Blowout

by Byron L. Dorgan

  “We’re raising our price per barrel to you by twenty-three percent. Do you perceive an ambiguity?”

  “But you’re not raising your prices for China or India.”

  “No,” Luzardo said.

  “Why?”

  “Because we can.”

  “It will create an unnecessary hardship for our citizens.”

  “Yes,” Luzardo said.

  “There may be serious repercussions,” Mann said, already knowing that his trip here had been useless. “Can there be no negotiations?”

  “With the United States?” Araque demanded.

  “Yes, Venezuela is still one of our major and most trusted trade partners. In the aftermath of Katrina your government held out a hand of friendship, offering help.”

  “Which your President Bush arrogantly refused, while at the same time planning for Operation Balboa to invade our country.”

  “There were never any invasion plans, but that was a different time, a different president.”

  “Then there was Obama, who said that we helped Colombian guerrillas. He had the same stench as Bush.”

  “Your President Chávez made that statement, but at the Summit of the Americas in April oh-nine he said that he wanted to become friends with President Obama.”

  Araque waved it off. “Can you tell me that there are no plans to assassinate our president?”

  “You have my word.”

  Luzardo was sitting back, the same unreadable expression in his dead eyes. “You understand that sovereign nations need to protect themselves.”

  “As I said, sir, there are no plans to invade your country or assassinate your president.”

  “Perhaps or perhaps not, but you are presently busy at work trying to ruin our economy.”

  “That’s simply not true.”

  “Oil is Venezuela’s lifeblood. Without it our people would be driven to starvation.”

  “As would happen to my people without it,” Mann said, no idea where this was going. But he had an ominous feeling that he was walking into a diplomatic trap.

  “Do you know about the Dakota Initiative?”

  And all of a sudden Mann knew that the trap had been sprung. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said.

  “That’s too bad because you are lying, of course.”

  “No.”

  “Yes,” Luzardo said coldly, no inflection in his baritone voice. “If Venezuela loses its U.S. oil market it would be devastating to our economy. Even as we speak we’ve had to raise our bus fares, and you’ve already seen what that small measure has done to our people.”

  “Your administration—every administration beginning with your first Bush—has been arrogant,” Araque said angrily. “No other people matter more than yours. You rape the planet, and when you have depleted everyone’s resources you move on, leaving the rest of us in your garbage heaps.”

  “Twenty-three percent is just the beginning, Mr. Envoy,” Luzardo said. “Tell your president that if he plays with fire to be careful he does not burn himself with its unintended consequences.”

  “I cannot bring him that message.”

  “As you wish,” Luzardo said. He picked up the phone. “Come.”

  Gabriella appeared at the door. “If you will come with me, Señor Mann,” she said brightly.

  “Can there be no further discussion? No negotiation?”

  Neither Luzardo nor Araque answered, they simply looked at him as if he were some disagreeable object better served out of sight.

  Mann got to his feet. “Craziness,” he muttered, but he followed the girl to the elevator and back to the main floor.

  “Have a pleasant journey home, sir,” she said and walked away, her hips swaying and her heels tapping on the marble tile.

  The receptionist at the front desk, another pretty girl, looked up and smiled as he passed and went outside. The chanting crowd that had all but filled the broad Avenida Bolivar had spilled out to the side streets, hundreds of them streaming by.

  The government-supplied limousine that had brought him in from the airport was gone, and when he reached the curb he began to get the first glimmer that something was wrong.

  A battered windowless Mercedes Sprinter van pulled up, and before Mann could react two men jumped out and hustled him into the backseat, and then a third man behind the wheel took off, easing his way through the crowd to the next corner where he turned south and accelerated.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” Mann sputtered, but he felt real fear, the first since a mission had gone wrong in Somalia three years ago.

  “We’re taking you back to the airport, señor, so that you can bring a message to your president from our president,” one of the men who had grabbed him said.

  Mann could only see forward out the windshield, but after a few blocks he realized that they weren’t heading for the airport, and he said as much.

