HOW ARE WE GOING to get Colonel Sumter to give up his list of personnel?” said Jamison on the drive back. “He hasn’t even gotten back to Kelly on his earlier request. And I don’t see us getting a search warrant. We have no probable cause. And on top of that, this Ben guy was military; he’s not there anymore anyway. It’s all Vector personnel now.”
“So let’s dial up some help.” Decker pulled out the device Robie had given him.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Apparently, a hotline to Batman.”
He hit the green button. Within two seconds, Robie answered.
“Yes?”
“Need some help. Wondering if you could provide it?”
“Tell me what it is and I’ll see what I can do.”
“We’re looking for a guy who used to work at the Air Force station here. First name Ben, last name unknown.”
“Is he military?”
“Yes. We learned that the DoD pulled out the military component and outsourced the work to a firm named Vector. You know them?”
“Why is this guy important?” said Robie, ignoring the query.
“He told a guy I trust that we were sitting on a ticking time bomb here. So I want to talk to him.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“One more thing.”
“Yeah?”
“Irene Cramer. Any idea why the Feds are interested in her?”
The line went dead.
Jamison glanced at Decker. “Well?”
“Not sure. I might have just said something I shouldn’t have.”
They drove past the western edge of the Brothers’ Colony, where they saw colorful oil rigs erected along the way with trailers and trucks and lots of activity.
Decker read the sign erected in front of one rig nearest the Air Force property: THE ALL-AMERICAN ENERGY COMPANY. Two large Stars and Stripes were suspended from tall flagpoles and flapping in the breeze. Decker said drily, “Well, that’s patriotic.”
“What could be more American than drilling for oil?” quipped Jamison.
* * *
Kelly said, “We’ve had a BOLO out on Parker from the minute we found him missing. There’s been no sign of the guy.”
They were walking to the room where the postmortem had been performed by Walt Southern on Pamela Ames.
“I guess around here there are lots of places to get rid of a body,” said Jamison.
“Yep. We got landfills full of crap that they add to every day, including some radioactive stuff that comes naturally out of the drilling process.”
“Radioactive,” said Jamison. “And they can just dump that in a landfill?”
“Well, they’re not supposed to. But people aren’t supposed to do lots of things and they still do.”
“That’s why we have a job,” grumbled Decker.
As they entered the room Southern was finishing up some notes in a paper file.
He eyed Decker warily. “Heard you came by to look at Cramer’s body while I was out of town.”
“I did.”
“It looks like you opened her up again.”
“I did,” Decker said again.
“Why?” he said sharply.
“Because I had to. Now, I’d prefer to talk about Ames’s post.”
Southern started to say something but then seemed to catch himself. “Okay. Not much to tell. Dead about fourteen hours when you found her. Single contact GSW to the right temple. Dum-dum round.” He held up a baggie with the round inside. “All beaten to hell. No striations, lands, or grooves visible. Did what it’s designed to do. Won’t get a ballistic match off it.”
“Fourteen hours,” said Kelly. “So around ten o’clock at night?”
Southern glanced at his notes. “About, yes.”
“Stomach contents?”
“Some dinner, half digested. That’s it. Tox screens have been sent out. I found no obvious signs of drug use. No sign of a sexual assault or recent sexual intercourse.”
Kelly nodded but said nothing. He was watching Decker.
Decker said, “Did you confirm that nobody cut her up, like they did Cramer? We didn’t look under her clothing. Just noted the gunshot wound and bagged her for the post.”
Jamison looked at her partner in surprise, because this was an unusual thing to say. But from the look on Decker’s face, the man had a reason.
Southern slowly put down his file. “Do I have to read between those lines or are you going to come to the point?”
“You noted that Cramer’s stomach and small intestines were sliced open. Sliced. I don’t need to tell you those places are pretty popular to hide contraband. When I asked you if there was anything unusual in the post you never mentioned either of those things. Now I’d like an explanation for that.”
“They were in my report.”
