by Zoe Sharp
No, you were already in custody in another state, I thought, but noted the ‘back’ and said carefully, ‘You were all here – you and Maria and Liam – before you went off to join Debacle.’ I made it a neutral statement of fact, then asked, ‘Whose idea was that?’
‘It was kind of a joint decision,’ Dexter said, a little defensive even so. ‘Randall encourages everyone who comes here to find what’s important to them. For us, it was the environment. I mean, what’s more important than the planet we all live on, right?’
‘Right,’ I echoed. ‘And for Liam, of course, protesting against oil exploration had the additional appeal of sticking it to his parents. Or, more particularly, his mother.’
Dexter shrugged again. ‘Liam was into Debacle, right from the start. But when Randall held out, that really did it for him.’
‘Held out?’
‘Against temptation,’ Dexter said. He shook his head, wonder in his voice. ‘You gotta be real firm in your beliefs, to turn your back on all that dough.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘But I guess it kinda helps if you don’t need the money.’
Something prickled at the base of my neck, the back of my skull.
‘Held out against what temptation?’ I repeated and something in my voice brought him up short.
‘You mean nobody’s told you about the oil?’ he said, looking confused. ‘Jesus, I assumed that was the whole reason you people were here.’ He lifted his hands in exasperation, let them drop again, bitterness twisting his mouth. ‘That’s what it’s always about, isn’t it? You think this great country of ours would ever have gone in to “rescue” Kuwait if they hadn’t had a shitload of oil under their sand?’
‘Nothing to do with Kuwait being invaded by a hostile nation, then?’ I asked mildly.
‘If you believe that, kiddo, you’re living in a dreamworld.’
I paused, then pointed out, ‘I seem to recall we went to war over the Falklands.’
‘Yeah, and you notice we didn’t help you guys out on that one, even though it was practically in our own backyard.’
‘So, you’re trying to tell me that there’s enough oil under Fourth Day’s little patch of land to be worth murdering for?’ I asked, not bothering to hide the cynical note.
He snorted. ‘Some neighbourhoods in LA, they’ll cut your throat for your sneakers. And there’s enough oil under parts of Utah, Wyoming and Colorado to last into the next millennium.’ His face grew serious. ‘You telling me that’s not worth killing for?’
‘OK, let’s say you’re right,’ I agreed. ‘Why is it only just coming to light now? Why has the US allowed the Middle East to hold it to ransom for decades? However difficult the oil is to get at, surely it’s cheaper than going to war in the Gulf – twice? So, why aren’t there oil drilling platforms all over the Midwest and tanker ships lining up halfway along the Pacific coast?’
That provoked a full-fledged laugh. ‘Because it’s not that simple, kiddo. This is oil shale.’
I frowned. ‘What’s the difference?’
He sighed, as if talking to someone woefully ignorant. ‘They’ve known about oil shale for nearly one hundred fifty years,’ he said. ‘The problem is extracting it. They used to use a process called “retorting”. What happens is—’
‘I’m not an engineering student, so spare me the gory details,’ I interrupted. ‘Just cut to the chase. What’s the big problem?’
‘Using the retorting method – environmental catastrophe is what,’ Dexter said flatly. ‘Once the shale is mined, they have to crush and heat it to extract kerogen, which can then be distilled into oil and gas. But this produces huge amounts of waste, and I mean huge – like, the heat desiccates the rock and expands it, so by the time you’re done, there’s too much of it even to shove back into the hole it came out of.’ He raked his hands through his hair in frustration. ‘Not that you’d want to put it back, of course, because it’s now contaminated with heavy metals and a load of other highly toxic crap, just waiting to poison the nearest groundwater.’ He gave a caustic smile. ‘And there wouldn’t be much groundwater left, ’cause the refining process uses so much it sucks the area dry.’
‘So, what’s changed?’ I asked carefully. He stopped, pulled his focus back onto me. His breathing was elevated, I noted, cheeks flushed. ‘Has the price of oil finally risen to the point where the benefits now outweigh the concerns?’
