Peak Oil (12 page)

Reg guessed the old man didn’t have much of a choice, admitting murderers and criminals into his revered organization.

One day, on one of the long walks they so often took, Laiveaux told him about a new recruit who would be arriving soon. A young lady called Natalie Bryden. She would be the first female recruit ever to be accepted into the Legion.
 

The soldiers would rebel against this, Laiveaux had said. But times were changing. France was changing. High-ranking female politicians insisted that the League change as well. Why should only men receive a second chance at a new life, a new identity?
 

Laiveaux then asked Voelkner to keep an eye on her. Look out for her.
 

He remembered the day when the confident young woman strode into the compound. She was a rose among all the thorns, an innocent among all the reprobates and juvenile delinquents.
 

Voelkner took an immediate liking to her. She was tough and mentally stronger than any man in the Legion. She became a mother who nursed their bruised bodies back to health, a sister in whom they would confide their darkest secrets.
 

And she became their leader. Not by choice, but by her own actions.

They looked to her when the drill master broke their bodies down, when they were forced to scale obstacles with fractured bones and torn ligaments. She would always go on.
Hustle men, hustle. One more minute. Don’t stop, it will all be over soon. You are not a failure!

Grown men would cry, but they wouldn’t stop. If she could do it, they could too. Voelkner’s fondness for her developed into profound respect for
Femme Forte
, as they used to call her.
 

The Strong Woman.

She would never leave him behind; he knew he would follow her into any situation. And he often did.

He sucked in a long and melancholy breath. Since Laiveaux had enrolled him into Interpol, things had changed. He didn’t mind the fighting or the dangerous situations; he wished there were more of them. But he found detective work boring. Much better to laze around the pool.
 

The sun’s rays were warm and comforting, and he felt a slight buzz from the beer. Life was good.

Voelkner felt an uncomfortable sensation in his gut, as if someone were standing next to him. He opened his eyes and glanced to his side. Mary-Lou stood at his shoulder and smiled at him. She held a small, red booklet and a pencil in her hands.
 

He slid his sunglasses onto his head. “Hello, Mary-Lou,” he said and sat up. “What are you doing?”

She giggled and handed him the picture she had drawn of him lying on the wooden recliner next to the pool, his eyes closed, sucking on a beer.

It was really good. “What a handsome guy. You drew this?”
 

She nodded.

He examined the booklet in his hand and flipped it over. A Canadian passport. He opened the first page. The photo was of a good-looking blonde guy, smiling at him. His name was Andrew Jackson, and he was six foot five. Voelkner’s jaw dropped. He grabbed Mary-Lou by her shoulders. “Where did you get this?” he shouted, shaking her.

Her lower lip started trembling, and she burst out in tears. She yanked herself loose from his grip and ran away, calling for her grandmother.

Voelkner jumped up and chased after her. “Wait! Little girl, wait!”

Toby Griff slowed down as he drove into town. He rubbed his eyes with the palm of his hand and took another drag from the cigarette. He was beat. He had been on the road without a proper rest for more than eighteen hours.

One of the company regulars, Bubba Bartlett, had gone AWOL. They found his truck parked, out of gas, next to the road. Bubba was supposed to have relieved him for the shift back to Houston. But Bubba had disappeared, and they had a strict schedule to maintain. No check-in, no bonus.

So he sucked it up, caffeinated himself with a pot of coffee, and offered to fetch Bubba’s truck and bring it back to the refinery. A replacement driver had already been appointed, waiting to drive the tanker containing the refined diesel back to Houston.
 

He yawned. Thirty-five miles, no biggie.
 

So the maintenance crew had dropped him with a fourteen-gallon gas can, and he had filled Bubba’s baby up. She started after a couple of cranks and Toby gunned it through town, back to the refinery. He was making good time, the five cups of coffee helping him resist the numbing lull of the tires on the blacktop.

Toby flicked his cigarette out the window, but a backdraft caught it and blew it back in.

“Shit!” he said and lifted himself off the seat. He saw the smoldering butt between his legs and picked it up. He looked up and blinked.

Running down Jefferson Street as fast as her little legs could carry her was a young girl. She was being chased by a guy who was gaining fast.

She ran across the road, straight in front of him. Then she looked up and her eyes widened; she froze and covered her head with her arms, like a damn deer in headlights.

“Christ!” He slammed on the brakes and twisted the wheel to the right. It took a second before the wheels started to shudder and screech defiantly against the momentum of the speeding truck. He yanked a red lever on the dashboard, and the parking brakes kicked in as well.
 

He glanced in the side mirror as the back of the trailer drifted to his left. He would miss the girl by five yards, but the trailer was drifting her way. Shit. He jerked the wheel back toward the girl, fighting against the stubborn trailer behind him, overcompensating to force it back into line. Smoke billowed from screeching tires as he missed her by two feet. He glanced in his mirror and saw the trailer correcting itself, but too slowly. “Please, Jesus. Please, Jesus . . .”

The man who had been chasing the girl grabbed her by the arm, yanked her out of the way, and then grabbed her in his arms and backed up. Toby Griff let out his breath, but he knew the emergency wasn’t over. Far from it.

The wheels shuddered and screamed, bouncing and smoking along the blacktop. The momentum carried the truck toward the green embankment on the shoulder of the road. Years of experience instinctively kicked in and he corrected slightly, keeping the chassis on the road. The moment the trailer careened onto the grass on the embankment, the truck’s ABS kicked in, and it slowly drifted wide onto the grassy section. He glanced at the mirror as the trailer slewed onto the embankment behind him.

“Aw, shit. No!”

The truck jackknifed, and the front wheels of the chassis lifted off the tarmac. The truck flipped and smashed onto its side, and Toby braced himself as the horrendous screech of metal on asphalt overpowered his senses.
 

