The Laura Cardinal Novels (75 page)

Suddenly, Josh Wingate said, “Hey.”

Richie looked over to where Josh Wingate was standing in the kitchen, at a door that looked like it was to a pantry. “There’s a basement down here.”

His blood quickening, Richie went to take a look. Looked down into the dark. Cement walls. Ten steps down before a blind corner, a lightbulb on a cord halfway down.

Richie remembered what happened to two police officers in that little podunk town in Florida when Laura Cardinal was down there serving a warrant.

“Don’t go down those stairs,” he said to Josh. “I’m going to call the Bomb Squad.”

Getting one might take awhile, this being Williams.

At Exit 337, Jon Service turned right on West Shamrell Road and drove through a parklike area, new blacktop winding through vacant land dotted with pines. They passed an industrial park and turned onto Grumman, a short road dead-ending at the chain link fence to the airfield. The only place to go was a parking lot on the right. The parking lot belonged to Wiseman Aviation. According to the information Laura had gotten over the phone, Wiseman Aviation was an FBO—a Fixed Base Operation, combination filling station, rest area, and concierge service for the airplane-flying public. This was where Glenn Traywick would come in to pick up his girlfriend—if he showed up at all.

A beat-up red car old enough to be called a Datsun baked in the sun. Michelle’s car, from the apartment manager’s description and the number on the plate.

“She’s here,” Laura said.

“Unless she’s been and gone already.”

As Laura approached the door on the right side of the large, aluminum-sided building, every sense was alive. Laura tried to project calmness. She didn’t want to spook Michelle. They wanted to intercept her quietly.

They walked through the long entry hall, which ended in double doors looking out on the tarmac. The lounge opened up on the right: a grouping of brown leather chairs, a Santa Fe-style coffee table, a fireplace in the corner. A woman sat with her backs to them, her luggage at her feet. Blond hair with dark roots pulled into a ponytail under a white visor cap, pink sweater over manufacturer-faded blue jeans, running shoes. Big busted and big in the hips, but she had a narrow waist. She was leaning forward. When Laura came around the chair, she realized she was petting a sleek black cat who made passes around her legs like a bull with a cape.

Laura liked Michelle immediately, but that didn’t stop her. She glanced at Jon, who seemed to slip like smoke around the other side of the chair.

“Michelle Cantey?”

The woman looked up. For a moment Laura thought she was going to bolt. Then she heaved her shoulders and sighed. “What do you want me to do?”

“I’m with the FBI,” Jon said, showing her his shield. “We’d like to talk to you for a few minutes.”

“Talk away.” Her words belied her nervousness, which was evident in the stricken look on her face, as if she had been caught doing something unsavory.

Jon glanced around the small room. “It would be better if we talked outside.”

“Fine.” She stood up and reached down for her bags.

“You can leave them here.” He nodded toward the receptionist. “They’ll watch them.”

“My mother’s photo albums are in there.”

“They’ll be fine,” Laura said.

They walked out into the sunlight, Michelle between Laura and Jon. Michelle was saying, “I don’t know what you think I’ve done.”

Laura aimed her toward Jon’s car.

“Am I under arrest?”

“No,” Laura replied. “Do you want to be?”

That got her mouth working, but she didn’t say anything.

At the car, Laura said, “Do you know why we’re here?” Laura asked.

“Not really.”

“You’re meeting Glenn Traywick, isn’t that right? He’s flying in?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact he is.”

“How long before he gets here?”

“Any minute.”

“How does that generally work? Will he gas up?”

Michelle stared at her, and then at Jon. Reluctantly, she said, “I think he said he’d top off the tanks and we’d load up and go. But I don’t know what you think he’s done.”

Laura remembered seeing a sign for services in the lounge that listed both full and self-serve. “Self-serve or will they fill up for him?”

“Could you at least tell me what you think he did?”

“How about you tell us where you’re flying to?” asked Laura.

She shook her head and asked again if she was under arrest.

“No.”

“Can I go then?”

Laura said, “I’ll go with you.”

Laura and Michelle went inside. Jon remained in the parking lot, waiting for the Coconino County sheriff’s office deputies to arrive.

