The Yellowstone Gambit, page 8
Whatever flicker crossed Leon’s face died fast. He lifted the pistol again —
— and Nia’s shot clipped the slide and sent the pistol skittering into a drift. Leon cursed, stumbled, but stayed upright.
“Thirty seconds,” Julie said. “I lied to their timer and stole a minute. But it’s still hungry; you need to hurry.”
“Reggie,” Ben panted, already moving, “status?”
“On Two,” Reggie said, voice tight and cheerful — which meant he was scared and working. “I’ve got two guards who like breathing and a cabinet that doesn’t. Orange harness located. Cutting — now.”
Ben and Nia ran the trench toward Pad Two, but Reggie beat them there. His voice came fast: “Connector’s out… wait. Hearing a whine. I think it’s a — what are those little battery-looking things called? Capacitors? Yeah, it’s a capacitor thing.”
“Tamsin?” Ben snapped.
“Ten seconds.”
Reggie didn’t swear.
“Eight.”
Ben knew the countdown wasn’t helpful, but he wasn’t being entirely helpful here now, either. He watched, helpless, as Reggie finagled the device.
“Five seconds, guys.”
Reggie finally yelled in frustration, then tore the detonator brick off the backplate — harness, bolts, the works — and hurled it into the drift. Ben got a flashback of his friend losing his cool like this in the midst of a battle, fighting tooth-and-nail against an adversary.
That man had been bested by — of all things — Reggie’s wristwatch.
When his friend decided enough was enough, well… it was enough.
A white flash slapped the trench. Snow hissed back into itself.
“Quorum broken,” Tamsin said, shaky with relief.
Julie’s voice broke through. “Confirmed.”
The ground answered for everyone. A deep roll lifted the snow like a rug. A white column punched skyward where the collar sat, loud enough to swallow rotor wash.
“Back to the bunker,” Nia said. “Now.”
They took the trench back to their temporary home base. Tamsin yanked it open, breath fogging the emergency lights. “He stole my lab code,” she said, hands shaking. “Glued detonators to it and called it safety.”
Julie didn’t waste the moment. “We found the paper trail,” she said. “The shell that hired the pad crews feeds a hedge that’s been hoarding helium futures for six months and starving spot deliveries to hospitals to spike price. The shell’s owned by Hartmann’s CFO. Wire transfers. Emails. Voice notes. He didn’t ‘answer’ a crisis — he engineered it.”
Ben’s world narrowed to a point. NICU nurses tapping empty gauges. A donor gala. A crest on a helicopter. He could now see straight through the lie.
“You’re sure?” he asked.
“Shoreline Bank, three accounts,” Julie said. “Offtake contracts to a directed-energy lab. An internal deck titled Policy Follows Scarcity. I’m pushing the packet to USGS, Park LE, DoJ, and three reporters. Redundant mirrors. If we get cooked, the truth doesn’t.”
A shoulder hit the door. Leon stood there, swaying, one arm clamped to his ribs, the other empty.
“He’s got one more case,” he rasped. “Told him to run line behind Four while you guys chased ghosts.”
“Which kid?” Nia asked.
“The camera kid,” Leon said, jaw tight. “He’s more like an assistant. Apparently pretty capable, and not just for running social media accounts.”
They were in motion before the man was finished talking.
CHAPTER 20
Behind Four, a gear sled sulked under the trees. A coil of orange harness glittered like candy. The videographer — mid-twenties, cheeks raw, foundation crest on his windbreaker — knelt with a gimbal against his chest and a wire cutter swinging on a lanyard. His teeth were on a cable because his fingers had gone numb.
“Hands up,” Ben said.
The kid froze, raised both hands. The cutter thumped his wrist.
“He — he told us you worked for oil,” the kid said, voice shaking. “That you were trying to sabotage us, to keep the ‘power quo’ or whatever. Look, man, this is the only fix that can really help people.”
“He lied,” Ben said. “On more than one count. Step back.”
Nia popped the case. Another brick, another harness. Her knife flashed; the connector came free. Reggie’s voice rang in his ears. “Generator’s off.”
Oaks’ voice added, “The tree-line relay is jammed.”
