Pamela Ames was dead.
Hal Parker had been taken.
Beverly Purdy was dead.
Walt Southern had killed himself.
Brad Daniels was nearly killed.
Stuart McClellan was dead.
Hugh Dawson was dead.
And a host of foreign mercenaries were no longer living, largely thanks to Robie and Reel, but others still might be around.
However, Decker did not consider the secret prison to be connected to the above events. That was encapsulated and solved and the appropriate parties punished.
But clearly the All-American Energy Company and the bunker full of toxic chemical and biological weapons were connected. And the responsible parties had not been fully accounted for and punished.
Another question really nagged at him. How had these mercenary types even learned about the secret bunker with the weapons? Brad Daniels would surely have mentioned any foreign-looking folks coming to visit him and asking strange questions.
So by process of elimination they could have learned about it one of two ways: from Ben Purdy or Irene Cramer. Then they could have bought the land where the bunker was buried from the Brothers, started the drilling operation, and gone from there.
But Cramer had been killed, and it seemed obvious to Decker that Purdy was dead, too. So had they learned about the bunker, or parts thereof, from each of them? So that each of them had to later die?
Then Decker considered a question he never had before.
Did Purdy and Cramer know each other? Were they working together to figure this out? And had they gotten discovered, and then were killed?
And what had Cramer swallowed that they needed to so desperately get back that they cut open her belly and intestines looking for it?
All good questions. And he had not a single answer to any of them.
And by this point in the investigation, he should have had at least one answer.
He opened his eyes and drank his beer, sullenly looking over the bar area as he did so.
He was growing weary of this town, because it would not give up the secrets it was holding. And his “infallible” memory was not providing much help, either.
A man sat down next to Decker.
When Decker glanced over, he was staring at Will Robie.
The man was quietly dressed in jeans, an oversized sweatshirt, and worn boots. A John Deere baseball cap sat on his head. If he was armed, Decker saw no bulge. Maybe that was the reason for the bulky sweatshirt.
Robie ordered a beer and waited for it to come as he continually scanned the room and everyone there.
“You look pensive,” Robie said.
“That’s because I am. Did you find what was in that bunker?”
“We’re officially not in the loop. DoD and Homeland Security are all over it. But unofficially, I can tell you that they haven’t yet. ‘Slow and steady’ is the rule for that. You were right about the tunnel. They broke through the wall and found it. They put additional countermeasures on top of the cement your friend poured into the pipe, to ensure that stuff will never get to the surface. They’re probably going to have to build another bunker around the original vault before they’re comfortable opening it up and seeing exactly what’s inside.”
“Anything else?” asked Decker.
“We did some digging on the All-American Energy Company. Turns out there are international layers to it, which puts it squarely in my agency’s wheelhouse.”
“International how?”