Endangered Species (31 page)

Mallory muttered, “Oh, goddamn,” and spoke rapidly into his radio, the words “airport,” “security,” “leasing agents” repeated. He looked up to catch Wager’s eye. “I’m having all the airplane rental agencies in the area canvassed. There can’t be that many.”

“If they’ve already taken off, it’s too late. Better get the word out to Rocky Flats. Warn them about airplanes.”

The agent nodded and spoke again into his radio.

While Mallory talked, Wager settled closer to McGonagle. “Did King ever say anything about an airport? Or an airplane? Anything at all?”

“No. Nothing that I remember.”

“McGonagle, do you understand what they’re planning to do?”

He gingerly shook his head. “All I know is what they told me to do—build the tube.” He added, “This other stuff—you know, the bomb—I guess I kind of guessed. …”

“Did they say what the target is?”

“No. Just a building. They just talked about a building.”

“Why were you still here?”

“I was supposed to leave tonight. Take Libby’s car and drive it back to California.”

“Tonight? You were supposed to wait until tonight?”

“That’s what Libby said. Load up all the tools and stuff out of the basement, clean the house and wipe down everything. Then stay out of sight and leave here after dark.” He took a deep breath and held the wet cloth to his stinging cheek. “You got here too soon. I hid under the bed when I heard you guys, but—”

“McGonagle, do you know anything about Rocky Flats?”

“Sure. It’s the nuclear bomb plant. Libby hates that place.”

Mallory asked, “Doesn’t the damned fool know the government’s closing that plant?”

“He said they’re not really closing it, just moving it. Libby said the government can’t be trusted, anyway. They’re still testing bombs in Nevada, he said, and—”

Wager slammed his fist on the table. “He’s going to bomb the Flats—now—today! And when he does, he’s going to spread plutonium dust over half of Denver.”

The man stared at Wager’s angry face. “No. Libby wouldn’t ever do something like that!”

“Yeah. Right—tell that to Pauline Tillotson. Why in hell do you think they killed her?”

McGonagle said nothing, bloodshot eyes staring at Wager.

“That’s what that tube’s for, McGonagle. That’s what you helped build—a bomb to blow up Rocky Flats. There’s no way in hell to control the radioactive dust that’s going to come out of there when that bomb goes off.”

Mallory was on the radio again, but he glanced at McGonagle long enough to tell him, “He’s right.”

“Schools—kids outside on the playground—they’re all around the plant, McGonagle. Pregnant women. They’ll all be poisoned. The ones who don’t die of radiation poisoning are going to have their genes screwed up for generations.” Wager angrily returned the man’s stare. Behind him, he heard Max clear his throat in cautious warning. “God damn you, McGonagle, what did they say?”

McGonagle flinched as the heel of Wager’s hand thudded against his shoulder. “They didn’t say anything to me—I swear it! But Simon has a plane. He has his own plane.”

“Where does he park the damn thing?”

“Boulder airport. I heard him tell Libby that one time. He keeps it at the airport in Boulder.”

9/26

1100

M
ALLORY WAS BUSY
on both his radio and Wager’s office telephone. McGonagle was booked on every possible charge Wager could think of, including conspiracy, criminal complicity, criminal attempt to commit a class one felony, first-degree assault, second-degree assault, reckless endangerment, first-degree arson, first-degree criminal tampering, obstructing a police officer, concealing a death, three counts of accessory to a crime (arson, assault, murder), membership in anarchistic and seditious associations, suspicion of murder, and littering. The last charge was based on the probability that if the bomb went off, it would scatter bits of aluminum all over hell and gone, and the littering statute was one of the few that applied to both public and private property. Wager hoped they’d have King and Simon in custody by the time a lawyer finished reading up on all the charges, and that the youth would be willing to testify in return for a hundred years or so knocked off his sentence.

“The airplane’s not there.” Mallory’s weary voice said more than the words. “The airport manager showed them the empty parking space; Simon’s plane wasn’t there.”

“Any guess when he left?”

“No. The manager thinks Simon flew out a couple days ago. Pilots are supposed to file flight plans, but they don’t always, he says, and there’s no tower at the field.”

