Blowout (15 page)

He stopped a few yards from the ATV. There was blood splashed on the seat and handlebars and a large pool of it on the gravel road that had been disturbed possibly when the victim's body collapsed. Four shell casings littered the road about ten feet from the ATV. Just beyond that he could make out the clear impression of a jumble of footprints, plus a blood trail that along with the footprints abruptly ended not far from the tire marks of something big, something with dual wheels in the rear.

Osborne walked over to the shell casings where he hunched down and picked up one with a ballpoint pen. About the same diameter as a 9mm Para, but much longer, which meant more powder, a much greater stopping power. He was just about certain it came from the Knight PDWs the terrorists had used.

Something had gone wrong that had caused one or more of them—probably their leader—to kill the woman down at the Initiative and then shoot another of them here even though they had gotten away.

A disagreement that had gotten violent. Perhaps the man or woman who'd been shot to death here and whose body had been carried into the big vehicle with dual rear wheels—a motor home, he thought—had wanted to go back and finish the job or most likely wanted to rescue their fallen comrades. The leader disagreed and shot the dissenter to death.

He dropped the shell casing into a small plastic evidence baggie that he pocketed. Then stepping carefully, he took out another baggie and a cotton swab—things he always carried with him to a crime scene—nearer to the ATV where he bent down, scooped up some blood with the swab, and sealed it in the baggie.

Cameron had pointed him toward the Posse and two names—Ada Norman, shot to death at the back door of the power plant, and Barry Egan. The names, the automatic weapons they had used, the Semtex, and the timing device made a good start. But Osborne, straightening up, wondered why this facility, and more important, why now? Why last night, of all possible dates?

They'd come in disguised as elk hunters. He glanced over at the marks the dual rear wheels had made. From a big motor home. Common for the better-heeled out-of-state hunters. Another small lead. And it had gone south, back to Rapid City maybe. Another small lead.

But it still didn't explain why last night. Why not at the beginning of the hunting season?

“We've got company coming our way, Nate!” Seagram shouted from the open door of the helicopter.

Osborne looked up as one of the MH-60 Black Hawk helicopters from last night appeared over the top of the hill to the north and hovered for several seconds before it made a tight turn and touched down on the gravel road not twenty yards away, sand and gravel flying everywhere. It was one of the two gunships equipped with 7.62mm machine guns that had shown up to provide security for the Initiative.

Captain Nettles jumped out of the side door and marched over. He didn't look happy. “You were ordered to stand down until General Forester showed up!” he shouted.

“You're contaminating my crime scene, Captain,” Osborne said, standing his ground. “Back off.”

Nettles pulled up short right in the middle of the road, a foot or two away from the tire tracks and the last of the blood spoor, and after a long moment he glanced at the ATV, the shell casings, and the pool of blood.

“This site is now under military jurisdiction.”

Osborne nodded toward the north. “The Initiative is yours, but right now you're in my county. Leave or I'll place you under arrest.”

Nettles took a step forward, but one of the men called to him from the chopper.

“Captain, I have radio traffic for you.”

“Stand by!” Nettles shouted.

“It's General Forester, he's incoming from Bismarck.”

Nettles looked as if he wanted to shoot somebody. “On my way,” he said. “You're coming with me, Sheriff.”

“I'm flying back to my office, where I'm sending one of my deputies out here to secure the scene until the FBI forensics team shows up from Minneapolis. I'll drive out to the Initiative in a couple of hours.” Osborne turned and walked back to where Seagram was waiting.

“Goddamnit!” Nettles shouted.

But Osborne reached the Bell Ranger without looking back. “Get me back to town, Tommy.”

“They going to shoot us?”

Osborne laughed. “I wouldn't put it past them.”

 

21

DAVID GRAFTON, THE
newest and best educated of the three deputies, was having a heated argument about the Green Bay Packers versus the Vikings with Kevin Trembley, the oldest, when Osborne walked in. They stopped immediately.

