Blowout

by Byron L. Dorgan

  “We ran into stuff like this in Afghanistan. When the weather shut everything down, the Taliban made their worst attacks on our positions. Their eyeballs were better than our night vision gear, and they were dedicated.”

  “You think that the Posse is going to hit us again? Finish what they started? Because if that’s the case, and they actually get the microbes into the seam, Whitney says that we can pretty well kiss off all the work they’ve done for the next several years. Maybe longer.”

  Osborne shook his head. “It won’t be the same thing. Not with all the ground troops out there. But something is coming.”

  “And you can feel it,” Cameron said.

  “In my bones. And incoming rounds usually have the right of way.”

  “Hoo-rah,” Cameron said. “Should I give Nettles the heads-up?”

  “Won’t hurt,” Osborne said, and he passed the wireless handset across.

  Whitney had awakened and she’d turned around in her seat and looked back at them. “Are we in trouble?”

  “We might be late,” Osborne said. “The crew is trying to get us as far as Bismarck, but it depends on what we’ll run into.”

  “Could we get stuck out here?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Great,” she said. “I’ll have to let my people know what’s going on. They’re all a little shook up right now.”

  “Anybody quit?”

  “No,” she said. “Not one.”

  “Good people.”

  “The best,” Whitney said.

  Cameron broke the connection and handed the phone back. “The guy’s a prick,” he said.

  “I got the same impression,” Osborne told him. “We can talk to Forester, if you want, and he’d be out of there on the next transport back to Rapid City.”

  “I didn’t say the man was incompetent, I just said he was a prick.”

  Osborne got a dial tone and called Ashley’s number at her apartment in Bismarck, hoping that he was rousing her out of bed. But after eight or nine rings, he disconnected, and called her cell phone, which she answered on the second ring.

  “Good morning,” she said. “Back from Washington so soon?”

  “We’re still in the air, trying to make it to Bismarck. I tried your apartment.”

  “I didn’t want to risk getting stuck for Christmas, so I went back to the hotel. It’s getting to feel like the Medora Ritz. What does that say about me?”

  Osborne’s temper flared. He wanted her to be anywhere but Medora, but he kept his tone reasonably light. What was done was done. “How’s the weather?”

  “In town it’s not so bad, but the AP says it’ll be pretty awful everywhere else, and the highway patrol is issuing warnings that the interstate will be closed within the next hour or so.”

  “Just stay put until I get there, will you?”

  “I’ll be okay. How about you?”

  “If we can get to Bismarck I’ll try to rent a four-wheel drive, or if need be a snowcat from the DOT, but it’s going to be late by the time we get there.”

  “Seriously, Nate, take your time. I want to go Christmas shopping with you. And I forgot to ask, do you have a tree?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll get one in the morning,” Ashley said. “Who’s the ‘we’?”

  “Jim Cameron and Dr. Lipton.”

  Ashley laughed. “What’d my dad have to say to you guys?”

  “Among other things that you were a willful girl, but he agreed to let you help out. No holds barred. No secrets. But at a price.”

  “Anything I write has to be vetted first.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Sam didn’t like that I was staying out here, and that I didn’t have story to file, but I made him understand that this was big enough that the wait would be worth it.” Sam Adams was the Bismarck Tribune’s executive editor.

  “This is bigger than we first thought. A lot bigger and more dangerous.”

  “Okay, now you’ve really got my interest. What can you tell me?”

  “Not on an open line. They were sophisticated enough to block communications at the Initiative, so I don’t think hacking into our phone conversation would be too difficult.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Listen to me, I want you to watch your back. If something doesn’t look right, make a one eighty and leave.”

  “I’m not going anywhere in this.”

  “Call Sally at State, or Nettles at the Initiative.”

  “Can you be a little more specific?”

  “Just a hunch for now. But I have a feeling that something’s coming our way. Possibly tonight, maybe tomorrow night. Sometime during the storm. So stay put.”

