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42.
Collwood spoke briefly with Thomas Blake as the five surviving mercenaries assembled on Anaconda's private air strip at the plant complex near Brawley.
A white twin-engine turbofan jet sat on the runway with its engines whistling loudly during preflight tests by the pilot and co-pilot. On short hops like this from San Diego, a technician also flew along for checkout purposes. That left room for seven passengers and up a ton and a half of cargo, which in this case consisted primarily of weapons and ammunition as well as a hastily developed Swedish model military gas mask with NBC anti-fungal filters. Blake's men were about to start boarding the plane, which had a wingspan of just under 40 feet. Its two engines were pod-mounted tight against the fuselage just above the trailing edge of the wings. It was just under 50 feet long and had a maximum range of 2300 miles, traveling at up to 530 mph (Mach 0.81, 461 knots at 41,000 feet (12,496.8 meters).
Hot desert air whipped their short hair about and rattled their clothing. The early morning light was reddish, but turning lighter to reach its incandescent brilliance at noon. "You see now what you're up against," Collwood said, feeling a trace of frustration, yet also a certain satisfaction.
Blake, like his men, had lost any touch of skepticism or doubt. "Sir, I apologize for our shaky start. The good thing is, now my men and I are motivated like never before. We understand there is a deadly enemy out there, and we'll find him and neutralize him—including the thing that was my man Lo."
"Excellent. A lot is riding on this, and I'll pay you all double if the mission is a success."
Blake brightened. "That's ' another excellent motivator, Sir."
Collwood watched as they tromped off toward the waiting plane, a converted C-21 medical evac jet Anaconda used to ferry small cargoes among its plants, as well as brass. It was his West Coast jet, and he had another in New York City. There was no time now to have these men drive to San Diego—they must be flown in. A regular plant courier could drive their van into town. The van would be parked at Tidjman's property for now.
Collwood watched the plane taxi down the runway and angle up for ascent. It lifted with a thunderous noise that rolled back and forth on the desert floor and among the reddish outcroppings on the horizon. Glinting in the sunlight atop a stream of exhaust, the jet banked to one side and streaked off to San Diego. Within a minute or two, its thunder grew distant and faded into silence.
Wind whipping in his ears, Collwood got into his golf cart and picked up the phone. He called the San Diego plant and ordered Martin Delavalle, the operations manager, to take charge as Acting CEO in Henry Morton's place. The first order from Collwood to his new Acting CEO was to announce that Henry Morton had to attend to a sudden death in his family and left for an unspecified city far away. That would stall off curiosity for quite a time, Collwood thought. He also ordered Delavalle to come to Brawley immediately to confer.
Within two hours, as Collwood sat lunching alone by his pool, he heard the return thunder of the jet. The C-21 had dropped off Blake and his men at a private hangar near Pacific Coast Highway in San Diego, and picked up Martin Delavalle. After a quick checkout and refueling, the plane returned to Anaconda Brawley Airport. Collwood, in his golf cart, met the plane on the runway. As always, Collwood shook hands with the pilots and technician. Delavalle had come alone, carrying a suitcase and wearing a light gray business suit. He was a balding man with a fringe of curly red air over his ears and around the back of his head. At 45, he had the rugged, lined features of the outdoorsman that he was, and sharply competitive—almost predatory—blue eyes. He had a strong grip. "How do you do, Mr. Collwood? Thanks very much for the honor."
"You're welcome," Collwood said heartily. Delavalle was his man in the San Diego organization. Morton had recruited him from an East Coast manufacturing firm, as he had all his staff, but this was the man Collwood had most courted over the past few years to obtain intelligence on Morton's operation. It never hurt to have eyes and ears on everyone's inside. Delavalle had another excellent use: he was Morton's liaison with the Mayor and the City Council. Collwood felt good about having this fellow in charge. "Come join me by the pool for a drink."
"Thanks."
They got into the golf cart, and Collwood drove it fast over the bumpy walkways among palm trees and flowering bushes. "As you know, things are tight these days, and I've let much of my staff here go. I hope you will help me turn it around."
"I think we can manage that," Delavalle said confidently.
"I'm glad to hear it. If you'd said 'I'll do my best, Sir' I would have packed you back on that plane and fired you."
Delavalle grinned with that hard, unfazed look. "I wouldn't have it any other way."
Collwood prepared drinks for them both, along with a tray of hors d'oeuvres from the outside refrigerator. "You're a tough man, Mr. Delavalle, and that's what I need now. Someone who doesn't flinch, no matter how ugly things get, and someone who gets the job done, no matter what, recognizing that the greater good is at stake. There are over 20,000 Anaconda Chemicals employees worldwide, and this is a company I need to turn around so they can all stay employed—which means 100,000 family members are affected by what you and I do here."
