Off The Grid

by Dan Kolbet

  When the tech returned, he did as he had for the previous trips. He picked up the bag and walked toward the stairs. Only this time the open seam of the bag gave way under the pressure from his hand, spilling its contents all over the tile floor and stairs. A huge cloud of dust exploded from where the bag hit the ground. Luke watched as the stunned tech tried to save the bag, but only managed to fall to his knees covered in the ash-like substance.

  “You moron!” Kathryn screamed. ”Do you know how much money you just cost this company? You know how valuable this substance is! Don’t you? Obviously not.”

  “I’m sorry, I-. I don’t know what happened,” the man said. “I’ll clean it up.”

  “No you won’t. You’re covered in that stuff. You can’t breathe that in. Move out of the way.”

  Kathryn pushed past him and looked up at the employees who had rushed to see what she was yelling about. Luke was enjoying the show.

  “You, Luke,” she pointed at him. “Get on a Haz-Mat suit and clean this mess up. I don’t want these idiots to touch it.”

  She continued to glare at the tech who was forced to sit in the mess and not move, under the watchful eye of every employee in the building. His red face only got brighter and brighter.

  Luke had some trouble getting the suit on over his arm cast, but managed to squeeze it in. He used a vacuum with a micro fiber filter to suck up the material. After going over every inch of the stairs and floor, making a smooth circle around the man on the floor, he had nearly filled up the entire tank of the vacuum. When left to settle, the line on the side of the tank read 10 ounces.

  He brought the sealed vacuum tank to a secluded area of the laboratory, out of view from all but a handful of employees. He used a measuring cup to empty the contents of the tank into a Haz-Mat burn bag, which he placed in a second sealed bag and handed it over to a waiting tech, who locked it in a storage container. If the tech had emptied the contents, he’d have noticed that it weighed just over six ounces.

  ***

  Luke removed the bulky Haz-Mat suit in the sterilization and contamination room. He cautiously removed the helmet with one hand and unzipped the jumpsuit, then stuffed them into a large bin for disposal. He took off his left glove and tossed it into the bin. He pulled his right glove halfway off, then rubbed his fingers together until he was confident that they were as clean as they were going to get. His hand was gray with the dusty substance. He got his first look at it under the light. It sparkled with silver flecks.

  He folded over the top of the glove, sealing in roughly four ounces of double-A, shipped directly from Moldova. He stuffed the glove in his pants pocket and washed off his hands before going back to help unload the rest of the shipment.

  Chapter 60

  Seattle, Washington

  Rachel’s back was to her office door, so when she heard the knock, she simply said, “Come in,” without looking at who it was. When she turned around, she instantly regretted it.

  “You’re a sight for sore eyes,” Steve Lunsford said, striding into the room and plopping down across from her desk. “Didn’t know you were back in town.”

  He pulled a stick of gum out of the pocket of his ruffled jacket, popped it in his mouth and began chewing it with gusto. It had been nearly two weeks since they last spoke.

  “I’m only in for today, I need to finish up a few loose ends and then I’ll be taking some time off. I need a little getaway.”

  “Glad to hear it. I envy those who can take vacation time.”

  His eyes were scanning the papers on her desk. Instinctively she scooped them up and placed them in a drawer, although there was nothing in them worth hiding.

  “I got an interesting call from your former fiancé this morning. You must have worked your charms on him after his accident.”

  Rachel had arranged for Luke to call Lunsford that morning but she played dumb.

  “It’s not ‘former,’ it’s ‘fiancé.’ And I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “I was a little worried that our boy had gone off the deep end. I told you that when we were in Moldova. I guess I misjudged him, which I’m sure you think I had. He said big things are happening down at MassEnergy and he wanted to assure me that he was still working hard on behalf of StuTech. I can only assume that someone gave him a little shove in our direction. My gut says it was you.”

  “Not that it’s any of your business. We obviously had a few other issues to work out considering him and that woman. I told him that he needed to make sure the last few months have been worth it to us and in turn, to the company.”

  “That’s good. Very good. MassEnergy is trying to rush to market before the WES Act is law. Makes sense for them. They have got to pull out all the stops. You don’t think Luke’s trying to play both sides? I mean, you of all people stand to lose the most if MassEnergy becomes a real threat.”

  “A woman knows,” she said. “He is with us.”

  “That’s what I was hoping to hear. Your father will be pleased as well.”

  “What do you mean that I have the most to lose?”

  “As the sole heir to Warren Evan’s fortune you will have controlling interest in this company upon his death. Of course you know this. And God willing, he lives many more years.”

  Rachel didn’t spend much time thinking about the vast fortune that awaited her after her father’s death. She’d always had more money than she knew what to do with. Even today, if StuTech didn’t make another cent, she would have enough cash on hand to live ten more lifetimes. Her father was worth as estimated $7 billion, including his stake in the company.

  “What I stand to lose is never getting my fiancé back and never having a normal life,” she said. “That means making sure that StuTech can withstand challenges from its rivals, even upstarts like MassEnergy. This isn’t the best arrangement at the moment, so I urged him to wrap it up down there and get home.”

