“They wouldn’t care all that much about the risk of accidental detonation, especially if they are building the bomb here, in the US, so they wouldn’t need those safeguards. A nuke going off anywhere in the US is a catastrophe.
“As for the plutonium and the necessary technical expertise, there are any number of rogue states—Iran, North Korea, Pakistan—who would be only too happy to provide expertise and materials. Crippling the Great Satan with a nuke would suddenly make them, and those rogue nations, dominant world powers to be reckoned with.”
Angela shook her head as she sat back. “I’m still not convinced I believe all this.”
“Why attack a border crossing?”
“I don’t—” Angela snapped her fingers with sudden realization. “Islamic terrorists know that they may not be able to blend in very well or go unnoticed, so having all their people pose as Hispanic would allow them to be practically invisible in America. They could come and go as they please. Blowing up a border crossing would destroy the detection equipment that surely must be able to detect nuclear material.”
Jack was amazed at how quickly she had made the critical jump to what was going on, and why.
He turned in his seat to face her. “Angela, if you delivered the EBW here, that means they’re probably building the bomb here before transporting it to a major city. If they wanted to use it in LA, they would have built it in on the West Coast. That means they likely intend to set it off in New York City.”
“Milford Falls isn’t that far from New York City.”
“Where was the place you delivered that package?”
“I’ve already been there looking for those four men. They’ve cleared out.”
“Take me there. I want to see it for myself.”
She looked out the windshield, almost as if she could see the place. “I was going there now anyway. I suppose I could take you along.”
“Why would you be going there now, in the middle of the night?”
“I made a promise. I intend to keep it.”
Jack thought he knew what she meant. “Is it far?”
“Not too far. But I wouldn’t get my hopes up if I were you. It’s in a massive, deserted industrial area. It’s easy to get lost in there. I suspect those men are still there, somewhere in those deserted buildings. Now I know why. I’ve been going there a lot, spending time learning the layout of the place.”
“Looking for those men?”
“Yes,” she admitted, “but so far I haven’t seen any sign of them.”
Jack rubbed a finger along his lower lip. Such a deserted industrial complex sounded like the perfect place to build a bomb without being disturbed or discovered.
“I need to find out if this is just a scary theory, or if we could really be on to something. There might be a clue at the place where you delivered the package.”
“I’m game.”
Angela turned the key, and the engine roared to life.
FIFTY
They had to drive back through town first before they could to get to the old industrial area. The main streets were mostly deserted. Jack’s familiar sense of paranoia was beginning to set in. With so few cars on the streets, he felt like anyone could be watching them.
At one traffic light some guys in a car pulled up beside them on the driver’s side. The driver revved the engine as some of the men opened their windows to make lewd offers to Angela.
Angela glared at them as she gave them the finger. They all laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world.
“Jerks,” she muttered as she pulled away when the light turned green.
They stayed next to her. She abruptly cut around a corner to the right. She had turned too late for them to follow without stopping and backing up. By then she was gone. She took side streets for a while until returning to her course through downtown. The men were nowhere to be seen.
Jack knew that she could have ignored them. It said something about her nature that she didn’t.
They wouldn’t think it was so funny if they had followed her and stopped her truck only to find themselves looking down the barrel of her gun. She might not look it, but this was a woman you messed with at your own peril. The fact that she went out all alone to a deserted area late at night hoping to find the guys who had tried to kill her also said a lot.
Jack had only met this woman, and already he felt a bond with her. It was rare to encounter another person who shared an understanding of the things he dealt in, and more than rare that she was prepared to handle them alone.
As they left the lights of Milford Falls behind, they drove for a time down a lonely, winding highway. Trees in the darkness to either side of the road flashed by in a seemingly never-ending procession until the road eventually emptied them out in the middle of a vast, deserted, commercial landscape. It was an eerie scene.
Lit by moonlight, the place felt like life on earth had died out long ago and they were the last people alive in the world, wandering among the crumbling remains of civilization.
Angela drove slowly into the maze, looking left and right around every building. He could see windows broken out on most of the buildings. All of them were dark. After they made their way through the tangle of deserted buildings, stacked industrial equipment, and fenced implement yards, she turned down a road going past a long building and then parked at a door along the side. The door had a hand-painted address on it.
“This is where I delivered the package,” she said as she cut the engine. “If you want to look around inside, I’ll keep watch out here.”
Jack thought that wasn’t a bad idea, but at the same time he didn’t think it was a good one, either. “All right. I’ll try to be quick.”
“It’s pitch black in there,” she said.
He pulled out his small light and clicked it on briefly to show her how powerful it was.
The door wasn’t locked. It scraped on the ground as he opened it. Inside the enormous building there were walls for several rudimentary offices. Between several of the office spaces stood gray metal shelving. Some of the shelves had crumpled, dirty blankets left on them, but there was nothing underneath.
There was a filthy, greasy moving pad on the floor. He knew why Angela hadn’t wanted to come inside.
Jack looked around for a good ten minutes, trying to find a clue as to what the men had been doing. He found a variety of milling machines back beyond the shelving, but they had been cleaned and the floor vacuumed. A specialized search team could probably find a speck of something, but he couldn’t. Since the site had been abandoned, at this point, with the clock ticking, whatever had been there was irrelevant. They needed to find where whatever they had been making had been taken.
As he climbed back up into her truck, she said, “Told you.”
Jack sighed. “They appeared to have been using milling machines for something. Like you said, they’ve cleared out. It was worth a look. I don’t know what else we can do out here.”
She started the truck but didn’t answer. She pulled out and drove slowly on through the maze of crumbling buildings, chain-link fencing, and razor wire guarding piles of rusted junk. There were broad concrete areas as well and streets of sorts, even alleyways between clusters of the old buildings.
“Aren’t you going to turn on your headlights?”
“No. The moon is out. The moon is enough to see by if you don’t drive too fast. Your eyes will adjust.”
Jack didn’t object. He knew what she was doing and he couldn’t say he blamed her. Besides that, those men were the only clue they had. If by some stroke of luck she was able to find them, they might be able to provide some answers.
The problem would be getting them to talk.
They drove slowly for almost an hour, weaving their way among the ruins of what used to be a thriving complex. Angela didn’t say anything. She was intently focused on surveying the moonlit ghost town.