by Dan Kolbet
Now wearing white coveralls and white visitor hardhats that had been stuffed neatly in their oversized briefcases, Luke and Kathryn strode confidently into the loading dock. A plastic State of Colorado identification badge dangled from each of their waistbands next to their official visitor badges. The IDs wouldn’t pass thorough inspection, but Luke didn’t plan on letting that happen.
The loading dock was a series of three stalls big enough for a tractor-trailer to park. Each stall was connected to a double-rail that was affixed to the floor in two-foot steel increments. The raw material was brought up from the mine on the other side of the massive building and pushed along the rails for loading onto the transport vehicles.
Luke waved at the foreman who was sitting in an office overlooking the dock. The foreman got a curious look on his face and came out to greet them.
“This is a secure area, who are you?” he demanded.
“Colorado Office of Occupational Health and Safety,” Luke said. “We’re here to ensure that this operation is not cutting corners regarding employee safety. We’ve had some complaints.”
“Complaints from who?” the foreman demanded.
“Tsk, tsk, you know I can’t tell you that. Our office prides itself on the confidentiality of our whistleblowers. Just know that we’re going to fully inspect this claim right now.”
“This government oversight is BS, I run a good dock here. Can it wait for about a half hour, we’ve got a shipment going out and I can’t afford to delay that.”
“So it’s your belief that timeliness and productivity come before the safety and health of your workers?” Luke said, scribbling notes as he talked. “Okay. That’s certainly your call. What was your name again? I need it for the inspection report.”
“Fitz Grimes. But hey, I’m not going to get in the way of your work, but I’ve got a job to do and I just don’t want to slow anything down. I’m sure you understand that.”
“Well, first on my list is that I need to see your federal OSHA poster. You know it’s mandatory that those posters be prominently displayed in an area that employees frequent. I don’t see them anywhere. This is not a good way to start out.”
“The posters are in the break room. Follow me.”
While Luke and a reluctant Fitz left the loading dock to visit the all-important safety posters, Kathryn stayed behind to get a jumpstart on the rest of the inspection and lay the ground work for the only part of their plan they hadn’t worked out yet. Now that they were minutes away from seeing a shipment of raw material, how exactly were they going to get any of it?
Kathryn scoured the dock trying to improvise a plan. It only took a few moments for her to come up with it. She smiled. Simple and effective, if it worked.
The loud alarm sounded as the roll-up door at the end of the loading dock opened up and a convoy of mining carts rolled into the space behind the loading dock stalls. The armored trucks had yet to arrive and so the remote controlled machine, that looked like a riding lawn mower pushing the carts forward, shut down just inside the door.
There were three carts on the rails, each the size of a washing machine. They were metal with an open top. Piled high in each cart were dark gray rocks with tiny silver flecks, nearly identical to the ones they found in the Caribbean. This was the first time Kathryn had come face to face with the reality of what they found in the underwater ravine and what danger they were really in.
“You run a pretty tight ship here all right,” Luke told Fitz loudly from down the hallway, announcing their arrival back on the dock to Kathryn who was just about to reach in and grab a handful.
The armored truck buzzed the intercom to request access to enter. Fitz returned to his office to punch in the code that opened the door, but kept an eye on the carts. Kathryn quickly told Luke what to do. Her plan wasn’t a sure thing. Not by a long shot, but what choice did they have? It was now or never.
As the carts began to move forward Kathryn moved to the transition point on the rails. Here, the foreman had to manually switch where rails would go, depending on which stall the truck was parked in. The truck was backed into the stall nearest the foreman’s office. Fitz adjusted the alignment of the rails as Kathryn stepped to the appropriate point.
The first set of heavy metal wheels on the carts scraped along the track toward the transition point. Luke took this moment to chat up Fitz about the importance of proper overhead lighting. Neither of them was looking at the cart as it rolled on to the transition point.
Kathryn’s gasp and collapse drew their attention. There, lying on the ground was Kathryn, covered in black oil from head to toe. A small pool of the stuff was dripping from her white coveralls. She was now motionless on the floor, eyes closed.
“What the hell?” Fitz said, stopping the cart by slamming his palm into a large button on the wall then franticly running around the other side to see what happened.
Kathryn was now shaking her head and rubbing the back of it. She started to sit up, but collapsed back onto the floor dramatically.
“What sort of joke are you playing?” Luke said to the foreman, holding half a plastic bottle of lubricant in his hand. “This bottle of oil was jammed in the railings. You could have blinded her. Or me.”
“I don’t know how it got there. It was some sort of accident. We only use that for maintenance work.”
“I’m fine, really,” Kathryn said. “Just a little bump on the head. Nothing my embarrassment won’t cure.”
“Oh, no,” Luke said. “We’ve got to do a report on this. Full investigation. This dock is a death trap. We’re lucky to get out alive. This place needs to be shut down until we can access the real dangers here. Could take days.”
“No, please you can’t do that,” Fitz pleaded. “I’ll lose my job. This is just a misunderstanding. Nothing like this has ever happened before.”