“Ms. Novak from the governor's office called and wants to talk to you right away,” Grafton said, sounding impressed. Diane Novak was the Department of Commerce commissioner.

“What'd she want?” Osborne asked, walking straight back to his small office.

Their radio dispatcher was out sick today, and Stu Burghof, their other deputy, was on vacation somewhere in California for two more days, so it was just the three of them.

“Didn't say, but she sounded kinda mad,” Grafton said, following him.

Osborne tossed his ball cap on the desk and went to the big wall map of Billings County and the edges of the surrounding counties. “There was some trouble down at the ELF facility last night. Could have been a Posse attack. There were a lot of casualties, and right now an Air Force Rapid Response team from Rapid City has taken charge. They want me down there right away.”

“No shit?” Grafton said. He was excited. Almost nothing ever happened in the county, except for some domestic battery and a few drunks on the weekend.

“No need for profanity,” Trembley cautioned from the doorway.

“Kevin, I want you here on the radio in case something comes up. And try to find out where Stu is staying and get him back,” Osborne said. He poked a blunt finger at the spot where he'd found the ATV, the shell casings, and blood spoor, and told them about his confrontation with the Air Force captain.

“That's not federal land,” Grafton said. He'd gotten his degree in criminology with a minor in law from the University of Minnesota over in Duluth, but he wasn't a big shot about it.

“I'm going to try to head them off if I can, but in the meantime I want you to get down there with an evidence kit. Put police tape around the entire area and take lots of photographs. Pick up anything you find, and make tire casts; something big was out there, I'm guessing a motor home. Dual rear wheels.”

“What if this Nettles comes back and tries to stop me?”

“You're a civilian, and this is your county,” Osborne said. “Pull rank on him.” He gave the shell casing and blood sample to Trembley. “Get someone to run this over to Bismarck and ask if the blood is a match to any known Posse member. And find out what weapon they used; most likely came from a compact submachine gun I saw out at the power plant last night, a Knight PDW, I think. But make sure. Might be able to find out who bought them and where.”

“What about the ATV and trailer?” Grafton asked.

“Lots of photographs and dust them both for prints.”

“I can bring them back here.”

“Okay, but put them out in the county road maintenance shed. And tell Eric and his people to keep their hands off.”

“I'm on it,” Grafton said.

Osborne phoned Novak at her office in Bismarck and she answered on the first ring.

“What the hell is going on out there, Nate?” she demanded.

She and Osborne's mother had been school chums in Fargo. And she had once babysat him while his parents had gone on a rare vacation down to the Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam, and Vegas. “Somebody attacked the Initiative last night, some serious damage and a number of casualties. The Air Force is up from Ellsworth and they've taken charge until General Forester shows up sometime today.”

“We were told it was an industrial accident.”

“Looks like the Posse,” Osborne said.

The Commerce commissioner was silent for a long beat. “So where do we stand here? It's your county.”

Osborne explained everything that he'd been involved with including his confrontation with Captain Nettles out on the gravel road south of the facility.

“President Thompson phoned Stuart first thing this morning, asked if we'd stay out of what was going on over there as much as possible.” Stuart Howard was the second-term governor, and he and his wife, Toni, were very well liked in the state. “Now you're telling me that you're right in the middle of it? Not good, Nate.”

“Too late for that. Anyway, Bob Forester wants to talk to me right away. What do you and Stuart want me to tell him?”

The commissioner chuckled. “Thought you'd say something like that,” she said. “You always were a brat, Nathan, and still are. But tread with care this time. Please?”

“I'll try, Miss Dottie.”

*   *   *

A pair of armed Rapid Response Team airmen in a Hummer blocked the gravel road past the main gate to the Initiative's Administrative and Scientific Center, and Osborne had to turn around and drive to the armed guards at the entrance. He had to wait several minutes before Jim Cameron could give word to let him through.

“Everyone's at Donna Marie, sir,” the young man in white camouflage BDUs told him. “Do you need an escort?”

