Deadly Waters

by Theodore Judson

  “Contact him for me,” said Margaret, also rising to go. “We’ll see what he can do for us.”

  Oh, I’ll contact him all right, thought Ronald, but he’s not going to be working directly for you.

  “Anything you want, Margaret,” he said.

  XXIII

  7/10/07 17:24 Atlantic Daylight Time

  Mondragon and Taylor sat at the rear of the elevated platform Harris and Abe Wilson had constructed in the jungle mess hall; they and the forty Colombians listened to Col. Method address the assembled conspirators. Another day of moving empty oil drums about the nearby lake had left the men exhausted and hungry for Bill Thorpe’s evening meal. They had learned to pay close attention to the man they knew as “Senor Max,” the former Stasi man. During their training they had seen him fire a gun with a deadly accuracy neither they, nor any of the street toughs they knew back home, could come close to matching. When he gave some brief lessons in personal defense, he had shown total mastery of the martial arts and had tossed the toughest of them through the air like a circus seal tossing so many hapless beach balls.

  “My comrades,” said Method in Spanish to the attentive criminals, “we have come to the point in our endeavor when we are ready to perform a rehearsal on the soil of the United States. Our leader, Mr. Petrovski,” he indicated Taylor, “and his chief associate, Mr. Corello,” he nodded toward Mondragon, “have arranged for sixteen drums, similar to the ones you have been using, to be brought into the state of Arizona. We will take you to a place in the desert north of Tucson. There, each team will receive the drums they will take to their respective sites.

  “The Glen Canyon team will take four drums. Everyone else gets three. By now you should know the route you will take to your dam site. You also should have memorized the latitude and longitude of the place our pilot will meet you after your mission is accomplished. If you forget these things, a member of each team will carry, hidden on his person, a written copy of this same information.”

  He had Harris and Wilson dim the lights as he turned on a projector that illuminated a screen behind him.

  “Now then,” said Method of the first slide he showed the men, “this is a North

  American U-Haul truck. We will be using the larger twenty-four foot type, which will accommodate the drums. You must be careful to make the drums--and later the torpedoes--secure in the rear of the truck. No more than two men will ride in the front. Three men up front will make you look foreign. You will all board your U-Haul trucks at the staging area north of Tucson and within twenty-four hours drive to your separate destinations. One man, the best English speaker in the group, will do the talking for each team. Tell anyone you happen to meet you are businessmen from Venezuela going fishing. Do not say you are Colombians. Colombians have a certain reputation in the minds of some Yankees.”

  Some of the men, particularly the seven among them who had served time in American prisons, were amused by that notion.

  “You do not have to worry about securing a pontoon boat at your respective sites,” continued Col. Method, and showed a slide of a deployed oil drum and its attached cable and anchor. “Like your trucks, your pontoon boats will be awaiting you at your respective sites. Someone will return them to the rental companies after you have deployed your drums and have departed the scene. At a remote place on the edge of your reservoir, load your drums onto your boat and take them to within a quarter mile of your target dam. Dock your boat securely, go back to your truck, and drive--at the speed limit--to your designated pick-up area.”

  Col. Method showed them a slide of the old DC-3 that Jonathan Greeley would use to carry them to safety.

  “Each of your teams will be going to either a remote landing strip or a small municipal airport,” explained Method. “Someone else will return your trucks to their rental companies. You merely have to park them, then board the airplane when it comes for you. After the completion of this trial run, you will each be given 10,000 United States dollars.” He showed them a slide of a pile of money, and the forty men clapped in appreciation of the beautiful sight. “At the end of the real mission next year, you will each be given another 488,000 dollars.” He showed them a last slide of an even larger pile of money, and the men cheered. “You should know the routine in your sleep, my friends. You have only to do as you are told, and you will be both rich men and heroes among the oppressed nations of the world.”

  Col. Method ceded his spot on the podium to Mondragon amid general applause.

