River of Ruin

The Canal Zone, Panama

An hour had passed since Mercer had driven away aboard the auto carrier. In that hour they had dropped down the near-vertical rails that launched the freighter’s podlike lifeboat and waited for ten tense minutes for one of the ship’s loading ramps to open. It was Bruneseau who motored them toward the repair docks at Gamboa, satisfied that he had given Mercer enough time and that the geologist was not coming. The Gamboa harbor was where the canal operators kept some of their tugboats, as well as the 350-ton crane barge Titan. Away from where workers repaired large buoys that bobbed along a seawall, the French spy had hot-wired an employee’s battered Chevy while Foch and Lauren helped the injured pilot. Bruneseau took the wheel for the drive to the Legion safe house in Panama City.

It was just moments into that ride, as they crossed the trestle bridge they had almost hit with their helicopter, that they saw the auto carrier again as it continued toward the Pedro Miguel Lock. From the ship’s towering deck they spied the Chinese Gazelle lift away toward the west, all of them certain that Mercer was on board, but only Lauren Vanik feeling that he was somehow still alive.

Panama’s military had just begun their response to the distress calls from the ship and a handful of army vehicles passed them on the road, headed toward the lock where the ship would likely be detained for an investigation. They were in the outskirts of the city when they spotted the first military chopper headed for the canal—far too late to go after the Gazelle.

Now they were safely at the house. Carlson was being looked after by a medic who had the skills to remove the bullet fragment lodged in his thigh. The corpsman singled out Lauren for stemming the pilot’s blood loss with a tourniquet while still maintaining a trickle of circulation in the lower limb. She had spent the time riding to Panama City ministering to the man. In her rage against the French, her aid to the pilot had nothing to do with compassion. She simply needed something to keep her from being overwhelmed by grief and anger.

Two of the off-duty Legionnaires went out to dump the stolen car downtown while the rest huddled over Carlson in a back bedroom, leaving Lauren alone. Restless, she stripped off her fatigue blouse and stood over the kitchen sink splashing palmfuls of water over her face. The cool water soaked the neck of her T-shirt and beaded like diamond chips in her long lashes. She could feel hot tears mingled with the water, greasepaint and sweat.

She couldn’t define what Mercer had become to her in the few days she’d known him. It had been so long since she’d had such a reaction to a man and she didn’t trust herself enough to dwell on it. During her tour in Kosovo, she’d learned to insulate herself from her feelings. To become too close to comrades or those she’d been charged to protect made the inevitable losses unbearable. In order to face the horror and the pain she had to prevent them from getting too deep. That lesson had cost her part of her soul, she knew. By insulating herself from the agony, she’d had to sacrifice what brought her the deepest joy, too.

The passage of time was mending that gap and maybe this was the first instance where her heart had broken through the shield she’d built around it. She wasn’t sure, and wouldn’t allow herself to think specifically about Mercer, gladdened that anyone had gotten through. She clung to that thought, drawing from it, using it to find the will to act. For the past hour, events had moved her along because she’d had no choice. Now, standing at the sink, she knew it was time for action.

Mercer had programmed Rodrigo Herrara’s number into her cell phone so she could dial it with the press of a button. Roddy’s wife, Carmen, answered. Without going into details, Lauren told her that she needed Roddy and Harry White. She gave directions to the safe house, which wasn’t too far from the Herraras’ home in Panama City’s El Cangrejo neighborhood. Carmen said the men were in the back-yard with Miguel and would be on their way in minutes.

Bruneseau’s actions at the lake—his reckless need to get into the compound—was an indication that the French mission in Panama went beyond a concern for radio interception antennas. But until she knew what it was they were looking for, she decided not to call the U.S. embassy. The ambassador had bought his post with financial contributions to the current White House administration, so he didn’t have the clout in Washington to forward any report she gave him. The CIA station chief was a hopeless drunk who was marking time to his retirement and Lieutenant Colonel Bancroft, her military superior, wouldn’t jeopardize his chance to put eagles on his shoulders by acting on what Lauren had found out. Maybe if she had concrete evidence—but for now he’d do nothing. That left her with Frenchmen she didn’t trust, an old man and an out-of-work canal pilot.

She was at the front window drinking from a second bottle of water when an older Honda Accord pulled into the driveway. She recognized Roddy behind the wheel and Harry sitting erect next to him. It was only when she opened the door that Rene Bruneseau came out of the back room.

He glared at seeing the two men enter the safe house. “What is the meaning of this?”

His size and intimidating build may have stopped most people in their tracks but Harry White brushed past him with such a casual contempt that the spy retreated a step. “Where’s Mercer?” he asked Lauren in a brusque tone that couldn’t cover his concern.

“Captain Vanik,” Rene snapped, “who are these men?”

Harry wheeled on Bruneseau, poking the heavier man in the chest with every third word. “I’ll ask you the same question in a second, but first I want to know where Mercer is.” It had taken him two seconds to gain control of the situation.

