Olympus Device 1: The Olympus Device (14 page)

All the while, Maria’s smiling face seemed to mock him. Those beautiful brown eyes had warmed his soul since the first time he’d met her
; now their gaze felt belittling.

Stop it!
He chided himself.
Maria holds no ill will against you. The marriage didn’t work for her, but at least you took the high road as it ended. Call her.

His room-stall started spinning. Closing his eyes made it worse. He reached for the no
contract phone inside the pack and dialed the number listed on the brochure.

“Champion Properties,” a friendly sounding voice answered.

“Hello,” he mumbled. “Is Maria in?”

“I’m sorry, but Ms.
Weathers is out of the office right now. She’ll be checking her messages throughout the day. Could I let her know you called?”

Dusty hadn’t expected this. He didn’t want to get Maria in trouble, but on the other
hand, he was desperate. A lie popped into his head.

“Yes… yes, please do. My name is
Clarence Turner, and I’m calling from Midland Station. I’m relocating to Houston next month, and Ms. Weathers was recommended by a mutual friend, Tina Rodriguez. I’m only going to be in town for a short time, could you ask her to hurry?”

“Sure, Mr. Turner
. I’ll let her know as soon as she calls in.”

Dusty left the number to hi
s phone and ended the call. Clarence Turner was Maria’s father’s name, Midland her hometown. Tina had been her best friend in high school.

Time passed slowly in the stall. The pain, loss of blood
, and confinement all combined to make it seem like days before the cheap, little phone began to ring.

“Maria?”

“Yes, Dusty. The message was cute. Are you all right? Do you know the FBI was at my house?”

He interrupted her, “Maria, I’m hurt… hurt pretty badly. I’ve lost so much
blood; it feels like I’m going into shock.”

The voice on the other end changed,
the words laced with concern. “Where are you? I’ll come get you right now.”

“I’m at a truck stop. I don’t know where though. It’s called The Gulf Station. You’ll have to look up the address. I’m in the men’s room
, hiding.”

She didn’t hesitate, “Stay right there.
Hang on. I’m on my way.”

Dusty finished
the last bottle of water, his thirst unquenchable. Knowing that help was on the way improved his mental condition. He had hope… an out… a chance at escape.

He gently used another handful of paper towels to redress his wound, the blood flow about the same. He killed some time rearranging the pack, and making ready to leave once Maria arrived. He was weak, dizzy
, and constantly feeling like he needed to vomit. The pounding in his head was relentless.

Twice he started to call her back, illogical
visions forming in his mind. At one point, he was sure she’d forgotten, a minute later convinced she changed her mind and decided not to come. Each bout of paranoia grew stronger, more difficult to fight off. He then began to worry he was going insane.

A voice called out, a
hint of humor in the tone. “Clarence Turner, your wife is here looking for ya. She doesn’t look happy.”

He almost
ignored the use of the fake name, the pain and thunder in his head making reasoning difficult.

He managed to stand and unlock the stall, his legs wobbly and weak. A
few difficult steps, and then he was looking at Maria, concern painted on her face.

“If you bleed all over my car seats,
I’ll be pissed.”

Somehow,
she managed to get him into her car, the smell of leather and her favorite musk permeating the interior. He fell asleep before they had exited the lot.

He dreamed about being
irate with her. She was pushing him along, encouraging him to walk into some strange place. He didn’t want to go, the car’s seat comfortable and safe, the smell of her reminding him of cool spring mornings in their bed. The dream continued, his beautiful Maria becoming angry, insistent that he enter the new place, pulling on him physically while chiding him mentally.

Tim Crawford gradually worked his way around the perimeter of law enforcement
personnel behind the hotel. He recognized one of the cops, the officer obviously bored with the task of keeping a throng of curious onlookers well away from the site.

Making sure his press ID was
n’t visible, Tim made his way over to his acquaintance and smiled. “What’s going on, McCormick?”

“Move on, Crawford. I don’t want anyone
to see me talking to you right now.”

Taken aback by the rude response, the reporter from
the
Houston Post
feigned hurt feelings. “Jezzz McCormick, what the hell did I ever do to you?”

“Nothing that I know of, and I want to keep it that way. There’s a
busload of feds crawling around here, and that makes my captain nervous. Shit rolls downhill, and I don’t want to be at the bottom of an avalanche.”

The
reporter snorted, dismissing the less than talkative cop with a wave. “Whatever.”

Crawford considered joining the gaggle of other reporters, most of the on
-scene press from the local news channels. Their fancy vans, bright lights, and handheld cameras had been herded into a corner of the hotel’s parking lot, a thick wall of police between them and the downed tower.

Judging the isolated press pool
as the last place he’d gather any real information, he continued to casually saunter through the field, at least as close as the authorities would let him. That was close enough to be in awe of the disaster.

