Blowout

by Byron L. Dorgan

  “And the consequences,” Egan said.

  “Yeah,” Daley. “Those, too.”

  Egan started to turn away, but then on impulse looked back at the contractor. “Why did you take this job?”

  “Money. Isn’t it always the same?”

  Egan nodded, and walked back around the corner to the front of the club, not at all sure why exactly he was here. “Post three, team lead,” he spoke into his lapel mike. “We’re going to have company pretty quick, so soon as you hear the choppers get your ass back up here.”

  “Copy that. What was the shooting?”

  “Just someone getting a little out of line. Look sharp.”

  “Copy.”

  “Post one, team lead,” Egan radioed his people at the rear gate. “You guys copy the last?”

  “We’re clear down here.”

  “Soon as you hear the choppers incoming, get your asses up here.”

  “Roger,” the squad leader on the rear gate radioed.

  It was quiet. The wind had died and the sky was perfectly clear except for the Milky Way, which out here was a broad band of illuminated fog clear from horizon to horizon. Made a man feel small sometimes, and he didn’t think he could ever settle down out here, or understand a man like Osborne who could.

  “Rodriquez, Egan, copy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Switch to two,” Egan said, and he reached inside his tunic and switched his comms unit to the alternate channel. Only he and Rodriguez had the spare channel, and it had been the Mexican’s suggestion.

  “I thought I heard gunfire.” Rodriguez was there. “Does the center hold?”

  The Mexican, according to the stories he’d told on the way up, had lived a rough life in some barrio, yet he was well read. The first time he’d used the “center hold” expression Egan had no idea what the man was talking about. But when Rodriguez had explained that it was from a famous poem by a guy called Yeats—“things fall apart, the center cannot hold”—Egan had understood perfectly well what the poet had meant. And when Rodriguez told him that the poem was called “The Second Coming,” it had made even more sense.

  “Oh, yeah,” Egan said. “The center holds, my man. But we have one small problem that you need to deal with. Send a couple of men up to the R and D Center. The sheriff and his girlfriend are holed up there, probably talking to Ellsworth by now.”

  “Armed?”

  “Yes. I’d like to include the woman in our package, but the sheriff is definitely expendable.”

  “I’m on it, comp,” Rodriquez said, and signed off.

  56

  “THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG with him,” Whitney told the nearest contractor who stood at the edge of the dance floor, his M4 pointed in their general direction. She slowly helped Cameron to his feet. Dried blood was caked on the side of his head and still more seeped from a scalp wound.

  The contractor raised his carbine and the other two over by the bar looked over. All of them were nervous because of the shooting outside. It was the county sheriff and some broad who’d shown up unexpectedly.

  “Get the fuck back down on the floor,” one of them ordered.

  Whitney took a step forward, Cameron, his head lolling on her shoulder, stumbling and nearly collapsing.

  “Slowly,” he mumbled into her ear. He could see the nearest contractor out of the corner of his eye. The timing was right, he just hoped that Nate and Ashley had made it, and he felt terrible that he had talked them into coming out here tonight, right in the middle of another mess.

  “I said get the fuck back.” The contractor came over, his carbine pointed directly at Whitney.

  “The lieutenant commander is a personal friend of mine,” Whitney said. “If he dies tonight because he gets no attention, you’ll have to kill me, too, because I sure as hell won’t cooperate with you.”

  Cameron was convinced that Whitney was the one person here who Egan could not afford to lose if he were to have any chance of getting out alive. They needed her as a hostage, and the Ellsworth Rapid Response Team had been given specific orders from day one that she was even more important than the bacteria and the gadget. Those could be replaced. As the Initiative’s principal scientist she was just as vital to the project as Oppenheimer had been to the creation of the atomic bomb in New Mexico. Without him the Manhattan District might have been pushed back for years. And without Whitney the Initiative would be set back for nearly as long.

