24 Declassified: Death Angel 2d-11

by David S. Jacobs

  The new lead sent Jack and Orne Lewis racing through the night to the Wind Farm. They took Lewis’s car. Lewis drove.

  The dashboard-mounted digital media station’s two-way radio was set to the police band frequency. An all-points bulletin had been put out alerting all city, county, and state law enforcement agencies to be on the lookout for Dr. Hugh Carlson. His description and that of his vehicle along with its license plate numbers were circulated as part of the BOLO — be-on-the-lookout — alert.

  The authorities were moving fast to cordon off the county, blocking all roads.

  U.S. Army Military Police were in transit to assist in the blockade. The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the military from participating in civilian law enforcement operations. But the pilfered PALO codes were a matter of the highest national security. Therefore the strictures of the act were suspended and the MPs were joining the search.

  The ongoing firestorm was both hindrance and help in the manhunt. The blaze created chaos and disorder, stretching law enforcement ranks thin. On the other hand, the law in Los Alamos County had already been reinforced by police and deputies from neighboring counties volunteering to help out. The many roadblocks that had been established throughout the disaster area to bar civilians from the fire zone and assure swift passage for first responders would serve as so many checkpoints screening the roads and searching for Carlson.

  Proceedings were in the works to have the air space over Los Alamos County and environs declared off-limits to any unauthorized aircraft. Once invoked, the ban would be enforced by nearby Kirtland Air Force Base, whose fighter pilots would be instructed to shoot down any aircraft that were in noncompliance and refused to obey orders to identify themselves and land at the nearest airfield for inspection.

  * * *

  Lewis exited Corona Drive through the west gate, leaving South Mesa behind. An access road put his vehicle on Highway 5 South.

  “It can’t be coincidence that Adam Zane arrives on the scene just when Carlson makes his big break,” Jack Bauer said.

  Lewis looked away from the highway ahead for an instant to cut a glance at Jack. He was excited. “The legendary Adam Zane! — One of the world’s leading traders in stolen secrets. I’ve heard about him for years. He’s been sighted in London, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Tokyo, and Beijing. Even Washington, D.C., on several occasions. But I never thought he’d turn up in the godforsaken New Mexico high desert of Los Alamos.”

  “Probably neither did he,” Jack said. “That’s good for us. Only something as big as the PALO codes could lure him out of his usual haunts, to risk his skin by coming here in person.”

  “I just hope it’s not a bum tip.”

  “You and me both. Right now it’s the best thing we’ve got. This is a big county with lots of places for Carlson to hide in.”

  Lewis shook his head, his expression one of grim certainty. “Not for long. Carlson’s strictly a city boy. No outdoorsman he. He’d be as out of place in the backcountry as a Gila monster at the Santa Fe Civic Opera.”

  “Not if he hooks up with the Blancos. They’ve got plenty of hideouts where they could stash him safely for a long time.”

  “The gang may have bitten off more than they can chew, Jack. This isn’t one of the usual thug crime capers they’re used to. The big heat is going to come down on them. Between the carrot of big rewards and the stick of life in a federal max prison unit, all but the most committed hard core of the gang is going to have plenty of incentive to roll over on their comrades,” Lewis said.

  “On the other hand, some of that Blanco hard core is pretty hard,” he added.

  * * *

  New Mexico, Land of Enchantment. Enchantment? The bleak, rocky lunar landscape through which Lewis’s car now coursed seemed not so much enchanted as haunted. No other vehicles were in sight on the empty ribbon of road.

  To the northeast, the firestorm could be seen as a black smoky sky veined by red and orange streaks and infused with a glow from the inferno below. Rocky scarps and ridges hid the burning hills from view of the car going south on Highway 5. The fire glow shone on the canopy of black smoke streaming overhead.

  Smoke haze from the fire had diffused west of the blaze, blurring the scene on Highway 5 and filling the air with the smell of burning. The car windows were rolled up and the air-conditioning was turned on but they couldn’t keep out the smell of burning.

