Deadly Waters (22 page)
Authors: Theodore Judson
5/5/09 19:22 Pacific Daylight Time
Maria Cordova Dominguez Munoz looked up from her kitchen table and saw her Colorado River quickly grow from the trickle that she was used to seeing in the barren mud flats outside her doorway, into the broad river the old people in the village told her existed in earlier times. Here in the foothills below the Sierra de Jaurez and on the western side of the Baja, elderly folk had kept alive memories of the years when the river had flowed unchecked to the sea, and lush tropical forests had grown in the estuary delta, where now there was only mud and mile upon mile of barren sand.
“When the river returns to us,” the old men had said, “fish will return to the top of the Sea of Cortez, and prosperity will come back to the delta.”
At the end of its journey in Mexico, the Colorado had lost its crest and its power. Every dam between Glen Canyon and the sea had been destroyed, yet the river met the sea with a gentle kiss. Children and dogs ran from Maria’s village to wet their feet in the water as it feathered across the width of its ancient channel. They did not see any dead bodies floating in the mid-stream until later.
“The river has found us again!” whispered Maria, and she fell to her knees to offer a prayer of gratitude.
5/5/09 18:54 Eastern Daylight Time
“It’s hard for me to see an upside in any of this, sir,” said Bernard Simmons, the new president’s chief political advisor.
The president himself sat in front of the great bay window in the Oval Office, his chin resting in his hands. “How many dead?” he asked, not looking up at his circle of advisors.
“Anywhere from forty to two hundred thousand,” said the Secretary of the Interior. “Give or take a few small towns on the California-Arizona border we haven’t made contact with yet. Really, the situation is not as bad as we feared. Were we not to have evacuated most of the Boulder City-Henderson area, it would have been much worse.”
The usually gregarious president lifted his head from his hands and glared at the Secretary of the Interior with such undisguised anger the secretary fell silent.
“All Colombians,” interjected the Secretary of Defense. “All the men we’ve arrested so far are Colombian nationals in this country illegally.”
“Five of them have already been identified as having criminal records, Mr. President,” added the FBI Director.
“There is a distinct relationship between criminals involved in the narcotics trade and leftist guerrillas fighting in the Colombian countryside,” said the Secretary of Defense.
“Narco-terrorists,” noted the FBI Director in case the president had never heard the term before.
Several of the men and women sitting in the circle of chairs pondered mentioning the reports that had leaked to the public two years earlier, the same reports that had their origins in Vladimir Petrovski’s wild ramblings, even though at that level of governance no one really believed in official reports.
“Do we have a specific contingency plan?” asked the chief political advisor.
“Absolutely,” said the Secretary of Defense. “One of our undersecretaries has been preparing for this very possibility for the past three years. Thanks to her we have a plan in play already.”
“Her?” asked the forlorn president.
“Margaret Smythe, sir,” answered the Secretary of DoD.
At the mention of her name three male members of the president’s inner circle looked up at the ceiling and pretended not to have heard of Margaret previously.
“I can report to you, sir, she and a team of special agents are en route to the southwest even as we speak.”
“Special agents?” muttered the president.
5/5/09 23:02 Arizona Standard Time
Deputy Sheriff Bob Mathers had been at the Page airport for ten hours interviewing the twelve suspects in the hanger. The building the Colombians had once hidden in had since become their informal jail, wherein the men sat propped against the metal wall and gave evasive answers to the questions Bob posed in his makeshift Spanish.
The situation had become more problematic when the FBI men arrived in the afternoon; they had ordered the Colombians not be moved and allowed Bob to talk to the suspects only if one of them were present.
At eleven o’clock that night some heavily armed soldiers dressed in black Ninja outfits had landed in helicopters and had ordered Bob and the other local law enforcement officers out of the hanger altogether. They said they were Delta Force and that was the whole of the explanation they gave as they told the lawmen they should leave the airport or be shot.
Tony, the over eager rifleman Bob had strained to contain earlier in the day, had hung onto the bit of paper another officer had found in Claudio’s shoe. Bob had told him to take it to the evidence locker back at the city jail. Tony insisted on carrying the paper about in his breast pocket, and now and then waved it about to demonstrate the great prize he had garnered. As he should have expected, the paper eventually came to the attention of the FBI agents milling about the hanger.
“What’s this?” a ferocious agent in a grey FBI windbreaker yelled at Tony.
