Ben tried to withhold a yawn. His lips curled into what might pass for a smile. “This is Minot?”
“No. Devil’s Lake.”
Ben blinked, his mind trying to place them in relation to Minot. He opened up the map. “It says on the map here that the next stop is Rugby and then Minot.”
“That sounds right.”
“We want to get to Minot, right?”
“Right.”
“So why are we getting off at Devil’s lake?”
“Because there’s still a chance THEY know where we’re headed.”
“You said everything was purchased through a separate business, not connected to you in any way?”
“Sure. But like you said, they’re the government; they’re not playing by the same rules as you and I. Which means, they might just know where we’re headed.” Sam pointed to Minot on the map. “If they do, they’ll have a small army of law enforcement officers waiting for us here, and if I was Devereaux, I’d put a second group at Rugby, just in case we get off early.”
“So we’re getting off two stations back?”
Sam grinned. “So we’re getting off two stations back.”
The train reached its stop with a slight jolt. Sam opened the shipping container’s door and he and Ben slipped through. He closed the door, making sure it was still locked, and stepped off the track, into the shade of the riparian forest.
They crouched down and waited until the freight train moved again.
As soon as it left, Sam stepped forward, trying to orient himself. He turned around slowly, his eyes taking in the landscape in the light of the gibbous moon. They were surrounded by thick forests and distant mountains, but there was no sign of a small city.
Ben looked at him. “What is it?”
Sam swallowed hard. “We were supposed to pick up a car left for us at the station at Devils Lake.”
“So where is it?”
“I don’t know, but judging by the lack of roads and, for that matter, train stations, my guess is our train made an unscheduled stop.”
“Great. How far out do you think we are?”
Sam tried to shrug, feigning an indifference he no longer felt. “I have no idea. Hopefully not too far, it’s got to be getting down below twenty degrees Fahrenheit. If we don’t find shelter soon, we’ll freeze to death out here.”
Ben sighed heavily. “Then we’d better make a start.”
Chapter Forty-Four
Minot Railway Station, North Dakota.
Ryan Devereaux watched the freight train roll in.
His lips curled into the crooked smile of a gambler whose efforts were about to finally pay off. A pair of military helicopters hovered directly above the train, their powerful spotlights and heat sensors making certain no one managed to open a door and jump off unannounced.
The train engineer brought the cab up to the start of the platform, applied the airbrakes, and shut down the massive diesel engines.
He met Devereaux’s eye, his jaw set firm. “You mind telling me what’s going on?”
“Yes. An officer here will take you aside for questioning while we search your train.”
The engineer crossed his arms, sticking out his chest, ready to argue the point, but one glance at the FBI agents and SWAT team who were all armed to the teeth, and the man simply nodded and kept walking.
Devereaux depressed the mike on his portable radio. “All right, move in!”
The FBI agents secured the perimeter around the train, while the SWAT team cleared the train individual carriage after carriage. It was a long process, because many of the shipping containers being hauled were locked.
As a consequence, Devereaux’s agency racked up a small fortune in intentional damages to property in the process. All told, nearly an hour passed before the entire train was searched and he finally accepted the fact that Sam and Ben were no longer on board.
He picked up his cell phone and dialed the Secretary of Defense’s private number.
“Tell me you have him!” she demanded.
“They’re not on the train.”
“So they got off earlier.”
“No. We had people watching at Rugby. No one got on and no one got off.”
The Secretary said, “Maybe he’s already there. You know what that means?”
Devereaux understood the consequences. Aliana Wolfgang owned a biotech company, theoretically capable of mass replicating Ben Gellie’s blood. There was a reason he’d come directly to this spot. Aliana provided him with the means to infect the world.
The muscles in his face stiffened. “I’ll stop him, ma’am.”
Chapter Forty-Five
The temperature seemed to drop quickly.
At least as the thermometer fell, the moisture in the air dissipated, meaning that it had finally stopped snowing. Sam pulled the hood of his thick woolen jacket tighter across his face. What little skin was still visible to the outside extremes now stung from the icy bite. A small snow-covered road led into the forest. There was a solid gate and what looked like a large house round the back.
Ben said, “We should go there, find some sort of shelter before this storm hits.”
“They’re not going to be happy about meeting a couple of vagrants in the middle of the night. They’re likely to call the cops, no matter what story we give them.”
Ben shrugged. “We can keep them quiet until we leave.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know, but we’re going to die if we’re still out here when this storm hits!”
Sam mulled that over for a minute. “Do we keep following the tracks or find shelter?”
“Take the damned shelter.”
“All right,” Sam agreed. “Let’s go see what happens.”
A sliver of moonlight permeated the heavily forested conifer trees that lined the snow-covered lane. The driveway looked dilapidated, with overgrown branches making it unlikely any cars had driven down the laneway in a number of years.
Sixty feet in, and they were confronted by a large ornamental steel gate that seemed at odds with the rest of their impression of the property.
