Revenge of the Dog Team

by William W. Johnstone

  So besotted was he, and so corrupt, that he’d jumped at the lifeline she’d offered him. His current service posting was as an instructor at Nevada’s Burpleson Air Force Base, where he regularly flew training missions in the A-10. Tammi introduced him to a man who was willing to pay one million dollars for the delivery of such an aircraft. The man was Zirani himself.

  Not sex, but the power of money proved to be Peters’s ultimate undoing. They didn’t call it the Almighty Dollar in this country for nothing. Zirani offered to pay Peters half the money in advance and half on delivery. As a gesture of good faith, Zirani deposited five hundred thousand dollars in an offshore island account solely accessible to and by Peters. No tricks, no catches, the money was his. Zirani had no fear that Peters would keep the half million and fail to make good on the delivery of the A-10. Not that he had faith in Peters; his faith in Tammi was his surety. Peters was besotted with the girl; he wanted her more than he wanted the money. He couldn’t have her without the money, but he could have her and a cool million.

  The plan was set in motion. Zirani acquired the rights to the Dead Lake gypsum mine. The mine was as dead as the lake and he secured the rights for a pittance. Now it was up to Peters to fulfill his part of the bargain. The theft was absurdly easy. The squadron at Burpleson was scheduled to go on manuevers. For the sake of realism and verisimilitude during the exercises, the A-10 was armed with live ammo. One morning, Peters arrived at the base hangar with forged flight orders courtesy of one of Zirani’s craftsmen. Climbing into the fully fueled aircraft, Peters took off alone. Deviating from the flight plan, executing a series of tricky evasive moves, he flew low, under the radar, dropping off the monitoring screens. The nature of the A-10 lent itself to low-altitude flight. He flew west, into the mountains and out of the ken of the Air Force.

  The hard-packed dry bed of Dead Lake served as a perfect impromptu landing field. The abandoned mine was pressed into service as an airplane hangar. Once the landing was made and the plane taxied into the mine, Zirani’s men went to work on the lake bed, erasing all traces of its use by the aircraft. The screened mine gates and the omnipresent guards posted there around the clock ensured the plane would be safe there until needed.

  As for Peters, he was no longer needed. Zirani’s chief executioner, Hasan, eliminated him as soon as the plane was safely in possession. Peters’s blind spot had been the money. With him dead, the half million would be irretrievably, irrevocably lost. He’d been unable to conceive that Zirani was willing to sacrifice the sum to achieve his ends.

  To Zirani, the money was nothing and the ends were everything. And of course, Peters had believed Tammi and her blandishments, believed that she was in love with him and desired nothing more than to go off with him and spend the money on a nonstop love feast. Hadn’t she proved her devotion the most tangible way possible, with her enthusiastic, orgasmic bedroom performances? How simple were these American fools!

  Still, Peters remained close to the heart of the enterprise. His remains were buried in a desert grave covered by rocks not far from the mine. Zirani had his own pilot, Captain Sayyid ibn-Talal of Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi Air Force, retired. Sayyid was a loyalist with a deep craving for martyrdom. He could be relied on to see the holy mission through.

  As for Tammi, her current assignment done, she dyed her hair back to a mousy brown color, scrubbed off her makeup, hid her eyes behind thick-lensed glasses that were made of real glass because her vision was perfect, hid her figure of passion under layers of dowdy, frumpy clothing, and resumed burying her real identity behind the mask of Terri Sarkesian, Bert Sarkesian’s clumsy, ungainly, ill-favored niece.

  The truth of the saying that only God is perfect had recently been brought home to Zirani by his current troubles. His plan was flawless; not so the imperfect human tools through which he had to work. First there was Mayhew of ISS, who’d sold him the information about the toxic train and its Red Mesa run. Why, the man was no better than a crook, selling the same information to the Iranians! And not just any Iranian but Darius, an accomplished agent and dangerous man. It had been only through luck that Zirani had learned of Mayhew’s treachery and Darius’s possible involvement, at least alerting him and putting him on his guard.

