by Lynn Ames
Vaughn replaced her ear bud, as well, and joined them. She wasn’t done processing, but Sedona was right—there were more pressing matters to attend to. “Peter, Lorraine? Do you read me?”
“Loud and clear,” Peter said.
“Ditto,” Lorraine answered.
“What’s our situation?”
“No change. All’s humming along.”
“Okay. I assume you’ve been listening to what’s been happening here.”
“Yes,” Peter and Lorraine said in unison.
“We need to wrap this up,” Lorraine said. “They know we’re here now. It won’t be long before they come looking.”
“I agree,” Justine said.
“Oui, please,” Sabastien said from the front passenger seat of the SUV.
“I can’t yet,” Vaughn said.
“What?” Justine asked.
“We need to finish this,” Sedona supplied. “We have to take out the facility. Whatever it is they have planned, we can’t allow it to go forward. Now that my presence is known, they’ll connect the dots and figure out that the president is on to them. They’re going to be desperate. That either means they push up their timetable for implementation or they turn tail and run, disappearing into the woodwork.”
“Either way,” Vaughn jumped in, “there’s some really dangerous shit in there and one very dangerous man. We need to finish what we came here to do.”
“What do you propose?” Peter asked.
“I’m going to go in there and take out the bombs. Hopefully, I’ll be able to grab Quinn in the process and we can wring more information out of him.”
“You can’t go in there by yourself,” Sedona said.
“I have to. There’s no way to get more than one of us in. You saw the routine. There’s one weak spot. It’s the major who travels between the units outside and the watch commander inside. That’s the way in.”
“I don’t like it,” Justine said. “What would you do once you got in there?”
“She could set off an explosive charge and detonate the yellowcake.” The scientist said it sheepishly.
“One more time?” Vaughn looked down at him.
“If you had a small container, two pounds of Semtex or C-4, four or five D batteries, blasting caps, and a cell phone to use as a remote control initiator, you could set a directional charge aimed at those drums.”
“Exactly what would happen?” Vaughn asked.
“The resulting explosion would contaminate the yellowcake and render it useless.”
“What kind of casualties are we talking about?” Sedona asked.
The scientist considered his answer. “Anyone in the immediate vicinity would be killed quite quickly. Anyone else anywhere in the facility would die of contamination, likely within a couple of days or perhaps a little longer. The area most likely would be deadly toxic for at least one hundred years.”
“Oh my God.” Sedona slumped against the side of the SUV. “There are a lot of people in there.”
Vaughn’s heart constricted. “I know.”
“What are our other options?” Peter asked.
“I’m not sure I see any,” Vaughn said.
“There’s an alarm switch. There has to be in any facility where there’s a risk of contamination or leakage,” Sedona said. “What if you tripped the alarm after you set the charge and before you detonated it? It would give people a chance to get out of there in time.”
“Yes, but where would they go? They’d still be on the grounds. It would just mean a slower, more painful death for them,” Vaughn argued.
“That facility is built with very thick walls. All such places are,” the scientist pointed out. “The blast you’d be setting would be in the most fortified part of the grounds. If those people could get even a few hundred yards off the grounds, they could be fine.”
“Vaughn.” Sedona’s eyes pleaded with her. “Please.”
Vaughn tried not to get lost in those eyes. She tried to ignore her own heart, which balked at causing so much death and destruction. But how many more lives would be saved by eliminating the threat?
“If I may, there is one more possibility,” Sabastien said.
“Let’s have it.”
“While you all have been debating the fate of mankind, I have been hacking into the facility’s control interface.”
“Do you mean to tell me that they defended against someone taking a photograph via satellite but not against someone hacking into their servers?” Sedona asked.
“So it would appear. It is a common fault of arrogant people,” Sabastien said. “Here is what I propose. I already am poised to trip the alarm you referenced and several more for good measure. That would send people scurrying like little bunnies.”
“Mice,” Vaughn corrected automatically.
“As you wish.”
“But what about setting the bomb?” Lorraine asked.
“Mr. Bomb man, you couldn’t hear the discussion through our communications system, so let me ask you something. If we had a way remotely to trip the alarm, is there also a way remotely to set the explosive?” Vaughn asked.
“Of course. You could load the same bomb I described making onto the larger drone, fly it in as people were running through the door in a panic, and remotely detonate it after you saw that everyone left the premises.”
Vaughn leaned down and clapped him on the shoulder. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?” She helped him up. “Okay. Your job is to make the bomb and get it ready. How quickly can it be done?”
“I can’t believe you guys wanted to come sit through this with me.” Max Kingston parked the white work van around the corner from the building Daniel Hart had just entered.
“I’ve never been on an honest-to-goodness stakeout before,” Jay said. “This’ll be fun.” She raised her chopsticks in salute and shoveled in a mouthful of pork-fried rice.
“You just wanted an excuse to eat,” Kate said.
“Since when do I need an excuse?”
“She has a point,” Max said. He navigated his way into the back of the van where surveillance equipment, including video monitors, audio recorders, and various and sundry other bits of technology took up one entire wall. “Let’s see if we can figure out who else is in a rush to get here.”
