Shadow of Betrayal

CHAPTER 24

Peter was true to his word, and as soon as he had finished briefing Quinn on the phone, he uploaded everything he had to a secure FTP site. Quinn booted Nate off the laptop for a few moments so he could download and print out all the documents. Stack of paper in hand, he got out of Nate’s way and moved over to the kitchen counter.

Peter had done the same thing to Deputy Director Jackson that Quinn was doing to him, demanding everything the DDNI had from and about Primus. There was almost two years’ worth of material. Most was information passed on before Hardwick had revealed his LP ties. The information on the Odessa kidnapping was there, as was the tip about the arms dealer’s trip to Thailand. There were other things, too. Guerrilla cells in South America, money transfers between terrorist organizations, two potential assassination attempts.

Good stuff all, and a treasure trove that would make whoever possessed it look like a superstar. But from all Quinn could tell, the DDNI didn’t use any of his newly obtained knowledge to improve his position. Instead he acted on it, often passing tips to appropriate governments anonymously. No personal gain, just doing the job he was hired to do.

Quinn opened the refrigerator to grab a beer before diving into the stuff that was most relevant, the information concerning the group who had approached the LP.

“Can I have one of those?” Nate asked, looking up from the laptop.

“Depends. You get anything yet?” Quinn asked, already reaching for the second bottle.

“I think so,” Nate said. “At first I did all the basic searches. Public sites and that kind of stuff.”

Quinn set the bottles on the counter and popped the tops, letting Nate go over his process uninterrupted. It was the way Quinn had taught him to operate if time permitted. Quinn had said it was so that he’d be able to evaluate Nate’s progress. That had been true at first. But Quinn had come more and more to trust Nate’s abilities, so now it was just habit.

“I got a couple hits,” Nate went on. “But they were mostly about the state bird of Alabama. But I did find a Yellowhammer Lake in California.”

“That sounds promising,” Quinn said as he handed Nate a beer.

“Thanks,” Nate said. They both took a drink. “I thought so at first, too. But it’s remote. Yosemite area. You have to hike into it. So I thought I should keep digging.”

“Let me guess,” Quinn said. “Couldn’t find anything.”

“Close, but you’d be wrong. I came across a few odd entries that mentioned an actual place called Yellowhammer, and it didn’t seem like they were talking about a lake. The first was so random I thought someone must have mistyped it.”

“I’m guessing there’s a ‘but’ here.”

“Right,” Nate said. “The second one. It was on a blog that posts wartime letters. Some of them from as far back as the Revolution. I found another mention in one of the letters. It was dated near the end of World War II. Some guy writing home to his wife saying he’d been assigned to a place called Yellowhammer.” Nate turned to the computer. “I’ll read it to you.”

He clicked one of the tabs in his browser, then skimmed the text on the screen with his finger.

“‘They’re sending me to Yellowhammer until my time’s up. I finally get to go to California, I guess, but it’s so far from you. At least it’s only four months and then I’ll be home. I do wish I was there now.’ Goes on for a little while longer, but that’s the important part.”

“That could be anything,” Quinn said. “The military loves code names. Might not even be a place at all, but an operation.”

“I had the same thought.”

“Another ‘but’?”

Nate smiled. “Orlando’s been giving me tips for accessing some less public sources.”

“Skip the rundown, and tell me what you found.”

“There was a government facility, here in California, called Yellowhammer. The last mention of it was in the early sixties, a few months after the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was apparently decommissioned then.”

“Where exactly is it?”

“See, that’s the funny thing. I’ve found nothing on that anywhere. I found the name. I know it existed. I’m just trying to pinpoint it now.”

Quinn stared down at the laptop, not really looking at the words on the screen. A secret facility? A secret decommissioned facility? That didn’t make Quinn feel very good. But it jibed with Hardwick’s story.

“All right,” Quinn said. “Keep at it. Also send what you’ve found to Peter. Maybe he can use his resources to dig something up.”

“Yeah,” Nate said. “I was going to suggest that.”

“Were you?” Quinn said.

Nate brought up a window on the laptop that had been hidden. “I’ve got the email ready to go.”

Quinn was impressed, but kept his face blank. Once again, he had taken to underestimating Nate.

“Send it,” he said. “I’m going to go check on Orlando.” He picked up the papers from where he’d left them on the counter. “Don’t stay up all night. I have a feeling we’re going to be on the move tomorrow.” He paused as he was about to walk out. “Nate. Good work.”

