The Assassin's List (22 page)

When he landed at the small airport in Hermiston, he was impressed to see that the Umatilla Depot Commander had a white Suburban and driver waiting for him. Drake identified himself and got into the passenger seat of the Suburban. The depot was located twelve miles west of Hermiston and the short drive through the sparse, high desert landscape didn’t take long. Not long enough to develop much of a conversation with his driver, who appeared to have been instructed to keep his mouth shut.

The sprawling, nineteen-thousand-acre installation, had one thousand and one concrete, steel-reinforced, earth-covered igloos stretched across the land. It stored twelve percent of the nation’s chemical weapon arsenal. Originally the old weapons had been designed by the Nazis. Nerve gas and mustard gas by the tons had been made, as lethal as anything ever developed for warfare at the time. After WWII, chemical weapon plants in the Russian zone were dismantled, put on railroad cars for the trip back to Russia, and reassembled. The West had seized samples of the weapons, but when it learned Russia was reconstructing the chemical weapon factories, it had to scramble to catch up and achieve parity with its old ally, now a new adversary.

But times had changed. The stockpiles of chemical weapons that had never been used were being destroyed. The job of the new Umatilla Chemical Demilitarization Facility (UMCDF) was to destroy all of the three thousand, seven hundred and seventeen tons of chemical weapons. That was what Lt. Col. Hollingsworth was supervising at the depot.

Under his command were six hundred and fifty civilian contract employees, and a National Guard infantry company. Another one hundred personnel lived on base to monitor the chemical agents, operate the incinerator, perform security operations, and conduct a highly important public affairs program. No one wanted to live near a chemical weapons facility, and the folks around the Umatilla Depot were no exception.

When Drake neared the depot, he saw the perimeter had a fence topped with barbed wire. There was a second, inner fence topped with razor wire.

“You ever have anybody try to get through your fences?” Drake asked the driver.

The driver, a National Guardsman in his twenties, answered with a snort, “Yeah, couple of drunk assholes tried it on a dare last year. They didn’t make it to the inner fence before the reaction team got there. Our electronic surveillance is the best in the world. No one’s going to breach our perimeter, sir.”

From the looks of the fences and the surveillance devices he could see spaced along the inner fence, he had to agree. If you were going to gain access to the depot, you weren’t going to do it by crashing through the perimeter fences.

At the main gate, security guards carefully checked his ID, even though he was escorted by the Commander’s driver. In the distance, an armed patrol moved along the inside of the perimeter fencing.

“You use perimeter patrols all the time, or just for the ceremony tomorrow?”

“Twenty-four seven, sir, twenty-four seven,” the driver answered, as he drove on to the cluster of buildings that housed the Commander and his staff.

A guard at the front door of the depot headquarters checked his ID again before escorting him to the Commander’s office. They walked down a hallway with a highly polished floor and photos of the depot’s operations on the walls.

Lt. Col. Hollingsworth was younger than expected. He was short, maybe five foot nine or so, a fireplug that probably led his men in calisthenics.

The commander stood behind his desk and watched Drake with a polite smile as he entered the room. He was used to dealing with politicians. Now he was being asked to answer to some security person for a guest speaker he’d already gone out of his way to protect.

“Colonel Hollingsworth, I’m Adam Drake. Thank you for making time to see me and go over the arrangements for tomorrow, on behalf of Senator Hazelton.”

“Mr. Drake, I took the liberty of calling the Pentagon to make sure the Senator had a son-in-law. I learned you were Special Forces. Your record is a little skimpy, though. That suggests several things to me. Would you mind telling me why you’re here?”

Drake smiled and said, “Colonel, you’re a careful man. I was Special Forces, and I am Senator Hazelton’s son-in-law. I’m also an attorney. I help the Senator from time to time.”

“That doesn’t tell me why you’re here, does it? But if the Senator is worried, I’m sure your trained eye will spot something my staff may have missed.”

The twinkle and challenge in the Commander’s eyes said, as clearly as anything, take a look, you won’t find anything even if you were Special Forces.

Commander Hollingsworth called his aide into his office, introduced her to Drake and then dismissed them both. His aide, Capt. Martinez, had short black hair, beautiful brown eyes and wore a uniform that sported airborne wings. She didn’t waste any time letting him know she was efficient, and more than qualified to serve as the Commander’s aide.

“Commander Hollingsworth told me you’re interested in our security arrangements for tomorrow. This depot covers a rectangular area of nineteen thousand, seven hundred and twenty-eight acres. There are two outer fences and roving security patrols. Two hundred reservists augment our civilian security force, and all of them are armed. Surveillance cameras monitor K Block, where the chemical weapons are stored in bunkers that have detectors for leakage and security breaches. This is a secure facility, Mr. Drake. I’m not sure what it is you want to see,” Capt. Martinez said stiffly, as they walked toward the Commander’s Humvee.

“Relax, Captain. I’m just here to see that the Senator is in good hands tomorrow. The curiosity is my own—call it professional interest. Where do your reservists come from?”

“The current rotation of reservists is from the Texas National Guard. They’re here for one year. They’ve been through the Army’s Special Reaction Training for this type of facility, and they’re good people.”

“I’m sure they are, Captain. What about your civilian security force? Do you hire and screen them, or does someone do that for you?”

Capt. Martinez looked away and briefly glanced down at her boots before she answered. Her right hand rested on the passenger door of the Humvee she was about to open for him.

“We screen and hire them ourselves. We only hire people with prior security training, mostly from the military, but some from the private sector. Not all of them have Special Reaction Training, if that’s what you’re asking. We run enough drills to make sure they know what they’re supposed to be doing. This isn’t everyone’s dream job, but we do get good people.”

“There’s not a lot to do out here, are there any problems here at the depot?”

