Color of Blood(108)
He considered the three strands of barbed wire at the top, angled at forty-five degrees toward the outside. Reaching into the car, he brought out two towels that he’d borrowed from the hotel, the red painted device, and a tube of construction-grade adhesive.
He jammed the adhesive and the device in his pockets and climbed up the fence. He was startled to hear how his climbing sent a low metallic rumbling sound up and down the fence.
Navigating the barbed-wire section was difficult. He awkwardly tossed the towels over the barbed-wire overhang and pulled himself over the top, making much more noise than he wanted.
The towels were not as effective as he’d hoped, and he managed to cut the bottom of his rib cage. He felt the coagulating blood sticking to his shirt.
After climbing down the other side, he made his way across the red, barren soil to the container stacking area. He passed abandoned containers, sheds, and the mysterious detritus of industrial operations, including huge tractor tires, discarded wire fencing, a rusting automobile, and a pile of galvanized chains, each link the size of a loaf of bread.
It was relatively easy to move in the shadows, and after several minutes, he had positioned himself near the huge Lego-like pile of containers. A container ship was in the process of being loaded, and he was relieved to hear the motors, winches, and warning beeps that made it impossible for anyone near the port to notice the twanging of the fence that he had created earlier. The loading area was bright, with high-wattage lights casting strangle, elongated shadows.
Dennis could easily make out the red container with the small yellow stripe. He moved quickly, staying in the shadows and looping around to the farthest side of the container pile.
Dennis approached the container pile slowly. For all he knew, the agents in the Suburban were asleep, but he kept out of their line of sight. After reaching the enormous mountain of containers, he slowly traversed the pile on the desert side, away from the ship being loaded, since it was too well lit there.
Halfway down the length of the pile, Dennis was suddenly aware of a noise from above. He looked up and saw the huge scaffolding that held the sorting crane directly overhead. The crane had attached itself to a container at the top of the mountain behind him, perhaps eighty feet high, and with a loud “boom,” had clamped it tight and was lifting it across to the container ship one hundred yards away.
Using the deafening sound of the crane, Dennis scooted to the end of the pile and found the container where it had been the day before, about twenty yards away from the pile. Another fifty yards past the container sat the darkened Suburban.
He raced across the open space toward the container, praying the Suburban’s occupants were blocked from seeing him. Unfortunately he was not blocked from anyone else’s view, including the crane operator and at least one dockyard employee he saw a hundred yards away near the ship’s bow.
Dennis slid to his knees when he got to the container and took out the device and the tube of clear adhesive. He had already broken the thin metal seal on the tube and quickly pressed out a gob of it on the container next to the locking mechanism for the doors. He turned the device over and pushed a small switch. The device beeped to life. He stuck it to the adhesive and held it there for several minutes.
Again he heard the clanking and roaring of the overhead crane, this time louder. He looked up and was startled to see the huge clamping device coming straight down for the yellow-striped container.
“Shit,” he said out loud.
He held the device in the goo of adhesive as long as he could and then bolted back into the shadows of the container pile. As the crane clasped the container it boomed like timpani struck by an overexuberant music student.
The container flew upward into the floodlights and was gone. Back in the safety of the pile of containers, Dennis peeked at the darkened Suburban and then carefully retraced his looping path around the pile and back to the fence and his car.
He was back in the hotel forty-five minutes later and went right to his room, avoiding the bar. The container’s destination would, he hoped, explain everything. Still, something was odd about shipping a whole container with only a handful of barrels inside. He read that uranium processing involved many steps including first creating a uranium powder called yellowcake. Later, yellowcake is further refined into nuclear fuel for reactors. Even further refinement can lead to weapons-grade nuclear material. But it required enormous amounts of yellowcake to start.
Maybe it wasn’t even yellowcake. Could it be opium flown in by plane and repackaged? Dennis was dizzy processing the possibilities.
Chapter 40
He flew back to Perth the next day, but his layover was brief, and he did not call Judy, though he was tempted. He flew on to Sydney, where he had another layover.
Dennis was certain that Langley knew where he was at this point, since he had booked the last leg under his real name. All plane manifests were open to the Agency and their good friends, the NSA.
The long flight across the Pacific to Los Angeles International Airport was marked by alternating bouts of boredom, anxiety, and an undercurrent of depression.
He drank several nips of Scotch, but the alcohol only managed to force him to hit the bathroom with a frequency that irritated the passengers in his row.
***
The Immigration Service agent at LAX looked at his passport, his Customs declaration form, then at her screen, then at him, then back at his passport, and finally back to the screen. Since he had an official government passport, he did not expect to be questioned, but she said, “Were you in Australia on government business?”