“Hart sure took off from his office like his pants were on fire after he got that phone call,” Jay said. “So where are we?”
“I googled the address,” Kate said. “Looks like it belongs to that lawyer.”
“Stanley Davidson?” Max asked.
“Yeah.”
“His name sure seems to come up a lot lately,” Jay said. She glanced up from her takeout carton in time to see a well-dressed woman sprinting up the stairs. “Isn’t that—?”
“Congresswoman Emily Kincaid of Texas, I believe,” Max said. “I saw her with Hart at the Capitol the other day. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I thought maybe they were an item.”
Jay set the food aside and picked up the laptop she brought with her. She opened a web browser and looked up the Congresswoman’s biography. “She’s the chairperson of the Senate Energy Committee.”
“What would she have to do with Homeland Security?” Kate mused.
“Like I said, I thought maybe they were an item,” Max said.
“I’m not buying it,” Jay said.
At that moment, another man ran up the steps. “There sure are a lot of folks in a hurry today,” Max said, snapping the man’s picture. “I also saw him with Hart and Kincaid the other day.”
“Which means that unless they’re having a kinky threesome, there’s something else going on here,” Kate said. “Any idea who he is, Max?”
“I only caught his first name last time, but I remembered it because it was unusual. It was Astin.”
“Like the car?” Jay asked.
“I think so,” Max said.
“Not exactly a common name. Let’s google it and see if anything pops.”
Kate laughed. “I don’t know how you did it all those years.”
“Did what?” Jay asked.
“Managed to do investigative reporting without the aid of a search engine.”
“Beats me.” Jay stuck her tongue out at Kate.
“All right, Stanley, what was so urgent?”
“That would be the Astin guy,” Max said. “I recognize his whiny voice.”
“Astin’s right, Stanley. I was in the middle of a very important meeting with the Majority Leader. What couldn’t wait?” Senator Kincaid asked.
“We have big, big trouble,” Hart said. His voice was trembling.
“How big?” Kincaid asked.
“Catastrophic big,” Hart answered.
“You’re probably just being hysterical.” Astin sounded bored. “Don’t be overly dramatic.”
“Listen, you idiot—”
“Gentlemen, and lady, I’m afraid Daniel is correct.”
“That’s Davidson,” Max supplied.
“We have a dire situation on our hands.”
“Out with it, Stanley,” Astin whined.
“It seems Sedona Ramos is not in custody in Kuwait or anywhere else.”
Jay stopped eating. Kate sat up straighter. “Turn it up, Max.”
Max turned up the volume.
“That’s right,” Davidson said. “I received a very disturbing call from a source a little while ago informing me that Ramos is, in fact, sitting outside the grounds of Tuwaitha even as we speak.”
“That’s not possible,” Kincaid said. “The president went on national television to announce her capture.”
“Either he was badly misinformed or he knows a lot more than we gave him credit for,” Astin said.
“It’s the latter,” Hart said. He sounded miserable. “I knew something was funny when he kept pushing me to reveal my source for the terrorist designation. I don’t know how he knows, but he does.”
“You can’t be sure of that. Maybe somebody in the field gave him bad information,” Kincaid said.
“What does Quinn say?” Hart asked. “Did you talk to him, Stanley?”
“I tried to raise him over there, but he must be out on the production floor. Fucking cell phone reception is horrible in that place. The walls are too damn thick.”
“We have to talk to Mr. Grayson,” Kincaid said. “We have to put a stop to this.”
“Who did she just say?” Kate asked. She stood up in the van and hit her head on the ceiling. “Ouch!”
“I could have sworn she said Grayson,” Jay said.
Max, who was wearing headphones on one ear, nodded.
“There could be more than one, honey,” Jay said to Kate.
“I already met with Mr. Grayson. He insists that we move forward. We are too close and there’s too much at stake,” Davidson said.
“What the hell does he have to lose,” Hart complained, “he’s already locked up for life.”
Kate grabbed Jay’s laptop off her lap. “Hey! What are you doing?”
“Looking for connections between all of these characters. If the Commission is still in business, you can bet somehow all of these seemingly disconnected players are tied to one man. Wayne Grayson.”
“Start with Davidson, then,” Jay suggested.
Kate plugged in the names Wayne Grayson and Stanley Davidson. “There’s one,” she said, grimly. “It seems Mr. Davidson is trying to get Grayson a pardon.”
“As if,” Jay said. “So Davidson can meet with Grayson in private because he has attorney-client privilege. Nice.”
“I’ll remind you that you owe your appointment to this office to Mr. Grayson, Daniel. Is that any way to talk about your benefactor?”
“He doesn’t own me. I got held over by this administration on my own merits.”
“Surely you don’t honestly believe that, do you?” Davidson asked. “Check again to see where the pressure on the president came from to keep you in that post. Then check where the votes came from in the Senate to reconfirm you.”
“But Daniel is right,” Kincaid said. “This is insanity. We should step back while we still can.”
“And how did you become chairperson of the Energy Committee, Emily?”
“Mr. Grayson,” she mumbled.
