The conversation had broken the ice, Paiz was friendly, but Sonny sensed there was more to be revealed. Why else had he insisted on riding in the van?
“Has Doyle identified any of the so-called terrorist groups that help Raven?” he asked.
“Off the record?” Paiz replied.
“Sure.”
“Doyle’s story is that Raven has Mideast connections. He has some, but those aren’t the groups funding him.”
“Then who?”
“Someone in this country wants the bomb built,” Paiz replied.
Sonny arched an eyebrow and looked at Lorenza’s face in the rearview mirror.
“Someone in this country is behind Raven?”
“Yes. As near as I can tell, it’s a far-right group that calls itself the Avengers. They’re probably the best-funded, best-organized group in the country.”
“A militia group?”
“They have militia chapters in every state. People who hate the federal government, hate income tax, hate the United Nations, and fear the so-called One World Order. These groups also claim the country’s being overrun by ‘the brown hordes from Latin America, the yellow from Asia.’”
“White supremacists,” Sonny said.
“In the worst way.”
“What are they going to do, bomb the immigrants who come looking for work!” Sonny exploded. “What the hell ever happened to the American Dream! Every white person in this country has immigrant ancestors! What the hell are we doing now, closing the doors!” He caught himself, paused. “Sorry. I just don’t understand this entrenchment. What’s the fear?”
Paiz shrugged. “You put your finger on it, fear. They’re afraid of the exploding population in the Third World. They look south and say Mexico and Latin America will soon overrun the borders. Food and population will force the people north. Hey, my parents came from Zacatecas, worked hard and contributed to society, raised four kids, and we’ve done all right. I figure without that escape hatch my dad would still be sweeping streets in Juarez, and I’d probably be running dope for the Mafia.”
Sonny nodded. For centuries the Mexicanos journeyed north to trade in the land their ancestors had called Aztlán. There were no borders then. The pre-Columbian Indians from Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon had trade routes into Mexico.
This was the land of the Aztecs’ birth, recorded in their legends and codices. Their ancestors were born in the Seven Caves of Aztlán, their sacred birthplace. Aztlán just happened to be the northern Río Grande valley.
Later the Spaniards and Mexican mestizos had traveled north, using the old trade routes. The Españoles called the road El Camino Real. They came in search of gold and to finally settle down. The people from the south brought their willingness to work hard, their language, music, fiestas, and added their skills and talents to the native cultures of the Southwest.
“Fear of the Other,” Sonny said. “Except we’re not outsiders.”
“Yeah, but they continue to make us objects of their fears. They believe the government is protecting the so-called minorities, so their plan is to take over the government.”
“A military dictatorship,” Sonny said. “Won’t work.”
“It will if they can create a crisis that will topple the government.”
“Like Oklahoma? That didn’t work.”
“Bigger. They’ve been waiting for a really bad economic downturn or a catastrophe—any crisis, and they blame the government. But they don’t want to wait much longer. They believe the country is ripe for a civil war. The bombings create distrust in the government. If the feds can’t protect the public, they preach, then topple the government and let the Avengers run it.”
“So they plan to use the bomb to create the crisis,” Sonny said, and whistled softly.
“It sounds far-fetched,” Paiz said, “but that’s the way I read it. They have a lot of explosives stored around the country, so they can set off enough bombs to create havoc. But they know we’re on their trail. We’ve infiltrated some of the groups; we’ve recovered explosives. The public is now aware of their tactics and is condemning them. So now their plan is to use one big explosion to create the catastrophe they need. And that’s a nuclear bomb. It’s the way most dictatorships come into being. Frighten the people into submission. Prove the current government can’t provide for their security.”
“I used to think these people were nuts,” Sonny said. “People who want to return to the Garden of Eden. A kind of frontier mentality where every man is his own boss. No feds, no taxes, everyone armed to the teeth to protect his castle. Lord, it was never that simple. To build their castles they destroyed Native America. Don’t they see the falsehood of their arguments?”