Lauren felt a rush of comfort that Harry was here. More than an ally, the feisty octogenarian was an advocate who wouldn’t stop until Mercer was safe. Had Bruneseau not been in the room, she would have hugged him. “The Chinese have him,” she answered. “They took him away in a chopper.” She paused, unsure how to tell him that she didn’t know Mercer’s condition. “We don’t know if he’s ...”

White ignored the implications of her voice trailing off. “Took him on a chopper from where to where?”

“From a ship in the canal. They were headed west.”

“I thought you guys were going to the volcanic lake?”

“It’s a long story,” Lauren replied.

“That is enough!” Bruneseau snapped. “Captain Vanik, you have compromised our safe house and our mission by inviting these two men. I will not permit you to tell them any more.”

“As of right now,” she said hotly, her well of strength seemingly replenished by Harry’s presence, “your mission, whatever it is, means nothing to me. I am getting Mercer back. I suspect you will do nothing to help me, but you damned well can’t stop me either.”

“What she said,” Harry echoed and settled onto a couch, his body language dismissing Bruneseau. He lit a cigarette. “You said it was a long story. I’ve got all day to hear it.”

The Frenchman wouldn’t let his point drop. “I cannot believe your unprofessionalism. These men are civilians.”

The rage Lauren had been holding in since the canal exploded. “My unprofessionalism? Don’t you dare lecture me. You and Foch were the ones who tried to infiltrate Liu’s camp at the lake and nearly got us all killed. You still haven’t explained what you were looking for, and don’t give me some cock-and-bull story about Chinese listening posts.”

“I will not answer your questions.”

“But I will.” The voice came from the hallway leading to the bedrooms. It was Foch.

“Lieutenant!”

“I am sorry, monsieur. They deserve the truth.”

Although the two men switched languages, there was little difficulty following their argument. Bruneseau’s anger did nothing to blunt the Legionnaire’s resolve, even when faced with what sounded like a direct order. When it was over, the spy leaned against a wall with his arms crossed. It was evident by his expression that Foch was going to pay for what he was about to reveal.

“Eleven weeks ago, a shipment of spent uranium fuel was transported from Rokkasho in Japan to the reprocessing plant in France owned by Cogema.” Foch overrode the startled gasps and the quick looks of confusion directed at him. “The route, like the previous one hundred and sixty times such a load has been moved, took the specially designed double-hulled ship through the Panama Canal. The fuel was stored in what are called type-B casks, huge drums about twenty feet long and weighing over a hundred tons. About six tons of spent uranium are carried in each cask. Since 1971 about thirty-five thousand tons of spent fuel have been transported in these and other types of containers.

“This is all sanctioned by the International Atomic Energy Agency under guidelines drawn up in the 1970s,” Foch explained when Lauren drew a breath between her teeth at the amount of radioactive material routinely shipped around the globe. “When the ship arrived in France, and each cask was reweighed, one came up five hundred pounds light.”

“Jesus Christ! You lost five hundred pounds of radioactive fuel?” Harry said.

Foch nodded. “There are two ways this could have happened. Either it wasn’t loaded in Japan or it was taken from the ship during its run to France. French regulators are working with the Japanese at Rokkasho to see if the problem occurred at the plant—”

“And you’re working with Bruneseau to see if it was somehow taken off when the ship passed through the canal,” Lauren finished for him.

“It is an unlikely scenario,” Bruneseau scoffed. “The ship never stopped on its way through and only three pilots came on board to guide it. Not enough men to open one of the casks and steal a deadly fuel assembly weighing almost two hundred kilos.”

“But you were still given orders to check it out anyway?”

“My government wanted every contingency investigated.”

“How big is the ship that carried the fuel?” Roddy Herrara spoke for the first time.

“One hundred and four meters, about three hundred and forty feet,” Foch answered after Roddy told him he had been a canal pilot.

“A ship that size,” Roddy said, “would only need one pilot.”

“Except for its extraordinary cargo. Surely they’d bring in extras to help.”

“Maybe one other,” the Panamanian replied. “Not two.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Bruneseau said. “Even two men couldn’t have done it alone. There’s no way the uranium could have been taken off the ship here. The safety monitors on the vessel never recorded a spike in radiation, the ship’s officers said that the pilots never left the bridge and the security tags on the cask hadn’t been tampered with. The five hundred pounds of missing uranium was not on board. The Japanese screwed up by shorting the load when they put the fuel into the casks. It’s a clerical error.”

“You’re probably right, sir,” Roddy said respectfully, “yet you seem to have stumbled onto something here or you wouldn’t be so vehemently pursuing your investigation.”

Bruneseau remained silent for a moment. “I’ll grant you something’s going on, but it’s not about a lost shipment of uranium. We focused on Hatcherly because of their connection to China’s military, but in the weeks we’ve been monitoring them with gamma detectors we’ve found nothing. Their activities at the lake were something we didn’t know about, and yet there was no evidence of radiation at that location either.” He turned to Lauren. “You’re right when you said my mission has nothing to do with yours. I don’t care that Hatcherly Consolidated is robbing this country blind or that they’re about to complete a Chinese takeover of the Panama Canal. Your country should have considered that when they gave the damned thing away. As I told my superiors when they sent us here, the whole trip is a waste. Nous sommes fini, ici. We’re done here.”

