Blowout Page 18

  “Where am I going?”

  “Washington, buddy,” Cameron said. “The president wants to have a word with you. Actually with all of us, especially Whitney. And General Forester gave me a direct order that his daughter was not to get involved, or even be told a thing.”

  It wasn’t what Osborne expected and he was taken aback for a beat. “What the hell am I supposed to say?”

  “About what?”

  “For starters, Ashley. She’ll expect me to be around, can I at least get word to her?”

  “Afraid not.”

  “I’ll have to let my deputies know I’ll be gone overnight.”

  Cameron gave him a hard look. “Make damn sure they keep their mouths shut. I’m serious about this, and this goes all the way to the Oval Office, because there’ve been hints that something big time is happening politically.”

  “Something to do with the attack?”

  “It’s a possibility.”

  Osborne shook his head. “I can’t do anything for you people. I’m just a small-time sheriff, nothing more.”

  “Your Medal of Honor says otherwise. Anyway, don’t you keep saying that this is your county?”

  And it was his county, his people who he deeply cared about. Ever since Afghanistan he’d had a strong sense of family; especially so because he had only an ex-wife and a child who was growing more distant each year, parents dead, no siblings, no aunts or uncles or cousins, only the townspeople and the ranchers and park employees.

  “I’ll need to get back to my place to change clothes,” he said as they pulled up to the trailer where a half-dozen cars and Hummers and a couple of golf carts were parked.

  “No time,” Cameron said. “Anyway they don’t want you in uniform. This is an in and out to the White House, strictly no media attention.”

  It wasn’t making any sense to Osborne and he told Cameron as much. “I’m no expert on politics. What do they want from me?”

  “You’re a good judge of character.”

  “Comes with the job.”

  “Well, the other problem we’re facing is the leak somewhere in the system. Almost certainly on the science side because the biological soup that they were trying to inject into the well would have caused a hell of a mess. Probably a blowout and a catastrophic release of methane. Enough to do some serious damage to our atmosphere. And the only way it could have been engineered was to know exactly what we were trying to do out here.”

  “Have Whitney Lipton’s people been vetted?”

  Cameron nodded. “They came up clean. Which leaves the doc herself.”

  Osborne laughed despite himself. “You have to be kidding.”

  “The FBI isn’t.”

  “Why the hell would she sabotage her own project? If I’m catching even half of the drift here, we’re talking a possible Nobel, so it sure wouldn’t be money.”

  “They’ve already ruled that out. No offshore bank accounts, no diamonds or cars or trips to Paris or anywhere for that matter. But the Bureau brought an expert over from the CDC—Whitney’s old boss—who thinks that her science is way off base, and she knows it now, so she’s trying to cover her own ass.”

  “I know even less about biophysics than I do about geopolitics.”

  Cameron hesitated at the door and smiled. “I just want you to meet the guy; name’s William Cargo. In my estimation he’s a complete ass, but I’m a little bit prejudiced here. So I want your take. In the meantime I said politics, not geopolitics.”

  “If it’s clean coal up against oil you have at least OPEC to contend with, and probably all the financial wizards who’re making money on futures.”

  Cameron laughed out loud. “Simple country sheriff, my ass.”

  Just inside the front door a bank of monitors—most of them displaying views from inside Donna Marie—was arrayed on a wall in front of a desk, at which sat a young Air Force technician. Captain Nettles along with several men in dark blue FBI sweaters were watching over the tech’s shoulder at one of the monitors that showed the view inside what appeared to be a small conference room with a table for a dozen people. Whitney Lipton was seated on one side of the table facing the Bureau’s Minneapolis SAC Deb Rausch and an older man with long white hair and thick muttonchops. Rausch’s expression was neutral, but the man seemed tense and angry.

  Nettles looked up and scowled. “Sheriff,” he said.

  Osborne nodded. “Captain.”

  “Anything new?” Cameron asked.

