Mike Lawson - Dead on Arrival

The papers didn’t say how long the strike would last. On one hand, a stoppage could work to his advantage. If the facility wasn’t operating, security would be even more lax. And for all he knew, the security force was also on strike and had been replaced by temporary guards even less qualified than the existing ones. The problem was that if the refinery wasn’t operating, he didn’t know if there would be enough hydrofluoric acid in the tanks to cause the calamity he desired. He was not going to waste all the work he and the boy had done by blowing up empty tanks.

An Internet article he had read said there was talk of bringing in nonunion workers to replace those on strike, but it was uncertain if that would happen or when. Another article he read said that before going on strike the workers had conducted illegal slowdowns, sick-outs , they called them, and he didn’t know what that meant in terms of chemical quantities on hand. No, he didn’t like all the new variables caused by the strike. If they brought in different guards, they might follow different security procedures. And if they brought in replacement workers, the refinery most likely wouldn’t operate at maximum capacity, which could mean less of the chemical would be released. He just didn’t know.

It was God’s will. He would have to wait until the strike was over or find a different target.

After all, what did it matter if he had to wait a month or two? It had taken more than four years of planning to fly the planes into the Towers. And there was another reason why waiting could be good. He didn’t understand what had happened with this senator and his bill. It had appeared that the bill was going to pass in the American parliament or whatever they called it, when suddenly this senator was killed and the next thing he read was that the terrorist attacks were really caused by some madman, some drug dealer, and not by true believers. Now they were saying the law was not going to pass and, if anything, the government was now apologizing to Muslims for what it had been about to do to them.

So maybe waiting was good from that perspective as well. Let things return to normal, and then, when the tanks were destroyed — when thousands of people were killed, when dead schoolchildren were seen lying on the ground, when the wounded were shown blind and horribly burned — then the furor would begin all over again. And this time the whites would demand that this dead senator’s law be passed and there would be no doubt who was responsible for the attack.

The real problem with waiting was the boy’s mother. In the first few months after her husband’s death she had been almost catatonic, and when he’d first met the boy, she was still in that state. But in the last week or so, she had started to come out of it and was beginning to take an interest in her son’s life again. She knew the boy had stopped going to school, and when she first found out about this she hadn’t said too much. But now she was beginning to nag the boy about his education.

He had told the boy to tell his mother that he had a job, a job at a factory where he sometimes had to work nights. Where the mother came from, it was not unusual for boys her son’s age to have jobs, and she was so isolated from others of her kind and so ignorant of American norms that she accepted the explanation. To reinforce the lie, he gave the boy a small amount of money to take home each week to his mother as proof that he was working. But now she was asking questions. Where was this factory? What did he do? Did he have a future working there? And who was the man who called so often?

Again, had this not been America, had this been anywhere else in the civilized world, the boy, as man of the house, would have told the woman to mind her own business. But this was America. The woman thought she had the right to meddle in the affairs of men, particularly her son’s affairs.

The best thing would be if the mother were to die, but in some way that would increase the son’s bitterness toward his own people.

He would have to give that some thought.

Unlike with the two men who had tried to blow up the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel, Myron Clark didn’t have to sleep-deprive Jubal Pugh to get him to talk. He didn’t have to bring in his glowering six-foot-four partner to intimidate him either. All he had to do was turn on his tape recorder. Pugh knew the only way he was going to stay out of jail was if he told Myron Clark everything he knew.

In response to Clark’s first question — How did he become involved in the terrorist attacks? — Jubal shrugged and said, ‘Got a letter in the mail.’ He said this like the letter had been a coupon flyer from a pizza place. ‘The letter said I’d make two million bucks if I was willing to do a few things to support a patriotic cause. And there was five grand in cash in the envelope, just for meeting the guy who sent the letter. That got my attention.’

‘And where’d you meet this other patriot at?’ Clark asked.

‘At a restaurant in Winchester,’ Jubal said. ‘The Waffle Shop. Guy called himself Mr Jones. Sounded like a highfalutin’ bastard.’

Clark guessed that meant the man didn’t have the dulcet tones of one raised in an Appalachian hamlet.

‘Anyway,’ Jubal said, ‘the first thing he did was name the guy who supplies my ephedrine.’

‘What?’ Clark said.

Pugh explained. The man who supplied the ephedrine that Pugh used to make his meth was the head of a Mexican drug cartel and lived in Mexico City. Mr Jones told Pugh that he’d done some work for the cartel and if Pugh wanted to check on his background, all he had to do was call his supplier and ask him about a man named James Flint and the job in Guadalajara. He said the Mexican was expecting Pugh’s call.

‘But I also figured Jones was sending me a message,’ Pugh said. ‘He was telling me he could fuck up my meth operation any time he wanted.’

‘Are you trying to say Jones forced you into helping him?’ Clark said.

‘Nah, I guess not. I’m just saying he had some leverage on me.’

‘And did you contact this Mexican?’ Clark asked.

‘Yeah. He knew Jones, or James Flint, or whatever his name is, and he said the man was someone I could trust.’

‘So you became partners with a man you’d never met based on the word of a drug lord.’

‘No, I became his partner ’cause he was payin’ me two million bucks. And I did try to find out who Jones really was,’ Pugh added. ‘I had Randy take his picture. Randy was up at the counter, drinkin’ coffee, and while I was talkin’ to Jones, Randy snapped off a shot with my Kodak.’

Clark didn’t bother to tell Pugh that the picture wasn’t worth a damn.

‘And later Randy tried to follow the guy,’ Pugh said, ‘but he was too slick for that.’

Clark refrained from commenting on the slickness quotient of Jubal or his boy Randy.

‘So then what?’ Clark said.

‘Well, then he told me what he wanted me to do,’ Jubal said.

Pugh said Jones gave him a broad outline of the plan and said he’d pay Pugh in installments following each successful phase. Pugh said he was impressed with Jones’s thoroughness and negotiated for another half a million.

‘I mean, I knew the shit was just gonna fly if I did what this fella wanted, and I figured another half million was only fair, considering I was taking all the risks.’

‘Yeah, sounds like you were a real bargain,’ Clark said. This guy Pugh, with his ferret’s nose and his tiny eyes and his unshaven chin, was just repulsive.

Pugh said that after he agreed to work with Jones, they left the restaurant together. In the restaurant parking lot, Jones gave Pugh a laptop, a schedule specifying when he was to turn the laptop on, and told him to hide the laptop someplace where it wouldn’t be found in the event that some law enforcement agency — like the DEA — obtained a warrant to search his house.