Valley of Death (9 page)

A
n hour later, Jack stared out the window as their Cruiser rolled past the visitor center and along Route 190 once again. In the daylight the highway looked ordinary and innocent, with all traces of last night's drama removed from sight. The sand had been blown smooth, as if nothing more than gusts of wind could polish away trauma. As Jack watched the mountain peaks blend into the horizon, he thought about what he had admitted in the motel room, to his parents and to himself.

He'd made a decision to help Leesa. Listening to his father rail against Jesse for his irresponsibility, Jack realized how much his own decision could have cost them all. But it had worked out, he argued with himself. He had his sister back safely, and that was all that mattered. And yet, he couldn't help wonder if success was the only criterion for justifying a judgment call. Was anything he did OK as long as it worked out all right? Or were his choices like prints left in sand…the outcome could blow one way or another, depending on the nature of the wind.

A tumbleweed skittered along the side of the road. Jack sighed and watched it grow smaller, until it disappeared like a dot behind him. Maybe he'd have to grow old before things came clear to him. Or maybe some questions just didn't have any good answers.

When they reached the law-enforcement headquarters and found the right office, Hank waved them inside. His reading glasses dangled against his chest, held in place by one earpiece stuck into his uniform pocket. The stark white of his T-shirt made a
V
at the base of his tanned neck. Square-faced and muscular, Hank managed to appear both serious and friendly. “How's our girl today?” he asked.

“Trying to recover from her fright,” Steven answered. “It's going to take a long time.”

Ashley did look haggard. Though she'd bathed and washed the sand out of her hair, she still had a pallor beneath her sunburn. “I'm OK,” she told Hank.

“You're a tough little lady. Those men who had you were pretty rough guys.” Hank leaned across his desk to pick up some papers and raise them toward the Landons. “Our folks have been busy this morning,” he began, pulling out his reading glasses and putting them on. “We've found out a great deal about the kidnappers. They belong to that chapter of The Unit at Darwin Falls, part of the same cell as those other eight men who were on their way to help them.” He riffled the papers, saying, “Although the men live in different towns around here, even as far away as San Bernardino, they've built a hideout right on the park boundary. It's a little shack where they hold meetings. Our people located the hideout early this morning. What we found there was pretty interesting.”

Hank looked up then to ask, “Do you folks know what's just across the Death Valley National Park boundary, on the west side?”

When they answered no, he told them, “It's the China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station. It covers about a million acres, and it's where they test such things as guided missiles and rockets and all kinds of shelled explosives. They shoot 'em into this vast empty place to see if they work, which most of them do. But some of them blow up accidentally.” Glancing at them, he added, “And there are others that
don't
work right then, but they don't blow up either. They just land and lie there.”

Jack began to wonder what all this was leading to.

“It's such an enormous area,” Hank said, “that it's impossible to patrol the whole thing. So there are a lot of unexploded weapons and pieces of weapons and guided missile systems lying around. It's illegal for anyone to go in there and pick anything up, but some people do. We call them ‘scrappers' because they take all the scrap they can find.”

“What kind of scrap?” Steven asked.

“Oh, aluminum, wire, steel—I'm not sure what all of it is. The naval base hires legal contractors to go in and clean up the stuff, but too often the illegal scrappers get to it first. But the stuff I just mentioned is pretty minor.” Hank moved around to sit on the front of his desk, facing them. “What the scrappers are really hoping to find are the unexploded missiles or munitions. There's a huge black market for military weapons, and the prices paid for them are high.
Very
high.”

“And that's what these men were doing?” Olivia asked. “Selling unexploded munitions?”

“You got it. The papers we found in their hideout tell it all—that's what I'm holding here: Copies of those papers. The Unit made a mint by selling this stuff to terrorist groups, but that's not all they were into. No siree.” Suddenly Hank reached behind him to pick up chunks of something Jack couldn't identify.

“Know what this is?” Hank asked. “Jack? Leesa? Ashley? Want to guess?”

He handed a piece to each of them.

Oddly shaped, the pieces looked like hunks of dark brown rubber. Those Hank gave to Leesa and Ashley were no bigger than tennis balls, but the one he gave to Jack was the size of a thick book. Jack tried to bend it, and it gave a little but not much.

“A new kind of Play-Doh?” Ashley ventured.

“One of those balls that you squeeze to strengthen your grip?” Leesa guessed.

Jack turned his piece over in his hands, studying it. Finally he admitted, “I'm clueless. What is it?”

Hank laughed and picked up another piece from his desk. “This,” he announced, “is solid rocket fuel. This is what fires the boosters that put the space shuttle into orbit. It's also used to make defense missiles. When there's a test-firing accident at China Lake and a missile blows up before it takes off into the air, pieces like this fly all over the place.”

