Judas Horse ag-3

by April Smith

  There is a ripple of anxiety in the crowd that moments ago had been peacefully watching the fish jump through the roaring water. SWAT teams in combat gear are quickly moving families away, while moon men in bomb suits and helmets with built-in microphones direct a score of firemen ready with hoses. The woman with the toddler picks him up and carries him away, staring at Slammer with hate.

  “Julius wanted to blow up the dam. To get revenge on the U.S. government, and because he was a sick individual. A lot of innocent people could get hurt—” Alarmed, he says: “Where is Allfather?”

  “He’s dead. There was a fire at the farm. Everyone is dead except for Sara. She’s okay; you can see her as soon as we resolve this. Right now, it’s very important for you to listen to me. Do not move. The bomb squad will remove the backpack.” Slammer laughs. “No way he’d do something like that. Besides, one little bomb can’t blow up all these tons of concrete. He wouldn’t send me here just to blow myself up? For a couple of fish?” “We’re not going to let anything bad happen to you.”

  “You’re trying to trick me.”

  “I’m trying to save your life. I did that once before, when he buried you alive, remember?” “You’re a liar!” Slammer screams. “You sold us out! You’re a fed! You’re a liar! You deserve to die!” “I do care, Slammer. That’s why I’m standing here. These guys could take you out in a heartbeat.” Slammer glances above him; the snipers are set up on the roof.

  “You’re a good person. You know how I know? Because you didn’t kill Herbert Laumann when you had the chance. There is good in you, Slammer. It shines. You’ve had a real hard time of it. People haven’t let you be good. But I know you are. I wouldn’t be risking my life if I didn’t think your life was very important. More important than the fish. Come on, dude.” “Stay back,” he says.

  “No. I’m coming to help you.” I take a step closer.

  “Why should I believe you ever again? You think I’m that incredibly stupid?” I stop just short of tackling distance. Slammer’s eyes are glassy and big, and he’s chewing indecisively on those childlike lips. We face each other in a standoff as the human crowd recedes like a tide, leaving the windswept concrete walkways quiet except for the peeping song of the ospreys patrolling low over the water.

  “I trust that you’re not going to do this, Slammer, because you’re smart enough to know you’ve been set up by Allfather. He’s the one who was lying to you.” “It’s another test,” he decides. “Of fire and ice.”

  And then he jerks the cord.

  In one stupefying moment, I grope for a lifetime of reconciliations. A series of pop-pop-pop explosions blows me backward and knocks Slammer to his knees as red dye fumes and spurts in all directions. While it continues to spray like a fireworks sparkler gone wild, he wrestles the backpack off and throws the whole thing into the fish ladders, and the water turns blood red.

  Just like Stone’s test run.

  And that’s the extent of it.

  Slammer can’t stop laughing for joy, even as a pile of agents brings him down.

  “I believe in Allfather!” He keeps on snickering. “I belieeeeve, oh yesss!” Stunned, the bruised shoulder searing with pain, I wipe at the splattered dye on my face. The wind off the river is icy. The helicopters keep circling. Radios crackle, and SWAT reinforcements overwhelm the top level.

  My hair is whipping across my eyes. From the catwalk is a panoramic view of the river. Below, fish continue to flop over the weirs, the big clock of nature ticking placidly along, but now I am listening to a different buzz in a higher key. All the craft on the water have been diverted, except for one that has torpedoed through: a small powerboat heading in a perfectly straight line toward the dam.

  I grab a pair of binoculars from one of the SWAT guys.

  It is the boat I saw at Toby Himes’s. The wheel is tied down. Otherwise, the boat is empty.

  Except for large plastic barrels that contain military-grade explosives.

  Mountain Man must have sent it on the final voyage. Slammer and the red dye were a diversion. The real attack bears down on us now on an automated suicide mission at eighty miles an hour, loaded with enough high explosives to blow a crater in this concrete monolith, where hundreds of agents, police, and tourists have massed — powerful enough to cause the river to overflow its banks, flood towns, destroy farmland, shut down the Northwest power grid. It is what terrorism experts call “a secondary explosion,” the dual purpose being to inflict the greatest human casualties on responding personnel.

