Ground Truth

by Rob Sangster

  “Damn good thing the Chief told me you were out there.” He flashed his trademark grin, shook hands firmly and gave Jack’s shoulder a squeeze followed by a friendly slap. “My friend here told me you must have decided to cancel.” He waved an arm casually in the direction of the other man in the room who stood next to a porthole, facing them.

  Justin Sinclair stayed where he was, brushing a speck of lint from the sleeve of a dark gray suit that radiated genteel extravagance.

  Jack had considered the possibility that Sinclair would show up at this meeting, so his game plan prepared him to counter. But that was before the son-of-a-bitch had tried to have him assassinated; before he’d had Mac murdered in a parking lot. He felt a rush of rage, his face hot. He wanted to run across the room and beat the coldhearted bastard’s face into the bulkhead, pound that cynical smile off Sinclair’s face. He could feel his hands gripping the man’s throat. But that would end the meeting with Gorton. Too high a price.

  At Jack’s first step forward, Sinclair took a reflexive step back.

  Years of training enabled Jack to get control of himself. He had to keep his anger from knocking him off his game plan. He could do that. The moment of danger had passed. Gorton might not have noticed the moment he’d lost it, but Sinclair had—and that was good.

  Sinclair had a big edge. He’d been in the room alone with Gorton, peddling his poisonous fiction. But now Jack had an edge too: Sinclair’s heart must have skipped a few beats when Gorton told the Chief to bring in a man Sinclair thought was dead. It was a shame the intervening minute had given him time to make his face impassive.

  To most people, Sinclair’s bushy eyebrows and slightly drooping lids made him look a little sleepy, but Jack knew he was as alert as a cheetah poised to pounce on a gazelle. Sinclair’s prey, in or out of the courtroom, seldom escaped. The floor of the legal jungle was littered with the bones of lawyers who had antagonized Sinclair, but Jack was ready to take him on, right here, right now. This was no longer a matter of making a carefully crafted argument to a skeptical President. This was war.

  “In your absence, Mr. Strider,” Gorton said, showing no intention of resuming his seat at the end of the table, “Justin briefed me on those allegations of environmental violations in Mexico you wanted to see me about. I agree with him that any infractions can be handled by—was it Palmer, Justin?—yes, by Palmer Industries with the firm guidance of Justin’s law firm. Best all around to keep the public out of this thing. I’m sure you agree.”

  “No, sir. I don’t agree, and I don’t think you will either if I may speak with you for just a few minutes.”

  From the far end of the room, Sinclair broke in. “Time to drop it, Strider. I gave the President all the salient details. Obviously he’s satisfied.”

  “That’s about it, Mr. Strider,” Gorton said. “Justin also mentioned that you’ve been under considerable strain and tend to grow overly alarmed about what are quite manageable situations. Sorry you made the trip to Travis for nothing. I’ll have the Chief arrange a VIP tour of the Base for you.”

  Sinclair had done his work well. No wonder the bastard was always the last man standing. But not this time. Jack had scores to settle for Mac, Ana-Maria and Juanita. Gorton could take his VIP tour and stuff it.

  Gorton’s hand returned to Jack’s shoulder, this time to steer him toward the door. Jack braced himself and stopped his motion. Gorton stepped back looking perplexed.

  “Mr. President. It’s vital to you and our national security that I outline this situation for you myself. Since this meeting is supposed to be between the two of us, I respectfully request that Mr. Sinclair wait outside.”

  “You ingrate.” Sinclair’s voice rose. “Don’t you dare suggest I haven’t told the President everything he needs to know. A man with a reputation as disgraceful as yours has no credibility in this room.”

  “Hold on, Justin,” Gorton broke in, looking perplexed. “You didn’t tell me he has a disgraceful reputation. If that’s true, why the hell did you insist I meet with him in the first place?”

  “I set this up only because Strider threatened to go public with his crazy stories. I thought it was worth investing fifteen minutes and getting him off our backs. As far as what I said about him earlier, I was trying to be kind. The fact is that he was fired by the law school where he taught.”

