The Sardis Oil field was a two-hour drive from the airport. “This is not my area, Mr. Johnson,” Paul said as they left the suburban sprawl and headed into open country. “My questions may sound stupid.”
“Nothin’ sounds stupid out here, mister. I’ve been in oil all my life and I can’t explain this.”
“Tell me about this well.”
“This here’s a production well, as opposed to a wildcat well. Wildcats are the ones we sink when we’re looking for oil trapped in reservoirs.
Once we find a reservoir, we drill production wells. With geomagnetics, we don’t need a lot of roughnecks on a crew, but by the time a well like this starts pumpin’ oil, we’ve sunk millions into it.”
“How often do oil wells catch fire?”
“Happens, but it’s rare. Nowadays, the cause is almost never mechanical. Sometimes lightnin’ will strike a well. Sometimes the fire is set. Like now.”
“You seem sure.”
“The Mexicans were behind it.”
“Let’s say it was a foreign faction,” Paul said. “How would they do it?”
“Not just foreign—Mexican,” Johnson said. “They work up here, learn our technology enough to sabotage it, thinkin’ that’ll help their sorry little oil business. Or maybe the A-rabs put ’em up to it. Those boys would just love to see us go back to the Middle East for oil.”
“Paul’s here as our religious expert,” Tick said. “The rumors about miracles suggest there’s a Christian threat—that this may be a Christian terrorist act.”
“Christians, Mexicans, A-rabs—I don’t care. Somebody’s got to pay.”
* * *
The oil field lay about ten miles off the freeway. When the driver rolled down his window to check in at the gate, a smoky chemical smell invaded.
“Whoa!” Paul coughed. “You could get high just breathing out here.”
“No joke,” Donny said. “It’ll make you sick if you breathe it too long.”
“Downwind you get the real pollution,” Tick said. “The draft, or superplume, from a fire this big goes up thousands of feet into the atmosphere. The winds up there disperse the smoke hundreds of miles away—out over the Gulf, if we’re lucky.”
The limo wheeled close to the fiery well, which was surrounded by a fence and guarded by two men wearing hazmat suits and carrying laser Bayous.
“We won’t be stayin’ long enough to need the suits,” Donny said.
“They’re too doggone hot. But we’ve got goggles and masks and coats.”
He tapped on the interior window. The driver lowered it and passed back a bag of equipment, three long canvas dusters, and a Stetson hat.
Donny distributed the masks and goggles and coats, then handed the hat to Paul. “Keeps off the sun and the worst of the soot.”
Even through Paul’s hazmat mask, the air was acrid, and it felt gritty.
His shirt soaked through in minutes under the heavy canvas coat. The fire sounded unearthly—not the familiar snap and crackle of a wood fire but rather an uprush of wind whirling to a keening wail high overhead—what Paul imagined a tornado would sound like up close.
The fire itself impressed him most. About eighteen inches in diameter, it was a column of pure white, its leaping and ebbing flames stretching high into the sky. Through the scrim of heat waves, the white fire looked pearlescent, hypnotic, beautiful.
“Is this a typical well fire?” Paul shouted.
“No way,” Donny Johnson said. “Usually all you see is heavy smoke.
Nothin’ like this.”
“What do your techies say about it?”
“They took samples and they’ll be back today, but they got nothin’ to say yet. No one’s ever seen anything like this before. First there was lots of smoke. Then it just shot right out of the ground like a white gusher.
We’ve got witnesses who can tell you all about it.”
Paul could almost understand how the weak-minded or impressionable might regard something this mysterious and haunting as a miracle.
Got to be sabotage.
Johnson pointed back to the car. “Let’s get these fool masks off.”
Back in the car, the men wiped their faces. “How far from this well do we have to be to risk breathing outside without a mask?” Paul said.
“About a quarter mile, and even then you can smell it. Base camp should be okay.”
Johnson had the driver take them through a nearby field where more wells dotted the landscape.
“You’ve tightened security to protect these?” Paul said.
“We’ve added a couple of armed sentries at each entrance, on top of our regular guards. We also have electrified razor wire atop the fences.
And alarms, of course.”
* * *
From the comfort of the air-conditioned car, they surveyed the wells for nearly an hour, eating box lunches of spicy gazpacho soup and thick slabs of roast beef and ham on sourdough bread.
“Meat’s from my ranch,” Donny said. “Better grub than we’d get at the camp.”
Finally the limo pulled up to the gate of a fenced-in compound on a stretch of land without a tree or so much as a blade of grass. Inside were three low, oblong cinder-block buildings flanking a larger square one. A fourth oblong building had apparently been recently completed. It still had stickers on its windows and flats of construction materials nearby.
“Field headquarters,” Johnson said. “Roughnecks and guards both work seven straight days, then have three days off with their families in Beaumont or Houston. Workdays they bunk out here in the barracks.” He gestured to the oblong buildings. “We have two rotating crews, each pullin’ a twelve-hour shift, and when they’re not sleepin’ they stay busy.
Each man has his own room with a bed and sink and entertainment center; there’s a common room in each barracks so they can play cards and such; and here behind our offices—” he pointed at the square building—“is a mess hall and gym.”
