Chapter 17 Heading for Livingston, Montana
Musical theme: Private Investigations by Dire Straits
Dave awoke to the sound of the air brakes locking. Looking out the window, it looked pretty sloppy, so he put his boots on. Jainie jumped out of the driver’s seat right to the ground, with her zip up file holder in hand. She consulted with a chubby young man with black hair, and they laughed. They went into the office. Dave followed them.
As Dave came in, Jainie spoke. “Dave, this is Steve. He’s the receiver.”
“Where do Garry’s cars go?”
“In the row where the green Dodge is. Up on the hill.”
Jainie set down the file holder, and pulled the papers out of it, retaining the keys. We’ll be right on it, Steve.”
They went out to the Baby. Dave looked up the hill, then got in and took the wheel. He flicked the transmission in reverse. He cranked the wheel over, folding the rig at 90 degrees. He spun it around, then straightened the rig, and they were on the road to the hill. He turned at the building, and kept backing to the road up the hill, up it until the tailgate was even with the green Dodge. He locked the brakes. He climbed down from the truck. Jainie jumped out the other side. She put her jaw back up. “I will never be able to do that.”
“Don’t worry about it. Let’s unload these cars and get on up to Sue Ann’s.
She gave him the key to the first car on second deck. He put the ramp down, and drove down it in reverse, and backed into a space down the way a bit from the green Dodge. He walked back up, and she handed him the second key. As he came down the ramp, she went up and unrigged the third car. She got in and backed it carefully down the ramp and up to Dave. She gave him the key to the fourth. He took it and went to get the car. Jillian parked her car. She went to the truck, and was still fiddling around with the controls when Dave came and sorted it out. He backed the last car off the second deck, and then showed her how to stow the ramp. He parked his car, and she parked hers. They put the rest of the cars away, and he took the keys from her.
“You drive back down. Be safe, but go a little bit fast, and very confidently. He’s going to think it was you that took it up the hill, too.
She came down the hill a little bit fast, and very smoothly, and parked the truck next to the office. She jumped out to the ground with the zippered case in her hand.
Dave climbed down as she was laying the keys out on the counter.
“You sure can drive a truck, ma’am. I guess your father taught you.”
“He did, but that’s my husband there, not my father.” Her voice had all the warm and pleasant feeling you would get by having your face pushed into an Antarctic glacier. “I was born in an 18 wheeler on I-20 East of Shreveport, Louisiana. Dave is the only ex-marine sniper I know of who has smoked two terrorists in less than a minute at more than a mile of range with a Barrett .50 BMG, and the first professor of mathematics I ever met who could drive a big truck and define tintinnabulation.”
As she spoke, she laid the papers out on the counter. Five cars, five key rings, five titles.
“So you have everything. I have to get back to Wyoming. I’m going to blow up a mountain.”
Steve looked at Dave. “My friend, Sue Ann, wants me to fire the shot. It’s really only half a mountain. Half a million tons of rock.”
Dave took the wheel. “Who told you that stuff about smoking two terrorists from over a mile in one minute?”
“It was just something I read in Marine Snipers in the Gulf Wars. But it really was you! You’re Black Cat! You know you’re not allowed to lie to me.”
“I am Black Cat. Now that you know, you can’t say any more. Remember that Zen thing, ‘Those who know do not say; Those who say do not know.”
“Of course Sond knows all about it.”
“Of course he does.”
“When I married you, you said you were Clark Kent.”
“Now it’s possible that some super villain will target you. Do you think Osama bin Laden would trash the World Trade Center but he wouldn’t go after Black Cat’s wife?”
They got back to the highway. Jainie called Sue Ann, who said the shot was ready, so they headed for Wyoming. He pulled into a truck stop after a couple of hours, and went to pee. They were all right on fuel, so he went the back way, and stopped at a grocery store. He bought all the sandwich stuff, a gallon of milk, several cans of deluxe mixed nuts, and some macadamias, a case of bottled water, some coffee, and some pens and pencils.
“I want to drive.”
He got in the sleeper and took his shoes off.
“Black Fucking Cat. Fucking Black Cat.”
“You’re down to ‘Black Cat Fucking.’ None of the other permutations make sense.”
“Now you will make fun of me.”
“Not of you.”