‘The oil companies claim they’ve been working on an in situ conversion process, which means you don’t have to mine the shale at all. Instead, they drill down and insert heating elements into the rock, then heat the whole of the subsurface up to like seven hundred degrees, for several years.’
This was clearly supposed to provoke some kind of a reaction, but I just blinked. ‘What does that do? Boil it off?’
‘No, it speeds up the natural development of the oil and gas by millions of years. But, of course, nobody knows about the long-term consequences,’ he added glumly, ‘and I doubt they care.’
I asked, ‘Surely it can’t be cost-effective to heat up something to that temperature, for so long?’
‘Compared to conventional oilfields, you’d be amazed,’ Dexter said. ‘They’re still developing the process, but the word is, they’ve got it just about cracked. Soon as they do, any pockets of oil shale the government doesn’t own already are going to suddenly become prime real estate. We’re talking a million barrels an acre.’
OK, now it was something worth killing over. ‘And there’s oil shale under Fourth Day’s land?’
‘Yeah. Liam discovered it, not long after we came here, but Randall, of course, wasn’t interested in exploiting it.’ He gave a smile that was a mixture of pride and sadness. ‘Which is why they’re trying to get rid of him.’
‘Who is?’ I said. ‘Nu?’
Another derisive snort. ‘John Nu doesn’t have the cojones for something like that – not on his own,’ Dexter muttered, ‘but I know who has.’
‘Epps.’ The name came to my lips almost unbidden.
His head jerked. ‘Whoa – that bastard’s involved, is he?’
‘You know him?’
‘Our paths have crossed, let me put it that way,’ Dexter said, lips twisting. ‘He tried to get me to rat out Debacle after the Feds grabbed me in Texas a few years ago.’
‘Which is where you were when Liam was killed in Alaska.’
He paused a moment. ‘Sharp, aren’t you?’
‘It has been said,’ I returned dryly. ‘I know Maria was there and saw what happened.’ When he raised an eyebrow at that, I added, ‘Things she said, after Nu took a potshot at her. She had kind of a flashback.’
‘Shit, poor kid.’ He looked away, swallowed. ‘It destroyed her. She only joined Debacle to be close to Liam. He was like the big brother she never had.’
‘You knew, last time we met, that I believed Billy might be Liam’s kid,’ I said. ‘You do realise, don’t you, that if you’d told me the truth – that he was yours – I would never have come here? You could have saved yourself a lot of bother.’
His mouth twisted. ‘Yeah, and painted a damn great target on the kid’s back while I was at it. You’ve met Epps. You think he’d hesitate to use Billy to get to us?’ His eyes looked through me, then he said, ‘I would have married her – I wanted to marry her, but she said no. That made me angry for a while, but I guess it runs in the family, what with her mom and all.’
‘What happened to Maria’s mother?’
‘She and Bane had a thing going, then she went home to Mexico, joined some bunch of fanatics down there. Never told Randall she’d gotten pregnant,’ Dexter said. ‘Maria only found out about him after her mom died while we were at college. She tracked Randall down, wanted to meet him.’ He shrugged. ‘Liked what she found.’
I let my breath out slowly. Well, that explained a lot. For a moment, I wondered if Bane had allowed his personal feelings to colour his advice, and telling Sean of my own pregnancy might well turn out to be the worst thing I
could possibly have done.
He had to know some time.
I pushed the thought aside. ‘You said you didn’t think Nu was the brains of the operation, so who was?’
‘The only person I can think of is the one who was trying hardest to persuade Randall to go ahead with the exploration project,’ Dexter said. ‘That little bastard, Sagar.’
‘Chris Sagar?’ I demanded faintly, mouth dry, skin shimmying in reaction. ‘But wasn’t he Bane’s second in command?’
Dexter laughed again, and it wasn’t a pleasant sound. ‘Second in command? What is this now, the military? He wasn’t good enough to scrape the shit from Randall’s shoes.’
‘So, who is he?’
‘He was part of the old Fourth Day, before Randall bought them out. Sagar stayed on, but Randall cleaned out all the rot and Chris Sagar was rotten, believe me, all the way through. He’s the one who campaigned hardest to develop the oil shale. He hounded Liam for figures on how much could be made out of it. Eventually, Randall threw Sagar out.’
