“Got it.”
“Sam, let Marcus take the lead on this.”
I get off and call Mulcahy. “He’s not going to the Galveston port,” I say.
“Don’t shit me, Carpenter. “I’ve got twenty agents there now, with two choppers on the way.”
“The choppers you can use,” I say, and tell him what Sam told me.
He’s not satisfied. “An airfield near a Denny’s? I’ve been looking at maps; you know how many airfields there are in south Texas? You’ve got interns working for those big oil companies that make enough to fly their own planes. There are almost as many airfields as there are Denny’s.”
“So get fighter jets up in the air; shoot the planes down once you identify them.”
“Carpenter, with what he’ll have on board, we can’t afford to shoot it down.”
The automatic private gate to the airfield opened as the truck pulled up.
Sam and Marcus could see that it was prearranged; they were waiting for Bauer to arrive. The gate then closed behind the truck, leaving them outside.
Up ahead on the tarmac were two medium-sized jets. Sam knew absolutely nothing about aircraft, but to him they looked like they could carry maybe seventy-five passengers each. If they were hollowed out, they could handle a lot of cargo.
The backs of the planes seemed to be open, an indication that they were specially designed to haul large items. Next to the jets were large machines that looked like cranes. There was no doubt in Sam’s mind that they were there to transfer the cargo on to the plane.
Bauer pulled up next to the planes, and two men ran up to help him. There was no way to tell whether they were also the pilots, but no one else seemed to be around. Bauer opened the back of the truck and climbed on, while the other two men quickly started moving the machines into position.
“Marcus, we can’t let them transfer that stuff on to the plane. I’m going to see if I can open the gate.”
Sam got out of the car and started running toward the gate, but as he did he sensed motion behind him. He turned to see that Marcus was driving the car toward the gate at high speed.
Marcus hit the gate at seventy miles an hour, and it was no contest. The gate was obliterated, and Marcus continued driving out to the airplanes. The two men looked up, shocked at the noise of the gate getting smashed, and the car barreling down on them.
Marcus pulled the car to a screeching halt, crashing into the machines in the process. He was out of the car and on the men in an instant. If there were twelve of them it would not have been a fair fight; two of them was a total mismatch.
It took Marcus a total of two punches to end it, leaving the men unconscious on the asphalt. He then climbed up into the relative darkness of the truck to go after Bauer.
But in the process of disposing of the two men, Marcus did not realize that Bauer had exited the truck from the front, and had come up behind him.
He heard the click of the gun being cocked, and whirled. It was too late to do anything before the shot was fired, but just in time to watch Bauer blown sideways by the blast, into the wheel of the plane.
And there was Sam, about twenty feet away, unable to take his eyes off of Bauer. “I shot him,” he said, as if he couldn’t believe it himself. “I really shot him.”
“Yuh,” said Marcus.
I learn what happened from a variety of sources.
First is Sam, but all I can really get him to say is, “I shot him, Andy. He’s dead. I shot him, and he’s dead.” After a few rounds of that I’m so desperate for information that I ask him to put Marcus on the phone. That doesn’t work out so well.
Then Laurie calls. She had arrived on the scene well after it happened, but had gotten the lay of the land rather well. She describes what happened, and how the FBI and Homeland Security agents are now all over the airfield. There are also decontamination experts on hand, but no one seems terribly worried about that, as the canisters seem secure.
By the time she calls, Sam and Marcus are being questioned and debriefed by agents. Good luck with that.
I also get some information from the cable news networks, though they don’t really add much to the picture. They know that there was a shootout at the airfield, and that Homeland Security was called in.
No mention is made of any dangerous cargo, and more ominously, no mention is made of any possible connection to the Galloway case.
I have spent the three hours since I found out that Sam and Marcus were okay and Bauer was dead thinking about how I can make this impact Noah’s situation. My only possible way to do that is through Mulcahy, to have him again go to De Luca, this time armed with the weight of the night’s events.
I try him a bunch of times, but he doesn’t answer the call, probably because he knows it’s me. He finally calls me back at one-thirty in the morning, though he doesn’t wake me. He could call at any hour tonight and not wake me.
“I’ve been trying to reach you,” I say. “I want to know what happened.”
“You already know what happened,” he says.
“What was the cargo?”
“That’s pretty much the only thing I’ll tell you, because you were right. But I need your word you won’t repeat it.”
“You’ve got it,” I say. “Uranium?”
“Uranium. But not the normal kind. Not the kind seen anywhere before.”
“What kind is it?”
“More than ninety-nine percent of uranium taken out of the ground is called uranium 238. It has within it a tiny amount, less than half of one percent, of uranium 235, and that’s the part that’s needed to make a nuclear weapon, at least a basic kind. If you have enough 235, the enrichment process is easy.”
“And this uranium contained a high level of 235?”
“The current estimate is twenty-two percent. It’s never been seen before, and I hope it’s never seen again. Whoever got their hands on this would in effect be getting their hands on the bomb.”
“Who was trying to get it?”
“That’s on a need-to-know, and you are not close to having that need. But I do want to thank you. You were right about an awful lot, and you saved a lot of lives today.”
“Great,” I say, “now all you need to save is one. Noah Galloway’s.”
“What do you want?”
“I want you to talk to De Luca.”
“I’ve seen that movie,” he says.
“Then see it again. Or have someone above you see it. But get De Luca to order a directed verdict of acquittal before the jury convicts him tomorrow morning.”
“Everything about this incident is classified, Andy. There is nothing I can do.”
“I’ll talk to the media.”
“And people might or might not believe you. Or they might think you’re a lawyer trying to protect a client with information that already didn’t work at trial.”
“He’s going to go to jail for the rest of his life.”
“You’re worried about him, and I’m worried about everyone else. I can’t help you.”
I can see the strain on Noah’s face as he is led into the courtroom.
It’s the look on every defendant’s face as they prepare to hear the verdict that will decide their fate. The problem for me in this case is that I put that strain there.
If not for me, there would have been no trial. Noah would have taken his punishment well, even willingly, and would never have hoped or expected freedom. I raised his hopes, and now the jury is going to wipe them away.
Becky sits directly behind him, wearing a similar expression. When I nod to her she mouths, “Thank you.” I don’t know if Noah’s likely conviction will make her feel the guilt that I feel, because without her I never would have had the chance to take Noah down this path.
Noah sits down next to me. He smiles and says, softly, “The day of reckoning.”
Across the way, Dylan and his team are assembled. They do not seem under any particular stress; either way they are going home tonight. If I had to guess, it’s more important for Dylan to beat me than to convict Noah. Unfortunately, doing one means doing the other.