  Ashley laughed. “Orders already?”

  “I’m serious,” Osborne said.

  “I can hear it in your voice,” Ashley said. “I’m going to bed now, so drive careful, okay? And call when you get close; I’ll have a Mich Ultra waiting for you at the bar.”

  38

  EGAN MOVED AWAY from the connecting door to Ashley Borden’s room, troubled. She’d been talking to the sheriff, who’d apparently gone to Washington, D.C., which was almost impossible given the time line. The sheriff had been in the dining room early in the evening.

  Mattson stood by the dresser, a frightened, expectant expression on his face.

  If Osborne had driven directly to the airport at Dickinson a VIP jet could have picked him up, taken him to Washington for some kind of a meeting—a very brief meeting—and brought him back. But a meeting with whom? Who would he be meeting at that hour of the night? With that urgency?

  General Forester was certainly a possibility, but Kast said Forester had flown from Reagan National the day after the attack, and it was likely that he’d gone to the Initiative. So who had summoned a small nowhere county sheriff in the middle of the night?

  And the answer, when it came to him, was nothing short of stunning.

  He focused on Mattson. “I think we may have underestimated the sheriff.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The broad was on the phone with her boyfriend, and apparently he’s on his way back from Washington.”

  “That was fast. Maybe the military flew him out.”

  “Or the FBI, or maybe even the president,” Egan said.

  The color drained from Mattson’s face. “This is way out of my league, Barry. I mean, I’ve helped the Posse from the get-go, and I helped get you down here and all, but this shit has got to stop. I’m a journalist for the cause, not some kind of foot soldier.”

  “I know what you’ve done for us, and I appreciate it, we all do. But I need you for the rest of the morning, and soon as we’ve finished with what we’ve set out to do, I’ll drive you over to the nearest airport that’s open, even if it’s all the way down to Rapid City. Wherever.”

  “Exactly what is it that we’ve set out to do? You’ve never leveled with me.”

  “Snatch the broad, I told you that from the start.”

  “Saying that we pull it off, then what? A ransom note or something?”

  “Something like that.”

  “In the meantime where do we stash her?”

  “The Roundup Lodge. Toby’s bringing the horses in case the Caddy gets stuck.”

  “If we leave the car behind how the hell am I supposed to get to an airport? And what about the owners and the staff down there? They’ll know something is wrong, and they’ll call the cops.”

  “For starters the phone lines are down. Toby made sure of that first off.”

  “But what about the staff and guests? We can’t hold all of them hostage.”

  “No problem,” Egan said. “They’re all dead.”

  Mattson stepped back. “This is beyond crazy,” he said, nearly out of breath, the words choking in his throat.

  “Even if the Caddy does get stuck we’ll use one of their cars or trucks. I’m sure we’ll figure out something.”

  “I’m not a kil
ler.”

  “I want you to settle down. In a few hours this’ll be all over for you. You have my word on it. But I need your help.”

  “I meant at the camp. I’ll be charged as an accessory.”

  “They’ll have to catch you first. Right now we’re going to pack and soon as the bar closes and everyone goes home, you’re going to bring our stuff down to the car, and we’ll snatch the broad. In an hour or two this place’ll be totally dead, and Toby should have just about made the rendezvous point.”

  “Which is where, exactly?”

  “South on Eighty-five, on the way to the lodge.”

  * * *

  By three the hotel had been quiet for more than an hour. Egan had taken off his wig, removed his makeup, and had changed into a pair of jeans, a heavy sweater, and hiking boots. Mattson had managed to get their things down to the car without being spotted. When he got back his jacket was covered in snow.

  “Just our car and the Bismarck Trib pickup truck,” he said. “Looks like we’re the only ones in the hotel tonight.”

  “Good,” Egan said, but it was about what he’d expected in a place like this a couple of days before Christmas.