“But they were not highlighted. They were buried, in fact. A single sentence for both organs. And you took no photos of them. You should have drawn our attention to them. That’s standard protocol.”
To this, Southern shrugged. “But you found out about them. So what’s the problem? No harm, no foul.”
“If you have to ask a question like that I’m not sure you’re in the job you need to be in.”
Southern scowled. “I do this out of a sense of public duty. It’s not like they pay much.”
Decker glanced at Kelly, who didn’t look inclined to say anything.
Southern said, “So you think she might have had something inside her?”
“Did you find any trace of that?” said Jamison.
“Because if you did it wasn’t in your report,” noted Decker.
“That’s because I found no trace of any foreign substance inside her stomach or intestines.”
“And you specifically looked?” asked Decker.
“I checked the organs.”
“Did you give the stomach and intestines a more focused look because of the way in which they had been sliced open?” Decker wanted to know.
“I was thorough. And that’s all I’m going to say on the matter. If you got a problem with that, you can take it up with Joe. Now, if we’re done here? I’ll have my very thorough report ready for you later today.”
And with that Southern walked out.
Decker stood there for a minute and then walked over to the body of Pamela Ames and lifted the sheet. The Y-incision stared back at him along with the dead woman’s pale face.
No electric blue light again, thought Decker. My brain keeps me guessing and I don’t much care for it. No, I hate it.
“Decker?” Jamison said, coming to stand next to him. “You okay?”
Decker curtly nodded.
Kelly said, “I wish you could have given me a heads-up on all that.”
“What are you going to do about it now that you know?”
“What can I do? It was in the report, right?”
“Not where it optimally should have been.”
“Optimally? I can’t take that and run with it. Hell, without Walt we don’t have anyone here who can do posts. I don’t see that I have many options.”
“I would think that you have options for somebody like that.”
“You can’t believe that Walt would have intentionally—”
Decker cut him off. “I don’t believe or disbelieve anything until I can prove it. Just so we’re straight on that.”
He put the cover back on Ames’s remains, then walked out of the room and slammed the door behind him.
“I take it he’s pissed,” said Kelly.
“And I think he has every right to be,” retorted Jamison.
And with that Jamison left, leaving Joe Kelly alone with a corpse.
WILL ROBIE WAS ON THE MOVE. It was night, and a warm rain was falling. He was on foot, dressed in a camouflaged ghillie suit, with a pair of night optics, and a GPS tracker mounted on his forearm. Under the ghillie was Level 3A body armor along with rifle plates that could stop and disperse all handgun rounds and most rifle rounds. They offered superb stab and spike protection as well. Unless someone got a head or femoral artery shot on him, then it was over.
He took up position on a slight rise of earth and surveyed the area in front of him through the optics. To the left were the lights of the Brothers’ Colony, and to the right those of the Air Force station. And then there were the oil rigs surrounding these two facilities like a hostile army ringing an enemy.
There was movement at the oil rigs as people and trucks came and went. He could see the lights of vehicles moving across the land owned by the Brothers. The radar array sat high above all this activity as it scanned the night skies for incoming nukes and other space traffic.
Amos Decker had been described to him in three precise words: brilliant, quirky, relentless. After meeting the man he hadn’t gotten to see the quirky part so much, but Decker certainly seemed intelligent enough. And he hoped the relentless part was spot on because the man was going to need it. His partner, Alex Jamison, had an excellent rep at the Bureau. Partners were important, Robie knew. He was missing his partner on this assignment. Jessica Reel was currently in a different and far more dangerous part of the world. Although this area of North Dakota certainly seemed to have its share of violence.
He got up from his position and moved forward with efficient strides of his long legs.
The outer perimeter of the Air Force station loomed in front of him.
Robie’s people had tried to do this the nice way and had gotten zip for their politeness.
Now Robie had been sent here to do it the impolite way.
