Fallout

CHAPTER 13

With Craig Kreident pulled away from the militia case, Agents Goldfarb and Jackson approached the small home of Bryce Connors, the Hoover Dam worker who had disappeared sometime the previous day.

They had their search warrants and their suspicions, but nothing tangible to connect Connors with the Eagle’s Claw — at least not yet. But if the October 24th deadline could be believed, they could waste no time dismissing possible leads.

Connors’s house was a low one-story suburban home built in the late sixties, painted a burnt-orange color that reminded Goldfarb of baby diarrhea. It did not stand out from the others on the street, an average home in an average residential district.

The area around Henderson had once been a quiet suburb south of Las Vegas, populated by blue-collar families, many of whom worked at the casinos or the Air Force bases or the dam itself. Now, though, strip malls had moved in, streets turned into highways — and what had once been a residential neighborhood was now bisected by a busy thoroughfare complete with traffic signals on virtually every corner.

Jackson parked their rental car in front of the house against the curb. Across the street, Goldfarb saw a video rental store, a small coffee and donut shop, a beauty parlor, and a Circle K convenience store. Early morning customers wandered in the stores, but here on the residential side of the street the homes seemed quiet. Everyone had already gone to work, kids already at school.

Goldfarb stepped onto the sidewalk, brushing a palm over his curly dark hair. Paying attention to every detail, he checked the handgun in its shoulder holster, gripped the search warrant and his badge wallet in hand. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and find a hot clue,” he said, squinting at the unremarkable house.

Behind the steering wheel, Jackson glanced up into the rear-view mirror, watching carefully for traffic before he climbed out the driver’s side. “Sure,” he answered. “Maybe Mr. Connors will just confess, and we’ll find a nice little manifesto describing everything the Eagle’s Claw intends to do.”

Goldfarb smiled and shrugged. “Or maybe it’ll just be a dead end. But we’ve got to start somewhere.”

They knocked on the front door and waited, but the home greeted them with only silence. “Not surprising,” Jackson said. “Mr. Garcia was unable to reach him either.”

“My guess is he’s skipped town,” Goldfarb said. He winked at Jackson. “Hopefully, we can find some trace evidence, at least some residual explosive materials, something to link this guy with the bombs we found at the dam.”

After knocking repeatedly, they walked around the house, loudly identifying themselves and following standard procedure. Finally, reaching the side garage door, Jackson removed a pack of locksmith’s tools from his inner jacket pocket. “Time to proceed to Plan B,” he said.

As Jackson fiddled with the side door, Goldfarb looked around, waiting for the neighbors to come squawking or pointing shotguns at them. He patted the search warrant in his breast pocket, but it didn’t console him. No telling who around here might sympathize with Connors. “Can’t you hurry it up, Randall?” he said.

“I’m not exactly an expert lockpick,” Jackson grunted.

A snap and a ping signified either the tumblers finally giving way, or one of the locksmith tools snapping in half. Jackson smiled broadly at his companion, then turned the door knob, pushing his way into the garage. “Anybody home?” he called.

“FBI,” Goldfarb said in a thin voice that carried a distressing squeak. He cleared his throat. That was no way for a Federal agent to sound.

Inside, the garage was dim and smelled of gasoline. Oil stains splattered the floor like old dried blood. Jackson flicked on a light, a bank of crudely wired fluorescents dangling from the wooden rafters.

Goldfarb could see a workbench strewn with tools, an auto-parts calendar tacked onto a two-by-four support beam. With a chilling realization he saw that Friday, October 24 was circled in red.

“Bingo,” Goldfarb said, cautiously withdrawing his Beretta from its shoulder holster. “Time to be prepared, just like the Boy Scout motto says. He might have left us some surprises.”

Three gray 55-gallon oil drums sat in a corner. Jackson bent over to sniff. “Fuel oil,” he said. “This guy must be gearing up for the next fuel shortage.”

Goldfarb gestured to bags of fertilizer stacked against the opposite wall. “Or maybe he’s just trying out some chemistry experiments,” he said. “He’s making ANFO. There must be enough for a hundred pounds of TNT equivalent.” He paused. “I think we should be very, very careful Jackson.”

The dark-skinned agent nodded silently, then stood against the entrance into the house. For some odd reason he pressed his ear against the door, heard nothing, then turned the knob, surprised to find it unlocked. He stepped over the threshold, glancing warily from side to side.

Goldfarb followed, his handgun drawn. “FBI,” he called out again.

They entered the kitchen. Dishes piled in the sink were caked with dried food. “Not much of a housekeeper,” Jackson said.

Goldfarb wrinkled his nose at the old food. “Not much of a cook either.”

“I guess blowing up the free world takes precedence over good housekeeping.”

They moved deeper into the house, staying close to each other but separating to cover ground as quickly as possible. The place had a deserted feel to it, but oppressive — as if glinting yellow eyes were watching them from shadowy corners.

“He’s long gone,” Goldfarb said. “Listen to how quiet it is.”

“Yes, but how much of a hurry was he in when he fled, and what did he leave behind?” Jackson answered.

Goldfarb sniffed the air. “This guy must have been nuts to live in here with this chemical stink. Smells like he used rocket fuel for an air freshener.”

“Quite the chemist, our Mr. Connors,” Jackson said. “But I don’t think he’ll be making any more bombs in here. Maybe he didn’t get time to concoct a surprise for this Friday.”

Goldfarb moved down the hallway past a single bathroom. The toilet seat was up, the bathtub stained and cracked, the shower curtains rimmed with mildew. The small single bed in the main bedroom was unmade. Goldfarb frowned, muttering to himself. “I guess the maid hasn’t come yet this morning.” He continued to snoop around.

Stepping cautiously into the living room, Jackson found an overstuffed reclining chair, its plaid fabric worn, discolored stuffing poking out like thistledown. Beside it, a metal TV tray held a three-week-old program listing, the kind that came free in the newspaper. The television itself was an old Zenith with vacuum tubes that probably took several minutes to warm up. He saw no cable box, no remote control.

Jackson continued his cursory inspection and went to the front door, where they would have entered had anyone answered the knock. He glanced down at the floor and the hinges — and froze in horror.

Small blocks of the bluish-gray plastic explosive had been mounted along the jamb, rigged to contact points connected to the door, strung to all the front windows. If he and Goldfarb had broken inside, the bombs would have detonated — enough to blow out the front of the house and all the windows. Both agents would have been killed instantly.

Suddenly the house seemed much more sinister around him. Swallowing in his dry throat, Jackson bent over to scrutinize the wires.

At the other end of the house, Goldfarb turned from the bedroom to the opposite side of the hall, some kind of den with a door half closed. He glanced inside, his hand on the doorknob. He saw stacks of books, drawings, maps, leaflets, piled up on and around an old card table. Brown boxes filled with debris, wadded newspapers sat beside the table. “Whoa, jackpot.”

On one white wall all the pictures had been removed, but hanging nails still stuck out from the sheetrock plaster board. Excited by his discovery, Goldfarb pushed the door open and just had time to hear the faint tink as a tripwire popped free. He instantly saw two short words scrawled across the wall in thick black magic marker:

Jackson yelled from the living room. “Ben, watch out! The place is booby trapped!”

Before Goldfarb could turn, the inside walls of the den erupted in flames.