  “I want to tell you,” said Mondragon, “that my Russian comrade and I are well pleased with you men. Senor Gusman said you were the best of the best. You have not

  disappointed us. Every day you have become more expert at your jobs. Each day we have sent favorable reports to our comrades on the other side of the world. This trial run you are about to embark upon will be watched more carefully than any phase of your training. I know you will not disappoint us.

  “One more minor detail I want to further explain to you,” Mondragon added. “As Senor Max has said, one of you on each team will be carrying a slip of paper that gives the coordinates of your landing sites. Now then, when you go on your actual mission, we expect you to have memorized these same co-ordinates, and the slip of paper one man in each team will be carrying will bear false information. Should--God forestall the possibility--any of you be captured, this false information will mislead the Yankee authorities and help your comrades escape to freedom. Should any of you be arrested on this trial run, do not be afraid; you will have committed no serious crime, and we shall have you out of jail and back here in no time. Feel secure that you are never in any real danger. Our Russian friend will now say a few words to you.”

  Taylor stood at the podium and struggled to think of something to tell them.

  “Just say something,” Mondragon whispered to him.

  “It may rain today,” said Taylor in Russian.

  Mondragon translated this into Spanish as: “You are the vanguards in a revolution that will shake the world.”

  “How much does an apple cost?” said Taylor, which Mondragon translated into: “History will write your names in granite.”

  “This is the way to the train station,” concluded Taylor, and Mondragon rendered this in Spanish as: “Go forth and win a victory the Yankees will never forget!”

  The forty Colombians stood and cheered the befuddled Taylor. Col. Method retook the podium and told the men that there was special entertainment awaiting them

  back at the barracks. He was referring to the prostitutes Mondragon had arranged to be brought to the camp at least twice a week. These women were Indians from the interior and spoke little Spanish and therefore could tell no stories when they were sent home to their villages. Mondragon made a single weekly payment to their pimp, and everyone but the much abused women were happy with the arrangement. The forty men charged back to their barracks, leaving the leading conspirators behind in the humid mess hall.

  “We should expect,” Mondragon told Taylor, “at least one team, maybe two, to make a serious mistake during the trial run. They’ll do the same during the real sortie.”

  “How do you figure?” asked Taylor.

  “They are very low quality individuals, generally speaking,” said Erin. “We’ve got the best of them in charge of each team. Old Method has rehearsed them till they should be able to do everything blindfolded. Our difficulties arise from the fact they don’t fear American prisons or anything else the Americans can do to them. They fear violence, and nothing violent can happen to them in the U.S. At least nothing like what can happen to them back home. So they’re going to be careless, so careless some of them are certain to screw up. Can’t be prevented.”

  “Perhaps we shouldn’t do it then,” said Taylor. “They’ll get us caught.”

  “They will get themselves caught,” said Mondragon. “This time, they will be guilty of some littering. Next time, the charges will be more serious. At any rate, as long as the Glen Canyo
n team--our best team--gets its target, we will be home free.”

  XXIV

  7/17/07 03:25 Arizona Standard Time

  “--so I bought a year’s supply of powdered pancake batter, and I was thinking: ‘Why not fry it all at once,’” Wayland Zah was telling the night jailer. “I put in a hundred gallons of distilled water. Or was it purified water? I get the two confused. What is the difference between them?”

  “My wife says the minerals in tap water are good for you,” said the jailer through the bars. “We don’t buy any kind of bottled water.”

  “Back to the story,” said Wayland. “When this Y2K thing didn’t pan out and the world didn’t come to an end, I had all this water on hand and all this pancake mix, and seeing the two them together in the storage shed for seven years got me thinking: ‘Wasn’t these things made for each other?’ When I saw Rocky Henderson’s cement mixer parked in the Circle K parking lot, the keys still in it, I figured I pretty much had a sign from God Himself. Whenever it gets real hot, like it was today, you know how people say you could fry an egg on the pavement? Eggs, pancakes, whatever. You have them for breakfast, don’t you? So I borrowed Rocky’s truck. I brought it right back. With the pancake mix and the water rolling round in the back. That stuff about frying an egg turns out to be true. I dumped that stuff and it rose up nice and hot like it was on a big skillet. Free breakfast for everyone. I even brought the sixty-four gallons of syrup. Was anybody at the Circle K grateful? You can see where I am now. This’ll be the last time I ever do them a favor.”

