Blowout

by Byron L. Dorgan

  “Did they give a tag number?”

  “It’s probably in the computer.”

  “Call Sally at State for me, and have an APB put out for the vehicle. Approach with extreme caution, suspects are probably armed, and may be traveling with a hostage.”

  “Hostage? Who? What’s going on for God’s sake?”

  “Just do it for me, would you please?”

  “Right away, Nate,” Tina said, and Osborne broke the connection.

  “Are you armed?” he asked Cameron.

  “Yes,” Cameron said.

  “Dr. Lipton is your top priority, your only priority for now.”

  “Always has been,” Cameron said. “Just remember to duck.”

  “Will do,” Osborne said. He grabbed his jacket, at the door thanked the crew again, and headed into the nearly deserted terminal to meet Tommy.

  40

  THEY HAD DRIVEN to Belfield, absolutely no traffic on the windblown interstate that had already started to drift over, and had taken U.S. 85 south to the dirt track that ran out to the Initiative where Barry turned the Caddy around so that it was facing east. They were less than one hundred yards from the fence.

  He turned around to look at the woman who glared back at him. Her mouth was covered with duct tape, and they’d used tape to bind her wrists, ankles, and knees together.

  Trussed up like a hog for slaughter, Egan thought and laughed a little.

  Mattson, sitting in the backseat, had distanced himself as far from her as was possible. He stared at Egan. “We’re going to get stuck here if we wait too long for Toby. We should try to make it back to Regina.”

  “Shouldn’t be long now, Donald,” Egan said dreamily. He was actually daydreaming a little about what would come next, how it would even be better than sex, and he was getting aroused.

  “Don’t use my name.”

  “Take the tape off her mouth, I want to have a little chat.”

  Mattson was frightened, but he reached over and gently peeled the tape off Ashley’s mouth.

  “Thank you for at least that,” she said, her voice croaky. She had put on a pair of jeans and a sweater plus her Sorel Pac boots and parka, open in front now. “Could I have something to drink?” Her hair was disheveled, but without makeup she was still attractive.

  “No,” Egan said. “Tell me what you know about the Initiative.”

  “It’s an ELF communications system for contacting our submarines when they’re under water.”

  “Already got one in Wisconsin.”

  “This one’s better.”

  “Odd, isn’t it, that your dad working for ARPA-E is in charge of the project?”

  Ashley said nothing, but if she was worried she didn’t show it.

  “Means you’re lying to me, and that’s not a good thing.”

  “You probably know more about it than I do. So what’s the point, Mr. Egan? My dad won’t give you anything.”

  “Even for his precious daughter?”

  Ashley shook her head.

  Egan reached over the seat and caressed her cheek with the tips of his fingers, and she reacted as if she’d been touched with a branding iron. “Even your big bad sheriff won’t come to your rescue?”

  Ashley looked him directly in the eye. “You’d better hope he doesn’t.”

  Egan laughed, spittle flying all over the place.

  Mattson suddenly looked up. “Toby’s here.”

  The snow blew horizontally, making it nearly impossible to see more than a few yards. But Toby was right there leading two horses, and he dismounted and came over to the Caddy as Egan got out and braced against the rising wind.

  “Any trouble getting up here?”

  “No, but it’s going to be a bitch getting back in this shit,” Toby said. He glanced at Mattson and Ashley in the backseat. “Three horses, four riders.”

  “Two riders, leaves us a spare,” Egan said, and he motioned for Mattson to get out of the Escalade.

  “I don’t know how to ride a goddamn horse!” the Posse newspaperman shouted into the wind as he got out of the SUV.

  Egan pulled out his pistol and shot the man in the face, just above the bridge of his nose, and Mattson fell backward, dead before he hit the snow-covered ground.

  Toby shrugged, but Ashley struggled against her bindings, wildly thrashing around in the backseat, until Egan shoved the pistol back in his pocket and hauled her out of the car, dumping her on the ground.

  “You maniac!” she screamed, her voice ragged.

