Blowout (27 page)

“You can't see shit five feet in front of your windshield.”

“Fly low, and follow the interstate,” Osborne said. “This is important. We have a hostage situation, and less than two hours to do something about it. And right now you're my only bet.”

“Fuck you,” Seagram said. “I'll be there in fifteen.”

“No Stinger missiles, promise,” Osborne said, but Seagram had already broken the connection.

“You do know who took her and where she is,” Cameron said.

“I'll know in just a minute,” Cameron told him, and he called Tina Patterson, the bartender and night clerk at the Rough Riders hotel. It took ten rings before she answered.

“We're all booked up,” she mumbled groggily.

“It's me,” Osborne said. “I need you to do a quick favor for me. Just take a minute.”

“Is this a joke?”

“I have a situation brewing. You know the couple that checked in? They were driving a Caddy Escalade. I want you to check if it's still parked out back”

“Of course it is. Who'd want to go out on the night like this?”

“Just check, would you please?”

“I'll have to go to the back door. Give me a minute.”

“Hurry,” Osborne said.

“What couple?” Cameron asked.

Osborne explained about the two who said they were from San Francisco, and the oddness of the woman who'd caught Ashley's attention. “They didn't fit.”

Tina was back two minutes later. “It's gone, Nate. Do you want me to check their room?”

“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.