“Well, that is sure how it looks.”
“I didn’t tell you about that because it puts you in danger. Not much, maybe, but just leaving another rattlesnake out there to bite you.”
“’Never leave one alive behind you.’”
“Right.”
“What if you killed all the rattlesnakes?”
“Wouldn’t bother me,” he said.
“The boys and I would not miss them. But you’re drifting. If you’re mad about the Black Cat thing, then beat me up about that.”
“We love each other. If we have something we need to work out, then we need to focus on the real issue. If I am wrong, you need to show me, and then I can admit it, and correct it. If you just look for something bad to say about me, you can always find something. If you want a reason to dump me, you don’t need one, so see how easy that is?
“You know I don’t want to dump you,” She said.
“So you want to work this out. From your point of view, what is it I did wrong, and how can I correct it, if I can?”
“You sound so reasonable.”
“I’m trying to be reasonable.”
“I don’t know what you should have done.”
“Could we maybe say I did what I thought was best, and probably was right?”
“Then you win,” She said.
“There is no winning and losing. It would just be something bugged you, we talked it out, and you decided there wasn’t really anything wrong.”
She took an off ramp and stopped off the road on the on ramp. She went back to the sleeper, and took a hold on him. “Nothing is wrong. I’m sorry. You were right.”
“Don’t be sorry. There isn’t anything for you to be sorry about.”
“OK. I am unsorry.”
They both laughed. She burrowed in. He held her tight.
A siren yelped.
Dave came to the driver’s side and opened the window. A state trooper was alongside the truck. “What’s up, officer?”
“You’re not supposed to stop here.”
“If you want the truck moved, it will be moved.”
“I want to know why you stopped here.”
‘My wife and I had a disagreement. We stopped because it would be stupid to try to drive a big truck and argue and be upset. We have it resolved, so if you want the truck gone, we can do that.”
“What did you argue about?”
“It involves national security.”
“An argument with your wife.”
“Yes. She became aware of something, and got upset about it being kept from her in the first place, but it is a national security issue.”
“Get out of the truck.”
Jainie picked up Dave’s cell phone. She looked through the listings, and dialed one that said FBI. It was answered instantly. “I’m Dave’s wife. I think he is going to be arrested by a Montana State Trooper at the Conger road exit to I-90.”
“Do not offer resistance. Do not say anything you know that may be relevant to national security. Stay on the line. If he makes you get out of the truck, leave the phone on, and cover it with a shirt or something, or put it under the seat. Leave it on.”
She sneaked a look out the window, and the trooper was talking on his cell phone. Then Dave was getting back into the truck, and the trooper was telling him to leave. She told the man on the line what was going on. “Let me talk to Dave, please.”
“A guy from the FBI wants to talk to you, Dave.”
He picked up the phone. :
“She is right here, Chuck. She doesn’t know anything about it.”
“Jainie, why did you call this number?”
“That trooper was acting crazy, like he was going to arrest you because we stopped off the side of the road. And you told him we were arguing about a national security issue. And then he wanted to know what it was.”
“Did you hear that, Chuck? No. All it was, she guessed who Black Cat was. I understand that. We’re southbound. Sheridan would be fine. We will be there in an hour or two. Nobody. There is not. She does not. Right. I will. Yes. Here she is.”
Jainie took the phone. “This is Chuck. Don’t say anything to anyone. You’ve pulled kitty’s tail, but I know it was not on purpose. Just don’t discuss this with anyone.”
“I won’t.”
“I will speak with you when you get to Sheridan.”
“OK.”
He hung up.
“It’s no big deal, Jainie. Just don’t tell anyone anything.”
“Dave, what is going on?”
“Don’t ask.”
When they reached Sheridan, they parked at a nondescript office building. They went in, and Dave went to make a call. A firm but polite woman swept her for bugs, and asked for the keys to the Baby to sweep it, too. She handed them over. The woman came back and returned the keys. A few minutes later, she took Jainie to a room where Dave was talking on the phone. “Here she is. I’ll put it on speaker.”
“Jainie, this is Chuck again. What happened was, you touched a trigger. It’s all right. This is a secure phone. That’s why you had to stop in Sheridan. Your husband did some things that need to be kept secret, and unfortunately, like most people who have served their country in extraordinary ways, he is a bit wild. So we worry. I would hate for you to live your life in a state of worry, but a little awareness is a good thing. You should be a little more suspicious than most people are, and if you are threatened, you should call me.”