Downstairs he found Orlando in the same position she’d been in when he’d watched her fall asleep. She didn’t even twitch as he sat beside her and checked her pulse. Steady and strong. By all accounts she was doing fine.

It should have made him happy, but he was pissed that she was in this condition at all. The LP had taken the leg of his apprentice the year before, and they had come within inches of paralyzing the woman he loved. Whether it was the LP behind the shootings or not didn’t really matter. They were involved, and that was enough. Those sons of bitches had screwed with Quinn too much. He only wished there was something he could do about it.

He took his beer and the papers out onto the small balcony off the back of his bedroom. There was a chair, and a table, with a light plugged in to a socket at the base of the wall. Often a gentle breeze would move through the hills, but tonight the air was still.

He took another swig of his beer, then dove in. Though there were dozens of pages, most were painfully short on details. The first half-dozen items had been email exchanges, each no more than two lines long. The final one arranged for a meeting where Primus promised to hand over tangible information. Looking at the log Peter had sent along, this meeting took place in Philadelphia three weeks before the Ireland disaster.

The tangible info turned out to be an initial tracking report on someone identified at the time simply as Alpha, but who Hardwick claimed was Leo Tucker. The document was very similar to the one Peter had passed on to Orlando while they were still back east, only a little lighter on details. There was also a note from Primus.

Quinn read the letter twice. Peter had been right. The DDNI hadn’t known about Hardwick’s LP affiliation for more than a couple months. According to the log, the DDNI hired the Office two days later.

Made sense. While Deputy Director Jackson might have wanted to continue his relationship with Primus, he wasn’t stupid. He knew he’d need help, but because of his previous experience with the LP, he didn’t know who he could be sure of in his own organization. Tasha Douglas, of course, but beyond that he would be taking risks. The Office had been an obvious choice. Peter had proven his trustworthiness.

And when Peter suggested using Quinn to keep tabs on the next meeting, a meeting that for safety reasons was to take place outside the States in Ireland, it would have made sense to the DDNI. Quinn, after all, had been the one to stop the LP’s assassination attempt in Singapore the previous year.

The picture that emerged from the rest of the documents was nothing more than hints mixed with scant usable data. It was maddening. But not just to Quinn. He could see the DDNI’s own frustration in emails he’d sent to Primus.

This is moving too slow. You need to tell me everything instead of just giving it to me in bits.

But Hardwick wasn’t biting:

You can accept my information or we can stop now. But this will be by my timetable, not yours. If it gives you any comfort, I believe three more face-to-face meetings with my couriers should be sufficient.

The first of those three was the Ireland meeting. Then the DDNI had been killed, and the next two hadn’t happened.

Quinn read through everything again, then set it all on the table and reached over and turned the light off. He sipped his beer as the night washed over him. Though it was a few minutes before 2 a.m., he could still hear the distant rumble of traffic.

He leaned back, resting the bottle against his chest, and let all he’d absorbed drift through his mind. He didn’t force any connections, just let things simmer.

He didn’t remember closing his eyes, but he did remember the last image that passed through his thoughts before he fell asleep.

Marion Dupuis in an old, beat-up Saab, looking out her window at him, her eyes wide. And in the back seat, movement. A body now, coming into focus. Small.

A child. A child …

Quinn woke at first light with the realization that he had yet to call his mother. He also realized that he’d spent the entire night in the chair on his balcony. Carefully he sat up and retrieved his phone. Given the two-hour time difference, he knew his mother would be up, so he dialed her number. But the answering machine picked up. He left a lame message, promising to be there as soon as he could.

“Shit,” he said to himself after he hung up. He felt like an idiot, but it wasn’t like he could call back and rerecord it.

He stood up, every muscle in his body aching, and made his way back upstairs to the kitchen.

Nate was already there.

“Peter came through,” Nate said.

“Did you sleep?” Quinn asked.

“Enough.”

He handed Quinn a printout of an email.

Yellowhammer. Naval test facility loosely associated with the old Naval Ordnance Testing Station, later the Naval Weapons Center, at China Lake. Actual location just north of the city of Lone Pine, near site of Manzanar Japanese internment camp. (Map attached.)