“No, they don’t. That’s the scary part,” Paiz said. “You see, the Avengers are a core group we’ve never been able to infiltrate.”
“I thought you said—”
“We’ve gotten into the militia groups, but the government takeover doesn’t just involve the state militia groups. Not just the good old boys who will fight for the right to bear arms. Not just the America-first crowd of the love-it-or-leave mentality. The real leaders are in high government posts. In the military, in research labs, in the Pentagon, senators, representatives, you name it.”
“You’re kidding.” Sonny looked at Lorenza. She was listening closely to Paiz.
Paiz shook his head. “Not kidding. The Avenger group is real, and its members are some of the highest officials in government and business in this country.”
“If Doyle knows this, why does he keep harping on Middle East terrorists?” Sonny asked.
“Well, the director has to report to Congress,” Paiz said, but his cynical look told Sonny something else.
“The director of the FBI?” Sonny shook his head. “But the militia groups hate the FBI.”
“It’s a game they play. Hate the government and destroy it, and what better way to topple a government than to have your men in key positions. They’ve been plotting this for thirty years. They don’t want to engage in guerrilla warfare in the woods against the U.S. Army. They’re right in the center of power. Washington, D.C.”
Sonny slumped back in his chair. So they’ve gotten into high places, and the bomb Raven would build was to be the trigger to bring down the government. Lord, he thought, life under the Avengers would be like living under Nazi Germany. They would allow no dissension. They would close the borders, not just the physical borders, but the forums where ideas were debated. There would be deportations of those who didn’t agree with the party line. The radical white supremacists would create a race war. There would be a bloodbath, the Armageddon they had been preaching all along.
Raven was part of it. He was funded and protected by the Avengers. What they didn’t know is that he didn’t give a damn about creating a new government; he was using them to accomplish his own goals.
“It doesn’t look good,” Paiz said. “They have a worldwide network. It’s not just us targeted.”
“But you start at the center,” Sonny whispered.
This was one of the remaining spiritual centers in the country. The Pueblo Indians knew that. Here where the covenant with the ancestral kachinas had been made lay a great power for the good of mankind.
“Raven also wants you. You know that.”
Sonny nodded. Paiz had been putting it all together since his agents started chasing Raven. In La Nueva México, Raven had found the spiritual center he needed to destroy. They didn’t need New York, Chicago, or San Francisco. They wanted to destroy the spiritual heart. They wanted to blast the dream apart. Go right to the heart of thousands of years of ceremonies that sustained life.
“You feel okay?” Paiz asked, reaching out to touch Sonny. He had seen the sheen of sweat on Sonny’s forehead.
“Yeah,” Sonny replied. “Just a little tired.”
“We could turn back,” Lorenza said.
“No. I’m all right.”
Don Eliseo had told him this era
of time was coming to an end, and a struggle would take place between Sonny and Raven. Between those who dreamed the dream of peace and those who put their trust in the violence of chaos.
He looked out the van’s front window. They were nearing the building.
“Does TA-Two have an alarm system?” he asked, looking up at the cliffs that rose on either side of the tech laboratory. Someone with training could rappel down the side of the cliff and land practically on the lab’s roof.
“They have sensors at the LAMPF gate.”
“LAMPF?”
“Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility.”
“But none here?”
“No,” Paiz answered, suddenly tuning in to Sonny’s uneasiness.
Lorenza pulled the van next to Doyle and Eric’s Jeep. Sonny let himself out with the lift. Overhead, threatening clouds hung above the Jemez peaks. The wind moaning through the pine trees on the cliffsides blew harsh and cold. High on the cliff Sonny heard the cry of a raven. Then all was quiet.
He’s here, Sonny thought, the sonofabitch is here. But where? There were only two other cars in the lot, both marked “Security.”
“It’s quiet,” he said.
“Too quiet,” Paiz replied. He had picked up Sonny’s anxiety. Automatically his hand went for his pistol.