  Egan cut the tape from around her ankles and knees and pulled her to her feet. “You have two choices, either die here and now, or take your chances with what comes next. I promise I won’t shoot you if you don’t give me trouble.”

  “We can take her back, but it’ll slow us down,” Toby said. He was half drunk.

  “We’re not taking her back,” Egan said, and he hustled her into the teeth of the wind to the Initiative fence line, slipping and sliding, the footing treacherous, the hundred yards taking them nearly fifteen minutes.

  Toby followed them with the horses.

  Egan shoved her back against the fence. “Raise your hands over your head.”

  Ashley, suddenly realizing what he meant to do, pushed him away, and tried to knee him in the groin, but he deflected her blow with his hip and smashed his fist into her face, driving her head back against the fence.

  She flailed her arms, trying to fight back, but he hit her again, and her nose started to bleed and her knees gave way beneath her.

  She was slightly built, so it was fairly easy for Egan to tie her wrists above her head to the fence with one of the plastic wire ties he’d brought for just this purpose. Once she was secured he spread her legs, tying her ankles to the fence in the same manner.

  “The bitch’ll freeze to death in no time at all!” Toby shouted.

  “That’s the idea,” Egan said, enjoying himself immensely. It wasn’t in the script that Kast had given him. But what the fuck, it was a tough old world.

  “I thought we were holding her for ransom. They’ll find her out here soon’s this shitstorm lifts, maybe sooner.”

  “Don’t care,” Egan said, and he pulled out his pistol and started toward the horses.

  Suddenly understanding what was about to go down, Toby reared his horse back with one hand on the reins, let go of the horses he’d been leading, and grappled for his .44 Magnum inside his parka, but Egan was right on him, and he fired two shots, both of them catching the rodeo cowboy in the chest and knocking him off his horse, which bolted along with the others.

  “Son of a bitch,” Toby said, and he tried to scramble backwards and still reach for his pistol.

  Egan reached him and fired one shot point-blank into the kid’s head. “It’s a tough old world out there,” he said.

  Ashley had come around and when Egan turned back to her she shook her head. “Whatever you wanted for ransom you sure as hell won’t get it this way,” she croaked. “Won’t take long for me to freeze to death.”

  “Maybe it’ll make him think twice about finally retiring,” Egan said. “And who knows, maybe your sheriff hero will come to the rescue after all.”

  He started back to the Caddy to put the chains on the tires, everything to this point going exactly as he had planned; the newspaper broad screaming obscenities at him until her voice was finally carried away in the biting wind.

  41

  THE HUEY POUNDED west twenty-five feet above the snow-covered surface of I-94, cutting to the diagonal southwest once they’d picked up the lights of Belfield where they followed U.S. 85 to the south. Visibility was almost nil, but from what Osborne had seen nothing was moving. Only a couple of semis were stranded out on the main highway, and even the snowplows were in the barn until the weather settled down.

  “What’re we looking for, Nate?” Seagram asked in Osborne’s headset.

  “A Caddy Escalade.”

  “Out in this shit?”

  “I think so.”


  “What if we find it?” Seagram asked. He never turned turn to look at his passenger, instead his eyes continually darted from the view out the windshield to the attitude indicator on the panel, which assured him that they were in straight and level flight. The snow streaming past the windshield had the tendency to make a pilot drift in the same direction.

  “We’re looking for two guys, or maybe a man and a woman, plus Ashley Borden,” Osborne said, and he explained about the couple at the Rough Riders, and the ransom call to Ashley’s father in Washington.

  “Where the hell are they going to hold her for two months? Not around here. Once the weather clears they’d stick out like sore thumbs.”

  “They’re not going to hold her.”

  Seagram glanced at Osborne for just an instant. “No ransom, they took her to kill her?”

  “I think so.”

  The lights of Belfield were behind them, the night once again thick, when Seagram finally got it. “If these are the same people who hit the Initiative, what’s a Bismarck reporter have to do with anything?”

