Shards of metal rained down around them. Tyler covered his head with his arms, but it would do little good if any large engine parts were flung this far. He just had to hope the boulder would do its job.
After what seemed like an eternity, the reverberations of the blast subsided. Tyler opened his eyes.
Tyler checked Stevens and Beech. Both were breathing and uninjured.
Grant blinked like he was coming out of a coma.
“You all right?” Tyler said.
“Definitely two miles next time,” Grant replied.
They stood and staggered from behind the rock to survey the damage.
As the dust settled downwind, they could see that the road train had been wiped from the earth. In its place was a crater a hundred feet wide. The car had vanished, reduced to mere fragments by the explosion. Any remains of Colchev’s men would be microscopic.
Grant handed Tyler his Leatherman without taking his eyes off the wreckage.
“Thought you might want this back,” he said.
“Thanks,” Tyler said as he mechanically replaced it in his belt holster.
“So,” Grant said, “shall we call the police now?”
“I doubt that’ll be necessary,” Tyler said as he gazed in awe at the smoking hole in the ground. “I imagine we’ll have plenty of company in a few minutes.”
TWENTY-TWO
Thirty seconds after he lost the video and data signals from the road train, Colchev felt the shock wave from the immense explosion shake the van like a paint mixer. He tried reaching the men in the Ford, but all he got was static in return. He tore his headset off and smashed it against the console, swearing a stream of Russian curse words in violation of his own directive.
Locke had somehow caused a premature detonation, literally vaporizing his carefully designed plan. At least the man was likely dead, but his operatives were also gone.
Colchev sat back in numbed silence to consider his next move. If someone at the base had discovered the Killswitch didn’t arrive from the airport, the explosion of the truck bomb was intended to bring any investigation to a dead stop. But with Pine Gap still intact, the Americans would act quickly to track down the weapon. That meant he had to act decisively. Quitting just as they were starting was not an option. He’d never get a chance like this again, so he could not waste time hesitating.
The van slowed.
“Keep driving,” Colchev said, moving to the van’s passenger seat. “Head to the rendezvous.” A mushroom cloud rose in the distance.
“What the hell happened?” Zotkin said. “Wasn’t that early?”
“We lost the truck,” Colchev said.
Zotkin’s grip on the steering wheel tightened until his knuckles were white. “How?”
“An intruder got on board and blew it up. It was Tyler Locke, the engineer who killed Golgov and Popovich in New Zealand.”
Zotkin gaped at him. “Locke is here?”
“He must have been with Bedova.”
“Did he survive?”
Now that Colchev thought about it, there was a chance Locke was still alive. He had to operate under that assumption.
“He may have made it,” Colchev said, “but there’s nothing we can do about that now. The site will be crawling with police before long. Gurevich and Lvov are dead, too.”
Given how soon the explosion happened after Gurevich got out of the CAPEK cab, they had to have been caught in the blast.
Zotkin’s jaw clenched. “The US government will put every resource they have into finding the weapon.”
“We have a solid plan for getting the Killswitch back to America. Our larger concern is retrieving the xenobium to power it.”
“Can we still accomplish our mission?”
“Absolutely,” Colchev said, betraying not a flicker of doubt in his voice. He did, however, have grave doubts. Without the xenobium, the Killswitch was just a regular bomb, and not a very powerful one at that. With the xenobium, the Killswitch could change the world.
Colchev’s phone rang, and he answered the blocked call warily. Other than his operatives, only his mole at Pine Gap had this number.
“Yes?” Colchev said.
“It’s me,” a man’s voice said. They didn’t risk using names. The call was forwarded by a VOiP service, so there would be no way to trace it to Colchev from the source. Still it was a risk they’d avoided until now. His mole was desperate.
“What do you want?”
“I want to know what the hell happened!”
“The package wasn’t delivered as planned.”
“I know that! Don’t you think I heard? What am I supposed to do now?”
“Can you get out?”
“No. They put us on immediate lockdown.”
“What about the trigger?”
“I can’t smuggle it out now, for God’s sake! You’ll have to wait.”
“We can’t. I’ll have someone check the drop in Sydney tomorrow. If the—” In his anger at the ruined scenario, Colchev almost said “xenobium”, but mentioning the word would raise alarms. “If the trigger isn’t in the planter box by midnight, our business is concluded.”
“You can’t leave me hanging out to dry! It’s only a matter of time before they realize I helped steal the weapon.”
“You knew the risks, and you were paid a lot of money to take them.”
A long pause. “I’ll tell them everything.”
“What will you tell them? You have no idea where we’re taking the package. I will be fine. You, on the other hand, will be executed for treason. So keep your wits about you and figure out another way to get me the trigger. And don’t bother trying to call me again.”
Colchev hung up and opened his window. He erased the phone’s contents, removed the battery, wiped both parts clean of fingerprints, and tossed them into the desert.
“Do you really think he can do it?” Zotkin asked.
Colchev shook his head. “Doubtful, but there’s nothing we can do to help him at this point.” Without the truck bomb to divert attention from the theft, it would be almost impossible for his mole to get the xenobium out of Pine Gap undetected. Colchev massaged his forehead to ward off the headache he could feel coming on.