  “That’s not true,” Jack protested.

  “But you told me you hired him for your firm,” Gorton said.

  “That was a mistake. I had a specific job to be done in Mexico that I thought he could handle. Instead, he caused so much trouble I had to fire him. He—”

  “Mr. President,” Jack interrupted, “there are two situations that need your immediate action. The first involves poisoning a major aquifer that two million people depend on. If it’s destroyed, El Paso and Ciudad Juarez in Mexico will turn into ghost towns.”

  “Just a damn minute,” Gorton said. “Destroy the El Paso water supply? Are you saying there’s some terrorist plot? We’ve always been worried about the vulnerability of—”

  “Pardon me, sir,” Jack interrupted. “It’s not terrorism. It’s the greed of an American company. That’s what I need to tell you about.”

  Gorton grimaced and glanced at Sinclair. “All right, I’ll listen for a minute. Take a seat here at this end of the table.” Gorton sat at the other end of the conference table. Sinclair sat at his right.

  The conference table seemed as long as a bowling alley. The psychological distance felt even greater.

  “Mr. President, Palmer Industries, a California corporation, set up a facility on the outskirts of Juarez to treat and dispose of extremely hazardous waste trucked in from all over the U.S.”

  “All perfectly legal,” Sinclair said.

  “Only as long as Palmer Industries obeys Mexican laws . . . which it doesn’t. That’s why PROFEPA, the Mexican environmental protection agency, tried to get an injunction to shut it down. Mr. Sinclair ordered me to defend Palmer whether they were guilty or not. Then Palmer Industries bribed the prosecuting attorneys and the judge and got the complaint dismissed with prejudice. But it gets much worse. Rather than spend the money to treat some of the lethal chemical and biological waste, the manager of the Palmer Industries plant, Tomás Montana, has been pumping it into huge tanks on top of a mesa near the plant. From there, he built a pipeline to three injection wells. Those wells drain straight into the aquifer that serves El Paso and Juarez.”

  Sinclair snorted. “Strider, you’re delusional.”

  Jack took a folder from his briefcase and held it up. “This statement, prepared by a Stanford hydrologist, describes the geology of the area and the vulnerability of the aquifer.” He took out a second folder. “I also have a statement from a scientist at the University of Texas at El Paso. It’s an analysis of the contents of the tanks on the mesa that shows how deadly they are. And here are photographs I took of the tanks and the wells.”

  He walked the length of the table and held them out to Gorton. The President merely nodded and indicated that he should set them down.

  He returned to his seat and continued, “The wells were damaged three days ago, but Montana could have it operational almost immediately. After he dumps that toxic material into the aquifer, El Paso and Juarez will be uninhabitable. The Mexican government won’t stop him, and the Juarez police are in his pocket. When Montana pulls the lever, there will be an international catastrophe with an American corporation as the proximate cause.”

  “Good God!” Gorton exclaimed and looked at Sinclair. “What’s going on here? You told me you’re their general counsel. How could you let this happen?”

  Sinclair looked indignant. “As I told you earlier, I can handle it.”

  “The President won’t think so when I tell him the rest of the story.” Jack consulted his yellow pad. “After I me
t with PROFEPA on June thirtieth, I told Mr. Sinclair that Palmer was guilty as charged by PROFEPA. Four days later, I told him that Palmer should settle and comply in full.”

  “On July 9th, three days ago, I informed Mr. Sinclair how Montana intended to poison the aquifer and that he should be arrested and the wells dismantled immediately. I also told him that Montana’s people had shot at me and that two women who could have testified against him had been murdered. Mr. Sinclair could have stopped Montana right then. Instead, he did nothing.”

