Blowout

by Byron L. Dorgan

  Dr. Kemal stepped back a pace.

  “Start one of the machines, you’re coming with me,” Barry ordered, and he went to where Ada lay facedown and put a round point-blank into the back of her head. “It’s a tough old world,” he muttered.

  Dr. Kemal started one of the ATVs and he stood flat-footed like a deer caught in headlights on a country highway.

  “Moose, Brenda, copy?” Barry radioed, but there was no answer. They were down. He went back to the ATV and climbed aboard, motioning for Dr. Kemal to ride pillion, the same as he had with Moose.

  Gordy had been monitoring all the radio traffic. “One, base. Trouble?” he radioed.

  “Nothing we can’t handle,” Barry said, hitting the throttle and pulling away, Dr. Kemal clutching at him. “Are we still clear?”

  “Roger. Plus forty, five-zero remaining. What about Moose and Brenda?”

  It came to Barry that the son of a bitch kid was a sentimentalist after all his bullshit talk about technology being the only real form of truth and honesty. “Computers don’t lie to you, man,” he’d said once. “If they fuck up it’s always your fault. Garbage in, garbage out.”

  “They’re down,” Barry radioed. “So is Ada.”

  “Shit, oh, shit.”

  “Stand by to move out. We’re incoming.”

  “You can’t leave them.”

  “Base, one!” Barry shouted. “You copy my orders? We’re incoming, get prepped to move out.”

  He angled to the west, keeping the bulk of the generator station between him and the south and west exits. It would take some time for anyone to respond to the emergency because no signals were getting out of the station. Except for the one guy they had missed and presumably the newspaper reporter. But in a few minutes they were going to have their hands full when the Semtex the girls had planted started popping off.

  Fire in the hole, indeed, he thought, and he began braying like a madman.

  11

  BILLINGS COUNTY SHERIFF Nathan Osborne leaned his six-four frame against the front left fender of his mud-spattered Saturn SUV radio car, his elbows on the hood to steady his binoculars as he glassed the rugged countryside to the northeast. It was late, well after dark, the light wind raw, and he should have been home with his family eating dinner.

  But all he had was an ex and an eight-year-old daughter living now in Orlando, near Disneyworld. No one in Medora. Sometimes no reason to go home. Maybe to Fred’s for a beer and a steak and fries, but not the ranch he’d inherited from his parents five miles out of town near Fryburg.

  At thirty-four he was just about in the same shape he’d been in as a Marine Force Recon lieutenant running around doing black ops in the Afghan mountains until his left leg below the knee had been shot off by a Taliban sharpshooter who’d gotten lucky with a Barrett A2 .50 caliber U.S. sniper rifle at three hundred meters, just clipping the base of his knee. His next conscious memory was at the Landstuhl Hospital outside Ramstein in Germany when a White House representative was at his bedside congratulating him and his wife. Soon as he got well enough to travel to Washington, the president was going to drape the Medal of Honor around his neck.

  It was only a week or so later until he’d understood that he hadn’t screwed up by getting shot, in fact he’d saved the entire forward fire team by crawling wounded for nearly one hundred meters, through withering fire, to a position where he took out the sniper with his M-16 and then eight other Taliban who’d had the high ground waiting to launch their attack after the sniper had taken out the officer and platoon sergeant.

  Failure to maintain a proper lookout, he’d told himself over and over, just about every day since then. Failure to maintain a situational awareness. Failure, as his Annapolis friends used to say, to keep his head fully withdrawn from his rectum at all times.

  Afterwards he’d been promoted to captain and had been given a desk job in public affairs at the Pentagon, where he’d seriously chafed at the bit for two years until he’d been promoted to major and reassigned to the 2nd Recon Battalion at Lejune, North Carolina, as a black ops and high risk personnel instructor.