From the west side of the Police Administration Building, visitors had a sweeping view of the Front Range and the prairie leading up to the abrupt foothills. That wall of mountains, tilted slabs of rock cut by canyons and gullies dark with pines, formed a line as far as the eye could reach. Glittering with snow, Longs Peak anchored the northern range, and seventy miles south, Pikes Peak loomed just above the horizon like a pale-blue shadow. Toward the north, at the foot of the line of jutting mountains, Boulder was hidden behind a rise of brown prairie dotted with scattered housing developments and industrial parks. If you knew where to look, you could even make out the distant silver wink of the water tower that served the Rocky Flats installation. Above, the cloudless blue sky seemed empty.

“He could be coming in from the west,” said Wager. “He’d pop up from the other side of the mountains and be on top of the Flats before anyone spotted him.”

“I don’t think so—the air’s too thin.” Mallory shook his head. “The lab in Washington estimated a shape charge that size to weigh almost a thousand pounds. And the airport manager described Simon’s plane as a Beechcraft Turbo Bonanza—single wing, single engine. I happen to know that model can barely carry a thousand pounds at sea level. Unless he had to, King wouldn’t take a chance on not clearing those mountains.”

“Can the bomb blow up a building?”

Mallory nodded. “They said a shape charge that size could cut through a reinforced-concrete structure four or five stories high.”

“The plutonium vaults are only four stories down.”

“Yeah. And the explosion and fire would suck that stuff straight up. The burning building would turn into one big chimney and pull out everything caught in the ducts as well.”

Wager rubbed at eyes tired from filling in the last blanks on the charge sheets for the DA to play with. “What kind of air defenses do they have out there?”

“New-generation Redeye missiles. Hand held. Their primary defense is against ground attack.” The agent paused. “Unfortunately, there’s so much nearby traffic out of the Broomfield airport that they usually curtail the air defense to prevent any accidents.”

“Close the goddamn airport!”

“I’ve already requested that, Wager.” He added, “And I’ve got men searching it for Simon’s plane. No luck so far.”

“King and Simon aren’t going to give up now even if they find out we’ve got McGonagle.”

Mallory, too, rubbed at the puffy flesh beneath his eyes and nodded. “But they wanted him to leave as soon as it got dark.” He sipped at a cup of office coffee, mouth pursing at its bitterness. “If I was trying to bomb the place, I might do it just before dark so I could still see the target. No running lights, come in low, be over the target before they could locate me.”

McGonagle had told them that he finished the tube late the night before and that King and Simon had carried the parts off in Simon’s car that morning. “Does the Flats have radar?”

“No. It wouldn’t do any good anyway—the Broomfield flight pattern goes right out to the property line. There’s no way to tell a hostile out of all that traffic.”

“They can black out the buildings, can’t they?” At night, the installation was a glare of orange sodium light. Rows of security lamps illuminated the periphery fencing against infiltrators, and each building had its own spotlights shining on walls and doors. The gleam could be seen for miles across the prairie.

“They can. They probably will.” He tilted his watch so Wager could see its large dial and smaller windows. “But tonight’s a three-quarter moon.” He glanced out the window. “And not a cloud in the sky.”

Wager’s telephone rang again, and a crisp voice asked for Special Agent Mallory. Wager handed him the receiver, half-hearing one side of the conversation as his mind went over what McGonagle had told them. King and Simon would have to fill the main tube with explosives, assemble the parts, and arm its detonator. Then load it on the plane. They’d need some kind of rig to carry it and then to drop it, and that meant someplace to park the plane while they worked on it. And, Wager knew, that’s what they were doing right now, if they weren’t already through.

Mallory hung up the telephone and showed Wager what he’d noted down from this latest call. “One of our engineers did some estimates from McGonagle’s drawings. The main charge probably weighs eight hundred pounds. The explosive could be several things: black powder, composition B, whatever. But for the most effective shape charge, it’s probably pentolite—it’s more powerful than TNT and more sensitive. A forty-pound, concave charge of pentolite can penetrate five feet of concrete or twenty inches of armor plate. Eight hundred pounds will do a hell of a lot more. It can be detonated by a pressure-type fuse or a nonelectric blasting cap in the base of the main charge. Detonation is always the trick, but probably the shock of impact would set off the cap, and the cap would fire the pentolite. If dropped from, say, two hundred feet, and if the nose hit the target squarely, it would work. The harder the impact, the more likely the detonation, of course.”