  “Her father runs the project. They want to slow him down.”

  Seagram concentrated on his flying for a minute or so. “That’s more than a navy communications setup,” he said.

  “I’d keep that speculation to yourself,” Osborne said.

  “I hear you, but what’s your involvement? I mean why not just call out the on-site security people? It’s their problem, isn’t it? Why risk your life flying around in this shit? We ice up and we’re going down.”

  “Because I’m not one hundred percent sure that they’ve taken her here. It’s crazy. Just what these guys shouldn’t be doing.” And in part because Ashley was involved and he didn’t want to turn over searching for her to Nettles and his people who might be getting a little trigger-happy about now.

  “There,” Seagram suddenly said.

  Osborne turned in time to spot someone standing next to the Cadillac pull something out from inside his coat. “Hard right, now!” he shouted.

  Seagram’s jaw disintegrated and the back of his head exploded in a spray of blood and white matter, and the helicopter rolled over sharply to the left and the snow-covered field came up to meet the windshield.

  42

  EGAN’S FIRST IMPRESSION was that the military was on his case, because the chopper was definitely a Huey, and more would almost certainly be on their way. But he fired directly at the pilot out of pure instinct, and as the helicopter banked sharply left and flew out of control directly overhead he couldn’t spot any military markings.

  Seconds later it crashed, and although it was likely there were no survivors—’cause he’d for sure scragged the pilot—he was torn between jumping into the Caddy and driving the hell out of here, or making sure whoever had come looking for him was dead.

  “Whatever you do never leave loose ends, boy,” his dad had drummed into his head over and over. “It’s the loose ends that’ll surely rise up and bite you in the ass.”

  “What if it’s people,” Barry had asked. He was a teenager, and his dad wasn’t really talking about football, he was talking about war.

  “I don’t give a shit if it’s your best friend; if they get in the way, put ’em away, put ’em down, take the sons a bitches out. It’s a tough old world out there, kid. Just remember what ol’ Satchel Paige had to say.”

  Egan remembered and he was worried that something just might be gaining on him, so he headed down the gentle slope to where the helicopter had gone down, no fire, which was just fine because he didn’t want anyone coming out of the Initiative to investigate just yet. But on the same token he didn’t want to leave any loose ends.

  It took nearly ten minutes to reach the wreckage. At the last moment the chopper had turned over on its side, saving the more fragile nose from a direct impact, but smashing the pilot’s body beyond any recognition, though Egan was sure it wasn’t the sheriff. The body was too small.

  No one was in the passenger seat, but the right-side rear hatch was partially open. Impossible to tell if anyone had been riding back there, except there were no bodies, nor could he smell blood or anything else from ripped-apart torsos. Only the smell of hot oil and leaking fuel.

  He stepped back, but in the dark he couldn’t see much of anything except his own tracks. If anyone had gotten out and walked or crawled away from the wreckage it was impossible to tell.

  A tremendous gust of wind shook the mangled fuselage, and already snow was beginning to drift up against the side of the chopper. Egan ducked under the tail section, and made a three-sixty visual scan, but nothing was out there that he could see, though a herd of buffalo could be standing right there ten yards out and they’d be invisible.

  He turned and looked back the way he had come, but from here he couldn’t see the Caddy, and could barely make out his own footprints in the snow. He began to panic a little. Sure as hell he wasn’t going to get his ass lost out here in the Badlands and freeze to death. He’d made his contract, he had money coming, and this time he figured he might just go someplace warm.

  But first he had to make tracks. No more screwing around.

  Lowering his PDW, he walked around the front of the wreck and headed as fast as he could back to the Caddy. She was a damned big machine, four-wheel drive, chains on all four tires; it was enough he figured to get him at least to Belfield, and from there he would blend; evade and escape, change appearances, be one with his environment, let ’em see what they expected to see, and just where they expected it.

