host family. I was outside playing with Christiana when the Russian aircraft appeared on the horizon. The Nassars were three-stories up, standing outside on the apartment balcony. He was talking on the phone and drinking tea. She was watering plants.
Flight kicked in for me. I grabbed Christiana’s hand and began running. It wasn’t until we were two blocks down—one block away from the shelter—that I looked back.
And there they were, still as statues on that balcony.
A bomb hit the apartment building, killing them.
Another landed a block in front of me, a direct hit that destroyed the bomb shelter.
Bomb after bomb.
With me in full-fledge flight mode, running through street after crumbling street, little Christiana in tow.
Boom!
Boom!
I’m suddenly fully awake and rolling up in bed, shaking off the nightmare while trying to get my bearings.
For a few panicked seconds, I don’t recognize the small room with a twin bed, two chairs and table. It’s the slight pitch of the ship that reminds me I’m on a cargo ship headed to Ireland. I booked passage—something a globe-trotting friend had told me was possible if you had the money.
I’m onboard the ship transporting illegal, black market cargo. Except it’s not drugs or weapons as I previously thought. It’s uranium. Enriched uranium—a main component of nuclear weaponry.
At one point in every journalist’s career, something she believes to be true turns into something far more horrific. That often beneath the ugly surface of a story, unthinkable things lurk.
Bad enough drugs and guns are sold on the black market. But uranium?
I’ve had time to research things, to do my homework and lay the groundwork for this story. In the 1970s, governments concerned about nuclear weapons being built passed the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty. Parties who sign the treaty will cooperate with each other in developing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, with consideration of developing countries. In 1974, the United States added Section 123. For non-NGS member, US consent is required for any material or equipment designed or prepared for processing of uranium.
The worry? If uranium reaches the wrong hands, every country, every citizen is at risk.
No wonder I’m having nightmares.
Part of being a smart investigative reporter is recognizing when a good opportunity changes into an excellent one. For me, everything changed when I stumbled upon a small slip of paper I found stapled to the original shipping manifest on my return visit to the Acapulco port. The new clerk had taken it upon herself to organize the scribbled bits of note paper her boss had stuffed inside a drawer. I’d interrupted her while she’d been muttering about “unorganized operations” and stapling the fragmented pieces to their corresponding files. Rough, torn edged paper. Scribble I can barely translate.
Señora del Leon
Hacienda Santa Miguel, Tepoztlán
52 33 4500 1122.
$2.97 per kilo (American dollars).
50 crates.
Enriched uranium.
Sunday 22/8
Cork
A67H4C222-422
This slip of paper not only changed the course of my investigation but listed the name and address of a woman who was irrefutably involved in the illegal trade of uranium. It was exactly the forward push I needed after the wasted time spent with that barbarian.
I went to Tepoztlán and gained temporary employment at the señora’s hacienda, tipped off the CIA using the phone number El Chula had given me, then waited for the CIA to make their bust. Witnessed true evil—the señora killing her husband then burying him in her garden. Three weeks of terror then . . . boom.
No bust.
No paper trail on the uranium.
Just my videos and commentary.
I roll out of bed and grab my phone, thumbing through the videos I recorded until I find the one I’m searching for. Sitting down, I hit play. I wince as I relive the nightmare of what happened at Tepoztlán. Señora del Leon’s hacienda blowing up into smoke. My screams, my terror as real as it’d been back in Aleppo. My phone falls to the ground yet is still recording. Capturing me cowering and covering my head, unsure if my hiding place in the bushes in the front yard will protect me.
It’s hard to watch.
It’s even harder to explain what happened.
Did someone intentionally dynamite the horrible woman’s home? Killing her and any chances I had of using her as a lead?
You’re lucky to have been in the front bushes when it happened instead of buried beneath the rubble or along with the poor soul in her garden.
With a sigh, I take a minute to upload all my videos to my cloud file, something I have a bad habit of forgetting to do. Backup in