  “Those people were pretty upset,” the jailer noted.

  “Because they don’t like Indians,” said Wayland. “A white guy could have done this, and they’d want to give him a medal.”

  The jailer was not persuaded. Wayland had dumped the pancake mix on the parking lot because he had gotten into an argument with the store manager over whether Jerry Rice was a better wide-out than Don Hutson. Wayland had been in the Coconino County Jail before for performing other grand but idiotic stunts.

  Bob Mathers, taking a break from his rounds on the graveyard shift, entered the jail area and told the jailer there was fresh coffee in the lunch room.

  “You think you’re being clever, don’t you, buddy?” he said to Wayland.

  The jailer rose to get himself to the break room once he saw his presence near the cells was no longer necessary.

  “I think I’m a philer--, a phila--, one of those guys that’s all the time doing good for other people,” said Wayland, sitting upright in his cell bed to talk to his friend.

  “You don’t let anybody do you any good,” said Bob.

  How Bob sighed when he spoke disrupted Wayland’s good mood.

  “Oh, boss,” said Wayland, “you can’t be that way. You know I like you.” He looked at the black and white checkerboard pattern in the floor and decided he might as well tell the truth. “The clerk and I didn’t get into a fight about football,” he confessed. “The son of a bitch wouldn’t sell me a Freezie. I made it myself, had my money on the counter, and he stood there looking at me. ‘We told you we ain’t gonna serve you,’ he told me. So I fixed his ass.”

  “You fixed your own ass, buddy,” said Bob. “What he did was illegal. You could

  have called me. One phone call, and this would never have happened.”

  “Don’t worry,” Wayland told him. “I’ll be out on bail by noon.”

  “What are you talking about? You couldn’t pay a parking ticket. You’re not in for disturbing the peace this time. Rocky is upset about his cement truck. Then there’s the parking lot. They still haven’t got it cleaned up.”

  “I have a friend,” began Wayland, and realized he should not mention Mondragon to Bob again.

  “One of those creeps at the doughnut shop? You still haven’t told me what they were doing in Page.”

  “Like I told you, boss,” said Wayland, laughing to mask his true feelings. “Mr. Corello has never touched—”

  “Mr. Charles Corello,” interrupted Bob. “I’ve been doing some research. You were in prison out in California, before you got transferred to the federal place, with a Mr. Charles Corello. Guess what? The one you were in jail with is thirty-six years old, is almost six feet tall and weighs a skinny one hundred and forty-five pounds. Your man was sixty, if he was a day, and he was, I think, about five eight and weighs maybe two hundred and ten.”

  “There’s more than one Charles Corello,” insisted Wayland. “Lots of them. Look, there’s a hundred billion people out in California.”

  “Not quite that many,” said Bob.

  “However many of them there are,” said Wayland, as he stood up and stretched inside his little cell. “I don’t know how big California is or how many of them have been to prison or are named Charles Corello. I know if they go to prison, they can put it behind them. You can’t put being an Indian behind you, boss. You get to be an Indian all your life.” He sat back down on his bed and faced the back wall rather than look at Bob.

  “Buddy, I can’t make the whole world right,” said Bob. “I can only be a friend when you need one.” He waited for a reply. Wayland said nothing. “Don’t do this, Wayland. We have to talk.”

  Wayland said nothing, and he refused to say anything until Bob Mathers had left him.

  As he predicted, he was released before noon. Someone in the San Francisco Bay area wired him two thousand dollars, and he made bail soon thereafter.

  *

  Bob Mathers made contact with the real Charles Corello’s employer at the halfway house in Fresno and discovered that Corello had not missed a day of work in three years.

