The Gates of Babylon (15 page)

“Maybe I should pass this to my FBI buddies,” Krantz said. “If he’s in California, too, they can bring him in.”

“Doubt it would do much good,” Trost said. “He was hard to hit before the crisis. I can’t see what you could do now. Last summer, in fact, we picked up two of his drug mules on the freeway, but couldn’t get an indictment against the leader. Tampering, intimidating witnesses—that sort of thing.”

Something started to turn over in Jacob’s mind. “Wait a second. What’s this guy’s name?”

“First name is either John, or Diego, or Lazario, depending on who you ask. Last name is Alacrán.”

Alacrán.
Jacob remembered his Spanish and let out a bitter laugh.

“Something funny?” Miriam said.

“
Alacrán
means ‘scorpion’ in Spanish.”

Expressions hardened on the faces of Krantz, David, and Miriam, but Trost looked confused. Jacob didn’t want to explain about the shootout, the robbery of their diesel fuel, or Miriam’s remotely detonated fuel bomb that had probably killed a man.

He turned back to Trost. “He looks like a white guy, right? Barely an accent?”

“I’m not sure. You’ve met the guy?”

Jacob chose his words carefully. “We got sucked into some black market trading. He said he could get us a turbine for the reservoir. Turns out he wanted to rob us instead.”

“Let him attack us on the freeway,” Miriam said. “We’ll finish him off. Or at least take out some of his men. It’s our chance for revenge.”

“We don’t need any more revenge,” Jacob said, with a slight emphasis on “more,” hopefully not enough for Trost to pick up.

“Then we should pray about it,” she said.

“Not unless we can pray up a new two-lane highway straight to Las Vegas.”

Jacob looked down at the map and his gaze fell on the long, desolate road to the Arizona border, and the polygamist town of Colorado City. The FLDS.

“Make the call,” Krantz said.

Jacob looked back at the washed-out road, the meadow. Calculated how long it would take to return to Blister Creek for a chainsaw, how long to cut their way through and lay a track for the vehicles across the waterlogged meadow. Oh, and facing another showdown with Chip Malloy, who had probably been rethinking his decision to let them leave.

“Take your time,” David said. “Not like the world is ending or anything.”

Jacob looked at him with raised eyebrows. “You want to make a recommendation?”

“Me? Hell, no. But I don’t want to sit here freezing my nuts off, either.”

“All right,” Jacob said. “Better the devil you know. Let’s go say hi to our crazy cousins.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

The governor and his brother arrived at the shuttered amusement park north of Salt Lake in a panel truck. The lone security guard had left the gates unlocked and the governor himself drove the truck into the middle of a vast, empty parking lot.

“It’s like TV,” Jim said. “One of those hidden camera things.”

“What are you talking about?” Parley asked.

“You know, where some idiot politician is caught on camera collecting a bribe, or selling drugs to an undercover FBI agent.”

Parley pointed toward the ticket booth. “Go that way.”

Jim drove almost up to the booth, where the Colossus loomed above the walls of the amusement park like the bones of a giant metal brachiosaurus. At the beginning of the summer, the Indonesian volcano was a news oddity from the other side of the world, barely considered by teenagers celebrating the beginning of summer
vacation who had crammed the amusement park by the thousands. Now, Jim wondered if Lagoon would ever reopen or if the coasters would sit rusting until torn apart for scrap.

The only vehicle in the parking lot was a green van with a bubble top, parked at an angle across two handicapped parking spots in front of the ticket booth. As they pulled up, the door of the van swung open and a scruffy-looking young man with a knit cap and a ski jacket stepped out. He stood, scratching at his stubble, while Jim parked the truck. He and his brother got out.

The two sides stared at each other for several seconds before Jim cleared his throat. “Want to, um, check out the goods?”

“Goods?” The man raised his eyebrows. “You mean the .50-cal ammo and the artillery shells you lifted from the National Guard armory?”

Jim gave an embarrassed shrug. “Yeah, those goods.”

“What my brother means,” Parley said, “is do you need verification that we brought what we promised?”

“We’ll know soon enough if you didn’t,” the man said. “But if it makes you feel any better…”

He slid open the door on the panel truck, peered in at the ammo cans stacked throughout the cargo hold, and turned around a couple of the crates holding mortar shells and 25mm rounds.

