Blowout (32 page)

Barry Egan, also dressed in white camos, open at the collar to show his one star, came out of the shadows. “Stand down, gentlemen,” he said, and the troops lowered their weapons. He was not happy. “I didn't feel any problem with the truck. In fact you sped up back there.”

“You have to feel it in the pedal.”

Egan came to the open doors and looked outside, his breath white in the rest stop's harsh lights.

“It's not far to Eighty-five, and by the time you get there everyone will be partying,” Jesus said. The four operators had lowered their carbines, but he knew that if it came to a shoot-out, he'd be dead before he could pull out his pistol.

Egan turned back and looked at him. He nodded. “It's what I would have done,” he muttered. He turned to his people. “Saddle up, gentlemen, do you want to live forever?”

“Shall we lower the ramps?”

“Yes,” Egan said. “Lower the ramps, and then run home to Mama. I suspect it's way too cold up here for you.”

 

48

SINCE HE'D TALKED
to Nate Osborne earlier in the day Cameron had become increasingly spooked and standing at the bar in Henry's, nursing a beer and watching Susan Watts, who was sitting on the shoulders of Bernie Stein and stringing the last of the balloons to a sprinkler head on the ceiling, he was too preoccupied to really see her. Nor was he hearing the loud music, the Beach Boys, thankfully per Whitney's orders not more rap.

All of her crew plus the four engineers from Donna Marie and two of the three Air Force gate guards were ready to party. But they were edgy, and that much he was catching because they'd been that way since this morning when Whitney had announced that all the reconstruction was finished and that the experiment would go forward tomorrow at noon.

Everyone was waiting for the other shoe to drop; the sword of Damocles, that according to Frank Neubert, the most serious of Whitney's postdocs, was hanging over all of their heads by a single hair while they yukked it up at the banquet table.

Cameron was just raising his bottle when Whitney was at his shoulder.

“A penny,” she said.

He managed a smile, though he was in something of a funk. “Take more than a penny. But I'll tell you that I'll be damned glad when we get past the experiment tomorrow. And I don't much feel like a party tonight.”

She studied his face. “Should I be worried again?”

“No. That's my job, you stick to the science.”

“Bob Forester wouldn't have pulled out Ranger Rick and his troopers if he expected more trouble was coming our way. Do you think we should call them back, just until tomorrow?”

Cameron had been asking himself the same thing since the civilian contractors had shown up thirty-six hours ago, leaving only the Air Force cops on one-man shifts at the main gate. But he'd put it down to nothing more than a case of nerves. The same as Nate Osborne was feeling. He shook his head. “No. I'm just a little jumpy is all.”

She touched his arm and gave him a tentative smile. “Okay, so do you know how to dance, or are you the kind of a guy who gets out on the floor just to grab a girl's ass?”

“Both.”

“Honesty from a man. That's refreshing.”

“But you'll have to give me a half hour, I want to check with Daley to make sure Donna Marie is secure and his people haven't seen or heard anything.” Wayne Daley was the security team leader, and from what little Cameron had been able to piece together he'd been a navy lieutenant j.g. But he and his people had been completely vetted by Forester's office, so Cameron hadn't tried to dig any deeper.

“Don't be long, okay? Or else I'll be forced to dance with Bernie who thinks that I work for him, not the other way around.”

Cameron started to turn away but Whitney stopped him.

“You're a good man to have around,” she said. “I just wanted to tell you that.”

“Maybe I'll just forget the dancing bit and skip to the next part.”

“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 dressed 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.”