  The Wind Farm was located on a rise west of the road. It was the brainchild of T. J. Henshaw, a magnate who’d made big money in oil, aircraft, and electronics. He’d gotten into alternative energy production in a big way. He planned to use windmills to generate electricity to supply the power needs of outlying ranches and suburban residential districts in the county and ultimately the city of Los Alamos. Leaving the more expensive coal-and petroleum-fueled power plants to supply the voracious needs of the laboratory complex on South Mesa. Thereby combining profit and patriotism.

  Henshaw had built several dozen titan wind turbines on a piece of property with a western exposure in an open and unblocked notch pass in the Jemez Mountains. The north by northeast winds funneling through the gap would create a Venturi effect that would give an added boost to the wind turbines.

  The economic crash had put an end to Henshaw’s dreams of a wind-powered windfall. The recession had trashed his extensive financial and real estate holdings and wiped out his fortune. The Wind Farm had gone bust. Now it was in foreclosure, owned by banks that didn’t know what to do with it.

  Repossession companies had carted away the generators and miles of copper cable and wiring. They couldn’t carry away the wind turbines. It would have cost more to tear them down and truck them out than whatever the sale of the scrap metal would have brought. The wind turbines were left in place. In this arid climate, it would be a long time before they rusted away.

  The car neared the Wind Farm. It lay on the right, an eerie sight. The property was set several hundred yards back from Highway 5. A paved two-lane road ran from the highway to the property.

  Before he went bust, Henshaw had been a high flyer. Literally. He did a lot of traveling by private plane between his various properties in the Southwest. Like the others, the Wind Farm had its own landing strip.

  It ran parallel to the highway and lay between it and the wind turbines. A wood frame building stood at the strip’s northeast corner. Its windows were squares of light. A couple of vehicles were parked beside it.

  Lewis slowed, making a right-hand turn on to the road leading to the strip. He didn’t bother to use a turn signal. Jack Bauer pulled the pistol from his shoulder holster and held it in his lap.

  The car cruised toward the runway. The building was a one-story white wooden frame structure, a shack. A flood-light was fixed in the middle of the eave of the roof, shedding a glowing cone of radiance in front of the door. A plane stood on the runway near the shack, a modest-sized job with twin propellers.

  To the left of the shack stood a pair of gas pumps on a small, oval concrete island. A lamppost stood between the two pumps. It was about eight feet tall and had a pair of electric lights at the top, arranged so that each lamp shone on a pump.

  None of the lights, on the shack or the pumps, was overly bright. They were dim, minimal, so as not to draw attention to themselves.

  Beyond the landing strip, a hundred yards back and west of it, stood the wind turbines, a steel forest of them. There were about two dozen metal poles, each fifty feet high and fitted with four rotors each. Some of the rotors made X-shapes; others made crosses.

  The car neared the shack. The windows were open, covered by shades on the inside. Two figures came out the front door. A third stood outlined in the open doorway.

  The car rolled to a halt, its front pointed at the shack. Headlights shone on it, outlining the men. The passenger side, Jack’s side, faced the two men standing in front of the shack.

  One was an uncouth, hulking figure. He wore a baseball cap and a pair of blue denim bib overalls. He was car
rying a shotgun, a wicked pump-action piece.

  The other man was small, neat, compact. Jockey-sized. He was bareheaded, short-haired, and clean-shaven, with a thin, angular face. He wore a black bow tie, a thin black vest over a white short-sleeved shirt, and black pants. He looked like a waiter or a member of a catering service. Except for the gun he wore in a shoulder holster rig.

  The third man was an indistinct figure, a black silhouette framed and backlit by the doorway.

  The hulk in the farmer overalls held the shotgun under his arm, pointed down at the ground. Jack wasn’t fooling around with any shotguns. He knew what they could do.

  “Hit the high beams,” he said.

  Lewis switched on the beams, flooding the shack and the men with harsh glare. Jack Bauer got out of the car and pointed his gun at the man with the shotgun. Fast, all in one motion.

  “Easy, fella,” the man with the bow tie said.

  “Drop that shotgun,” Jack said.

  “Like hell!” the man in the overalls said. He started to swing the shotgun up.

  Jack shot him twice in the torso. The big man dropped without firing a shot.