  He strapped the Velcro harness to his chest, checked the load on his compact Knight PDW—the same weapon they’d used on the attack at Donna Marie—and attached it to the harness. When he pulled on his jacket and zippered it up, the weapon was undetectable.

  Mattson was shook up, but he said nothing as Egan checked the action on his silenced Glock, stuffed the weapon in his belt, and pulled on a dark blue baseball cap with the logo of the Billings County sheriff’s department.

  “Are you good to go?” Egan asked. He’d checked the room twice to make sure that they’d left nothing behind, especially fingerprints or DNA evidence in the bathroom.

  Mattson nodded nervously.

  “Go warm up the car. I’ll be down directly with the broad.”

  Mattson left and Egan switched off the lights, then put his ear against the connecting door. He could hear nothing.

  The corridor was deserted, and Egan went to Ashley’s door, pulled the bill of his cap low, and knocked twice. “Ms. Borden?” he called.

  The woman didn’t respond.

  Egan knocked again, this time a little louder. “Ms. Borden, I’m Officer Trembley. Are you in there?”

  A light shone from under the door. And someone came to the peephole. “What is it?” Ashley asked, her voice sleepy.

  “Sorry to bother you, ma’am, but Sheriff Osborne asked me to come over and make sure that you were okay. Are you okay?”

  “Just dandy. Now, if you don’t mind, I was in the middle of a really good dream.”

  “It’ll just take a minute, ma’am, but the sheriff gave me specific instructions that I was to check your room, the window latches, telephone, all that kind of stuff.”

  “Go away.”

  “If need be I’ll have to stand outside your door until he gets here. I don’t want to lose my job. You know how it is. It’ll just take a minute.”

  “What’s your name again?”

  “Trembley. Kevin Trembley.”

  “Shit,” Ashley said, but she undid the safety latch and opened the door.

  Egan pulled out his pistol and as she started to back away, he pushed his way in and pointed the Glock directly at her head, just inches from her face. “Make a noise, any noise, and I’ll blow your fucking head off. Do you understand?”

  Ashley looked beyond him to the empty corridor, but she nodded. She was dressed in gray sweatpants and a Columbia University T-shirt, her feet bare.

  Egan let the door close. “This is going to be a simple kidnapping. We take a little drive, I call your father with a ransom demand, he pays it, and you’re free to go.”

  “The Posse doesn’t work that way.”

  “It does when we need money.”

  “If this is your second shot at the Initiative you’ve screwed up.”

  “We know about the attack, but we decided to cash in on the paranoia down there. Figured your father is worth a few hundred thousand, maybe a million. See what he’ll pay for his baby girl. So get dressed, Ms. Borden, unless you want to freeze your ass off.”

  Ashley stood her ground, studying his face, and suddenly she nodded. “You’re the woman from the dining room. Barry Egan, I suspect.”

  Egan was rocked to the core, and his finger tightened on the trigger.

  39

  THE LANDING AT Bismarck was dicey, the Gulfstream nearly sliding off the icy runway in a stiff crosswind before the pilot managed to ease it back to a straight line path and taxi to the terminal. The runway lights behind them were turned off, and the airport was officially closed until the weather cleared, which was not supposed to happen for another thirty-six hours.

  The stewardess came back, and despite the late hour and rough landing she still looked fresh. “You have a call from General Forester,” she told Osborne.

  The general sounded grim. “They’ve taken Ashley. I got the ransom call ten minutes ago.”

  Osborne had been uptight all night, but he was suddenly calm; it was the same reaction he’d had on the battlefield when the expected attack finally began and the job in front of him was clearly defined. “Who was it, and what do they want?”

  “It was a man’s voice, said he’d been directed to halt the Initiative, not destroy it. Said that if he had my word that Donna Marie would cease operations for sixty days, my daughter would be released unharmed.”

  “He won’t keep his word.”

  “I know that. So I asked for a few hours to get clearance from the White House. He gave me two.”