“We got this off one—” Tony was allowed to say before the agent grabbed it from his hand.
Tony objected, a little. When the Delta Force soldiers again threatened to open fire, and the FBI agents once more flashed their badges and asked the rhetorical question: “Do you know who we are?” Tony then decided even he should leave. Bob Mathers intervened by getting between Tony and the soldiers and pushing the young deputy toward the parked squad cars.
“We’re going,” Bob told the federal forces. “Just one thing: I’m not interfering here, but you should know that a local man, Wayland Zah, is involved in this whole mess. I’m not certain of his level of involvement. He helped the Colombians--or others associated with the Colombians--plot this attack. Find him, and you’ll know more about this incident.”
The FBI men and the Delta Force team had to confer with their superiors. Their superiors in turn had to come see Bob Mathers at the edge of the airport, and hear what he had to say. Those in charge had another cup of coffee inside the hanger and emerged twenty-five minutes later to tell Bob he had to wait around to talk to the DoD official, who was really in charge.
It was past one on the morning of the Sixth, a Wednesday, when a small personal jet landed on the Page airport’s single long runway. Out its side door popped Margaret Smythe, dressed in a black uniform similar to those worn by the Delta Force soldiers, except that it was tailored to fit snugly on Margaret’s appealing figure.
“Everyone shut up and listen!” were the first words she spoke to her troops as she strode confidently toward the metal hanger still housing the captured suspects.
5/6/09 03:42 Arizona Standard Time
For three hours Wayland Zah had waited in tiny Bluff, Utah, inside his Impala
parked at the spot where Highway 191 turns north toward the larger town of Blanding. Bluff’s three gas stations and their attached stores had closed for the night, and the village’s residences had gone to sleep after the ten o’clock news. To Wayland’s left, that is to the west of his car, was a fallow garden and a vacant two-story stone house beyond the garden plot, the same house and garden plot in which he had met Taylor and Mondragon after the trial run almost two years earlier. To his right there was a tangle of willows and cottonwoods growing on a downward slope that led into the San Juan River.
Wayland would not listen to the radio while he waited because he knew what news was filling the airwaves that night. Instead he slept behind the steering wheel and awoke each time a car passed on the lonely road to the north. At a little past three thirty in the morning a car approached him from behind, stopped, and blinked its headlights off and on three times, as Mondragon said he would. Wayland at once hopped from his car and went to the driver’s window of the black Buick and beheld Mondragon, Taylor and Col. Method sitting inside.
“The eagle flies tonight,” said Wayland, in anticipation of a big payoff.
“Let’s get out,” said Mondragon, and emerged from the driver’s door. “I need to walk a bit. Sitting too long in one place, you know.” He stretched his arms and looked about the town. “Over there,” he said, indicating the stone house beyond the garden. “As we did last time. That will be better than the road. People can see us out here.”
Col. Method left the front passenger door and stayed near the rear of the car, a few feet away from Mondragon and Wayland. John Taylor lingered inside the automobile.
“Come on, John,” said Mondragon into back seat window. “We’re going to the house over there.”
“I feel sick,” said Taylor, his head bent toward the car’s floorboards.
“The night air will make you feel better,” said Mondragon. “You have to do this. We’ll only be a minute.”
He pulled Taylor from the Buick, and the four men crossed the fallow garden in the direction of the stone house. Method was carrying a small satchel Wayland presumed held his money.
“Is that it?” he asked the former military man.
The colonel did not reply until they reached the abandoned house’s front door. A car happened by at that moment, its bright headlights illuminating the corner garden made the dried corn stalks look like the shriveled skeletons of the dead.
“Yes, this is it,” said Colonel Method.
Wayland looked up at the stars and picked out the bright path of the Milky Way. He thought of the money he had coming and of the new respect it would buy him. The first thing he planned was to buy a Corvette convertible, a cherry red one with a black top, and drive it to Tuba City and park it in front of a house that belonged to a woman named Jessie. She would come outside in a white dress that floated on her body and run her hand over the automobile’s undulating curves and smile at Wayland with her black eyes. He did not think of the people who died the day before, for he had resolved not to remember anything unpleasant.
“Nice night, isn’t it?” he asked the colonel. “No wind. The stars are out. Not too warm yet.”
