Blowout (45 page)

“And the kids, too?”

“They'll be out of range before Forester shows up. And I'll be nearby, so that if anything should happen to you I can send the signal,” Rodriguez said. “You good to go?”

Egan gave him the thumbs up, even though he was starting to feel a little sick in his stomach.

“Good man.”

Egan managed a weak smile. “Could I have a glass of water?”

 

70

RIDING SHOTGUN IN
the front seat of the Cadillac Escalade, Osborne still wasn't sure how he wanted to deal with the situation Ashley's father had put her in. They were in the backseat for the short drive from the DOE to the Dirksen Senate Office Building where they had an eleven o'clock appointment with Texas Senator Daniel Packard.

“He did what he had to do,” Ashley told him in Minneapolis six hours after she'd been arrested.

They were gathered in Deb Rausch's office where the FBI director had phoned to explain what was going on, and the necessity of the thing.

“You'll have to keep out of sight for the next few days,” Rogers had warned.

“Do you want me to keep her in protective custody for her safety?” Rausch had asked. She had been furious that Osborne had followed them from North Dakota, but she hadn't mentioned it to Rogers, nor had he apparently been surprised by the sheriff's presence.

“From what I understand she's in good hands with Sheriff Osborne.”

It was a sentiment wholly shared by her father, who had called a few minutes after Rogers. “Are you okay, sweetheart?” he'd asked.

“Now I am, but it was a bit interesting there for a few hours,” Ashley had told him. “Ed Rogers explained everything, and now he wants me to keep out of sight for a couple of days. That include from my newspaper?”

“Especially your paper.”

“They know that I was arrested and they'll demand to talk to me.”

“The Bureau will stall them. All we need are a couple of days tops.”

“To do what?”

“We've already found out who was leaking information about the Initiative from my office, and he's been arrested. Now we're trying to find his contact, who probably works for Venezuelan intelligence. We don't think they're finished yet.”

“Is Ashley in danger?” Osborne had asked.

“I'm told that Mr. Egan is still at large,” Forester had said. “As unlikely as it might be, he might show up at some point, probably back in Medora where he figures you'll be. And wherever you are might lead him to my daughter.”

“They can stay here in Minneapolis,” Rausch had suggested.

“I want them here,” Forester had said. “If that's agreeable to you, Sheriff.”

“I'm not letting her out of my sight until this thing is completely settled,” Osborne had said.

In Washington they'd been put up at the Hay-Adams Hotel across from the White House, at government expense, and that first day they'd gone shopping for a change of clothes and some toiletries because they hadn't been able to go home to pack. They'd not called Ashley's newspaper, but Osborne did call his office to say that he would be out of town for a couple of days. And no one had questioned him, because they figured that he was in Minneapolis where Ashley had been taken, and would stay there until the matter was settled.

Nor had they talked to the general until this morning when he'd sent a car to bring them over to the DOE. He wanted to prep them for what was likely to be a lively session with the senator who was the chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence.

“He was never privy to what the Initiative was really all about,” Forester had explained. “In fact he never suspected what was going on under his nose, and it was only an hour before the president made the announcement that Packard and a few other key members of Congress were told.”

“What does he want with us?” Ashley had asked.

“If I know him as well as I think I do, he's going to want to hold your feet to the fire. Yours and Nate's. How was it that you two knew so much about the Initiative, while he didn't? He's taking it as a gross insult.”

Osborne had bridled a little. “I'm not really a part of this,” he'd argued. “And I'm definitely no good at playing politics.”

“But you were very much a part of it. Hadn't been for you a lot more people would have lost their lives—including my daughter, and very probably Donna Marie would have been destroyed.”

“Just doing my job.”

“I can't order you to talk to the senator. You'd be perfectly within your rights to get up and walk out the door. But I'm asking you help me keep the peace, because a lot more will be coming our way. Things even worse than the drastic cuts OPEC is threatening.”

“The president knew what was coming, all of you did. You should have been better prepared.”

“You're right, of course. But the Initiative was necessary, because we've become far too dependent on foreign oil, and the situation is getting steadily worse.” Forester had looked out the window as they turned up First Street SE, the Library of Congress on the right, the Capitol on the left. “It's about money. In the tens of trillions over the next couple of decades,” he had said. “And about displacements—especially in the coal mining and transportation sector. But the irony is that oil, including the futures and hedge fund markets and the derivative positions, will not be all that badly affected. We still need oil for everything from pharmaceuticals, to clothing and plastics, not to mention lubrication, and hopefully only for the short-term bunker fuel for big civilian ships, and kerosene for our jets. But just not for cars and trucks. Those will run on electricity, which Whitney Lipton's work proves we can generate in enough quantities and very soon. All we'll do to the oil people is to slow down their profit-taking, and spread it out for a lot of years. Two centuries plus, and I'm told that's just from known reserves.”

Osborne had been all over the world, and the cachet of his Medal of Honor had for a time put him in the media's national spotlight. He understood that what the general was talking about meant nothing short of a major paradigm shift, probably as far reaching as the Industrial Revolution or the dawn of the Information Age. But at heart he was nothing more than a sheriff in a very small rural county. And it's all he wanted, all he'd ever wanted. Home, wife, kids. And Ashley told him that she wanted that same sort of life.

“Boring is pretty good most of the time,” she'd said.

“Like the last couple of months?” he'd answered, and they'd laughed.

“We're just at the start-up stage,” Forester was saying, and Osborne turned and looked back at him and Ashley.

“I'm going home right after this meeting,” he said. “I don't belong here.”

“And I'm going back to Bismarck,” Ashley said. “I have a ton of catching up, and I'm thinking about a book.”

“Tomorrow,” Forester said. “Please. We'll have dinner tonight, and we'll put the two of you on a plane by one—two at the latest.”