“What’s the matter?” Doyle asked.
Paiz shrugged. “Just go slow.”
“This way,” Eric called, and they followed him and Doyle to the front door. When Eric pushed the door open, Sonny heard him gasp. Paiz whispered a curse. On the floor, in a pool of blood, lay the lifeless body of a lab security guard.
Paiz went in, felt for the man’s pulse, drawing his revolver at the same time.
“He’s just been killed.”
Eric had instantly reached for his cellular phone. He pushed a code number and spoke. “Eric here! Red alert!” he shouted. “We have a security man down at TA-Two! Repeat, we have a guard down. We need backup!”
Almost at the same instant a siren went off. The labs would instantly be shut down, and somewhere in the security station, Sonny knew the lab rapid-response team was scrambling. They’d be at TA-Two in three minutes. At Kirtland Air Force Base in Alburquerque, a SWAT team would be scurrying toward waiting helicopters to fly to Los Alamos.
“He never had a chance,” Paiz said, motioning them back, pressing himself against the wall. Whoever had killed the guard could still be in the building.
“How many guards covering this place?” he asked.
“Three,” Eric replied.
“Stay put, I’ll check it out,” Paiz said, and entered the dark hallway. Sonny followed. They were both thinking the same thing: all the guards were dead. Else they would have sounded the alarm.
The next man lay dead where the hallway made a turn toward the old reactor room. Faceup, his eyes staring blankly at the ceiling, he lay in a pool of blood. The wound was a slash across his chest, a machete blow so vicious and deep it opened the sternum, cut through the heart and into the guts. Someone with incredible strength had caught the guard unaware and killed him with one blow.
Sonny looked at Paiz. Sweat beaded on the agent’s forehead.
“What the hell?” he gasped, meaning, What kind of an animal kills like this?
“Holy Mother of God,” Sonny whispered. Whoever had killed the guard was only minutes ahead of them.
Sonny shivered. The spirits of the dead men raced around him, crying in silent agony, shocked souls suddenly separated from their bodies. Instinctively he made the sign of the cross, an old habit from childhood days, so that the souls would not possess him.
The guard’s blood had spurted on the floor from the initial blow, so the footprints of the assassin were red insignias leading down the hallway. Footsteps of the devil.
A cautious, slow-moving Paiz followed the bloody prints, holding his revolver at ready. Sonny followed in his chair, one wheel creaking in the otherwise silent hall.
What was it Oppenheimer had said that fateful day when the first atomic bomb was detonated at Trinity Site? On the northern end of la Jornada del Muerto desert, which Oñate had traveled through centuries before.
The quotation crossed Sonny’s mind: “I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.” From the Bhagavad-Gita, a Sanskrit text Oppenheimer knew well.
July 16, 1945. Five twenty-nine AM and the desert had blossomed with a man-made sun. The first atomic bomb, called the Gadget by those who worked on it, had changed the course of history. Man had tampered with the elements, created new elements, completed the secrets of the atomic table while pursuing the nuclear structure of new elements, processed them, finally laid them at the core of a metallic container, then imploded them with detonators. The rest was history.
Then the Destroyer of Worlds was dropped on Hiroshima and thousands of people died, miles and miles of flattened rubble lay where life had once teemed. Children with burned flesh dropping from their bodies roamed the streets, crying a lament new to the world. It was the cry of those who saw their world ending in intense heat. Overhead, the mushroom cloud, the new archetype of the age of technology.
Nagasaki followed, where the horror beyond horrors was repeated. Man using the fire inherent in the elements had turned it against man, woman, and child.
Now Raven wanted to take the energy of the sun, the fire that was once a gift from the gods, and turn it against mankind. Raven, the demented Sun King, knew that to control nuclear power was to control the earth.