  “Did he say where she’d been taken, or how and where she would be released once you promised to do what he wanted?”

  “No. And I wasn’t expecting such a call, so I wasn’t set up for a trace, or even a recording. But I’ve notified the FBI, and I called Captain Nettles to put him on alert. But he said Jim Cameron gave him the heads-up a couple of hours ago that something might be coming our way. Do you know something about this?”

  “Just a hunch,” Osborne said.

  “Goddamnit, Sheriff, we’re talking about my daughter’s life, because you know damned well I can’t give the order to shut down the experiment.”

  “If it were me coming after the Initiative I’d pick the conditions where the weather and date were on my side.”

  “A snowstorm and Christmas,” Forester said, a little of the hard edge softening. “Do you think Ashley might be a diversion?”

  Osborne wanted to think that it was. “No,” he said. “But he’s given us a clue.”

  “What clue?”

  “The sixty days. It’s too specific to have no meaning.”

  “That’s not going to help us find my daughter.”

  “It just might, General, because I think I know where he’s taken her and why. And I think I know who it is.”

  “How?” Forester demanded.

  “Because I met him last night,” Osborne said, and he broke the connection.

  Cameron and Whitney were looking at him.

  “They’ve kidnapped the general’s daughter. They want him to shut down the project for sixty days or else they’ll kill her.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Whitney said.

  “They’ll kill her no matter what,” Cameron agreed. “There’s no way possible for them to hold her that long. What do you want to do, Nate?”

  “Nettles has already been warned, but in the meantime we have the one asset that’s even more important than the wellhead and the gadget.”

  Cameron glanced at Whitney. “She oughta stay right here in Bismarck.”

  Osborne nodded. “And I want you to stay with her. We can call the state police to give you a hand if you think you need it.”

  The pilot came off the flight deck. “This is as far as we can take it, folks. No way we’re going to make Dickinson, and we can’t even make a turn around.”

  “Thanks
for getting us this far,” Osborne said. “We’ll take it from here.”

  “What about Ashley?” Cameron asked. “You told the general that you had an idea where they’ve taken her.”

  “I think so,” Osborne said, and using his cell phone he called Tommy Seagram at his home number in town. The helicopter pilot answered on the fifth ring.

  “This fucking better be a beautiful woman,” Seagram said.

  Osborne heard Tommy’s wife say something in the background. “It’s me. I need you to get to the airport and power up your Huey as fast as you can get here.”

  “Nate? Are you out of your mind? Have you looked out the window?”

  “Just flew in aboard a Gulfstream from D.C. Made it with no problem.”

  “You can’t see shit five feet in front of your windshield.”

  “Fly low, and follow the interstate,” Osborne said. “This is important. We have a hostage situation, and less than two hours to do something about it. And right now you’re my only bet.”

  “Fuck you,” Seagram said. “I’ll be there in fifteen.”

  “No Stinger missiles, promise,” Osborne said, but Seagram had already broken the connection.

  “You do know who took her and where she is,” Cameron said.

  “I’ll know in just a minute,” Cameron told him, and he called Tina Patterson, the bartender and night clerk at the Rough Riders hotel. It took ten rings before she answered.

  “We’re all booked up,” she mumbled groggily.

  “It’s me,” Osborne said. “I need you to do a quick favor for me. Just take a minute.”

  “Is this a joke?”

  “I have a situation brewing. You know the couple that checked in? They were driving a Caddy Escalade. I want you to check if it’s still parked out back”

  “Of course it is. Who’d want to go out on the night like this?”

  “Just check, would you please?”

  “I’ll have to go to the back door. Give me a minute.”

  “Hurry,” Osborne said.

  “What couple?” Cameron asked.

  Osborne explained about the two who said they were from San Francisco, and the oddness of the woman who’d caught Ashley’s attention. “They didn’t fit.”

  Tina was back two minutes later. “It’s gone, Nate. Do you want me to check their room?”