He felt the seatbelt pulling him tightly into his seat. It seemed to last for an eternity. Three hundred yards later, the upended vehicle came to a grinding halt beside Prairie Lookout Park, and Toby shakily hoisted himself out of the cabin. He hobbled around the wrecked tanker on unsteady legs, making sure all the auxiliary pumps were closed. He couldn’t see any leaks.
 

By the time he had finished, a nurse from Saint Josephine’s had already rushed up to him to treat his bleeding head. His legs felt like jelly; he was going into shock. She pushed him down onto the ground, forcing him to sit.
 

He held his head in his hands, trying to recall the exact sequence of events that had led to the accident.

“I had it under control. I had it under control,” he muttered, staring up at the nurse. “This has never happened before.”

He fumbled for a cigarette in his jacket, lit it with a trembling hand, and brought it shakily to his lips. Then he smelled it. A heartbeat later, the gas caught alight and exploded, obliterating everything in its scorching path.

“Ah, here we are, Browns Stadium,” Ryan said as they approached dozens of immense metal reservoirs, three stories high and roughly three hundred feet in diameter. More than a dozen tanker trucks were lined up in front of one of them. Overalled workers were attaching pipes with nozzles to the back of the tanker trucks, and guys with neon jackets were talking on two-way radios, waving their arms and signaling the vehicles like aircraft marshals.

Neil craned his neck. “What are the big drums for?” he asked.

“Reservoirs,” Dr. Ryan corrected and glanced at his watch. “Storage. From here, the crude oil is pumped to the silos and goes through the refining process.” He waved his hand with a flourish. “We stock 500,000 barrels of Brent crude. After extracting the various compounds from the oil into their simpler forms, we pump them back to the latter storage units to be shipped to depots across the country.”

They rumbled past the colossal containers. Two miles later they turned left toward Cowboys Stadium.

The facility had a double ribbon-mesh wire fence around it, twelve feet high with razor wire at the top. Guards with dogs patrolled the perimeters, one stationed every two hundred yards.
 

Guard towers on tall metallic stilts stood every mile along the perimeter of the facility. Uniformed men with binoculars studied the group as they drove past.

Dr. Ryan continued his exposition. “This is the refinery, the heart of the facility. It encompasses roughly four acres.” He waved his arm dramatically. “It’s a large chemistry set. Crude goes in, gasoline and the by-products come out.”

“It looks like a penitentiary,” Lucy said. “What’s up with all the guards and spotlights and stuff?”

Ryan took off his glasses and started cleaning them with his jacket. He lifted a bushy eyebrow at Lucy. “Oil is a precious resource, Doctor. You should know that. We process roughly two hundred thousand barrels per day.” He put his glasses on and looked at them with unnaturally large, magnified eyes. “Production runs upwards of $20 million per day. Profit. That’s more than $800,000 per hour.”

Alexa noticed David Beck stiffen as he glanced at his wife with a frown. She raised her eyebrows and shrugged at him.

“You’re afraid of being sabotaged?” Neil asked.

Ryan nodded. “We’ve had a few attempts.”

“Who?” David Beck asked with a slow smile.

Ryan shrugged. “Tree huggers. Competitors.” He scratched his chin. “That’s why Mr. Fitch doesn’t mind spending a couple of dollars on security, I guess.”

They drove along the massive facility. Tall Douglas pines planted next to the golf course afforded some aesthetic relief from the rigid lines of the dirty buildings, towers, and chimneys. The driver veered left to The Linc.
 

“Up ahead are the labs and our call center.” Ryan looked at the Becks with an amused grin. “This will be your daytime prison for the next couple of years.”

The Becks smiled, craning their necks. The ranks of buildings were unassuming, square two-stories built from red bricks. People with white lab jackets stood outside the entrance, drinking coffee and smoking. They drove behind a building and pulled up in front of the restaurant doors where they had been picked up.

Dr. Ryan stood up and straightened his ruffled lab coat “That’s it. End of tour.”

They piled out of the bus and bid farewell to Ryan. Alexa walked up to Ryan and touched his elbow. “One last question.”

Ryan turned around and nodded. “Yes?” he asked gruffly.

“Why does a refinery need a call center?”
 

Ryan smiled. “Good question. We supply third-party services to other refineries.” He nodded and smiled. “State-of-the-art stuff.” He turned around and walked away.

Alexa noticed the Becks glance at each other with a frown. “What’s wrong?”
 

David Beck shrugged. “Didn’t know about the third-party stuff. I guess we’ll find out more soon enough. We have our orientation briefing in a couple of hours.”

They shook hands and said good-bye. Neil and Alexa climbed into their car and languidly followed the twisting route out of the refinery. They were quiet; there was a lot of information to mull over.
 

“What the—?” Neil exclaimed and jerked the car onto the side of the road as two red fire trucks with flashing orange lights overtook them and sped toward the exit.

Alexa removed her vibrating cell phone from her pocket as Neil powered the rental onto the main drag heading into town. She glanced at Neil with a frown. “Voelkner wants us to meet him at the lodge, says it’s urgent.”

She looked up as the traffic up ahead was being diverted through a back road by one of the red trucks. Thick black smoke billowed into the air from somewhere down the road. Alexa gagged as the acrid smell of burning rubber seeped past the car’s air filtration system. “What the hell is that?” she asked, squinting her eyes.

Neil coughed and turned up Jefferson Street toward the inn. The sharp odor dissipated, swept away by a warm afternoon breeze. Voelkner was waiting in the parking lot, his hands on his hips. Neil pulled up next to him.

“What happened to your eye?” Neil asked as he got out.
 

Voelkner’s right eye was swollen shut, and blood was trickling from his nose. Strain colored his features, but he said nothing.