“Not more than usual. You know what it’s like on an Army base. Most of the personnel who live here are young. We’ve had some fights in town. Some of the local citizenry don’t like us much. I don’t blame them. These weapons are pretty scary. We had some problems, when the incinerator was being built, with the construction workers. We’ve had bomb threats, because someone thought we were covering up nerve agent leaks that made them sick. But other than some minor drug use, we haven’t had any significant problems.”

Drake wanted to smile at the way she minimized the problems the depot had experienced. He knew, from news reports, there had been attempts to sneak into K Block. A lab worker had walked off with a vial of nerve agent by accident, causing a panic until the man was found. And, a security guard shot himself during a simulated attack on the depot.

“Tell me about your emergency planning and training,” he said.

“Mr. Drake, I understand you were in the Army. What unexpected threat do you think we haven’t trained for? There’s a no-fly zone here. We train for someone trying to crash a plane into one of the igloos in K Block to cause a nerve gas leak. We train for coordinated attacks at multiple perimeter sites, truck bombs crashing the gates, you name it. Training is what the Army does best.”

Drake knew she wasn’t angry yet, but she was getting close.

“Captain, I’m not here to give you a bad time. I just need to confirm arrangements, so I don’t get in your way tomorrow. Maybe you could show me around the depot and review your plans for tomorrow. I’ll be out of here before you miss me.”

The tight smile on her face said there was no way in hell she would miss him.

After they were seated in the Humvee and driving slowly on the depot’s main road, Capt. Martinez began her review of the arrangements for tomorrow.

“The dedication of the incinerator is scheduled for ten hundred hours. There are three hundred guests and dignitaries invited, your father-in-law included. They have all been screened for us by the Secret Service. No one will be allowed to enter the depot after oh-nine-thirty hours. We’ve doubled the security patrols around the perimeter of the depot. The airspace is already restricted. The Oregon State Police, the Hermiston County Sheriff and the Hermiston Police Department will be on alert. Additionally, the Oregon National Guard unit in Pendelton will have their rapid response team on standby. The State of Oregon, as you probably know, developed our emergency disaster plan. It’s as comprehensive as it gets. I think we’ve got things covered here.”

They were driving by the storage igloos in K Block as Capt. Martinez concluded her briefing. Row after row of earth-covered cement and steel storage units housing the chemical weapons stretched away into the brown and barren distance.

“Who has access to this area?” Drake asked.

“Security staff patrol the area and civilian lab personnel monitor the igloos for leakage. No one else gets in here,” she said.

“What happens if you have an accident here in K Block? What does the emergency plan call for then?”

Capt. Martinez stopped abruptly, next to the entrance of an igloo and turned to face him. “If there’s an accident, Mr. Drake, sirens go on all over the depot. Personnel in the command structure, responsible for responding to an emergency, immediately go to the depot’s emergency operations center. There are cameras installed all around K Block so command personnel can watch personnel responding. Visitors are taken to the emergency center, where they can be protected from any chemical weapon exposure. Our response teams deal with that exposure. Then, the emergency operations center determines the potential exposure to the surrounding communities. The depot’s medical staff prepares to deal with decontamination and treating any victims,” she said, slamming the Humvee into gear. “If you need more information, take it up with Colonel Hollingsworth.”

On the silent ride continuing around the depot, they drove past the chemical agent disposal facility with its giant incinerator. Drake saw that the dedication platform had been erected in the visitor parking area. He made a mental note that the dedication platform was less than a mile from K Block.

“One more question and I’m done,” Drake said, breaking the silence. “If an emergency occurs during the ceremony tomorrow, how long will it take to move visitors to the emergency center?”

“The visitor buses arrive, and then remain behind the grandstands. They’ll take visitors to the emergency center. The VIPs will be brought in by assigned Humvees. Everyone will be instructed to return to the vehicles they arrived in if an emergency siren goes on. Our rehearsals require twelve minutes to return everyone to the emergency center,” Capt. Martinez said, without turning her head from the road.

If rehearsals took twelve minutes, Drake knew the real thing, with all the confusion that sirens would cause, would take twice as long.

“I’d like to see the emergency center, and then I’ll be out of your hair, Captain.”

When he was returned to headquarters, after a quick tour of the emergency center, Lt. Col. Hollingsworth was in a meeting. Drake was left alone in the Commander’s office to look at the books in his glass door barrister’s bookcase. They were mostly biographies and civil war histories. The pictures on the walls were of ceremonial poses with senior officers the Commander had served with. Some were pictures of young soldiers in fatigues, in unnamed places around the world, including one of a much younger Lt. Col. Hollingsworth. Drake wondered how Hollingsworth had wound up in charge of a chemical weapons depot, far away from the action.

Based on his tour of the depot, it was clear that the facility was well guarded against an attack from outside the perimeter fences. If an airplane violated restricted airspace and attempted to crash into an igloo, the earth-covered bunkers were reinforced to withstand the impact. No, if the depot was exposed to a serious threat, Drake concluded, it would come from within—from the civilian security force or some reservist.

“Well, Mr. Drake, did Capt. Martinez convince you we’re secure here?” Lt. Col. Hollingsworth asked when he returned to his office.

“That’s one straight aide-de-camp you have there, Colonel. Yes, she did her best to convince me you’re one hundred percent secure here. But we both know that’s rarely the case.”

Lt. Col. Hollingsworth sat down in his high-backed chair and studied Drake. His look was not defensive, but coolly appraising.

“If you think you spotted something, lay it out for me. Protecting this place and the people who live around here is my job. I take it seriously, but I don’t believe any place is one hundred percent secure.”

“Colonel, I can see you take your job seriously. Just a couple more questions and I’ll be on my way. What identification is required to get into the depot for your civilian personnel and reservists?” Drake asked pointedly.