They finished the meal and headed outside, their thoughts returning to the trouble they were facing. Their meeting at the depot with project manager Robert De La Garza lay ahead.
Jessie hoped the conversation would be more productive than the last time she was there.
TEN
The Alamo Chemical Depot, fifty miles southwest of Fort Carson, sat on twenty-three thousand acres of flat, arid land dotted with sagebrush. Concrete bunkers beneath mounds of grass-covered earth housed the weapons set for destruction.
The plant itself was an eighty-five-acre facility composed of buildings, storage units, and pipelines created specifically to destroy one of the last two remaining US chemical stockpiles.
Bran had done his homework on the facility, digging up as much as he could off the internet. It helped that Jessie had been to the depot when her father was commander and had learned so much about it.
Carol Mason, Robert De La Garza’s administrative assistant, was a dark-haired woman in her thirties, a civilian, like the rest of the employees at the plant. She led them to a beige, flat-roofed, unremarkable structure, where men and women in yellow hard hats, the Weidner emblem on the front, roamed the grounds. Employees working inside the actual destruction facility wore full-body hazmat suits, including gloves and helmets.
“The chemicals are destroyed by a neutralization process,” Carol explained as they walked. “Followed by a biotreatment procedure. It’s all done with the use of sophisticated robots.”
“From what I understand,” Bran said, “not all the weapons can be destroyed that way.”
“That’s right. There’s a second procedure, an explosive system that’s used for problematic munitions whose deteriorated condition won’t allow them to be destroyed by the automated system.”
Carol paused in front of a door. “We’re here. Mr. De La Garza is expecting you.” She opened the door and Bran walked past her into a simply furnished office with a desk, metal file cabinets, and a black ergonomic computer chair. A pair of metal-framed chairs upholstered in beige vinyl sat in front of it. A single window behind the desk looked out on a series of huge stainless pipes and more flat-roofed buildings.
Robert De La Garza rose from behind his desk, tall and lean, with the olive skin and coarse black hair of his Hispanic heritage. Introductions were made and De La Garza shook Bran’s hand. “Nice to meet you,” he said.
“Thank you for seeing us,” Bran said.
De La Garza turned to Jessie. “I’m surprised to see you back here, Jessie. I thought I’d answered your questions when you came to me before, but apparently not to your satisfaction. Have a seat.”
She sat down and Bran sat down beside her.
“I was hoping by now you’d have more details on how the theft was actually accomplished,” Jessie said.
De La Garza leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers as he considered his reply. “I suppose you deserve to know as much as I’m at liberty to tell you.”
Bran tried to get a read on him, but he was careful to school his features. De La Garza was a powerful man in a powerful position. The theft of deadly chemical weapons was a black mark against him that could destroy his career.
“Our assumption at this point,” he began, “is that the operation was carried out by a small number of people. We aren’t sure how many. As you probably know, trucks loaded by soldiers at the bunker sites are used to transport the munitions to the destruction facility. On the day of the theft, the truck was loaded as usual, but instead of following the normal routine, the driver simply drove away.”
“No one noticed when the truck didn’t show up at its destination?” Bran asked.
“A GPS tracker monitors all the vehicles’ locations. Twenty-three thousand acres is a huge parcel of land. There was a programming glitch that allowed the truck to go missing without anyone noticing. Apparently it was unloaded somewhere off-site, then returned to the plant.”
“Why weren’t the missing weapons noticed when the truck finally arrived?” Jessie asked.
“Our facility is highly automated. When the trucks reach the plant, they aren’t unloaded manually. A mechanized system does the work. The computer registered delivery of the munitions, and the driver returned to the field for another load, and so on until the end of the day.”
“So the vehicle arrived empty,” Bran said, “but the weapons weren’t discovered missing for more than two weeks.”
“That’s right.”
“That’s when Charles Frazier found the computer discrepancy and reported the missing munitions to my father,” Jessie added.