“Yes,” said the colonel, and looked at Taylor and Mondragon, who had crossed the garden at a snail’s pace and were only then drawing near. “The door is unlocked,” he told Wayland. “It sticks a little. You might have to force it open.”
Wayland put his shoulder to the dilapidated wooden door while Colonel Method set down his satchel in the dirt. In the space of a single heartbeat he pulled a gun with a
silencer from his case and shot Wayland in the back of the head. The body fell through the door. Method shot the corpse two more times, pulled Wayland completely inside, and shut the door. He did not forget to pick the three spent cartridges from the dirt lest he leave any evidence for the police.
“Who drives his car?” he asked the other two men.
Taylor collapsed on his knees and wept.
“Get up,” Mondragon told him. “We don’t have time for that.”
“He was a boy,” blubbered Taylor. “Not even thirty.”
“He couldn’t be trusted,” said Mondragon, as unaffected by the murder as Method was. “He is but one of many who died today. We don’t have time to be crying over them. Come on, get up. You can ride with me. Have a drink in the car.”
The expectation of a little alcohol was enough to get Taylor on his feet. He and Mondragon took the black Buick while Method drove Wayland Zah’s car to Blanding, where they left it parked on a dusty side street.
5/6/09 12:19 M.D.T.
The seven members of the team that had struck the Blue Mesa Reservoir were still waiting at their designated landing strip in the hills of northwest Colorado on the Tuesday morning after the attacks on the dams. Several members of the team had wanted to leave the site northeast of Dinosaur, but had been outvoted by the majority. Their orange U-Haul truck stuck out like a blazing brand among the miles and miles of drab sagebrush, which in itself should have persuaded the Colombians either to hide the vehicle or to leave the area entirely. The lure of big money kept them there. At a quarter past noon they heard the distant hum of a rotary propeller and shouted to each other that the DC-3 was at last on its way. Moments later they heard two more propellers and realized a minute too late to do them any good that flying machines were approaching from every direction.
Eight Army helicopters converged on them from every point on the horizon. Dozens of well-armed soldiers from the Delta Force hit the ground running, their rifles pointed at the seven hapless Colombians. The desperados had no other choice than to surrender. The soldiers had come prepared; there were Spanish translators in their midst to tell the Colombians to lie down on the ground and put their hands behind their heads.
5/6/09 13:45 MDT
In Utah the last free group of Colombians, the Flaming Gorge team, the men who had abandoned their truck east of Vernal, were seated in the Sunrise Café on the west end of that same small town. They had passed the night sleeping in a farmer’s alfalfa field and looked considerably worse for the experience. Unshaven and dirty, they sipped the inky drink the waitress said was coffee. They acted unconcerned while the ranchers and truckers in the café stared at them and whispered. The Flaming Gorge team had not heard the radio since they had left their truck and were unaware that local lawmen were searching the countryside for seven men believed to be from Colombia.
“You are certain this is coffee we drink?” one of them asked the waitress.
“What you think it is?” she asked. “Tea?”
“
Muerde
,” said the Colombian. The waitress did not recognize the Spanish word for excrement, and passively nodded in response.
Late spring in Utah felt like early winter to the seven Latins, and in spite of the bad coffee, they were grateful to be inside a warm, dry place. The sense of well-being encouraged them and they once more spoke of the grand adventures they would have when they got their money. One confessed to his companions that he planned to open a ladies’ clothing store when he was rich.
“You mean you want to meet beautiful ladies?” they asked him.
“If that happens, I would rejoice,” he said. “I would, however, find reward enough in the work.”
“You will steal from the women while they are unawares?” said one, and the others clucked in approval.
“They will be naked in the dressing rooms,” said another. “Completely vulnerable.”
This occasioned more laugher and nods of approval.
“No, I want to give them beautiful things,” said the dreamer. “That would please me.”
The others inched slightly away from the speaker. They were not at ease with
themselves while in the presence of innocence. They were so involved in their discussion they did not see the Vernal police, the Uintah County Deputies, and several FBI agents surrounding the small café. The Colombians did not realize they were trapped until two federal agents dressed in coveralls sneaked into the restaurant and pointed machine guns in the surprised faces of the seven outlaws.
“I want a lawyer,” was the one English phrase every member of the party knew.
The FBI agent in charge at Vernal quickly called the contingency headquarters in Page, Arizona, and informed his commander that all the suspects had been apprehended.