At any moment, Jim expected the scruffy-looking guy to flash a badge and cuff them. And then men with cameras would come out of the camper van. The governor’s face would be on the five o’clock news, coast to coast.

Only there were no television exposés anymore. The battered remnants of the mainstream media labored under the unblinking
gaze of the federal government. The only place for real news these days was the Internet, and most of that was buried among lies, propaganda, disinformation, or pure speculation.

The man slid the door closed and turned around. “Keys?”

“In the ignition.”

He nodded, climbed into the truck, and pulled away. He drove about fifty yards then turned right onto a service road that led back into the park itself. The brothers stood alone in the middle of the empty parking lot.

“Alacrán didn’t say anything about taking our truck,” Jim said. “How are we supposed to get back to the city?”

“How many political campaigns have you survived?” Parley said. “So why is it every time something goes wrong you practically piss yourself?”

“You know what I’m sick of?” Jim said, fuming. “You treating this like some kind of game. Shut the hell up and quit needling me.”

“Relax.”

“To clarify the question,” Jim said, “do you think we’re supposed to take his van, or is he bringing our truck back?”

As if on cue, the van started up. It backed out of the handicapped parking spots and swung up next to them. The window rolled down, and Lazario Alacrán looked out at them with a smile. He’d shaved his singed hair to the scalp and smeared his burned face with some goop that glistened like Vaseline.

“Get in,” Alacrán said.

“I’d rather not be seen climbing in or out of your van,” Jim said. “If you know what I mean.”

“I’m not driving you to Salt Lake, if that’s what you’re getting at. You’ll get your truck back. Come on.”

They went around the other side and climbed in, Jim up front, and Parley on a bench in the middle of the van.

A radio sat on the dash, squawking. A man’s voice cut out, replaced by a woman who was saying something about a food truck in Hurricane, pronounced
Huricuhn
. It was a town in southern Utah, on the outskirts of St. George. The last town before the polygamist enclave of Colorado City.

They drove down the service road and into the park, where the smuggler parked his van. Two men were unloading Jim’s panel truck of the pilfered ammunition. They carried it by hand into the bumper car pavilion, where the cars lay scattered across the floor, their antennae touching the roof, as if waiting for riders and a flick of a switch to send them careening across the floor. In addition to the goods delivered by the governor, there were already dozens of boxes and crates lying in haphazard piles. Some were long, almost like coffins, and marked with numbers and letters Jim didn’t understand.

What were they? Rockets? Anti-tank guns?

“General Lacroix would love to see this,” Jim said. “What are you doing, building a private army or something?”

“Don’t worry, it will be out of here tonight.”

Parley leaned over the railing that guided the waiting line through a course. He stared at the boxes with a thoughtful expression then turned back around. “You didn’t answer my brother’s question.”

“But I did. I’m building something, but it won’t bother you, because I’ll stay out of your way and you’ll stay out of mine.” He nodded, as if that settled things. “It’s going to take these guys a while. Come on.”

They walked through the deserted amusement park, past the log flume, the haunted house, and the kiddie rides, toward the coasters. Here and there Jim spotted trucks parked beneath awnings or poking out between buildings, and covered with camouflage netting, as if to conceal them from aerial surveillance.

They walked by the Wild Mouse, a ride that had stood on this very spot in various incarnations since Jim and Parley were boys. They’d buy a season pass, bring dates when they could find them, or hit on the girls working summer jobs at the rides or concessions when they couldn’t. Later, after Jim’s mission, he’d brought his girlfriend—soon to become his wife—on their second or third date. Held her hand for the first time while waiting in line for the Wild Mouse. Made out with her two hours later in the ball pit at the fun house.

The doors hung open on the maintenance shed and the governor saw crates of assault rifles and more cans of ammunition.

“So you
are
building a private army,” Parley said. “And you want us to know it.”

“I’m not greedy. I’ll draw a line across the state. North of I-70 is Utah. South of I-70 is—how would I put it?—hinterland.”

“Oh, so give you half the state,” Jim said.

“A third,” Alacrán corrected.

“Which is still twenty-five thousand square miles.”

