The Alarmists

by Don Hoesel

  “Oh, that,” Albert said. “That’s where I hurt my leg. You’re right, we should probably start there.”

  “Can you tell me everything you can about what you were doing in Antarctica, Mr. Griffiths?”

  Happy for a chance to talk about the injustice done to him via the holding of his workman’s comp checks, Albert did just that, from the first call he’d received asking him to join the team to his time in the hospital in South Africa getting his leg seen to.

  “So you see, friend,” he said, “I left a bit of skin on that rock and so I want to be properly compensated for it.”

  Through the telling, this Colonel Richards hadn’t said a word, and now that he’d finished, Albert was beginning to wonder if he’d lost the connection.

  “You still with me, Colonel Richards?”

  “Mr. Griffiths, can you tell me exactly where you were drilling?”

  Albert thought for a moment. He failed to see what that had to do with his workman’s comp checks. Unless this fellow was also wondering about Ben. “You don’t think they up and left poor old Ben there, do you?” he asked.

  Albert waited while the military man entertained another long pause. Finally, he said, “It’s important we find out where you were drilling. If there’s any way you can point us in the right direction, it would be very helpful.”

  Albert didn’t quite know how to respond to that. This all seemed like a lot to go through to secure his comp checks, and to see to the health and well-being of Ben.

  “Well, they never actually told us where we were in Antarctica,” Albert said. “But a few of us had compasses, so I know we were on the eastern coast.”

  “That’s a bit helpful,” the colonel said. “Can you be more specific?”

  “Sorry, but like I said, I wasn’t there but a week or so, what with my leg injury.”

  The colonel asked a few more questions, which Albert answered to the best of his ability, and when it appeared the conversation was near completion with no mention of his missing money, Albert said, “So when can I expect my checks to start coming?”

  “Thank you for your time, Mr. Griffiths,” the colonel said. “We may be back in touch if we need more information.”

  Then the line went dead, leaving Albert holding the phone to his ear and feeling as if he’d just had an interesting conversation that ultimately had accomplished nothing. When he hung up he found Andrea waiting with an expectant look.

  “From the Pentagon,” Albert explained. “He called about the message I sent to our congressman.”

  “Really? I had no idea you were so well connected, love.”

  Given the look on his wife’s face, Albert suspected he would not be crawling back beneath the Charger anytime soon.

  —

  With Maddy gone almost an hour, Brent had taken over her research as well as his own. The one thing he envied her—all of them, in fact—was the depth of the resources at their disposal. The report Maddy had been using a red pen to go through was compiled in less than twenty-four hours by one of the in-house research units. Within the almost seven hundred smartly bound and crisp pages were a large number of possible candidates for the role of polarizing event.

  There was, however, one problem. Seven hundred pages’ worth of results suggested that Maddy’s search criteria was wrong. He had to believe that, because the other possibility was more frightening: that there really were this many potential events of volatile variables to meet Brent’s needs. Brent couldn’t imagine how Maddy could hope to go through all of it. Even to narrow the monstrous list to one half its size would take more time than they had. He had given up after a few pages in Maddy’s book and had just started into his own work again, adding elements to his Poincaré map, when Richards and Maddy came back. And from the expression on Maddy’s face, it looked like something was about to drop into his lap.

  Or onto the table. Maddy slipped a page in front of him and waited while the professor read. When he looked up he raised an eyebrow. “I don’t get it.”

  “Maddy said the same thing,” Richards said. “What it comes down to, Professor, is that as a general rule I don’t believe in coincidence. We have issues with two different oil companies, along with a missing worker and a story about some mysterious drilling project in Antarctica.”

  “Yet not a bit of it is probably related to what we’re doing,” Brent said, surprised that a man as levelheaded as the colonel was considering allowing this email to coax them down a rabbit hole.

  “Dr. Michaels,” Richards said, “I just got off the phone with Mr. Griffiths, and he had enough interesting things to say to pique my curiosity. And while I’ve said that I don’t believe in coincidence, every once in a while I can be led by my gut. This is one of those times.”