“Nice setup.”
“Expensive, but we gotta have it. Keeps the men productive. Buncha guys cooped up in the middle of nowhere—well, they don’t call ’em roughnecks for nothin’.”
“We’ve got everyone who was working the well that caught fire isolated in the new building,” Tick said. “It blew on the third day of their work cycle so no one’s expecting them home yet. Easier to keep them here for questioning before going through the formality—” he winked at Paul—“of detaining them in town.”
“I see,” Paul said. “Easier to keep a lid on the rumors. You’d have to release them soon, especially if lawyers got involved. And once they were home, who knows what tales they’d tell.”
Tick smiled. “Their rooms have been searched—company property, you know—their phones have been confiscated and their implants disabled. Everyone will be incommunicado until we get to the bottom of this. I’ve got agents interviewing them right now.”
* * *
After dropping Johnson at the office, the limo delivered Tick and Paul to the new barracks. Tick paused at the door. “What role do you want here, Paul? Being on the new Zealot Underground task force, I mean.”
“I’ll observe the interrogations, looking for any religious angle.”
“You know what?” Tick said. “I don’t think it’s related.”
“No? You’d be surprised how cunning and dangerous these people are.”
“They’re a new threat we’re all going to have to get up to speed on.
You want to question people yourself?”
“Only if I hear something interesting.”
“You have free rein.”
“By the way,” Paul said, “what exactly were we looking for when we searched the witnesses’ rooms?”
Tick shrugged. “Anything out of the ordinary, I guess. I couldn’t begin to tell you what could cause a disaster like this.”
The door opened into the common room, where some twenty men sat on folding chairs under the watch of guards. One quadrant se
emed reserved for the Mexicans, who sat huddled. Two long folding tables; a huge video screen, now dark; and a full trash can were the only fixtures.
The building was not yet ready for occupation.
Midway down each sidewall of the common room was a corridor. The NPO supervisor, Dirk Jefferson, emerged from the one on the left. He greeted Tick and Paul warmly and drew them back down the hallway, which was lined on both sides with open doors. In each room Paul saw a disheveled cot with its head pushed under the window, separated by a four-foot aisle from a sink and a built-in armoire with four drawers.
Everything smelled of fresh paint. Paul assumed these cells were not yet equipped with their entertainment centers.
Out of earshot of the men, Tick filled Paul in. “Johnson had the sense to round them all up right after the well blew. None of them has left the building for forty-eight hours.” He pointed toward the corridors. “We’re using the rooms at the far end of each hall for questioning. There was some Internet buzz, but we clamped down fast and tight enough to keep the press off it.”
A voice bellowed from the common room. “Lay off, man!” Tick, Paul, and Jefferson raced down the hallway to find one of the Mexicans on the floor groaning, clutching his foot, his nose bloodied and tears streaming.
One of the guards cradled an injured arm while another had his Taser trained on a burly man.
“What’s going on?” Tick barked.
No one spoke until Tick stepped up to confront the injured guard.
“Uh, Lloyd here was picking on the Mexicans,” the guard said. “Think he busted my wrist.”
As Tick turned to the burly man, the Mexican on the floor said, “Lloyd wasn’t picking on nobody, man.”
“What’s your story, Lloyd?”
The big man raised his eyes to the ceiling and said nothing.
“Let’s hear it, Lloyd,” Tick said. “Now.”
“Someone stomped on this guy’s foot and started smacking him around. I was just trying to break it up.”
Looking around, Tick said, “We’ll get a medic to look at you two. But hear this: The next man out of line—roughneck or guard—is going to face prosecution. And you, Mr.—”
“Lloyd. Stephen Lloyd.”
“Have you been questioned yet?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, I think it’s time. Jefferson?”
9
Paul headed down the hall to observe, curious about Stephen Lloyd.
Maybe he was a hero, maybe a troublemaker. If Lloyd had intervened in a good cause, assailing an armed guard was still reckless, considering all the help at hand right down the hall. Standing fearlessly on principle could be noble or hotheaded, but it was also typical extremist behavior.
Jefferson sat behind a table, facing the door, nearly hidden by Stephen Lloyd’s broad back. Paul guessed Lloyd at six-foot-three and at least 250
pounds. He wore a white T-shirt and light-colored jeans over high-laced tan boots. His yellow helmet lay on his stomach with his hands folded on top of it. He had longish blond hair and was, of course, deeply tanned.
Paul nodded at Jefferson over Lloyd’s shoulder and leaned back against the doorjamb.
Jefferson checked a paper. “Mr. Lloyd, you are from Childress?”
“Like I told you folks yesterday.”
“Long way from home.”
“Over four hundred miles. You go where the work is.”
“And you’re how old?”
“Twenty-five.”
“Athlete?”
“High school football.”
“Didn’t play college ball?”
Lloyd shook his head. “Grades.”
“Stephen, why did you attack the guard?”
“He was beating on the Mexicans.”
“And why do you suppose he was doing that?”
“Probably thinks they had something to do with the fire.”
“Why do people think that?”
“Got me. Guess everybody needs somebody to pick on. Nobody wants to think this could be anything an American would do. But I don’t think the Mexicans had anything to do with it.”
