Blowout (37 page)

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 Osborne—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.”

“That won't be up to you, Mr. President,” Forester said, and the connection was broken.

Thompson held on for several beats, willing himself to calm down, but then telephoned his adviser on national security affairs. Fenniger answered on the third ring, the sounds of a party in the background.

“I'm calling an emergency meeting of the National Security Council for this morning, as soon as you can get everyone up and running,” Thompson said. Including the president and vice president, the council consisted of nineteen people, from the secretaries of State and Defense all the way to the directors of Homeland Security and CIA, and including the attorney general and even the ambassador to the UN.

“Yes, Mr. President. Are you talking about the Venezuelan situation?”

“I may have to order Operation Balboa after all.”

“My God. Don't tell me that they've hit the Initiative again?”

“Could be in progress right now,” the president said. “Shake a leg, Nick.”

 

58

OSBORNE HAD HELD
up at the corner of the R&D building long enough to make sure that no one was coming after them from Henry's. Inside now on the first floor, he'd taken the wrong direction down the corridor, ending up at a series of offices. He had wanted the control center, but he'd never been there before, so he didn't know where it was.

He turned around and raced the opposite way down the corridor, past stairs leading to the second floor, when some serious shooting started from across the compound, and as he reached another intersection, someone else started shooting from the south in the direction of Donna Marie. At least two guns, and he was torn between finding Ashley and getting her out of here before they got caught in an attack coming from two directions, and going out to meet whatever was coming their way.

But the shooting stopped as he pulled up short, and the sudden silence was ominous.

First he had to find Ashley and make sure that she'd made contact with Ellsworth, and then they could get the hell out of here and keep out of everyone's way until help arrived.

He turned as Ashley came from a door halfway down the corridor, the short-barrel Ithaca shotgun in her hands, up and ready to fire.

“You bastards!” she screamed, completely hyped-up, but determined, not frightened

Osborne stepped back and raised a hand. “It's me!” he shouted.

She just stood there, the shotgun pointed down the corridor.

“Come down now,” Osborne said. “It's me. Ease up.”

She lowered the shotgun, her face contorted as if she were going to cry, but she laughed a short little bark. “Someone was shooting. I didn't know who.”

Another burst of firing came from the south side of the compound, but closer this time.

Osborne hurried down the corridor to her. “Did you get through?” The windowless room she'd come out of was long and narrow, and filled with electronic equipment and four desks with computers. Several plasma screen monitors were mounted on the walls.

“I did,” Ashley said. “I told them that we were under attack, and someone was shooting at us.”

“Are they sending help?”

Ashley looked up at him, puzzlement on her face, and she shook her head. “I don't know.”

“What are you talking about?”

Someone fired two rounds, this time from the east side of the building, and very close. Answering fire came again from the south.

Ashley was distracted, and she looked down the corridor toward the front entrance. “What's going on? Who's shooting?”

Osborne grabbed her shoulder and turned her back. “Is help coming? Did they say that they understood?”

“I don't know,” Ashley said. “I told them what was happening, and they wanted to know who I was and when I told them the connection was shut down. It made no sense.”

It made no sense to Osborne, either, but the people at Ellsworth knew that something was going on up here. At the very least they would have to send someone up to take a look.

Whitney and Ashley would make perfect hostages, but this attack wasn't about money, it was about the same thing as the first—the destruction of Donna Marie—and hostages would only serve to give Egan and his people time to set the charges and then get out.

He figured that Whitney had already been taken and was likely down at Henry's with the others. Which left Ashley and Donna Marie.

What sounded like someone coming through a window on the north side of the building was followed by more gunfire along the front. They'd just about run out of options.

Ashley stepped back, a determined look on her face. “What do you want to do?”

Osborne winked at her. “Attack. It's the only thing we can do.”

She glanced down the corridor toward where they'd heard the window breaking. “Whatever it is, big guy, I suggest we do it now.”

“Right,” Osborne said, and he hustled her back down to the corridor to the stairs he'd passed just a minute ago, and headed up, making as little noise as possible.

At the top they ducked around the corner and held up, Osborne's every sense listening for the sound of someone coming up the stairs after them. But if anyone was down there they were being stealthy now.

“They know we're in the building,” Ashley said, close to his ear. “When they find out we're not downstairs, they'll be coming up here. Won't be long.”

“Just long enough for us to get out of here,” Osborne told her, and he led her down the corridor to the south end of the building where he tried three doors on the west side before he found one that was unlocked and led into a conference room with a long table around which were ten chairs and a large window that looked out across an open snow-covered field.

Slinging the M4 over his shoulder, Osborne started to drag the heavy table over to the door and Ashley helped him.

“Won't take them very long to figure this out, either,” she said.

“Are you afraid of heights?” Osborne asked. He went to the window and looked out, watching for someone below, or at the corners of the building, waiting to cut off an escape from this direction. But if anyone was down there they were out of sight. In any event it was the only way out now.

“Less afraid of heights than bullets. Might there be a reception committee down there?”

“Could be. But I'm hoping they're busy downstairs looking for us.”

A short burst of gunfire was immediately followed by another, and using the butt of the carbine, Osborne knocked out the window glass, and ran the barrel around the frame to make sure all the shards were gone.

Still nothing moved below, but it was very cold and just as dark. The only lights were a couple thousand yards to the south on the Donna Marie generating hall and the smokestack.

Someone shouted something on the first floor from what sounded like the foot of the stairs.

“Looks clear for now,” Osborne said.

He took the shotgun from Ashley and laid it on the floor, then picked her up and eased her feetfirst out of the window. It was about a fifteen-foot drop into a bank of snow piled up against the base of the building.

“Ready?” he asked, holding her at arm's length.

“Right,” she replied, and he let go.

She landed soft, and immediately rolled over away from the building, keeping as low a profile as she could. But after a moment, she looked up and waved for him.

He dropped the shotgun and then the carbine, both of them butt first into the snow, and as soon as Ashley had recovered them he levered himself out the window, a task made very difficult because of his titanium leg, and dropped to the ground. He hit hard, a sharp, nearly impossible pain hammering his stump, nearly dislocating his hip, and slamming all the way up his spine to the base of his neck as he lost his balance and fell over.

For just a few seconds his wind was gone and struggling to get up he almost lost his balance again, but Ashley was right there at his side.