by Jack L Knapp
“I tried to use my debit card but it was declined. That account should have more than enough money, so why was the card declined?”
“I’m sorry, sir. The account has been frozen. We’ve received an order from the Justice Department. This one is from the El Paso Intelligence Center and it’s signed by the US Attorney.”
“Not a court order?”
“No, sir. The US Attorney’s office filed the order, working through the Intelligence Center. He represents the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Agency, so the originating complaint could have come from any of these.”
“So the money’s still there, right? I just can’t access it until I get a lawyer to see what bee they’ve got in their bonnet?”
“That’s true, sir. But I have to tell you,” the voice hesitated, ”freezing the account is the first step. There’s always a follow-up order confiscating the funds if there’s any doubt of ownership being legitimate. That will probably arrive in a day or two. The account is frozen until the rest of the paperwork for confiscation is prepared and filed.”
There was nothing else to say, so I broke the connection. Ray Wilson, retired soldier, now fugitive from the FBI or the DEA. Maybe both. I wanted to swear, but I’d learned a long time ago that it solves nothing.
I passed the information on to T and drove south, carefully staying under the speed limit. I parked the Volvo near the Sunport in Albuquerque and waited. Snoozing, I waited until about three in the morning. There were no witnesses as I drifted over the fence of the long-term parking lot. Removing a license plate from the rear of a car, backed into a parking space by a helpful owner, took only a few moments. I removed the Texas plates from the Volvo and mounted the lone New Mexico plate on the back. The Texas plates got buried in a shallow hole in the desert near Truth or Consequences.
I paid cash for everything I bought on the trip to El Paso. The bank where I had the safety deposit box was helpful and I soon had the cash from the box, now bundled into a shopping bag. A taxi had brought me to the bank and another dropped me near where I’d left the Volvo. The false plate would work for a while, but sooner or later I’d need to abandon the Volvo. It had been a very good car, but it was now a link to Ray Wilson. I could change plates but not the VIN number. In any case, there were few Volvos on the road, so it would always attract more attention than I wanted.
I’d been on the go for most of the past day and a half, catching a short nap near the long-term parking lot but otherwise living on coffee. I finally found a small park alongside the Rio Grande in Los Lunas. T had given me an idea, so I took my camping gear, the cash, and the wingsuit bag and levitated away from the car. I would catch up on sleep while camping in the Bosque, the strip of forest that lines the river on both banks.
T had given up on further attempts to find a mining company that would investigate what he’d found. He still had some of the more valuable jewels and had gotten more than seven hundred thousand dollars for the stones he’d sold.
I was on the run, T would probably be on the run soon, but at least we weren’t broke. Between us, we had access to more than a million dollars in cash. Some of it we carried with us but most of it resided in the two safety deposit boxes we’d rented, mine in Albuquerque and T’s in Phoenix. Neither box linked to our old identities, the ones we’d used in El Paso and New Mexico.
Mid-morning found me on the road again, now fortified by more coffee and a breakfast bought from a drive-through. I parked the Volvo behind T’s cabin and joined him there.
This might be the last time we saw the cabin. It would take time, but the feds had a lot of people. They would follow the link from Ray Wilson to T, Thomas Sauer being the full name on the identity he’d used, once they began looking at the business account I’d established. It might take a couple of days, but they had people. They’d be working out the association.
I commed Ana Maria and told her that T and I were in trouble and that she should avoid any contact with my house in El Paso. She agreed and we exchanged brief pleasantries. Not much, considering how much hope I’d invested in the relationship.
I slept on my camping pad in the living room of T’s cabin. Both of us had been exhausted from all the things we’d done during the past two days.
Suddenly I found myself sitting upright in bed with no idea of what had awakened me. I could hear a rumbling sound in the distance. T stumbled out of his bedroom just as the cabin shook again.
“What’s happening, T?”
“Earthquake, Ray. Fairly big one, too. Use your bubble if you have to, but we should probably get out of the cabin. Just watch out for rocks or falling trees.”
“Damn, T. It wasn’t bad enough having the cops after us, now nature’s against us too!”
We were laughing as we stumbled outside, clad only in our underwear. T stopped laughing as soon as we were outside. The great ponderosa pine that he’d practiced levitating over when he was first realizing that he had a new Talent now leaned precariously. We watched as the tree leaned further and toppled. The trunk struck the ground, but the uppermost few feet smacked into the cabin roof, shattering into several large pieces. The roof and part of the north wall of the cabin now held the weight of the tree and it slowly sagged, eventually collapsing.
T looked at the wrecked cabin in shock. Finally, he shook his head and began chuckling.
“Ray, I don’t think this is going to be a good day. What else can go wrong?”
He shouldn’t have asked.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Ray:
Fortunately for us, we already had our emergency equipment in the vehicles. T took the time to turn off the main breaker at the box behind the cabin. A gas line led from an underground propane tank to the cabin, and he shut off the main feed valve for this too. This left the cabin without power, water, or gas, since his water came from a deep well that used an electrical immersion pump.