“Señor.” A little of the respect had drained from Roddy’s voice. “I am not saying that it is likely that your ship was tampered with in the canal, but I think you should know it is possible. Many times during a transit, tugboats are used to nose a ship into a lock. Depending on the time of day your ship went through, enough men could have boarded the vessel from the tug and broken into one of these casks.”

“Don’t you think I’ve had men sweep all the tugs looking for residual radiation?” Bruneseau retorted. “That’s the first damned thing we did when we got to Panama. I’m telling you the casks weren’t tampered with. The missing uranium is still sitting in Japan and eventually some clerk will find the error that wrongly listed it on the ship’s manifest.”

“You’re willing to take the risk if you’re wrong?” Harry growled.

“If there was a risk, no. But there isn’t.”

“And what about Mercer?” Lauren had gone bitter, knowing how the agent would reply. “Don’t you owe him something for using him to gain access to more of what Hatcherly is doing? I thought the Legion always took care of their own?”

“And I,” Rene pronounced, “am not with the Legion.”

Lauren looked to Foch, imploring. The soldier seemed to have gone as far as he was willing. He couldn’t meet her gaze. “Neither was Mercer. I am sorry, Captain.”

“You cowards,” she hissed. “Mercer risked his life not knowing what you were looking for and you’ll just abandon him now that you think you’ve been on a fool’s errand.”

“Even if we wanted to help,” Foch offered, “we don’t know where Hatcherly took him or even if he’s still alive.”

Harry White leaned forward, his eyes drilling Bruneseau to the wall even as he spoke to the whole room. “I know where they’re taking him.”

Rodrigo Herrara nodded. “Sí, we know.”

A feeling of hope surged through Lauren’s body. Her breath seemed to catch in her throat. “Where?”

Harry, never one to let an opportunity to be the center of attention pass, ground out his cigarette and ceremoniously lit another. He decided against opening the whiskey-filled flask at the top of his sword cane. With Mercer in danger, time was of the essence.

“Okay, after your little romp in the container port, Mercer asked Roddy and me to find out where those dump trucks were bringing all that gravel from and why. No surprise, we didn’t find a trace of the armored car. Liu probably stashed it that night after moving the gold someplace else. Bank most likely.

“Anyway, Roddy and I waited outside Hatcherly’s gates all the next day and into the early evening before the first of the dump trucks left the container port. They drove out of the city and across the canal on the Bridge of the Americas toward Penonome to the west.” He gave Lauren a significant look. It was the same direction the Gazelle had taken. “About twenty miles past that town they turned onto a private road belonging to Las Minas del Viente Diablos. The Twenty Devils Mine.”

“A mine?” Lauren asked, having never heard of the place. “What kind of mine?”

Harry looked pleased with himself and his detective skills. “We talked to a peasant walking along the highway. Told us it’s a gold mine.”

“I know there’s a big copper mine between Santiago and David but the gold mines in Panama were in the Darien Province and have been closed for a century.”

“The place is little known,” Roddy interjected. “After we discovered that is where the trucks are going, I phoned the ministry that oversees mines. I wanted to question some officials but I was refused a meeting. I got only as far as a low-level clerk who told me that the mine has been in operation for six months and that it’s partially owned by a foreign company. He wouldn’t tell me which country nor would he tell me how much gold they’ve extracted.”

“At the lake,” Lauren said, “we discovered that Liu Yousheng hasn’t found the Twice-Stolen Treasure yet. Is it possible the gold Mercer and I saw at the warehouse came from this Twenty Devils Mine?”

“I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion quite yet,” Harry said enigmatically.

“This is a waste of time,” Bruneseau dismissed the whole line of inquiry. “We don’t know where the Gazelle went after it left the auto carrier. As for the trucks at the port? Hatcherly is a maritime company. They could be shipping ore for the mining company.”

Harry smirked, as if he was setting up the French agent. “A minute ago you said that you’d take no chances if Liu had stolen the atomic fuel and stashed it someplace in Panama. What if the mine is controlled by Hatcherly and that’s where the helicopter took Mercer? Would you be willing to check it out?”

“It could have gone anywhere.”

“Too true,” White agreed. “But we have evidence that something about that mine isn’t kosher, a strange link between it and the warehouse. Remember the gravel in the warehouse?” The others waited expectantly while Harry drew out the moment. “Hatcherly isn’t moving it to a ship from the mine. It’s the opposite actually. It appears that the gravel is brought in on ships and is then transported to the mine.”

“Huh? Why?”

Looking around the room, Harry said, “Only way to find out is to go and see for ourselves.”

He didn’t need to add that his interest was finding Mercer, not why Hatcherly was playing bizarre shell games with dump-truck loads of gravel.