“I get it,” Jack said. “I bet The Unit tries to sell this stuff on the black market to terrorists who want to blow up things.”

Rubbing his hand across the weathered skin of his cheek, Hank answered, “Close, but not quite. This stuff won't work unless it's contained and fired from inside a rocket casing.” He dropped the piece on the table, where it bounced just a little. “See? No explosion. But here's what it
will
do.” From a drawer, Hank pulled out a Swiss army knife and opened one of the blades. Then he carved a slice from the rocket fuel, the way he'd cut cheese from a chunk of cheddar. “Now watch this,” he said. “All of you better stand back.”

On his desk sat a wide metal ashtray. After placing the slice of rocket fuel in the center of the tray, Hank opened a book of matches, struck one, and held the match to the small, brown, rubbery cube.

A flame shot up so high and so suddenly that Hank had to leap out of the way. “Wow! That stuff would be great for starting campfires,” Jack yelled.

“Right. It won't explode, but it sure burns like crazy. That's why those militia guys were collecting it,” Hank said.

“To make campfires?”

“No, folks. For arson. Imagine putting a bunch of this stuff into a church or synagogue and setting it on fire—it would go up like tinder. The Unit had a lot of plans to commit arson. Catching them last night not only saved some buildings, it also potentially saved lives.”

Olivia reached to take the piece from Jack's hand and examine it. “You say you found a lot of larger fragments like this just lying around on the ground at The Unit's campsite?” she asked Hank. “Do you know what rocket fuel is made of?”

“Can't even guess,” he answered. “I'm no chemist.”

“Neither am I, but maybe we could call someone at China Lake and ask them,” she suggested. “I'm very curious, but for another reason.”

“Why don't you just look it up on the Internet?” Steven suggested. “You can find almost anything on the Net. May we use your computer, Hank?”

With a sweeping motion, Hank pulled back his chair and pointed to his screen. “Be my guest.”

Within five minutes they had their answer. By weight, solid rocket fuel was made of 69.6 percent ammonium perchlorate; 16 percent aluminum in particle size (very fine like flour); 12 percent polymer; and small amounts of iron oxide, plus a curing agent.

“Ammonium perchlorate,” Olivia murmured. “That's an inorganic salt, very soluble. I've read reports about water contaminated with that stuff—it sickened rabbits and rodents that drank the water. Damaged their thyroid glands.”

“The pieces weren't anywhere near water, so they couldn't have contaminated anything,” Hank told her. “They were just stacked on the ground. I mean, some of them were stacked. Others looked like they'd been knocked over by a wild animal. What are you getting at, Dr. Landon?”

Again Olivia stared at the piece in her hand. Then her eyes opened wide.

“You said the stack was knocked over?”

“Yes.”

“How big was the stack?”

Hank held his hand off the floor. “About yay high—a couple of feet. Why?”

“It would have been a large animal that knocked it over.”

“Probably—”

“Did you see any tracks?”

“Can't say I looked for them—but now that you mention it, that is near the area where the sheep turned up dead.”

“A salt lick!” she exclaimed.

“Huh?” No one was sure what Olivia meant.

“You know how ranchers put out blocks of salt for cattle to lick?” Olivia asked excitedly. “If the bighorn sheep came across these hunks of rocket fuel made of 70 percent ammonium perchlorate—an inorganic salt—and they licked them, it could make them very sick—or even kill them, because they'd be getting it in an almost pure state rather than diluted by water.”

Ashley cried, “Congratulations, Mom! Sounds like you solved the mystery of the sheep deaths.”

“It's too soon to be sure,” Olivia demurred, shaking her head. “We'll have to do a lot more investigation and analysis. But it's a starting point, and that's more than we've had so far, since the blood test I was waiting for came back marked ‘inconclusive.' This really could be it!”

“Well, one thing
is
sure,” Hank said. “Sheep are a lot like little kids. They'll take a taste of anything they find lying around.”

“That sounds just like my brother, Jack,” Ashley announced. “I've seen him eat things a lot grosser than ammonia whatever-that-was. Once a long time ago, he found this old piece of—”

“Hey—don't tell that story!” Jack protested. “I was just a kid!”

“So? Anyway, Jack found this disgusting stuff stuck on his—”

“Wait! I'm sure Hank doesn't want to hear this story,” Jack insisted.

“No, no,” Hank said, smiling broadly. “I don't mind. Go ahead, Ashley.”

“Yeah, Ashley, keep talking,” Leesa instructed. “This sounds like something I want to hear.”