  “That highway has been closed, we have to use an alternate route.”

  Mann began to panic. “Take me back to PDV.”

  “It’s too late for that,” the one man said. He had a cruel, narrow face, and his sweatshirt and jeans were dirty, stained with what might have been oil or grease.

  Five minutes later they came to what looked like an industrial district of abandoned buildings, and rusted-out factories with rutted streets, a collapsed smokestack, and bricks reducing the road to a narrow lane.

  “I’m an envoy from the president of the United States.”

  “You should have listened with respect,” the narrow-faced man told him matter-of-factly.

  The van turned down another lane, and pulled into the cavernous hall of a huge factory building, all the machinery gone, and stopped in front of a workbench standing alone in the middle of the space.

  Mann’s captors pulled him out of the van, as three men dressed in white coveralls, white booties, and gloves came out of the shadows. Two of them were almost as large as sumo wrestlers, while the third, much smaller man, carried a chain saw, and Mann’s legs turned to water.

  “You can’t be serious!” he shouted, but his voice was lost in the large space.

  The two wrestlers hauled him to the workbench and roughly slammed him facedown, bent over at the hips. A moment later the chain saw whined to life.

  “No!” Mann shouted. “Please, I beg you!”

  But the chain saw was right there, right on top of him. It revved up and he nearly managed to pull away when an intensely sharp pain bit into the back of his neck, blood flying everywhere in his peripheral vision, and suddenly the pain was gone and he was floating toward blackness, no last thoughts except horror for what was happening to him.

  20

  OSBORNE FIGURED THAT the terrorists had only two ways in or out last night. The first was north of the power station toward the Teddy Roosevelt National Park where a gravel road wound up connecting with the interstate highway nine miles west of Medora. From there they would have had clear driving into Montana. The second was to the south along the Little Missouri River, toward Amidon on U.S. 85, where a lot of out-of-state elk hunters came up from Rapid City.

  It was eight in the morning, the air crisp enough to see your breath, when Tommy Seagram headed his Bell Jet Ranger south, along the river, from where he’d picked up Osborne at Chimney Park just outside of town. Far to the west the Sentinel Butte rose from the horizon while to the southeast was the Kinley Plateau.

  Within a few minutes they picked up the smudge of a lingering fire at the Initiative rising into the clear sky.

  “Trouble out here last night?” Seagram asked.

  They wore headsets that made it possible to talk to each other without shouting. “Some,” Osborne said.

  “Unidentified aircraft on a course of two zero five eight miles south-southwest of Medora, you are entering a restricted airspace. Please turn to one eight zero. Acknowledge.”

  Seagram banked the chopper slightly to the left so that they would pass a couple of miles to the east of the f
acility, and got on the guard frequency. “Roger,” he said, and he gave his tail number. “We see smoke, do you require assistance?”

  There was no answer and despite himself Osborne had to laugh. Seagram had been born and raised down in Rapid City and had moved up to Bismarck to, as he said, get away from the madding crowds, and “anything that smacks of authority.” It was a common trait among a lot of North Dakotans, locals as well as imports.

  “Goddamn bureaucrats,” the chopper pilot said.

  The Little Missouri River, which came down from the Missouri Creek above the Teddy Roosevelt Elkhorn Ranch, meandered all over the place like a drunken sailor. In many stretches it was just a trickle, sandbars everywhere, in some places there were grasslands and stands of ponderosa pine, in others stunted growth brush right down to the high-water mark. A million years of flow carved little canyons that were framed by rolling brown and green hills, cellular lava outflows, and in the distance like sentinels over a wasteland, rocky outcroppings and buttes and other fantastical, even alien rocky formations. These were the Badlands and Little Missouri Grasslands, home to Osborne and to Seagram and a lot of other people—not just ranchers—who loved the openness and stark beauty of it.

  “Okay, so you got me out here, Nate, what do you have in mind?” Seagram asked as he glanced over. “Anything to do with the Initiative?”