Suddenly, Hartmann stepped through steam like a man walking out of his own advertisement, hair crusted with ice, eyes bright and brittle. He stopped five yards away, looked at Ben, then at the kid.
“You’re feeling brave and righteous tonight,” he said, warm and perfectly pitched. “But by next week, you’ll start to read headlines of power outages. Clinics cancelling procedures. And you won’t see cause and effect, because people like you never do.”
“Cause and effect,” Ben said, “if you have it your way, is you causing hospitals to react to a crisis. And the effect is you’ll benefit from the PR by swooping in to save them with your miraculous production of helium.”
Hartmann blinked once. He could have denied the allegations. He didn’t.
Instead, he doubled down.
“Scarcity moves policy,” he said, not to Ben but through him. “Committees don’t. Petitions don’t. Scarcity puts a hand on a senator’s throat and says, sign. I didn’t create the crisis. I clarified it. I accelerated a truth regulators would have delayed until the basin went dry. I floated price at the moment the system would feel it — so they’d fix it for real.”
He was close enough that Ben saw the crack at the corner of his mouth. Hartmann continued. “You hire crews with grant money and get two weeks of press. I build supply and every NICU in the hemisphere stops borrowing cylinders. If a bad week now prevents a thousand worse ones later, don’t pretend your ethics are cleaner than mine.”
“Your ‘supply’ starts with detonators in a geyser basin and ends with an offtake to a weapons lab,” Ben said.
“Directed energy retires coal,” Hartmann snapped. “Don’t quote blog headlines at me.”
Ben stepped in, voice low enough to get under his skin. “Say it plain. You created the market, then cornered it. You cut deliveries. You caused pain, so you could sell relief.”
Hartmann’s jaw flexed. The mask slipped a breath. He paused. “Pain is leverage,” he said, almost tender. “And leverage saves more lives than sermons.”
The kid’s thumb tapped the gimbal again. Ben almost missed it.
“Ben,” Julie’s voice said. “We’re getting all of this. The camera guy turned something on, and we’re now getting a stream. But he’s been filming the audio all along, and I suspect he’s just changed sides.”
Before Ben could respond, the ground bucked. The sled jumped its groove and slammed into a tree. A loose brick skittered into a newborn crack and popped in the wrong place, a single clap that flashed snow to glass. The executive helo flinched sideways. Rook’s Bell slid smoothly through steam beyond the pines, low and rude and fearless, completely immune to the devastation happening on the ground.
“Ben, it’s going to get worse before it gets better,” Julie said.
The ground shaking beneath Ben’s feet confirmed this.
“I’m here,” Rook barked. “But I’ve got one more pass before I need to head to, uh… a more reasonable environment. Don’t make me land in that soup.”
“Go get Tamsin and Oaks,” Ben said, eyes still on Hartmann. “They’re at the bunker. They’ll be able to help with the evidence, so I want them with us.”
“Copy that,” Rook said. A flare spat from her skid and turned the executive searchlight to milk.
Hartmann looked at Ben with something finally honest: fury. “You think you win because you cut a wire?” he asked. “You’re not a dam. You’re a speed bump. Today it’s me. Tomorrow, it’s somebody else who opens a valve. Maybe even our own government. And trust me, it’s better me do it than a government engineer with some crack team of underpaid and overworked interns.”
Leon limped up, blood freezing on his cheek, and looked between them like a man flipping a coin for the last time. “Sir,” he said to Hartmann, voice stripped bare, “you should leave.”
For a flicker, Hartmann almost took the advice. Then the mask clicked back. He turned into his light for the camera.
“Get it all,” he told the kid. “Get this insufferable ranger. And make to get a shot of his gun. Get the steam, too. It’ll play well.”
The kid swallowed. “I — I already did,” he said — too soft for Hartmann to hear clearly.
“What was that?” he asked.
The kid looked wide-eyed at his boss. “I said… I already got it. Everything. Your conversation. I’ve been recording.”
Hartmann’s polished exterior finally cracked. “Now, listen here. I think we can just — ”
“We’re currently uploading it and backing it up,” Ben said. “This isn’t a shakedown, Hartmann. We’re not negotiating. It’s already on the way to our lawyer, some reporters, anyone we know in the government who might take some interest.”
