The Yellowstone Brief

by Larry LaVoie

  “Grab a cup of burnt coffee,” David greeted Trick. “Catch me up on things other than your attempt to make the Guinness book of records.”

  “I nearly froze my...”

  “Seriously, what happened when I was out?” David interrupted.

  They sat down in the mess with fresh mugs of hot coffee.

  “I’m beginning to get used to this stuff,” Trick said, lifting his cup. “If they send it through the grinder again, it might even be drinkable.”

  “I thought they were going to have the road finished today,” David said. “It looks like they didn’t take this stretch on top of the world into consideration when they gave that optimistic estimate.”

  “It looks good to me,” Trick said. “From my perch on top of the world, I could see the other road crew to the west.”

  “They have another crew?”

  “Yeah, east and west. It looks like they’ll meet about a mile west of the Divide. You can not imagine how treacherous the next mile of road is. I don’t see what good it will be. I mean, it will be useless for moving heavy equipment to the tunneling site. And if they have to evacuate the site in a hurry, forget it.”

  “My guess is it’s necessary for getting the GPR units over the tunneling route. The riskiest part of the tunneling operation will be under this section we’re sitting on, right here.”

  “I agree, this area is filled with faults and the heavy snow pack has filled them with ground water. I overheard one of the tunneling engineers say all hell breaks loose when one of those NPTMs hits water.” He finished his coffee and stood up. “Let’s try to get Henry on the radio. I’d like to know if he has anything new to tell us, before I give Colonel Mathews an update.”

  “You call him. I’m going to retrieve the satellite phone. I want it with me in case we get a signal. Tanya will divorce me before we get back if I don’t call her and let her know how things are going.”

  When Trick returned, David had Henry Evans on the radio. “What’s up, Henry?” David held out the radio so Trick could hear.

  “I’m having trouble with my instruments. They communicate by satellite and the signal keeps getting disrupted. Every time there’s a break in the signal, my equipment reboots and tries to send the data again. The last information I got was pretty bad. Mallard Lake Dome is rising fast. I think our time has run out.”

  “Maybe,” David said. “Why don’t I come in and go over the data with you?”

  “Are you nuts? You’ll have to go right past Mallard Lake Dome to get here. You know the ash cloud from Beehive Geyser might be what’s disrupting my signal. That area will be the first to go.”

  From the alarm in Henry’s voice, David could tell he was starting to panic. “Trick and I will head your way right after I brief Colonel Mathews. In the meantime let the FBI know the satellite communications are down.”

  It took an hour for David and Trick to find Colonel Mathews. He was at the westernmost point of the road, waiting to congratulate the two road crews as they came together. They had the length of a football field to finish, although the terrain was so rugged, they could not yet be seen. As Trick pulled the pickup to the side of the road, the colonel climbed out of his Humvee and strutted toward them with a broad grin on his face.

  Trick and David got out and met the colonel in the center of the road. The wind was howling through the narrow gorge which had been blasted through solid rock. Trick had just driven through it, and rocks the size of baseballs were still skipping along the roadway from the spinning tires of the pickup, as they made their way through the narrow opening. “That wind has to be blowing 60 miles an hour,” David said, zipping up his coat. Both Trick and David pulled the collars of their coats around their necks as they approached the grinning colonel.

  “You boys going to stay for the ceremony?” Mathews yelled, over the blasting wind.

  David pulled up the hood on his coat, to further shelter himself from the cold wind. Beyond the colonel, he could see the black smoke from the stack of a road grader blowing sideways and dissipating rapidly. The diesel engines were all but drowned out by the roaring wind. He raised his voice. “Can we meet inside your vehicle. I have some information you need.”

  “This way,” Mathews said, heading back to his Humvee. “There’s room in the back.”

