Steve Martini - Guardian of Lies

By now the bird was on the ground. Yakov could hear the gentle woofing of the blades as they idled quietly, whipping the air in the clearing beyond the huts. As he came around the corner of the last building, he suddenly realized why Alim had waited so long to transport the container.

This was no ordinary helicopter. Yakov had seen it before, but it was always in the distance, miles away, where you couldn’t gain a true appreciation of its size. The huge Sikorsky Skycrane was used for logging in remote areas, in particular for hauling high-end exotic hardwoods from inaccessible river valleys. Yakov had heard stories of logs hollowed out to carry even more valuable crops, thousands of pounds of cocaine whisked through the air to unknown destinations.

On the ground close-up, the Skycrane looked like a giant dragonfly. Its seventy-two-foot-diameter rotor blades and giant twin turboshaft engines could lift a fully armed battle tank to nearly ten thousand feet. It could carry it two hundred miles in less than two hours and gently set it back on the ground. Yakov noticed there was something different about this particular Skycrane from the ones he had seen before. There were two large exterior tanks fitted into the normally vacant area under what looked like the rigid backbone of the craft.

Nitikin saw Alim in the distance, standing next to the chopper, gesturing with his arms and pointing in the direction of the cargo container a hundred meters away just at the edge of the clearing near the trees.

Two crew members in orange jumpsuits were arranging the lift cables under the helicopter’s belly tanks. The cable lines looked as if they were at least a hundred feet long. From these the container would dangle like a pendulum beneath the belly of the huge chopper.

“This way.” The interpreter tapped Yakov on the shoulder, directing him away from the helicopter and toward the cargo container where the four surviving members of Afundi’s group were waiting. As they approached, one of them opened the cargo container door, swinging it wide. He gestured for Nitikin to get inside.

The wooden crate containing the device was already bolted in place, fastened to the floor in the center of the container. The bomb was not heavy. It was a fraction of the weight of the atomic device dubbed Little Boy that had been dropped on Hiroshima in Japan at the end of World War II, though its yield would be equal to or perhaps even more destructive. Both the Soviets and the U.S. had made strides in reducing the size and weight of warheads in the years immediately following the war.

The real weight of the load was in the lead lining of the cargo container itself, a precaution not so much for safety as against detection. Nitikin had told Alim that this was unnecessary, but Afundi refused to believe him. A warhead using highly enriched uranium, while more primitive and less powerful, was more difficult to detect than an implosion device using plutonium. The gamma rays and neutrons emitted by a shielded uranium device allowed for detection only at very short distances, no more than two to four feet. More important was the time required to count a sufficient number of particle emissions from a uranium bomb in order to set off an alarm. This could take anywhere from sev eral minutes to hours. By then, any vehicle carrying the device through a border check or control point would be long gone.

Yakov just stood in the open doorway looking at the crate. One of Alim’s men tossed three large duffel bags into the container. Then he nudged Yakov toward the door. As Nitikin stepped inside the man gestured for him to sit on the floor. He sat with his back against the container wall and his feet against the wooden crate. When he looked up he saw Alim at the doorway, looking down at him with a simpering smile.

Afundi had packed a few personal items. He knew he would not be coming back to the camp. In a light day pack he carried the newspaper given to him by Fidel that morning in Havana and Emerson Pike’s small laptop. He figured, why not? He didn’t own a computer and the dead American no longer needed it.

Within seconds, Alim, his four men, and the interpreter joined Nitikin inside the cargo container. The interpreter handed Yakov two small white pills. “Here, take these.”

“What is it?”

“Dramamine, for motion sickness. Trust me, you will need it.”

Nitikin swallowed the two pills.

Someone outside closed the door. Yakov heard the screech of metal as the steel bar was dropped into position, sealing them behind the heavy metal door. The interpreter turned on his flashlight as they sat and waited.

Liquida read the brief account of the fire in the local newspaper the next morning. One fatality, a woman, her identity withheld until they could notify the next of kin.

Later that afternoon, after packing his luggage for the return to Mexico, he took a detour on his way to the airport. He parked the car and took a stroll down the dead-end street. Everything was back to normal, except for the burned-out house two doors from the corner. Someone had swept the glass and debris from the street. The front gate on the house was padlocked, probably to prevent looters from falling into the charred pit that was inside.

Liquida could see all the way up to the sky through the broken windows on the front. All that was left standing were the exterior masonry walls. From what he could see, the interior was totally gutted. The old wood had burned well.

Wearing oversize sunglasses and a baseball cap with the New York Yankees’ logo on it, he walked slowly down the sidewalk on the other side of the street. With his hands in his pockets, he surveyed his handiwork. If he had a camera, he would have taken pictures to send to his employer. The camel jockey was never satisfied.

Liquida walked past the house and ended up three doors down where a woman was dragging a hose and watering some plants in her front yard.

He smiled, then spoke to her in Spanish. “Good afternoon.”

“Hello.” She nodded and smiled back.

“What a shame.” He stood there looking back at the house across the street.

“Yes. It was a very bad fire. And the explosion shook the entire block.”

“Really?” said Liquida.

“Oh, yes. Propano ,” she said. “That’s why I don’t have it in my house. It’s too dangerous. Only electricity,” she said. “The fire got so hot it burned the telephone wires.” She pointed to the cables running between the poles across the street.

“I hope no one was hurt.”

“Well, a woman had a heart attack,” she said.

“You mean the woman who lived in the house?” Liquida was surprised there was enough of her left that they could find her heart.

“No, no, not Maricela, the lady next door to her. She was in her eighties. It was probably all the excitement from the explosion. No, the woman who lived in the house was very lucky. She got out.”

Liquida nearly got whiplash turning to look at her.

“Some students up at the beauty school said that two men who were walking up the sidewalk smelled fumes coming from the house. They managed to get inside and one of them carried her out, just before the house blew up.”

Liquida didn’t say anything. He just stood there looking at her as she continued watering her plants.

“Was she hurt?”

“Oh, yes. She was unconscious when they brought her out.”

“So I assume she’s in the hospital?”

“No. One of the men, the one who carried her out, a very big hombre , managed to revive her. Right up there on the sidewalk.” She pointed up the street. “I would say it was a miracle. I was sure she was dead when he brought her out. And his friend, the other man, he didn’t look too good either.”