“The state trooper?”
“Was just an asshole. It makes much more sense to stop when you are upset than to keep driving a big truck. We don’t want anyone to know who Black Cat is. You took that story out of a book, and threw it in that clown’s face, and then Dave thought you knew, and asked you, and now you do know. Just don’t say anything. Secrets slowly leak out; you have seen how. But the longer we hold them down, the more legend accumulates. If nobody knows who Black Cat was 30 years from now, there will be so much bullshit accumulated that nobody can ever be sure. Just don’t talk about this, and that will make you, Dave, and the United States a little safer. I’m going to leave you now, and you can talk with Dave in the secure room. I will be here to answer if you call.”
He hung up.
“Dave, what is all this?”
“If you are a sniper, they give you a target, and you don’t know why. You could be shooting Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden, and not know it, and they would like you never to know, because it’s safer to not know. They might like to deny having anything to do with it, so if you don’t know, that is one place they don’t have a leak coming from: you. What I know, I am told never to tell, and what you know, you should also never tell. You will figure out a few things from time to time, but you don’t tell anyone. You don’t even tell Chuck unless you need to.”
“So you have to trust them that the guy is really bad, that you are not killing some guy who should not be killed.”
“One of the big reasons I got out. You can’t trust them. They don’t trust you. It’s like a spy movie. You try to serve your country, and then this happens.”
“They are listening?”
“Of course they are.”
“So we never discuss this again. I never say anything about it. And we keep Chuck’s number, because if anything funny happens, he wants to know sooner, not later.”
“That putting the phone under the seat thing, they would be all over that scene if something went bad. They want to know. They might have a sniper, and he would be told to kill anyone but us. I hope he would not be told to kill us. If that trooper was a rat, not just an asshole, they might blow him away.”
“So what can we do?”
“Be a little more careful than most people are. Realize that the chances of anything happening to us are actually pretty small. And that we have some very good help in an emergency that other people would not have.
“So, are they going to let us leave?”
“Sure. We just came here to use the secure phone to call Chuck.”
“This is so, so weird.”
“It is. Let’s go blow up that mountain.”
They went down to the truck, and got in. There were people watching, rather obviously, but nobody followed them as they left.
“Next stop, Sue Ann’s quarry.”
“Or maybe a pee break.”
“Maybe. How about if I drive, Jainie?”
“Good idea.”
He climbed in and started up the truck. He got onto the highway. “A lot of those things I did, I wish I had not, in a way. Probably most of the targets were right, but I will never know. I handed my moral judgment over to people who may not have that much of their own.”
“Are they listening?”
“I would figure they are.”
“They will listen for the rest of our lives.”
“I guess so. They will listen to a lot of people. There is not much left of privacy in the modern world. We say we still have it, but we don’t.”
“We just have to not say anything.”
“You can still say you love your mathematician, but you can’t threaten their power.”
“I still get to blow up the mountain.”
“Yeah. Sue Ann is probably really looking forward to seeing it go. Once she has a good shot, all will be right with the world.”
“A bad shot?”
“She would be in trouble.”
“I almost got wiped out by the inheritance tax. Now they don’t hardly have it any more.”
“If there was only one thing you could do, wouldn’t you be against a tax on it? W. Bush there.”
She laughed. “I don’t want to see dynasties, but I’m not sure it would be a good idea that I would have had to sell the ranch. If the super rich get to keep it all, and leave it to their kids, then it really cuts the little guy out. But if I get to keep my place, I am still small enough that I know all the boys. Someone my size might care. The huge companies never do. They also say that the family farm has to be big to survive, but then you end up with only one family out of a million that can afford to farm.”
“I’m not interested in dreaming up solutions in a world where the people who could solve the problems are the same ones who create them,” He said.
“But who will make things better?”
“Probably nobody. We give out great tips. We pay a guy to clean up trash in a place we will never see. But we are not the solution. We’ll hit the next truck stop.”
“It’s a ways, if I remember right.”
“It is where it is.”
The fall leaves were in color. The road was bright in the cold sun. Dave couldn’t get himself to care.
