Chapter 13

Helen headed back to Alamogordo, but changed direction at the last minute, cutting over to Valmont on U.S. 54. She used to know a roadhouse along the highway, the Apache Lounge, where some of the off-duty flyers hung out.

The place was still there, but they had air conditioned it, so she had to pull the door closed behind her instead of just letting the screen door bang. In fact, the place was unpleasantly cold, she thought. She sat down at the bar and tried to decide what to order. They wouldn’t have a Sapporo draft, would they, or a Heinekens? “Dos Equis, please,” she decided.

“We don’t have no Mexican beers,” the bartender told her.

Oh, yeah, it had to be Bud. She looked around. One guy was at the bar, half-loaded, old enough to be a flyer, she guessed, although he looked pretty darn young. But sloshed at four in the afternoon wasn’t a good sign, not for a pilot and not for ground crew, either.

The guy looked at her with interest as she glanced at him, and she knew he was going to hit on her in a most inelegant manner.

“I’m an aide to Secretary Roth,” she announced to the room. Did she have to add that Roth was secretary of the Air Force? Maybe so.

A door creaked. She turned her head. Someone came out of the men’s room. Someone she knew. She smiled. Captain Steven Goodman. “I thought you got out of the flying game,” said Goodman. “Now you’re hanging out with the top brass?”

Helen blushed. “No,” she admitted. “I just said that. That’s my cover story. I flew a private plane in this morning, and I’m headed out again tonight or tomorrow. What are you still doing in this savage country?”

“Yeah. I’m getting too old to fly. At least the experimental models. I hate that moment when you know you either bail or die. My problem’s not fear, you understand. I’m just too tired for another one. Like how you feel when you have to get out of bed at four in the morning. In fact, I’ll be moving along as soon as my orders come through. That is, if the Air Force wants me anymore.” He grimaced. “A lot has changed in the military lately, that’s for sure.”

“I hadn’t been flying so much myself,” she told him. “Until recently. I’ve done a lot of different things since I got out of the service—executive protection, investigations, information security. I’m supposed to get married in August.”

“That’s too bad for Jack here.” Goodman nodded at the drunk at the bar. “He was angling for you.”

“Highly flattering, I’m sure,” she said. She looked at Jack. He sank a little further into the stool with every sip.

She turned back to Goodman. “Know anything about Rockerton down on 70?” she asked.

“Rockerton’s not doing so well. I read it in the local paper. They had a big layoff last month or two. The Cold War’s over. Government contracts have dried up. Not much money in nuclear weaponry anymore.”

“Rockerton is nuclear warheads then?” she asked.

“Some of what they do, I guess. Some stuff at White Sands. They also have a contract or two with the government up at the Yakima Firing Center in Washington State.”

“Is that Hanford?” she wondered. “I couldn’t find Hanford on the map, but there’s a U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration near Richland, not too far from Yakima.”

He shrugged. “Something like that. Not a lot of Air Force up that way, so I don’t know. I’ve flown up there once or twice. Sage and sand, just like here. A few trees. A little colder.”

She nodded. Was she up for flying into Richland? she wondered. She picked a quarter up from off the bar and flipped it. Oh, well, might as well head for Richland in the morning, anyway. She couldn’t think of what else to do.

Having been in love once when she had flown out of Holloman, she had stayed in seedy motels in Alamogordo before. One of the good reasons why love scared her was an Air Force captain she had known from around these parts.

She took a quick shower and dialed a number on the phone. “Hi, I hope your phone isn’t bugged,” she said when her party answered.

“I don’t think the bosses would go that far,” Dennis assured her.

“The government wouldn’t,” she agreed. “But the government isn’t our only adversary.” She raised her voice. “Just kidding, ATF, FBI team,” she shouted down the receiver. “I’ll bet you’re wondering what you can do for me today,” she added, speaking to Dennis in her normal voice.

“No, I didn’t realize that was the basis of our relationship.”

“It’s not,” she assured him. “We’re working on this together, but what you need to do tomorrow is check to see if either Robert Avilla or Ernesto Peno is a licensed pilot. That should be simple—and legal, too, since you are employed by the FAA. You didn’t get into any trouble at work, did you?”

