Blowout Read online

  Osborne reached around the beam and fired two shots high and to the right. Almost instantly the shooter fired back, the bullets plinking against the beam, and Cameron reached around the feedwater heater and fired two shots.

  There was no immediate return fire and Cameron and the two women stepped out from around the machinery and hobbled as quickly as they could go toward the back door.

  Osborne’s attention was focused on the upper portions of the boiler steam drum atop the aft sections of the furnace when he caught a slight movement and he fired three shots before ducking back.

  The shooter returned fire on his position, but then realizing the mistake switched aim toward Cameron and the women but it was too late, they’d already reached the safety of the towering deaerator device.

  Something about the sound of the weapon was slightly bothersome to Osborne. He was sure he knew it from somewhere. More than a semiautomatic as it had been fired to this point, because the rounds had been pulled off too easily. But it was just a feeling.

  A moment later something metallic clattered down from above, And Osborne heard the characteristic snap of a magazine being slapped home, and he instinctively hunched back behind the steel beam, making himself as invisible as he possibly could.

  It came to him all of a sudden that the gun was a Knight Personal Defense Weapon. He’d learned about it in Afghanistan during an intensive briefing on American, British, and Australian contractors hired to act as guards for VIPS in the entire theater, including Iraq. Almost to a man their automatic weapon of preference was the Knight. It fired a 6x35mm round that was considerably larger and more powerful than either the standard 9mm Para or .45 ACP with twice the muzzle velocity and a theoretical cyclic rate of seven hundred rounds per minute. Plus it was extremely compact with a length of less than eighteen inches when the stock was retracted and an empty weight of only four and a half pounds.

  An instant after the shooter reloaded they fired a full thirty rounds on full auto, the bullets slamming into the steel beam, off the concrete floor, and into the wall behind Osborne, sending chips and bullet fragments everywhere, one of them nicking the side of his neck just below his right ear.

  Osborne waited for the sound of another magazine being ejected and discarded, but for several long seconds there was nothing except for the whine of the turbine, until a tremendous explosion somewhere behind and below the shooter’s position blotted out all sounds and sights, and it seemed as if the entire installation were caving in on top of him and he started to run.

  16

  OSBORNE FIGURED THAT the shooter had managed to manually fire one of the remaining blocks of Semtex as a last-ditch suicide mission, which made them crazy, most likely some Islamic militant. But that didn’t make a lot of sense. Why hit a research facility?

  Something was on fire at the front end of the generating hall, and the noises of machinery and metal beams collapsing, concrete breaking up, and the roof coming down blotted out just about everything except for the high-pitched whine of the turbine still spinning.

  A tall, slender man in white coveralls, a bullet hole in the side of his head, lay on the floor, his arms flung out as if he were trying to give up. Osborne had seen him on the way in, and now he recognized it was Pete Magliano, who was the Army Public Information officer for the project. It would have been him who escorted Ashley over here and he’d given his life for it.

  Pocketing Cameron’s pistol, he scooped up Magliano’s body and carried it the rest of the way to the rear door and outside, the night air dry and the wind bitterly cold. He gently laid it down next to the body of a woman dressed in white coveralls and armed with a PDW. She’d been shot several times in the back.

  Whitney was with Cameron, who’d managed to climb into his Hummer and was on the radio with someone, and in the distance to the south Osborne could hear several helicopters incoming. When he had them located he spotted their lights, low and fast, up from Ellsworth one hundred and fifty miles away.

  Ashley was leaning against her pickup and she was pulling out her cell phone, but when she saw Osborne she came over. “You made it,” she said, and looked at Magliano’s body. “We had no idea what was going to happen. He had just explained to me about the turbine and I ducked under it to get a better look when they shot him. I don’t think he knew what hit him.”

  “Probably not,” Osborne said, and he held out his hand. “Give me your cell phone.”