  There were only three hundred and fifty officers and enlisted men in all of FORECON so they were a tight-knit group, and having a grizzled veteran—an “old man,” even though at that time he was only twenty-nine—and a Medal of Honor winner to boot, was impressive, and the kids actually did listen to him. But he’d kept track of the ones he’d trained who came back in body bags. They were good, but they weren’t supermen, and neither was he, so he had quit and came home to western North Dakota.

  His wife Carolyn had managed Washington and even Lejune, but not North Dakota, even though her husband had been elected Billings County sheriff in a virtual landslide because no one ran against him. She’d only lasted six months before she’d filed for divorce and headed to warmer climes. The fact that he was an amputee hadn’t helped, but as he had told her at the time: “Can’t promise you I’ll be any good at dancing.”

  “You never were,” she’d told him, smiling. They were still friends.

  But it wasn’t what he had expected after Afghanistan. Wasn’t what he’d hoped for, because he’d lived the RECON creed in and out of the service, and he’d figured that was enough to see him through.

  R for Realizing it’s my choice to be a Recon Marine I accept all challenges.

  E for Exceeding beyond the limitations set down by others shall be my goal.

  C for Conquering all obstacles, I shall never quit.

  O for On the battlefield as in all areas of life I shall stand tall above the competition.

  And N for Never shall I forget the Recon Marine’s principles of honor, perseverance, spirit, and heart.

  A Recon Marine can speak without saying a word and achieve what others can only imagine. Hoo-rah!

  The sheriff’s office was only open in the winter from eight to four Monday through Friday, but 911 worked for emergencies and the 1-800 State Radio number was even better.

  Sally at State had called him an hour ago that Ashley Borden, the Bismarck Tribune reporter, had been nosing around Medora all day trying to find someone who would admit to working at the ELF project, and when she’d gotten nowhere she’d disappeared.

  “Tom Campbell was on Ninety-four coming back from Patterson Lake when he saw the girl’s pickup truck heading south on Eighty-five,” she’d said. “Could be she’s going to storm the gates. What do you think?”

  Osborne had chuckled. “I think that you’re in the perfect job for an old busybody, but thanks for the info. I’ll head down there and take a look.”

  Nothing much had been happening in the main administrative compound, so he’d driven down to the power station and ELF antenna farm, and through the glasses he had spotted the reporter’s pickup truck parked next to a gray Hummer, one of the project vehicles. But just peeking out around the far corner of the main generating building, beyond which was the transformer yard, was the tail end of what looked to Osborne to be an ATV. It was hard to make out any details in the harsh light from atop the building, but he’d never seen anything like that out here, and a little alarm bell began tinkling at the back of his head.

  Because of his former Recon position in the Pentagon, and his present position as sheriff, he’d been among a handful of state representatives who’d been partially briefed four years ago at the start—and the emphasis that day at the Department of Homeland Security in Washington had been on partially—on the Initiative, which had absolutely nothing to do with a new communications system. It was a top secret project to generate clean energy that didn’t use natural gas or oil or nuclear power. No carbon dioxide emissions, the undersecretary who’d briefed them promised.

  “Coal,” someone had suggested. “We have plenty of that in the state. But cleaning it up in any way that makes economic sense isn’t possible.”

  “ARPA-E is in charge,” the man had said; the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy under the Department of Energy that was modeled after
the Pentagon’s DARPA that had developed everything from the precursor of the Internet to predatory drones, passive radar systems, and advanced computer and artificial intelligence programs and devices. And everyone except for the briefer fell silent. “Unfortunately energy independence for the U.S. has become a matter of national security.”

  What Osborne hadn’t known until about a year ago when Jim Cameron, chief of security out here, had let it slip over a beer in town was that Ashley Borden was the daughter of retired Army Major General Bob Forester who was the Initiative’s director.

  “She’s pushy as hell,” Cameron had warned. “Sticks her nose wherever she can. Only be a matter of time before she shows up out here in earnest. And when that happens we’re going to have to deal with her.”

  “Can we shoot her?” Osborne had asked.

