Soon (8 page)

7

THE MONDAY AFTER PAUL’S DEBRIEFING
by Koontz was his first official day back at work. He arrived early to find Trina Thomas perched on Felicia’s desk, legs crossed and a high-heeled pump dangling from one toe.

“Hey, good lookin’,” she said. “I was just writing you a note. You look like you tangled with a cactus.”

“Last week I looked like I tangled with a grizzly.”

“Well, I’m sure you could lick a bear any day. But seriously, how do you feel?”

“Surprisingly good. Not even sore anymore, even if I am black and blue.”

“It’s very macho, I assure you. I came by to tell you I ran that sample a couple different ways while you were gone.”

Paul unlocked his office door. “Come on in.” When she was seated, he shut the door. “And so?”

“It’s old paper of very high quality. Today what little paper we use is made of reconstituted fibers from the plastics that used to be considered indestructible. But at the turn of the century, paper had a high organic content—wood pulp, even cloth fibers. Cheaper papers were made of ground wood and tended to the acidic, so they yellowed and decayed quickly. Your sample is top grade, with a high rag or cotton content, which is why it’s in such good shape.”

“Is it possible to buy today?”

“Not that I know of. It hasn’t been commercially available since the war. There’s so much surplus plastic around, which is cheaper and easier to work with, and the final product is so much more stable. There may be craftspeople who produce organic paper in small batches for artwork or something. But spectroscopic analysis shows the fibers in your paper have started to break down to an extent that suggests that it’s between thirty-five and fifty years old. The sample is gummed, too, treated with an adhesive activated by moisture. It’s part of an envelope, right? They used to seal them by licking the gum.”

“Ugh.”

“Not as sanitary as our snap-dot seals and not as secure. Once you snap shut a modern security envelope, you can’t open and reseal it without detection because the dots can never be exactly realigned. But back then, to be sure no one but the intended recipient opened it, they might also seal the envelope with a blob of wax. There are some traces on your sample.”

“Interesting.”

“So where does Jae think it came from?”

“Oh, ah, the genealogy project. Some relative during the war.”

“Makes sense. Was a letter with it? Something important, I’d guess from the quality, and probably not electronically printed. Handwritten? Calligraphy?”

“I’ll ask.”

“You’d expect something that formal to be signed. And thirty-five years isn’t that long ago. I’m surprised Jae’s relatives can’t identify the document.”

“Listen, I really appreciate your taking the time to run all those tests.”

“Let me know if Jae wants the ink tested. That would establish the age with more certainty. ’Course, you’d owe me a second lunch.”

Paul half expected Trina to push on and guess who penned the letter. Forensics people were used to spinning whole scenarios out of small shards of evidence.

But if what she said was true, the letter could be real, a prospect that horrified Paul. It was hard to know which was worse—to discover he was the target of an agency sting operation or that the father he lionized had become the dupe of an evil cult.

But he had to know for sure—now more than ever, after his own near death. The ink was the key, Trina said, and handwriting analysis would add certainty. But Trina’s intuition and curiosity could be a problem. The last thing Paul wanted was speculation about the letter all over the office.

But what about Angela Pass? According to her business card, she worked for the Library of Congress, which surely had the means to test the letter. He could write via the secure e-mail he used for dealing with informants, and she would have no way of knowing he was with the NPO. Now that the truth was out about Andy, the letter had no value to Ranold as a test of Paul’s loyalty, but the old spymaster would probably still view him with suspicion. If Ranold
had
planted the letter, approaching Angela would be a good way to flush him out.

He dashed off a note to Angela, reiterating his pleasure at meeting her. Trading on the fact that they both had military fathers, he claimed to be working on a commemorative project for his father’s platoon. Might she have a colleague who could identify the soldier who had written a certain letter by comparing two handwriting images he could scan and send her—and perhaps also help him get an age fix on the letter from an ink specimen?

Two can play the spy game.

And, Paul thought with a smile, asking Angela for help could fan a spark between them.

Jae had been surprised at how unwilling Paul was to talk to his father-in-law during his two weeks of recuperating at home. He claimed he was in too much pain. But now that he had been back to work a few days, he seemed to welcome Ranold’s calls. Jae took that as a good omen—that Paul’s new satisfaction on the job was promoting better relations with her father, which might also herald greater contentment for him at home.

Koontz urged Paul to ease back into his duties, but by the end of the week he was demanding a new assignment. “I want to keep my momentum,” he said. “I can’t do that hanging around the office. Put me back in the field.”

