Judgment at Alcatraz by Dave Edlund (best historical fiction books of all time txt) 📗

even suspect you’ve hassled Toby, I’ll be back. And I’ll kill you. You’ll never see it coming. Just boom, and you’re both dead. Have I made myself clear?”

The two nodded. “Don’t worry. We won’t bother Toby no more.”

“Oh, I’m not worried. But you should be,” she growled.

Cole and Craig scampered down the driveway and out of sight. Danya picked up the two clubs and tossed them into the garbage. She heard the door hinges squeak, and then a soft voice.

“Danya? Is that you?”

It was Toby. She was wrapped in a blanket, standing on the top step.

“It’s me,” Danya replied. “You won’t be hearing from those two again—ever.”

“Cole and his brother? They were here?”

“Yeah. Just left.”

“I don’t get it. What did you say to them?”

Danya smiled. “Let’s just say I was able to convince them of the error of their ways.”

Toby noticed the steel tomahawk, the business end hanging below Danya’s knee.

“I’d imagine that,” Toby pointed at the weapon, “had something to do with your powers of persuasion?”

“Oh, this?” Danya slipped the handle beneath her belt. “Yeah. Maybe a little.”

Chapter 9

Duck Valley Reservation, Nevada

May 17

In the hills, about two miles east of Owyhee Road, a small team of technicians was busy at work. The double-wide trailer that served as their laboratory was adequate, but primitive. Still, they made do with lead shielding and down-draft chemical hoods—eight of them—that vented through the floor of the trailer. The hoods themselves were nothing more than five-sided rectangular boxes, with the sixth side, the front, a clear glass sash that could be raised or lowered.

The technicians stood before the chemical hoods. Their arms, clad in black elbow-length rubber gauntlets, were inserted into the boxes where they worked with corrosive acid. The heavy gloves, lined with a thin layer of lead foil, made even routine finger movements awkward and strenuous.

In half of the hoods, small piles of ceramic pellets were digested. As the acid did its chemical magic, noxious orange-brown fumes were given off, and these had to be ducted to the outside. Once the pellets were dissolved, the resulting solutions were then concentrated, and finally, evaporated to dryness in the other four hoods.

All but the front sash of each hood was wrapped in layers of lead sheet to contain the radiation. To protect the workers—who had to spend time in front of each hood—they were covered in lead-lined suits. Plus, their daily time in front of the hoods was limited to avoid the onset of radiation sickness. This requirement did not significantly limit productivity since the lab was outfitted with cameras for remote monitoring, and the dissolution process, as well as the drying process, proceeded with little in-person oversight from the technicians. The cameras were monitored from a second trailer nearby, which served as the living quarters.

Unbeknownst to the technicians, the radiation monitor each wore had been calibrated to give a false low reading. The job only required two days, insufficient time for the symptoms of radiation exposure to develop. And long-term effects would be of no concern.

After a full day of round-the-clock effort, the ceramic pellets were digested and dried to yield a colorless powder. In this form, the powder was soluble in water—an undesired property. The technicians further heated the powder in air until it decomposed. This process was also completed inside the down-draft chemical hoods. The result—a water insoluble material that was packaged in lead straws, each holding about a gram of radioactive strontium-90. The straws, each about twenty-centimeters long, were crimped at both ends and placed in grooves in graphite trays. A cover, also made of graphite, fit over the trays to secure everything in place.

Sacheen monitored the technician’s progress from the monitors in the second trailer. She’d been paying close attention to their work from the moment she’d delivered the fuel cannisters from the two thermoelectric generators that had been partially dismantled on the shore of Bathurst Inlet. Russia had deployed more than a thousand of the generators decades ago. Unsecured, now they littered the Arctic, leaving their deadly contents free for the taking.

After flying the de Havilland DHC-2 Beaver at tree-top level across the border, she’d made one clandestine fueling stop at a remote ranch, landing on a long and straight dirt road that led to a rustic barn. The owner of the ranch had made a nice profit for less than an hour of work pumping fuel into the Beaver, and for keeping his mouth shut.

Gassed up, she’d completed her flight, landing on a primitive dirt landing strip on the reservation. A simple metal structure served as a hangar for the aircraft as the precious, yet deadly, cargo had been offloaded for further processing.

The graphite containers were stacked next to other boxes, similar in appearance, but filled with lead straws containing cobalt-60 oxide. Another radioactive material, the source had been metallic rods of cobalt-60 used in medical imaging. Like the ceramic pellets, the cobalt rods were also dissolved in acid, and then converted to a water-insoluble powder suitable for aerial dispersion.

“The irony of this location hasn’t been lost on me.” She was sitting at the de facto kitchen table—a simple six-foot plastic folding table.

Across from her sat Leonard Cloud. Like Lewis Blackhawk, he was from the Shoshone tribe and had lived on the Duck Valley Reservation most of his life, having left only long enough to complete a college education at the University of Tulsa.

Leonard’s eyes were dark and clouded with anger.

“It was here,” he said, “on this reservation, that the family of my uncle was murdered by government agents. The date is forever burned in my mind. February twelfth, 1979.”

“Your uncle was a great leader and spokesman for the Movement, for our people,” Sacheen said.

“It came to him naturally. His passion as an outspoken activist in support of Indigenous-People’s rights is well-documented and serves to teach new generations. It is fitting that we are continuing the fight for respect and dignity for all tribes.”

She reached out and wrapped her hands around Leonard’s.

“The atrocities committed by the