  “Doesn’t work in here,” she said. But then she realized what he meant and she stepped back. “No way in hell, Sheriff.”

  “I don’t want to arrest you after all of this, but unless you give me your phone I’ll turn you over to the Air Force team who’ll be here any minute.”

  “Goddamnit, this is my story.”

  “Not yet. Maybe never. But certainly not until we find out who’s behind this mess and why.”

  “Terrorists.”

  “Probably. But there was no reason for them to hit an ELF station, there’ve been no protests out here like in Wisconsin.”

  “This is no ELF facility and you know it,” Ashley said. “It’s a power station all right, but the antennas out there are fake. Dr. Lipton is a microbiologist not an electronics expert and Lieutenant Magliano told me something about microbes being injected into the coal seam. Plus my dad is involved out here and he used to be DARPA. Heavy-duty shit.”

  The helicopters were much closer now, and Osborne counted four of them by their lights. “Tell that to the Air Force and you’ll start off in the brig at Ellsworth, and then probably a federal penitentiary somewhere, and your father—if he is involved—would most likely sign the order.”

  “Bullshit,” Ashley said. She glanced at Whitney, at Cameron, and then at the incoming choppers. “I won’t give you my phone, but I promise not to use it in connection with this story.”

  “Or write about it when you get back to Bismarck.”

  “I won’t, I promise you that much, too, but I’m going to lean on some people—starting with my dad—to find out what’s going on. I was shot at tonight, and I don’t very much like that.”

  “Nobody does, especially Pete Maglianao.”

  “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “I expect you didn’t,” Osborne said. “But I’m going to hold you to your promise.”

  “Okay.”

  “And you have dirt on your chin.”

  Ashley laughed and pocketed her cell phone as Osborne walked over to Cameron and Whitney.

  “How do you guys want to play this?” he asked. “I’ve probably seen and heard too much tonight.”

  “You had the briefing in Washington, and I expect after tonight you’ll probably be given the whole thing. At least that’s what Whitney and I are going to recommend, but it’ll be up to General Forester.”

  “He’s in charge?”

  “Yeah,” Cameron said. “Which makes his daughter a problem.”

  “She’s promised to hold off until she talks to him.”

  “Do you trust her?” Whitney asked.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Fair enough, Nate,” Cameron said. He had a lot of blood on his jacket and he was pale. “But for now let me do most of the talking. You were on a routine patrol cruising for illegal elk hunters, saw the back gate open, and drove down.”

  “Wasn’t for you we’d all be dead,” Whitney said, glancing toward the rec center and the other trailers.

  “What about your scientists over at the control center?”

  “I’ll tell them we had an accident. But one thing’s for sure, we sure as hell won’t run the experiment in the morning. Maybe not for months, even a year.”

  The four helicopters, two of them MH-60 Black Hawk combat choppers, the other two heavy lifters, circled the power station then came around, flared, and touched down in a row in a field about twenty yards away. Immediately a half-dozen medics jumped out and came over on a run, some of them carrying back boards and others with medical equipment; twe
lve or fifteen others were armed and immediately set up a loose perimeter. A medium-height man with a dark mustache dressed in a flight suit, captain’s bars sewn on his collars, and a pistol holstered across his chest, strode across to where Cameron climbed painfully out of the Hummer.

  The captain, whose name tag read NETTLES, saluted even as he was eyeing Cameron and the others. “You’ve been hit,” he said. “Medic!”

  “Glad you could make it, Glenn, but the situation is contained so far as I can tell,” Cameron said.

  “This facility is under lockdown as of this moment. How much damage have you sustained inside the plant?”

  “A lot, but there isn’t much flammable if the wellhead wasn’t damaged, we’ll be back up in business within a month or six weeks. But we need more on-site security here, and you know damned well we do.”

  But this was rural North Dakota, and the U.S. wasn’t in a global war, so ARPA-E had decided on the low-key route. And tonight was a direct result of something that could have been prevented, and Cameron was bitter at the same time. As head of Initiative Security this was his fault, and yet it had been beyond his control.

