Walk the Wire (Amos Decker #6)(74)

“Has it been a radar array looking for missiles all that time?”

Strangely, she didn’t answer right away. “Well, it’s hard to tell. From what I could find out, it didn’t come online as an eye in the sky until the late sixties, well into the Cold War.”

“The Korean War was in the early fifties. What was it used for back then?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t find out.”

“How is that possible? Don’t you have every security clearance they give out?”

“I thought I did, until I started asking questions about the place, particularly what it was doing back in the fifties. There I ran into a stone wall.”

“I understand there’s another eye in the sky around here.”

“That’s the other funny thing. The Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard Complex is on the eastern side of the state and is part of the Twenty-First Space Wing, and designated Cavalier Air Force Station. It’s near Grand Forks, North Dakota, and was deactivated in 1976, but it has a PARCS radar array and keeps watch out for incoming missiles and also tracks objects in space.”

“Which was how the commanding officer at the facility here described what they do. A pair of eyes in North Dakota? Isn’t that a bit of overkill, especially considering the Cold War is long dead?”

“You would think, Decker, you would think.” She paused. “What do you believe is going on up there?”

“I think the answer to that would scare the crap out of even somebody like you.”





“THINGS ARE ACCELERATING,” said Blue Man.

He, Robie, and Reel were sitting in Reel’s black SUV on a quiet road about a mile outside of London. In the distance they could see oil rigs and crews pecking at the earth with drill bits and detonation guns.

“The police are all over the property,” noted Robie.

“Well, there was no way we had the resources to clean up something like that. But that was a big loss for them, thanks to you.”

Robie glanced at Reel. “Thanks to me and Jess. I thought you were on the other side of the world on assignment.”

“I was.” Reel was a female version of Robie, tall, lean, rock hard, with the calm and resolute features of a fighter pilot. “But then I got the call to come to wonderful North Dakota, where there were pressing matters that needed my attention.”

“You were following me?” said Robie, his features troubled.

“I knew your itinerary, otherwise I would not have been able to. Don’t worry, you’re not losing a step.”

“Your timing was impeccable, I understand,” noted Blue Man.

“I’m six feet under if she was a second later,” added Robie. “Jess and I checked some of the bodies out before we left the scene.”

“They weren’t members of our military,” said Reel. “They weren’t even from this country.”

“Foreigners on domestic soil,” murmured Blue Man.

“Which begs the question of why,” said Reel.

Robie said, “Decker told us about the farmer who saw the man trying to escape. Speaking gibberish?”

“A foreign language, possibly Arabic or perhaps Farsi. I believe Mr. Decker would have already come to a similar conclusion.”

“So it’s a prison, then,” said Robie.

Reel interjected, “It’s no secret that some of the prisoners at Gitmo have been transferred to federal prisons across the country. But that Air Force facility is not a prison, at least not that anyone’s told me.”

“Perhaps they haven’t told anyone,” suggested Blue Man.

“What’s going on with Gitmo now?” asked Robie.

“Past administrations either tried to keep it open or shut it down. The latter turned out to be harder than it looked. It now costs about thirteen million dollars per prisoner. Currently, there are roughly one hundred prisoners there.”

“So one point three billion bucks to house them,” said Reel.

“A steep price,” added Blue Man. “But no one seems to know what to do about it.”

“So you think they transferred some of them up here?” said Robie. “Why?”

“I didn’t say that,” said Blue Man. “These might be new prisoners. We’re still fighting over there, of course. Taliban, Al-Qaeda, ISIS, even Houthian rebels and Iranian operatives, and other groups that are not as well known.”

“So that Air Force station might now be Gitmo Two?” asked Reel.

“And maybe doing things to prisoners there that are no longer allowed at Gitmo One,” mused Blue Man.

“Meaning torture?”

“I used to talk the company line and say, instead, ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’ but things like waterboarding, well, we need to call them what they are.”

“How in the world could something like that get authorized?” said Reel. “And at a military facility? The DoD has always been against that sort of thing. It violates the Geneva Conventions and opens up American soldiers held as prisoners to the same kind of treatment.”

“It might not have been authorized, at least not through the proper channels,” said Blue Man. “I think the politicians have learned their lesson on that one.”