“You lead, I’ll follow, Ray. There’s nothing left for us here that we can’t do without. We planned to leave anyway, so this just speeds up the process. It’s too bad,” T said thoughtfully, ”We were comfortable in that cabin. It was a place we could readjust after escaping from Afghanistan. The quiet of the mountains, not having people around, I think all that was good for me.
“But it’s gone now. I can start over someplace and you need to be starting over too.
“Let’s go. You lead, I’ll follow in my truck. We can go south along highway 4 and see if there was damage in Jemez Springs. We can have breakfast in Bernalillo and decide what to do then.”
“Do you want half of the cash in case we get separated, T?”
“Not yet. Let’s just get on the road. We can divide it up in Bernalillo. Trust me, nobody’s going to take that away from either of us.”
I cranked the Volvo and we followed the dirt-and-gravel road from the cabin to highway 4, then turned left for Jemez Springs. The Caldera was some distance behind us as was the tiny hamlet of La Cueva, but I saw nothing in my rear view mirror to indicate that the quake had cause the Caldera to become active. Maybe it wouldn’t. But I didn’t like the idea of that quake shaking the ground near a supervolcano!
I drove around a curve and braked. A house-sized boulder and a number of other rocks had rolled down from one of the cliffs. Some of the rocks had fallen into the creek and water had backed up, although not enough to reach the roadway.
T blocked the road behind me and the boulder blocked it in front. There was no oncoming traffic; people weren’t heading deeper into the mountains after the quake!
I began by rolling the smaller rocks downhill. After they’d cleared the road embankment, I let nature take its course and the rocks tumbled down into the creekbed. Finally it was time to see if I could lift or roll that huge boulder.
Anticlimax; it turned out that lifting a multi-ton boulder was but little different from rolling a rock that weighed perhaps five hundred pounds. The exercises I’d been doing had clearly paid off.
I could have lifted the boulder, but I chose to roll it instead. It left cracked highway behind in a trail leading over the embankment and finally the boulder lodged there, off the road and partially damming the creek. I doubted it would be a problem. The water would rise, but then flow past the sides of the plug.
The road was now clear except for a few cobble-sized rocks left behind. They wouldn’t impede traffic if there were others behind us trying to escape down the state road.
The second quake, heavier I thought, struck just before we passed Battleship Rock.
I pulled over to wait for T and he parked behind me. A loud, low rumble came from the mountains to the southeast. The ground continued shaking for a few seconds longer, but that first heavy jolt appeared to have been the worst of it.
I got out and looked off that way but saw nothing. T walked up and stood beside me as we tried to decide what we should do next. A number of cars, headlights on, were now slowly heading our way from the direction of La Cueva.
T spotted the danger before I did.
“Ray, look at that cliff over there.”
I glanced in the direction he was pointing and realized he was talking about Battleship Rock itself. The almost-sheer face now was no longer vertical; it had tilted until it overhung the creek and the leaning cliff now threatened the state road below. Rocks slid and tumbled from both sides of the huge rock, sliding and splashing into the creek below.
I could hear sharp cracks coming from somewhere behind the huge monolith.
The people behind us now began creeping slowly forward, moving southwest along the highway, trying to pass the leaning cliff before it fell.
They weren’t going to make it.
We ran across the highway and looked up at the towering cliff face.
I lifted my hands in unconscious effort to gain a ‘feel’ of the leaning mass. In a moment I felt a kind of heavy pressure centered behind my eyes and the headache I hadn’t felt for a long time reasserted itself. It would get worse.
T emulated my movement. Was he feeling the same strain that I was?
We stood there, hands up in an attempt to hold back a mass that weighed thousands of tons. I was concentrating on the leaning rock as I’d never concentrated before. The first car of the backed-up convoy inched past behind us.
I spared a glance and saw an incredulous stare from a woman passenger. There were also children in the rear seat of the SUV, but they were more interested in the leaning rock than us. As the SUV slowly passed, another one took its place and then another behind that one.
The last car slowed enough and the driver called out to us through the opened window.
“Get out of there, man! You’re going to get killed if that thing falls!”
I didn’t have the energy to answer him. We kept waiting to see if there was another car coming down the road.
#
Jaime Gallegos was able to increase speed after he passed the debris that had landed on the highway. The canyon opened out past Jemez Spring, although there was a steady line of cars leaving the small village. He finally was able to squeeze into the traffic stream, earning a curse from the man he’d cut off. Slowly going ahead, the ground shivered and Jaime felt a stab of fear.
But this was no quake. Behind him, a huge cloud of dust rose from beyond Jemez Springs. In a moment, he understood the cause.
Battleship Rock had finally collapsed.
