Leah said, “Did he find this person?”
“Yes, but he lost him. What he did find was the firepower the son of a bitch intends to use, but we need to dig it up without … That’s why we need Brad. Jack said he’d know what to do. And you know what you have to do.”
This was unbelievable. Someone had gotten Tom to talk. Or was he hiding something in plain sight? And was Tom really abdicating to this fellow Brad? That seemed equally out of character. Except that I’d had to all but drag him out of Nancy Wallace’s house that afternoon. Perhaps all he wanted was to hand over the reigns and get back to Faye. I shook my head to clear it. Everything had suddenly gone peculiar in my world. But I knew one thing: I was not ready to quit until I saw that thing under the sand dug up and destroyed.
Leah said, “Who else is in on this?”
“No one that I know of.”
I blinked. She hadn’t asked, Have you called the police? or, Who would do such a thing? No, she had cut to the center of the matter, and appeared ready to take command. My mind spun with questions. Who was this woman really? What was her background? And what emergencies had she been through with Jack that, instead of cowering or trying to lean on the forceful personality that Tom presented, she asserted herself, commandeered him, and easily pushed him around?
I heard a knock at the door. Leah said, “Would you let him in, Tom?”
The man who came through the door when Tom opened it was about my age. He was a hair shorter than average height, but thickly muscled through the shoulders and chest, like a smaller, dark-haired version of Jack. He nodded to Leah, shook Tom’s hand, and then fixed his quick blue eyes on me. “Who’s this?”
Leah said, “This is Em Hansen, a colleague of Tom’s and a lady friend to our Jack.”
Brad’s eyes sparkled, and he gave me a fine grin. “Hey, any lady friend of Jack’s!” I stood up to shake his hand, but he grabbed me into a hug that nearly knocked the wind out of me. When he just as quickly released me, I staggered, but Brad’s attention was already back on Tom, all jest gone from his expression. He said, “I got through to one of the others. He’ll be here in ten minutes.”
“He’s discreet?”
“About what? Tonight never happened.”
What is this, some kind of militia? I began to feel the need to back out of the room. Too much was happening too quickly, and with too little explanation.
The conversation quickly took off and left me. Brad was saying, “How deeply buried is it?” and “So you’re thinking we should extract it before daylight.”
As the questioning evolved, I saw Leah head to a hall closet and return with a small suitcase. It had an old-fashioned leather handle, and the sides were battered. She put it by the door that led out to the carport and said, “You boys dig some food out of the refrigerator. Make some sandwiches and be sure to get some cookies out of the cupboard. There’s fresh fruit in the crisper and bottled water on the shelves out by the carport. If I’m gone before you return, Brad can show you where the key is hidden.”
Tom said, “I think you can wait until daylight, Leah.”
Leah nodded. “That would be better. I’m not as young as I once was. And Lily—” Leah’s eyes shifted to me. She turned and started out of the room. As she disappeared back down the hallway, I saw that one corner of her lips was curled in a sad, ironic smile.
I turned to Tom in question. He turned away, letting me know that my answers lay elsewhere.
– 22 –
We were back on the road before midnight and closing in on the Holiday Inn Beachfront Resort back in Cocoa Beach by one A.M. Brad and the man he had phoned, another remarkably fit specimen named Walt, followed a distance behind us in Brad’s jet-black, four-wheel-drive vehicle. I could spot it by its high headlights, and, each time a truck passed going the other way, by the row of surfboards mounted on its roof rack. He had put them there to obscure his mission as a pleasure tour.
During the drive, conversation was sporadic at best. Tom fell into one of his silences, and for my part, I had so many questions that they all jammed into one big heap that was buried under the urgency of the moment. So I ate cookies and thought dark thoughts about the fact that people seemed to be keeping me exactly there, in the dark. In fact, the darkness was increasing. By the time we were halfway back to the shore, the clouds had socked in solidly, obliterating the moon.
