Heartland (9 page)

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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Heartland
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“Your cell leaders have been alerted?”
“They will be leaving the city this evening, and all of them will be in position within forty-eight hours.”
“Very good, Juan, very well done.” The little man got off his stool and went around behind the bar, where he brought out a bottle of good red wine and a large bottle of carbonated water.
He was an intense-looking little man, with large, penetrating eyes, and a swarthy complexion. In a way
the man almost looked Oriental to Juan Carlos, or perhaps even Indian, except that he knew the man was almost certainly a Soviet officer of some sort. He had come with the highest recommendations of Colonel Qaddafi himself, so from the beginning the Montonero leadership had not questioned his presence. Nor had Juan Carlos or the others.
They sat down across the bar from him. He poured them each a tall glass of wine, mixed half and half with carbonated water, then poured himself some of the wine straight.
When they all had their drinks, he raised his in toast. “To the liberation of your people.”
“
Libertad
,” Juan Carlos said, and Teva and Eugenio repeated the single word. They drank deeply.
Just outside the breakwater the ship rose to meet the larger waves, and the little man came around the bar to a long dining table in the center of the room where a detailed topographic map was spread out. He flicked on an overhead light. Juan Carlos and the others gathered around.
“We will have to be well away with this boat before the operation begins, which is why I am dropping you at Tigre so early,” the little man began.
They had all seen this map before, but Juan Carlos leaned forward so that he could get a better look at it. He didn't want to miss a detail.
“How far is it from the drop point to the clearing?”
“A little less than ten miles. It will be difficult, but you should be able to manage it by morning.”
“Our provisions are there?”
The little man nodded. “Along with your weapons, and the radio with which you will summon the helicopter.
There's enough food for a week, in case we run into any delay.”
Juan Carlos studied the map thoughtfully. “Another five miles from the clearing to the house. A ten-mile round trip. The most difficult part of the operation.”
“Under cover of darkness and the diversion, you should not have any trouble. You should be able to make it well within the limits.”
Juan Carlos switched his attention from their objective to the river where the other Montonero cell would be waiting with a very old, very large river boat. At the set hour, they would bring the boat up behind the main house and set it on fire. The commotion would, according to the little man, bring most of the house staff on the run down to the river.
“His personal bodyguard may be with him, but between the three of you, there should be no real difficulty.”
“What if we meet with heavier resistance?” Eugenio asked.
Juan Carlos and the little man both looked up at him.
“You will have your radio. Channel A is the helicopter, and B will be monitored by the cell leader aboard the boat. He understands the contingency. If you run into unexpected trouble, he will lead his people up to you.”
“Will we have time to get out of there?” Eugenio asked.
Juan Carlos was frustrated by the questions, because they were valid and well thought out. He, the leader, should have thought of those contingencies first.
“Timing will be critical, of course. We're assuming that, once the action begins, the authorities will be
notified,” the little man said. He turned to Juan Carlos. “If that happens, if you need help from the river, then your fallback code will be ‘Helpmate one,' which will bring the helicopter directly to the airstrip behind the house.”
“There may be more resistance there.”
“Almost certainly there will be. But by then you will have been joined by the other cell, and the helicopter crew will be armed.”
“There will be no other changes in that event?” Juan Carlos asked.
“None,” the little man said. “You will be set down with your cargo at the interior point where the van will be waiting.” He stabbed a blunt finger at a spot on the map about fifty miles inland and slightly north of Buenos Aires. “You only have to hold them for twenty-four hours, then you can release the ransom message and get out. The second cell will take over from there.”
Juan Carlos nodded. Eugenio looked thoughtful. Teva was flushed.
“Transportation will be provided for you to Tripoli, but there will be absolutely no negotiations from there. The colonel was most clear on that point. All communications will go through Geneva. We have someone in place there at this moment. Once you get to Tripoli, instructions will be waiting for you.”
Juan Carlos studied the map a bit longer, almost overwhelmed by what they were about to pull off. Their action would forever change Argentine history. And the blow to the morale of capitalist pigs the world over would be stunning.
He raised his glass again.
“Libertad,”
he said fervently. “
Libertad
!”
The weather had turned slightly cool this evening, causing a dense fog to rise up from bayous surrounding New Orleans, across Lake Pontchartrain, along the commercial docks, and among the grain elevators standing like proud, erect ghosts.
Traffic over the causeway toll bridge, and along the interstates and bypasses which cut through the city, moved at no more than 15 miles an hour. There was an eighteen-car pileup on Interstate 10 just west of Lakefront Airport. All flights were grounded, of course, and even the city bus service was running late on every one of its lines.
As one hip disc jockey put it over the air, not long before midnight: “You might just as well stay home, baby, and enjoy the soup, ‘cause ain't nobody goin' nowhere nohow tonight.”
Louie Benario, a long-time torch out of Detroit, only lately arrived in New Orleans, shuffled along the railroad
tracks behind the International Trade Mart near the Bienville Street Wharf. He was a tiny man who all his life had been called the runt, or peewee, or short stuff, or midget. Terms he resented deeply, because he had always thought of himself as a big man.