“He thinks that contraption will really work?”

“He’s scared shitless.”

Wager nodded. He knew the feeling. “We’d better let Doyle know.”

9/26

1601

D
OYLE WAS THE
first to hear, but he wasn’t the last. The Bulldog listened to Mallory’s report without once removing his cigar to play with it. When the agent finished, the chief slowly placed the dead stogie in his oversize ashtray and muttered, “God, Jesus.” Then he started punching buttons on his telephone console. By midafternoon, McGonagle was being interrogated for the fifth or sixth time by yet another team of experts, this one flown in from a Department of Defense regional office in St. Louis. Like the FBI interrogators, they wanted to take the man back to their own territory, but Wager’s stack of charges had anchored him in Denver, so the interrogation took place in one of DPD’s mirrored rooms. Each team took over with an unspoken air of succeeding where the previous interrogations had failed, and Wager had spent some time behind the glass, listening to the youth wearily repeat what he had already said. But nothing new came up.

Mallory telephoned to tell Wager that he’d assigned airport searches to Agent Bunting of the Denver office and was receiving periodic reports on airplane rentals, tie-down spaces, aircraft mechanics’ shops, high-octane fuel sources, and navigational equipment and electronics outlets. Agent Wilmore had taken the office’s leased plane to fly around and touch down on every private strip in the vicinity of Rocky Flats—including stretches of packed dirt in farmers’ fields—where a small plane could sit while the bomb was being attached to it. He said that the plane wouldn’t be noticed if it was hidden among other planes, so he was checking flight lines and maintenance areas as well as sales lots. But if King had parked it in some unlikely place, they could only wait for a call from a citizen puzzled or upset at seeing an airplane where it shouldn’t be. How long that would take, God only knew; so far, no one had reported anything.

A small flurry of telephone activity told Wager that Pipkin had been brought to the Denver FBI office from Steamboat Springs and was being questioned there, and Deputy Sheriff Lofting from Boulder called to ask what in God’s name was going on—he’d just seen a bunch of people in FBI jumpsuits taking apart Simon’s cabin log by log and stacking the damn thing up like a Tinkertoy. “They came in a helicopter, Wager! The neighbors thought it was a goddamn invasion—had half the SO coming out with riot guns!”

An excited Gargan had called once, and Wager told him to talk to the public relations officer, and when Lieutenant Watterson called to find out what to tell Gargan, Wager referred him to Chief Doyle: “I don’t know how much he wants classified, Lieutenant—better check with him.”

Even Elizabeth called. “Is it true? You have definite evidence of a planned attempt on Rocky Flats?”

“How’d you hear that?”

“My contact in the mayor’s office. She said a message came in this morning and the mayor’s been calling the FBI every half hour to find out what’s happening.”

“Well, it’s true, Liz. And the mayor probably knows a lot more about it than I do now. FBI, Department of Defense, the National Security Agency, even the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms people are around. I’m out on the edge of things now. It’s like watching a damn circus.”

And in the middle of it all, Max gave Wager another message: “Goddamn riot on the west side, Gabe—Tapatíos and Gallos. Every uniform on duty’s being called out, and the reserves are being brought in!”

“Oh, Christ! I thought that was settled when we got Flaco.”

“Arnie called me. Said some of the Tapatíos started hitting on some Gallos about evening things up for Raimundo. He said it was a bunch of the younger pepperheads, but one thing led to another. Now they’re scattered all over the west side, and some of them are using guns.”

“They need us?”

“Not you. Chief Sullivan said you stick with this case. And Doyle wants me with you in case something happens—says you won’t be able to call on any uniformed support tonight.”

Wager’s road to hell was paved with the good intentions of others. “All I’m doing is watching things happen. And answering the damned phone.”

One of the day’s last calls was from Stover. “Gabe, you know that place we’re buying?”

“Stovepipe, I don’t have time right now—”

“I understand, Gabe. But I don’t like to call you at home, you know? And, man, you ain’t been home much anyway. You’re a hard man to find, so I mean, where else can I talk to you, you know?”