  “No, but it’s a pleasant thought.”

  And she was apparently here now and it was dark and Osborne had a gut feeling that he’d stumbled into the middle of something. It was the same sort of feeling he’d had in Afghanistan every time something went to hell, and he’d learned to listen to his instincts.

  He’d met her twice in the past few years; once at the initial open house and briefing for the ELF project, and again about nine months ago when a tourist in the Roosevelt Park South Unit had gone berserk and chopped his wife and two children to pieces with a hatchet and then had slit his wrists with a hunting knife, and the initial investigation and media briefing was a Billings County job even though the crime had taken place on federal land. He remembered her as an attractive woman who asked some good questions, among them what had driven the ad executive from Minneapolis to suddenly go nuts? But she’d been too pushy. And Carolyn’s leaving him still grated. And he’d shut out of his mind any thoughts about seeing any woman as anything more than a criminal or a plain no one.

  Osborne used his cell phone to call Cameron’s number, but he couldn’t get through, so he called State radio and had Sally call the number on a landline.

  “No service,” she said. “Want me to call the phone company?”

  “That’s okay, I’ll take care of it.”

  “Problems?”

  “Yeah, someone probably forgot to pay the phone bill,” Osborne said. His phone had service to State, but not to the Initiative, which at this point made no sense. Alarm bells were jangling all along his nerves. It was like the battlefield all over again.

  “What do you want me to do, Nate?”

  “I think there might be some sort of a problem out here. Look up the emergency number at Ellsworth—it’s on your contact list—and give them the heads-up.”

  “What sort of a problem, they’ll want to know.”

  “Sally, just make the call, please.”

  12

  WHITNEY LIPTON PULLED up in front of the rec center double-wide at Donna Marie and slowly got out of her Mercedes station wagon, her heart in her throat.

  The trailer was pockmarked with dozens, if not hundreds, of holes, the windows all shattered, the blinds hanging in tatters, only a few lights on inside, and no sound; no music, no laughter or talking. And it took her a full minute to realize that what she was seeing and not hearing were the results of some sort of a military attack. The holes had been made by bullets, and she saw that everyone inside was dead.

  She stepped back, the movement reflexive, then turned and grabbed her cell phone from her purse. But she had no signal bars, which was impossible. The Initiative had its own cell phone antenna.

  “Christ,” she said, and she turned toward the power station.

  Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The red light atop the smokestack, on which the cell phone antenna was attached, was flashing and even from this distance she could hear the thrum of the turbine spinning at its maintenance revolutions. Magliano’s Hummer was parked alongside a pickup truck at the rear entrance. And maybe two other smaller vehicles, something that looked like ATVs, were pulled up nearby, but she’d never seen them before.

  It came to her that whoever had attacked the rec center, had probably driven here on the ATVs and were probably still inside the power station, and she was torn between checking to see if anyone was alive and using a landline to call for help or driving back to the R & D Center to call for help. But that was two miles away, and she had a feeling there was no time.

  She tossed her phone down, hurried across to the rec center, and yanked open the door where she was rocked back before she could step across the threshold. Bodies and blood were everywhere, the stench of blood and human entrails so overpowering it made her weak in the knees and she nearly vomited.

  She knew these people, she had worked with them for the last four years, and for several long seconds she simply couldn’t wrap her mind around what she was seeing. She couldn’t grasp the enormity of it.

  They had been shot to death, their horribly mutilated bodies lying at all angles, the expressions on their faces pure panic and intense pain.

  Their killers had stood outside the double-wide and fired into the rec center through the thin aluminum skin.

  But she didn’t see Jim among them. After just a half minute she was sure of it and she almost felt guilty for being relieved.

  Girding herself to move, she went inside, stepping with extreme care to avoid the blood and gore, went to a wall telephone, and picked it up at the same moment there was an explosion over at the power plant.