“If he gets caught, he’ll reveal the location of the dead drop.”
“Which is how we’ll know if he was caught.” His capture wasn’t a concern because he couldn’t tell the authorities anything useful. Colchev had led him to believe he was stealing the Killswitch weapon for some American mercenaries planning to sell it on the black market.
“What about the xenobium?” Zotkin said. “We can’t use the Killswitch without the trigger.”
“We have proof that there’s more xenobium in Peru. And now we know how to find it, thanks to Fay Turia.”
Zotkin opened his mouth to voice further concerns, then thought better of it when he saw Colchev’s icy stare.
Five minutes later, Zotkin turned onto a dirt path and drove for a half-mile until he parked the van behind a rocky tor. He opened his phone.
“We’re ready.” After a moment, he hung up. “They’ll be here in four minutes.”
Colchev nodded. They wiped down the van and jogged back to the highway. The van would eventually be found, but their trail would go cold here.
They reached the road just as two cars arrived. Both were beige sedans, the first with only two men inside, the other with four. The contents of the stolen Killswitch crate had been divided between the trunks.
Colchev and Zotkin got in the back of the lead car, and they sped away.
“Buran,” Colchev said to the driver, “you and Vinski will wait at the dead drop tomorrow. Be aware that the location may be compromised. If the delivery is made, pick up the trigger and rendezvous with the package in Mexico.”
“What about us?” Zotkin said.
“We’ll follow the trail that Fay Turia led us to in case we need a backup source of xenobium.”
The cars stayed at the speed
limit as they headed south. In ninety minutes they’d be at the remote airfield where they’d parked a chartered PC-12 Pilatus prop plane. Four hours after that, they’d be at Bankstown airport on the west side of Sydney.
Using Zotkin’s phone, Colchev called the pilot of their private jet and told him to be ready to leave Sydney’s main airport by eight a.m. the next morning. Because of today’s setback, they had an enormous amount of work to accomplish. There were only four days left until zero hour.
TWENTY-THREE
Sitting in the back of the unmarked black van, Grant worked his jaw trying to get his hearing back. The buzz in his ears was now down to a dull roar, and since they weren’t bleeding, he assumed he hadn’t ruptured the eardrums. His clothes were caked with dirt from his tumble out of the truck. His shoulder got the worst of it when he hit the ground, but he seemed to be intact, the benefit of learning how to take a fall during his wrestling days.
Tyler sat across from him, rubbing his elbow. Dust cascaded from his jacket.
“You okay?” Grant asked.
“Just a little impact with a car hood. Nothing that a beer won’t take care of.”
He nodded at the stoic security officers in the front seat and smiled at Tyler. “At least they didn’t handcuff us.”
Tyler shot him a grin. “Considering what we did to their nice road, I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had.”
Within minutes of the explosion, police, firefighters, and ambulances descended on the site like locusts and cordoned it off from the local press. When Tyler mentioned Jess and Fay during questioning, they got even more attention from the police. They were told that Jess had discovered the five bodies of Bedova and her men at the warehouse.
The police had been about to bring them in for further interrogation when a Pine Gap security team took custody of them and swept them into the security van.
“Do you have any idea why they’re taking us to Pine Gap?” Grant said.
Tyler shrugged. “You got me.”
“They probably want to give us a medal. Thank us for stopping a major terrorist attack.”
“I doubt they were terrorists. If they’re rogue Russian operatives like Bedova said, it’s more likely that they’re mercenaries. Besides, they weren’t the sacrificial types.”
“Because of the robotic truck?”
Tyler nodded. “They went to a lot of trouble to steal the CAPEK prototype and put together a hundred and sixty tons of ANFO. Do you know anything about Pine Gap?”
“One of the cops said it’s some kind of NSA listening post. The people stationed there mix with the locals, but no one ever talks about what goes on inside.”
“Whatever it is, the people who put this road train together knew what they were doing. They had a definite plan, and it wasn’t to make a political statement. Otherwise they wouldn’t have been after Fay’s artifacts.”
“But all this having something to do with Roswell? I know we’ve seen some funky stuff in our time, but that’s just crazy.”
“I don’t believe in little green men any more than you do. But there’s something big going on here.”
“Must be, for them to bring a couple of civilians into a spook palace.”
Not that they were typical civilians. Because Gordian did so much work with the Pentagon, Tyler and Grant had secured Top Secret clearances. But that didn’t mean they could just stroll into the most secretive US base in the Southern Hemisphere. Someone with juice had to make that happen.
They reached the front gate of Pine Gap. Though the security was formidable, the road train had been so massive that halting its momentum would have been impossible, especially with no driver to shoot.
The guard checked the passengers’ credentials, including Grant’s and Tyler’s, while a second one used a mirror on the end of a stick to check the underside of the van for contraband or bombs. After a lap around the van, the guard waved them through.
A minute later the van screeched to a halt, and one of the security men got out and yanked the side door open.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Tyler climbed out and Grant followed, putting on his shades to shield his eyes from the harsh midday sunlight. He breathed in the clean air, unsullied by the smoke that was downwind and just visible over the ridgeline.