“No, because I haven’t been back to work yet,” he confessed.

“Well, you do have to go back sometime.”

“Oh yeah,” he agreed. “Those guys from the ATF said they weren’t going to tell, right? Where are you?”

“Taking the uranium cure for my arthritis. Isn’t that what people used to do? I’m at White Sands. Ya know, when they set off the first atomic test out here, the scientists made book as to whether or not they were about to start a chain reaction that would take the whole world with it.”

“They really must have hated those Nazis something awful,” said Dennis.

“It’s a macho kind of mentality,” she told him. “Even the scientists didn’t have the objectivity to pull back from something they thought might destroy the world, since they didn’t want to be the ones to chicken out. There’s something a little bit scary about that. Thirteen billion years for the planet to grow human beings and we try to bust up the globe the minute we get the slightest hint of how it can be done.” She examined the blanket on the bed for bugs.

“J. Robert Oppenheimer was a scientist who jumped off the band wagon,” inserted Dennis. “They put him on trial for something—like treason, maybe, or maybe it was for violating an employment contract. I’m kidding, of course. Are you really in New Mexico? How did you get out there?”

“People trust me. They give me airplanes right and left. I have a new CitationJet that flies like heaven. She’s taking me up to Yakima in Washington state tomorrow. I’m following the Avilla connection and I think it does lead to those pesky little nuclears. Rockerton has contracts up that way—which is near Richland, the home of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Not that pilfering plutonium is all that easy. You can’t simply carry it out of a nuclear facility in a brown paper bag.” Helen thought about it. “I don’t know how you do it, actually. You probably pay a technician to bring you a bunch in a suitcase.”

“A lead-lined suitcase,” Dennis added. “Say, Helen, I was wondering. How am I supposed to get my car?”

Kids started screaming outside her window at about six-thirty in the morning, which made it as good a time as any to rise and shine. She drove out to the airport, got rid of the car, and had a cup of coffee and a buttered roll. The roll was stale and the butter slightly rancid. Maybe Eric and Dennis were right. Maybe her diet wasn’t of the most health-expanding type.

She refueled and chatted up the ground crew. Hers was the only jet that had flown into the airport in several days. The regular airlines flew turboprops on their scheduled flights now, they said. The transports had decreed cut-back time again.

Helen made a face. “How low can you go?” Because the turboprops flew lower than the jets, they inevitably hit a lot more turbulence. They also didn’t have the class a thoroughbred plane such as hers did. But the whole scenario bothered her. If the provincial airports were getting away from jets, would they be able to handle the traffic when a plane such as hers flew by? Would their new runaways be long enough? Would the ground crew understand how to service a jet?

Cloudless skies followed her to about Salt Lake city, when great big rain clouds suddenly appeared ahead. She climbed. She was sleepy. The scenery below had been awesome, but she still had a long leg of sky to trek across through Idaho and Oregon before even reaching Washington State. She felt like a truck driver driving the long haul.

She sat and had eggs in the terminal building at Yakima and before she could pay the bill, her eyes fell on Robert Avilla. The aeronautics executive stood at the little newsstand buying a roll of some kind of mint. Pure sugar! Even Helen didn’t approve. She wasn’t quick enough in deciding if she ought to avoid him or not because in another five seconds he had turned and spotted her.

He didn’t recognize her exactly, she could tell. Seeing her had tripped something in his brain, but he didn’t seem to be certain exactly what it was. She sidled toward the door and exited. He followed and called out to her, “Miss, excuse me. Miss.”

She saw no cabs and no way for her to hurry off, so she turned around, feigning surprise at finding him here.

“That’s right,” he said. “You’re the woman from the FAA. I’ve forgotten your name.”

“Helen Robbins,” she told him. “What are you doing all the way across the country, Mr. Avilla?”