  13

  CAMERON HAD DROPPED to his knees a few feet away from Magliano’s body in front of a small electronic device from which nearly a dozen wires snaked back into the station when a short, sharp explosion went off somewhere at the other end of the plant. He turned to look when a second, much larger explosion rocked the concrete floor.

  Ashley, knocked off balance, sprawled half on top of him. “We’re too late!” she shouted.

  “Not yet,” Cameron said, and he turned back to the detonator. An LED counter was passing the eight-minute mark, and another smaller number in the lower right-hand corner of the display blinked nine.

  Nine what? he asked himself as he frantically studied the device. His first instinct was to yank the wires that had to lead back to the plastique explosive Ashley had seen the terrorists plant, but he stopped. The device was vaguely familiar to him, but different from anything he’d remembered from his BUDs (Basic Underwater Demolitions) evolution. In the end his expertise had been mostly as an intel officer, but he’d taken the basic course as everyone else in SEALs had. And this thing looked like something he’d seen before. Fail-safe. Pull the wires and a disconnect signal was sent to the detonators, which sparked, blowing the explosives.

  But there was a way to disarm the thing. A code, a shut-off switch, a safety. Something simple if you knew it. But studying the thing he knew that he didn’t, and he was going to have to start taking chances if there was any hope of saving the station.

  “Get the hell out of here!” he shouted without looking over his shoulder.

  “Where to?”

  “I don’t care! Anywhere. Just get out.”

  “No!” Ashely shouted. “Tell me what to do to help!”

  The LED counter passed the 7:45 mark, and for a long second or two he felt completely lost, helpless. He didn’t know what to do. Acrid smoke poured from somewhere in the vicinity of the methane furnace five hundred feet away. But no fuel was coming up from the seam; this was at least one break in their favor. Whoever had planned this had come twenty-four hours early. By this time tomorrow any explosion back there would have cascaded into an all-out conflagration that would have obliterated the entire plant.

  “I don’t know how to disarm this thing,” he admitted. He looked up. “I need to pull the wires out of the plastique, and you’ll have to tell me where they are. It’ll be faster.”

  Ashley could see the LED counter. “I’ll show you!” she shouted over the turbine noise. “I’ll show you!”

  Cameron wanted to argue, but she was right. He got to his feet. “We’re running out of
time.”

  The detonator control box was positioned just below the generator less than twenty feet from the rear door. Ashley turned and sprinted to the front of the unit where a ten-inch-in-diameter shaft protected by a reinforced and tempered steel case was connected to the turbine and pulled up short, searching for something.

  She ducked beneath the generator and scrambled to a spot between it and the boiler feedwater pump directly ahead of the turbine.

  “Here!” she cried, and she moved aside to let Cameron squeeze into the small space.

  A gray lump of Semtex smelling faintly of vinegar and looking something like ordinary plumber’s putty had been molded on to the shaft case. There was a lot of it, probably three or four kilos. Enough, Cameron knew, to not only destroy the shaft case and the shaft itself, but to just about vaporize anyone within ten feet of it when it blew.

  “Get back,” he told Ashley.

  “I’ll find the next one,” she said in his ear and she was gone.

  Semtex plastic explosive was extremely stable. It would not explode if it were dropped on the floor or hit with a hammer or even if it were shot with a bullet or tossed in a fire. Only an acid fuse or in this case an electrical charge could set it off. The problem was the electronic detonator unit back by the door. Disturbing any part of the circuit, including the wire coming out of the plastique, might initiate a momentary current surge enough to set it off.

  Cameron smiled. In for a penny in for a pound, his pragmatic grandmother who’d raised him used to say. She’d emigrated from Ireland with her husband, who’d died of cancer three months after he’d been sworn in as a U.S. citizen. Six months later her unmarried daughter, eight months pregnant, had committed suicide by slitting her wrists. The premature baby—Jim Cameron—had been taken by paramedics, and never once had his grandmother burdened him with any sort of sadness, or some dour Irish philosophy of life’s travails. In for a penny in for a pound had been the worst of it.