  “So, he’s reporting to you now?”

  “As any good future-husband should. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me.”

  She took a file out from her drawer and began reading to herself, essentially telling Lunsford that he was excused.

  ***

  Lunsford went back to his office and called the only person he could talk to about what had just happened. After summarizing the conversation, his confidante detailed the events that occurred that morning in Portland.

  “So they haven’t started working on the material yet?” Lunsford asked.

  “No, it’s being analyzed first. It might take a few days.”

  “You know the clock is ticking in D.C., we don’t have a few days. This needs to happen now,” he said.

  “I’ll see what I can do to speed the process, but I can’t promise anything. These things take time. Unless you give me the green light to ramp up my efforts.”

  “Hands off Luke Kincaid. It won’t do us any good to hurt him. There’s still something he’s hiding and I need to find out what it is. Just get the towers up and running. That’s your priority now. It has to happen. If the WES Act gets signed before we launch, then we’re screwed.”

  “I know, but there’s another wrinkle. Your boy got a hold of a sample of double-A. There was some sort of spill and he snapped up some of it. He got lucky.”

  “So what? That just confirms what Rachel said. He’s back on the payroll with us. Let’s just see how it plays out. I expect to hear from him again tomorrow.”

  “I’m not so sure about him. I don’t like it. I just don’t see the point in letting him run around here. Let me end him.”

  “No, just get those towers up and running and let me worry about the kid. Trust me, he’ll be out of our hair soon enough.”

  Chapter 61

  Portland, Oregon

  Luke and Rachel sat at a small circular table tucked into a corner of their motel room. They choked back bitter cups of motel-room coffee. The place offered free breakfast and a cardboard-like mattress for $40 a night. Luke sa
w the place as a slight upgrade to his previous accommodations, although he’d been getting used to the Murphy bed. He wasn’t comfortable at his apartment any longer. Any number of reasons would do. First on the list was Beckman. Luke managed to leave the campus with the sample in his glove and avoid a one-on-one encounter with the man, but Luke had caught Beckman watching him several times. If he tried to get rid of Luke once, he’d probably do it again. No reason to take the chance. Better to keep a low profile.

  Then there was StuTech. Who knew who was watching Rachel? Sure, he shouldn’t be surprised that the company who hired him to steal secrets from its competition wouldn’t be totally on the up and up. Rachel had come to the same conclusion.

  “They have mines on four continents, but only claim to have one in Colorado,” Rachel said. “One source for their precious material. I believe the humanitarian outposts are storefronts for the mining operations. It explains why they would invest in locations that have no obvious market for goods. Claiming to have grand humanitarian goals is the perfect cover. Once they establish a strong presence in those areas, no one is going to argue when they go public with the mining operation. It’s actually pretty ingenious. They are buying cooperation.”

  “But how can you be sure they are mining underground in those areas?” Luke asked. “You said yourself that you never saw any digging whatsoever.”

  “Follow the money,” she said. “I kept copies of the books I saw in Bolivia, Sudan and Moldova. Each of them was flush with cash. The notations on the ledgers said the money was for taxes, security, local access-“

  “Which means bribes,” Luke added.

  “Exactly. The amount of money being spent couldn’t have possibly been used for the medical clinics or office buildings. For the amount on the books, we could have built a first class hospital. Not a drafty medical tent.”

  “What about Nevis?” Luke asked. “If StuTech knows about the other sites, why aren’t they mining there too?”

  “Who says they aren’t? Deep World Oceans is a subsidiary company of Atlantis Oil. Atlantis recently had a shake-up in their top leadership, which has led some investors to believe that they are gearing up to fight a hostile takeover or it already happened, just not publically.”

  “So StuTech owns Atlantis,” Luke said.

  “Possibly. Or maybe they’ve just taken a strong position with them. I haven’t had enough time to dig that far into it.”

  “They aren’t publically mining the site, so maybe they are under orders to just keep others away,” Luke said. “I can’t believe your father wouldn’t tell you about the mines before sending you to each of those places.”

  “I’m not one bit surprised. He needed to confirm that his operations were well hidden. Who better to tell him than the person he sent to give him a hands-on report.”

  “Did you ever give him your notes?

  “I did. I dropped them with the guard at the gate of his estate just so he’d know that I found out about his little game.”

  “Do you think we should go public with this?”

  “No, not yet. We need definitive scientific proof if we want people to believe this. Besides, StuTech is a publically held company that at the moment is providing electricity to more than half of the United States. If investor confidence in the company drops, then its stock value will plummet.”

  “So what, serves them right.”

  “It hurts the company, sure, but it will also threaten the lives of millions of people. The elderly people on oxygen; people could freeze to death. Do you want that on your hands? And cities like Mill Creek will lose any chance of getting back on the grid. Crushing StuTech isn’t the answer. It hurts too many people.”

  “But your father isn’t going to just roll over.”

  “With the right evidence we can roll him. I can be very persuasive.”