  “Not your fault, Jim.”

  “Tell that to Pete Magliano’s family, and the families of the two guys up in the control center and the others over at the rec center. It was a bloodbath. They didn’t have a chance.”

  A medic came over and made a quick examination of Cameron who leaned against the Hummer. “Looks like you got lucky,” he said, swabbing the shoulder and leg wounds and placing field dressings over them. “We’re setting up a MASH unit, but this should hold you for the time being.”

  Ashley had come over and the medic checked her out, placing another field dressing over the crease in her hip.

  Four people were erecting a tent about fifty feet away, and even as it was going up others were off-loading medical equipment from the choppers.

  “We have casualties over at the double-wide,” Cameron said. “I think they’re all dead, but check it out please.”

  “I’m on it,” the medic said, and looked at Osborne. “You’re wounded, sir,” he said.

  “It’ll hold,” Osborne said. “Did any of your people see anything on the way in?”

  “We saw nothing,” Nettles said. “But we weren’t looking especially hard. Our mission is to secure this facility; we leave criminal apprehension to the civilian authorities. In any event, what are you doing here, sir?” Nettles demanded.

  “Saving our asses,” Cameron said, and he explained the situation beginning with the sudden attack on the party at the double-wide, the bodies of the engineers in the power station control, Lieutenant Magliano’s body on the main floor, and the planted plastique charges, some of which he and Ashley Borden had managed to disarm, and the confrontation after Osborne had arrived through the open back gate.

  “Then the project owes you a thanks, Sheriff,” Nettles said. “But if you don’t require any medical treatment I’d ask that you leave this facility, but make yourself available within the next twenty-four hours for debriefing. The same goes for you, Ms. Borden.”

  “No,” Whitney said. “Sheriff Osborne saved some lives here tonight, and although the situation looks bad he probably prevented a lot more damage. This is a civilian facility and I am the principal scientist in charge. He will be briefed here and now.”

  “That include newspaper reporters?”

  “At this moment, I’d say yes.”

  “You’re going to have a crowd out here within the next few hours, Captain, whether you like it or not,” Ashley said. “You’ll need a rep who knows the requirements of the service as well as the media.”

  The Rapid Response Team was air force because Ellsworth was the nearest military base that could field such a C3I plus medical mission that included Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence, plus medics, but the Initiative was under the DoE, and even though on-site security was provided by the army, Dr. Lipton was in charge.

  “On your orders, ma’am,” Nettles told Whitney. “But in the meantime all the casualties will be treated here, or medivaced to Ellsworth. No one is going to a civilian hospital.” He raised his right hand and snapped his fingers, and a sergeant carrying a military-hardened laptop came forward.

  “Comms have been restored, Captain,” the sergeant, whose name tape read IVERSON, said.

  “Get me General Forester.”

  Iverson set up the laptop on the lowered tailgate of Ashley’s pickup truck, and got online.

  “This is your part of the universe, Sheriff,” Nettles said. “Didn’t you notice anything or anyone unusual around here?”

  “Elk hunters,” Osborne said. “But they knew the codes for the back gate, and apparently they did something to wipe out communications, including cell phones. Until just now. A little more sophisticated than the average hunter or Dickinson rancher could manage.”

  “Not my brief, sir,” Nettles snapped, his dislike obvious.

  “And what is your brief, Captain?”

  “Securing the facility after an incursion.”

  “Doesn’t seem to me like you’re doing a very good job of it. You haven’t even determined if any of the perps are still here.”

  “I have General Forester, sir,” the communications tech announced.

  “This facility, along with the control center, has been secured. And that, sir, is my only brief for the moment.”

  17

  OSBORNE WALKED OVER to his SUV and got on the radio to State. “Sally, you still awake?”