  After that, his troubles had multiplied. There was the murder of Choey Maldonado at a site not far from the mine, which had created all sorts of difficulties, culminating in a bloody falling-out with Rio and the rest of Clan Maldonado. There was the American Kilroy, that sower of discord and ill will, whose infernal snooping had led to the unmasking of Zirani’s double life here in Adobe Flats and the decimation of his cadre of trusted advisors, enforcers, and spies.

  But all was not lost. God was good, delaying the debacle of Zirani’s downfall long enough to assure the success of his master plan. Even now, the toxic train was on the final lap of its run, having entered the state this very day, as dawn was breaking. The A-10 was armed, fueled, and ready to go. By the grace of God, he, Zirani, had survived the night of blood, living long enough to deliver pilot Sayyid to the takeoff point.

  The A-10 was exiting the mine, preparatory to taxiing across the launching strip of the dry lake bed and becoming airborne. Soon, it would be winging its way east across the mountains, then flying below the radar on a course that would inexorably bring it to its rendezvous with destiny in the shape of a train hauling twenty boxcars filled with some of the most virulent and lethal poison gases and nerve agents known to man.

  The A-10 would fly its final mission against the train, cutting loose with its lethal nose cannon and strafing the line of boxcars, shredding them, ripping them apart, and loosing their noxious contents in a death cloud that would rank as one of the most horrendous eco-catastrophes of all time.

  With any luck, the winds would blow the death cloud into Las Vegas, smiting that modern day city of sin on the plain as Sodom and Gomorrah had been once felt the fury of divine wrath. What was it the Americans called the A-10 in the popular vernacular? Ah, yes: “The Warthog.” The Hog, a swine, an unclean thing forbidden to the believers. Set a hog to destroy a city of sin. Here, truly, was the dreadful symmetry of divine justice!

  On the rise on the southern rim of Dead Lake, Kilroy unlimbered the weapon that he’d just taken out from where it had been stored, in the camper section attached to the back of the pickup. He’d had it with him ever since undertaking the mission to seek and destroy the strayed A-10, as the ultimate insurance if and when it came to a showdown.

  Now the showdown had come. The weapon: a shoulder-launched Stinger antiaircraft missile.

  Hefting the launcher, making final adjustments, he sighted it in on the ungainly A-10 just nosing out of the cave mouth and onto the lake bed, getting ready for takeoff. The aircraft’s engines emanated an infrared profile that would serve as an irresistible guide path for the weapon’s heat-seeking missile.

  He fired. A jolt, a whooshing back-blast of exhaust gases and rocket propellant, and the missile streaked across Dead Lake to dart itself into the A-10.

  The initial blast was ferocious; the successive series of blasts as the aircraft’s fuel tanks and ammunition exploded was cataclysmic. The explosion beat the surface of the dry lake like a hammer striking a gong.

  The fireball that erupted into being was a multipetaled orange-red rose of heat and force that grew and expanded like time-lapsed, fast-motion footage of a flower unfolding itself and spreading out in all its sun-fire glory.

  The inferno swept across the eastern end of Dead Lake, oversweeping sheds and outbuildings, scouring the depths of the mine itself. The firestorm touched off the fuel stored in the outdoor tanks, multiplying the hellfire.

  Later, when the flames had died down, Kilroy and Brand edged closer to the site for a look-see, as close as the heat allowed.

  By some freak of chance, the first shock wave had scooped up Rio Maldonado like a giant invisible hand, tossing him out of the basin and onto some rocks above the dirt road rounding the lake bed’s southern rim.<
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  There wasn’t much left of him, but what there was was still alive, conscious, and aware. Staring eyes narrowed in recognition as he saw Kilroy’s face looming over him. Kilroy didn’t know how much time Rio had left, and he wanted to get it in before the other clocked out.

  Kilroy said, “I killed your brother. That’s right, me. I killed Choey and his two pals. I came across them while doing some night hunting looking for the missing plane. The two girls that survived were taken to a safe place. They told me plenty about your outfit that helped me get a line on you.

  “I hired Barker and Deetz to kill you. They were killers and had it coming, too. I crossed them and killed them to get in with you. Just thought you’d like to know. Take that to hell with you.”

  Rio formed the words: “Finish it…”

  Kilroy raised his gun, put a bullet in Rio’s head.

  “It’s done,” he said.

