And then that vision morphed into another that beggared belief.
I ran out the door.
Soliano and Walter and Scotty were lined up like ducks at the stone ledge, looking down at the pool. As I sprinted across the lawn I heard Soliano shout “break the lock.” Down below, I saw Andre’s team on the hunt. They were armored and padded and helmeted and booted, hugging submachine guns. Full ninja.
“Yes?” Soliano said, spotting me.
I lifted a hand, panting. I felt, suddenly, unsure. This was an absurd idea. But they were waiting so I began. “What if this is a diversion?”
Soliano held up the rolled map. “Until you find me another target, I am diverted.”
Walter eyed me. “Diversion from what?”
I waved at the clouds. “This is all an offshoot of that hurricane off Baja California. Right?”
They glanced at the sky. Scotty turned, stiff in his suit.
“According to the weather report, the storms were forecasted to start hitting us Monday and continue through the week.”
They waited.
“What if the forecast was a trigger? So Monday night Jardine’s ready to go. He does the last swap. But Beltzman gets cold feet — maybe he doesn’t want to go offroading with major storms on the way.” I took in a deep breath. “But major storms are just what Jardine needs.”
Soliano stared. “Why does he need storms? For cover?”
I saw Andre’s team, below, fan out to the pool house and the fireplaces and the banquet room. They were cautious, mincing their way, big ninjas on tiptoe like they didn’t want to find what Soliano had dispatched them to find. Unlike the ninjas, I plunged ahead. “How about for a delivery system?”
Scotty’s phone rang.
I clarified. “A flood.”
Soliano frowned. “He needs storms to create a flood? And this flood will deliver the resins to…his target. This is what you are saying?”
“Yes. He’s been waiting for a flood. And now the storms from the hurricane are going to give him one.”
Walter’s eyebrows lifted. “No dear. A flood is not predictable. At a set time. In a set place. He has to have chosen his site a good long while ago.”
“Okay but what if he checks out the Park Service doppler radar system every time there’s a storm? And he gets a pattern, where the risk index is high. And he maps out likely areas. Then all he has to do is wait until a big enough storm hits.”
Walter was shaking his head.
“He’s got to move the resins from the mine to the target. How’s he do that?”
“He releases them in situ,” Walter said. “And your rains wash the resins down into the groundwater. Toward the aquifer. As we discussed.”
“There’s a better target.”
“Hector.” Scotty closed his phone. “That was Lucy. My RERT, with your man Andre. She says we got hit.”
We took the service road that ran up behind the Inn. RERTs and their vehicles formed a wall. Ninjas hovered. I couldn’t see anything. Scotty barreled ahead.
I tried to hold on to my bathtub vision. I had carried it like a cup of smoke and already it was curling away. I caught a glimpse of a RERT edging toward a field of black vinyl. The ninjas backed up. Somebody swore. I heard beads. I heard crapped up. And now I could see that the vinyl overlaid a water tank sunk into the ground. The vinyl was ripped. The RERT dipped his tallywhacker through the hole. Like ice-fishing. Crazy ice-fishing in the desert in a pool of crapped-up water.
My mind raced, inventorying. What did I have to drink?
Scotty joined us, unmasking. “This tank’s an auxiliary.”
Soliano opened the map. “For?”
“For watering the lawn.”
I gaped. So this tank’s not the main water tank on the diagram Soliano found in Jardine’s truck. This tank doesn’t supply potable water. We didn’t drink the water from this tank. Pria didn’t take a bath in this water. We all gaped at the auxiliary tank. All that worry. Out it went. Gushing out. Soliano expelled a breath. I sagged. Walter put his arm around me.
“And,” Scotty added, grim, “it’s piped to the swimming pool.”
It took us a long moment, to move from relief to horror. From us to them — the lap swimmers who got in the pool in all good faith for a little exercise, a little fun. And what they got was a big taste, courtesy of Brother Roy, of what’s to come. My skin crawled. But beneath the skin, beneath my outrage and my horror, I still swam in my own relief.
“Scotty,” Soliano said, “check it all. Re-check. Every place the water flows.”
“We’re already on it,” Scotty said.
I stared at the exposed water in the auxiliary tank. Water water everywhere. Not really. I looked down at the dry fanglomerate soil. The rain squall of half-hour ago had left no liquid trace. The world again steamed dry. I watched Scotty run his hand through sweat-plastered hair. Blond filaments dried before my eyes. I turned to look at the service road, which ran from the Inn uphill to where we stood, and thence further up to the main water storage tank. Water water everywhere. Now you see it, now you don’t. The sun glared. My bathtub vision came back so strong I had to squint. I spun to Soliano. “It is a diversion, Hector.”
“This?” Soliano glanced at the tank.
“This is a bucket. He’s going to poison the well.”
Walter understood. He turned to look upfan, up toward the Furnace Creek Wash. We couldn’t see it from here but we’d sure seen it yesterday. The mounds of travertine. The stands of mesquite, dotted along the fault trace for nearly a mile. The thrust fault that channeled water up from the aquifer, through the alluvium, spitting out that line of bighorn-attracting springs.
I said, fierce, “Springs.”
Soliano looked directly at me, for the first time. “They supply water to the Inn?”
“Yeah. And the Ranch and the rangers and the Timbisha and the golf course and the campgrounds and all the rest. The whole village. And the bighorns and the coyotes and the bats and the snakes and the mesquite and these amazing little daisies that pop up when it rains and… The whole ecosystem, Hector.”
“I see.”
Not yet you don’t. I said, “How about if he craps up the water supply for national park headquarters? How’s that for a symbol?”
“Of what?”
“The virgin.”
“Yes, I see.” Soliano swept a hand. “An oasis.”
No you don’t see. My tongue seemed to harden, down to its roots. “Do you know how hard it is to find water out there?”
“I have not had to look.”
I looked at Walter, whose jaw was working like he was sucking on a pebble.
“I see,” Soliano said, this time like he did.
“You see what?”
“The priceless.”
“Yes.”
“No,” Walter said, finding his voice, “he can’t hit the springs.”
I knew. We had a map that said he didn’t, that said the geology took his offroader only as far as point D, well upcanyon from the springs. But Pria changed my mind. Pria in her bath. The draining water had carved a channel through the purple shampoo slick that coated the tub bottom. That bathtub vision reminded me of the giant fan where Walter and I took shelter, and how floodwaters had carved a channel through the desert-varnished fan. Pria’s bath had left me a demonstration — the power of a channeled flood. I said, “Maybe he could hit the springs if he had a damn delivery system.”