  “INCOMING!” I scream. “THE BOAT IS ARMED.”

  Orders are relayed and everything starts moving backward. Ambulances screech off the road. Police units back out of the parking lot. Fire trucks and panicked tourists push toward the woods. Only the military helicopters swing forward in unison, flying low over the water, gunners leaning out the doors, firing.50-caliber automatic weapons at the boat, intercepting its kamikaze mission a scant two hundred yards before the target. The choppers jam it, up and away, as an orange ball of fire explodes out of the water. The boom echoes off the riverbanks, and every living creature along the Columbia River Gorge quakes.

  The catwalk shakes under the confident steps of Peter Abbott. The SWAT gear he wears looks more like a costume now, his bearing that of a civilian, with a civilian’s priorities of personal gain and comfort, not justice; no longer one of us. Tall and balding, glasses blank as coins, he fairly bounces with authority.

  “Give me the data.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Toby Himes reported that he saw Dick Stone hand it to you.”

  “Good old Toby.”

  “Don’t fuck with me.”

  “What happened at the farm?”

  “It’s gone,” says Abbott impatiently. “Everything burned to the ground.” “The barn and the orchard?”

  “Orders were to destroy everything.”

  “They were your orders. You assassinated an unarmed woman.”

  “She was not the primary target. But she was a terrorist.”

  “And you burned the trees. Why did you burn the trees?”

  “Calm down. You are not in control of yourself.”

  “Did you kill the little horse, too? Did you mow him down, just for the hell of it?” “Give me the data, and let’s go inside.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m talking about the device that Stone gave you.”

  “Why? What did Dick Stone have that brings you here, way out on a limb? We know he had an inside source. So? Ah well, you’re right. You never could tell what was real with him anyway. But what about you, sir? Which side are you on? Was Toby Himes relaying information on criminal activity in the Northwest…or was he your lackey to get to Stone?” “Toby Himes is a loyal patriot,” Abbott replies swiftly. “And you are done, Agent Grey. Your picture was posted on the Internet by Stone’s accomplice.” He describes Rooney Berwick’s personal Big One. The suicide. The photo ID of Darcy DeGuzman. “Your identity has been exposed. Your career as an agent is over. Let’s go out like a hero.” We are standing alone on the narrow walkway that spans the fish ladders. Water rushes in shallow channels under our feet. What are my options? The rampant power of the river is far beyond the concrete decks and barbed-wire gates.

  “If I give you the data, what are you going to do for me?”

  Abbott rubs his nose disdainfully.

  “You’ve been down in the muck too long. This is not a negotiation.”

  “Everything is negotiable.”

  “You can walk off this ramp whole.”

  “No censure? You won’t make me look bad?”

  He shifts on his feet. What a girlie question. “No censure.”

  “All right, fine.”

  I show him the device in my hand. “Here’s the data,” I say, and rocket the thing in a fine sparkling arc, high over the fences and deep into the wild green-white current of the river, where it is sucked into the giant t
urbines.

  Abbott laughs and a stray wisp of setting sun lights his face.

  “You look relieved,” I say.

  “Oh, I am. And you are under arrest.”

  Inside the control room of the dam, long, curving banks of computers trigger the gates of the navigation locks and release the spillways. You can sense the rumble and hear the huge weight of water as it spumes out of the downstream side. The techs have been evacuated except for one nervous shirtsleeved supervisor behind the main desk. Two baby sheriff’s detectives allegedly guarding the rogue FBI agent are perched at workstations, nosing through other people’s personal stuff. The cold air smacks of the bloody ice of a fish market. We’ve been contained here for hours.

  SAC Robert Galloway nearly blows the door off its hinges as he bursts inside, ordering everyone else out.

  “What the hell are you thinking?”

  I cradle my left arm in its sling. “I could ask the same of you.”

