Blowout (31 page)

Rogers saw the point Page was making. “Two American investment brokers involved with oil in Havana at the same time as the high-ranking SEBIN officer,” he said. “But if they did meet, what does that have to do with the attack?”

“The Posse Comitatus never has had the kind of money it took to outfit the motor home, or to make contact with people like Dr. Kemal. So we've been operating under the assumption that someone with deep pockets who might be interested in protecting their oil interests was involved. D. S. Wood, Margaret Fischer, and SEBIN are about as good a fit as we can come up with.”

“You mentioned a couple of possibilities. What's the second?”

“Egan's intel on the Initiative, especially the electronic emissions from the facility, along with the exact makeup of the biological research, has led us to suspect that there is a leak somewhere either at the Initiative itself or here in Washington, D.C., inside ARPA-E.”

Rogers was familiar with this line of inquiry and he said so. “Dr. Lipton and her staff have been cleared. Absolutely nothing turned up in their deep background checks that even hints at trouble, and there'd be no benefit for any of them to see the project fail. Just the opposite. Which leaves Bob Forester, or most likely someone on his staff. But so far they have turned up clean.”

“We came to the same conclusions, but you're forgetting one other person,” Page said.

Rogers shrugged. “We vetted the security staff, including Jim Cameron, but even he doesn't have access to the science part of it.”

“Dan thought that it could be someone not actually connected to the project, but someone close. Someone who could potentially benefit immensely from the attack, and maybe another, whether or not they succeeded.”

“Someone at one of the universities working on individual concepts?”

“Somebody much closer; somebody who has the confidence not only of Forester, but of Dr. Lipton and even Jim Cameron and the sheriff out there, plus your own Special Agent in Charge at Minneapolis who's the lead investigator.”

Rogers was at a loss. “I don't have a clue.”

“The newspaper reporter, Ashley Borden. Forester's daughter.”

It was a surprise to Rogers. “Doesn't wash, Walt. They kidnapped her and tied her to the fence to let her freeze to death, which would have happened had Osborne not shown up.”

“Convenient timing, wouldn't you say?”

“You can't think that he's involved, too?”

“Of course not. But Egan could certainly have been tipped off that Osborne was coming their way and staged the kidnapping.”

“Tipped off by who?”

“By Ms. Borden, of course,” Page said. “Were you aware that she spent the last two days here with her father? And that as soon as she flew back to Bismarck this morning she drove immediately out to Medora?”

It made no sense to Rogers, and yet Page's argument was seductive, but for one disturbing thing. “Do you have someone on the ground out there that we know nothing about?”

Page shook his head. “No. Dan had the hunch and he made a few phone calls. Nothing more than that. But I can't find fault with his reasoning.”

“Ashley Borden,” Rogers said. “Amazing.”

“I suggest you get a court order and monitor her phone calls. Could be interesting to see if she makes contact with Wood, Fischer, or anyone in Venezuela.”

“Wood could be the money source for the Posse,” Rogers said. “I'll give you that much.”

“With Ms. Borden as the conduit,” Page added.

 

47

THE THREE EIGHTEEN-WHEELERS,
marked with the oil well derrick logos of Mid-Texas Industrial Supply, that had come up I-29 from Omaha, had gotten off the interchange southwest of Fargo and swept west on I-94 about four hours ago just before six. And now the sky was still clear, filled with a billion stars, the temperature minus fifteen and the highway snow free.

Jesus Campinella, the lead driver, glanced at the Escort 9500ci radar detector on the dash that showed no threat either in front, behind, or above, and put the pedal to the metal, the Kenworth's speed ramping up to ninety. His brief had been twofold: reach the Initiative before midnight, and under no circumstances get stopped by the highway patrol.

The Escort, powered by a GPS receiver, was loaded with real-time intelligence that showed the locations of speed traps, Smokeys with radar guns, and the schedules of all traffic control over flights, plus road blocks, construction projects, and any sort of a traffic delay—even those from accidents. And it was totally undetectable not only from police equipment but from the more sensitive military radar absorption gear that they might run into when they got close to the Initiative.