  “Are you certain of this?” Bob asked the halfway house’s director. “He never was in Arizona on a weekday? It would have been, let’s see, this past April?”

  The director assured Mathers that Corello had not gone anywhere in April. At Bob’s insistence he brought Corello to the telephone. The instant Bob heard Corello’s East Los Angeles accent he was certain this was not the man he had met in Page.

  “Is there something I can do for you, sir?” Corello had asked.

  “No,” said Bob, “I’m sorry to bother you. I called because I think you should know there’s a crook here in Arizona using your identity.”

  XXV

  8/6/07 00:07 Arizona Standard Time

  At a few minutes past midnight on a hot Arizona night, a Peterbuilt semi-truck bearing California plates and pulling a single large trailer pulled into the border check station at Nogales. Customs officer Ralph Gordon set aside his issue of Institutional Personnel and went outside his glass partitioned booth to have a look at the vehicle and its hissing air brakes. The driver was Kenneth Greeley, a resident of Alabama, and he had his truck log and his I.D. cards in order. The trailer door was sealed shut with colored tape, indicating it held container cargo that had been sealed shut in the port of Caracas, Venezuela.

  “Que tiene?” Officer Gordon asked the driver.

  “I don’t speak the lingo, son,” said Greeley, “In case you’re asking what I’m carrying, I’m to tell you it’s scrap from the oil fields bound for Tucson.”

  While they spoke, two other customs agents leading a drug-sniffing German shepherd made a pass around the truck. They let the dog smell along the rear door. One man listened with a stethoscope to the trailer wall to make certain the truck was not carrying illegal aliens. Neither the agents nor the dog sensed anything untoward about the trailer.

  “Funny,” said Officer Gordon, checking his clipboard, “I see here I got a notice from up in Phoenix saying I should expect you. They sent me your plates and everything.”

  “The head office was being thorough,” said Greeley.

  “You must run a tight operation at…,” he rechecked the shipping company’s logo… “Yellow Butterfly Lines,” said the border official.

  “We try,” said Greeley, and pulled through the uplifted striped gate.

  At seven thirty-five that same morning the Yellow Butterfly tr
uck was parked in a rest area on the Pinal Highway, fifty-two miles north of Tucson. Kenneth Greeley waited for a charter bus driven by Col. Method, which zipped by him at the appointed time of seven forty. Greeley followed the bus north for another three miles up the paved highway and onto a dirt side road that led into a dense thicket of mesquite and Paulo Verde trees. He traveled a short quarter mile on this second trail and emerged into a clearing, wherein the bus, a black Buick and five orange and white U-Haul trucks were parked. The forty Colombians and Method were slowly emerging into the dusty sunlight from the bus. Mondragon, Taylor, Harris, Abe Wilson and Mr. and Mrs. Thorpe were already standing by the Buick. Method quickly arranged the men into four groups of seven and one of twelve and began transferring the empty drums from the large semi into the smaller rental trucks.

  “Be careful!” Method counseled them in Spanish. “Move slowly and stay together. The real torpedoes will not forgive stupidity. Pace yourselves, gentlemen.”

  The Colombians did not slow down much. They did make serious expressions to show how concerned they were.

  “Look at Alfonso in the Glen Canyon team,” Mondragon whispered to Taylor in English. “It will be a miracle if that clown doesn’t shoot somebody before this is over. I wanted to transfer him to the Strawberry group with the other idiots. He wants to be around his cousin.”

  “You mean Claudio?” said Taylor.

  “Nepotism is forever the enemy of organization,” said Mondragon. “Did you know your old nemesis Benton has an idiot younger brother on his board of directors? Shows how contagious the problem is. Even the evil are susceptible to it. We have to hope Claudio can keep his fool cousin in line long enough to get the job done.”

  Sixteen minutes went by, and the men had moved all sixteen empty drums from the semi. In another half an hour they had loaded the drums into the five U-Haul trucks and had only dropped one load.