Sam ran his eyes across the gate, turning his gaze upward, at the fixed security camera. “That seem odd to you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they’re not home over winter – hell I know I wouldn’t want to be – and so they like to have a security camera to watch over the place. Who knows?”
“You think they’re watching us?” Sam asked.
“At four in the morning? No way.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.”
Sam gripped the fence and climbed over. It was vertical with a series of horizontal arms, making it easy to climb. If he had to guess, it was built to stop vehicles, not people.
Ben followed him over and they continued down toward what appeared to be a large log house. There were no windows to the house at all. It didn’t look like it had been boarded up for the winter; instead it appeared as though the entire place had been built with the windows intentionally left out.
“Something seem odd to you about this place?” Sam asked.
“Yeah, everything. The entire place gives me the creeps.”
Sam’s eyes narrowed. “You want to look for another place to find shelter?”
“No way. Spooky or not, I want to get inside and get warm. I don’t see any cars around here. So maybe we got lucky and no one’s home.”
“All right. You still have those lock picks?”
“Yeah.”
“So show me what you can do with this door.”
Ben withdrew the two lock picks from his wallet and started to work on the door. It took longer this time. The padlock at the summer camp was straight forward, whereas the door lock was obviously made to a much higher standard.
Sam said, “Can you do it?”
Ben closed his eyes, feeling with his half frozen gloved fingers, instead. “I think so.”
“You never told me why you’re carrying lock pic
ks.”
Ben made a thin-lipped uncomfortable smile. “It’s not what it looks like. I’m not interested in breaking and entering.”
“Sure,” Sam said, in a voice that clearly stated anything but that he believed him.
“I’m serious. I mean, what I do is far from legal, but it’s not breaking and entering, in a traditional sense. And it definitely doesn’t warrant getting me on the FBI’s number one most wanted list of fugitives.”
Sam grinned. “All right, so tell me what it is?”
Ben jiggled the pick upward. There was slight shift in the locking mechanism. He held it there and now maneuvered the second one in the opposite direction, searching for the latch.
“It looks like we’re going to be here all night; we might even freeze to death in the process, so you may as well tell me.”
“Yeah, whatever. None of it matters now. I think it’s fairly safe to say I’m never returning to my old life, so I suppose I can come clean.”
“What was it?”
“You know I worked for the justice department, right?”
“Right. I think you said that earlier.”
“So, politicians from both sides of the divide are constantly lobbied. Every one of them pushing their own agenda, you know what I mean?”
“Sure.”
“What if I told you one of those groups boasted the ability to control nearly twenty percent of the senators in Office, meaning that those votes in Congress could be bought?”
Sam shrugged. “I’d say, twenty percent seems a little low, wouldn’t you?”
“Haha… very funny. I’d have you know that despite the in-house fighting that the media would lead us to believe, the majority of US senators have spent their lives serving their country, for no other reason than they were compelled by duty.”
“Except for the twenty cheats in Office?”
“Even the majority of the cheats as you call them mean well.”
Sam lifted his eyebrow with incredulity. “Really?”
“Yeah, that’s what makes this organization so dangerous. They target individual senators, find their weaknesses, and apply pressure. Most don’t even know they could be bought.”
“So where do you come in?”
“Well, the company that does this lobbying. One of its most capable lobbyists is a woman named Jessica Chase.”
“Jessica Chase,” Sam repeated the name. It meant nothing to him. “What about her?”
Ben’s lips curled into a suppressed smile.
Sam asked, “What?”
“Well, I was supposed to have a date with her yesterday…”
“You’re kidding me. What were you going to do?”
“I was asked to search her house, see if I could find anything.”
“What good would it have been if you did? Wouldn’t everything be inadmissible in court, given the means by which it was obtained?”
“Sure, but we’re not trying to go to court, not yet anyway. Right now, we’re still trying to prove to our bosses that this thing exists.”
“Right, so you’re sleeping with a girl to get a promotion?”
Ben shrugged. “Something like that.”
“I think I liked you better when I thought you were a common thief.” Sam chuckled. “At least then you would have unlocked this damned door by now, and we’d be inside getting warm.”
Something clicked on the lock.
Ben turned the handle.
The door swung open slightly.
Sam glanced inside. The place was open, like a giant hall. Large overhead lights filled the room with light. There were more than a dozen people working inside. They wore masks and stirred large metal vats that looked like cauldrons. No one looked up.
He closed the door, silently turning the handle into place. He swallowed and said to Ben, “Of all the shitty luck, we had to stumble upon a meth lab!”
Chapter Forty-Six
Sam whispered, “That explains the security cameras and blocked driveway.”
Ben nodded. “Yeah, but it doesn’t explain how they move the stuff after it’s made.”
“Who cares? Let’s get out of here.”
“I care. That lane we came down hasn’t been driven on in years. That means they’re not shipping the drugs out from there. Ergo, they must have another way in and out. There must have been a dozen or so people working inside, they don’t live here, so where are their cars?”