I jerked to my feet. ‘We’ve got to talk to Bane,’ I said, agitated. ‘Epps is using Sagar as his Fourth Day advisor. Either he had no idea Sagar’s got some kind of personal vendetta going, or he doesn’t care.’
‘It’s a little late to consider that, I’m afraid,’ said a deep voice from the doorway. We both turned, to find Bane himself standing in the opening, regarding the pair of us gravely. I wondered how long he’d been there. Dexter flushed.
I said quickly, ‘What’s happened?’
‘Tyrone has reported some disturbing activity around our boundaries,’ Bane said, eyeing the way Dexter’s face had turned corpse white beneath his tan. ‘It would seem there is a significant SWAT presence surrounding us.’
‘They’ve come for me,’ Dexter whispered, sinking onto the edge of the bed. ‘You were right, Randall. I shoulda never come back. I’ve put you all at risk.’
‘Oh, I don’t think you’re the one to blame,’ Bane said, looking straight at me as he spoke.
That hurt more than I expected, a physical pain in my chest. ‘Bane, listen—’
He held up a hand. ‘I’ve heard all I need to. If Chris has been feeding those people with enough lies to have brought them this far, the time for talking is over.’
I felt the blood drop from my face. ‘You can’t make a stand,’ I said, thinking suddenly of those twenty little faces who’d turned towards me in the classroom. ‘It will be another Ruby Ridge. Another Waco. You’ll be slaughtered.’
‘You speak as if we’re a cult,’ he said, nothing more than moderate distaste in his voice. ‘How long do you have to be among us before you realise that’s not the case?’
‘I know you’re not,’ I said. Now. ‘But what I believe is immaterial. You should be worrying about the guys out there. The ones dressed in black with the armoured Humvees and the fifty-cal machine guns because, right now, what they think is pretty bloody vital to your survival.’
Bane didn’t respond, just switched his gaze to Dexter. ‘If you’re done here,’ he said to him, ‘we have arrangements to make.’
‘Of course,’ Dexter muttered, getting to his feet.
‘What can I do?’ I demanded. ‘If you need help with defensive—’
Again, Bane held up that silencing hand, cutting me dead. ‘You’ve done enough,’ he said, face grave. ‘I trust you won’t take it as a personal insult if I insist that you remain here?’ And he held out his hand. For an absurd moment I thought he wanted to shake on it, then I realised he wanted the Salinger, and the key it contained.
‘“Trust” is an interesting choice of word,’ I said, acidic, as I handed it over.
‘I’m sorry, Charlie,’ he said. ‘But we now have to consider you a possible danger to us. The safety of this community is my responsibility.’ He ushered Dexter out. Dexter threw a final reproachful glance in my direction as he went.
‘Yeah,’ I murmured as the door closed behind the pair of them and I heard the lock turn. ‘Good luck with that.’
After they’d gone, I lay on the bed staring up at the ceiling for what seemed like a long time. The sun dropped towards the horizon and I tracked the passage of the long shadows around the walls like a giant sundial.
I didn’t expect sleep to come, but eventually it did, restless and disturbed.
So, when I came bolting into wakefulness with a gasp in the dark, for a few seconds I wasn’t sure if it was something real or imaginary that had roused me.
A fraction later, senses screaming, I registered a presence in my room, a bulky slither of sound, a proximate breath. I closed my hand around the makeshift knuckleduster I’d moulded out of the old table fork, and catapulted upright in my bed, lashing out blindly. I caught something a glancing blow that elicited a pained grunt in response, but only served to accelerate my nightmare.
Flailing, I began to scramble from under the entanglement of bedclothes, needing mobility, a clear fighting ground. Adrenaline injected into my system with a raw whisky blast.
The lock dropped onto me seemingly out of nowhere, pinning my throat, my neck. I saw wild colours and black static, felt the sudden compression of blood inside my head, the pressure behind my eyes as the clenched muscles restricted the supply. In utter panic, I knew what came next.
I barely felt the scratch as the needle went into my thigh.