“It does,” Steven agreed, at the same time Olivia pressed her fingertips into her forehead and murmured, “I'm not sure it's anything
I
really want to know.” To Hank, she added, “As the kids get older, I keep learning about mischief I never discovered back when it actually happened.”

As Ashley went through the embarrassing story, animating every detail so that everyone laughed, Jack only pretended to care. Inside, he knew what it really meant. Ashley was coming back to her old self. She might still have a long way to go, but she'd taken the first step. He had his sister again.

“I
think this is a very special reward for us,” Olivia announced.

The four Landons and Leesa were still sitting in the Cruiser, parked to the east of the steep Panamint Range. The sides of the mountains had been sculpted into wide canyons that descended as much as a thousand feet per mile, from halfway beneath the peaks all the way down to the alkali flats. It was in those cool, green canyons that the wild burros hid.

“Reward, Mom?” Ashley asked. “For what?”

“You're mother's being modest, as usual,” Steven said. “What she means is that it's pretty unusual for the Park Service to allow civilians like us to witness a wild burro roundup. They're letting us do it as a special reward because your mother figured out what was wrong with the bighorn sheep.”

“I figured it out—perhaps,” Olivia corrected him. “We won't know for sure until more tests are run. That's the scientific method: Test and confirm, and then test again to make sure.” Looking up at Steven, she added, “And what I really meant was that just being here—all of us—on this beautiful day, surrounded by mountains with the pink glow of dawn on their peaks…well, it's the kind of reward life hands you sometimes. You have to feel grateful.”

Smiling back at her, Steven touched her cheek and said, “You're sounding pretty philosophical for so early in the morning.”

“Can we get out of the Cruiser?” Jack asked, impatient with all the talk. The wild-burro roundup would be starting soon. He could see the four wranglers riding back and forth, warming up their horses. The burros would be herded by helicopter until they came close enough to a V-shaped catch-pen corral that had been assembled out of metal pipes. Then the wranglers would take over, chasing the burros, one at a time, and forcing them inside the corral. And after that the ground crew—two men and a woman who were now sitting on the rails of the corral—would get to do their jobs of guarding the gate so the captured burros couldn't escape again.

“I guess we can get out of the Cruiser,” Steven was saying, “but we'll have to keep well out of the way when the burros get here. You wouldn't want to get run over by a burro. Or by a horse. I guarantee you it doesn't feel very good.”

“I know. Remember, I nearly got trampled by that wild mustang near Zion National Park,” Ashley said. “Did you ever get run over by a horse when you were at the boys ranch for foster kids, Dad?”

Steven raised his eyebrows and gave a wry grin. “Nothing as scary as what happened to you at Zion, but my feet got stepped on by horses plenty of times. Believe me, when a horse is standing on you, you can't move. You just try to keep from bawling in front of the other guys while you wonder how many bones are getting broken in your foot.”

By then, all five of them had left the Cruiser and were moving toward a little hillock. From there they could see everything, but still be far enough away that they wouldn't interfere with the roundup.

“You were a foster kid, Mr. Landon?” Leesa asked.

“I was. It gave me some of the best and some of the worst experiences of my life. But I made it through.”

“And you turned out just great,” Olivia said, taking his hand and swinging it. “Let's sit here on the sand. And Leesa, I think it's OK now for you to let Jack and Ashley in on your big secret.”

“What secret?” they both asked.

Leesa gave them the biggest smile Jack had seen on her face since she'd come to stay with the Landons. “It's about my mother. She's coming to get me. She was watching the national news and saw the story about me—the one Jesse videotaped! So she called right away, and she's on her way from Milwaukee. She should be here tonight, and I'll go home with her. I'm so happy.”

“To Milwaukee? Wisconsin?” Ashley asked. “You'll be so far away! And what about Aaron?”

Leesa's smile dimmed a little. “Aaron and I will stay in touch. Letters and e-mail and phone calls. Some day….” She left it unfinished.

Soft in the distance, but growing louder, came the thud of a helicopter, a sound Jack would never have trouble recognizing for the rest of his life, since he'd heard so much of it during Ashley's abduction.

“Do you have the binoculars?” Steven asked.

“Got 'em,” Jack answered.

Steven didn't need the binoculars; he was peering through the big telephoto lens he'd attached to his camera. “Looks like the pilot is driving the burros down that canyon over there,” he said, pointing. “You three kids can take turns watching for them. Yell when you see them.”

Jack expected the wranglers to ride their horses to where the burros would be appearing, but instead they stayed near the catch-pen corral. “Why aren't the wranglers moving out, Mom?” he asked.