  Inside, David told the colonel what he had heard from Henry. “See that black cloud rising to the west.” David pointed out the window. “That’s Beehive Geyser, the reason we vacated the headquarters at Old Faithful. If there’s a full-scale eruption, I expect that area to go first. After that, the massive pressure relief within the system will cause the rest of the caldera to become unstable and one-by-one, a hundred other sites will burst open. I’ve got to see the data Henry Evans has gathered, before I can say for certain, but he can’t send it to me because his communications are breaking up. By the way, if you were planning on using this road for an evacuation route, it won’t work. It’s too close to the epicenter.”

  “I developed another plan,” Mathews said, matter of fact. “You boys be careful. We still have to get through a few more days of tunneling.”

  David started to get out. “Doctor Wayne,” Mathews said, “when you get back here tonight, camp will be moved to the tunnel site. This road is about finished.”

  “Right,” David said. He looked at Trick, who raised his eyebrows.

  “You have something you want to tell me?” David asked Trick, when they were back in the pickup.

  “Park Headquarters has much better food. I was thinking we should eat there before returning, that is, if we return.”

  “What do you mean, if?”

  “You said it yourself; Mallard Lake Dome will be the first to blow. There is no way we’ll get back here if it does.”

  “Let’s get a move on. We’ll be lucky to reach Mammoth by dinnertime anyway.”

  August 27th, Yellowstone Park Headquarters

  Henry walked out the front door of Headquarters. He had been trying to run down Matt Renfro. The pretty voice on the other end of the phone told him agent Renfro had gone to the infirmary to check on a patient. He turned to his right and walked toward the infirmary, which was the building next door. As he approached the front door of the hospital, he heard a commotion behind him and turned to see several school buses pulling up in front of the Post Office, across the street. Several young people were leaning out the windows harassing a small herd of elk grazing on the grass strip that divided the roadway. They were waving hand-painted signs. He could make out one of them that said, “Save our Planet.” What the hell, how did they get in here? So much for the park being off limits to the public. For a moment he considered approaching the driver and telling him to leave, but he reminded himself, that was someone else’s job. Not in my pay grade. Let the FBI or the Army handle it. He entered the hospital, stopped at the nurse’s station, and inquired of the woman at the desk, “Have you seen Agent Renfro, of the FBI?”

  “First room on the left,” the woman said, without looking at him.

  Henry entered the room, and saw Renfro with a beautiful young lady. “Pardon the intrusion, Agent Renfro.”

  “Dr. Evans, isn’t it?” Renfro said. “Come in.”

  “I’ve been asked to inform you that we have a satellite communication problem, and was wondering if you knew about it. Also, there are a couple of school buses full of demonstrators harassing the wildlife out front.”

  Renfro looked at Heather. “That didn’t take long.”

  “You don’t seem too concerned,” Heather said. “What’s going on?”

  “Actually, we’ve been tracking the demonstrators for the past several hours. We have the National Guard on the way from Cody. They should already be in the park. What bothers me is I haven’t heard anything about the truck with the bomb.”

  “How could they miss them?” Heather asked.

  “We didn’t get the road blocks in place until afternoon yesterday. You were a little sketchy on details, before we got
you hydrated.”

  Henry had been listening to the conversation, without a clue to what he was hearing. When he heard bomb he stepped forward and grabbed Renfro’s arm. “Did you say bomb!”

  “You have a detailed map of the park handy?” Renfro asked Henry.

  “My office.”

  “Good. Heather, do you feel up to going back in the field?”

  “Anything I can do to help.” Heather said.

  “Henry, we need you and your map. If that bomb has made it to the park, we need to find it fast.”

  Henry stopped at the door of the infirmary, looking outside at the riot. “You sure we want to go out there?”

  Renfro pushed open the door and the acrid smell of tear gas burned his nostrils. “Is there a back way out of here?”

  Henry led them down the hall and they left through a side door and walked behind the building, across a patch of grass, and came up behind the Headquarters building. He pulled a set of keys from his pocket and let them in through a back door. In another minute, they were in his cluttered office. On his wall hung a large topographical map of the park.

  “Agent Martin, what were they planning on doing with the bomb?” Renfro asked.