  “You flat-out defy the deputy director.”

  “He set me up and you know it.”

  Galloway staggers slightly backward, as if stunned by the accusation. “You better slow down.” “Abbott had me pegged from the beginning. He had read my file before that first meeting in L.A. He knew I had been diagnosed with PTSD, but he overrode the doctor’s recommendation, because he wanted me on this case.” Agitated, my boss sits on the edge of a rolling chair. “You tend to think a lot of yourself, Ana, but many agents could have done this job.” “I happened to suit his needs. Abbott had a personal interest in reining in Dick Stone, going back to when his family was involved in building the powerhouse for the Bonneville Dam. The one we’re sitting in right now. Remember that photo of Megan wrapped in the American flag? This is the project she tried to kill. Abbott put an end to that by adding her to the ‘dirty hippies’ list. Dick Stone imploded and they went underground.” “And what about you?”

  “I’m getting to me. Stone took thirty years to implement the Big One, his ultimate revenge on Peter Abbott and the federal government that abandoned him. If anything makes him a terrorist, that’s it: the patient planning, the fixed beliefs. He used his influence with the vulnerable Rooney Berwick to uncover illegal deals with the Abbott family. Stone always said that symbols are important, and destroying the dam was a good one. What is it except a massive monument, literally, to power?” Galloway has been sitting forward, hands on the armrest. His body has become still, but his worried eyes take everything in.

  “And you?”

  “Me? Well, I was the perfect dunce for Peter Abbott. Good enough to get Stone, and then totally disposable. He wasn’t worried about family dirt coming out, because that could be manipulated. You could blame it on the source. The undercover was unstable. Disturbed. Am I sounding a lot like Dick Stone? And if the deputy director was very lucky, I might go over the edge and identify with the suspect, and die in a tragic shoot-out.” “That’s a stretch, Ana.”

  “I could easily have been the first one out that door, Robert.”

  Galloway’s expression goes from cautious listening to pissed as hell. “This is terrific.” He gets up so abruptly, the chair scoots backward. The hostile Brooklyn accent hits like a bludgeon.

  “We did everything possible not to let this happen. Despite training and supervision, you allow yourself to get in too deep, and let a nutcase, someone out for nothing but sick personal revenge, destroy your career.” “Are you talking about Abbott or Stone?”

  “Lady, you are cruising. You defied the deputy director during a tactical operation.” “I made the determination he had something to hide.”

  “So you toss crucial evidence into a river. In a case of domestic terrorism.” “I didn’t want him to have it.”

  “How stupid can you be?”

  “I guess that’s obvious.”

  “This is big-time stupid. I am here to tell you that Peter Abbott is charging you with treason. Destroying evidence in a terrorism investigation is a treasonable act.” Lights blink. Computers tick along, mockingly doing their job. There is hydropower to output! Fish to manage! But you are trapped inside a concrete bunker ten feet thick and you will never see daylight!

  The future will be this: imprisonment in a stale progression of lawsuits and appeals, maybe even jail time, until my vitality is sapped.

  Just go on being Ana Grey.

  I notice Galloway has been watching me during this brief meditation, jacket open, fists on hips, totally perplexed.

  “I have something to tell you, too,” I say. “About Steve Crawford.”

  “What about Steve?”

  “He wasn’t who we thought he was. Going in, you couldn’t have asked for a more loyal friend, a more good-hearted person, but when nobody was looking, he got hungry.” “Is that so?”

  “That’s right. The most talented agent to come through L.A., isn’t that what you said? The golden son? Steve knew that Stone had a valuable stash and figured to steal it, but the thing blew up in his face. He wasn’t killed by an act of terrorism. It was greed.” I watch Galloway’s face as the shadow of uncertainty deepens.

  “Or, you could say, it was due to the stresses and strains of undercover work. He was a casualty of war. Like a lot of us.” I take a ragged breath. “I’m just as devastated as you are. I loved the guy.” Galloway’s hands fall to his sides.