  Not having a long association with the man, Brent didn’t know how unusual it was for the colonel to make this leap of faith. However, Rawlings, who did have the experience and association Brent lacked, looked up from his work and regarded Richards with surprise.

  That was when Maddy jumped in. “If nothing else,” she said, “it may be worth asking Mr. Griffiths a few more questions. From what you told me, Colonel, we may get more if we do it in person.”

  She didn’t say anything else, and neither did the colonel, leaving Brent to wonder if they were about to lose a critical day to a wild goose chase. His eyes then fell to the large stack of papers in front of Maddy, the loose charts and diagrams spread next to Rawlings, and his own work, all numbers and lines. All of a sudden the thought of sitting in this office for another minute didn’t sit well with him.

  “Maybe it would be nice to get out of here for a while,” he said. And judging by the smile that appeared on Rawlings’s face, Brent guessed he wasn’t the only one in need of a break.

  December 16, 2012, 3:41 P.M.

  Unlike Brent’s last field trip, where he and Maddy had resorted to commercial coach to reach their destination, this time they took the Learjet. The passengers were him, Maddy, and Rawlings. The colonel remained behind to manage the growing number of inquiries from Homeland Security, the other branches of the armed forces, and Washington. The simple consult for which the professor had signed on had grown into something much larger, and Brent did not envy the colonel the task of explaining it all. Snyder had remained behind as well, wading through the research, using Brent’s notes as a guide. Brent didn’t envy him either. What Brent still couldn’t understand, though, was where or how he fit into this trip. While he was grateful for the time away from his office at the university, his skills were in research as opposed to fieldwork. He felt like something of a fifth wheel.

  The black SUV cut through the Tucson traffic, the sun just beginning to pull in front of the vehicle as the driver aimed the vehicle west on E. 22nd Street, skirting the air force base to the south. Within twenty minutes they’d entered a suburb of modest homes, with the telltale signs of new business evident just about everywhere Brent looked.

  The driver made a few turns, winding into a neighborhood that looked a bit slower in adapting to the new face of the suburb. Brent watched out the window until the truck pulled up in front of a house that, if Brent was to be charitable, looked lived in.

  For one thing, three cars rested on blocks in the front yard, and as Brent surveyed the rest of the street with its well-kept lawns, he suspected the Griffiths might not be invited to many neighborhood functions. The front door hung open, with the screen door the only thing keeping bugs and people alike from walking inside.

  Brent, Maddy, and Rawlings exited the truck and started for the front door, Brent being cognizant of the distance Maddy kept between them. Since their unexpectedly personal talk in the Pentagon cafeteria, she’d closed up a bit, although Brent suspected that had more to do with her than it did with him. He hadn’t pressed things, mostly because he still didn’t know which way to press them. He couldn’t figure out if this was a passing thing or if the chemistry they shared deserved attention beyond the length of the consult.r />
  He could almost say the same thing about the entire team. Looking back on all of his consults, he could not remember a time when he’d felt so in sync with another group of people. That was why he’d agreed to things so far outside the scope of this contract, including gunfights in Afghanistan and home visits in Tucson.

  Rawlings had called ahead to make sure the trip wouldn’t be wasted. Now the man mounted the three front steps and knocked on the screen door. No answer came from within the house. Brent stepped up next to Rawlings and peered through the screen door into the dimly lit living room. It was hard to see anything with the sun behind the house, and he couldn’t hear any activity inside.

  “You did call ahead, right?” Brent asked.

  “I’m assuming you’re the fellas from Washington?” came a voice from behind them.

  When Brent turned he saw a man’s head sticking out from underneath one of the cars on the lawn. The professor, a car guy in his younger years, recognized a Charger when he saw one.

  “Are you Albert Griffiths?” Maddy asked, leaving the steps and crossing the lawn to meet the man, who had crawled out from under the car and was wiping his hands on his pants.