  “The place was attacked last night. Maybe as many as a half-dozen terrorists. Probably Posse.”

  “Not surprising. Any casualties?”

  “Yeah. Maybe eight or nine, plus at least two, maybe three, of the bad guys.”

  “Holy shit. You think they might have come this way?”

  “Either that or up to I Ninety-four, in which case they’re long gone.”

  “Hell, put out an APB, give it to the Highway Patrol.”

  “An APB for what?” Osborne said. “They came up to the Initiative on ATVs, but how they got in and out is still unknown. But I think they probably posed as elk hunters.”

  “Well, you can get the list of out-of-state registrants, see if any of them are Posse.”

  “They probably used false IDs.”

  Seagram grinned. “That’s why I herd these things, and you’re the cop. So what are we doing out here? There’s no way they’re still hanging around.”

  They were a few miles past the Initiative now, two ranges of low hills between them. Osborne had Seagram drop down to fifty feet off the deck and swing back to the west toward the river and the gravel road. They were right on the Slope county line, where the road branched, one continuing south but heading away from the river toward the Badlands Roundup Lodge, which had been in existence since the 1880s, while the other jogged straight east just south of the Initiative before it swung north and connected with U.S. 85.

  “Not a good idea if we get too close,” Seagram said.

  “No.”

  “What are we looking for?” Seagram asked, but then they both saw the ATV and a disconnected trailer abandoned just in the lee of a rounded hill south of the Initiative.

  “Set us down about twenty yards north,” Osborne said.

  Seagram put the Bell Ranger practically on the deck, giving the trailer and the ATV a wide berth before he set down on the road in a flurry of dust.

  “Stay here,” Osborne said. He jumped out of the helicopter and ducking below the still-rotating blades headed back up the road, keeping to one side as he scanned the gravel surface for any signs of a recent disturbance.

  He stopped a few yards from the ATV. There was blood splashed on the seat and handlebars and a large pool of it on the gravel road that had been disturbed possibly when the victim’s body collapsed. Four shell casings littered the road about ten feet from the ATV. Just beyond that he could make out the clear impression of a jumble of footprints, plus a blood trail that along with the footprints abruptly ended not far from the tire marks of something big, something with dual wheels in the rear.

  Osborne walked over to the shell casings where he hunched down and picked up one with a ballpoint pen. About the same diameter as a 9mm Para, but much longer, which meant more powder, a much greater stopping power. He was just about certain it came from the Knight PDWs the terrorists had used.

  Something had gone wrong that had caused one or more of them—probably their leader—to kill the woman down at the Initiative and then shoot another of them here even though they had gotten away.

  A disagreement that had gotten violent. Perhaps the man or woman who’d been shot to death here and whose body had been carried into the big vehicle with dual rear wheels—a motor home, he thought—had wanted to go back and finish the job or most likely wanted to rescue their fallen comrades. The leader disagreed and shot the dissenter to death.

  He dropped the shell casing into a small plastic evidence baggie that he pocketed. Then stepping carefully, he took out another baggie and a cotton swab—things he always carried with him to a crime scene—nearer to the ATV where he bent down, scooped up some blood with the swab, and sealed it in the baggie.

  Cameron had pointed him toward the Posse and two names—Ada Norman, shot to death at the back door of the power plant, and Barry Egan. The names, the automatic weapons they had used, the Semtex, and the timing device made a good start. But Osborne, straightening up, wondered why this facility, and more important, why now? Why last night, of all possible dates?

  They’d come in disguised as elk hunters. He glanced over at the marks the dual rear wheels had made. From a big motor home. Common for the better-heeled out-of-state hunters. Another small lead. And it had gone south, back to Rapid City maybe. Another small lead.

  But it still didn’t explain why last night. Why not at the beginning of the hunting season?

  “We’ve got company coming our way, Nate!” Seagram shouted from the open door of the helicopter.