“I’m really OK. Just help me up,” Kathryn said. “If I hadn’t had on this hard hat I might have gotten a concussion.”
“Thank goodness for that,” Fitz said. “See she’s OK. We don’t need to report this.”
“I really don’t want to head back to HQ and tell them that I slipped on a pool of oil, I’ll be the laughing stock of the entire department,” Kathryn said.
“But we’re here and I’ve already started filling out our report,” Luke said.
“We’ll come back tomorrow and finish it,” she said. “Let’s just pretend this never happened.”
“That sounds like a great idea,” Fitz said.
“That means you can’t breathe a word of this to anyone else,” Luke said to Fitz. “You got that?”
“My lips are sealed.”
Chapter 67
Rachel had just about exhausted her requests for financial data and the employees were starting to get a bit restless when Luke caught her attention from outside the conference room door. The strap of his briefcase was cutting into his shoulder. It was being weighed down by 10 pounds of rocks that he’d snagged while Fritz was tending to Kathryn. Rachel held up two fingers indicating that she would be along to follow them shortly.
The car was parked in front of the main building, but given Kathryn’s appearance they wanted to avoid a public exit. They headed down a side tunnel under the main building that ended next to an electrical substation that fed the building. Given the massive amounts of electricity that the mining operation used, it needed a hard-wired connection to the grid plus a back-up generator. Ironically it didn’t use wireless electricity at all.
Once out of the tunnel, Luke could see a standard six-foot chain link fence surrounded the electrical substation on all sides. It was spread out over nearly an acre of land that was forested on two sides, but open to the parking lot and building. It blocked their path around the front of the building. Luke found out too late that this wasn’t an exit at all, but just a path into the substation.
Luke made the decision that they would have to go back where they came from, when he saw there was a set of toolboxes near a
transformer bank inside the sub that must have been left by a worker doing maintenance of some sort. Luke tried the first gate. It was open. Hopefully the gate on the other side was also unlocked. They could slip through to meet Rachel at the car and no one would have to see the oil and grime on Kathryn’s face and hair.
“Don’t touch anything inside here,” Luke said to Kathryn as they stepped inside. “The transformers and switches have live electricity running through them. These subs aren’t meant to have visitors.”
“Let’s just get through to the other side and get out of here,” Kathryn said.
They quickly walked through the massive web of gray overhead wires, porcelain insulators and transformers the size of minivans to get to the other gate. As Luke reached for the other gate he saw movement in the tree line just outside the sub and stopped short.
The sun had pierced the overcast sky at just the right moment and the glint of a silver handgun shined into Luke’s eyes. He couldn’t help but look directly at its source. Emerging from the trees was Amir, pointing a pistol at him.
“Try the gate Luke,” he said. “It’s open.”
“What’s with the gun?” he said, not sure which part Amir would play. Friend or foe? It didn’t take long to figure it out.
“I’ve been waiting to train my gun on you for the last four months. You couldn’t just do your job. You had to be the big hero, didn’t you? You know if you hadn’t drained my computer with that data sync watch, I wouldn’t have made this personal.”
“I needed to check out your story. Turns out Rachel was right, you’ve been working for StuTech all along.”
“Sure, StuTech. Let’s go with that.”
Luke and Kathryn didn’t move toward the gate, but were slowly backing up through the substation and toward the confines of the building.
“Why are you doing this? Put the gun away,” Luke said. “We’re no threat to you.”
“But you are Luke, and not just to me. You were only supposed to report back what was happening at MassEnergy. Not help them take the next step in developing towers. You brought this on yourself. You gave away the Golden Goose.”
“Who do you work for?” Kathryn asked, trying to stall him.
“Today? I work for the highest bidder.”
Luke had already suspected that Amir wasn’t telling them the entire truth the day he came to his apartment. Which is why he had used one of Lunsford’s data watches to copy the recent activity on Amir’s computer when the ARC shipment arrived at the Dev Floor. They knew Amir was talking with someone at StuTech, but not who it was. Seeing him here now, confirmed that his orders came from the top and that meant only one person – Warren Evans.
“Here’s what I think happened,” Luke said. “You never worked for Beckman. That was all bull. StuTech gave the orders. You told the truth when you said you trailed us halfway across the world. But what I can’t figure out is why they wanted you to do it.”
“That’s why you’re locked inside this cage and I’ve got you in my sights,” Amir said.
Amir stepped inside the gate and at the same time pulled back the slide of his weapon, preparing it to be fired. The gravel under his feet crunched as he moved toward them, but the electrical hum from the transformers drowned out the sound.
“Drop the bag,” Amir said. “I assume you stole minerals from the mine. You really shouldn’t take things that don’t belong to you. Nevis and now here. Bad habit you’ve got. You know, you have no idea what you’re up against. This thing is bigger than you could ever imagine. Now, drop the bag.”
“Great plan,” Kathryn said. “You’re going to shoot us right here? So during the next shift change when 50 miners walk back to their trucks to go home, they will see you blasting away at two unarmed people.”