“Who then?”
“Nobody I know.”
“You’re an oilman. What do you make of this fire? How does it happen?”
“I’m not an oilman. I’m a roughneck. Do what I’m told. Stuff below the ground is beyond me.”
“You must have an opinion.”
Stephen sighed. “It won’t help you much. I think it’s something natural. Something in nature.”
Jefferson cocked his head. “Something that’s never happened before in recorded history.”
“You asked.”
Jefferson emptied an envelope onto the table. “This your wallet?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Your keys?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And how about this? What’s this?” Jefferson held up a dull gray coin attached to a leather strap.
Stephen shrugged, but Paul saw the muscles tense in his back. “Call it a good-luck charm.”
“You carry it for luck?”
“You could say that.”
An old-fashioned book was engraved on it, and Jefferson peered at it.
“I haven’t seen one of these since I was a kid. What’s that about?”
“Just a book.”
“You’re not old enough to remember books. You a reader?”
“Not much.”
Jefferson riffled through the wallet, then slid all three items back into the envelope. Stephen relaxed again.
“Let me see that,” Paul said.
Stephen seemed to stiffen as Paul took the envelope. Paul pulled out the medallion and turned it over. The engraved book was open. What was that behind it? A quill? No, that would be in front of the book, not in the background. Then Paul recognized it—a palm frond—and knew what it meant.
“Why don’t you and I take a walk, Mr. Lloyd.”
* * *
The afternoon shadows were lengthening. Paul led Stephen away from the building to the skids of leftover cinder blocks and beams. “I recognize that medallion,” Paul said.
Stephen jammed his hands into his pockets and shrugged.
“I think it identifies you.”
Stephen rubbed his face with both hands, but still the color seemed to drain from him.
“You know, it’s not unique,” Paul pressed, “carrying some token so people like you can recognize one another.”
Stephen put his hands on his hips and closed his eyes, turning his face toward the sun.
“And when you told Jefferson he could say you carried the medallion for luck, you meant that in an entirely different way than he meant it, didn’t you?”
Stephen lowered his face and opened his eyes, staring at Paul.
“And when you said the oil phenomenon was something natural, you meant supernatural, didn’t you?”
The big man grimaced, as if unsure how to respond.
“Word is it’s a sign,” Paul said. “A miracle.”
Paul felt like a hunter circling his prey. He flashed back angrily on the Christian service in San Francisco, the widow speaking of “signs that the coming of the Lord draws nigh” and the “tasks we must perform—despite the law, despite the danger.” And he thought of the greeting—the password—of the believers.
“Listen to me, Stephen. He is risen.”
Sweat broke out on the big man’s brow. “Who is risen?” Lloyd whispered.
Paul felt they were both teetering on a precipice now. Will he deny it?
“Christ is risen.”
Lloyd covered his mouth with a hand, then pulled it away just enough to whisper hoarsely, “Who did you say?”
Paul parroted the phrases that he could call to mind from the service.
“The one who says ‘I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star.’ The one who says ‘Let him who is thirsty come.’”
Stephen Lloyd seemed hardly abl
e to stand still. Paul drew on the words of the letter from his own father, which were etched on his brain:
“‘He will lead them to the springs of life-giving water. And God will wipe away all their tears.’”
Lloyd was gasping. Paul moved to the clincher. “The one who reminds us, in Revelation, ‘I am coming soon.’”
“He is risen indeed,” Lloyd croaked.
Bingo!
Lloyd clutched at Paul, almost sobbing. “Man oh man, brother, I’ve never been tested that way. You never know if you’ll have the courage . . .
I almost didn’t make it. . . .” He wiped his eyes with his wrist.
“It’s tough being isolated,” Paul said. “Stuck out here, bearing witness to such an awesome sign . . . I hope you haven’t been completely alone.”
“Thank God, no,” Lloyd whispered.
“There are others like us?”
“Some. Mexicans, mostly. They tend to keep to the old ways. But the rest of these people. Can you believe ’em? Trying to blame this on Mexicans, Arabs, sabotage. I mean, are you kiddin’ me? A pillar of fire, man! If that’s not God, who is it?”
They were interrupted by the approach of a limousine.
“Hey there,” Donny Johnson called, unfolding his big body from the backseat. In his cowboy hat he towered over even Stephen Lloyd. “How’s it goin’?”
“Fine,” Paul said. “I’m making an arrest.”
Stephen Lloyd jerked back.
“Who? You?” Johnson demanded. He grabbed Stephen’s arms.
“You’re the arsonist?”
“No, no, I—”
“He’s a Christian,” Paul spat. “I want him in custody—”
“Why, you scum—” Johnson drew back and slugged Lloyd in the gut, doubling him over. He yanked him up by the hair, cursing and pummeling him with his free hand. At the commotion, Tick and Jefferson came running out of the barracks.
“Johnson, stop!” Tick shouted, jumping to grab his arm. Johnson wrenched free, his hat flying, and again set upon Lloyd, pushing him back into the cinder blocks. Before Tick could stop him, Johnson had snatched up a block and started brutally bludgeoning the roughneck.
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