  Osborne looked up as one of the MH-60 Black Hawk helicopters from last night appeared over the top of the hill to the north and hovered for several seconds before it made a tight turn and touched down on the gravel road not twenty yards away, sand and gravel flying everywhere. It was one of the two gunships equipped with 7.62mm machine guns that had shown up to provide security for the Initiative.

  Captain Nettles jumped out of the side door and marched over. He didn’t look happy. “You were ordered to stand down until General Forester showed up!” he shouted.

  “You’re contaminating my crime scene, Captain,” Osborne said, standing his ground. “Back off.”

  Nettles pulled up short right in the middle of the road, a foot or two away from the tire tracks and the last of the blood spoor, and after a long moment he glanced at the ATV, the shell casings, and the pool of blood.

  “This site is now under military jurisdiction.”

  Osborne nodded toward the north. “The Initiative is yours, but right now you’re in my county. Leave or I’ll place you under arrest.”

  Nettles took a step forward, but one of the men called to him from the chopper.

  “Captain, I have radio traffic for you.”

  “Stand by!” Nettles shouted.

  “It’s General Forester, he’s incoming from Bismarck.”

  Nettles looked as if he wanted to shoot somebody. “On my way,” he said. “You’re coming with me, Sheriff.”

  “I’m flying back to my office, where I’m sending one of my deputies out here to secure the scene until the FBI forensics team shows up from Minneapolis. I’ll drive out to the Initiative in a couple of hours.” Osborne turned and walked back to where Seagram was waiting.

  “Goddamnit!” Nettles shouted.

  But Osborne reached the Bell Ranger without looking back. “Get me back to town, Tommy.”

  “They going to shoot us?”

  Osborne laughed. “I wouldn’t put it past them.”

  21

  DAVID GRAFTON, THE newest and best educated of the three deputies, was having a heated argument about the Green Bay Packers versus the Vikings with Kevin Trembley, the oldest
, when Osborne walked in. They stopped immediately.

  “Ms. Novak from the governor’s office called and wants to talk to you right away,” Grafton said, sounding impressed. Diane Novak was the Department of Commerce commissioner.

  “What’d she want?” Osborne asked, walking straight back to his small office.

  Their radio dispatcher was out sick today, and Stu Burghof, their other deputy, was on vacation somewhere in California for two more days, so it was just the three of them.

  “Didn’t say, but she sounded kinda mad,” Grafton said, following him.

  Osborne tossed his ball cap on the desk and went to the big wall map of Billings County and the edges of the surrounding counties. “There was some trouble down at the ELF facility last night. Could have been a Posse attack. There were a lot of casualties, and right now an Air Force Rapid Response team from Rapid City has taken charge. They want me down there right away.”

  “No shit?” Grafton said. He was excited. Almost nothing ever happened in the county, except for some domestic battery and a few drunks on the weekend.

  “No need for profanity,” Trembley cautioned from the doorway.

  “Kevin, I want you here on the radio in case something comes up. And try to find out where Stu is staying and get him back,” Osborne said. He poked a blunt finger at the spot where he’d found the ATV, the shell casings, and blood spoor, and told them about his confrontation with the Air Force captain.

  “That’s not federal land,” Grafton said. He’d gotten his degree in criminology with a minor in law from the University of Minnesota over in Duluth, but he wasn’t a big shot about it.

  “I’m going to try to head them off if I can, but in the meantime I want you to get down there with an evidence kit. Put police tape around the entire area and take lots of photographs. Pick up anything you find, and make tire casts; something big was out there, I’m guessing a motor home. Dual rear wheels.”

  “What if this Nettles comes back and tries to stop me?”

  “You’re a civilian, and this is your county,” Osborne said. “Pull rank on him.” He gave the shell casing and blood sample to Trembley. “Get someone to run this over to Bismarck and ask if the blood is a match to any known Posse member. And find out what weapon they used; most likely came from a compact submachine gun I saw out at the power plant last night, a Knight PDW, I think. But make sure. Might be able to find out who bought them and where.”