The Rift (26 page)

“She’s a civilian,” Moms said.

“We’re past that,” Nada replied. “She was our asset in North Carolina and she’s our asset here.” He didn’t add what only the two of them knew: Ms. Jones had said do it, so do it they would.

“I can drive a Sea-Doo too,” Kirk said. “Let’s us cover more of the river. I’ll take one side, Scout the other.”

Moms sighed. “All right.”

“Do I get paid?” Scout asked.

“No,” Moms said automatically.

“Do I get a gun?”

Moms was about to give the rote answer, but Nada interceded. “Do you know how to use one?”

“Yes,” Scout said, all seriousness for once. “I took the daylong course.”

“Roland,” Nada said. “What do you have for our scout?”

Kirk would have recognized Jimmy DiSalvo for exactly what he was: a meth-head nut job, tweaking so bad he kept loading and unloading the four bullets he had left into the magazine for the 9-mm pistol he’d taken from the store clerk.

The other five bullets that had been in the gun were now in the store clerk at Weigel’s back in Farragut. DiSalvo didn’t get it: Why get killed over a minimum-wage job?

It never occurred to him to wonder why he’d killed the clerk over one hundred forty-two dollars. And twenty-seven cents. And four bullets.

Three bullets as one escaped DiSalvo’s fingers and tumbled down the side of the cliff and disappeared into the water below.

He should have made a wish, although what do you get for a bullet in a lake?

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” DiSalvo kept repeating, hitting himself on the side of his head with the hand holding the three bullets. The contact made him feel better, believing that he was knocking sense into his brain, which needed it; after all, that’s what his dad had always told him every time he whacked Jimmy upside the head.

But he didn’t want to lose the bullets! That piece of common sense rattled through, so he switched hands.

Except he forgot he had the unloaded gun in that other hand and the next whack was the barrel of the gun rather than his hand. DiSalvo was dazed.

Dazed layered on top of confused while standing on top of a cliff over a lake formed by the brightly lit dam just to his right was not a good combination. DiSalvo staggered, tried to right himself, and then followed the bullet.

He bounced several times off the rocky cliff, hard enough and often enough that by the time he hit the water, he didn’t have to worry about drowning.

He should have made a wish.

“Why did you recruit Burns?” Hannah asked.

Dr. Golden was seated across from her, hands folded in her lap, listening in.

There was the slight hiss of reassuring static out of the speakerphone, meaning that the encryption was working. Hannah often wondered if the designer left that static in for the reassurance. Surely technology was advanced enough now that the static could be engineered out?

“His family,” Ms. Jones responded, her voice containing its own static.

“More specifically?” Hannah pressed, not used to Ms. Jones being evasive.

“His grandfather was Colonel Johan Schmidt, the leader of the Odessa group at Area 51.”

“Ah,” Hannah said. “But that still does not explain why you recruited him.”

“We don’t know what happened with the first Rift,” Ms. Jones said. “Schmidt was involved. There is a legacy. I felt that legacy would unfold. So I recruited him for the Nightstalkers.”

“That might have been a mistake,” Dr. Golden said.

“It might have,” Ms. Jones admitted, “but we have yet to see how this current event will play out. Obviously, Burns is central to it. This has been building. Whether by plan or by circumstance, I can’t say, although I lean toward the former especially given the events of last year in North Carolina and Scout’s involvement now and here.”

“I don’t like it,” Hannah said. “There are too many unknown variables.”

“There usually are,” Ms. Jones said. “But we have our best people on it.”

“Do they know Burns’s location or target?”

“Negative on location,” Ms. Jones said. “But they have three potential targets in order of priority and proximity: The Loudoun Dam, Oak Ridge, and the Watts Bar nuclear plant.”

“Your FPF?”

“On station.”

“Very well,” Hannah said. “Continue to update me.”

She cut the connection and looked across her desk at Dr. Golden. “I hope our best is good enough.”

Burns stared at the Tellico Dam while information on it poured into him from Neeley’s cell phone.