  SIXTEEN

  But it wasn’t done, not quite.

  The long trail that had begun in a Virginia suburb with the murder of Colonel Millard Sterling and had wound its way across the country was nearing its end. The toxic train that was traveling south along Nevada’s eastern border now neared the town of Brigade, a junction point about twenty miles north of Las Vegas, where it would take the western branch into the central wastelands and the final destination of Red Mesa, where the CW-destroying incinerator complex awaited.

  At mid-morning, as the train neared the junction, Steve Ireland and Fred Osgood were on roving patrol in the killer Klondike SUV, making a sweep of Brigade and the roads leading into and out of it. Earlier, the train had paused so the vehicle could be offloaded from the flatcar ramp and set in motion.

  Steve drove, Osgood rode in the front passenger seat. A variety of weapons and ammo was ready to hand behind the front seat.

  Brigade sat amidst a vast, sprawling flat cut by roads and wrapped in immensity. There was a sameness to the landscape, a sandy tableland sprinkled with a scattering of isolated land-forms, rocky knobs, and outcroppings that rose like reefs and islets in a sea of sand.

  Some miles further south down the line, closer to Las Vegas, immense tracts of suburban sprawl with hundreds of thousands of residents had developed around Sin City, which had been one of America’s fastest-growing metropolises before the housing boom went bust, and was still one of most populous areas in the Southwest.

  But not here. Here was undeveloped wilderness, hundreds of square miles of tan and sandy wastes studded with myriads of cacti, mesquite, and sagebrush, home to snakes, lizards, mice, gophers, coyotes, small swift birds, and high-flying buzzards.

  The sun had started making itself felt shortly after dawn, and now, hanging midway between the eastern horizon and the zenith of the cloudless blue sky, it broiled the empty land beneath it with relentless fury.

  Steve gladly abandoned his usual practice of driving with the windows open to get a feel for the surroundings, in return for keeping the SUV’s interior coolly air-conditioned. It further amplified the vehicle’s gas-guzzling proclivities, but it wasn’t Steve who was paying to fuel the tank. He and Osgood took turns driving; it was Steve’s turn now. He liked to drive, and it was a pleasure to be out here in the wide-open spaces where the speed limit was as fast as you could go, except when passing through the sparsely spaced small towns.

  The highway was a straightaway stretching out to the vanishing point. Heat waves shimmered on the asphalt, creating the illusion of quicksilver ponds and lakes dotting the road ahead, mirages that ceased to exist in an eyeblink, only to be replaced by fresh phantasms as the road ahead unwound.

  A small town that could rightly be called a whistlestop, Brigade was a crossroads around which had sprung up a community of several hundred souls. Its secret: water. Below the surface, the ground was permeated with subterranean springs and artesian wells. From frontier times to now, in this arid land, water meant life. In the days of steam-powered locomotives, the underground springs had put Brigade on the map, where it stubbornly continued to cling to existence.

  Brigade was centered around a clump of food and fuel outlets, gas stations, truck stops, diners, and fast-food chains. A commercial district featured several blocks of small businesses and modest office buildings; it was ringed by a belt of residential neighborhoods, mostly single-family homes.

  The branch line to Red Mesa ran east-west straight through town. The imminent passage of the toxic train had shaken up the sleepy little town, crowding it with officials, state police, and Department of Homeland Security types. Unlike most of the towns along the toxic train’s route, the inhabitants of Brigade were aware of the nature of the cargo that was passing through town. Trains traveling west on this branch were bound for the incinerator at Red Mesa. The state of the economy being what it was, most of the citizens were damned glad of the extra business and revenues brought by the train’s facilitators.

  The Klondike’s dashboard was fitted with a scanner that monitored the frequencies used by railroad personnel, traffic control, the state police, and all the rest of the protective phalanx cocooning the train. Steve and Osgood also had their personal handsets keeping them in communication with the train’s defenders, including Mantee and Webber’s M.P.s

  The train was proceeding on its slow, stately, measured course through the center of town when somebody hit the panic button.

  The crisis blazed into being with the roaring rush of a prairie fire, its course being charted by the ever increasing, ever more frantic signal traffic crackling over the Klondike’s scanner.