  “Joshua said they were not going to set it off, only use it as leverage to stop the tunneling. At this point I think we have to consider all contingencies. Why would they bring it to the park if they were only going to use it as leverage to stop the drilling?”

  “If they weren’t headed here, we would have heard from them by now. My bet is they are going to detonate it in the park. If they do that, this national landmark will be off limits for a thousand years.”

  “Get me a map of Wyoming,” Renfro said to Henry.

  Henry opened a filing cabinet and handed Renfro a state road map.

  Renfro spread the map out over the mass of paper stacked on the desk. “We know they were coming from here.” His finger traced the road from Hell’s Little Acre, and stopped at Shoshoni. He looked at Heather. “Is it possible they were never intending on bringing the bomb into the park through Cody? What if they took another entrance?”

  “Their camp was set up outside of Cody. I assumed they would be headed back the way we came. Come to think of it, if they wanted to get the bomb in the park, they probably wouldn’t announce their arrival with a demonstration.”

  “What if they took this route, instead?” His finger continued west from Shoshoni across the Indian reservation connecting with HWY 287. “This road leads straight to the south entrance.”

  It was like a light went on in Heather’s head. “The demonstrators were sent to Park Headquarters as a diversion. We’re a good 50 miles from the south entrance. If they get the bomb into the Park, there will be no way ....”

  “I hate to pour rain on your parade,” Henry butted in, “but the reason I ran you down, in addition to telling you communications were being disrupted, was to tell you that things are getting really unstable. That darkness outside isn’t a summer storm. At least not the kind of storm you might expect this time of year.”

  Renfro glared at Henry. “For God’s sake, man, what are you trying to tell us?”

  “That area to the south is already sending up ash clouds. I think that’s what has messed up communication with my satellite instruments. I was wondering if you were having the same problem with your satellite communications?”

  “My last communication with Washington was pretty broken up. What do you mean by really unstable?” He turned back to Heather. “We’ve got to get word to the south entrance.”

  “I think the landlines still work.” Henry opened a park directory and dialed the land line number for the south gate. He let it ring. On the tenth ring, he handed the phone to Renfro.

  Renfro handed the receiver back to Henry. “We have to assume the worst.”

  “You mean the bomb is already in the park,” Heather said.

  “The radios are working,” Henry said. “I spoke with Dr. Wayne this morning by two-way.”

  “Dr. Wayne, where is he?”

  Henry shrugged. “Could be anywhere by now. That was over an hour ago. He said he was coming to headquarters, but he was on the road from the tunneling site. I told him that wasn’t a very good idea. That road leads right to the area that is rising.” Henry pointed on the map using a ballpoint pen as a pointer. “If they make it this far, then this would be the logical road to take, but it’s also the area that has been erupting. If it’s too hot, they may have to turn right toward West Thumb, go north and cut across the caldera at Fishing Bridge.”

  Heather was following Henry’s pen as it traced the road. “That goes right past the south entrance,” she said excitedly. “Maybe they will see something.”

  Henry handed his radio to Heather. “They’re on this frequency.”

  Renfro grabbed the radio from her. “I spoke with him the other day, he’ll know my voice” He pushed the talk button on the radio. “Dr. Wayne, can you hear me? Over.”

  As they bounced down the rocky road, Trick cinched his seat belt a little tighter. “This truck is a piece of crap, if you know what I mean,” Trick said. “If we come across a Humvee, we should make a trade.”

  “Just a minute. I think I heard my radio,” David said.

  He pulled the radio from its holster and answered, “Wayne here, over.”

  “This is Agent Renfro. What is your location? Over.”

  David looked out the window. “It’s hard to tell. It’s awfully black out here. Over.”

  “Are you headed toward West Thumb, by any chance? Over.”

  “Negative. We are on the Loop Road headed north a bit south of Madison, over.”

  Henry took the radio from Renfro. “Dr. Wayne, this is Henry Evans. How bad was it going past the junction at Old Faithful? Over.”

  “Not too bad. The ash cloud is going straight up and drifting north. It’s a mess where we are right now, though. There was some broken pavement we had to work our way around. What are you doing with Agent Renfro? Over.”