  43

  BLOOD OOZED FROM a gash in the side of Osborne’s head, a couple of his ribs were broken, and he wanted to fade out, just lie back in the snowdrift five yards from the downed chopper where he’d scrambled in case of an explosion or fire. But the worst part was the titanium prosthesis on his left leg. It had jammed under the control panel when they’d crashed, and it was bent and his stump was damaged. He could feel blood running down the side of his leg.

  The man in the dark jacket had ducked under the chopper’s tail, and stopped for a moment to look directly at him, but by the time Osborne had managed to pull out his pistol the man had disappeared in the blowing snow.

  Osborne raised his gun anyway and started to pull off a shot, but stopped. Ashley was out there somewhere. Or at least he hoped she was, and he didn’t want to shoot blind and take the risk of hitting her.

  For a full minute, what seemed like an hour while at the same time just an eyeblink, Osborne lay propped up on one elbow, his pistol cocked, his aim wavering in the general direction the man had gone.

  Finally he safetied it, stuffed it in the holster on his right hip, and reached for his cell phone in his jacket pocket. But it was gone. Somewhere in the wreck, or in the snow. He tried to make his head work. If he laid here he would freeze to death, and unless the son of a bitch who’d shot them down still had Ashley in the Caddy she was out here, too. He didn’t want to think that the man had already killed her, although that would have been the logical thing to do.

  He got up on his good knee, and trailing his bad leg, pushed himself upright with every ounce of strength he had left. His head spun and he stood, hunched into the stiff wind, his stomach heaving, his ribs on fire each time he took even a shallow breath.

  Afghanistan wasn’t so far away, and he remembered just then the pain mostly blocked out by adrenaline, and he stumbled the few yards to the helicopter and looked in at Tommy’s mangled body. He was going to have to face Eunice at some point. Tell her why it had been necessary to call Tommy out on a night like this. Writing letters to the families of his soldiers had been the most difficult job he’d ever had, and facing Tommy’s wife was going to be worse.

  He worked his way to the chopper’s nose, and hesitated for just a moment before he headed out in the direction he thought they’d seen the Caddy. Each time he put weight on his left leg the pain of metal grating on bare bone was nearly impossible to bear, but he put it out of his mind. Nobody died because
of a hurt stump.

  The wind and fiercely blowing snow was pushing him to the left, he knew this intellectually, yet it was easier to simply go with the flow, and in about fifteen minutes he topped a small sharp rise and was on the flat surface of the gravel road.

  Maybe fifty yards or more, he figured, from where the Caddy had been parked. He started to draw his pistol again as he turned to the east, the wind at his back when he heard something. A woman, shouting or crying, and he turned back, his heart soaring, his ear cocked.

  But there was only the wind. Numbing, shrieking, a presence impossible to ignore as was his fading strength.

  He took a step back and he heard the cry again. Impossible to pinpoint exactly where, except that it was into the wind and not very far.

  About fifteen or twenty yards he stumbled across a body, its legs on the road, its head and much of its torso already half buried in the blowing snow. It wasn’t the guy who’d come down to the chopper, but in any case it didn’t matter now.

  A woman shouted his name, off to the right, and it was Ashley, he knew it for certain, and he hobbled down the road and then off into the higher drifts until he saw her spread-eagled up against the fence, her parka open in front, her chest and face and hair covered in snow.

  “Nate,” she cried weakly when he got to her.

  The ties that held her wrists and ankles to the fence were frozen solid. Osborne holstered his pistol and sawed through them with a pocketknife.

  “I’m so cold,” she cried softly, and he held her close, trying to give her some of his body warmth.

  After a couple of minutes he managed to zip up her parka, scoop the snow out of the inside of the hood, and from her hair and face, and pull the hood over her head.

  “What took you so long?” she asked, managing a little smile.

  “A little detour,” he said. “Can you walk? We have to make it to the gate, maybe two miles.”

  “I’ll try,” she said, but she was nearly out of it, and after only one stumbling step her legs collapsed from under her. “Oops,” she said. “Must have been the last wine.”