Blowout by Byron L. Dorgan Read Free Book Online Page B

morning, the furnace that would burn the methane, the boilers that would produce the superheated steam that would turn the small three-stage turbine generating nearly one megawatt that would then be sent to the transformer and distribution yard, rose up from the prairie a couple of hundred yards away from a cluster of mobile homes housing the barracks, dining hall, and rec center—a safe enough distance if there was an accident.
    The power generated led to an impressive-looking array of transmission towers that supposedly would send messages to any military unit anywhere on the planet, even to submarines a thousand or more feet beneath the surface. Donna Marie would guarantee that in case of an all-out war vital communications—especially data transfers to military units—would not be interrupted even if our satellites were knocked out.
    In actuality Donna Marie was nothing more than a methane-powered electrical-generating station. No big deal in Egan’s estimation. But he’d studied the blueprints, and he’d been given the list of the nine personnel—four engineers, including Tim Snow who was in overall charge here, plus five tool pushers, and each person’s probable location at any given moment, and even though he didn’t fully understand the importance of the mission, he did understand the fabulous money he and his people would be paid, and their need to strike back at the fat cats getting rich on the back of the working man.
    Moose crawled up beside him. “How’s it look, boss?”
    â€œNobody knows we’re here,” Barry said without lowering the binoculars. Someone had just come out of the main turbine building. “Base one,” he spoke softly into his comms unit.
    â€œOne, base,” Gordy responded.
    â€œWe’re in position. Are we secure?”
    â€œWe own the place. Ninety-minute window.”
    Ninety minutes, it’s all Barry had asked for. After an hour and a half Gordy’s system would begin to deteriorate, primarily because of overload—the computers in the motor home could only hold a finite amount of data. Sooner or later information flowing to and from the facility to ARPA-E and a half-dozen other governmental facilities, including NOAA, NASA, the CIA, NSA and, of course, Homeland Security, would have to be dumped. Links would be broken. Questions would be asked.
    But in ninety minutes the entire operation would be mounted and conducted, leaving a good margin for an orderly retreat when they could again become ordinary elk hunters.
    So long as there were no witnesses—electronic or human.
    â€œThe clock starts now,” he radioed.
    â€œThe operation is at plus one, eighty-nine remaining,” Gordy said.
    The man in white coveralls, who’d come out of the turbine building, drove a golf cart across to the trailers, and there was no further activity that Barry could see and he started to lower the binoculars when Moose nudged him.
    â€œForty-five right.”
    Barry scanned right along Donna Marie’s west inner fence and around the corner to the front gate on the south side as two vehicles, one of them a gray Hummer with government plates, followed by a blue pickup, approached the unmanned gate as it slowly swung inward. The logo on the side of the pickup was for the Bismarck Tribune .
    When the gate was fully opened, the two vehicles went into the power station yard and directly over to the turbine building, where a man in civilian clothes got out of the Hummer and a young woman with short hair got out of the pickup before they went inside.
    â€œTrouble?” Moose asked.
    Barry lowered his binoculars. “Two extra bodies in the turbine building,” he said. “But no trouble.” And his mind was suddenly abuzz. He liked the press—the power of the media. And he started spinning out scenarios of how the death of a Bismarck Tribune reporter—if that’s what she was—could advance