On an average day, t
he high-voltage towers were overlooked by the average citizen. When standing upright, they didn’t attract attention like a building of the same stature. People drove and jogged and walked their cocker spaniels past them every day, hardly giving the critical structures a second glance.

That all changed when the tower fell. The length of crumpled steel lattice looked
like the spine of a slain giant, felled after a ferocious battle. The thick cables, randomly strung along the ground and draped over the crumbled metal, resembled the great beast’s entrails. Dark patches of burned grass were the bloodstains – scarred soil where the life had drained from the titan. The entire scene had a melancholy feel, the carcass of a mighty warrior surrounded by an army of human ants.

Being naturally nosey
made Crawford a good reporter. That unrelenting curiosity, combined with a higher than average IQ, propelled him to the rank of journalist. An innate distrust of his fellow man garnered him rewards and accolades, and at that moment, he smelled a story hidden in the mundane explanation provided by the authorities.
Failed structural integrity my ass
, he determined, staring at the fallen monstrosity.

The first piece of visual evidence
of a cover up was the plow mark. Looking to the reporter’s eye like some sort of odd crop circle taken from a photo shopped tabloid picture, a gash in the field started 50 yards away from where the tower had stood and followed a perfectly straight line to the now-mangled base.

There wasn’t any fallen debris close to the trench, and the grass was flattened on each side. Something had ripped through the field on its way to
the tower – a meteorite or projectile of some kind. He’d seen similar scars in the earth while working in Iraq, furrows of tilled, desert sand left after American tanks had fired their massive cannons. Yet there was no tank or anything else that would explain the damage.

Crawford pulled his smart phone, tap
ping the screen a few times until he found the weather. Three days ago, a thunderstorm had rolled through north Houston, the highest recorded wind speed reaching 38 mph, from the west. The tower had fallen as if it were pushed from the southeast. If the story were to be believed, wouldn’t the failure have occurred during the storm? The last few days had been calm.

The most suspicious aspect of the entire aff
air was the presence of the feds. As McCormick had stated, the place was thick with them. Sure, the tower was a major hit to the north side’s infrastructure, some 350,000 people now without electricity. Sure, it was possible such an incident might provide the federal boys a chance to get out of the office on a slow day. But it had taken him two hours to arrive, snarled in gridlock due to the powerless, non-functioning traffic signals. Guessing that the tower had fallen three hours ago, he asked himself how long would it take the FBI to figure out this wasn’t a terrorist attack and leave. They sure seemed to have officially labeled the cause very, very quickly – unless they already knew.

Pulling out his digital camera, the reporter snapped a few pictures from the best angle. Visual extravagance
was the realm of broadcast news; his story would be told mostly with words.

While he zoomed in on the base, m
ovement caught his attention. Two men wearing Houston Power and Light hardhats were strolling over to speak with what appeared to be an FBI agent. After about five minutes of animated pointing and uncomfortable body language later, the electric company workers headed for the parking lot. Crawford moved to follow.

They were just closing the trunk lid of the white Ford sedan, complete with
HL&P logo, when Crawford accosted them. “Excuse me guys,” he said, flashing his press ID, “I was wondering if I might ask you a couple of questions?”

“Sorry,” the older one replied, holding up his hand, “you need to speak with law enforcement. We have no comment.”

“Okay,” Tim replied, a sense of disappointment in his voice. “If you want your company to take the heat for this, that’s up to you. My editor is good to go with the lack of maintenance angle.”

“What do you mean, ‘lack of maintenance
?’” responded the younger guy, despite the harsh look from his partner, “There wasn’t a lack of maintenance on shit.”

Crawford shrugged his shoulders, “That’s not what the FBI is telling me off the record. Word is, the tower hadn’t been properly inspected or maintained
, and that’s why it went down.”

The older man stiffened his spine, flashing Crawford an annoyed look. “Bullshit
. Pure, unadulterated cow droppings. Metal fatigue, poor maintenance, or nothing else I know of had shit to do with that tower coming down. We don’t know what kicked it over, but sure as God made little green apples, HL&P had nothing to do with it.”

“How do you know?”

The younger guy stepped forward and lowered his voice, “Off the record, okay? I’ve never seen anything like it. The steel in that support is four inches thick. An entire section is just missing… gone. Now, I’ve used just about every technology out there to cut steel. Saws, lasers, plasma torches, you name it. Nothing can slice metal and leave a smooth edge like that… nothing. We examined it at a microscopic level, and there wasn’t any fatigue. It was like someone just snapped his fingers, and the metal wasn’t there anymore.”

“How… is there… what could do that?” Crawford asked, trying to piece it all together. 

Shaking his head, the older man opened the car door, signaling his coworker to do the same. They had already said too much. “Nothing Mister, nothing of this world.”