  “Nate, thank goodness. I’ve been trying to reach you for the past half hour. The nine-one-one lines have been going crazy. We’ve already had three calls. Something about an explosion and a fire down at the ELF facility. Have you seen anything?”

  “Right in the middle of it. Listen, call Burt Lance over in Bismarck and tell him that I have a developing situation that involves a possible terrorist attack on the facility. Lots of damage, lots of casualties.” Lance was the commandant of the North Dakota State Highway Patrol. “Then wake up the governor, I think we might have to coordinate this with the National Guard, but that part will have to be worked out with the folks in charge here. You still with me?”

  “I’m on it, what else?” Sally was a retired high school math teacher and as sharp as they came.

  “Call Tommy over in Bismarck, tell him I want a fly-over out here at first light.” Tommy Seagram ran Bismarck Air Charters, and had been a chopper pilot in the first Iraq war. He had an old refurbished Huey and a newer Bell Jet Ranger. Best of all he knew western North Dakota’s hunting grounds, federal parklands, and scenic areas like the palm of his hand.

  “What’s he supposed to be looking for?”

  “Have him call me ASAP, I’m riding with him.”

  “Just a minute, I have an incoming,” Sally said.

  Osborne looked over to where Nettles and Cameron and the others were gathered around the laptop on the tailgate of Ashley’s pickup. Nettles was using a handset for the audio. But then he put it aside.

  Sally was back. “I just talked to a Captain Nettles, says he’s on site. He’s ordered a communications blackout. I’m not supposed to say anything to anybody.”

  “Just do as I asked, would you? He’s standing ten feet away from me. I’ll take care of it.”

  “He’s from South Dakota, what does he know?” Sally said, and she was gone.

  Osborne walked over to where Nettles was giving his preliminary briefing to General Forester whose image was on the screen. The general was in a tuxedo, the bow tie undone, seated behind a desk in what could have been a library with book-lined shelves or more likely the study in someone’s private home.

  “You say there are casualties?” Forester demanded. He was hopping mad.

  “They’re all dead on this side, Bob,” Whitney told him. “They were having a party in the rec room when someone shot through the side of the trailer. Tom Snow and Mike Ridder were in Donna Marie’s control center and Jim sa
id both of them were shot to death.”

  “Jesus,” Forester said softly. “What about the research center?”

  “They just hit the power station and got out. My people are okay.”

  “How extensive is the damage?”

  “I’ll need a structural engineer out here as soon as possible, but I think the wellhead and turbine have come out of it okay. As far as the experiment goes we were lucky. Twenty-four hours from now it would have been a completely different story.”

  “Don’t say anymore,” Forester said. “I’ll have someone from MIT on the ground within twelve hours. In the meantime who else is involved? Captain Nettles said Nate Osborne got through the fence.”

  Osborne stepped into camera range. “Good evening, General.”

  “What’s the situation as you see it?”

  “Looks like a military operation to me. They apparently had the proper codes for the back gate and they came down on what I’m guessing were several ATVs—two of which they left behind—split into two teams, one taking out whoever was in the trailers and the second to take out the personnel in the power plant, and set a lot of plastique to take out some serious-looking machinery.”

  Cameron stepped into camera range and briefed the general on what he’d seen and done. “This was sophisticated, General. They somehow took down all of our communications channels, including cell phones, landlines, and probably satellite links. They definitely knew what they were doing, and exactly what they were after.”

  “What are we doing to catch up with them? They couldn’t have gotten that far.”

  “It’s dark and these are the Badlands,” Osborne said.

  “I’ll have a KeyHole satellite tasked to take a look for heart signatures.”

  “They’ll be long gone by the time you could convince someone over at the NSA to move a bird,” Osborne said. “But I’m going to do a flyover first thing in the morning. We’ll pick up something. And besides we have two of their people here. One stuck it out inside the plant, but it looks as if there was some sort of a fall out and the second one was shot to death just outside the back door.”