Olivia explained, “Those burros are smart. They know how to pace themselves when they're running so they don't get too tired. They can keep going for a long time, back and forth, back and forth. Since the helicopter will be herding first one group of burros, then another group, then another one, all day—”

“Will this really last all day?” Leesa interrupted.

“I expect so,” said Olivia. “That's why the wranglers don't chase the burros over a wide area across the desert flats—they're trying to spare their horses. They let the helicopter do the chasing.”

Anxious, Leesa asked, “Will we be back in time to meet my mother?”

“Don't you worry about that,” Steven said, giving Leesa's braid a reassuring tug. “We'll get to the motel in plenty of time before your mother arrives.”

“I see them, I see the burros,” Ashley cried as she stared through the binoculars. “What long ears they have! They look like junior-size horses that have been crossed with jackrabbits.”

Soon the burros moved close enough that Jack could follow them without the binoculars. Running in single file, heads held high, were four adult burros and one little one. “Oh, look at the baby!” Ashley enthused. “Isn't it cute?”

“A baby burro is called a foal,” Jack told her. “And the females are called jennies and the males are called jacks. But I don't know how you can tell which is which from this far away.”

“With the binoculars,” Olivia answered. “The light-colored one is the jack.”

“Just like you, Jack,” Ashley joked. “Now I know why Mom and Dad named you Jack. It's because you're light colored, you've got big ears, and you're a donkey brain!”

He had a smart-aleck comeback on the tip of his tongue, but he held it in. Let Ashley tease him as much as she wanted—he didn't care. She'd been returned safely to her family, and that was all that mattered. He was glad she felt good enough now to make fun of something, even if it was her big brother.

Olivia was right about the burros: The energetic little beasts ran back and forth, determined to escape. Right behind them, the helicopter pilot kept swooping, trying to herd them in the direction of the catch-pen corral, flying low enough that they surely must have felt the downdraft. Suddenly one of the burros reversed field like a football player, ducking beneath the chopper to head back toward the hills.

“Way to go, jenny,” Ashley yelled.

“How do you know it's a jenny?” Jack demanded.

“Cause it's too smart to be a jack,” she giggled.

The pilot kept after the burros, making one pass after another, until finally he got all of them close to the corral. Then the wranglers took over. Swinging their lariats, each of the four wranglers started out after a different burro, one on one.

“They won't have to rope the foal,” Steven said. “It will follow its mother.”

Bucking and swerving, the four burros managed to escape the lariats until the pursuing horses had worked themselves into a lather, but still the wranglers kept after them. Dust rose from the desert floor; the wranglers whooped and hollered; the horses whinnied and the burros brayed. The valiant fight lasted a long time before the burros succumbed to the skill of the riders. One after the other, the burros were herded to the wings of the corral, which acted like a funnel into the corral itself. The frightened little foal trotted after its mother, just as Steven said it would.

Soon the pandemonium inside the corral grew wilder than the chaos outside. The two men and one woman who made up the ground crew clung to the railing to keep an eye on the burros, ready to intervene if the animals hurt each other or the foal. After all five burros had been driven into the corral, the gate was slammed shut, and the wranglers had a few minutes to catch their breaths before the helicopter brought in the next bunch of animals. The burros ran around the inside of the pen, squealing and braying.

“I
hate
this!” Ashley exclaimed vehemently.

“Honey, what's wrong?” Olivia asked.

“I know how they feel, locked up like that, scared to death because they don't know what's going to happen to them. They've been kidnapped by strangers just like I was.”

Putting his arms around her, Steven said, “It isn't the same, Ashley. These animals are being captured to save their lives. They'll be adopted by people who will take good care of them and learn to love them.”

Ashley hid her face against her father's chest. “I still hate it.”

It was Leesa who seemed to know what to say. Taking Ashley's hand, she told her, “You're right, Ashley, it's scary to lose everything you've been used to. But sometimes it can be a good thing.”

When Ashley raised her head, Leesa went on, “I'll tell you the truth—I'm scared, too, because everything is changing for me. I haven't seen my mother since I was five years old. But I have to believe I'm trading my old life for something that will be better.”

Ashley whispered, “You're so brave, Leesa. I wish I could be like you.”

Taking a deep breath, Steven said, “Maybe we've had enough of the burro roundup for today. I've shot lots of film, so let's get back to the motel and start packing up for our trip home. Tomorrow Leesa will start her new life….”

“And the rest of us will get back to our old one,” Jack said. “You know what I'm going to buy you for a coming-home present, Ashley?”

“What?” she asked.

“A Helicopter Barbie. So you'll always remember how you were lifted out of the valley of death.”

“You're weird, Jack,” Ashley said. Smiling, she added, “But I guess we'll keep you.”