Decker stood there for a minute and then walked over to the body of Pamela Ames and lifted the sheet. The Y-incision stared back at him along with the dead woman’s pale face.
No electric blue light again, thought Decker.My brain keeps me guessing and I don’t much care for it. No, I hate it.
“Decker?” Jamison said, coming to stand next to him. “You okay?”
Decker curtly nodded.
Kelly said, “I wish you could have given me a heads-up on all that.”
“What are you going to do about it now that you know?”
“What can I do? It was in the report, right?”
“Not where it optimally should have been.”
“Optimally? I can’t take that and run with it. Hell, without Walt we don’t have anyone here who can do posts. I don’t see that I have many options.”
“I would think that you have options for somebody likethat.”
“You can’t believe that Walt would have intentionally—”
Decker cut him off. “I don’t believe or disbelieve anything until I can prove it. Just so we’re straight on that.”
He put the cover back on Ames’s remains, then walked out of the room and slammed the door behind him.
“I take it he’s pissed,” said Kelly.
“And I think he has every right to be,” retorted Jamison.
And with that Jamison left, leaving Joe Kelly alone with a corpse.
WILLROBIE WAS ON THE MOVE. It was night, and a warm rain was falling. He was on foot, dressed in a camouflaged ghillie suit, with a pair of night optics, and a GPS tracker mounted on his forearm. Under the ghillie was Level 3A body armor along with rifle plates that could stop and disperse all handgun rounds and most rifle rounds. They offered superb stab and spike protection as well. Unless someone got a head or femoral artery shot on him, then it was over.
He took up position on a slight rise of earth and surveyed the area in front of him through the optics. To the left were the lights of the Brothers’ Colony, and to the right those of the Air Force station. And then there were the oil rigs surrounding these two facilities like a hostile army ringing an enemy.
There was movement at the oil rigs as people and trucks came and went. He could see the lights of vehicles moving across the land owned by the Brothers. The radar array sat high above all this activity as it scanned the night skies for incoming nukes and other space traffic.
Amos Decker had been described to him in three precise words: brilliant, quirky, relentless. After meeting the man he hadn’t gotten to see the quirky part so much, but Decker certainly seemed intelligent enough. And he hoped the relentless part was spot on because the man was going to need it. His partner, Alex Jamison, had an excellent rep at the Bureau. Partners were important, Robie knew. He was missinghispartner on this assignment. Jessica Reel was currently in a different and far more dangerous part of the world. Although this area of North Dakota certainly seemed to have its share of violence.
He got up from his position and moved forward with efficient strides of his long legs.
The outer perimeter of the Air Force station loomed in front of him.
Robie’s people had tried to do this the nice way and had gotten zip for their politeness.
Now Robie had been sent here to do it the impolite way.
He had brought some tools with him in case he came across any opposition but had been instructed to use them judiciously. His orders were also to not kill anyone in his path tonight. Of course, those on the other side would have no compunction about doing that to him, since they would see him as only an intruder. An intruder looking for the truth, but an intruder, nonetheless.
He had a map of the facility downloaded on his phone, and he stopped to take a brief scan of the outer perimeter. It was sophisticated and had been thoughtfully implemented by people who knew what they were doing.
Yet he had been told about a sliver of a blind spot in the facility’s defenses. It took him ten seconds to scale the first perimeter fence. His gloves with metal mesh palms allowed him to easily circumvent the concertina wire atop the fence. He dropped down to the other side and eyed the ground in front of him. Fortunately, he knew that pressure plates aligned at two-foot intervals and set at forty-five-degree angles ran off the support posts for the fence. Best-case scenario, if he stepped on one an alarm would go off. Worst-case scenario, Robie would be blown to nothing.
He picked his steps carefully and safely reached the interior perimeter fence. This had double rows of razor wire toppers, and it took him longer to get over it than he ideally wanted. He dropped silently to the ground and squatted there, watching and listening. This endeavor made up three-quarters of most of his missions; this was the part that allowed him to live. So he paid attention to it, gave it the due it deserved. He wanted to walk out of here, not be carried out in a body bag.
Now the easy part was over.
The one unknown for him was whether they deployed dogs here. His intel had been sketchy on that. Dogs were almost impossible to defeat, at least for long. But if they were present, he had brought something that would help him overcome this obstacle.