Jardine was sure the female felt the same way.
The breeze quickened, moving his ponytail.
He stopped. There was a sound, in the distance. Ahead? About a dozen yards ahead, the canyon took a turn. The sound came from upcanyon, he thought, although in these narrow canyons sounds and directions could fool you. He listened. Still as post.
He tried to hold on to the female.
The sound was louder, coming downcanyon — coming straight for him — roaring now, and now he thought about the clouds, hells bells it was a flood and he was in a canyon. He looked around wildly. No way out. The walls went straight up. He threw himself against the nearest wall, flattened his skinny self until he was just a bump on the wall.
The sound was deafening. The thing came around the corner and if he had not been pressed against the wall the thing would have gone right through him. Spinning, shrieking, speeding down the canyon like it had wheels.
When he could breathe again he said her name.
He watched the dust devil whirl along the ground until it came to another turn and it pivoted and went around that corner like it knew what it was doing.
If it had been a flood, he’d be drowned.
When he could speak, he told himself: let this be a lesson. That whirlwind was a message, surprising you like that. Just like the female. The female is a whirlwind spinning your head to where it’s facing the wrong way and you better straighten it out.
25
Walter said, “You’re not eating, dear.”
I lifted my fork and bit into my rattlesnake.
Soliano had been first to order the rattlesnake croquettes because he always ordered the local delicacy, and Scotty and Ballinger recoiled and ordered steak, but then Hap brought up primitive tribes who eat the enemy to absorb their power and so Walter had ordered the snake and I thought why not and followed suit. I swallowed. The snake seemed to stick in my throat. Bats for breakfast tomorrow?
Going a little mad, tonight, at the Inn.
I hunkered down. We sat around an oak table in the corner of the dining room. I had an adobe wall at my back and a picture window at my flank, and from my hard oak chair I could keep watch on the twilit desert outside and the mad sunburned visitors inside who kept looking our way.
We’re making them nervous.
We should have made them gone. After today’s events, Soliano had wanted an evacuation but all he got was the borax canyon roped off until the cleanup’s done. His superiors bowed to the Park Service, who bowed to the businesses at Furnace Creek who feared publicity and the loss of dollars. And so we remain the EPA monitoring team, which has discovered illness in a colony of nesting bats in the borax mines. And so the mad summer visitors who came to Death Valley for sand and salt and heat just might — if we don’t stop Jardine — get more than they came for.
Soliano laughed.
“What?” Scotty said, alarmed.
“The music.”
We strained to hear over the buzz of talk in the cavernous room — guitar licks as haunting as background clicks of the Geiger counter.
Soliano wore a dreamy look. “The piece is titled Fantasia Para un Gentilhombre, which translates to…”
“Fantasy for a gentleman,” Hap said.
Soliano showed his surprise. “You speak the language.”
“Some. Don’t get the funny part though.”
“No? It is you who calls unstable atoms the gentlemen. I hear this music and wonder what fantasy Mr. Jardine entertains for his gents.” Soliano smiled. His teeth showed white as bleached bone in the light cast from the brass coyote candlestick.
I thought, some sense of humor the FBI has.
“I’m not laughing,” Scotty said. “Add C4 to resin beads and I’m scared.”
“That what he used?” Ballinger asked. “Plastique?”
“We await the lab,” Soliano said. “The lab awaits the decontamination. A shaped charge certainly fits Mr. Jardine’s profile. He is not a wasteful man. Plastique is not a wasteful explosive. It can be shaped to fit the need. It can be placed unobtrusively. And, we will assume he attached some sort of motion sensor, which triggered a blasting cap to detonate the plastique.”
Yeah, we could assume that. I bump the cask with Lucy’s tallywhacker scoop, the motion sensor reacts — and boom. My hand, now, shook. I feared I’d drop my fork. Walter was eyeing me. There he goes again. Since this afternoon he’s taken on a watchful look, overseeing my every move. Now I know how he feels when I watch him eat a sugar donut. How many donuts is safe? How do we know? Is one donut ALARA? Two, three? One donut for him is not the same as one for me. He’s already on the list. And it’s cumulative.
Walter’s focus switched to Soliano. “Will we assume Jardine acted alone, today?”
“Or in concert with Ms. Jellinek, who is not yet located, or with another, or others, not yet identified.” Soliano glanced around the table, then flipped a hand. “Currently, I confine myself to Mr. Jardine. My fantasy is to divine where he will strike next. Thoughts, Mr. Ballinger?”
“Why ask me?”
“Because we learn today that you are the object of his attention. He airs his grievances against you at the borax mine. Where next?”
“Ask him when you find him.”
“I ask you. He demands payment, to his bank account in the Caymans. After today’s demonstration, your superiors at CTC consider negotiation. But he also, it appears, intends to get his pound of flesh. He does not appear to care who gets in the way. He has a stockpile of resins yet to unleash. And so, Mr. Ballinger.” Soliano’s voice went very soft. “I do not wish to be blindsided again. You knew about his sister. What else do you know, and do not say, that will help us identify his next target?”
Ballinger’s skull bloomed in sweat.
“There is something more? I will find it, but it behooves you to save me the trouble of looking.”
“Just the, ah, side effect of the resin spill. Nothing to do with Roy.”
“What is this side effect?”
“It’s old news.”
Soliano said, icy, “It will be new to me.”
Ballinger hesitated.
Soliano slammed his palm onto the table.
Ballinger jumped. “Okay, so the resins got spilled in the trench, trench was torn up, it rained a lot. We get a kinda monsoon season in summer. Lot of thunderstorms. Like now.”
“And so?”
“And so rainwater made leachate.”
“What is leachate?”
“Stuff in the water.”
Walter set down his fork, hard. “Milt, the man asked what leachate is. Not everyone is versed in hydrology.” Walter turned to Soliano and said — using the tone he takes when he’s explaining what gabbro is to a jury, the tone that says lack of information is not a moral failing—“Leachate is a liquid that percolates through soil and picks up soluble substances.”
Soliano gave an almost imperceptible nod. “And these substances were… What, Mr. Ballinger?”
“Radionuclides.”
“Dios mio.”
“Hey,” Ballinger said, “we reported it to the Nuclear Regulating Commission. Got a fine. Notice of violation. No big deal. We’re not the first to get fined for a leak.”
Scotty snorted. “You’re damn lucky you didn’t get shut down.”
“Well we goddamn cleaned up. Soon as we found the spill.”
“True,” Hap put in. “Two months after the fact.”
“You weren’t even there, Hap.”
“True, Milt. But like I said at the borax mine, it’s one of them stories get told to the new guy. I get it wrong?”
“We cleaned up. End of story.”
Soliano turned to Hap. “What further do you know of the story?” There was a new edge to Soliano’s voice, of grudging respect. Maybe because he’d learned that Hap understood Spanish. Maybe that was Soliano’s fantasy, to have others search for the translation.