* * *
He pulled into the truck stop and got out, heading for the bathroom. Jainie was awake, but she didn’t get out. He got some coffee, and came back out to the truck.
“I got some coffee. I thought you might want to drive.”
“I’m sick of this truck.”
“Do you still want to go to the quarry?”
“I guess.”
“What’s wrong? GUS got you down?”
“No. Well, maybe some.”
“Then what is it?”
“You are not the person I thought you were.”
“Nobody is.”
“So the whole thing of relationships and love is illusory. You can’t actually have it. Every hope about someone else is doomed to failure.”
“If your expectations are unrealistic enough, you can be sure to be disappointed. I am not. I thought you were pretty, sweet, and smart, and I was right. We’ve had more problems than I thought we would, but maybe that is just me not knowing how it is.”
“I thought you were this neat guy who drove around on the Gulf taking stuff to the oil rigs.”
“That was not true?”
“It was, but there was more to it. You were also a killer. You had secrets, GUS was bugging you. You knew all kinds of unsavory characters.”
“I suppose that’s right. Nathanial Blake, Eric Delacroix, Kevin Lake, Candellaria Escobido, Juventina Sondermeyer. Some priests and nuns in Southern Louisiana. I’ll have to disappoint you, I don’t know Edwin Edwards or Carlos Marcello.”
“Everybody… I’m not doing too well with this.”
“You don’t have to win. Being right is much more important.”
She jumped on him and burrowed in. “It isn’t you, it’s just all this stuff.”
“I brought it into your life. Most of that happened before I knew you, and I never had any idea what it was going to be like.”
“Those two guys Black Cat killed, they are described in the book.”
“If you believe the book, they were not nice people.”
“They were awful. I know that’s right. But to kill someone, and work the bolt, and kill someone else, just like that.”
“Requires tremendous discipline and effort. Holding a lot of things in and doing what must be done. That’s why the authors singled out the Cat. Mindless brutality would not impress them. They were Marine officers. They’ve seen plenty of that, and that fighting dog crap disgusts them.”
“They rescue kittens out of trees.”
“They certainly respect people who do.”
“What would be their idea of an admirable kitten rescuer?”
“Suppose you were scared of heights, and not real good at climbing trees, but you went way up in the tree to get the kitten anyway. It freaks out and claws you, which always happens, but you hold on, and bring it back down to the kid it belongs to, and act like it was nothing, all the time shaking from adrenaline, scared out of your mind. That would impress Roman Hernandez and Kristine Lawson.”
“Captain K. Lawson, USMC, is a girl?”
“Check out their web site.”
She pulled out her laptop and booted it up. She went to Firefox, and searched for Marine Snipers in the Gulf Wars. She got the website link, and clicked on it. She soon had a picture of Captain (now Major) Kristine Robin Lawson. “She’s a beautiful black chick. Woman, whatever.”
“I can’t imagine Kristi being politically correct enough to worry about being called a chick.”
“Would you call her a chick?”
“Sure. I called her brown sugar once, and she didn’t pull out her .45.”
“It’s disrespectful to women, though.”
“I don’t see it that way. What have you got, dudes and babes, guys and gals, cats and chicks? Are any of those things disrespectful to men? We never complain. Not to say you, but some gals have their disrespect meters turned up way too high.”
She giggled. “Roman Hernandez is hot stuff.”
“There you go, being disrespectful to stud muffins.”
She smiled. “That name is kind of dumb. You like Roman?”
“He’s all right. Kind of stuffy and stuck up about his looks.”
“Like Marcie?”
“Yes, but Marcie keeps it behind a veil. Roman lets everyone know he thinks he is God’s gift to women. Maybe he is, but I don’t want to hear about it. Roman is a mustang. Came up through the ranks. He understands the sergeants. Kristi went college, and she came in doing some kind of vehicle maintenance.”
“This says she has a master’s in automotive engineering.”
“That’s it. But she is a no shit about it Marine. We better get going if we want to be at the quarry in time.”
“Roll it. I’ll drive in a bit, when I finish looking over this web site.”
He took off for the highway. She was feeling better. It had happened fast. He took the truck all the way to the quarry with Jainie sleeping. He pulled in, and stopped by the office and locked the brakes.