  “No, but I think she’d like to kick his ass,” Nettles said.

  “Your project has been on shaky ground from the start, but you’re just too pigheaded to admit that you might be wrong,” the older man said. “Heaven forbid.”

  “Doctor Cargo,” Cameron told Osborne. “They’re just down the hall.”

  Whitney, whose right profile was to the camera, seemed frustrated. “Are you trying to accuse me of something, Bill? Because if you are I’d like to hear it, and I’d like your studied scientific opinion.”

  “I was asked by the Bureau to consult. So here I am. Gracious me, maybe we can work this out like professionals. Fact of the matter someone got to your bugs and found a way to neutralize your quorum-sensing mechanism.”

  “I thought you said it couldn’t work,” Whitney jumped him. “Can’t have it both ways. Which will it be?”

  “This is a serious situation, Dr. Lipton,” Rausch said.

  “You bet it is,” Whitney shot back. “Because my experiment will go forward in less than one week and then we’ll see.”

  “I meant the leak.”

  “So did I,” Whitney said, and she got to her feet. “I have an appointment, so we’ll have to wait until tomorrow afternoon to continue.” She turned to Dr. Cargo. “You used to be a damned fine scientist. But somewhere along the line you lost it. Couldn’t keep up. Stopped publishing. And you became an embarrassment so they promoted you.”

  “You can’t say that to me,” Cargo sputtered.

  “Lead, follow, or get the hell out of my way. I have work to do.”

  Neither Cargo nor Rausch said anything and Whitney left the room.

  “What do you think?” Cameron asked.

  “The man has his own agenda, and it has nothing to do with any leak in the system,” Osborne said.

  “Maybe he’s the leak,” Cameron said, but Whitney had already stormed up the corridor and she caught the remark.

  “Not him,” she said. “He’s too goddamned ignorant.”

  Nettles had stepped aside to take a call. “Your jet is standing by at Dickinson and a chopper to get you there will be here in five minutes,” he announced.

  34

  GETTING OFF THE interstate and heading south on U.S. 85 at the small town of Belfield, Ashley had no idea what reception she was going to get when she showed up uninvited again at the Initiative, but if Nate Osborne was there no power on earth was going to stop her from storming the gates.

  The turnoff was about ten miles farther south, and the night was pitch-black, no stars in an overcast sky, absolutely no traffic on the highway, but as soon as she bumped onto the gravel road—which had been kept primitive to discourage snoopers and hold down speculation about what might be back here—she could see the lights along the fence line, and a hint of the red flasher atop the Donna Marie smokestack several miles farther to the southwest.

  She’d done a lot of traveling as a child with her father, as a college student on road trips during semesters, spring, and summer breaks—usually alone—and then as an investigative reporter running down story leads, also usually alone. And she did a lot of her best thinking on the road, always had. Without an audience she wasn’t afraid to examine her true inner feelings. One of her father’s favorite expressions was something like you can lie to just about anyone and get away with it, if you’re really good, but you can’t lie to yourself unless you’re pathological. And if truth be told now, and if she wasn’t lying to herself, she thought that she might be falling in love with the s
heriff. In fact she might have been falling in love with him ever since the murders in the park. She’d thought that he was attractive and decisive, qualities she’d always liked in a man.

  The light snow had let up, but the storm was expected to start hitting them sometime tomorrow. No big deal, this was December in North Dakota. But she was glad she’d decided to come back. She didn’t want to take a chance of getting stuck in Bismarck for Christmas.

  She drove directly past the main gate and followed the gravel road the rest of the way west and then north, to the Donna Marie entrance. Almost immediately an Apache helicopter rose up from inside the Initiative and came at her, pacing her speed off her left side and just ten or fifteen feet off the deck.

  “You are trespassing on government property,” a voice boomed from the chopper. “Turn around at once, or you will be subject to arrest.”

  Ashley powered down her window and held her press pass out.