Amir looked to both sides of him and realized that he was overly exposed. He hadn’t intended to leave the tree line. He was planning to surprise them once they left the sub, not confront them in the open. He was on his own. He needed to move to cover before someone called security and he was trapped.
“Very astute, boss,” Amir said with a smirk. “Now, both of you turn around and slowly walk back the way you came. And for the last time – drop the bag.”
Luke’s mind was reeling, searching for a way to escape. He had no intention of getting back into that long tunnel with an armed man who had already said he wanted to kill him. Amir had obviously been given some sort of autonomy at StuTech, otherwise he wouldn’t have been allowed past the mine’s main gate.
Luke removed the bag from his shoulder, relieved to have the weight off. Quickly scanning the sub, he selected his spot and tossed the bag toward a row of high-voltage wires near him that connected to incoming power lines. The bag was within two feet of the live wires. Amir could easily grab it, but it might give them enough time to make a run for it. They continued to back up.
The gunshot smashed into the gravel just inches in front of Luke’s feet, causing him to stumble backward to the ground.
“You’re not going to make killing you easy, are you?” Amir said with a sadistic smile, still pointing the gun at him. “Inside, now.”
He still had the gun pointed at them, when a semi-truck fired up a diesel engine around the corner of the building. The rumbling sound combined with the hum of the electricity from the substation equipment made it difficult to hear.
Out of the corner of his eye Luke saw Rachel emerge from the tree line. She must have been waiting for them out front and came looking for them when they didn’t show up. He shook his head no slightly, hoping that Rachel got the message to stay away. She saw him shake his head, Luke was sure of it, but she also saw the gun pointed at them. There was no way she missed hearing the gunshot either.
As Luke and Kathryn continued to retreat toward the tunnel, Amir kept his eyes and the gun pointed at them. He was just feet from the shoulder bag when Rachel took off at a full sprint at him from behind. The sound from the truck’s engine covered the crunch of gravel beneath her feet as she rushed through the gate and halfway through the substation.
Amir never saw her coming. She slammed her shoulder into his back, knocking him off balance. The gun fell to the ground. Instinctively, he reached out his arms to brace himself. Unfortunately for him, there was nothing to grab a hold of but two exposed transformer connections.
The sizzling sound was grotesque. His hands began to smoke as the 115 kilovolts of electricity used his body as the path of least resistance. The smell of burning hair and flesh filled the air. The powerful jolt of electricity rocked his body back and forth until a safety breaker on the opposite side of the sub gave an explosive pop, cutting off the flow of juice. Amir’s lifeless body collapsed onto the wires.
Rachel had managed to stop her forward momentum, but landed just inches away from Amir’s body. She ran to Luke, horrified at what she’d just done. He embraced her.
“He was going to kill you both,” she said. “I had to.”
“You did the right thing,” Kathryn said. “I know you’re upset, but we have to go, now. We can talk it through later. Who knows how many more guys like him are after us.”
“We can’t just leave him here,” Rachel said.
“That’s exactly what we need to do,” Luke said.
He grabbed the bag and the three of them ran to the parking lot. They got into the Taurus and after passing the security gate with a friendly wave, they sped away from the compound at a breakneck pace.
“What do you think he meant when he said he was working for the highest bidder?” Luke asked when they were miles down the road.
“That he was on StuTech’s payroll,” Kathryn said.
“Sure, but he said ‘bidder’ as if someone else was vying for his services.”
“If it wasn’t StuTech, then who? He was already working for MassEnergy.”
Luke knew they were missing something, but couldn’t put his finger on it.
Chapter 68
Palo Alto, California
&nb
sp; Two days later
Luke hadn’t been back to the Stanford Campus in well over 10 years. The terracotta roofs and brick buildings were a pleasant reminder of his four years at the school. Four years where he rarely left campus for anything other than soccer games and odd jobs. The campus had undergone a few upgrades, including a new wing on a student activity center, but in general it was the same conservative, well-kept place he remembered.
He was counting on several other things remaining the same as well, such as his access code to the Earth Sciences building, otherwise their collection of the rock samples was just a bag of paperweights. They had kept off the radar over the last two days, but had also monitored the media on their phones. No mention of a death at the Pueblo Bluff facility. StuTech was keeping things in house.
It was Friday night, but the campus was still hopping with activity as co-eds and their friends went out to celebrate the end of another arduous week of academic study. Luke and Rachel picked up some school-logo gear at the university bookstore in an attempt to blend in.
“Nobody’s going to believe I’m a college student,” Rachel said, admiring her cardinal red sweatshirt in the mirror. “I’m about 10 years too late.”
“If anyone asks, we’ll just say you’re a super senior on the six-year plan.” Luke said.
“Very funny.”
The road trip from California to Colorado and now back to California was an exhausting experience. They made it to the school in two days. The three of them traded shifts at the wheel, until they dropped Kathryn off at the Las Vegas airport. Kathryn would stick to her vacation and relaxation story and fly back to Portland that day.