In the old days, when someone called him such a name, he would puff up to his full five foot two and take a swing at his adversary, which more often than not landed him flat on his back beside his bar stool. His nose had been broken so many times he had lost count; his arms had been broken, his fingers snapped, his wrist half-crushed, his jaw dislocated, and his skull fractured. His ribs had been battered until they were soft to the touch.
Because of this, he was, at forty, a misshapen old man who walked with a stumbling gait and hardly ever raised his eyes in public. Louie had finally learned his lesson: In public, keep your mouth shut. Blend into the woodwork. Make no waves. Be inconspicuous.
But in private Benario shone. He was an expert. One of the best torches in the business. Those in the know never called him peewee or midget to his face, because they knew they might wake up the next morning in a burning house.
He had learned his trade from Studs Logan, one of the most famous of all Detroit torches, before Logan became a victim of his own handiwork.
For a few years afterward, Benario had worked Logan's territory, and in ten indictments he had been convicted only once, for setting fire to a warehouse for a client who needed the insurance money more than he needed his business. The boys hired Benario a crack lawyer out of Los Angeles, and in three months Benario
was back on the streets, free on a technicality.
Eighteen months ago, Louie had burned down the home of a General Motors executive who had been putting the heat on a union-organized numbers racket. The executive was a fighter, and Louie had been advised by his friends to get out of Motown for a year or two until the smoke cleared.
Louie did just that, and had fallen instantly and deeply in love with New Orleans, whose mild winters and ultra-hot summers reminded him of a furnace. His kind of place.
He stopped for a moment, away from the railway traffic signals, adjusted the heavy pack on his right shoulder, and peered through the dense fog. He knew his objective was less than a block away. But he could see nothing except for the swirling mist, and after a bit he continued forward.
In his years Benario had set fire to no less than thirty warehouses, nineteen hotels, two nursing homes, a dozen or more private residences, and even a Chicago police precinct house for an irate out-of-town client. In those blazes, he had been responsible for at least ninety-five deaths and more than three hundred and fifty serious injuries, including a dozen or so firemen.
But Benario never thought of himself as a murderer. He was a torch, plain and simple; a man devoted to fire.
In the distance to the east, he heard a siren. He stiffened instinctively, a faint smile coming to his lips. There would be sirens after this job. Lots of sirens. The thought broadened his grin, and he chuckled out loud.
This would be his biggest job ever, made even more important by the sheer size of his target. It was the largest grain-elevator complex in the world, and brand
new. Owned by the Cargill conglomerate, it had been put in service less than six months ago, to replace hundreds of antiquated elevators up and down the delta. It would burn beautifully, the little man had assured him. The hot yellow flames would reach hundreds of feet into the sky. People for miles around would taste the smoke. Newspaper headlines across the country would blare: GREATEST GRAIN DISASTER IN HISTORY. LARGEST FIRE IN THIS DECADE. THE WORK OF AN EXPERT ARSONIST.
Benario had to laugh out loud with the sheer magnificence of it all.
On top of all that, like frosting on a cake or the cherry atop a sundae, was the fact that Benario had finally come into his own as an internationally known torch. The little man who had hired him for this job was a foreigner. French or Jewish or a Polak or something. Not only was he foreign, he was a little man, not much taller than Benario. They saw eye to eye.
He laughed even louder at his little joke. Eye to eye, watching the flames that'd tower over the tallest man in the world.
“Eye to eye,” he sang a tuneless melody. “Eye to eye, watching the pretty flames. My pretty, my pretty, watching my pretty flames, eye to eye to eye.”
A series of massive structures loomed out of the darkness to the right, toward the waterfront, less than a hundred yards away. Benario stopped in his tracks, hiccoughing as he choked off his song.
He could see now the dim halos formed around the lights at the base of the grain elevator, and around the red lights at the top.
He took a few steps forward, over the rail, and then scrambled down into the ditch beside the tracks. There
was activity over there this evening beyond the chainlink fence. Trucks were coming and going with their loads of grain. He could hear the dull, deep-throated mechanical noises of a grain ship tied up at the dock, although he was unable to pick out the ship's lights from where he stood.
It was there, in front of him. Ready and waiting for his skills.
He climbed up out of the ditch, soaking his trousers to the knees in the wet grass, then crouched down at the base of the fence and fumbled inside his heavy pack for his large wirecutters. Within a couple of minutes he had cut a large hole in the fence and crawled through it. On the other side, he pulled the cut section back in place, so that nothing but a very close examination would reveal the hole.
Spittle was oozing from the corners of his mouth. He licked his lips frequently as he scrambled away from the fence, toward the edge of the blacktop driveway that surrounded the mammoth elevator complex.
Five days ago, the little man had supplied him with a complete set of working blueprints for the complex, along with totally self-destructive fuses and enough plastique to bring down ten such installations. Benario had worked with such materials only once before, up in Detroit, but he had read all the available literature and was certain it would be a piece of cake.