  “You’re lying,” Sinclair shouted. “You gave me that cockamamie story with absolutely no proof. Against my better judgment, I passed it on to Arthur Palmer to take whatever action he saw fit, if any. But the one I should have stopped was you.” He withdrew a folded sheet of paper from his inside breast pocket. “Justin, this is a letter Strider wrote me just prior to the Hearing pertaining to the minor charges made against Palmer Industries by PROFEPA. He’d become so fanatical in his belief that Palmer Industries was doing terrible things that he was determined to make the company suffer. He said that if the judge didn’t penalize Palmer, he would betray his own client and put them out of business. When the judge decided in Palmer’s favor, Strider and some other thug trespassed on plant grounds and tried to burn the place down. He’s wanted for a dozen felonies in Mexico. He’s here because he wants revenge.”

  Damn it! He’d known Sinclair might use that letter to get him in trouble with the Bar, but he hadn’t expected to be confronted with it on Air Force One.

  Gorton scanned the letter and leaned forward. “Mr. Strider, this letter certainly undermines your credibility. Do you challenge its authenticity?”

  “No, sir.”

  “And when you said the pipeline system had been ‘damaged,’ that was a result of your taking the law into your own hands?” He pulled open a drawer under the table, took out a black cigar, and lit it. “I may have to hand you over to the Secret Service until we sort this out.”

  “Sir, I decided to act in the public interest even though the Bar association might question me about it later.” He felt conflicted. If they kept talking about the aquifer, his time would run out before he could warn the President about the nuclear waste smuggling. He had to change the subject and keep talking.

  “Mr. President, my time with you is limited, and there’s another extremely urgent matter you need to know about.”

  “Stop it!” Sinclair exploded. “This fellow simply cannot be believed. You know the aphorism, ‘Like father, like son.’ Jack Strider is the son of H. Peckford Strider who was responsible for the deaths of innocent young girls and the scourge of AIDS he imported across our border. The San Francisco District Attorney is investigating Strider to determine whether he would be prosecuted for involvement in the multiple felonies committed by his father.”

  “Judge Peckford Strider,” Gorton said. “I hadn’t made that connection.”

  Jack saw uncertainty in Gorton’s eyes as he took a long draw on his cigar. The smoke he blew at the ceiling immediately swirled back down toward the table.

  “Mr. President,” Jack said, “may I respond?”

  Gorton waved his cigar in reluctant acquiescence.

  “Mr. Sinclair said I was fired by Stanford Law School. That’s not true. I resigned from the school to accept an offer from Mr. Sinclair to become a partner in Sinclair & Simms. The Dean of the law school will confirm my resignation.”

  “I made that offer,” Sinclair said, “before his father’s crimes were splashed all over the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle. You have no idea—”

  Gorton silenced Sinclair with a stern look and nodded for Jack to continue.

  “Mr. Sinclair knew my father well for more than thirty years, knew him as a highly respected judge. Yet he has the gall to use guilt by association to try to discredit me, the same tactic used by the late Senator Joseph McCarthy.”

  Despite Jack’s rebuttal, Sinclair looked composed, obviously confident that his status as a trusted advisor was enough of a shield.

  “Justin, your attempt to impugn Mr. Strider’s character was less than successful,” Gorton said caustically. “Mr. Strider, before we were interrupted you wanted to raise some other issue. Keep it short so I can get back to Washington before my term expires.”

  Jack checked his watch. 12:40. Still no Debra. At any moment Gorton might give the signal to get Air Force One ready for takeoff.

  “What I’m going to tell you about is potentially more dangerous to the United States, and to you personally, than the threat to the aquifer.”

  Gorton took several short drags on the cigar, and another cloud of smoke added to the miasma in the conference room. “That sounds very unpleasant, Mr. Strider, which means I should hear about it. Go ahead.”

  “It’s about illegal disposal of high level nuclear waste.” It was done.

  “Stop!” Sinclair roared. “I won’t stand for this. Jason, don’t let him take us on another wild goose chase.” Red-faced, nostrils flared, he looked like he was about to have a stroke.

  “Justin—” Now Gorton was angry. “—be quiet. I am damn well going to hear this.”

  Jack was ready. “For at least several months, power plants, hospitals, research labs, and maybe some government weapons facilities have been illegally shipping high level nuclear waste to a place called—” He paused and watched Sinclair. “—D-TECH.”