It was spitting rain when we got to the motel, and I could hear the surf pounding even over the rustling of the palm trees. We parked in the back lot, planning no pretense of being there for any reason other than to dig the damned thing up as quickly as we could and get it the hell out of there.
We got out of the car and waited. As I turned to look for Brad and Walt, I saw that they had arrived and parked some distance away. They got out and skirted the parking lot. They were dressed entirely in black, and I could not even see their faces. They gestured for us to hang back, and then melted into the night.
They were gone several minutes, and then I suddenly heard Brad’s voice, very low, so close to my ear that I jumped. “We’re clear,” he breathed. “Now show us the site. You lead. We’ll find you there.” I turned, and, even though he was within inches of me, I saw little more than the whites of his eyes, and inches to one side of his head, I saw the muzzle of his gun.
“Fine,” I said.
Tom lifted shovels from the trunk of the Mercedes.
The hair stood up on the back of my neck as I turned toward the beach. The choke point posed by the narrow path to the beach was too dangerous, the sight lines too limited. Anyone who wanted to give us trouble could do it too easily there, even though Brad and Walt were nearby. I could not see Walt, but was certain that he saw me. Brad said, “Go the other way around the far end of the motel. There’s another path there. Too much light, but there’s no boardwalk, so you can be quieter.”
I followed his directions, moving through the security lights and down between two lines of boulders. I noticed that the stone was a beautiful coquina. How I wished I were on a simple field trip. I would bend and touch the stone, see if I could flick a shell loose from the nearest one. But such were the actions of a simpler time, when intellectual pursuits could fill a day. Tonight, I was in the land of terrorism.
The dark masses of the palm trees whipped noisily in the wind. We walked quickly to the spot and started digging, setting up trench lines that crossed in the middle of the blank spot on the sand, marking a big X, on the theory that we would hit our object on one transit or another.
It turned out to be only two feet down. Tom hit it with his shovel, a hard tunk of metal on metal, muffled only by a heavy layer of plastic that was wrapped around it. Once we’d found it, we quickly uncovered it, and as quickly had the hole filled back in. Then we backed away and let our two bits of the night steal out of the shadows, wrap it in black cloth, and disappear it into the thrashing palms.
As we reached the Mercedes, I saw Brad’s four-by-four whip out of the lot, turn right, and head up the street.
“Now what?” I asked.
“Now we go back to Orlando and see what we caught,” said Tom.
The first moody indigo of dawn found us in Brad’s garage sucking down strong coffee. The missile lay at our feet, still wrapped in its shroud of plastic, which was sealed with green tape. It was an ugly thing.
“It’s a SAM-7 alright,” Brad said. “But here’s a puzzle: its effective range is only a few miles. To hit the shuttle, Mr. Bad would have to get it onto the Space Center at least.”
“Maybe he’s too crazy to know that,” Tom said.
“Let’s hope,” Leah said. “Crazy doesn’t mean he’s stupid.”
Tom asked, “Can you tell where it came from?”
Brad mulled this a moment. “The Russians built them. No, wait; it’s one of the newer Chinese ones, like we heard our brethren have found in Afghanistan. I have to tell you, I’m more than a little bit curious how it came to be buried in the beach by the Holiday Inn.”
Tom said, “That is exactly what I would like to know.”
“Jack could tell us,” Leah said, her voice fading. “But right now I care less about where this came from than where my boy has gone.”
Tom said, “We’ll find him, Leah. When we know where this came from, I think it will tell us where Jack is. I think he followed whoever buried this back to where it came from. It’s the only explanation that makes sense.”
I could think of another explanation. Jack had gotten in over his head, and he was … buried somewhere else. I pushed the idea out of my mind. I had to do something—anything—to keep busy. So I squatted down next to the missile and began to examine it. It was about five feet long. The launcher consisted of little more than two tubes. I gingerly put my hand over one of the tubes to touch some sand that was stuck to the plastic.