“I’m a Rockerton employee, even though the name of my subsidiary is Beaumont. Rockerton has an installation here.” He smiled at her. His similarity to his nephew, Peno, gave her chills, but he didn’t seem quite as evil. In fact, Avilla probably wasn’t a bad person at all. But maybe he was, so she would definitely keep right up there on her toes. “Can I give you a lift someplace? I have a company car over here. Getting a taxi at the airport is difficult, unless a regularly scheduled flight comes in.”

“How did you make it here then, Mr. Avilla?”

“I came on a 16-seater from Seattle. I wasn’t in any rush to leave the airport though. I know one or two of the ground crew who work here. I was talking to them. The car’s right over there, a blue Bonneville. See it? They left the car for me. I used to fly up quite a lot when I worked down in New Mexico, but I still come out from time to time.” He opened the door for her, and she got in.

She wondered that he didn’t ask her how she herself had come into Yakima, but maybe he had seen her fly in, or someone had mentioned that a private plane had landed. Had she indicated to him that she was a pilot? Yes, she recalled doing so.

“Is that all the luggage you have?” he asked, nodding at her little overnight bag.

“Yes, you don’t seem to have much, either.”

“Oh, I hope to head back tonight. Catch a red-eye. Where are you going, by the way?”

That was a natural question, wasn’t it? But not one she had an easy answer to. She had choices, of course, like “Wherever you’re going, Mr. Avilla,” or “The Department of Energy Research and Development labs, and step on it, please,” but no response seemed adequate.

“I’d probably like to find a motel first, Mr. Avilla, as I’d like to take a shower. There must be one somewhere along your route.” She would have opened her purse and busied herself with her comb as a distraction, but her Beretta sat in there, a nice military sidearm, but not the usual FAA issue, she suspected.

But did he believe her to be FAA, or did he know exactly who she was and wish her ill?

“I’m sure we can find someplace nice for you, my dear, but let me first stop off at one of the Rockerton sites for three minutes only. We’re almost there.”

Helen fell silent. She actually didn’t feel herself to be in any danger with him. He looked like a businessman; he talked like a businessman. He probably thought like a businessman.

They stopped at a building that had the Rockerton logo on it and Avilla pulled into an entirely empty parking area in front. “Come inside,” he offered. “I’ll only be a minute, but you might want to come in anyway.” She might, indeed. She was curious about the Rockerton operation and his part in it, current and past, and this could hand her some clues as to his connection with the nuclear industry.

Although he was coming around to help her out of the car, she opened her own door and shut it firmly. “Are you going to lock it?” she inquired.

“Oh, we’re safe in Yakima,” he told her with some amusement. She followed him into the building.

The double doors were open, but strangely, no one seemed to be inside. This wasn’t an office building, either, as she had expected, but an open storage area, a warehouse. And what was stored here was row upon row, shelf after shelf of rockets—the type fired with the help of a rocket launcher. The sight was freakish, an unpleasant reminder of the mass killing process that men called war.

Avilla walked further into the room and Helen followed slowly. She was nervous now, but he appeared calm and relaxed. “What I want is on the second floor,” he said. He approached the staircase and began to climb up. Hesitantly, she started up the hardwood steps as well, listening to the sound of their footfalls reverberating in the space.

The second floor was an office area, but the offices were all barren—empty of everything. No furniture, no telephones, and especially no people.

Avilla waited for her to catch up. He was breathing a little hard from the stairs, which surprised her. “A lot of Rockerton has had to shut down because the loss of defense contracts,” he commented, looking around.

She went to a window and gazed out. Not much to see. Sand and sage, Goodman had said. Although she couldn’t see them, she knew from her maps that they were near the Cascade Mountains. And Mount Saint Helens was probably less than two hours’ drive away. A guy she knew used to call her Mount Saint Helen back when the volcano had been puffing up fire and ash.

She turned to say something to Avilla and felt a heavy object whiz by her ear. She raised her arm to block the blow, but her reflexes failed her. She felt herself falling, then suddenly was aware of nothing at all.

She came to consciousness. How much time had gone by? Her head throbbed and she felt sick to her stomach, weak. She tried to stand. Her muscles wouldn’t hold her, but something else was keeping her from getting up as well. That’s when she noticed that she was attached to a steam pipe on the other side of the room from where she had been standing. She groaned.