“Not our problem,” replied Sam.
“No, but it might be our solution. Cars can’t be stored out in the cold in this part of the world. They’ll be tucked safely away somewhere nearby. Find the cars, we might just find a way out of here. There must be something round the back.”
“It’ll be dangerous.”
Ben shrugged. “Trying to walk anywhere from here will be deadly, so I’m up for it.”
“All right.”
They headed past the log-house-come-meth lab following the trail as it split into a fork, with one path leading farther south toward Devils Lake and the other turning into a more easterly direction. Buried within a dense forest of conifer trees, the track to the east became more protected from the elements and better maintained.
There were tire tracks beneath the snow.
They followed the trail. The tracks were deep and wide, like they came from a large SUV, a small truck, or maybe a Jeep. The track kept going for a couple hundred feet, giving rise to doubt – there was no certainty they were going to find the drug dealers’ cars.
A side path to their left led to a small barn roughly eighty feet away. The tire tracks continued straight ahead on the main path.
Do they keep going or try the barn?
Sam and Ben looked at each other, mulling over their decision in silence.
“Let’s have a look at the barn,” Ben said, his eyes tracing the snow-covered lane. “Look, no prints or tire tracks in the snow. At least we know nobody’s been this way for a while. Maybe we can crash there until this storm passes by.”
“Sounds good.”
Sam reached the side door. It was unlocked. The place looked conspicuously abandoned.
Inside, it was dark.
Ben closed the door behind him.
Sam fumbled with the wall, trying to find a light switch. There was a faint hum coming from the other side of the barn, suggesting the place still had usable power.
His fingers touched a dangling cord. He pulled hard and the light came on. Big compact fluorescent lights came on, taking nearly a minute to warm, before they shone brightly down on the barn’s single object, like the focused lights at an antiquity exhibition.
Whatever it was, it was covered by a thick cloth.
Sam pulled it back, revealing a mint condition, 1970, second generation, cranberry red Chevrolet Camaro RS/SS underneath.
Chapter Forty-Seven
The Camaro's styling was inspired by Ferrari. It was bigger and heavier than the first generation, and no longer capable of being built as a convertible. Engineered much like its predecessor, the car still used a unibody structure with a front subframe, leaf springs in the back and A-arms up front for suspension. It had the Rally Sport and the Super Sport equipment package, featuring the unique front-end appearance with a split front bumper and a center grille cavity encircled in rubber, and the heavier-duty suspension.
The red paint looked like it had just been sprayed yesterday.
The contours of the second-generation Camaro were streamlined like a racecar, with its new body style featuring a fastback roofline and ventless full-door glass with no rear side quarter windows.
Some believed it was the greatest car in Chevrolet’s history. Certainly, the most powerful of the Camaros. As the years progressed, it would grow less powerful, succumbing to the pressures of tightening emissions regulations and the fuel crisis of the seventies.
Ben stared at the car, his eyes wide, and his breathing deep. “I always wanted one of these!”
“Hey, it might just be your lucky day af
ter all,” Sam said with an unsuppressed smile. “If we can get it going, you might just get to be the proud new owner of a stolen Chevrolet Camaro SS! So much for staying inconspicuous…”
“Who cares, with a beast like this, we can outrun the police!”
Sam met him with the look of a parent about to tell a child Christmas wasn’t real. Doubt was written all over his face as though he seriously doubted the classic American muscle car – albeit great for its day – could outperform a modern police car. Still, they had to work with what they had and right now, that was a nearly five decades old sports car.
“Let’s see if we get can it going first.”
“Okay,” Ben replied. He lifted the pull-up handle and it opened smoothly. The damned thing was unlocked. “It must be our lucky day.”
Sam responded with a curt, “Clearly.”
“The key’s sitting in the ignition! Who leaves the key in the ignition of a classic sports car?”
“Who indeed?”
Ben nodded. “Oh right, a drug dealer who knows nobody’s going to be stupid enough to steal it.”
“That’s right. I guess he wasn’t thinking about a couple of fugitives on the run.”
“Guess not.”
Ben reached in and pulled the hood release latch under the dash beside the steering wheel. The hood lifted a few inches with a distinctive popping sound. He eagerly moved around to the hood, reaching his fingers under to find the latch. The old coils were tight, and the hood a little stuck. He pressed down with all his weight, releasing the tension, while his forefingers depressed the latch.
The hood released.
It lifted all the way up into its self-securing hood system.
He breathed out. It was the first time he realized he was holding his breath. The 1970 Camaro SS 396 was catalogued to have a 396 cubic inch engine, that boasted a blistering 350 horsepower. It was in pristine condition, and someone had gone to the trouble of keeping the engine block warmer plugged in overnight, which dispelled any fears that the car might not still be in a drivable condition.
Whatever dilapidated state the barn might be in, there was no doubt in his mind; the owner had gone to great lengths to keep the car in perfect condition.
The Holy Grail (Sam Reilly Book 13) Page 16