  Renfro grabbed the radio back from Henry and gave him a dirty look. “This is Renfro again. We have a situation, and it appears you may be the only one who can help us, over.”

  “Be glad to help. What can we do? Over.”

  “Have you seen anything unusual?”

  “Unusual? You’ll have to be more specific. We got a lot going on out here. Over.”

  “This is an open communication. Can you get to a landline and contact me at Dr. Evan’s office? Over.”

  “It may take a while. I think there is a store at Madison. Maybe I could use their phone. Over.”

  Renfro was frantically searching the map. “Can you make it to the junction at Norris and wait for us? Maybe we can meet you there. Over.”

  “Can you have Henry bring his information? If you haven’t heard, we’re trying to bore a tunnel into this keg of dynamite, and it looks like we may be running out of time. Over.”

  “Don’t get smart with me, Dr. Wayne. We have an emergency, or I wouldn’t be talking to you. ”

  Trick was listening to the conversation and leaned toward David. “Tell him he forgot to say ‘over’.”

  David gave Trick a dirty look.

  “Ask him if he’ll bring a Humvee,” Trick said.

  “You wouldn’t happen to be driving a Humvee? Over.”

  “A Humvee. Are you serious?”

  “I’m serious, Agent Renfro. Our pickup is about to die. And it’s not pretty out here. Not much else will maneuver in this kind of environment. Over.”

  “Roger that. I’ll see if I can find a Humvee. You wait at Norris and keep your radio on this frequency.”

  “What was that all about?” Trick asked.

  “Some kind of an emergency. You’d think we had enough on our plates without the FBI. How long before we get to Norris?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. I’m having a hard time with landmarks. If you see a sign let me know.”

  *****

  A
ugust 27th, Yellowstone Park South Entrance

  Andy Rhane dragged the body of a soldier aside and opened the gate at the south entrance to Yellowstone. He waved the truck through and closed the gate. He ran up to the driver of the truck and slapped the door. The driver rolled down the window.

  “Keep close on my tail. I’m not certain where the tunnel road is. It wasn’t clear in the radio transmissions. Just because we’re in the park doesn’t mean no one is looking for us.”

  Andy got back in the SUV and continued north into Yellowstone with the truck close on his tail. “Where are we going to plant the bomb?” His passenger asked in Farsi.

  “In the tunnel.”

  “But I thought the plan was to use the bomb as a means of stopping the tunnel construction?”

  “As far as Joshua was concerned, that was the plan,. What better way of stopping the tunnel than to blow it up?”

  “I see.” The man stroked the stubby black growth on his face. “The tunnel will blow, and the park will blow. What a statement that will make around the world.” He grinned and his eyes danced with excitement. “We will be famous, like movie stars!”

  Andy looked at his comrade and shook his head in disgust. Too many of his fellow countrymen were becoming westernized. With the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan over a ten year period, the young boys had been introduced to Western ways, including movies. Now it was getting harder to recruit them. He had to promise them they could come to America and become movie stars. It was a necessary evil. “Yes, you will become famous, but first we have to get this bomb to the tunnel.

  *****

  Renfro moved into action mode. “Henry, you’re coming with us. Gather up whatever you need to give Dr. Wayne an update. Heather you get that map off the wall, and I’ll see what I can do about transportation. Henry, what kind of a vehicle do you drive?”

  “A Dodge pickup; single cab, not enough room for all of us.”

  Renfro walked to the front entrance of headquarters and looked outside. The crowd was already under control and National Guard troops were herding strays back into the school buses. A fog of tear gas still hung in the air, but it was being dispersed by a strong breeze. It was as dark as dusk, the sun unable to penetrate the ash cloud overhead. The landscape looked dull, devoid of color making the grass and trees a dull shade of gray. Fine ash-dust was settling over everything. Renfro put a handkerchief over his mouth and nose and walked up to the nearest soldier. “Sergeant, who is in charge here?” He showed the soldier his badge.