“Of desert,” the man said. “A few small towns, mostly evacuated. It’s on its way to becoming a no-man’s land anyway. I’m encouraging the process. We’re squeezing what’s left. Those who resist.”

To what purpose?
Jim wondered.

Alacrán was placing his bet, that’s what, and it wasn’t on men like the general getting a handle on the crisis. He was gambling on a total collapse throughout the desert Southwest. Take a third of Utah, a slice of Nevada, Arizona—maybe even parts of Colorado and New Mexico. Pretty soon you were talking a big chunk of real estate.

“You’ve got some pretty toys,” Jim said. “But the general could launch a couple of tomahawks and smash you to a pulp.”

“The general has a civil war to fight,” Alacrán said. “He won’t bother with bandits. Not until it’s too late.”

Parley snorted and shook his head. “You’re a fool, Alacrán.”

“And the McKay brothers aren’t planning the exact same thing?”

“I’m the elected governor of this state,” Jim said. “If the federal government collapses, I have every right to—”

“So you don’t want my help transporting Blister Creek’s grain to Salt Lake? Fine, that’s easier for me.”

“The food is ours,” Jim said. “That’s the deal. You renege on that, and it’s all off. Is that understood?”

“Don’t worry. You’ll get your grain.”

“And that’s another thing,” Jim said. “We’ll get rid of this USDA agent, and we’ll make sure the general doesn’t interfere with the food shipments. But you’ve still got to take out Jacob Christianson and his buddies. How are you going to do that?”

Alacrán looked less sure of himself. He fingered the gauzy bandages still wrapping his hands. “I’m working on that. One cult at a time. Blister Creek is the toughest nut to crack. But their time will come.”

“Will it?” Jim said. “We’ll see.”

He thought about his own experience, staring down the barrel of his cousin Abraham Christianson’s gun. Blister Creek had derailed a presidential campaign two summers ago, and the Christianson clan had only grown stronger in that time, coming out on top of a bloody struggle within the church leadership, so far as Jim could piece together from the news.

“Did you know Jacob Christianson left for Las Vegas?” Jim added. “He’s going to come back with a whole bunch of shiny new toys, and then what?” He nodded at the boxes of weapons. “Stuff like yours, plus he’s got plenty of fanatics to squeeze the triggers. Can you match that?”

Alacrán looked momentarily troubled, but then a smile crept up at the corners of his mouth. “Did you say Las Vegas? When did this happen?”

Jim turned to his brother and raised his eyebrows in an implied question. Parley was the source of the information, thanks to some contact in Blister Creek.

“He only left this morning,” Parley said, “and he was avoiding the freeway, because of…
bandits
.” He gave Alacrán a sharp look at this last bit.

“So he’s still on the road,” Alacrán said.

Parley shrugged. “I guess. Probably get home late tonight, or maybe in the morning. Why do you ask?”

“Those back roads aren’t particularly safe these days, either.”

“You would know,” Jim said.

“Some washed out in the floods and never got repaired. Others are far from the watchful eye of law enforcement. If you know what I mean.”

For some reason this last bit irritated Jim more than anything. No use pretending any longer that the foundation wasn’t wobbling, but it was one thing to prepare for eventualities. It was another to be the guy hacking gleefully at the struts.

What if the McKay brothers bowed out now? Could Jim talk to the adjutant general of the Utah National Guard and launch an expedition to clear out the bandits? Or was Alacrán too strong already? Then what about Lacroix? The general could take care of this jerk in about five minutes, but what then? A military campaign in southern Utah would lead inevitably to martial law throughout the state.

Parley looked more calculating, as if pleased by the development. He turned to Alacrán. “You think we can take care of this mess before Christianson gets back?”

“No,” Alacrán said. “I can make sure he doesn’t
come
back.”

This sat in the air for a long moment. The last pieces moved into position in Jim’s mind.

It was a struggle between several parties, and the two weakest pieces would soon be swept off the board. Chip Malloy and the Department of Agriculture gone. Jacob Christianson dead and his church under military control. That left three players: the state government, the bandits, and the US military.

The military was the nastiest player in the game, but this was a skirmish and they were fighting a war across a battlefield that stretched from the Middle East to the Midwest. Nobody present could challenge General Lacroix, but they wouldn’t have to. He would soon pull out to fight bigger, more dangerous enemies.