Blowout

by Byron L. Dorgan

  “Don’t be long,” Whitney said.

  Cameron grabbed his parka and headed out the door to where he’d parked his ATV when his cell phone rang. It was Deb Rausch calling from her office in Minneapolis. “Doesn’t the bureau recognize New Year’s Eve?” he asked.

  “Not as long as Barry Egan and his nutcase friends are still on the loose,” she said. “How’re things out there?”

  “Quiet. Everybody’s at the R and D Center getting ready to party. Tomorrow’s the big day.”

  “Your contractors on the job?”

  “Not mine. Forester’s office hired them, but they seem to know what they’re doing,” Cameron said. “But you didn’t call to talk about that.”

  “The director called to tell me that the leak in Forester’s office might have been identified. And I don’t think you’re going to like it one bit, because I sure as hell don’t.”

  “Who is it? Someone on the science staff?”

  “Ashley Borden.”

  Cameron had just straddled the ATV and was about to start the engine, but he stopped. “You have to be kidding.”

  “We have a wiretap order on her phone, and I called to ask you to keep your eyes open. I’m going to give Osborne the heads-up as well.”

  “I’d hold off calling Nate.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re starting to have a thing for each other, and I suspect that he’ll think you people are more full of shit than I do. The general’s daughter?”

  “My same reaction, but she’s been officially designated as a person of interest, which means my hands are tied.”

  “Well, she and Nate are on their way down here to party with us. What do you want me to do, bar them at the gate?”

  Rausch was silent for a moment. “No,” she said. “If she’s the leak and she’s at the Initiative there probably won’t be another attack, or at least not until the experiment is over with. Maybe we caught a break.”

  “Or maybe your boss is smoking something he shouldn’t be smoking,” Cameron said. “But I’m armed, so if she tries anything funny I’ll shoot her, okay?”

  “I didn’t start this, and right now my job is the same as yours.”

  “I’ll keep my eyes open, but you guys are way off base and I’d bet just about anything on it.”

  “Your life?” Rausch asked.

  Cameron hesitated a beat. “Of course not,” he said, deflated.

  “Keep in touch,” Rausch said, and she rang off.

  Cameron pocketed his phone, pulled on his thermal gloves, started the ATV’s engine, and headed down to Donna Marie as he tried to wrap his mind around the possibility—no matter how stupid it sounded to him—that Ashley Borden could somehow have been involved with the Posse and the attack on the Initiative. The first question was why. What was her motivation? What did she hope to gain? Maybe getting back at her father for something in the past? But even if that were the case why hadn’t she simply published an in-depth article about what was going on here? Embarrass the general that way, because he couldn’t picture her so cold blooded as to be part of the murders of the two guys in the power plant control room and the massacre of the others in the double-wide.

  He didn’t know her very well, but among the opinions he’d formed they definitely did not include insanity of the kind Barry Egan and his type were afflicted with.

  One hundred yards out from the main generating building, Cameron slowed enough to key the inner gate with a remote control and drove through as it opened. He’d argued against the second level of security as unnecessary, but Forester’s planning staff had insisted that only key personnel were to be allowed inside the near perimeter of the plant, where the main pieces of top secret work was being done.

  The only other access was through the back gate, which was kept locked at all times and protected by closed-circuit television monitors along with motion sensors and infrared detectors that would set off alarms inside the plant as well as up at the R&D Center.

  Of course those measures had been electronically defeated the last time, so now Forester’s contractors had been ordered to physically guard the generating hall as well as the rear gate. Anyone who tried to get close was to be detained until more help arrived, or shot and killed if necessary.

  Yesterday two men in a Hummer had been stationed at the back gate, but this evening they weren’t there. Cameron angled away from the generating hall where the Air Force had set up its medical, dining, and barracks tents, gone now, only the tamped-down snowdrifts, tire tracks, and helicopter skid marks in a jumble remaining.

  Stopping at the gate, Cameron dismounted from his ATV and inspected the heavy lock and chain, which were intact. The lights on the two television cameras glowed dimly red, indicating that they were functioning, and that meant that someone knew he was here.

  The gate was flooded with light from above, which made the night outside the fence all but invisible. But Cameron could feel something, almost sense eyes watching him from the crest of the low hills less than a mile out, maybe through the scope of a sniper rifle.

  He turned at the sound of a Hummer racing down the access road from the generator building, its headlights bouncing all over the place until the big vehicle skidded to a stop just a few yards away. Two men, one of them Wayne Daley, jumped out and came over. They both were armed with M4 carbines.

  “Mr. Cameron, weren’t expecting you down here,” Daley said. He was a tall, solidly built man in his late twenties, and like all of his team he was dressed in arctic white camos.

  “It’s lieutenant commander,” Cameron said. “And why isn’t this gate manned?”

  “Nothing’s moving out there tonight, LC, and I decided to keep my men inside where it’s warm and they can conserve their strength and stay sharp.” Daley shrugged. “Unless you have different orders?”

  “How about sending someone up to the R&D Center? Lots of critical personnel there tonight.”