Laura sat down in the lobby with Michelle. Michelle pulled out a paperback book from her bag. The book was called
Blood is the Sky
and the cover was sunset over a lake, a float plane coming in over the trees. Looked like Alaska or Canada. Michelle tried to read, but Laura could tell she was having difficulty making sense of the words.

“Where are you headed?” Laura asked, keeping her tone conversational.

“I don’t have to tell you.”

“No, you don’t. But you’re obviously making a move.”

Michelle stood up. “I have to use the bathroom.”

“What a coincidence. So do I.”

While he waited for the Bomb Squad, Richie Lockhart went back to look at the new TV set. If Bobby Burdette was really gone, why did he leave something like this?

Holding up the TV was a cheap, veneered cabinet for storing DVD and videotapes, that heavy dark-wood Spanish style reminiscent of the seventies. Nothing was in it. Did Bobby take everything with him or give it away? With his gloved finger he pushed the button for the DVD player—the holding tray was empty. What the hell, punch the VCR eject button, too. This time the machine hummed as a video tape appeared.

Richie knew then that Bobby had left him something.

He pushed the tape back in and pressed REWIND. It was already rewound, so he turned on the TV and pressed PLAY.

Josh Wingate came and stood just inside the door to the kitchen, watching. “What is it?” he asked. The first interest he’d shown all day.

Ambient sound. The scene was this living room; the couch Richie was sitting on now. Bobby Burdette walked into the frame, sat down, cleared his throat. Richie noticed he was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, jeans, and white tennis shoes, and that his hair was still wet from the shower.

He held a piece of notebook paper in his hand, creased in fourths. He cleared his throat again, looked at the camera, smiled, showing yellowed teeth.

“If you’re watching this, I’m either in Mexico or I’m dead.” He waited a beat, giving his audience time to assimilate this. Looked down at the paper and up again. “You probably saw it on the news. Whatever happened, I did what I set out to do. I’m not going to apologize, because there’s nothing to apologize for. If someone forced my hand, then they paid the consequences. It was a lack of judgment on their part.”

He paused to look down and commit more words to memory.

“I did not mean anyone any harm. If circumstances turned out not the way I wanted them to be, I regret it, but I gave everyone a clear choice. I hope that they will take this seriously, because there’s absolutely
no reason for anyone to get hurt
.”

He scratched his neck and let the paper fall to his knees. “See, I am not the kind of guy who bluffs. Bluffing is not in my makeup. If you understand that, we get along fine.”

“So,” he said, leaning forward, “I hope they took it seriously. If they did, then everything turned out all right for everybody. If not, they underestimated me big-time. I’m sorry about that, but they knew what they were dealing with. I do not back down.
Ever
. That’s the way I am. My only request is that you send a copy of this tape to my mother, Mrs. June R. Burdette. All my possessions I give to her, unless you confiscate everything for the government. But that’s not my problem anymore. Wherever I am, I’m where you can’t reach me.”

He got up off the couch and headed for the camera. Then the screen turned snowy.

Richie glanced at Josh Wingate, who stared rigidly at the screen—an intensity he had not seen all day. Richie asked him what he thought.

“Guy is tough,” he said.

“You think he’s tough? I think he’s a coward.”

Josh looked at him. “Whatever it was he did, he went through with it, didn’t he?”

Approximately six miles east of Searchlight, Nevada, on a side road just over the first low hill on Nevada 164, Damien Peltier waited at the command post. The command post was invisible from the road until someone was right up on it.

Behind him, the road continued on to Cottonwood Cove at Lake Mohave, dropping from three thousand feet above sea level to six hundred.

The roadblock had been set up three-quarters of a mile beyond the command post, just over the rise of a second hill. There was a spotter up by the road. When the target went by, two FBI vehicles from the command post would fall in behind him.

At the roadblock, the SWAT team would be waiting. The team included two snipers: one for the driver and one for the passenger. Even in this godforsaken area, there were enough stunted trees and brush to camouflage them. The rest of the roadblock would be parked around and on the road, but would allow for a driver to thread his way through if he had to—slowly.

Safety first.

