
“A yellow butterfly,” said Bob. “Does a yellow butterfly mean anything to you?”
Corello glanced at his wrist and became a bit anxious about where the deputy’s questions might be headed. “You know my record,” he replied.
“When you were a kid in eastern Los Angeles,” said Bob, for he had a copy of Corello’s arrest record in front of him, “you were in a gang. Did you meet anyone else in prison with a butterfly tattoo on his wrist?”
“There were so many in prison,” recalled Corello. “The tattoo is from my homeboy days. Los muchachos. Did you think I got it in prison?”
“The man posing as you has one on his wrist,” said Bob.
“How does this Navaho kid figure in?”
“He knows this character claiming to be you,” explained Bob. “I’m afraid he and this unknown party are smuggling drugs.”
“When I think about it,” said Corello, “I’m sure the Indian guy’s name was Wayland. I can’t remember anybody else in prison with a tat like mine.”
“A sheriff up in Utah, Sheriff Witherston in Heber City, he also had a case involving a U-Haul truck supposedly rented by you, Mr. Corello,” said Bob. “I’ve already spoken to him. He will probably be in touch with you.”
“Should I be worried?” asked Charles.
“These people are up to something fairly big, a big score of some kind, I think,” said Bob. “Keep a record of everywhere you go. Are you married?”
“Five years,” said Corello.
“Have your wife keep a journal too,” advised Bob. “Ask your friends to do the same. Watch your credit cards. Call the police if anything funny happens.”
“Nothing funny ever happens to me here in Fresno,” said Charles. “I will keep one eye open nonetheless.”
8/13/07 10:20 EDT
Margaret Smythe was at her desk at the Pentagon on a busy Monday morning. Her secretary--a self-important black woman Margaret hated, as she could not stand narcissistic people--called her on the desk phone and told her she had a call from Arizona.
“Who is this?” she asked after the caller had identified himself.
“Deputy Sheriff Robert Mathers of Coconino County, Arizona,” said Bob. “I’m in Page. I’m sorry to bother you—”
“Why on earth are you calling me?” interrupted Margaret. “I have nothing to do with law enforcement out in the sticks. This is the Department of Defense. You know: airplanes, big ships, stuff that explodes. Even in Arizona they would’ve heard of it”
“I’m sorry, ma’am…” began Bob.
“Ma’am?” said Margaret, so offended at the regionalism she could not speak for several seconds.
“--the FBI directed me to you,” continued Bob. “I have a case, two cases in fact, involving foreign nationals dropping unknown objects near large hydro-electric dams. The FBI told me you were the expert, Miss Smythe, and gave me your number.”
“Who are you again?” asked Margaret, squeezing her ballpoint pen so hard its plastic shell shattered in her hand.
“My name is Robert Mathers,” repeated Bob. “I am a deputy sheriff in Coconino County, Arizona. I’m asking you—”
“Listen, Gomer,” said Margaret, “if you have half a brain, you’ll get off the line now. Who do you think I am? Who do think you are, for that matter? I could make one phone call, and you’ll be someplace where you’ll be afraid to sleep on your stomach. I’m someone important,
comprende
? Why don’t you go bugger your cousin, or whatever you do in Alabama?”
“Arizona,” said Bob.
“Wherever,” said Margaret.
“I only wanted to report—”
“Gomer, get off the line!” screamed Margaret. “This is your last warning. Do you know where I went to college? I’d tell you, but you’ve never heard of it. Where did you go?. Did you go?”
“I’ve two years of community college, and I became a cop when I was twenty, ma’am,” admitted Bob.
“A good job for a little man packing a little brain,” she said and slammed the receiver into its cradle. “Jesus, the crap that comes with this job!” she said to herself, and immediately set in motion efforts to have her new unlisted number changed.
*
For his part, Bob Mathers saw there was little more that could be done in this unusual case. His one definite hold on the matter was Wayland Zah. He had not seen Wayland since the young man’s last arrest and Bob had no idea where he was.