  “My orders were very specific: guard the generating hall, wellhead, and control room, and interdict any attempt at penetration.” Daley looked away for a moment, then spoke into his lapel mike. “Roger, understand ETA in five.”

  “Who was that?” Cameron demanded. Something wasn’t right.

  “We have help on the way,” Daley said.

  Cameron stepped back a pace and reached for his pistol, but the second contractor raised his M4.

  “Pull your weapon and drop it to the ground,” Daley said.

  “Son of a bitch,” Cameron muttered, but he did as he was told.

  “Take him back up to the wellhead and secure him. The general might have some questions.”

  “General?” Cameron asked.

  “You’ll see soon enough,” Daley said, and he motioned for his man to head back to the generating hall on foot with his prisoner.

  “Who the hell do you really work for?” Cameron asked. “Can you tell me that much?”

  “Command Systems,” Daley said, and he produced a key and walked to the gate.

  49

  THE THREE HUMMERS with army markings had swept through Belfield turning off U.S. 85 and headed west a little before eleven, the night pitch-black under a thick blanket of clouds that had moved in less than an hour earlier. Egan, riding shotgun in the lead vehicle, had suppressed a laugh thinking about what he was going to do tonight, and the money he was going to make that was going to guarantee his retirement.

  And the land ran red with the blood of his enemies, his wrath so terrible that even kings trembled before his name.

  It was a quote from somewhere Egan couldn’t remember, except he thought that his daddy had used it around the house whenever he was in one of his moods. But it was a fine sentiment, one that Egan had always seen as his exclusive property, and one to which he’d always added the notion of righteousness.

  And it was the righteous who would inherit the earth, just as he had been handed his own salvation on a silver platter. Twelve men, including himself, four to a Hummer. All of them dress
ed in arctic white camos, all of them armed with M4 carbines, 9mm Beretta pistols, a few flash-bang grenades, and enough Semtex and remote control fuses to destroy the important structures and mechanisms in the power station five times over. And all of them dedicated to his one star and to the mission for which they had already been trained.

  He had called Bob Kast from Louisville and a plane had been immediately sent for him. “One final mission and then you’re off the hook.”

  “First I want to get paid for the newspaper broad.”

  “She didn’t die. In fact Sheriff Osborne was in the chopper you shot down, and he rescued her after you left.”

  Egan was walking beside Kast along a low mountain path in the woods, just the two of them, and he’d felt a sudden stab of fear. Kast had called him here to kill him and bury his body somewhere on the Command Systems remote base. No one would ever find him, because no one knew where he was.

  “But you’re not going to have to worry about money ever again,” Kast had told him. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “No,” Egan had replied honestly.

  “We’ve laid out your final mission, and when it’s over you’ll be paid twenty-five million dollars. Do you understand what I’m saying now?”

  Egan had actually licked his lips. “I’m listening” was all he could manage to say.

  “You fucked up twice, so you owe us this. But that’s beside the point, because this time I’ve personally designed the mission: I’ve gathered the personnel—eleven under your command to go with you to the Initiative and six more who’ll already be inside.”

  “Your men?”

  “In a manner of speaking. But they’ll be yours for the duration. Twelve hours from the time you enter the south gate until you’re aboard a Gulfstream with five million in gold headed for Havana.”

  Egan had pulled up. “A Gulfstream won’t carry eighteen men, will it?”

  “Just,” Kast said. “But we’re counting on losing a couple of your men. There will be at least four armed security officers in the compound, presumably well motivated. But if they fail you’ll have to manage to cut the number down yourself.”

  They had walked in silence for another ten minutes before Egan came up with at least one fatal flaw in Kast’s plan. “Twelve hours is too long. Someone will notice something is wrong and they’ll come running. No way they’ll let us waltz over to the nearest airport and fly away.”

  It was Kast’s turn to stop. “They’ll do exactly that,” he said. “And I’ll explain why.”

  * * *

  Alessandro Rodriguez was a small, dark-skinned man whose English was without accent and whom Egan had met only a few days ago in North Carolina. He was a Command Systems special operator and had been handpicked by Kast himself to act as Egan’s number one, and he was driving the lead Hummer when they crested the last hill overlooking the Initiative’s back gate.

  “There,” he said.

  “Right on schedule,” Egan said. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, only the one man standing beside the open gate, beyond which was a Hummer, exactly according to plan, and his gut clenched. Keep your options open, his daddy had taught him, and despite Kast’s ingenious plan, he intended to do just that.

  Daley stepped aside as Rodriguez drove through the gate and pulled to the left to allow the other two Hummers to pass.

  Egan rolled down his window as the contractor walked over.

  “Mr. Daley, I presume.”

  “Good evening, General. Run into any trouble on the way?”

  “No. How about here?”

  “The head of security showed up a few minutes ago asking questions, just as you called with your ETA. He’s up at the wellhead secured.”

  “How about everyone else?”

  “Everyone’s up at the R and D end, at Henry’s, having a party.”

  “How about the cell phone antenna?”

  Daley glanced over his shoulder at the red light blinking atop the smokestack. “Should be going down any minute.”

  “Sat phones?” Egan asked. It had been his idea to task the contractors to search for satellite phones anywhere within the Initiative and to disable them.