“That’s the sighting unit,” Brad said. “The tracking head has an array of heat-seeking sensors and a microcomputer that adjust the trajectory of the missile to keep the target in the center of the array. The other tube holds the warhead and the rocket. There’s a protective cover over the seeker and the warhead that would have to be removed before use. I’m glad we found this thing. Now we’ve got to figure out where Jack is.”
I said, “Perhaps we can work the puzzle backward.”
Leah said, “What do you mean, Em?”
“I mean, maybe this thing can tell us where Jack is.”
“How?”
“Well, it’s got a story to tell. Look at all the sand that’s stuck to the outside of the plastic. That’s quartz sand from the beach where we dug it up. Sand is highly variable—size, shape, crystal characteristics, accessory minerals, and rock fragments—so it may be possible to ‘fingerprint’ it with a petrographic microscope or an SEM.”
“Which is what?” Tom inquired.
“A scanning electron microscope. Don’t worry your head about what that is. Concentrate on the sand. Look inside the plastic,” I said, poking at the wrapping with a screwdriver. “The sand inside is not quartz. See? Quartz is glassy. This is opaque and off-white.”
Tom folded his long legs to crouch next to me. “What does that tell you?”
“Well, it looks like some kind of carbonate.”
“Explain.”
“Calcium carbonate is the mineral that limestone is made of. The sand stuck to the outside, from Cocoa Beach, is principally quartz.” I pointed at one of the larger grains inside the plastic. “That’s a bit of shell; see the ridges? Probably a bit of a pectin, a scallop. There is no quartz in here. All these grains are busted bits of shell that have been worn smooth. Except these.” I pointed to more spherical bits. “These are oolites, formed in a gentle swash zone where the waves keep rolling things about. There aren’t any oolites, or much shell debris at all, outside the plastic. Nothing gentle about Cocoa Beach. And I don’t know what this is.” I pointed to some pinkish bits that were finer in size. “These are something else entirely, though maybe still carbonate.”
Tom was paying strict attention. “So what does this tell us?”
“We can presume that the quartz sand came from Cocoa Beach, because the whole thing was buried in it, coating the outside of the wrapping. But what’s inside doesn’t match, so it follows that what’s inside came from wherever the thing was packed. Furthermore, the packing itself is crudely done—hardly a factory job—so I’m guessing that whoever buried it wrapped it himself, and at some other location where there is a lot of loose sand. See this? Sand only, very little silt or clay. That suggests another beach. So the question becomes, where did the stuff inside come from?”
“Do you think you can figure that out?”
“Quite possibly, with the right help. I’m a generalist, Tom. I know a little about a lot, so I’m good at putting together big pictures. To do this job, I need the help of specialists, people who know a lot about a little. And I have to find the right specialist who has the right finicky little focus.” I shook my head. “That could take time.”
Brad glanced at his watch. “Almost time for my family to wake up, and for me to get ready to go to work. I’m going to go give my wife and kids a kiss and then call in sick. I’ll be right back.”
Walt cracked his knuckles. “I’m with you, bro.”
Leah said, “I’ll start making breakfast. An army travels on its stomach. “Tom, you’d better call Faye before she wakes up and it occurs to her that you should call.”
Tom followed Leah out the door.
Suddenly, I was alone with the missile, this instrument brought to this land for the express purpose of shooting our national pride out of the sky. It lay on the cement like a corpse stiff with rigor mortis. I wished fervently that it were in fact a once-living thing that had died, because then that would be the end of it. But machines can be produced in great numbers, and where this one came from, there had to be more. And, while it had been designed and built a long way away, it had been buried like an evil seed in my nation’s shore. I stared at it, knowing that such objects had been in my country right along, some built by our people, some by others. The only real difference between today and the day before was the expansion of my own sad knowledge of one human’s capacity for brutality toward others.
I shuddered at my own capacity to ignore the abundant clues of such brutality that had surrounded me all my life. While I am not by nature a very trusting person, I could not comprehend such evil, nor, I liked to believe, was I capable of it myself. My blood ran cold at the thought of the kind of mind that could unleash such violence. Where did such people come from? And, more central to my current task, where did they hide?