Collwood set a tray of luncheon meats, pumpernickel squares, crackers, dip, carrots, and the like between them on an umbrella-shaded glass table. The two men sat on either side of the table on dock chairs, sipping gin and tonics while the hot, dry desert wind gently raked their faces.
Carefully, revealing only as much as needed, but it was an awful lot, Collwood told Delavalle the story. "I took a huge gamble, sending a team of special operatives down into the Peruvian jungle. They retrieved for me about a hundred samples of various fungi from a location deep in the jungle, where I knew from an old World War II source these were located. Circumventing a bunch of useless red tape, bribes, and bureaucratic meddling, I had the samples brought into the country by cargo ship. Unfortunately, events took a bad turn. Something in that shipment took on a life of its own and has been killing people, including the ship's captain. I have people on the ground in San Diego as we speak, finding the samples and tracking down whoever stole them. I can also tell you that I've sent back my original insertion team to get more samples—and to handle them with far greater care."
Delavalle looked astonished. "How will you handle the samples once you get them?"
Collwood pointed to the large, weather-beaten buildings beyond his private enclosure. "I have state of the art assay facilities in there. We can rapidly micro-test for thousands of chemical combinations with our automated facility." He explained that he had thousands of assay or test trays ready for any desired test. The trays contained thousands of different combinations of organic (carbon-based) and inorganic (every other element) molecules. Each unique combo or sample had a minute amount in an inert jelly base sitting at the bottom of a tiny hole in the tray. If one wanted to test substance X, one ground up substance X into a fine powder, mixed it with purified and totally neutral water—in fact, Collwood's laboratory created its own water by bringing vapor forms of oxygen and hydrogen together under very controlled conditions to prevent explosion. One added a substance called reactin that would respond if any chemical combination turned out positive. The substance X/reactin/water solution then got injected into the thousands of test holes in the trays by a row of injection needles poised over the tray as the tray rolled through an injection chamber. It remained then to run the trays through a series of ultraviolet chambers. If a particular combination had any sort of interesting response, the ultraviolet would show a glow where the reactin was interacting with the substance. In this way, Anaconda Chemicals could do thousands of tests in a day that would previously have taken months.
Delavalle nodded with composure. "Biochem hasn't been my strong suit over the years, but I understand what you're saying."
Collwood said: "I have plenty of people who understand biochem. I need a man who can lead this company during a time of crisis without falling apart. I think you're that man."
"I believe that I am."
"I can promise you one thing," Collwood said. "Stick by me through thick and thin, and you'll come out of this a very wealthy man. Aside from company stock, you'll be cash rich—a multimillionaire. The sky's the limit."
"I am with you through thick and thin. Who do we kill first?"
"I have a team on the ground for that, Delavalle. I don't want you getting your hands dirty. I need you to understand what is going on so you don't get rattled."
Delavalle left within the hour on the jet.
Collwood called Syd Appelbaum in L.A., using an encrypted line. "Uncle Syd, I need you to turn around that insertion team and get them back into the jungle. We've got to do the exercise all over again, but this time we'll fly the material out."
"No problem," said Appelbaum, a spry man of 70 who had run a successful law firm to the stars and wealthy for decades and then retired to do, as he put it, 'more exciting things.' "I can arrange for a legitimate shipment of antibiotics and such to an orphanage near Cuzco, and they'll bring out test samples. You know, sick children, blood work, needs to be tested in the U.S.A. It makes Customs inspectors and other uniformed filters go mooshy in the soul, just thinking of all that patriotic singsong. We'll get your mushrooms in without a problem."
"Thanks, Uncle Syd, you are a gem."
"No problem, kid. The old man wouldn't want me to do anything other." Syd and Lee Collwood's father had been friends in the Army in their youth—two young captains assigned to desk jobs, processing JAG paperwork for a large stateside command—and Syd had been the old man's chief legal beagle for decades. They were like family.
No sooner had he rung off with Syd, than another call came in on the crypto line—from Martin Delavalle, who had just landed in San Diego and hadn't even left the airport. "In fact," Delavalle said, "I'm in the jet again, calling via scrambler. You have a problem downtown, pal."
"What is it?"
"There is a Federal task force that's starting to look at you. Check this out, for starters."
As Collwood waited impatiently and with growing consternation, he looked at the computer screen at his side. There was a black and white, somewhat grainy snapshot of two persons looking through a fence. "What is this?"
"Those are two cops from San Diego, being challenged by guards at the XenoX plant yesterday."
"So? That plant's been out of commission almost a year."
"That's what you think. Look at this." The image changed, showing a patrol vehicle and two men standing outside of it.
"Yes? What's the problem?"
"We changed private security firms months ago because we couldn't afford to put Anaconda guards at union pay out there."