He had dragged her over. She had really been knocked out and he had actually dragged her over here. Her assailant had been Avilla, hadn’t it? The assault had happened so quickly that she really hadn’t been able to tell. Avilla. She could figure him for financial crimes, but he didn’t seem like the type to bash someone’s brains in. He had used a metal bar or something equally hard, she would swear from the way her head now felt.

She examined the cuffs around her wrists chaining her to the pipe, done up in such a way that she couldn’t extricate herself. What she could do, she calculated, would be to pull the pipe out of the floor and ceiling. Yes, the pipe was a thick one, but she had three things on her side: persistence, focus, and a certain amount of feminine muscle power. She might not do yoga, but she did work out with barbells.

As she began to pull on the pipe with all her might and all her weight, she heard a series of small thuds not too distant from the building. She continued to struggle but tried to analyze the sound which began to multiply rather than die away. It was then that she realized that the thumps were coming from directly beneath her. The rockets below were being set off and exploding. She was in the middle of an unauthorized proving ground. And one element of the equation setting the armaments off, she soon guessed from the crackling sound, was a roaring fire.

She pulled desperately at the pipe. Getting out of a predicament like this looked so easy in films. She was sure she had seen Cynthia Rothrock, Eric’s favorite movie martial artist, disentangle herself from something like this at least once. Cynthia had probably then fended off the villain with the pipe she had pulled out of the wall. Rothrock was amazing that way.

But that pipe had been a Hollywood prop pipe and this one was real. This pipe wouldn’t budge in the slightest.

She yelled, “Hey, is anyone down there?” She knew very well that no one was.

She had begun to sweat, but neither the heat of the fire nor her exertions had set off her temperature rise. For the first time, a strange thought occurred to her. They wanted her to die! They actually wanted her to die. She had finally awakened to that unbelievable fact. The skyjackers were trying to kill her!

The noise below grew in volume. Not only were the rockets popping regularly now, but the fire, too, created an ever-louder fuss as it ate at both the floors and the ceilings—as it licked hungrily at the stairs, which were her only exit route down.

Exit routes were a moot point at right this moment, however, because she was still held in place quite firmly by the combination of cuffs and pipe. She tugged again and again. Frankly, the pipe couldn’t care less. The thick mounting wasn’t anywhere near about to give way.

Eric would be angry, wouldn’t he, when he found out that she had been killed through her own stupidity, her own lack of alertness. Her useless death seemed a terrible thing to happen to him, much less to her. He’d find someone else later on down the line, of course, even if she couldn’t imagine what type of woman that would be. He was a funny guy, not like anyone else.

As for herself, dead didn’t seem the way she was slated to go, no matter how hard she tried to resign herself to it. Other people crashed and burned. She kept on ticking.

The rockets went on bursting out of their storage bins. Helen could smell the smoke and other nasty odors released along with the rocketry. She tugged at her bonds without stopping, trying to break them or wrest the pipe out of the floor. Her wrists hurt; her head hurt. Tears of frustration poured down her face. “God damn it,” she muttered. Her heart had accelerated as if she were running the four-minute mile. She was afraid. She was deathly afraid. She started shouting. She was swearing. The one word she still didn’t want to utter though was “help.”

She was facing away from the entry, but in her fear and confusion she felt that someone had entered the space behind her. Maybe Avilla had returned, having struggled free of their attackers. Maybe the janitor had arrived on his rounds. Maybe the presence was the Spirit of the Fire, as the Indians might say. Helen was hoarse, but she yelled some more and was rewarded for her efforts.

Someone had arrived and now stood beside her. Someone was going to save her. But how? They hardly had time to go for a locksmith. Helen looked around eagerly, into her rescuer’s face for the solution. The face was a handsome one, one she was shocked to see. Where in the world had he come from? she wondered.

“You’d better get out of here,” she shouted at ATF agent John Garcia. “No way you’re going to save me in time. And you have no reason to die alongside me.”