– 23 –
Brad intersected me a few minutes later as I was walking across the lawn to Leah’s house. He gave me a mischievous grin. “So you’re Jack’s new lady.”
I nodded, even though I was no longer one-hundred-percent sure what I was agreeing to. I decided to deflect him. “Yeah … . So Brad, tell me about the mystery moves you and Walt were doing this evening. What kind of special training taught you to do that?”
“That was a little gag we learned as SEALs. So Jack-o didn’t tell you about his little pal Bradsky?”
“No.”
“I’m so insulted,” Brad said, pantomiming his heart being torn out. Then he gave me a knowing wink. “That Jack. He’s three years older than I am, and I guess I have always idolized him. We’d spend all day Saturday out on our bicycles, exploring the countryside—this is back when the countryside wasn’t so far away from here. We’d be collecting snakes, climbing trees, wading chest-deep through the swamps.”
“You waded through swamps?”
“Yeah, you just have to know what you’re doing. But Jack did. He always knows how to handle himself, that boy. He taught me A to Z about reptiles, birds, plants. Hell, I followed him everywhere, even into the SEALs.”
“The SEALs. I take it that’s not just a merit badge you got in Cub Scouts.”
Brad gave me a sideways look. “No. So Jack’s holding out on you big-time! Oooo, not good, Jack. The Navy’s Special Ops unit. Stands for ‘SEa Air Land.’ Jack didn’t tell you about all that?”
No, he did not. He has not told me a great many things. I had trouble forcing my voice out. “I knew he’d been in the service, but until I saw the picture on Leah’s mantel, I didn’t even know which branch.”
Brad’s smile faded a notch. “Oh. So you’re just getting to know each other,” he said doubtfully.
Just then, I heard the sound of aircraft approaching low and fast overhead. Brad whipped his head around and quickly spotted them, catching a glimpse through the trees. It was a group of military jets flying in formation, heading east.
Brad grinned as he shaded his eyes to track them as they disappeared toward the rising sun. “Hey, Lucy! We’re proud of you, girl!”
“What are you talking about?”
Brad made a big gesture at the passing jets. He was all but dancing. “There they go! Won’t be long now.”
/>
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“The astronauts. They always fly in from Houston in those T-38’s. Nice little jet trainers. They’re wasted on the Air Force, but at least they give them to the astronauts so they can keep their hours up.”
“Wait … that’s the astronauts arriving to go up in the shuttle? They come over Orlando?”
“Yeah. So does the shuttle, when it lands at the Cape. Makes a signature double sonic boom. Sets off the car alarms. But this is the crew of the shuttle arriving, big fanfare. They come in a couple days ahead. I guess that means the orbiter’s rolling back out of the assembly building. They rolled it back a week or more ago because of the winds off the hurricane that’s been nattering around in the southern Caribbean.”
“But that means they’re going up.”
“That’s what I just said. Hey, don’t worry. We got that thing out of the beach.” Brad squinted at me. “Oh, I get it. You’re thinking there might be a second one out there.” He gave me a friendly nudge with his elbow. “Don’t you think Jack would have told us?”
“What if there’s another one he didn’t know about?” I didn’t want to say what I was thinking, which was, What if he’s the one who put it there? Even as I thought that thought, I knew it didn’t quite make sense, because why hide something and then tell someone where you hid it? Unless he did hide it, but then decided that he should tell Tom, because Tom’s almost like a father figure to him. Maybe he thought better of it when Tom argued with him, and … what am I thinking?!
Now I was certain that I was not making sense. Had my doubts about Jack grown to the point where I suspected him of madness? Of violence?
I wanted desperately to ask Brad questions about Jack, but just then Brad opened the door that led from the carport into Leah’s kitchen and ushered me through. Inside, he turned his attention to Tom, who looked entirely out of his element, busy dispensing glasses of orange juice. The moment to pump Brad had passed.
Killer Dust Page 19