  “The same,” the man answered with an accent that Brent could have placed from either Australia or South Africa. He offered a grease-covered hand to Maddy, who without hesitating, shook it. “You folks want to talk about the work I did for Sheffield, is that right?” Griffiths asked. He bent down to retrieve a rag from the ground and, while using it to wipe his hands more thoroughly, started for the front door.

  “That’s right,” Maddy called after him.

  As Griffiths passed Rawlings and Brent, he gave them both a gap-toothed smile, ascended the stairs, and disappeared into the house, leaving the NIIU team members standing out on the lawn.

  “I have to tell you” came the man’s voice through the screen door. “I never thought complaining to a congressman would get this kind of a response.”

  Brent looked back at Maddy, who had joined the two men by the steps. She gave Brent a shrug, looking ready to call through the door, when Griffiths suddenly pushed open the door and came out onto the porch. In his hands was a six-pack of Guinness, one already pulled from the packaging.

  “Wet your whistle?” he said, holding the beer toward his guests.

  Brent started to reach for one when he heard Maddy clear her throat and he withdrew his hand.

  “Suit yourself.” Griffiths set the rest of the beer down on the porch and gave the team a once-over. “Almost makes me happy to pay taxes. I mean, a simple man like me makes a call and the army shows up.” He took a long draw from his drink and then settled his eyes on Maddy, for reasons Brent couldn’t argue with.

  “Mr. Griffiths—” Maddy began before he cut her off.

  “Call me Albert,” he said.

  “Okay, Albert. Can you tell me more about this drilling job you said you did?”

  “Right. Well, we weren’t a week into it before I got hurt. Tore my leg up pretty good.” With his free hand he took hold of his pants just above the left knee and raised the material, revealing a long scar that wrapped around the calf. “So me and the missus came here when I got back Stateside, after the doctor gave me a ‘good to go’ on my leg, and all I can say is that it’s been a regular odyssey trying to get my workman’s comp checks.”

  “We understand that part,” Maddy said, “but we’d like to know more about the project you were working on. What exactly were you doing in Antarctica?”

  The question seemed to catch the man off guard. He stared blankly at Maddy, then shifted his gaze to both Rawlings and Brent before landing again on Maddy.

  “Why am I getting the feeling that you’re not here about my workman’s comp checks?”

  Maddy offered the man a tired yet warm smile. “Albert, it would be very helpful to us if you could tell us everything you remember about the project.”

  Albert responded with a shrug of his shoulders. “Well, the whole thing seemed a bit off,” he said.

  “What do you mean by ‘off’?” she asked.

  Albert raised his eyes to look past the group, toward the Charger, as if trying to put himself back on the southernmost continent. “I wasn’t there for long, remember. I think we’d only started drilling the day before I got hurt. Which I thought was just fine once I found out I wasn’t going to lose the leg. Thought I’d collect checks for a while on account of my injury and not have to deal with the cold.” He paused to take another drink and then shivered, whether from the coldness of the Guinness or the memory of the work site, Brent didn’t know.

  “Do you have any idea how cold it is there? It’s the biggest, flattest piece of ice you can imagine. The wind cuts through your clothes like you’re not wearing anything.”

  Brent shook his head, while Maddy and Rawlings nodded.

  “Then you know what I’m talking about,” Albert said. “So I thought I’d just enjoy working on the Charger for a bit, while I healed up.” His eyes moved to the car, and Brent found his going there too.

  “Is that a 400 CID V8 in there?” Brent asked.

  Albert fixed Brent with a grin. “What else?”

  Brent’s eyes lingered on the muscle car, long enough for him to see a truck that looked remarkably like their own SUV cruise past Albert’s house. He watched until the vehicle reached the next street, then made a right and disappeared from view.

  “If we can get back to Antarctica,” Maddy prodded.

  “Sure. Like I was saying, I think we’d only drilled a hole or two before I left. But Sheffield had a big crew there. Whatever they were up to, they weren’t joking around.”

  “Holes?” Rawlings asked. “What kind of holes?”