  Time, General Forester had explained to them all after the first incident, they simply didn’t have, because of the increasing pressure by OPEC and the big oil fund and derivative managers.

  “This run-up has to work,” he’d said. “We’ve just about bet the farm on it.”

  But what Cameron wanted to do with Whitney’s help—disarm the explosive charges at Donna Marie—was the toughest decision of his life. Chances were that some good people were going to get killed because of him if things went wrong. But, he kept reminding himself, a lot of good people would probably die tonight if he did nothing.

  The other hostages sitting on the floor were looking up at them. Cameron caught the eye of Susan Watts and she was startled and started to speak, but the door banged open and Egan walked in on a blast of arctic cold air.

  “What the hell in Christ is going on?” he shouted, coming across the room.

  “If you let him die, you’ll have to kill me, too,” Whitney said defiantly.

  Egan came into Cameron’s field of vision, and the man had a pistol in hand, a wild, crazy look in his eyes.

  “I’ll kill the both of you myself!” Egan screamed.

  Cameron stiffened and was about to straighten up to put an end to what was likely to get them killed right now, but Whitney stuck out her chin.

  “Well, go ahead, you stupid son of a bitch!” she shouted back. “And when Captain Nettles and his men show up who will you use as hostages? Each other?”

  Cameron started to raise his head, but Whitney shifted her weight and took another half step toward Egan.

  After a long moment, Egan lowered his pistol. “Well, what do you want?”

  “There’s a first aid kit in the women’s room. I want to at least bandage his head to stop the bleeding. And I want to look at his eyes in some decent light so see if his pupils are the same size. He might have a concussion.”

  “I didn’t bring a medic.”

  “No. I don’t suppose you did. But if he is concussed I’ll need to put bandages over his eyes and lay him down where we can keep him warm.”

  Egan turned away for a second and shook his head. “Well, don’t just stand there, somebody help her,” he said.

  One of the contractors slung his M4 over his shoulder, muzzle down, and took one of Cameron’s arms over his other shoulder and together he and Whitney headed to the corridor off the end of the bar and back to the restrooms.

  Behind them Egan ordered one of his men to go out to the Hummer and power up the portable radio; he was going to talk to the Rapid Response Team and tell them what they were faced with and what they were going to do unless they wanted to be the cause of a bloodbath here.

  “What was the shooting all about?” someone asked.

  “The son of a bitch sheriff,” Egan said. “But he’s going to cease being a pain in my ass in about ten minutes.”

  The woman’s room was at the far end of the dimly lit corridor, and in addition to the first aid kit—actually there was one in both bathrooms, one behind the bar, and another much larger kit in the kitchen—the electrical circuit breaker panel was there. A detail, Cameron hoped, that the contractors who’d been hired just after Christmas hadn’t discovered. And thinking about them made him angry with himself just now. He’d known something wasn’t right, and their being here definitely pointed to someone on Forester’s staff, but he’d not raised any objections.

  He’d been out of the field for too long, he thought bitterly. He’d lost his edge, and it was possible he would get them all killed tonight if Nettles didn’t
cooperate or made a mistake. He couldn’t let that thought go.

  Whitney opened the door and let the contractor go inside first, and then stepped away, exactly as she’d been told to do.

  As soon as she was clear Cameron lurched into the contractor, as if his legs were giving way, tightening his grip around the man’s shoulders. But then he straightened up, wrapped his left arm around the man’s head, and twisted sharply. The contractor’s neck popped with an audible sound, and Cameron lowered his convulsing body to the floor as Whitney came inside and softly closed the door.

  The man was still alive, but slowly suffocating, his eyes bulging, his mouth open, and cheeks puffed out as he desperately gasped for air, and Whitney shrank back.

  Cameron took the 9mm Beretta 92F from the man’s hip holster, pocketed it, as well as two spare magazines of ammunition for the carbine and an extra one for the pistol, and then stripped the carbine from the contractor’s shoulder.