  “All right, so we’ve got two of the three ARC samples we need, one from Nevis and one from Moldova,” Luke said. “Are we set to get the last piece of the puzzle?”

  “I downloaded the schematics of the StuTech operation in Colorado. It is set up similar to the plant in Moldova, but on an even larger scale. The material comes up into the main warehouse over a seven-day period, when an armored truck company picks it up for transport to the refining plant three miles away. That’s where we hit them.”

  “Armored truck?”

  “Yes,” Rachel said. “They pick up the raw extracted rock from the mine.”

  “So your plan is for an accountant and an engineer to hijack an armored truck full of guys with guns.”

  “It’s a little more subtle than that.”

  “Too bad, because that sounded like a really great plan,” Luke said.

  Rachel ignored the sarcasm.

  “We’re missing one thing though,” she said. “We need a third to make this work. Do you think Kathryn will do it?”

  Luke considered this for a moment.

  “She put her neck on the line to allow me to get the sample at MassEnergy and she didn’t have to. And I couldn’t have gotten the material off the island if she weren’t there. I’m sure I can get her on our side, she’s scared to death of Beckman.”

  “But do you trust her? That’s what matters.”

  “I think she’s our best option,” Luke said.

  “All right. There’s something else I need to know before we bring her in on this. You had to work very closely with Kathryn and you spent a lot of time together. Be honest with me. Did anything ever happen between you two?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  Rachel’s heart sank. She could still see the image of Luke kissing Kathryn on the street. If he wasn’t honest with her, then what else happened that she didn’t know about?

  “Wait. That’s not completely true,” Luke said. “She kissed me, once. It was right after I found out you left Seattle. The things your father said really tore me up inside. I was a mess and we’d both had too much to drink. But I didn’t let it go any further than that. I immediately regretted it. That’s not an excuse, but-“

  “What do you mean, ‘what my father said?’” Rachel asked.

  “He told me you left me,” Luke said. “He said you realized that people like us didn’t belong together and so you moved on. I wanted to contact you, but you were out of the country. Your condo was subleased. I thought you were gone.”

  “And you believed him? After all these years of me telling you that my father is a snake, you take him at his word on something as important as that?”

  Luke thought back to his surprise run in with Evans in the Seattle hotel room. Rachel leaving him wasn’t the biggest surprise to come out of that meeting. Luke always thought he was “marrying up” with Rachel, so when Evans simply confirmed his insecurities, Luke believed him. At the same time, Evans was threatening to expose his involvement in Elliot Cosgrove’s death. Looking back on it, he realized that Rachel would never have left him like that. She was not her father. Luke had been conned by a professional liar and he felt like an idiot for it.

  “I’m not cut out for this double-life stuff,” he said. “I didn’t know what to believe. When I saw you in the hospital room after the car accident, I wanted to ask you about it, but I-.”

  “You had other priorities.”

  “No, I just, well, yes I . . .”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I know what it’s like to be led to believe something that isn’t true. Pretty much my whole life. You’ve got to promise me that from now on we’re in this together,” she said. “No matter what.”

  “No matter what.”

  “And you’re going to have to make it up to me,” she said.

  “How?”

  “I bet we can think of something.”

  She leaned in close to him, pressing her body next to his and she kissed him deeply.

  Chapter 62

  Los Angeles, California

  To set Rachel’s plan of action to work, they had to get out of town the next morning. Out of an abundance
of caution, Luke and Rachel missed Kathryn at Portland International Airport by several hours. They purchased tickets to Los Angeles and used Rachel’s corporate credit card to buy passage on a Mexican cruise leaving the California coast later that day, which fit with her comments about taking a little vacation. After landing in L.A., they dropped their bags off for the cruise, then slipped out of line before reaching the gangway.

  Luke was afraid to use a credit card that could be tracked, so getting a rental car was out of the question. Rachel had prepared by making a large cash withdrawal from her bank in Seattle before they left town. They visited a used car lot and forked over $3,500 cash for a used Ford Taurus that looked like it was in decent shape. It smelled like mildew, but it would have to do. Luke took the first shift as they headed up I-15 toward Las Vegas where Kathryn was waiting for them.

  Luke didn’t have to twist Kathryn’s arm to get her to become the third member of their team. She was anxious to finally leave the campus again. She had made a convincing case to Beckman that she needed a few days off, even at this critical time. Her mind just wasn’t right, she was stressed and afraid she’d make a crucial mistake. The Tesla project meant too much to her to mess it up, she said. A couple days by the pool in Vegas with friends from college would do her a world of good. He seemed happy to be rid of her and told her to take her time. Kathryn said she had gotten the distinct feeling that she wasn’t really wanted around MassEnergy anymore.

  Rachel was on GPS duty during the long drive to Las Vegas, watching their course and keeping them on track. Luke thought it might keep her occupied for the trip.

  “You don’t have to drive like a grandma,” she said. “It’s a highway after all, not a golf cart path.”

  Luke checked his speed – 80 MPH, ten above the posted limit.

  “Tell me more about Kathryn,” she said. “I want to know who we’re working with.”