Sue Ann came out. “Dave. Is Jainie coming?”
Jainie appeared, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.
“That ore hauler has a bench seat, so it’s the best for watching the shot from. We’re all wired up and ready to go. Would you like some coffee, or to use the restroom?”
“We’re good.”
“Let’s go blow up a mountain.”
On the way up, Dave felt Jainie’s mood change from a sort of bored presence to a wired up eagerness. “I have a camera in the bag, Sue Ann. I’m going to put it on a tripod, and film it.”
“Your camera won’t be as protected as we will be. If it rains junk, we get down, and we get a pass on the small rocks. The camera…”
I think Jainie would rather lose the camera than the memory chip with the film.”
“That’s right, Sue Ann. I want to film this. We might put it on You Tube.”
“OK”
She parked the ore hauler at an overlook. Dave set up the camera. From where they were, they could see a picture postcard view with a big torn up face of rock in the middle of it. When it was all down, there would be a nice nearly flat area there that could be built on, but of course it had no soil. That had been hauled off and sold. Dave stood by the camera, and Sue Ann tightened the leads on the detonator. “So I will say ‘ready’ and get in the middle seat of the truck. Jainie will count down from ten, and then say “Fire in the hole,” and fire the shot. Dave should be in the driver’s seat during the countdown, and everyone will be wearing hardhats and safety glasses. I am now going to start the two minute warning.” She pushed a button on a radio, and a very loud siren started hooting across the area. Brilliant flashing strobes lit off, and someone was speaking on a high powered loud hailer. “Clear the blast area. Do not re-enter for any reason. This is the two minute warning. Clear the blast area. This is not a drill!”
When the two minutes were over, Sue Ann looked sternly at Janie. “The two minute warning has been run, ma’am, and the blast area is clear. You may begin the countdown.” She got in the truck, and Dave started the camera, and he got in. Sue Ann put her foot on the door to make sure it would be fully open when Jainie got in. Jainie counted down the ten seconds, yelled “Fire in the hole!” and pushed down the detonator. She turned and leapt into the ore hauler.
For a moment, it seemed like nothing would happen. Then there was a crump sound, and three cloth ripping sounds in very rapid succession. These were the sequenced charges. A huge dust cloud formed over the mountainside. Then the pusher charges went off. It was a fabulous bam sound, and dust rose over the whole area, making it impossible to see more than that the mountainside was in motion. The cleanup charges fired, and nothing was visible any more. A sustained roar like a huge ocean swell breaking on a rocky beach sounded. The dust continued to rise.
“Get the camera, Dave. There is no rock rain.”
“Dave grabbed the camera and brought it in. He closed the door firmly, unscrewed the camera, and stowed it in its case. He collapsed the tripod and put it in the bag. The dust cloud came up over the ore hauler.
“The fact we have no rock rain indicates we didn’t overshoot. That’s good, but we still need to see if we didn’t undershoot and leave a lot of unbroken stuff. Overshots take the blast away from the work, undershots just don’t hit hard enough. I think this one is good. I knew Jainie would bring me luck.” She put her arm around Jainie’s shoulder. Jainie was very pleased.
“Dave, when the dust clears enough to be safe to drive, you can take the truck down to the quarry floor, and we’ll see what we have.”
Dave handed Jainie the camera kit, and she put it under the seat. She put her hand on top of Sue Ann’s. “I just know we have a good shot.”
The dust fell pretty fast, and Dave took the ore hauler down to the quarry floor slowly and carefully. There was no reason to hurry, because at the floor, there was still too much dust to see the rock that had come down. They put on their dust masks, and he went on down to the floor. He started at one end of the drop area running in idle. The dust cleared some more.
Sue Ann pumped her fist. “We blew it to baserock, Jainie!”
They drove past an enormous pile of thoroughly shattered rock.
“You think this looks like 500 thousand tons, Dave?”
“My guess would be more like 750 thousand.”
“If it is, how did we get that much?”
“I’m guessing backshatter. So your cleanups fired in gravel, and it reflected off the face. But I really doubt you only have 500. You can survey it tomorrow, and I’ll do the math for you.”
“Sue Ann, did you know he used to be a professor of mathematics?”
“No. That would be nice to have a close estimate.”
“You want at least 10 loads?”
“15 I