9/29/07 18:00 Atlantic Daylight Time
Col. Method faced the forty Colombians gathered in the base cafeteria. He had positioned the unlucky Strawberry team in front of the group so everyone present had a good view of their discomfort when he reviewed the team’s performance in August’s trial run.
“Looking back on last month’s exercise,” Method told the forty men in Spanish, “we can judge the entire operation--with two exceptions--a great success.”
The members of the Strawberry team looked relieved to hear him say “two exceptions.” They were not the only ones to have failed.
“The next time you enter the United States,” said Method, “most of you will do everything exactly as you did on this trial exercise. However, the Strawberry team will do less talking to the Yankees…”
He paused while thirty-three of the men laughed at the seven reprobates fresh from a federal jail in Salt Lake City.
“…and the Blue Mesa team will have a newer, more difficult mission,” said Col. Method, and paused for a strategic second. “We had planned to strike the Yankees in the spring.” He smacked his pointing rod against his boot top. “The rivers in North America are highest then because of the spring snow melt, and the damage will be the greatest. We will strike the dams in the springtime, my friends... but not until the spring of 2009.”
The Colombians gasped like teenage girls at a horror show matinee. Several momentarily stood from their chairs and shouted at the podium.
“Our money!” said one.
“We are supposed to live here in the jungle for another year?” demanded another. “You said six months to the day we returned!”
“Comrades!” glowered Method in a tone that was not at all similar to one a true comrade would use. “You will not be kept here. You will be sent to your homes in Columbia, and each of you will have another $20,000 American to live on while you wait.”
Someone else in the group rose to say something, and Col. Method gave him an angry glance that made him sit down.
“You will have time with your families,” he said to the men, nearly all of whom had no families other than their brother gang members back in Colombia. “Time to rest. To enjoy life. Of course, I need not remind you that your other comrades, the ones watching over our base here in Venezuela, will be watching you from a distance. Tell no one of our venture. That would be a fatal mistake.”
The Colombians remembered the two men who had vanished and the stories the local prostitutes had told of the dead men found near a logging truck. That memory and the glint in Method’s steel-gray eyes made them see the wisdom in the colonel’s proposal. They agreed a year back home would be most pleasant under the new circumstances.
“Mr. Corello and our friend Mr. Petrovski,” Method pointed to Mondragon and Taylor behind him, “have your money. A bus will get you in the morning. Our other friend, Mr. Gusman, will be in touch with you a year from today. Good luck and long live the revolution!”
The Colombians dutifully lined up to get another bundle of money and shuffled out the mess hall door, happy to be bound for home and months of easy living, but downcast because they suspected they would never hear from Corello, Petrovski and Col. Max again.
“There’s another $800,000 we’ll not see again,” complained Taylor to Mondragon, after the last Colombian was gone from the hot metal structure.
“It will cost us more than that,” said Erin. “Harris will have to make us a couple more torpedoes; smaller ones for the Point Morrow and Crystal Dams. You shouldn’t worry, Jack. This way we’ll do a more effective job; have more time to make the right sort of investments.”
“Those men will tell stories when they go home,” said Taylor.
“That’s more money in the bank, old man,” laughed Mondragon. “A year from now, every whore and gangster in Columbia will have heard stories about the Russians and East Germans in the Venezuelan jungle, the ones out to blow up the Yankee dams. Good. No one will believe anything before the dams go down. Afterwards, their stories will throw investigators on the wrong trail. Oh, and by the way, we need to send the Fontenelle team to the landing strip in western Colorado with the other northern teams. We can’t have them scattered across the Colorado Plateau.”
Taylor had one more objection to letting the Columbians go. He feared that some of the forty would never come back. “They lead dangerous lives back home,” he told Mondragon.
“Very dangerous,” agreed Erin. “Method and I estimate as many as a half dozen of them will, in a year’s time, either be dead or disappear into the underworld. There are plenty more where they come from. Our friend, Mr. Gusman, will have no trouble locating replacements for any of the missing. Anyone he finds will have to be smarter than anybody we might lose from this group.”