"I don't believe it."
"I checked it out just now. Someone canceled the contract Morton's people had set up with a private firm for cheaper rent-a-cops. They have fake Anaconda people driving the trucks."
"Who is doing this, dammit?"
"The name on record is a Captain Tidjman, supposedly acting on behalf of Henry Morton. Morton has left town, I hear."
"What's going on at my Volcan plant?"
"I assumed you knew, because I sure don't."
"So who are these cops?"
"Lieutenant Linsey Simon and Agent Cleveland Bartlett, bot of the Harbor Police, but they've been attached temporarily to a Federal anti-terror task force run by a Louise Trost."
"Harbor Police!" Collwood said. "It's starting to make a little sense now. The Lima Voyager is in their jurisdiction, even though the civilian dock is in the middle of Navy property. So she must have gotten suspicious and has been investigating—and there is no telling how close she is getting to me, or to you, now that you're taking Morton's place."
"What aren't you telling me, Collwood?"
"I'll be in San Diego tomorrow," Collwood ad libed. "We can talk then. In the meantime, get on this. See if you can stop her investigation, and go check out the Volcan plant and let me know what is going on there."
"I'm not going in there alone."
"I'll send some heat," Collwood said. He considered having Delavalle take some plant security people from the Mira Mesa plant, but thought better of it. Blake would me more discreet. "Hang on." He rang off, got Thomas Blake on the phone, and arranged to have three of Blake's team meet Delavalle at the Volcan plant gate where the two cops had been photographed by a surveillance camera yesterday.
Delavalle hung up the phone and sat back in the cool dark of his office in Mira Mesa. The venetian blinds were shuttered, but if he opened them, he'd be looking over the roofs of Anaconda Chemicals' San Diego operation. Around the office, he had photographs of Henry Morton's wife and family smiling at him from all sides. Fortunately, they were in Kansas somewhere, and it would be a while before the separated wife would start inquiring after her husband. As long as the monthly support checks kept flowing eastward from Morton's bank account, that would be in order—Delavalle had seen to that.
Now he had the larger problem. He didn't trust Collwood for an instant. The man had been playing him for years. Even Morton had advised Delavalle to be careful, given Collwood's reputation. The question now was—how to maximize the opportunity to milk Collwood and leave with a bundle, before the situation started to stink so badly that the Feds came in. He knew also that Collwood would take any opportunity to hang him out to dry if it meant saving his own neck. It was tempting to just walk out of here and not look back. But the lure of millions Collwood had promised was too strong.
Collwood phoned his old Republican Party buddy. "Danny? It's Lee Collwood."
"Oh, hi, Lee, how are you doing?" They made friendly chitchat for a few minutes, catching up on the past few months since they'd golfed together. After promises to renew their game, Collwood explained: "Got a situation here in San Diego. It's about the Anaconda Chemicals plant at Volcan Mountain. You know, we've been good to you over in your district—"
"Oh I know you have, Lee, I know you have."
"—I need you to delay a loose cannon down in San Diego from snooping on that government contract we set up for the biological warfare deterrent R&D."
"Oh really? What's going on?"
"Seems that a couple of Harbor Police cops have stuck their noses in something they shouldn't. I don't know how we breached our security. We were bringing in a shipment of fungus from South America. Looks like the stuff vanished off the dock."
"No!"
"Yeah, but I have it all under control. I have a private team tracking it down, to keep everything quiet and under wraps."
"Is there any danger?"
"Nah. None whatsoever. I think what happened is that the captain and a few of the crew were smuggling illegal drugs, and they took my mushroom samples along with their dope. The mushrooms are harmless until we genetically engineer them."
"Glad to hear it." Metrick was swallowing the story—hook, line, and sinker. Metrick said: "What do you need me to do?"
Last time he'd asked Metrick for a favor, he'd sent him a gift of $100,000 through a third party by way of a campaign donation. "Danny, it's important, and I will double the support," Collwood signaled—carefully, in case they were being wiretapped. One never knew, even though Collwood paid top dollar to keep his electronic and digital net swept clean by the remote network managers in Mira Mesa.
"I understand, Lee, and your understanding is always so very deeply appreciated."
"I'm always profoundly touched and moved when I am able to support your cause."
"What can I do for you, Lee?"
"I'd appreciate if you can step in and slow down this Louise Trost who is the task force supervisor of this female harbor cop. They are about to start investigating my Volcan Mountain plant, which has been out of operation for almost a year, and we cannot afford to have a messy, stupid investigation going on that hits the papers and exposes resources and ultimately hampers or cripples our national security effort."
"I buy you a little time, Lee. That's the best I can do."
"That will help greatly. Hey, golf soon?"
"You got it. God bless now."
"God bless you and your good works," Collwood said.
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