He shook his head at the human insanity the dam represented: people fighting to keep it from being built to save a tiny fish; sacred Indian land being submerged; land grabs by those in the know.

And it generated no power.

Not directly. Water from the Little Tennessee River was blocked by the dam, which had been built just above where the river had originally joined the Tennessee River. To get to the Tennessee, water flowed through a canal from Tellico Reservoir to Loudoun Lake and then went through the turbines of the Loudoun Dam, adding 23 megawatts of power.

Thus opening the gates of Tellico would reduce the water flow to Loudoun, thus reducing the power outage, which was barely enough at overpeak for what Burns needed.

Not acceptable.

Of course, the gates of Tellico Dam were opened only once a year for maintenance, but it was a loose end.

And one thing Burns had learned as a Nightstalker was to make sure there were no loose ends.

Plus, he still had some time for congruence at the Loudoun Dam to occur.

He looked around and picked up two brick-sized stones. He put them in his backpack. Then he threw the free end of the rope he had tied off down the face of the dam. He clipped the rope through the carabiner tied off to his harness and then launched himself down the dam.

Frasier was humming “I Wear My Sunglasses at Night” as he got off the elevator and walked down the corridor to the Can. His partner ignored him, as he always did when Frasier hummed the song en route to an interview. As he always did. Frasier, being schooled in psychology, knew it was OCD on his part, but he figured it was harmless, other than irritating his partner. Of course, his partner carried a big gun in his shoulder holster, and one day he might get irritated beyond the point of no return, but Frasier figured he had a ways to go before that particular incident occurred.

The man and woman who’d been in the Can when the power went out were seated away from the control consoles, looking decidedly unhappy. And well they should be, Frasier thought as he signaled for the single guard (they were scientists, one guard was all that was needed) to move away.

A new team was at the consoles, while several Support crews were going over every inch of the cavern, searching it. There were even two specially trained dive teams inside the stainless steel tank, working in relays, coming out of the water every five minutes to allow a muonic scan to be done, just in case another Rift occurred.

The two popped to their feet as Frasier and his partner approached.

“Sit,” Frasier ordered as he grabbed a folding chair, turned it around, interrogation style, and straddled it. His partner just stood there, looming.

He was a good loomer, which was why Frasier kept him around.

Frasier pulled his sunglasses off, his partner doing it in sync, like a dance team in step.

The two scientists did a double take, staring at Frasier’s left eye and then purposely forcing themselves not to stare at his left eye.

It was the usual reaction and the normal one.

Frasier had a solid black left eye. He’d never had the scar tissue around the socket fixed, since he figured that was like polishing the silver around the bullet hole. Or something like that. Of course, most assumed it was just a space filler, but the eye was actually a ridiculously expensive camera and microprocessor. Not
Six Million Dollar Man
stuff, where he could actually see, but rather a device that functioned as a sort of lie detector, tracking pulses in a person’s neck, perspiration, respiration rate, and so on.

The bottom line was it worked. Coupling the data from the eye with his own experience, his training in micro-expressions, and a natural ability, Frasier was pretty damn confident he could tell when someone was lying.

“It’s tough work in the field,” Frasier began. He reached across his body with his right hand and tapped his left arm, producing a metallic sound. “I got a deal on the prosthetics. Black was all they had in stock for the discounted eyes in the package deal.”

Was that a sigh he heard from the side and behind? Was his partner actually growing tired of his shtick? But he was doing his job, pulling out a notepad to ostensibly take notes, but the real purpose was to reveal the very large pistol resting in his shoulder holster, impressing on these two screen-watchers that this was a no-bullshit visit.

“It’s even tougher to work in the field when those we rely on for our data sabotage it.”

The woman responded first. “We didn’t sabotage the Can! The power went out!”

They didn’t exchange glances—one didn’t look at the other suspiciously—and his eye told him she wasn’t lying.

He shifted his gaze to the man. “And?”

