Читать книгу Stony Mesa Sagas - Chip Ward - Страница 22

Chapter 15

The new security guard at the Sea Ledges tar sands mine saw the gathering clouds. They built up into a towering mass above the mine site. The topmost layer of the massive cloud was etched in silver but the dense bottom was a dark and ominous grey. The guard was not alarmed. Monsoon season was like this. Usually the storms passed or dissipated. You could see storms on the horizon all day long and never get wet. The desert is big and thunder storms are a hit-or-miss affair.

This one was different. Darker and bigger than most, it rumbled and growled for close to an hour. The guard went into the shed where they kept equipment and broke out a rain poncho. He lit a cigarette and leaned back on a plastic lawn chair under a sheet-metal eve. “Bring it on,” he said aloud. “Start the show.”

A couple of days before, an eco-terrorist set fire to a house trailer and drove a bulldozer over a cliff. The site was strewn with yellow police tape because the detectives who were supposed to examine the crime scene were on another case and getting to the Sea Ledges site was a long and difficult trip. Construction was temporarily halted. The guard who was on the site when the sabotage occurred was fired and everyone who worked at the site was tense. But the young man on duty that morning reasoned that monkey-wrenchers don’t work in the rain and they don’t hit the same place twice in a week. He wanted to relax and the storm offered welcome entertainment.

In the first minute after the rain began to pour down it was clear this was no ordinary thunder bumper. It was as if someone turned on a fire hose. Rain came down in pillars of gray and silver. A trillion fists pounded the ground. The storm cloud pulsed with lightning and cracked with thunder so loud he felt it in his teeth. His hair lifted from his head and crackled with static electricity.

The dry washes filled with rivers of water and every low spot became a pond. The metal shed behind him buckled under the weight of the wet onslaught. He heard a groaning sound and realized that the company Hummer he rode in on was moving, lifted by rising water and headed slowly downhill, wagging back and forth as it moved like it was happy to be swimming away on its own. He scrambled to a ledge above the mine site and watched the carnage unfold. Machinery slid this way and that, shed roofs caved in, cement pads snapped as the soil beneath them disappeared into the maelstrom. Debris tangled in downed power lines made a temporary dam across the wash below him. Eventually the pressure of the mass of water trapped behind it snapped the lines and unleashed a small tsunami of mud and metal.