The manifests for each of the trucks showed that they carried oil drilling and fracting pipes and tools, bound for the newly developing Bakken oil shale fields in Northwestern North Dakota, from Mid-Texas Industrial's international depot in Houston. Such shipments were so commonplace from the Dakotas and Wyoming west and north that they were scarcely ever noticed, except by state troopers who were mostly looking for logbook violations.

But they wouldn't be subject to another weigh station inspection, before which they would have already unloaded their real cargo, and turned around for the return trip, empty.

“Taco Bell, San Juan, come back,” Campinella's CD blared on nineteen.

He keyed the mike. “San Juan, what's up?”

“How about backin' off the hammer?”

“Negatory, we have a clean shot far as I can see.”

“We're on schedule.”

Campinella, who was the convoy leader, considered what San Juan—Ignacio Gomez—was telling him. They were right on schedule, and their orders were to reach Highway 85 just east of Belfield no earlier than ten, which was no problem. But he wanted insurance in the bank in case of trouble.

He glanced in his big door mirror, the other two trucks at the proper intervals behind him, and then at the still-clear radar detector. Born in the slums of Bachaquero on the shores of Lake Maracaibo, Campinella had lived by his wits since he was seven when his father had been killed in a bar fight and his mother had died giving birth to her ninth baby. With all those mouths to feed, his older sister, who was fifteen at the time, had taken to prostitution in the oil workers barrio, so when Jesus slipped away one night she hadn't cared.

He'd learned his lesson early and hard, so by the time he was seventeen he'd come to the attention of a local cop who'd recommended him to the secret intelligence agency, and they'd taken him in with open arms. There always was a need for ground troops; expendables, they were called.

The other drivers on this job had about the same backgrounds, but their papers identified them as legal Mexican immigrants, who were working diligently for their U.S. citizenship. They even sent money home to fictitious families in Matamoros.

“Hold one,” Campinella radioed. He adjusted the display on his Escort for road problems fifty miles out, but nothing was showing. They were well west of Bismarck and in another few miles they would be coming up on a rest stop with facilities. He'd been given several choices depending on the road conditions—which to this point were near perfect—and the presence of state cops who might or might not be looking for them.

“Could just be drunk patrols for New Year's Eve,” their dispatcher, a rough son of a bitch in Houston whose name Jesus was never given, told him. “But it's your call on this run. Make it to the delivery spot, unload, and do your flip-flop right back here light.”

“What if we get stopped?”

“Make goddamned sure your comic book is up to date, so they've got nothing to bitch about,” the dispatcher said. The comic book was the trucker's log, which showed miles run and hours behind the wheel. DOT regulations specified that a driver could only drive a maximum of eleven hours after ten hours off duty. According to their logs they'd switched drivers in Wichita and again in Sioux Falls. In fact his co-driver, a boozer from San Antonio whose name had never been of any consequence to anyone, had spent all of his time in his berth, knocked out with a shot of methohexital, a powerful sedative. When they reached Dallas on the return run he would be given an overdose of crack that would kill him. One of the other co-drivers high on meth would kill the third with a .38 Police Special and then commit suicide. By the time the police got involved Jesus and his two operatives would be safely on a plane back to Caracas.

It was a tough old world, the general had told them at the end of their briefing in Houston. “Just see you do your jobs and don't end up the same way.”

“Let the
hijas de putas
talk all they want,” Campinella and the others had been instructed before they'd left Caracas. “And talk they will. Your job is a simple one. Take them to their insertion point then turn around and leave.”

Campinella keyed his mike. “San Juan, Sixteen Ton, we've got a pickle park comin' up in about ten just past the one twenty-three, and I'm needin' a ten-hundred, copy?” A pickle park was a rest area with facilities, and a ten-hundred was a bathroom break.

“Taco Bell, copy.”