  A spotlight switched on, flooding the entire truck with a light so intense that she was blinded and had to slow down to a crawl lest she was run off the road.

  Her hand was freezing so she pulled it back inside.

  A minute later the spotlight was switched off.

  “Your visitor’s pass has been temporarily suspended,” the amplified voice boomed. “You will be required to show your identification at the gate, at which time you will be directed to return the way you came or you will be subject to arrest. If you understand these orders please flash your headlights.”

  Ashley did as she was told, then sped up as her night vision began to return. She dialed her father’s private number, but after three rings his answering machine picked up with the instruction that the person was not currently available, and to leave a message at the tone.

  “Daddy, it’s me,” she said. “If you’re there, pick up. I’m at the Initiative and they don’t want to let me in for some reason.”

  Moments later the answering machine beeped. “For further options, please press one.”

  She hung up, and laid the phone on the passenger seat as she came up over a low rise at the bottom of which was the Donna Marie gate, open and lit up like day. It looked as if repairs were going ahead at full speed, and a couple of new tents had been set up. Big trucks came and went, and airmen in winter camos, night vision goggles, assault rifles—muzzles down—slung over their shoulders, seemed to be everywhere. She counted at least a dozen.

  Osborne’s Saturn SUV was parked just inside the fence.

  Two armed guards motioned for her to stop a few yards from the gate, and one of them came over as she powered her window down.

  “May I see your driver’s license, ma’am,” he said.

  Ashley pulled it out of her purse and handed it to him. “I came out to talk to Sheriff Osborne.”

  “Sorry, ma’am, he’s not here this evening,” the guard said. He looked up from the photograph on the license, then handed it back. “Turn around please, and drive back the way you came. Make no stops until you’re well clear of this installation, and do not attempt to approach the fence.”

  “That’s the sheriff’s car,” she said. I need to talk to him for just one minute.”

  “Ma’am, please turn around.”

  “Goddamnit,” Ashley said, and she started to open her door, but the guard unslung his assault rifle.

  “Okay,” she said, closing the door. “I get your point, but first I need to make a phone call, and then I’ll scoot.”

  “Please leave now.”

  “I’m having car troubles, and I want to leave word with a friend. I don’t want to get stuck out here,” Ashley said, and she speed dialed Osborne’s cell phone.

  The guard said something into a lapel mike, and then he backed down and lowered his weapon.

  Osborne picked up on the second ring. “Yes!” he shouted, a terrific noise of some machinery in the background.

  “Nate, it’s Ashley, where are you?”

  “None of your business. Are you in Bismarck already?”

  “I’m at the Donna Marie back gate, about fifteen feet from your car. Can you get me in? I just want to talk for a minute.”

  “No,” Osborne said. “I want you to turn around and get the hell out of there. Jim says that they’ll arrest you if you don’t. And after what’s happened they’re serious.”

  “I just want to tell you something.”

  “Not now. Go home and do your thing, I’ll be back by tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Back from where?” Ashley shouted, but Osborne had broken the connection, and she closed her phone.

  The guard was close enough to have heard her side of the conversation. “Ma’am,” he prompted.

  “Yeah,” Ashley said absently. She tossed the phone on the passenger seat, closed her window, turned around, and drove off, the helicopter rising up again and trailing her just a few yards until she was back up on U.S. 85 and heading north to the interstate.

  Despite what the guard said, Nate was there at the power station. She’d seen his car with her own eyes. And on the phone she’d heard the machinery noise. But he’d said that he would be back by tomorrow afternoon. But back from where? She turned that thought over and it dawned on her that the background noise wasn’t the same as the turbine whine, it was more like that of a helicopter.

  She got on her phone again and phoned the Bismarck airport control tower, and got a supervisor named Lawson.

  “Ashley Borden, Bismarck Tribune. Have you had any incoming VIP flights from Washington this evening? I’m trying to run down a lead.”