Paiz held up his arm and Sonny paused. Paiz entered the reactor room. There was no sound, so Sonny followed him. In the room sat the eight-megawatt reactor that had been used to make small amounts of PU-239 for research. In the room also lay the body of the third guard, slashed as the other two. All three had never had time to draw their revolvers or sound an alarm. After all, they were at ease, they had been told they were guarding a bowl. Whoever came upon them had struck quickly and with precision. They never knew what hit them.
Paiz moved around the large room, checking the shadows, but both he and Sonny knew they had arrived too late. The small table in one corner appeared unceremoniously empty. Moments ago the bowl containing the stolen plutonium sat there. Now it was gone.
“Oh, my God,” Sonny heard someone groan, and turned. Eric entered the room, followed by Doyle.
“He’s gone,” Paiz said, holstering his revolver.
“How in the hell could this have happened?”
“Lorenza?” Sonny asked.
“I instructed her to wait outside—”
Sonny turned and guided his chair back down the long hallway. He pushed past the dead guard, through the door, into the blinding sunlight. No Lorenza. He called her name. The cold wind buffeted his words, but there was no answer.
The first security Jeep came racing down the road toward TA-Two, its siren blasting. The entire canyon seemed consumed with the wailing of sirens. Behind it other cars and Jeeps followed.
“Lorenza!” Sonny called again. Damn! He should have known better. He shouldn’t have left her alone, not for an instant.
“Lo-reeeen-za!”
“Here,” she replied, coming around the side of the building as SWAT members surrounded them.
“He came down the cliffside,” she said, “dropped right into the building. The rope is still there.”
Eric came running out, waving the security guards into the building, shouting commands to the captain in charge.
“Do we have shutdown?”
“Yes, sir! All roads are blocked! No one goes in or out without my permission. Checkpoints are in place on all roads coming in. The state police have been alerted, the SWAT team from Kirtland is flying in. What happened here, sir?”
“Three men—” He stopped, drew close to the captain. “Three guards are dead—”
“Dead?”
“I want this building sealed, do you understand?”
“Yes, sir!”
“No state cops allowed in. No Kirtland boys. Seal
the building. Anyone asks questions, and we say that we have the robbery of an ancient artifact we were guarding. A bowl. We believe the perpetrator is still on the grounds!” Eric exclaimed. “Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir!” The captain saluted and turned to give orders to his men. They spread out around the building while he barked orders into his mobile phone.
Eric turned to Sonny and Lorenza. “We have to keep it out of the press. For the meantime.”
“Raven’s got the plutonium,” Sonny said.
Eric nodded. “God almighty, how could this happen? We’ve been on alert since we brought in the core, and he gets through our security. Shit!”
Sonny looked at Doyle, who together with Paiz was coming out of the building. Did he bring Raven in? Or did Raven the sorcerer fly in? Yes, the brujo could fly, he could turn himself into a raven, like the mountain ravens that flew among the tall ponderosa pines of the forest.
He shaded his eyes and looked at the sun. In a couple of hours the sun would set over the Jemez Mountains, and the threatening snowstorm would push in.
Eric looked at Doyle and Paiz in exasperation. “The sonofabitch came into the most secure area in the U.S., killed three of my guards, and—How in the hell do I explain this?”
“Dammit, man! How do I explain it?” Doyle cursed.
It didn’t look good for anyone. The director of the FBI and the regional director were at the labs when a terrorist came in, killed three guards, and stole a plutonium pit. Doyle would have to explain it to the president.
“Whoever attacked them, this Raven character, must be invisible. The guards just didn’t even push alarms. Each man was carrying a phone.”
“I don’t give a holy banana what each man was carrying,” Doyle sputtered. “Your security was breached. I’m called in from Washington to view a plutonium pit that’s come across our border, and I’m sitting in your office when this happens. I don’t like it one bit!”
“I don’t like it, either!” Eric shot back, defensively.
Does Doyle think he was set up? Sonny wondered as he watched the two, like hooked fish trying to break free of what was sure to cost one or both their jobs and reputations.