Decommissioned in December 1964. Security of facility had been maintained by government contractor Colstar until last year, when contract was picked up by Cameron-Kadash Industries. I’ve included the blueprints of the facility, but note that they are over fifty years old.

Might be their ops center. Find out.

Keep me updated.

Peter

“Did you print out the blueprints?” Quinn said.

Nate pushed himself out of his chair and stood up. The sight of Nate’s bare stump surprised Quinn. Since his apprentice had received his new prosthetic, Quinn had never seen him without it on. It had seemed like Nate wanted Quinn to forget the real leg was even missing. But now, as he hopped over to the printer hidden in a cabinet along the wall, Quinn couldn’t help but remember the pain Nate had been in, and the months of therapy and training he had gone through to get himself back in shape.

“What?” Nate said as he hopped back, holding a few pieces of paper in his hands.

“Nothing.”

“I just haven’t put it on yet,” Nate said, his tone defensive. “I wanted to check if we heard from Peter first. Is that all right?”

“It’s fine.”

“You don’t look like it’s fine.”

“Sorry,” Quinn said. “It’s just been a while … you know … since I’ve seen you without it.”

“I see it that way every day,” Nate said. “It’s the way it is. It’s not growing back.”

“I know.”

“Do you? Then accept it. And accept the fact that I’m still good enough to do this.” He shoved the papers at Quinn, not waiting for a response. “Here.”

Quinn took them, then said, “I’m getting there.”

“Yeah, well. I guess we’ll see, won’t we?” Nate stared at him for a moment, then sat back down. “The first two are the Yellowhammer blueprints. The last is the map.”

Quinn, not knowing what else to say, looked at the printouts. The facility was built underground at the base of the Sierra Nevada. There were two levels, each containing several rooms connected by corridors. There were limited living quarters inside, and barracks for two hundred additional workers located aboveground. But a note on the blueprint indicated that the ground-level quarters had been removed at the time of decommissioning.

Now the only aboveground signs of the facility were four air vents, and a structure that hid the main entrance. There was an additional way in, an emergency entrance. But it was hidden in a rock crevice wide enough for only one person to pass through at a time.

This didn’t shed any light on what the current inhabitants might be up to, but it did give Quinn their location.

“This looks like it’s going to be fun,” Nate said, his earlier defensive tone gone.

“Loads,” Quinn agreed.

He rolled his shoulders back, trying to loosen the muscles in his back that hadn’t expected to spend the night sitting in a chair outside. He took a closer look at the second page. It was the lower level of the complex, designated R2.

“I think this is some kind of laboratory,” he said.

“Maybe seventy years ago,” Nate said. “Who knows what they’re using it for now?”

“True. They could be just using the main level.”

“The main level of what?” The voice had come from behind them.

Quinn and Nate turned.

Orlando was standing at the edge of the kitchen. She was dressed and, except for the large white bandage covering her wound, looked almost normal.

Quinn pulled out one of the kitchen chairs, then took a few steps toward her.

“You shouldn’t be walking around,” he said.

“It’s not my leg that got hurt,” she said, then looked at Nate. “No offense.”

“Hey, I get it,” he said. “No worries.”

She walked over to the table and looked down at the blueprints. “What are those?”

“Blueprints,” Quinn said.

“No kidding,” she said, all but calling him an idiot. “Of what?”

“Yellowhammer,” Nate said.

“So this is where they are,” she said.

“So it would seem,” Quinn said.

They were all silent for several moments.

“What are we waiting for?” Orlando asked.

“Nate and I were just leaving,” Quinn said.

“We were?” Nate asked.

Quinn ignored him and looked at Orlando. “You, though, are staying here.”

“The hell I am.”

“You need rest, not a four-hour ride in the car.”

“I’m going,” she said.

“We can do this without you.”

“If I were anyone else, you’d expect me to continue on the project.”

Her eyes narrowed, daring him to contradict her. But Quinn couldn’t.

“Put me in the back seat,” she said, her tone softening a notch. “Nate, grab me a pillow.”

Nate pushed himself out of the chair. “Thick or thin?”

“Thin, please.”

“Hold on,” Quinn said.

“What?” Orlando asked. “It’s all settled.”

“Nothing’s settled,” Quinn told her.

“It’s settled.”

Quinn started to open his mouth, but stopped. Why the hell was everyone arguing with him this morning? He felt like going back to bed and forgetting the whole thing. Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option.

And as far as Orlando going along, like she said, it was settled.