  Lewis got out of the car with drawn gun. The man in the doorway ducked back into the shack, out of sight.

  The bow-tied man stood very still, motionless. Lewis ran to the left side of the shack, to the window. Jack sidestepped, putting the bow-tied man between him and the shack. The other raised his hands in an I-surrender gesture.

  The man in the shack picked up a machine gun and went to the window on the left-hand side of the front door. He thrust its snout outside, into the open.

  The bow-tied man glanced over his shoulder, saw what the other was doing. “Hoke, don’t!” he shouted, panicked.

  Lewis reached in through the side window and shot Hoke. Hoke staggered sideways. He turned, swinging the machine gun toward Lewis. He stumbled in front of the open doorway.

  Jack shot him twice. Hoke fell backward, finger tightening on the trigger. He sprayed an arc of machine gun fire up a wall and into the roof as he fell back. He hit the floor, thrashing. Lewis fired again. Hoke stopped thrashing, stopped shooting, stopped living.

  Jack stood hunched in a combat crouch, arms extended in front of him, elbows slightly bent, one hand pointing the gun at Hoke, the other steadying his gun hand.

  “That’s all of them,” Lewis said. He rounded the corner of the shack, crossing in front of it. “The one inside’s finished, but I’ll check anyway,” he said.

  He went into the shack, hunkering down beside Hoke. He felt his neck for a pulse. “Stone dead,” Lewis said.

  Jack pointed the gun at the bow-tied man’s head, went to him. He shucked the other’s gun out of its shoulder holster and tossed it away into the weeds. He gave him a quick frisk for concealed weapons, found none.

  The bow-tied man had thin hair, a pointy nose, a thin slitted mouth, and a pointy chin. His eyes were wide, bulging. They stood out against his pale flesh. It would have been normal for anyone to be pale under the circumstances, but the bow-tied man had the slick, waxy whiteness of one who has gone for long months without seeing too much sun.

  Jack figured him for a jailbird.

  The other swallowed hard a couple of times, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He still held his arms in the hands-up position. “You crazy? What’d you kill ’em for?” he asked, his voice thin, reedy.

  “They were waving too many guns around,” Jack said.

  “You’re in big trouble, friend.”

  “Not as big as you.”

  “You came to the wrong place. Nothing here worth stealing.”

  “What’re you doing here?”

  “Hired to keep away trespassers and vandals.”

  “With a machine gun?”

  The bow-tied man shrugged. “Lots of ornery characters in the backcountry. Like you guys. Okay if I lower my arms?”

  “No. Keep them up. What’s your name?”

  “Dennison.”

  “Where’s Adam Zane?”

  “Who? Never heard of him.”

  “The man who came in not long ago in that plane on the runway.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about. The plane’s been there for a long time. We were guarding it for Mr. Henshaw.”

  “Try again. The bank took away all Henshaw’s planes. His yachts and polo ponies, too. He’s so broke he couldn’t afford a watchman.”

  Lewis came out of the shack. “Plenty of hardware — guns — but nothing else. Not even a radio,” he said.

  “Where did Zane go, Dennison?” Jack asked.

  “I don’t know nothing about no Zane.”

  “Or the Blancos?”

  Dennison shuddered. After a pause, he said, “You from them?”

  “I’ll ask the questions.”

  “Make sense then. I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know what you’re mixed up in, Dennison. If you did, if you realized the seriousness of it, you’d spill your guts and quick, and be damned glad of the opportunity to do so. Because you will talk.”

  Dennison tried to look sincere. “I would if I could, but I can’t because I don’t know nothing. And that’s the god’s honest truth, mister.”

  “How long have you been outside, Dennison? Out of prison.”

  “You got me all wrong, chief—”

  “You’ve got that waxy look that comes from doing a long stretch behind bars.”

  “Not me. I don’t get out in the sun much. I work nights.”

  “Damn you for making me do this the hard way, Dennison,” Jack said, sighing.

  He went to work. He slapped Dennison around, roughing him up. Dennison clammed up. Jack escalated the inflictions. Twisting arms, applying wicked fingertip pressure to nerve centers, pressure points. Cutting off Dennison’s air supply until he nearly blacked out, letting him recover, and doing it again.