Paul didn’t confess his rage over Andy Pass—or his father—getting sucked in by the promise of “springs of life-giving water” or the threat that Jesus was coming soon. He couldn’t purge his mind of the young, overzealous Coker grinning and giving him the thumbs-up before jogging into a bomb shop, or of the earth pitching and bucking as he tumbled down the hill. He relived shooting the burning woman, the white uniform, and the limping man; and he kept flashing back to that moment when his heat ray intersected the arc of the man diving off the porch. Paul’s bruises were healing but his anger remained. How he wished he’d killed more, that he’d killed them all.

For a few days he had been distracted. First, there had been his thank-you-for-the-paper-analysis lunch with Trina Thomas, a languorous, wine-soaked afternoon culminating in a kiss that had left Paul relieved he’d had the sense not to place himself any further in her debt.

Angela had responded with delight in having heard from Paul and expressed her eagerness to help out his father’s old platoon. He had immediately transmitted images of a few lines his father had written his mother and a sentence from the letter—
“One day you will hold your own child and understand the profound
depth and breadth of a father’s love”
—along with a snippet of the date at the top of the page for ink testing.

Then he’d given over a few evenings to cat-and-mouse discussions with Ranold, trying to determine whether the old man knew about the letter and his approaching Angela.

But now Paul was stir-crazy.

“Well,” Koontz said finally, “we’ve got a situation in Gulfland. It’s strictly fact-finding, but I’ll send you with all the authority you need to question anybody at any level. You don’t even have to take a weapon.”

“I appreciate it, Bob, but don’t baby me.”

“Fair enough. But this one should be easy.” Koontz handed him a folder. “Oil country. A gusher there suddenly stopped pumping and caught fire.”

“I’m not an oilman, Bob. Is that unusual?”

“Must not be, other than being a nuisance for the investors, but what’s happening now is without precedent. It’s not some underground flare-up but a pillar of fire a couple hundred feet high.”

“Sounds dangerous. Why can’t they put it out?”

Koontz raised both hands. “Foam isn’t working, and they can’t figure a way to cap it. It’s another ‘inexplicable occurrence’ the crazies will have a field day with. People who see these things talk, and then rumors spread like wildfire. Personally, I think it’s got to be some sort of industrial sabotage.”

“This I gotta see.”

“How does first thing tomorrow morning sound?”

8

PAUL HAD ALWAYS BEEN
privately amused by the Gulfland NPO bureau chief. Most of the chiefs Paul had met were fairly buttoned-down bureaucratic types. Lester “Tick” Harrelson was about five-foot-six and 140 pounds. He had a shock of dry hair through which he was constantly—and ineffectively—running a hand. His tie was loose, and he had trouble keeping his shirt tucked in. But he was a pro, and his people worshiped him.

Tick and Donny Johnson, president of Sardis Oil and Tick’s polar opposite, met Paul at the gate at Bush International in Houston. All Tick and Donny had in common were cowboy boots and hats and a commitment to the problem at hand. Johnson was a big man with a long gait, and while it appeared he would be more comfortable in a workingman’s clothes, his suit was clearly custom-made.

“Good to see you again, Doctor,” Tick said, introducing him to the oil magnate. “Welcome back. Glad you’re back in the saddle. This boy’s a hero, Donny.”

Donny Johnson looked approvingly at the bruises on Paul’s face. He all but crushed Paul’s hand when they shook. “Sure could use a hero ’bout now.”

“Well, I—”

“Used to call that well my Spindletop. Now it’s nothin’ but cash money burnin’ up.”

Tick interpreted. “Spindletop was the original Texas gusher, the one that put us on the map way back when. Pumped a hundred thousand barrels a day, or so they say.”

Johnson shook his head. “We do double that now with geomagnetics, but in the old days that was somethin’. Biggest gusher the world ever saw. A miracle, they say—which is what they’re callin’ my well fire now and gettin’ folks all worked up.”

“Who’s calling it a miracle?”

“That’s for you to tell us, mister. Not even forty-eight hours and it’s already out over the Internet. And when you find ’em—”he clenched huge fists—“I’m fixin’ to beat their brains out.”

“Figuratively, of course,” Tick said. “Religious activity alone is punishable by law. Sabotage—”

“By law?” Johnson said. “We have our own ideas about law in Texas.”

Tick looked as if he’d heard this before. “Let’s show Paul what’s going on.”

The three climbed into a stretch limo at the curb. Though it was only March, Paul was sweating in his wool suit, even in the airconditioned car. He took off his jacket. “Loosen your tie,” Tick said, but Paul declined.

Houston had long been one of the most populated cities in the country and had recently passed Chicago for third place behind Los Angeles and New York. In the distance Paul saw some of the tallest buildings in the world, giving the port city a dramatic skyline. The windows of most of the skyscrapers were reflective, countering the relentless sun, and the glare gave the city an ethereal golden glow.

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 sub-urban 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 Arabs 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, Arabs—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 airconditioned 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 seemed 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?”