‘Bastards,’ I said, but my voice was already beginning to slur. And after that, I remembered nothing.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
I came round sitting upright in a hard-backed chair, sluggish and groggy, with a foul taste in my mouth. Even through closed eyelids, the room was lit with irritating brightness. When I tried to lift a hand to my face, something snagged sharply at my wrist.
My eyes snapped open. Mistake. I flinched, blinded, tried moving my limbs but found them constricted and heard the jingle of metal on metal. I stilled abruptly, fighting the terror that bubbled up in my throat. If anything brought me the rest of the way out of it, dismayed, betrayed, that was it.
A man’s voice said, ‘She’s all yours,’ and there were footsteps and a door closing. I opened my eyes again, cautiously this time, and looked out through slitted lids.
The first thing I saw was Sean, leaning his hip against a table with his ankles crossed and arms folded, watching me. He was dressed in DPM trousers and combat boots, and an olive drab T-shirt that showed the delineated muscle in his arms and shoulders. His clothes were stained with the sweat of prolonged effort, and crumpled like he’d been wearing them all night and well into what must have been the following day.
I was wearing yesterday’s clothes, too, but stripped down to my thin undershirt. I shivered in the clammy atmosphere as I eyed Sean for a moment without speaking, then turned my head slowly and surveyed the rest of the room.
It was not much bigger than the interview room where Detective Gardner had first confronted Bane. It even had the obviously fake mirror set into one wall, and heavy-duty spotlights in the ceiling. There was a camera mounted high into one corner, pointing down at us through a rage-proof grille. The recording light was on.
Initially, I had no idea of location and there was little to be gained from the room. Just the quiet hum of air conditioning overlaying the flat nothing of good sound insulation. But, every now and again, I felt a slight vibration coming up through the concrete beneath my feet as another heavy plane took off or landed. Probably Van Nuys, I considered. The government hangar at the airport was an ideal location for Epps to interrogate a less-than-cooperative subject. Not just from a security standpoint, but because of its seclusion, also.
Nobody can hear you scream over the sound of a jet engine primed for take-off.
I lifted my hands to the limit of the handcuffs that fastened my wrists to the steel arms of the chair, rattled them slightly. ‘So,’ I said, more calmly than I felt, ‘is this how it is between us now?’
‘We had every reason to be cautious. That was some improvised shiv you were usi
ng,’ Sean said, voice neutral. ‘And are you really saying – if we’d simply asked you to walk out of there with us – you would have come?’
‘We’ll never know, will we?’ I said, icy. ‘But some choice in the matter would have been nice.’
He came upright so fast I hardly saw him move, more a lurch of reaction. In front of me, staring down, he said with quiet vehemence, ‘Don’t talk to me about choice, Charlie.’
I swallowed, head tilted back to meet his eyes. ‘I know you don’t want to hear it when I say I’m sorry, but there were no choices to be made, Sean. I wasn’t given a choice.’
He stepped back, as if he didn’t trust himself to be near me. ‘Are you talking about our child,’ he said coldly, ‘or the fact you chose not to tell us about the terrorist attack Bane’s planning on the Middle Eastern delegation visiting the oil refineries in Long Beach? Or the fact he’s been hoarding enough small arms to start a war?’
For a moment I was stunned to silence. Thomas Witney had assumed that we would take advantage of the effects of the midazolam to question him as a matter of course, either during or immediately after his extraction. We had not done so, and I recalled feeling vaguely insulted that he would think we’d stoop to such measures.
But Epps had no such scruples.
The reason for having my arms bare suddenly dawned. They had wanted free access to my veins.
The sense of violation swept down over me like a bucket of cold water, drenching through my skin to chill the bones beneath. I struggled to suppress a shudder, and it took everything I’d got to fix Sean with a ruthless, unwavering gaze.
‘Well, it looks like you were right,’ I said then, matching my delivery to his.
‘Meaning?’
‘Right to chain me up before I realised what you’d let them do to me.’
I thought I caught a momentary twitch, then it was gone. ‘It had to be done, Charlie.’ This was out of my hands. He paused, almost a hesitation, then said quietly, ‘And do you honestly think I would have let anyone else question you?’