  “I choose not to believe it.”

  “Lucky you.”

  Donnato escorts me out of the powerhouse and into a black sedan. He maneuvers through the remaining rescue vehicles and news vans and hits the darkening road. The locks on the doors go down.

  “Did they really burn down the farm?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did they kill Geronimo?”

  “Who is Geronimo?”

  “The blind baby foal, goddamn it—”

  “I think he’s fine.”

  “You think? Don’t lie to me.”

  “I have never lied to you.”

  “All right.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I want that horse to go to a good home.”

  “Don’t get teary. Jesus, what’s the matter?”

  “Promise me. It’s the last thing I’ll ever ask of you.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “I have the data.”

  “No you don’t. You threw it in the river.”

  “That was Darcy’s cell phone. She didn’t need it anymore.”

  In the dashboard light I see Donnato’s face squinching up.

  “Don’t be telling me this.”

  I reach inside the sling where I have secreted the PalmPilot from the clumsy searches of baby deputies and the sharp eyes of my SAC.

  “Dick Stone gave me his testament.”

  “What’s on there?”

  “The manifesto. What he wanted to be printed in the newspapers. What he said the American people need to remember.” Scrolling past planting schedules and shopping lists, I discover a file called “Career of Evil.” “This is it! Memos dated 1972 to 1974, signed by Peter Abbott, authorizing illegal phone taps against ‘suspected student radicals.’” “Keep looking.”

  The screen is filled with numbers.

  “Fish statistics. Great.”

  And then a map. “A map of Bonneville Dam. Hey, wow. It’s a schematic.”

  Donnato looks over. “Detailed?”

  “The building plans for the dam. What Stone must have used to plot the bomb attack. There were several contractors.” I’m punching buttons, enlarging the type on the plans. “Hamilton, Meizner, Adams-Vanguard—” “Adams-Vanguard is one of Abbott senior’s shell companies.”

  “So Peter’s father, the congressman, was lining his pockets with a multimillion-dollar contract.” “I’ll bet if we had another twenty-four hours, we could come up with a link between the builders of the powerhouse project and contributions to young Peter Abbott’s political career,” adds Donnato. “But we don’t have twenty-four hours.” I hold it out to him. “You do.”
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  “It’s collateral,” Donnato says. “It was Stone’s collateral; now it’s yours.” “He wanted to cash it in. He wanted Abbott to roll on the floor like a pill bug.” I press the device into Donnato’s hand and find that mine is trembling.

  “Get him,” I whisper.

  “Roger that.”

  I realize that I am becoming incoherent.

  “Where is Galloway sending me? Why would he burn me? I’m a hero. Aren’t I?” “Shhh. You’re valued. Believe me, at the highest level.”

  “I don’t know what to believe.”

  “If you knew everything, you wouldn’t do the job. These aren’t the days of Dick Stone. The tentacles were working — all those people behind the scenes, helping to protect you until the case came together. The supporting elements of the undercover are like your crystal ball — we see your future and help you dodge it.” He kicks it up to eighty on the country road.

  “What is my future?”

  I watch a big green freeway sign for Portland snap backward into the dark.

  “Aren’t we going to the county jail?”

  Donnato does not reply.

  “But I’m in custody.”

  Donnato’s voice is breaking. “You just have to trust me.”

  We drive in silence through the poignant end of day. The little road is sweet, the way it flows between the silver river and vertical slopes of scree, where multiple waterfalls sport like nymphs. It is the same drive I made with Stone when he began to tell his story of betrayal by his own people; we are simply going in the other direction. Stone wasn’t asking for trust or belief. He wasn’t asking for anything when he told it. But Donnato’s tone is full of pleading.

  A rusted shell of a gas station and a neon sign half-buried in leaves that says MOTEL put you in mind of 1940s detective stories, where scheming lovers escape to a motor court out in the boonies with a million bucks in cash — only to discover the final, bitter twist.

  There is always a double cross.

  How far would the Bureau go?