  He jumped up, yanked open the circuit breaker door, and showed Whitney the main switch that would cut off all electricity to the building once it was thrown.

  “We’re going to have about thirty seconds once the lights are out, so don’t hesitate,” Cameron said.

  She nodded nervously.

  Three toilet stalls faced three sinks and on the back wall was a narrow casement window, the same as in the men’s room. He’d been counting on it, otherwise what they’d started would have been nothing more than an exercise in folly.

  Unlatching the locking mechanism he eased the window up, cold air instantly filling the bathroom. He looked back and Whitney nodded.

  Nothing moved outside, the night dark and perfectly still. They could have been the only people on the planet.

  Cameron shoved the carbine out the window and lowered it to the ground where he let it fall away from the building so as to make as little noise as possible. He pulled himself up and eased his way through the narrow opening, his hips barely clearing until he was mostly outside, and he clumsily dropped headfirst to the snow-covered ground.

  Grabbing the carbine, he swept left and right, but still nothing moved, so he went back to the window. Whitney was still at the circuit breaker.

  “What the fuck is going on in there!” Egan bellowed from the bar.

  “Now,” Cameron whispered urgently.

  Whitney threw the switch, plunging the entire building, including the outside lights, into darkness, and a second later she was at the window and Cameron helped her crawl through.

  Someone shouted something from inside, and either Susan or the bartender screamed. Whitney hesitated. She wanted to go back, but Cameron grabbed her arm and they started in a dead run across the thirty yards of open ground to the R&D building.

  Halfway there someone from behind opened fire, one round catching Cameron high in his back on the left side, and he stumbled and went down.

  “Jim!” Whitney shouted, dropping down next to him.

  Incoming rounds from at least two shooters kicked up dirt and snow all around them as Cameron rolled over, brought his M4 to bear, and emptied a thirty-round magazine into the back of the building.

  “Go!” he shouted, as he ejected the spent magazine and jacked in a second.

  “Not without you!” she cried.

  “Goddamnit,” he said. He got to his feet as he fired another eight or ten rounds into the back of the building, keeping them about window level so there was little chance of hitting any of the hostages who were sitting on the floor.

  He was sick to his stomach and light-headed, but their only chance was getting out of the open area between the buildings, which had become a killing ground.

  He and Whitney, keeping low, zigzagged the rest of the way across the compound, when all of a sudden someone opened fire from somewhere just south of the R&D building.

  57

  PRESIDENT THOMPSON WAS dead-tired and just a little discouraged. He and his wife, Ruth, had choppered up to Camp David earlier in the day, their son Donald and his fiancée, Crissy, joining them just before dinner. It was the first time they’d met the girl, and they were impressed. She seemed to have a level head and it had been obvious from the first minute that she adored their son.

  But watching the televised celebrations on Times Square and from elsewhere around the world, the new year no longer seemed as bright as it had just a month ago when Thompson had been briefed on the breakthrough progress Dr. Lipton and her people had made at the Initiative. He’d planned on addressing the nation on New Year’s Day, expecting the final experiment in the actual coal seam to succeed as expected.

  “Day one of our independence from foreign energy resources,” he was going to assure the people.

  The project had been just as big a financial gamble than even the Manhattan District—possibly bigger, considering the state of the world’s economy.

  But instead of the expected payoff they’d been delayed by two attacks on the project, had endured the bloodbaths in a small North Dakota town and at a dude ranch—that made no sense—and were facing yet another crisis over the likelihood that the Venezuelans were somehow involved.

  Wars had been started for a lot less.

  And now, sitting beside his wife on the couch in the main living area, he couldn’t shake the sense of impending doom he’d been feeling for several days. The problem of depending on foreign oil had become a national security issue. The New York Times had run a long op-ed piece by General Ben Wojiak, who’d served a one-year stint as chairman of the Joint Chiefs under a previous president before he’d retired. And in the past eighteen months he’d become a chief critic of what he termed was the “do-nothing administration.”