  “The round kind,” Albert replied. Then, seeing that he was the only one amused, he added, “The one I saw was maybe nine inches wide and they were drilling down pretty deep. I’d say fifty feet at least.”

  Maddy and Rawlings shared a glance.

  “What do you do with a hole that size?” Rawlings asked Albert.

  The drill-rig operator finished his beer and bent to retrieve another one. Only after he’d opened it and sampled the contents did he answer. “In my experience there are only two reasons you dig a hole like that, and only one that makes sense considering where we were. Ice cores.”

  “Ice cores?” Brent said.

  “Like you see on them shows on the Discovery Channel,” Albert said. “When I was working up in Alaska, we’d sometimes drill out a core for some scientists before we got down to real business.”

  Brent saw Maddy processing the information. To Brent, what Albert Griffiths was saying sounded plausible. But then he remembered that ice cores were only one of Albert’s reasons.

  “What’s the other reason someone would dig a hole like that?” he asked.

  “See, that’s where it gets strange,” Albert said. “Because the only other place I’ve seen holes like that is when a crew is trying to cut through rock.”

  “And how does that work?” Rawlings asked.

  “Well, you dig a nice hole, not too wide, slide a charge in there, set her off and, voilà, you have yourself a small pile of rocks where there used to be one great big one.”

  Brent tossed that possibility around in his mind, deciding the ice core idea made more sense. He was about to share that with Maddy when in his peripheral vision he caught movement around the corner of the house. Perhaps it was his recent experience with guns that caused his senses to be more attuned to the sight of one, but in the instant he had to consider things before the shadow resolved into a person, he knew the man was carrying one.

  “Maddy!” Brent shouted, and the captain followed Brent’s line of vision even as he rushed forward and took a surprised Albert Griffiths to the ground.

  The man weighed a great deal more than Brent, which meant it was like running into a brick wall, but the tackle did the job and the two civilians were facedown on the porch before the bullets began to fly.

>   Brent rolled to his side to look for Maddy and Rawlings and spotted the latter down on one knee at the foot of the stairs, his handgun drawn. As Brent watched, he saw Rawlings squeeze off two shots and then glance over at him.

  “Get him inside,” Rawlings shouted.

  After hesitating for only a moment, Brent grabbed a dazed Albert Griffiths by the arm and began urging him toward the door. It didn’t take long for Albert to reclaim his wits and assist in the effort. Once inside, Brent tried to ignore the sounds of gunfire as he and his charge retreated deeper into the house.

  “Is there anyone else in here?”

  “No,” Albert wheezed. “The missus went shopping.”

  Brent nodded, casting his eyes around the house, eventually bringing them back to Albert. “Do you have any guns?” he asked.

  Albert gestured for Brent to follow him to a back bedroom. Once there, Albert retrieved two shotguns from a well-stocked gun cabinet. He loaded both and handed one to Brent.

  “Stay here,” Brent said once the gun was in his hands.

  The look Albert returned was one of incredulity.

  “Not on your life,” the man answered. He moved to push past Brent when the professor put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Either stay here or I’ll have you arrested,” Brent said.

  Albert hesitated. “You can do that?”

  “I can send you to Guantanamo if I want,” Brent lied. Then he turned on his heel and walked away, leaving Albert there to consider things.

  When he reached the door, he knew better than to rush out. Almost pressing his face against the screen, he looked around as much as his field of vision would allow, and the realization was slow in coming that he no longer heard any weapons fire. He pushed his way through the door, leading with the gun, which felt a lot better in his hands than had the handgun in Afghanistan. His heart racing, he edged forward on the porch until he reached the steps, keeping his eyes moving as he advanced. It wasn’t until he reached the steps that he saw a pair of legs sticking out from behind a hydrangea. With quick but careful steps he descended the stairs and went around the bush, dreading what he would find, and almost dropped his gun when he saw one pointed up at him. Rawlings lowered the weapon and grimaced as he tried to shift positions.