  “Where is Adam Zane?” he asked.

  Dennison shook his head, choking back a sob. Jack Bauer resumed the treatment.

  Dennison lay on the ground, curled up in a fetal position, moaning softly between labored breaths. Jack Bauer and Orne Lewis stood looking down at him.

  “Tough little monkey,” Lewis said, half admiringly.

  “I don’t have the time to fool around,” Jack Bauer said.

  “What’re you going to do?”

  * * *

  “You crazy?” Dennison said, sputtering. Breathing hard, panting.

  The shack had yielded the needed oddments. Dennison was tied to the flagpole. He sat on the ground with his back against the pole and his legs extended in front of him. His legs were spread wide apart, ankles tied to the ends of a wooden pole. The pole was a broomstick with the broom part snapped off it. The spreader bar kept Dennison from closing his legs.

  A pile of kindling was heaped on his crotch and between his legs. A little teepee of twigs and broken branches. At the base of it was a mound of sawdust and fistfuls of dry grass. Pieced on top of them was a heap of twigs and wooden rods and spokes from a broken chair.

  Dennison squirmed, his eyes wide black dots floating in a ghostly white face. “What — what are you gonna do?”

  “A time-honored New Mexico tradition,” Jack said. “I picked this up in a book about the old-time Indian wars. The Apaches used it to torture their captives. Of course the poor devils getting the treatment didn’t have a choice. They were booked for the full ride.

  “You can stop it any time, Dennison. Just sing out where we can find Adam Zane and you’re off the hook. Don’t wait too long, though. These fires are hard to control.”

  “I don’t know, I swear—”

  “Let me borrow your lighter, Lewis,” Jack said.

  Jack stood on one knee beside Dennison. He flicked on the lighter. The yellow flame burned bright and strong, underlighting Jack’s face. Hard glittering eyes, tight-lipped mouth flanked by vertical creases at the corners. He had a workmanlike air.

  Dennison pleaded, “Wa
it, wait—”

  Jack Bauer touched the flame to the tip of a piece of crumpled paper protruding from the bottom of the pile of the kindling heaped between Dennison’s legs. The paper caught fire, the flames crawling inward along its length, crawling through a hole in the pile of dried twigs and broken spokes of wood.

  He said, “Don’t wait too long. No water to put out the fire and it could get out of control fast—”

  The paper touched off some of the dry grass heaped in bunches at the bottom of the campfire. The weeds burned better than the paper. They turned to flame with a crackling sound.

  From Jack Bauer came no quips, no smart remarks. This was serious business, and he went about it in deadly earnest. Thin lines of smoke rose from the pyramid of kindling heaped between Dennison’s legs and on his crotch.

  “Where is Adam Zane?”

  Crackling, sputtering, smoking. Dennison started humping and bucking, but the way he was tied to the flagpole allowed him little freedom of movement. Not much wiggle room.

  Jack stepped on Dennison’s taut thigh to pin his legs to the ground. The smell of wood smoke was strong. He said, “This is the day for fires I guess…”

  Tongues and tendrils of yellow flame began licking up out of the mound to wind themselves around twigs and kindling. Crumpled paper and those dry weeds at the heart of the mound were blazing nicely now, yellow firelight leaping up.

  “Where’s Adam Zane?”

  “I’ll talk! I’ll talk!”

  A moth-eaten old blanket taken from the shack earlier served as a flail to disperse the mound of burning kindling, sweeping it off Dennison’s crotch and out from between his legs.

  Jack Bauer said, “No real damage. Just in time. Now spill it, Dennison, and it better be good.”

  Dennison talked.

  Lewis watched the prisoner while Jack Bauer went into the shack. Jack came out carrying a toolbox and a flashlight.

  He went around to the back of the shack. A mobile platform stood against the rear wall. It was something like a seven-foot-tall metal stepladder mounted on roller wheels. At the top of the ladder was a square platform large enough for a man to stand on. It was enclosed by a waist-high guardrail on three sides.