  “The president and his advisers have become a flock of ostriches, their heads buried in the sand,” he had written.

  It was so damned unfair, and Thompson had wanted to brief Wojiak on the Initiative, until he’d been reminded by his chief of staff that the general had served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs for only one year because he’d had a history of not being able to keep his mouth shut.

  “It’s finally coming together,” Bob Forester had reported one week ago, and Thompson wanted to believe him; wanted to believe that the breakthrough they’d all worked for so hard and for so long was actually just around the corner. “A matter of days now, not weeks,” Forester had promised.

  But a day later Ed Rogers had brought up the terrible suspicion that the project’s leak was possibly the general’s daughter. The Bureau’s confidence was high and she was the subject of a very vigorous investigation.

  “Has Bob been told?”

  “I don’t believe so, Mr. President, nor do I think it would be wise at this point to do so.”

  And that, too, had contributed to Thompson’s funk, which he’d hoped to alleviate at least a little by having his family around him for a New Year’s Eve celebration. The new year had always meant new beginnings to him. But not tonight. Not this year.

  Carson McLean, his chief of the Camp David staff, came across from the kitchen and Thompson looked up, but could read nothing from the man’s bland expression.

  “There is a telephone call for you, Mr. President,” he said.

  “I’ll take it here,” Thompson said, reaching for the extension phone on the table.

  “Might be better if you take it in your study, sir.”

  His wife and the kids were looking at him, so he smiled for their benefit. “Goes with the job,” he said. “Be just a minute.” He walked back to his study where he closed the door and picked up the call. Like telegrams years ago, calls like this in the middle of the night were never good.

  “Mr. President, this is Bob Forester, it looks as if the Initiative has come under attack again.”

  “Goddamnit, what’s going on?” Thompson said, sitting down, his temper boiling over. All he could think of was Chávez and the Venezuelan intelligence service.

  “I tried to reach my daughter earlier this evening—she’s out at Medora celebrating with Nate Osbor
ne—but when I couldn’t reach her in town I thought she and Osborne might have driven down to the Initiative. But her cell phone was not working there as well, so I checked with the Bureau’s cybercrimes unit who told me that the only cell tower within one hundred miles of Medora that wasn’t working was the one at the Initiative. I phoned Ellsworth and declared an incident.”

  The connection was noisy, as if Forester was in middle of traffic at rush hour. “Where are you calling from?”

  “I’m in the air, just took off from Andrews,” Forester said.

  “Are you sure we’re under attack again?”

  “Not one hundred percent, Mr. President, but I thought that it was worth sounding the alarm. Especially considering that my daughter is probably out there, and in light of what Ed Rogers told me this evening.”

  “Which was?”

  “That my daughter is suspected of spying on the project and passing information to somebody—possibly Venezuelan intelligence.”

  “The Bureau is investigating everyone with even a remote connection, on my orders,” Thompson said. “That includes Dr. Lipton and her entire staff, along with your staff. You, too, and your daughter.”

  Forester didn’t respond.

  “Has any contact been made with anyone inside the Initiative?” Thompson asked.

  “Not to this point, Mr. President. But unless whoever’s down there are on a suicide mission, they’ll probably take hostages. So we need to be sure of what our response will be.”

  “I will not negotiate to save the experiment,” Thompson said angrily. “We can always rebuild.”

  “How about to save my daughter’s life?”

  “Don’t put that kind of a spin on this.”

  “How about Whitney Lipton’s life? Would you make an exception for her?”

  Of course he would. She was the exception. Everyone and everything else was expendable. But he didn’t say it, and the silence stretched.

  “Once we’re past this latest business, you’ll have my resignation on your desk.”

  “I won’t accept it, Bob,” Thompson said. “You’ve taken us this far, I won’t let you walk away until we’re over the finish line. As winners.”