“We won’t even talk about all the lovely cash in your campaign war chest that allowed you to beat your opponent in the last election.”
“Some things never change,” Kate said. “He’s got his hooks in everyone.”
“What’s in it for him?” Max wondered aloud.
“You mean, apart from the ego trip of thinking he runs the world?” Jay asked.
“Well, I can walk away unscathed,” Astin said. “He told me, himself, he doesn’t want me to have any real role in “The Four.”
“Your uncle had particularly pointed words for you, Astin,” Davidson said.
“His uncle?” Jay asked.
“He said, and I quote, ‘Tell that nebbish Astin that Calico Petroleum stands to take over the lion’s share of the oil production in the western world if he doesn’t fuck it up. Tell him I’m watching.’ End quote.
“Your uncle intends for you to buy the oil rights to every new contract that comes up as a result of Senator Kincaid’s fortuitously timed oil pipeline bill, which, coincidentally, just happens to be ready for a floor vote right now.
“All of the Arab Spring mayhem in the Middle East and North Africa already is threatening oil exports. If you add in the detonation of all these dirty bombs by rival oil-rich nations like Kuwait, Iran, and Iraq, it will choke off the availability of oil imports and drive the price of gas in this country to astronomical heights. Emergency passage of Senator Kincaid’s bill would rush construction of the pipeline from Canada to Texas and fast-track oil drilling in the Arctic and other off-shore locations.”
“And Calico Petroleum will be there to save the day,” Astin gloated.
“Not to mention rake in a ransom,” Kincaid said.
“Oh my God,” Jay said.
“That’s the endgame. We’ve got to get this to the president,” Kate said. “Max, can you upload a file of what you’ve got so far and give it to me on a flash drive?”
“Sure.”
“Jay and I will rush this over to the White House right now. You stay and see if anything else incriminating or illuminating comes up. We’ve got to stop this.”
“How are you going to get to the White House?” Max asked.
“Cab,” Jay said, stepping out of the van and putting her hand up to hail one.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“What about rounding up Quinn?” Sedona asked. She didn’t like the idea of his escaping underneath their noses when there was something they could do about it.
“My guess is, if his handlers have gotten hold of him by now, he’ll assume we somehow set off the alarm and he’ll stay put,” Peter said.
“In which case, he’ll be toast in a matter of minutes,” Vaughn said.
“If not and he runs out like the rest,” Lorraine chimed in, “chances are he won’t get far. We can have every military unit still in the country looking for him in a matter of hours.”
“Are we ready to go?” Vaughn asked, as the scientist dusted off his hands.
“We are.”
“Wait!” Sedona said. “Don’t you think we should run it past the president first?”
Peter and Vaughn both shook their heads. “If anything goes wrong, like a massive loss of life, this needs to be on us, not the president of the United States,” Peter said.
“If it goes right, he can take all the credit,” Vaughn said.
“Not only that, but the longer we sit here, the more likely it is we get discovered. We’ve already been here too long as it is,” Lorraine said.
“Okay,” Sedona agreed. “Let’s do this.”
“Sabastien,” Vaughn said. “Do your thing.”
With the press of his left mouse button, a cacophony of alarms sounded. “I am pausi
ng five seconds between each different sector to help rump up the fear.”
“Ramp up,” Sedona corrected.
“Just so.” He clicked the mouse again, and more alarms pealed.
Vaughn launched the drone and steered it well over the heads of the crowds that were now streaming out the front gate. They left on foot and by car. The members of the units that had been guarding the facility were among the first to abandon their posts.
Sedona watched Vaughn’s laptop screen. These people were genuinely terrified.
“Going through the first checkpoint,” Vaughn announced, as she piloted the drone via the joystick.
“I am setting off the last alarm,” Sabastien announced. “It is done.”
“Sabastien?” Sedona asked. “Can you pilot the other drone?”
“Yes.” Sabastien picked up the second joystick and connected it to control the bee-sized drone. “Where would you like to go?”
“I want to see if we can find Randolph Quinn with it,” Sedona said.
“Good thinking.” Peter squeezed her hand.
“I can do better than that,” Sabastien said. “Because we have captured his face with the recognition software, I can set the drone to specifically and automatically search for the match in real-time.”
“In other words, it will seek only him?”
“Yes.”
“That’s so cool.” Sedona leaned forward and kissed Sabastien on the cheek, causing him to blush bright red.
“Okay,” Vaughn announced, “I’m through into the production area.” She turned to the scientist. “Now what?”
The scientist scooted forward in his seat. “That’s your target.” He pointed at an area roughly thirty feet farther into the room and ten feet to the left of the drone’s current position. “When you get there, set it down on that table and detonate it.”
“How will we know if everybody’s out?” Justine asked.
“We won’t know for sure,” Peter said. “We’ll just have to do our best and give them as much time as we can.”
Sedona continued to watch Sabastien’s screen as the drone roamed about in a seemingly random pattern. “There!”
Peter, Lorraine, and Justine all shifted to see what she was seeing. “There he is. The son-of-a-bitch is running toward your drone, Vaughn. He must’ve spotted it.”