Blowout (41 page)

He looked at Rodriguez, really looked at him this time. No fear. Only urgency. A steadiness.

“Do you want to live, or do you want to die here this morning?”

Rodriguez was right, and Egan pulled himself back from the brink. “We can storm the control room from both directions. All we need is one of the women.”

“The hostages on floor would be enough to get us out of here. But even if they let us get to the plane and fly away, we would have failed here because we couldn't destroy the place.”

“Twenty-five fucking million dollars.”

“Does it mean that much to you?”

Egan nodded. “Yes.”

“More than your life?” Rodriguez asked. “Think,
comp
.”

“Then we'll kill them,” Egan said, holstering his pistol. “what the fuck.” He grabbed his carbine and got out of the Hummer.

“No time for that.”

“I'll make the time.”

They went to the rear of the Hummer and slipped inside the generating hall. The hostages were seated on the floor between the generator and turbine, their hands clasped at the back of their necks. Daley and the rest of his people plus Egan's had taken up defensive positions behind the machinery.

“The Chinook is on its way,” Rodriguez told them. “We just have to sit tight until it gets here.”

“What about the Gulfstream?” Daley asked.

“It'll be landing in Dickinson within the hour,” Egan told them. “And we'll all be in Havana for sundowners on the beach. Five million goes a long way down there.”

“Then what, goddamnit?” one of the others demanded. “We'll be stuck there.”

“I don't give a flying shit!” Egan shouted. “You want to give it up, lay down your weapons, and walk out the door with your hands up? Well go ahead, but I goddamn well guarantee that the Air Force won't treat you as good as the Cubans will.”

“We need to check on the wellhead before the helicopter gets here,” Rodriguez said.

“First we're going to take care some business,” Egan said. He was calming down now that he saw what needed to be done. The money would came later, even if he had to put a bullet in Kast's brain.

“Hijo de puta,”
Rodriguez said.

Egan ignored it. He pointed his carbine at Daley and two of his people. “You're coming with me.”

“Where?” Daley demanded.

“Osborne has barricaded himself in the control room with Dr. Lipton and the general's daughter. We're going to smoke them out. All I want is one of the broads, our surefire ticket outta here. Fuck the rest of them.”

“About time we get to kick some ass,” Daley said.

 

65

OSBORNE STOOD AT
the edge of the shattered plate glass windows that looked down on the floor of the generating hall. Nothing moved, but a few moments ago he'd heard someone shouting something. He'd not been able to make out the words but the tone had been unmistakably angry.

Earlier he and Ashley had shoved one of the desks up against the door, and overturned the other so that they would have a decent firing position. It was a foregone conclusion in his mind that Egan or some of his people would be coming up here to recapture at least Whitney and most likely Ashley, too. The project's chief scientist and the daughter of the ARPA-E general in charge would be their tickets to ride.

But someone had to be coming up from Ellsworth by now. Their only hope was holding out long enough for the Rapid Response Team to get here. But it also depended on Cameron managing to reach the remote booster antenna and disabling it. Because without that, they were all at Egan's mercy. If the fanatic was backed into a corner, Osborne had no doubt the man would push the button without hesitation, bringing the entire place down on their heads.

“She's back,” Ashley called from across the room.

Osborne turned as Whitney's head appeared above the level of the floor. Her face was white and tears streamed down her cheeks. She looked devastated and Osborne knew exactly what had happened and what it meant for them.

Ten minutes after Cameron had disappeared down the run, Whitney went after him, and nothing Osborne had tried to tell her did any good.

“He could have run into trouble, got tangled up in the wires,” she'd argued in near hysterics.

“Make as little noise as possible,” Osborne said. “They won't know it's you and if they hear something they won't hesitate to shoot.”

“I know,” Whitney had said, and she eased into the trough and crawled away.

Now she was back.

Ashley helped her out of the cable run and they sat on the floor hugging each other.