The problem, he had reasoned, would be to contain the initial explosion very low in the complex, in the conveyor system, where the explosive grain dust would be at the highest concentration. The explosion and fire would start, then, from the bottom and quickly work its way upward.
At the edge of the blacktop, Benario worked his way among the long rows of parked trucks, until he came to a grain-unloading bay that wasn't in use.
He slipped inside through a service hatch that led directly down into the mixing and delivery conveyor system. There he began placing his explosives, attaching each package with loving care, setting the fuses for 8:00 A.M., when, the little man had assured him, the grain would be moving through the system and the dust would be at its maximum concentration in the air.
 
It was a little after 6:30 on the morning of June 28 when Laura Conley's bedside telephone rang, the shrill noise bringing her instantly awake. She sat up with a start, the sheet falling away and exposing her bare breasts, looked down at Peter Rossiter still sleeping beside her, then reached across him and picked up the telephone on the second ring.
“Hello?” she said sleepily.
“This is Elizabeth Rossiter. I have to speak with my husband.”
Laura's heart skipped a beat. She and Peter had been lovers for less than six months, and she had had no idea that his wife even suspected. Today he was supposed to be in Minneapolis, meeting with Cargill executives.
“Miss Conley?” his wife said. “Are you still there?”
“I'm here,” Laura said. “I think you must have the wrong number.”
“Cut the bullshit, I know my husband is there. I telephoned Minneapolis and there is no such meeting. Which leaves only your place. Now put him on the phone.”
Peter was starting to wake up, and Laura began to
panic. “I don't know what the hell you're talking about …” she started, but Elizabeth cut her off.
“Goddamn it, there's trouble down at the elevator center. They need him immediately. If you don't want him to talk to me, at least pass on that message.”
Laura slowly hung up the telephone. Peter sat up, his eyes still clouded with sleep.
“Who was it?” he asked.
Laura just stared at him for several seconds. It was over for them now. He would never leave his wife and children. His marriage might be ruined, but she would be the loser.
“Who the hell was it, Laura?” he asked. “What's wrong?”
“It's the center,” she stammered. “There's some kind of trouble down there. They want you.”
“The elevator center?” He came fully awake. “How the hell did they know where I was? Who was it on the phone?”
Laura started to get out of the bed, but Peter reached out, grabbed her arm, and pulled her back.
“Who the hell was on the phone?” he shouted.
“Your wife,” she said, hanging her head, the tears coming to her eyes.
“Jesus,” Rossiter swore, half under his breath. “Oh, Jesus Christ!” He let go of Laura, grabbed the telephone, and dialed, speaking to Laura over his shoulder. “Get dressed. You're going to have to drive me down there.”
She padded across the bedroom and went into the bathroom, softly closing the door.
“Cargill,” said the phone at Peter's ear.
“Stan? This is Pete.”
“Am I glad to hear from you,” the night manager said. “You'd better get down here right away.”
“I'll be there in twenty minutes. What the hell is going on?”
“I tried to get you at home, but Liz said you were in Minneapolis. I called up there. and they told me you hadn't arrived, but to get ahold of you somehow and keep the cops out of it.”
“Out of what?”
“We've got a guy here with a bomb. Carl found him down in L tunnel getting ready to set it.”
“A bomb!” Rossiter shouted. “He hadn't set it yet?”
“No. Carl said he was just taping it up to one of the overhead conveyors.”
“Was that the only one?”
The night manager sucked his breath, the sound clear over the phone. “Christ, Pete, we never even thought of that. We just assumed …”
Rossiter cut him off. “Get the night crew down there immediately. I want every tunnel searched, inch by inch.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And call the New Orleans P.D. bomb squad.”
“But Minneapolis said no cops.”
“I don't give a shit what they said! It's my elevator. Now get on it, Carl. I'll be down there within fifteen minutes.”
As Rossiter hung up, Laura came out of the bathroom. She was wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt, and the tears were streaming down her cheeks.
He jumped up, grabbed his clothes, and started to get dressed. “Get your car out and bring it around to the
front. I'll be taking it.”
“I'm going with you,” she said.
“No way. Some nut has planted at least one bomb down at the center. There may be more.”
“I'm coming with you,” Laura said defiantly, and before he could object again, she grabbed her purse and left the apartment.
Within a couple of minutes, Rossiter was at the front door of the building, where Laura waited for him in her Chevy Camaro, the engine running, the headlights on. The dense fog of the night had gotten worse, if anything, and as he jumped in the car he realized with a sinking feeling that it would take a hell of a lot longer than fifteen or twenty minutes to get across town.
“Let's go,” he said, “but for God's sake, be careful in this shit. I don't want to be in an accident.”
She pulled out of the driveway and headed at a crawl toward the freeway, the low beams barely illuminating the road one car length ahead of them. They didn't speak, both of them staring intently out the windshield, the wipers slapping back and forth, until they had made it to the freeway, and she was able to speed up to twenty miles per hour.

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