Walk the Wire (Amos Decker #6)(103)

“Let’s drive out to the Brothers’ place again.”

“Why?”

“Just humor me, Alex.”

“Okay, but you don’t make it easy,” she snapped.

“Since when have I ever been easy?”

“Well, you could make an effort every once in a while.”

Jamison cut a sharp U-turn and headed off in the opposite direction.

Forty minutes later they pulled to a stop in front of the metal farm gate that was the main entrance to the Brothers’ Colony. The gate was now closed.

Jamison put the SUV in park and said, “Okay, now what?”

Decker got out and started to look around. Jamison followed him.

“What are we looking for?”

He stared across the acres of farmland. “They’ve been here a while, right? The Brothers, I mean.”

“You know they have.”

“I mean at this location.”

Jamison looked uncertain. “Well, from the looks of things they’ve been here a few years. It would take at least that long to build all this up to what we’re seeing today.”

Decker continued to watch as twin John Deere tractors moved slowly across a field far in the distance. Beyond that was the Air Force station.

“I think you’re right about that.”

“But why is the amount of time they’ve been here important?”

“It’s just a theory,” he said absently.

“Can you explain your theory,” she said curtly.

He didn’t answer. Decker headed back to the SUV, and she followed, not looking happy.

“This can’t be right,” he said, stopping at the vehicle’s passenger door.

“What can’t be?”

“If it were on the Air Force property,” he began, but now Jamison saw what he was getting at and leapt ahead of him.

“The biochemical weapons. No one could get to them if they were on the Air Force property. Meaning they must be on the land they auctioned off.”

“Right. But I don’t see how they could be on the Brothers’ land. I mean how could anyone hoping to get to the WMDs go there without them knowing?” He paused and his confused look deepened. “But why else would Cramer have mentioned to Judith White not to eat the crops they were growing there.”

“Meaning she thought if the weapons were buried they might have leached out and contaminated the soil?”

“Exactly.”

Realization grew across Jamison’s features. “But, Decker, part of the auctioned land was leased. The Brothers don’t control it.”

He shot her a look. “The frackers. Come on!”

They ran to the SUV and jumped in.

After they had driven for a bit, Jamison pulled off next to the land occupied by the All-American Energy Company drilling site.

“Got your binoculars?” Decker asked.

She pulled the optics from the console and handed them across.

Decker focused the binoculars and surveyed the site. Then he looked in the distance at the adjacent Air Force station, and the ground in between.

After about a minute she said, “See anything interesting?”

“It’s more what I’m not seeing.”

“What?” she said.

“There’s nobody working the site. It’s empty. I wonder if they’ve finished fracking it?”

“Let me see.”

She slowly surveyed the property and then lowered the binoculars. “But if they’ve finished fracking, why isn’t there a gas flare on the vent pipe sticking up over there? Remember, I noticed that before and you called it a miracle. And I don’t see any rig pumping the oil up like the other sites have, either.”

“We need to ask an expert. And I know just the person.”





THEY SKIDDED TO A STOP at the oil rig that Stan Baker was staging and jumped out of the SUV.

They hustled up to the trailer. Decker didn’t bother knocking, he just burst in with Jamison right behind.

Baker was seated in front of the computer terminals. He whirled around to stare at them. “Hey, what are you two doing here?”

“The All-American Energy Company?” said Decker.

“What about them?”

“There’s nobody working the site.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s nobody there. No trucks, no people, no activity.”

“Decker thought they might have finished fracking the site, but we couldn’t be sure,” said Jamison. “So we came to see you, since you’re the expert.”

Baker shook his head. “They couldn’t have finished fracking that well. They haven’t been there long enough. They haven’t even been drilling that long, so they couldn’t have gotten down all that far.”

“Stan, how come McClellan didn’t get the rights to that parcel of land? He’s got most all the other ones around here.”

“I heard scuttlebutt that All-American kept bidding the price up to where it got crazy. Like two or three times what it was worth. I guess McClellan just thought those boys didn’t know what the hell they were doing.”

“I think they knew exactly what they were doing,” said Decker ominously.