“He's dead,” Whitney said finally. She looked over at Osborne. “I saw his body at the base of the stack, and there was a lot of blood on the snow.” She lowered her head and began to cry in great racking sobs.

Osborne had hoped that Egan's people would have been more interested in keeping watch on the control room than the outside of the building. But the booster antenna was one of the main keys to the success of their operation. And at this point there was no telling if Cameron had managed to reach it before he'd been stopped.

Which put them back at square one because with what little they had they wouldn't be able to hold off a sustained assault for much more than one or two minutes. He had the carbine he'd taken from the contractor outside Henry's but less than half a magazine of ammunition, plus the carbine Cameron had brought with him and one full magazine, for a total of less than sixty rounds between the two M4s. Cameron had taken the Beretta with him, which left only Osborne's SIG-Sauer and about twenty-five rounds of ammunition, plus the Ithaca twelve bore and the handful of shells Ashley had gotten from the back of his SUV.

The only way into the control room other than the door was the cable run, which he hoped they hadn't figured out yet, or through the window opening that was fifty feet off the generating floor.

They wouldn't try to get a grenade through the window for fear of killing the women, nor did he think they would get up on the roof and blow their way inside with a half kilo of Semtex; too much could go wrong.

He'd tried to work out all their options, but the one that worried him the most was the one he hadn't thought of. The one a nutcase might come up with.

He caught a movement down on the floor out of the corner of his eye and just managed to duck out of the line of sight when at least two gunmen opened fire, spraying the room, most of the rounds slamming into the ceiling tiles and fluorescent light fixtures, but several of them hitting steel beams and ricocheting back into the room, at least one round slamming into a control panel near where the women were crouched.

Keeping low, Osborne made his way to the overturned desk in the middle of the room, and motioned for Whitney and Ashley to get into the cable run.

“Make your way back to the north side, and I'll put the grate back in place,” he told them. “Should buy us a little time.”

“And leave you here alone?” Ashley said, shaking her head. “Not a chance.”

“Goddamnit, I'm trying to save your life.”

“I know.”

“It's me they want,” Whitney said. “But this is my facility and I'm staying until the Air Force gets here.”

Someone pounded at the door. “Sheriff, we know that you're in there with Dr. Lipton and Ms. Borden!” Egan shouted.

Osborne grabbed Cameron's M4, and checked the load. The magazine was only half full, which left him his, plus the one full one. He switched it to single fire and handed it to Whitney. “Don't fire unless someone makes it through the door,” he told her as someone pounded on the door again. “But once you start, don't stop until your weapon runs dry.”

“Send the women out and you can walk away from this alive!” Egan shouted.

“I only have six rounds,” Ashley said.

“You'll have to conserve them. Fire one the same time as the doc shoots, but then hold off until they get through the door. They probably don't know we have a shotgun, but once they find out they're going to get real cautious.”

“Then what?” Ashley asked, and Whitney nodded.

“Keep firing. There can't be that many of them. Someone has to be guarding the other hostages and someone has to be keeping a lookout for Nettles and his people.”

“Last chance,” Egan shouted.

“Help is on its way!” Whitney said. “Jim talked to Captain Nettles.”

“Do they know about the hostages?”

“Yes.”

“Fire in the hole!” Egan shouted.

Osborne managed to shove the women down and shield them with his body when a tremendous bang filled the room, hammering off the walls and ceiling. The metal door and the desk blocking it were ripped to shreds, the pieces flying up and out and bringing down half the ceiling, two pieces of shrapnel slicing into his back and left leg just above his prosthesis.

Whitney was dazed but Ashley squirmed away from Osborne and popped up the same moment he did.

A lot of dust obscured the opening, and for a long beat nothing moved, until someone poked a carbine around the corner and opened fire one-handed, spraying the room, one shot catching Osborne high in the shoulder, shoving him backwards.

Ashley fired once, the Ithaca's twelve-gauge spread completely filling the open doorway with pellets, giving Osborne time to roll right toward the shot-out window, before another M4 was poked around the corner and the shooter fired a short burst before pulling back.