  “Four, all missing their SIM cards.”

  “Good work,” Egan said, and he turned to Rodriguez. “I want four men covering this gate from two defensible positions. Take the others up to the plant and get the charges in place and fused, priority one. Things are apt to get a little interesting here within the hour.”

  “You’ll be taking this vehicle up to the R and D compound I presume?” Rodriguez asked.

  “Yes, along with Mr. Daley’s people,” Egan said, and he turned back to Daley. “Get them rounded up.”

  “What about the security officer? Someone is bound to come looking for him sooner or later.”

  “Kill him,” Egan said, but then he changed his mind. “Better yet, bring him along.”

  “As you wish,” the contractor said. He spoke into his lapel mike giving the order as Rodriguez got out and started hustling his troops and equipment.

  50

  PASSING THROUGH BELFIELD, Ashley suppressed a shiver and Osborne behind the wheel of his SUV glanced over at her. “You want to go back?” he asked. The nearer they’d come to U.S. 85 the quieter and more withdrawn she’d become, and he was a little concerned for her.

  She shook her head and smiled. “I’m okay,” she said. “But thinking about those poor people Egan killed, and how he did it, sends a shiver up my spine. They never had a chance.”

  “Nothing like that ever happens out here, so most folks don’t even lock their doors.”

  Ashley looked at him. “It’s one of the reasons you came home when the war was over for you, wasn’t it?”

  “One, not the only,” Osborne said. “How about you? Why not New York, or Washington, someplace with news?”

  “I don’t know. Habit, maybe. Inertia. The Bismarck job came up and I took it. Guess I was just tired of all the time practically living out of a suitcase. Never having a friend for more than three years at a stretch.”

  “No one ever serious?”

  Ashley shrugged.

  “The majority of the population on most military bases is men. You should have had your pick.”

  This time she laughed. “You have no idea how hard it was for me to get a date. Even in high school.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Come on, Nate. Who has the guts to try to make time with the general’s daughter?”

  “I do.”

  “And trust me, my dad has always been a terror.”

  “I do,” Osborne said again, and this time Ashley heard him, and she got serious.

  “These last few days since Christmas, and especially this afternoon, don’t have to mean anything further than what happened,” she said. “I didn’t set any sort of a trap for you. I just want you to know that.”

  “Okay,” Osborne said, watching the road, but when he turned to glance at her she was staring at him with intensity. It was something new. “What?” he asked.

  “The problem is I think I’m falling in love with you. And when I told my dad he said it was about time I grew up, but I didn’t really know what he meant until just this instant.”

  Osborne didn’t know what to say.

  “I can’t imagine my life without you,” she went on. “And for me that’s a heck of an admission.”

  Ashley’s hands were clenched in her lap, and Osborne reached over and touched them. “When I saw you tied to the fence I thought I was too late to help you, and it nearly drove me crazy.”

  She nodded. “I won’t ever walk out on you, Nate,” she said. “The only way I’ll leave is if you tell me you don’t love me.”

  Osborne’s chest was swelling. “That’ll never happen.”

  She raised his hand to her lips and kissed it, then smiled. “I always thought women who acted like this were absolute saps.”

  “Medora’s not too much?”

 
Ashley laughed out loud, all the tension that had built between them on the way out here suddenly gone. “Medora will be just fine, so long as we can take a vacation back to civilization now and then,” she said. “You know, maybe like Dickinson or Bismarck or even Fargo.”

  And it was Osborne’s turn to laugh, and for the first time in a very long while he felt as if everything at least had the possibility of ending up just fine, even though he still had the jitters, which rose again to the surface as they came to the gravel road that led ten miles back to the Initiative.

  He slowed for the turn and Ashley was suddenly subdued. “Bastards,” she muttered.

  “We don’t have to go to the party,” Osborne said.

  Ashley shook her head. “Nothing’s going to happen tonight; according to my dad there’re no signs of anything coming up in the near term, but this business is a lot bigger than anyone suspected. Venezuelan intelligence is apparently working with a couple of very big Wall Street types—money managers who deal with oil derivatives—who’d like to see the bigger alternative energy programs, the ones most likely to succeed on an industrial scale, fail, and fail spectacularly.”

  “If it’s true then it’s another confirmation that there’s a leak somewhere,” Osborne said. “But where?”

  “My dad thinks it has to be on the science staff, but the bureau’s cleared everyone, which leaves his staff at ARPA-E, which he doesn’t want to believe. He’s worked with some of those people for a good portion of his career; called them over to help with the Initiative when the president appointed him to run the show. They’re friends from the old Bosnia peacekeeping operation.”

  “If the financing thing has gotten to the level we’re talking about that’s a lot of money. Serious money that can turn serious heads.”

  “I said the same thing to him. But he doesn’t want to believe that foxhole buddies could do something like that to each other.”

  “Maybe he should step down,” Osborne suggested in as gentle a tone as possible.

  “He will if he thinks he can’t do the job. But I know him, and God help the poor bastard if it is someone on the staff and Dad catches them. He’ll skin them alive.”