  Sinclair’s face tightened.

  Gotcha.

  “Where is this D-TECH?” Gorton asked. “Who owns it?”

  “It’s a ‘gray company’ near Mescalero in the New Mexico desert. I don’t yet know who owns it.”

  “Look,” Gorton said impatiently, “we have a half-dozen agencies dealing with nuclear waste issues. If you see some problem, take it to one of them and they’ll do . . . something.”

  Jack shook his head. “This is way out of any bureaucrat’s league. You’re the only one who can deal with it. The nuclear waste I’m talking about doesn’t stay at D-TECH. It’s loaded into trucks that are driven across the border into Mexico.”

  “Impossible!” Gorton exclaimed and sat up straight in his chair. “There’s no way the Mexican government has approved that. It would take five years of negotiations and hundreds of millions in sweeteners before they’d help us like that. But wait a minute.” His brow furrowed. “How do they get it across the border without being stopped?”

  “Bribes. Or maybe the guards won’t inspect trucks with hazardous waste symbols. Inspections may be tight on the U.S. side when cargo is coming north, but heading south the Mexican guards don’t care much. After the trucks cross the border, they go straight to Palmer Industries in Juarez where they take on fuel.”

  “Palmer Industries?” Gorton’s voice rose in pitch. “You mean all this stuff is connected?”

  “To Strider everything is connected to Palmer Industries,” Sinclair scoffed. “He’s obsessed by it.”

  “Sir,” Jack said, “may I lay out the rest of this?”

  Gorton made some notes on a previously untouched yellow pad then jerked his head at Jack to continue.

  “They switch crews so no one knows the whole route. With new drivers, the trucks head south past Batopilas and offload into a heavily-guarded cave at the closed end of a box canyon. Then the trucks go back to Palmer Industries, pick up the original drivers, and return to D-TECH.”

  Gorton looked up from his pad. “If the Mexicans had approved a facility for storage of nuclear waste, I’d know about it.”

  “I’ve seen that cave,” Jack said. “The government can’t have approved it for anything. It’s filled with piles of metal drums, concrete crates—”

  “Did you see any long cylindrical shapes?” Gorton looked worried.

  He gets it. He understands there’s highly radioactive waste in the cave. Jack
felt triumphant. “Yes, sir. Quite a few.”

  Gorton squinted at Sinclair whose face was as stony as a West Virginia road cut. No doubt he has a cover story ready, Jack thought, but he has to be sweating, not knowing what’s coming next.

  “Jason, don’t let Strider’s fairy-tale make you react without thinking it through.” Sinclair had changed tactics, using a composed tone to say, Listen to me. I’m the voice of reason.

  “Are you saying Strider’s lying about this?” Gorton asked.

  “Of course he is, and for the same reason he made up that story about an aquifer being poisoned. He’s lying because Arthur Palmer has been riding him since the day they met, trying to get me to fire him. He claims he was assaulted in Juarez by thugs sent by Montana, but he has no proof of that either. And did you report anything to the police, Mr. Strider?” He barely paused. “Of course not. He’s so hostile toward Palmer Industries that he was ready to violate his fiduciary duty and help PROFEPA shut them down. You read his letter.” Sinclair managed to look as affronted as if he represented all lawyers everywhere. “And remember, he’s a wanted man in Mexico. The Secret Service should take custody of him right now.”

  “That’s such a standard tactic,” Jack said to Sinclair. “Attack me because you can’t refute anything I said. I’m convinced Tom Montana and Palmer Industries are a menace. If the Juarez police want to talk with me, it’s because I tried to stop Montana. When I was attacked in Juarez, a senior associate in your law firm was with me. We were both injured and barely got away alive. Maybe you think she was hallucinating as well. The fact remains that you haven’t discredited one word I said.”

  Sinclair ignored him. “Jason, buying into his ridiculous theories would make a president look pretty damn stupid. That’s not what you want.” He sounded solemn and judicious, and then turned to face Jack. “You, sir, are a damned liar.” This time his booming words filled the room. “We do not require your further presence here.”