Dead center of the room stood Ben Purdy.
He wasn’t alone.
He was holding a gun to the other person’s head.
And that person was Alex Jamison.
“YOU GUYS ARE REALLY SOMETHING,” said Purdy, shaking his head. “I seem to have run out of men to take you on.”
“If you let her go, we all walk away from this,” said Decker.
“That won’t be happening,” said Purdy matter-of-factly. “You destroyed everything I’ve been working on.”
“You want to talk about it?” said Decker.
“No, I want to kill all three of you. But first, put down your weapons, or she gets an unwanted hole in the head. Do it now,” he added in a calm, measured voice. “I don’t have anything left to lose.”
Robie and Decker laid their weapons down and stepped away from them.
“I’m surprised you came back here,” said Decker.
“Well, considering the people who were going to pay me shit-loads of money are now not going to stop looking for me until I’m good and dead, I figured they might have thought the same thing. I convinced my remaining team members of that philosophy, but you’ve taken care of them, so I’m the last man standing.” He pushed the gun against Jamison’s head. “And I had to stay and repay you for all you’ve done to ruin my life. In fact, that’s my only focus in life right now.”
“I take it you followed us to Hal Parker’s?” said Decker.
“We’ve definitely been keeping eyes on you. My men heard you inside arriving at the truth behind what I did. I’m surprised you didn’t figure it out sooner. After that, well, I thought it best to bring you here. In fact, if I show photos of you three dead, my employers might just cut me some slack. It’s worth a shot anyway.”
“How’d you get all those guys into the country?” asked Robie.
“How else? Right over the little old Canadian border. It was easy.” He eyed Decker. “They found the bunker, didn’t they?”
Decker nodded.
“Was the stuff as potent as Daniels told me it was?”
“Apparently so. You do realize that ‘stuff’ would have killed millions of people.”
Purdy shook his head dismissively. “No, Daniels told me it would remain localized. It was heavy enough to where it couldn’t remain airborne in a concentrated pattern to be distributed by wind currents over large distances. It would max out at about a hundred miles in all directions.”
“Still really bad.”
“Bullshit. You want to know something?”
“What?”
“That’s why the Air Force put the kibosh on the program, Daniels told me. Because it couldn’t kill enough people. There’s your goody-good U.S. of A. The shit they do, you wouldn’t believe. And you think I’m a bad guy?”
“I don’t think, I know you are,” replied Decker.
“Yeah, well, distributing the stuff here was certainly enough to put the stop on the fracking industry.”
“And that’s what you were really being paid for,” said Decker.
“An amount of money that was truly beyond belief.”
“Even if it stayed local, it would have killed a lot of people,” Decker pointed out.
“Every plan has collateral damage. The Pentagon builds that into every scenario. What’s the civilian death count going to be? How many kiddies will bite the bullet? Price of doing the business of war. There’s nothing innocent about that. We’re just like everybody else.”
“No, we’re not. And I didn’t realize you were at war with your own country,” commented Robie.
Purdy eyed him. “I was just a grunt. All I ever would be. But I had brains and ambition. Which led me to this point. The risks I took. All the work. For nothing.” In his anger, he tightened his grip on Jamison, causing her to cry out in pain.
“Ticking time bomb?” said Decker. “You mentioned that to a guy in the bar. That’s how we got on to you. Only back then we thought you were a good guy.”
Purdy grimaced. “I had just found out all the stuff and hadn’t decided what to do about it yet. And I was drunk at the time. Finding out that you’re sitting on a possible Armageddon will cause you to drink. I regretted it the moment I said it, but I didn’t even remember who I said it to.”
Decker said, “With your smarts you could have gone to Silicon Valley and made a lot more than Uncle Sam was paying you.”
“They couldn’t pay me what these guys were, not if I busted my ass for a million years. I could have made the Forbes list. I’m not kidding.”
“And who was paying you?” asked Robie.
“People that even if you knew who they were you couldn’t touch.”
“Why’s that?”
Purdy grinned. “Because they’re valuable and trusted allies of ours, that’s why. We’d never expose them for what they really are. Don’t you read the newspapers? We’re suckers. We know they’re bad but we do nothing. And you want to know why? Oil! It makes me sick.”
“So did the collateral damage calculation include your mother?” queried Decker.
Purdy’s expression turned grim. “That was your fault, not mine. You went there to question her, my partners got nervous, and they took care of that end. I wasn’t happy about it, but I had no choice. Just so you know, I was going to buy her a nice place, take care of her. But what did she have really to live for? You saw her place. It was shitsville in the middle of nowhere. Wherever she is, I think she’s better off.”
Both Jamison and Decker flinched at this cruel comment.
Robie said, “And who gave you the right to make that decision for her?”
“I gave myself the right!” Purdy snapped.
“Can you answer a question?” said Decker.
“What?”
“Did you kill Irene Cramer, Hal Parker, and Pamela Ames?”
Purdy looked genuinely confused. “I know Hal. I hunted with him. I didn’t know he was dead.”
“Well, we’re not sure he is. But he is missing. And the others?”
“I’ve never heard of—what were the names again?”
“Irene Cramer and Pamela Ames.”
He shook his head. “I had nothing to do with whatever happened to them.”
“Okay, so where does that leave us?” said Decker.
“With the three of you dead and me not. I couldn’t believe you dropped your weapons. That was a mistake.”
Decker glanced at Jamison. But she wasn’t looking at Decker. She seemed to be looking past him, when she suddenly slumped downward as though unconscious, causing Purdy to reach forward and grab at her.
The next moment Decker felt something fly past his ear.
The spike embedded several inches deep in Purdy’s eye socket. He screamed from the impact and shock, dropped his gun, and staggered back. Then he went into convulsions and fell to the floor, where he continued to gyrate and pull at the spike for a few more seconds before his clutching hands fell away and he grew still.
Robie came to stand over him as Decker helped Jamison up. Then Robie reached down, pulled the spike free, and threw it on the floor. “What a prick,” he said quietly.