  “No, ma’am, but one’s standing by at Dickinson.”

  “Spending the night?”

  “I don’t believe so. Hold on.”

  She knew damned well the aircraft would be heading to Washington tonight, before the storm hit, and that Nate and probably Dr. Lipton would be aboard. It was the call Nate had taken at dinner. Something big was going down, and her father had probably given the order to keep her away.

  Lawson came back. “No, ma’am. In fact she’s already in the air, IFR Andrews Air Force Base.”

  “Thanks, you’ve been a big help,” Ashley said, and she broke the connection.

  * * *

  At Belfield, the streets lit up for Christmas, shoppers downtown for the last-minute sales, Ashley was suddenly more depressed than she’d ever remembered. She felt excluded, as if she had no family who loved her, and mostly she didn’t want to be alone tonight in a strange hotel room.

  At the entrance to the interstate she took the west ramp, the sign reading: MEDORA 10.

  35

  OSBORNE HAD BEEN to the White House, under a different president, to receive his Medal of Honor, but not at three in the morning local, and as he was ushered into the Situation Room down the hall from the Oval Office along with Whitney and Jim Cameron, it felt as if he were back in Afghanistan on the front line. This was the big leagues, the biggest of all. The president had called them here at this hour to discuss who was coming after the Initiative and why.

  General Forester, in civilian clothes, had met them at Andrews with a navy helicopter and had brought them over. He introduced them to the four men seated around the long conference table: Nicholas Fenniger, the president’s adviser on national security affairs; Edwin Rogers, director of the FBI; Walter Page, director of the CIA; and Air Force Major General Hollis Reed, director of the National Security Agency.

  “The president will be with us momentarily,” Fenniger said as Osborne and the others sat across the table.

  On the way over, Forester had briefed both Osborne and Cameron. “The president will ask some tough questions, and he’ll expect some tough answers. If you don’t know, don’t guess. And if he doesn’t like your answers—and he’ll let you know—don’t back down if what you’re telling him is your best opinion.”

  “That’s all well and good, General, but what the hell am I doing here?” Osborne asked.

  “Because he asked for you by name,” Forester said. “I u
nderstand that my daughter called you from outside the Donna Marie gate while you were in the helicopter on the way over to Dickinson.”

  “She did,” Osborne said. He had a feeling what was coming next.

  “What did she want?”

  “To talk to me.”

  “About what?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  Forester had nodded. “She’s a willful girl, always has been. What’s your interest in her, Sheriff?”

  “The name is Nate, sir. And that is none of your business at the moment.”

  Forester bridled, but Osborne went on.

  “Mostly because I don’t know the answer myself. But I’ll let you know when I have it figured out. Right now we have a bigger problem to deal with.”

  “That we do,” Forester said.

  Everyone suddenly got to their feet, and Osborne stood up as President Thompson, tie loose, shirtsleeves rolled up, no jacket, strode in and sat down directly across from Osborne.

  “Glad you could join us on such short notice, Sheriff,” the president said as everyone else sat down.

  “Thank you, Mr. President, but I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

  “I’m told that you own Billings County, you have a steady hand, you have a proven track record under fire, and until I find someone better you’re my point man on the ground out there.”

  “I’m just a small-town sheriff.”

  Thompson laughed. “Tell it to the navy, Major.”

  Osborne had to grin. “That line has never worked, sir.”

  Thompson nodded to Forester.

  “How much do you know about what we’re trying to do at the Initiative?” Forester asked.

  “It’s not an ELF station. From what I can piece together Dr. Lipton has figured out a way to convert coal to methane that can be pumped out of the seam through a wellhead and then burned to heat water to turn turbines to generate electricity.”

  “Almost zero carbon dioxide,” Forester said. “No mercury or other pollutants, and no waste, no coal ash to contend with. All the wastes stay underground. And the seam in western North and South Dakota and eastern Wyoming should last a hundred years or more.”