He had brought some tools with him in case he came across any opposition but had been instructed to use them judiciously. His orders were also to not kill anyone in his path tonight. Of course, those on the other side would have no compunction about doing that to him, since they would see him as only an intruder. An intruder looking for the truth, but an intruder, nonetheless.
He had a map of the facility downloaded on his phone, and he stopped to take a brief scan of the outer perimeter. It was sophisticated and had been thoughtfully implemented by people who knew what they were doing.
Yet he had been told about a sliver of a blind spot in the facility’s defenses. It took him ten seconds to scale the first perimeter fence. His gloves with metal mesh palms allowed him to easily circumvent the concertina wire atop the fence. He dropped down to the other side and eyed the ground in front of him. Fortunately, he knew that pressure plates aligned at two-foot intervals and set at forty-five-degree angles ran off the support posts for the fence. Best-case scenario, if he stepped on one an alarm would go off. Worst-case scenario, Robie would be blown to nothing.
He picked his steps carefully and safely reached the interior perimeter fence. This had double rows of razor wire toppers, and it took him longer to get over it than he ideally wanted. He dropped silently to the ground and squatted there, watching and listening. This endeavor made up three-quarters of most of his missions; this was the part that allowed him to live. So he paid attention to it, gave it the due it deserved. He wanted to walk out of here, not be carried out in a body bag.
Now the easy part was over.
The one unknown for him was whether they deployed dogs here. His intel had been sketchy on that. Dogs were almost impossible to defeat, at least for long. But if they were present, he had brought something that would help him overcome this obstacle.
There were surveillance cameras along the pedestrian routes, but he also knew where each of them was, and he stayed out of their lines of sight.
He saw the first sentry up ahead dressed in black with body armor and carrying a sub gun with a thirty-round extended mag and a walkie-talkie attached by Velcro to his shirtfront. A sweep light mounted on a tower was making its rounds over the ground. Robie watched its routine and then moved forward, avoiding its glare.
He drew to a stop about fifteen feet later and waited for the guard to finish his walk. When he disappeared around the corner of one building, Robie crept forward, his gaze moving across the area in front of him, side to side, then a look backward to check his full rear flank.
Two more guards appeared on the scene and they were joined by another—not an armed guard, but a woman dressed in civilian clothes. They all shared a smoke and talked. Robie strained to hear what they were saying but couldn’t quite make it out.
The woman finally left and the guards moved on, one going right and the other left.
Robie skirted along the shadows, occasionally looking down at his GPS tracker and the facility map on his phone. The building he wanted was up on the right. He reached the door but, after looking at it, decided not to make his entry that way.
He crept around the corner and eyed the window there. Basic snip lock, blinds half drawn. He risked hitting the window with his light to check the inside edge for signs of an alarm port. He saw none.
That was when he heard someone coming.
With his knife he flipped the lock, raised the window, slipped inside, and closed it a few seconds before a figure passed by. As he gazed out the window in the direction of the pyramid building he saw something extraordinary. Three guards came out of a side door pushing two gurneys with two men lying on them. They hurried over to the ambulances parked there and loaded the gurneys into the back of one of them, and two guards climbed into the rear. A driver must have already been in the vehicle because it started up, geared into reverse, and pulled out, its taillights winking as it drove away.
Robie had taken pictures of all this with his phone. He lowered the blinds, turned away from the window, and looked around the small office he was in. There was a desk with large American and U.S. Air Force flags resting in stands behind it. Gunmetal-gray file cabinets were parked against one wall. That was his target. In the digital world the military could still be counted on to also deal in good, old-fashioned paper products.
He slid open each drawer until he found the one he wanted.
Personnel files.
He went through them as quickly as possible, holding a pen-light in his mouth and shining its light into the drawer to keep as much of the illumination as possible hidden. Twenty minutes later his hand closed around the file he wanted, after he made sure there were no others that fit the bill. He took pictures of each page with his phone camera, put the file back, closed up the drawer, and turned to leave. Right as someone walked up to the door and he heard a key being inserted into the lock.