What of the two men he’d seen? He watched behind him for a Chevy truck and the Volvo crossover vehicle he’d seen parked behind the two men. The Volvo was unusual, not quite an SUV but not a sedan either. Finally, not able to shake the worry, he pulled over past the Jemez Pueblo reservation. The steep cliffs were behind him now. The small river had shrunk to a mere trickle.
He waited, watching the few cars that had been behind him as they passed. Finally the line of cars passing cars ended, but he kept waiting.
The dust cloud up the canyon had begun to dissipate, carried away by a slight breeze.
There had been no sign of a maroon Chevy pickup or a Volvo crossover.
Finally he got back in his car and drove on, still watching the road behind him. But there was no more traffic.
He eventually reached a roadblock that had been established on State 550 by officers of the NM State Police. They were allowing traffic to proceed southeast, but had anyone been foolish enough to try to drive northwest they’d have been stopped and turned around.
Parking his car on the shoulder of the road, he walked back until he could get the attention of the supervisor manning the roadblock.
“Sergeant, excuse me.”
“Can I help you, sir?” The sergeant was clearly busy, watching his officers at the barrier and listening to reports coming in over the radio.
“There was something strange happening back there. There were two guys, one a little older than the other, and if I didn’t know better, I’d swear they were holding Battleship Rock and keeping it from falling. They were standing there, hands up as if they were bracing it, and I yelled at them to get away but they didn’t move. I waited but they never came out. One of them had a truck, a maroon Chevy, the other had a Volvo, kind of like a station wagon.”
“Lots of trucks up here, Mister…?”
“Jaime Gallegos, Sergeant.”
“Fords, Chevys, Toyotas, there are more trucks in the mountains than there are cars. Not many Volvos, though. I’d have remembered that if it came through here.
“We’re clearing people out right now. I’ll pass the word to the emergency crews when they go back in. There are helicopters up there now. This happened at Battleship Rock, you say?”
“Yes, right there. I think the rock fell. I felt a jolt and saw a cloud of dust in the mirror.”
“Wait one, Mr. Gallegos. I’ll see if there’s a helicopter that can take a look.”
The sergeant was back in just under five minutes.
“Mr Gallegos, a national guard Blackhawk flew over the site. Battleship Rock is down and the road is covered with rocks. The creek is dammed and water is washing across the road behind where the rock fell. He spotted two wrecked vehicles, south of where most of the rocks fell, and he thinks they were probably hit when Battleship Rock came down. He says the doors were sprung open on both of them, so there’s no one trapped inside.
“If they got away, they might have tried to climb out past the slide. But there’s a pilot and a copilot in the chopper and they didn’t see anyone alive. They looked, hoping that someone might be waving from the road, but there was no one. What were those guys wearing?”
“Some kind of camouflage. Stuff like hunters and fishermen wear. I didn’t see anything unusual about their clothes.”
“I’ll pass the information to the rescue crews when they go in, but if those guys didn’t get out before that rock fell, there’s not much hope we’ll ever find them.”
Epilogue
“We’ve got a customer that wants a space for his motor home. The only spot empty is that one in the southeast quarter, D-14. Has that guy moved o
ut?”
“Let me check.” The conversation was between the manager and desk clerk of a campground located in Albuquerque near Interstate 40.
“Nope. The rent was paid until the end of next week. The fellow that rented it didn’t check out, so I guess he just went fishing or something. Anyway, he paid and didn’t tell me he was leaving. He’d have asked for a refund if he didn’t plan on coming back. You’ll have to turn that customer away. Want me to talk to him?”
“No. I’ll tell him. There’s a KOA on down the road, so he can get a spot there.”
#
FBI Special Agent Miranda Castro knocked on the door. DEA Special Agent Paul Pangola looked up from where he worked at his desk and gestured to come in.
“Got a minute, Paul?”
“Sure, come on in, Miranda. Want some coffee?”
“No, I’m coffee’d out. Rain check, OK?”
“To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit? We don’t often see you in our humble abode.”
“Humble abode my ass. You guys are living fat over here. Anyway, I’ve got these files on that drug case. What do you want to do about it?”
Pangola looked at the file folders she laid on his desk.
“Wilson…let me see what I’ve got.” He walked over to the third filing cabinet in a row of three and took a file from the middle drawer.
“We didn’t recover any drugs. No trace of anything, not even a marijuana seed when we searched the house. Did you come up with anything?”
“No. No drugs, just unexplained sudden money from somewhere. The US Attorney dumped it on us, and that’s why I’m asking you. It was more properly your case than ours anyway.”
“We didn’t find anything except the money. We’ve got a police report here, New Mexico State Police. Did you get that one?”
“Yeah, I’ve got it. I’ve also got a request from a lawyer for us to release the funds that were confiscated.”
“Will the US Attorney’s office go along with that?”
“They may have to, Paul. That tactic of simply confiscating money and making the perp tell where it came from is shaky on Constitutional grounds. And if he’s guilty of drug smuggling, we’ll probably never prove it now. The state cops think those two died.”