“Sixteen Ton, I'm with ya,” the third driver, Jose Ricardo, radioed. All of them had been coached on American trucker's dialect

Which was just as well, Campinella thought, because he didn't want to argue with his people, nor did he want to admit that the closer they came to their turnaround the more spooked he became. The mission planner, Major Pedro Ramirez, had warned him just before takeoff that the Americans were
loco
; it was possible that they could do almost anything.

“So watch yourself.”

“Why do this, sir, if they are such a risk?”

“Because those are your orders,” the major had said. “In fact I wouldn't trust this assignment to anyone else.”

Campinella knew when he was being flattered. “Because I'm an expendable?”

Major Ramirez had gotten serious all of a sudden but then he threw back his head and laughed.
“Sí,”
he said. “That, too. But you're from the barrio, which means you know how to spot an opportunity.”

And when to spot a lost cause for what it was and run. All the way up from Houston Campinella had been thinking what he would do if he were in the general's shoes. First on the list would be to eliminate witnesses. Make sure that his back was clear. But it would have to be done somewhere quiet. Like U.S. 85 south of Belfield. Out in the Badlands.

He didn't have all the answers, though the assignment had been specific: deliver the load to a spot fifteen miles south of the interstate on U.S. 85, then turn around and come back. But the closer they came the more nervous he got. If it doesn't smell right, he'd learned early on, it probably isn't.

The blue “rest area two miles” sign came up and Campinella began to throttle down. Almost immediately the general came on the intercom.

“Why are we slowing down?”

Campinella had rehearsed this moment. “My truck is developing a problem.”

“Which is?”

“I think we got bad fuel in Sioux Falls.”

“Have you told the other drivers?”

“They're a little bit jumpy. Could be we'd get stuck on Eighty-five.”

“Stand by,” the general said.

The radar detector was still clear ahead and behind, when Campinella began to shift down as they passed the one-mile marker.

“Do you have spare filters?” the general asked.

“Yes, but it'll take time to drain the water, change them, and bleed the air out of the system. If you want to wait, it's fine with me. But I can't guarantee that we'll be on the road on your timetable.”

The intercom was silent as Campinella shifted down through the gears, slowing the semi to under thirty miles per hour as he took the off-ramp, easing the brakes to slow them even further.

“Your call, General,” he called to the trailer.

“How far yet to our turn-off?”

“Sixty-five miles,” Campinella said, taking the left turn to truck parking and sliding his rig into one of the slots. The rest stop was completely empty of other cars or trucks.

“How does it look?”

The other two semis pulled in beside him.

“No one else but us,” Campinella said. “And the highway is clear for at least fifty miles in either direction.”

“Stand by.”

Campinella popped open his door, the cab instantly filling with air colder than anything he'd ever experienced in his life, and he caught a vision of his body lying on the side of some godforsaken western American wilderness frozen solid.

He reached under the dash and pulled out a Beretta 9mm pistol and stuffed it in his belt as the general called back.

“Check your radar detector now.”

Campinella did. “It is still clear in all directions.”

“Very well, we're getting out here.”

“As you wish,” Campinella muttered, and he grabbed his jacket, climbed down from the cab, and put it on, buttoning it all the way to his neck and pulling up the collar.

Gomez and Ricardo had climbed down from their cabs and came over.

“We're unloading here,” Campinella told them. “Be quick about it. We have a turnaround at one ten, and I want to be heading east
muy pronto.
”

“It's cold here,” Ricardo said.

Campinella opened the lock on the back, swung the doors open, and climbed inside what appeared to be a trailer loaded floor to ceiling with pipes, most of them six inches or more in diameter, leaving less than two feet of clear space in front of the doors. Undoing five hidden latches, he swung the false front open in two parts like a double door.

Four men in white arctic camos over their Army Delta Force uniforms that carried no markings, M4 carbines up and at the ready, stood on either side of a Hummer, nose out, also painted white, with no markings.