“Hey, dude, I don’t know what happened. Some kind of power surge maybe? Talk to engineering. They’re the ones who run the power grid. Maybe the reactor burped?”

Unfortunately, he, too, was telling the truth. Frasier wished he wasn’t so he could turn him over to his partner; he hated being called dude. Frasier rubbed his scar tissue above the black eye with his artificial hand. He often got migraines, because no matter how good the gear was, his body was not intact and the body yearned for its missing pieces sometimes.

Sometimes Frasier missed them too.

Frasier stood. “All right. You can go.”

The two exchanged a glance now, shock and relief fighting for supremacy. They didn’t question their good fortune as they scurried toward the tunnel for the elevator.

This time his partner’s sigh was audible. “What now?”

“We—” Frasier didn’t finish his answer as a diver popped to the surface with a shout, hand held high. A black orb rested in it. “Check that thing for prints. It’ll have either Doc’s or Ivar’s.”

Scout had the right bank while Kirk took the left on their Sea-Doos. At Moms’s insistence, they stayed parallel to her Zodiac. Ivar was in the bow, the wand for his improvised detection device held over the water. Roland was next to him, M240 at the ready. Moms drove as she peered ahead through her night vision goggles.

Scout was not impressed with Ivar or his machine. She had a feeling whatever was going to happen wasn’t going to be subtle or require a special device. The gun Roland had given her seemed rather undersized considering what everyone else, except for Doc and Ivar, was packing. A pistol. With two extra magazines.

She felt totally inadequate, but the look in Moms’s eyes had indicated she should be happy to get anything lethal at all. The gun was stuck on a vest Nada had wrapped her in. It was not fashionable, was very heavy, and, according to Nada, helped stop bullets. Then he’d strapped a life vest on top of the bulletproof vest and Scout felt like she was auditioning for the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. There was also a radio tucked in one of the many pockets on the vest and an earpiece stuffed in her right ear.

She didn’t feel as cool as those Secret Service guys with their dark sunglasses. But then again, how cool could they be? If they were so secret, why did everyone know about them? Sort of like why did the Lone Ranger have Tonto? What part of Lone didn’t he get? Scout shook these random but irritating thoughts out of her head and focused on the task at hand.

Literally.

Given the bulk surrounding her, she had to work to keep her hands in tight enough to her body to control the Sea-Doo. She scanned the dark shoreline as she drove along. They’d cleared Keller Bend a little while ago and the river turn left ahead. Scout spared a glance up, but there was no sign of Eagle and the Snake and the attack helicopters with him.

So far this was a lot less exciting than she’d imagined. She juiced the Sea-Doo as she reached the bend, slicing some water.

She knew Moms was glaring at her, wanting her to slow down and fall back into line. She wasn’t named Moms for nothing. Mother, Moms…what was with older women? Scout wondered. Be careful. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. As if their warnings could keep her safe from—

Scout blinked and stared ahead in the darkness. She could see white foam ahead, but there were no running lights.

Of course she didn’t have any lights on, nor did the two Zodiacs.

Scout slowed down, letting the Zodiacs take the lead because she had a feeling this wasn’t going to be subtle.

“I’ve got two boats and something bigger behind them,” Moms said, peering through her night vision goggles. “Eagle, hold until we get a clear picture of what we’re up against.”

“Roger. Holding at five klicks,” Eagle confirmed.

“You gotta be fraking me,” Roland muttered as the first target became clear in their night vision goggles. A fourteen-foot bass boat was racing toward the Nightstalker flotilla, no one at the helm.

“No one said Fireflies were brilliant,” Mac said over the team net.

“This one is mine,” Roland said, resting the bipod of the M240 on the armor plating and tucking the stock into his shoulder.

“Mac will help,” Moms said, looking past the bass boat, trying to determine what else was coming their way.

Roland fired, rounds easily punching through the thin aluminum hull of the boat. Mac’s first 40-mm grenade landed right in the center with a bright flash.

“Scratch one Firefly,” Roland announced, just as Scout screamed, “Watch out!” over the net.