Osborne thought he spotted a vaguely familiar figure across the street as their FBI driver reached Constitution via Maryland Avenue right in front of the Dirksen Building, but a tour bus passed by and what the general
wasn't
saying distracted him.

“Why one more day?” he asked. “What's going to happen between now and then?”

“The president's going to address the nation tomorrow at noon.”

“More about the Initiative?”

“In a manner of speaking. He's going to make public who was behind the attacks.”

The tour bus had passed, and as their driver pulled up in front of the Senate office, Osborne looked over in time to see Barry Egan across the street at the curb waiting for an oncoming taxi.

“It's Egan!” Osborne shouted as he popped open the door and pulled his weapon. “Call for backup and get them out here now!”

“Nate!” Ashley cried, but as soon as Osborne was out the FBI driver took off, peeling rubber around the corner on Second.

The cab passed and Egan stepped back a pace, looking for a way out, his face screwed up in rage and disbelief that almost immediately faded to something like resignation.

Osborne stepped out into the street. “Just us now,” he called out.

Someone came running out of the Dirksen Building. “Put the gun down!” a man shouted.

Osborne pulled out his badge without taking his eyes off Egan and held it up. “I'm a police officer, keep everyone inside, away from the front doors and windows. The FBI is on the way.”

Egan stepped off the curb, his right hand in his jacket pocket.

Another cab came up Constitution right at them, but the driver evidently seeing the developing situation, Osborne with a pistol in his hand, turned north on First and sped away.

“Take your hand out of your pocket, but if you draw your weapon I will shoot you,” Osborne said.

In the not too far distance they could hear sirens, and Egan took another step closer.

“I will shoot you,” Osborne started to say, but everything became suddenly clear.

Egan's jacket was too big for him, the sleeves too long, but it was tight around his torso, the shape wrong. And the look on his face was familiar. Osborne had seen it in Kandahar and Kabul. Young men, sometimes only kids, and even girls as young as ten or twelve, with explosives strapped to their bodies, walking straight up to a checkpoint, or police station, or even a school ready to die for the cause. The looks on their faces were almost as bad as the ten-thousand-yard stare that came into the eyes of combat soldiers bone-weary after a series of fierce battles—resignation.

At that precise moment there was no nearby traffic, nor were there any pedestrians or gawkers within what Osborne figured was a probable blast radius.

He fired two shots, hitting Egan center mass as he rolled left and dove for the pavement, covering his head with his arms.

Before he was fully prone a tremendous explosion shattered the morning, a huge blast of furnace-hot air filled with tiny slivery objects passed just above his body, singeing the backs of his exposed hands, a few needles piercing his shoulders and pinging sharply off the back of his titanium prosthesis.

The sirens were gone, and slowly gathering his senses and rising up on his elbows Osborne realized that he'd lost his hearing. Across the street was a smoking crater the size of a minivan. The cars parked nearest to where Egan had been standing were nothing but burning hulks.

And then hands were on him, gently easing him down, and he had to smile that Egan was finally dead and Ashley was safe. And tomorrow they could go home, and figure out the rest of it together.

 

Epilogue

ASHLEY, WEARING A
pretty print dress, a trench coat over her arm, breezed into Osborne's room at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda a few minutes before noon, just as a nurse was finished taking his vital signs. “Is he going to live?”

“Looks like it,” the nurse said. “He has a mild concussion, a temporary loss of hearing, and a lot of cuts, bruises, and a dozen small puncture wounds, but nothing terribly serious.”

“How do you feel?” Ashley asked him.

“I've felt worse,” Osborne said, but he felt battered and stiff, almost like what he imagined it would be like when he got old. But he felt good that Ashley was safe and that the threat from Barry Egan was finally gone. And for the first time since before Christmas he could finally take a deep breath without wondering what was coming at them next.

“Your lunch will be here in about twenty minutes,” the nurse said.

“Cancel it,” Ashley said. “I'm going to help him get dressed and take him out to lunch. It's the least I can do.”

“That'll be up to the doctor.”

“Already talked to him,” Ashley said, and she shooed the nurse out and closed the door, jamming a chair under the handle.

“I've never seen you in anything but jeans,” Osborne said as she turned back, and she blushed a little.

“Don't start on me,” she said. “This was my dad's idea and he was right. I just don't know if it's going to work in the Badlands.”

“Just fine,” Osborne said, smiling. “You look fabulous. And this is also the first time I've ever seen your legs in the light of day.”

“You're going to see more than that,” she said. She went to the television remote control and muted the sound.

Osborne had turned it to CNN in order to catch the president's talk to the nation at noon. “Thompson's supposed to be on any minute.”

“I got a copy of his speech an hour and a half ago, and I've already filed three stories, but I wanted to get over here as soon as I could. We have a plane to catch at two thirty, which doesn't give us much time.”

At that moment the president appeared on screen at the podium in the press briefing room.

Ashley tossed her coat aside, stepped out of her flats, unzipped her dress, and stepped out of it. She was naked underneath.

“He's going to tell the country that we bombed the shit out of six of Venezuela's major air force bases,” she said, shoving Osborne's cover off, and undoing his backless hospital gown and dropping it to the floor.

“Pull out my stitches and I'll have to stay another day,” he said, and she laughed at him.

“Big, bad marine afraid of lil' old me?” She kissed him on the lips and caressed an old chest wound, puckered and white now.

“Four of the bases were on the Caribbean side,” she said. “Barcelona, some place called Barquisimeto, and two around Caracas, which must have chapped their asses, one was on Lake Maracaibo, and the sixth inland at San Antonio del Tachira.”

Despite his wounds and the concussion, Osborne was more than ready, and she carefully got into bed with him.

“Are you going to talk all the time?” he asked, and as she rolled over on top of him, he entered her.