Peltier glanced at the navy-blue Suburbans parked one in front of the other on the dirt road—ready to go. He tried to stifle his impatience, but it was hard.

It had been hurry up and wait. Everything was planned down to the second, but this wind was getting to him. He hated waiting. That was something he had to a lot of when he was a kid. His harried and forgetful mother, who had eight children, had always left him for last when it came time to picking up her brood from their various after-school programs. Consequently, he would have to cool his heels consistently for a half hour to an hour, and often, she would forget to pick him up at all.

He made sure that he never had to wait much. As the SAC of the Phoenix metropolitan area, he had others do his waiting for him. But somebody forgot to tell Mark Anthony and Jerry Lewis that.

Mark Anthony. Jerry Lewis. Those assholes at Fleet Trucking—a company that contracted with the Nevada Test Site to move nuclear waste—had not even bothered to check out obviously fake names like that.

The wind rattled the canvas awning of the ramada, shuttled dirt into the phalanx of police vehicles, pelting them and the men outside them. The dirt hit him, the exposed parts—his hands, his face. It felt as if he’d been shot with a BB gun.

When he first got here, the sky was blue, one jet contrail bisecting the sky. Now the sky was cataracted over, making the desert dishwater dull. He hated it out here. Too barren, too much open space.

He shaded his eyes with a hand, listening for the spotter to alert him by radio. He had made the decision not to evacuate Searchlight. From what he knew about these two morons, all they wanted to do was make a point. Too cowardly even to stay with the truck—just leave it there and call the news affiliates. He just didn’t respect them. Ecoterrorists were not about to go to the wall for their cause—he wasn’t dealing with survivalists, and this wasn’t Waco.

It was a tough decision, but he was used to make tough decisions. He had always been able to look at a problem and see the answer quickly. He prided himself on his decisiveness, his ability to boil things down to their essence, so it was perfectly clear what action was required.

Evacuating the community on such short notice would have tipped off the drivers of the truck. You couldn’t do something like that quietly.

He walked over to Jordan Benteen, who was sitting in a plain-wrapped vehicle, hunched over his laptop.

“How are we doing?”

“They’re just getting to Searchlight now.”

Another blast of wind. He could taste dirt in his teeth. Suddenly, something flew into his eye.

“
Dam
mit!”

He leaned in to the car, back to the wind, pulling his upper lid over his eye, trying to dislodge the grit. He blinked several times, but he could feel it in there.

Jordan said, “Uh-oh.”

“What’s the matter?” He was pulling on his eyelash, bringing his lid down like a roll-up shade.

“It looks like—”

“What?” he shouted. “What’s going on?”

Jordan Benteen said, “They turned off.”

For a minute, it didn’t register. Then he felt his stomach drop several stories. “What do you mean, they turned off?”

“It looks like they turned south.”

“South?”

“You can see for yourself.”

“South? Why would they go south?”

“GPS doesn’t lie, sir.”

“You must be mistaken.”

“Take a look, sir.”

Squinting, one-eyed, he looked at the computer. “This thing is hard to see. Where’s a map?”

Benteen reached across the bench seat and grabbed a map, already unfolded and awkward to wield. It took him a few moments to find the place. “It’s 95. They’re going south on 95. Toward Cal-Nev-Ari.”

Where had he heard that name before?

Jon Service had mentioned it. Some outpost on State Route 95.

He had to think fast—there was no room for error.

“Are there any side roads that can take us down to 95?”

“It doesn’t look like it.”

Shit.

He wasn’t worried about catching them. That would not be a problem. But coming at them from only one angle—from behind—might encourage them to run with a truckload of nuclear waste.

That would be dangerous as hell.

He lowered his head, so that Jordy could look him in the eye, and enunciated clearly. “I don’t care what you do, how you do it, but we’ve got to get our people out in front of them.

“You’d better goddamn
find
a road.”

Glenn Traywick taxied his Cessna toward the FBO ramp, his mind already ticking away, how he would do this. It would be cheaper to get self-serve—and normally he would do just that. He hated to spend more than he had to. He was in a hurry today, though, so he would ask the lineman to bring the fuel truck. While the plane was being fueled, he could go in and get Michelle, and they’d be on their way.