“I know the way,” Osborne said, and when he was through he took the dirt road northwest to the power plant.

This was a different place on the ground than from the air; in some ways the countryside was more barren, certainly a lot less majestic, yet open, even limitless. He'd once tried to explain to a couple of friends at Recon school what western North Dakota was all about. One of them was from the woods of rural Pennsylvania who thought that the Badlands and the prairie were too wide open and vastly lonely, to which Osborne had explained it was just the opposite of the claustrophobia of the deep forests where a man couldn't see much farther than a dozen yards in any direction. The other was from California's Big Sur who thought that the ever-changing sea was as comforting as the ever-changing flames in a fireplace on a cold evening, to which Osborne had countered that his horizons were ever
unchanging,
something comfortable that could be counted on.

Donna Marie was a beehive of activity. Three dark blue semis with USAF markings were parked along the east side of the generating building about twenty or thirty yards from where the MASH tent had been set up this morning. Three of the four helicopters were on the ground, and approaching a large tent that had been erected after he'd left, and Osborne could hear the other gunship patrolling the perimeter a mile or so out. A half-dozen Hummers and a canvas-covered troop truck, also with Air Force markings, were parked near the big tent, and a second truck was pulled up in front of the double-wide from which bodies in zippered bags were being carried out. A lot of serious-looking people in uniforms, several of them in hazmat suits, came and went from the station. Already debris was being loaded aboard one of the semis, and the light from welding torches sputtered from the open doors.

An airman with a military police armband just outside the main tent flagged Osborne down. “General Forester and the others are expecting you, sir.”

Forester stood in front of a map table listening to Whitney Lipton, who towered over him, telling him something with passion. He was a slightly built man in his late fifties with thinning gray hair, mussed now, his military parka open, his bearing erect, obviously the man in charge. And Osborne could see the resemblance between him and his daughter Ashley, who stood a few feet away looking at a blueprint spread out on the table.

Jim Cameron was on the other side of the table with several men Osborne did not know. They were listening to what Dr. Lipton was saying.

Captain Nettles, who was at Forester's elbow, was the first to notice Osborne, and he turned to the general. “The sheriff is here.”

Forester turned and Whitney and everyone else looked up. “Sheriff, glad you could make it,” the general said. “We've been going over the situation and trying to work out something that makes sense for what happens next, and I need your input.”

“My friends call me Nate. And what happens next is figuring out why the Posse wanted to put this place out of commission, and why they did it last night.”

He and the general shook hands. “Posse Comitatus?” Forester asked. Nettles started to object, but the general motioned him off.

“We have an ID on the woman we found at the back door,” Cameron said. “She's Posse and one of her last known associates was a guy named Barry Egan, also Posse in Montana.”

Something lit off in the general's eyes. “You sure about that?” he asked Cameron.

“Reasonably.”

“If Egan was a part of this it would fit,” said a pleasant-looking woman in her late thirties or early forties in jeans and dark blue FBI parka. “It was his dad who tried to hit Baytown a few years ago.”

It was one of the Posse's legendary stories that Osborne had read about in an e-Guardian bulletin, which was the bureau's online system to counteract possible terrorist activities. “Might help if I was briefed on what's actually going on out here, because from where I stand it seems like you and Exxon might share a common enemy, or at least enemies with a common purpose.”

Forester and the woman exchanged a look.

“We're thinking the same thing,” the woman said. “I'm Deb Rausch, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Minneapolis office. We actually met at a regional LE conference right after you got elected. Had a drink with you and your wife that evening.”

Osborne remembered. “You'd just been assigned from somewhere out west as assistant SAC.”

“Salt Lake City, by way of army intel at Baghdad Central Prison.”

“Welcome to Billings County,” Osborne said. “Assuming for the moment that this does turn out to be a Posse operation, I have to believe that something else is going on. No reason for them to hit a facility like this one. Unless you have a serious leak in security.”