He rotated to get a lay of the land. Low white buildings were spread out over a ten-acre area. To the north were ivory-colored domes that protected sensitive communications equipment from the outback sand that billowed through the site. Nothing else distinguished the facility from an office complex you’d see on the outskirts of any US city.
Grant imagined the road train making it to the spot where he was now standing. If it had detonated here, every building would have been reduced to rubble.
A slender woman strode toward them, her thick auburn hair swaying with each step. Dressed in stylish gray pants, matching suit jacket, and tailored green blouse, she didn’t cut the figure of a scientist, but the sensible rubber-soled shoes didn’t peg her as an administrator, either. She would have been a knockout if she weren’t scowling.
She stopped in front of them. “Dr. Locke and Mr. Westfield, may I see your IDs?” She inspected their passports dispassionately and handed them back. “I’m Special Agent Morgan Bell, Air Force Office of Special Investigations.”
“Nice to meet you, Agent Bell,” Grant said. “Call me Grant. And you are welcome, by the way.”
She didn’t take the bait. “Anything you see, hear, or read on this base is classified at the highest levels. You shouldn’t even be standing here.”
“You wouldn’t be standing here if it weren’t for us,” Grant said.
“That doesn’t change the fact that you are a security risk that we don’t need right now.”
Grant looked back pointedly at the plume of smoke still rising to the east. “Seems like the security risk has already occurred.”
“Are we suspects?” Tyler asked.
Morgan shook her head. “We checked you out after the police identified you. Because of your security clearances, we felt it was prudent to debrief you here since you may have information vital to US national security. You should feel lucky that our position here kept you from being investigated for the murder of seven people.”
“Hey!” Grant protested. “We only killed two of them. And that was so we could save your butts. Not to mention those of Professor Stevens and Milo Beech, who I understand are doing just fine.”
Morgan took one step closer, so that Grant could feel her breath on his lips. “Mr. Westfield, I will let others bestow whatever honor you think you deserve for this morning’s actions. But I have bigger problems right now. You are here at my discretion, and you will do as I say when you are on this base. Follow me,” she said, and turned on her heel.
Grant leaned over to Tyler and whispered, “Oh, I like her.”
“You would,” Tyler replied. “Because she definitely doesn’t like you.”
“What’s life without a challenge?” Grant caught up with Morgan and matched step with her.
“What?” she said.
“I just thought maybe you’d feel better about us being here if you knew more about us.”
“I wouldn’t have agreed to this if I hadn’t read your file.” Morgan opened a door and led them inside the building. “I know everything I need to know.”
“Oh yeah? What do you know about me?”
“Electrical engineer from the University of Washington. Performed for professional wrestling’s meathead fans who think it’s a real sport before gaining a conscience and becoming a combat engineer. Thinks he’s some kind of badass for subsequently joining the Rangers. Now works for Gordian and is currently annoying me.”
“I also love hot cocoa, Shetland ponies, and moonlit walks on the beach. So tell me about yourself.”
She wasn’t buying. No smile. “No,” she said, and sped up.
“Well, I tried,” Grant said to Tyler.
Morgan stopped at
a door and nodded at a series of small cubbyholes.
“You’ll need to put any communications or recording devices you have in there. Although the room is completely shielded, no cell phones or PDAs are allowed inside.”
Tyler took Stevens’ phone from his pocket and put it in one of the empty slots. Morgan looked at Grant, who raised his arms.
“The one I had was turned into dust particles by the truck bomb. Oh, and I’d appreciate your getting mine back from the warehouse when you have a chance.”
Morgan rolled her eyes and went through the door. Grant smiled, thinking this was the most fun he’d had all day.
Tyler followed her, then Grant. He entered an immense laboratory filled with testing equipment, some of which he was familiar with, some that was new to him. Two men in lab coats were having an animated conversation with a guy in a dark blue suit. They stopped talking when they saw the newcomers enter.
Morgan introduced them quickly. The suit was her partner, Vince Cameron. Dr. Charles Kessler, the older lab coat, seemed to be in charge of the place. The intensely uncomfortable-looking younger lab coat was technician Ron Collins.
“I must reiterate my protest,” Kessler said as he sneered at Grant and Tyler. “These men are a security threat to the entire project.”
“The Secretary of the Air Force himself vouched for them,” Morgan said.
Grant wasn’t surprised about that. Tyler’s father had been a two-star general in the Air Force and was a friend of the secretary. A quick call would have verified Tyler’s credentials.
“Besides,” Morgan said, “they may be our only hope for finding the crate quickly.”
“Protecting the weapon is your job. If you were doing it correctly, we wouldn’t need them.”
Morgan stepped forward until she was nose to nose with Kessler. “Dr. Kessler, I don’t give a damn what you think of me. I care about my country’s national security. If you endanger it further, I will arrest you for obstructing my investigation. Am I clear?”
Grant chuckled. Even if Kessler couldn’t see it yet, there was no way he was going to win.
The Roswell Conspiracy Page 13