  It began with a state police unit reporting suspicious activity in a gas station a few miles north of town. The officers were going to investigate. That was their last message, after which they ceased to communicate. Five minutes or more passed with the state police’s central dispatcher radioing repeated and ever more urgent calls.

  The crisis escalated with a cell phone call made by a civilian, a citizen who was driving in the area. Monitoring the action on the Klondike’s scanner, Steve Ireland and Fred Osgood pieced together the picture from the information exchanged between the Brigade police department and the state cops.

  The citizen phoned the Brigade P.D. to report a crime. He’d pulled into a gas station, the same one the state police vehicle had gone to before ceasing to communicate. The citizen had stumbled into the aftermath of a massacre. The gas station attendants had all been shot dead, along with some luckless innocent bystanders who’d been getting gas at the time. Both state police officers in the vehicle that had stopped to investigate had also been shot. One was dead, the other seriously wounded.

  The wounded officer was unable to radio in, but he managed to convey to the citizen that a large armed gang had hijacked a fuel tank truck. The state cops had come along while the hijacking was in progress. The hijackers had opened fire, gunned down everyone else at the site, and had fled the station with the fuel tanker. They were proceeding south toward town.

  Because of the chaos and confusion entailed by the event and the inevitable delays caused by the town and state police in communicating the information, more valuable time was lost in responding to the incident.

  The Klondike had been returning to Brigade when the alarm broke. It was so close that Steve and Osgood could see the long horizontal line of the slow-moving train worming its way through the crossroads, virtually cutting the town in two. A couple of state police cars with their rooftop flashers on and sirens howling zipped past, heading northbound.

  Steve didn’t need to be told what to do. Seeing that the oncoming lane was clear, he made a quick U-turn, crossing the highway’s centerline and heading northbound in the wake of the speedy state police cars, which were already dots in the distance.

  Osgood got on the scanner, using the handheld mike to radio in that they were joining the pursuit. His use of the day’s password codes established his bona fides; he made sure to describe the Klondike, too, to prevent their becoming a target for trigger-happy cops in the heat of battle.
When police hear the “officer down” alert, their general tendency is to shoot, not talk.

  Steve said, “Looks like the other shoe finally dropped!”

  Osgood said, “Darius?”

  “Who else?”

  Out of the south flew a helicopter, streaking northward, flying low over the highway. It overflew the Klondike, bulleting ahead, swiftly overtaking the state police cars.

  Steve lead-footed the accelerator, feeling a palpable surge of power as the SUV’s mighty-muscled V-12 engine kicked in and started showing what it could do. The machine coursed forward, rocketing along the ribbon of road, a four-lane highway with two lanes on each side of the centerline.

  Ahead in the far distance, a dot of motion indicated the approach of the opposition. They came barreling along the center of the highway. The fuel tanker was heralded by a wedge-shaped vanguard of three black SUVs. The tanker was all highly polished metallic finish, gleaming like a prize piece of silver cutlery.

  Inside the SUVs were gunmen armed with assault rifles and submachine guns. They were hanging out of the windows, weapons in hand. One SUV took the point, using the highway’s centerline as its course marker. Behind it were two more SUVs, paired in tandem, the three vehicles forming a flying wedge to clear the path of all opposition.

  Behind them came the tanker truck, basically a muscular cab hauling a cylindrical tank on wheels. That cylinder was filled with highly combustible gasoline, a gargantuan firebomb in the making, winding out on a high-speed collision course with the toxic train.

  The helicopter reached it first, overflying the mark, then wheeling around in midair to reverse course and continue the chase.

  Three police cars were fast closing with the kamikaze convoy. The suicide squad of SUVs and the tanker hogged the road, taking up all four lanes. On they came, neither side slowing or switching course.

  It was a high-speed, high-stakes game of “chicken,” that roadway version of Russian roulette once practiced by hoodlum hot-rodders back in the old days of black leather jackets, switchblades, and zip guns. Two drivers at opposite ends of a straightaway point their cars at each other and floor it, speeding headfirst on a collision course. The first to break off the engagement is “chicken,” the scared loser. Of course, when two real hardheads joust in like manner, with neither one inclined to back off, mutual assured auto-destruction may result…