They were professionals, taking their time, and Osborne's heart sank a little. Nettles was probably waiting them out in order not to jeopardize the hostages. And it was exactly the right thing to do.

The muzzle of the M4 came around the corner and Ashley fired off another round at the same moment Whitney popped up and fired four times in rapid succession.

Blood streaming from his wounds, Osborne got up and managed to hobble to the front of the room where he pulled up just to the left of the door opening.

“Fuck it,” someone on the other side said, and two men rolled through.

Osborne fired at point-blank range, taking the first man in the base of his head just below his left ear at the same time Ashley and Whitney opened fire, taking the second man in the chest, driving him backwards.

Another shooter poked a carbine around the corner, and Osborne deflected its muzzle upwards with the barrel of his own weapon, a half-dozen shots going wild into the ceiling.

“Down!” he shouted at the women, as he swiveled to the right at the same moment he lowered his aim and emptied the magazine into the corridor.

Ashley had stood her ground, and as Osborne rolled back left, she opened fire with the Ithaca, giving him time to eject the spent magazine, slam home a fresh one, and charge the weapon.

Someone down on the main floor of the generating hall started shooting, and people began shouting, and immediately the shooting escalated into what sounded to Osborne like a pitched battle. Nettles.

“It's over, Mr. Egan. You and your people put your weapons down and show yourselves.”

No one answered.

Osborne cocked an ear and he thought he might have heard boots on the metal stairs at the end of the short corridor.

“Cover the door!” he shouted to Ashley, and he turned and hobbled to the blown-out window in time to see two men racing to the north end of the building, both of them dressed in white military camos.

He emptied the magazine in rapid fire, one shot at a time, at the retreating figures, the rounds ricocheting off the tile floor, dangerously close to the feedwater heater, but missing until the two men ducked under the gas feed line from the wellhead where he was sure that he had hit one of them. But then they were gone.

Hobbling back to the doorway he poked his head around the corner for a snap look, but except for a third man down no one was there. He went out and checked for a pulse, but the man was dead, as were the two in the doorway.

The firing on the main floor suddenly stopped, and except for the constant whine of the turbine the power station was quiet.

“Up here!” Osborne shouted.

“Jim Cameron?” someone answered from the foot of the stairs.

“No, Sheriff Osborne. I have Dr. Lipton and Ashley Borden with me.”

Two Rapid Response operators came up the stairs, their M4s at the ready, and when they came around the corner they pulled up short.

“Ms. Borden,” one of them said. “Put your weapon down, please.”

Ashley grinned, and lowered the Ithaca. “About time you guys showed up.”

 

Near Mashhad, Iran
On the Border with Turkmenistan

D.S. WOOD
WAS BONE-WEARY,
the events of the last twenty-four hours totally unprecedented in his life, and crossing the border into Iran in his company jet, still a couple of hours before dawn, he couldn't begin to think what the next year, month, or even day, was going to bring him.

He wasn't going to end up in prison like Bernie Madoff and some of the other guys whose financial dealings landed them in prison for life. He knew that much. But watching the lights of Mashhad, a city of nearly three million people, rising in the distance to the south, he didn't know if he had done the right thing by transferring nearly two billion dollars out of his Trent Holdings into the Central Bank of Turkey at Ankara.

But Margaret Fischer had telephoned to warn him that the SEC had issued her a subpoena to answer questions about her business dealings with Trent and a recent trip to Havana.

“What do I tell them, D. S.?” she'd asked.

“The truth, that you and I never had business with each other, and the closest I've ever come to Havana was a fishing trip out of Key West about twenty years ago.”

“They may not buy it,” she'd said, and he had heard a trace of fear in her voice.

“Maggie, you're a big girl in a man's playground, you figure it out,” he had told her and had hung up. Whatever the SEC wanted with her, the bitch deserved it.