Hartmann stammered. “You — but I — you can’t — ”
“We did, Hartmann. Thanks to your, uh, trusted associate here.” He slapped the kid on the back. “I guess your philanthropic mask got melted away in the steam. Hope it doesn’t burn too much.”
Julie broke in again. “I’m already uploading the feed, and the stuff he was already recording. Making redundant backups, too. Two reporters already confirmed receipt.”
Strobes swept the trees — the fat thud of Rook’s bird shouldering into the wind.
Hartmann met Ben’s eyes again. There was no appeal now. Just calculation — he still thought he could win with his courtrooms, op-eds, donors on speed dial. But Ben gave him nothing, and that’s what unnerved Hartmann. Ben knew he hadn’t dealt with his kind before — the kind of man not persuaded by pomp and circumstance. Not alarmed by the threat of legal action.
He gave Hartmann nothing in his stare. Not triumph, not fury. Just a tired man in a cold place with a story that, for once, had the receipts to back it up.
He didn’t care to punch him. He didn’t want to waste any more breath on this guy. He wanted to go home.
He’d won — Julie had won. He’d never doubted her, but he felt a wave of relief knowing that she’d once again stepped up, in a big way.
He turned for the bunker, trudged back in silence. Around him, steam thinned as the plateau cooled enough to settle the area.
Back at the bunker, the graphs inside glowed with the steady, boring slope that meant people would wake up tomorrow and never knew how close they’d come.
“Okay, the package is out,” Julie said softly. “USGS, Park LE, DoJ, three reporters have at least opened the email, and our lawyer. Also… Hope just kicked in her sleep and then settled without me having to pick her up. I’m calling that a win, too.”
Ben let the air out of his chest until his ribs hurt less. “I’ll take it.”
Nia slid in beside him, cheeks raw, eyes bright. Reggie followed, limping and grinning. Tamsin wiped her face with a sleeve and didn’t claim it was just melted snow.
Oaks hung his head, looking dejected.
“Let’s go home,” Ben said.
CHAPTER 21
Snow stacked on the eaves like someone had been pouring it out of a bucket all day. The Chugach range stood dark and close, immediately behind the cabin’s land. A thin line of smoke climbed from the chimney and drew a straight rule into a bruised-blue sky.
Ben parked crooked and didn’t fix it. The tires crunched. The dog’s bark — still a new sound to him — leaked through the door before his key turned.
The heat met him hard. Pine and coffee and that good dry stove smell, filled with fresh-cut firewood.
And Hope.
His daughter rocketed across the floor in socks, crashed into his leg, and wrapped both arms around him like she meant to keep him from leaving ever again.
He crouched. His ribs complained. He let them.
“You’re heavy,” he said into her hair.
She held up two fingers, then added a wobbly third and frowned at it. Eh, close enough.
Julie was there a heartbeat later. She didn’t say anything at first. She put a hand on his coat and another at the back of his neck and pressed her forehead to his chest like she was checking he was real. Then she kissed him and stepped back just far enough to look him over.
“Any holes I should know about?” she asked.
“Only the usual,” he said.
“And the ribs?” she said.
“Negotiating,” he said.
She tipped her head toward the stove. “Fire’s on your side. It’ll help.”
The dog shouldered in and pretended to be dignified while failing at it completely. Ben let his hand find its head without looking.
Reggie yelled from the kitchen like a man announcing treasure. “I made coffee that can jump-start a dead truck! Also, I bought donuts for your daughter and not for me, so if any are missing it’s because the dog likes chocolate.”
Ben rolled his eyes. “How the hell did you beat me home? To my home, I might add.”
He could almost hear the shrug Reggie gave from within the kitchen side of the one-room cabin.
“The dog doesn’t eat chocolate,” Julie said.
“I mean, he absolutely would,” Reggie said, appearing with a mug in his prosthetic hand and a limp he seemed proud of. “He just… shouldn’t.”
He tried to hand Ben the mug. Ben took Julie’s instead and sipped. It was perfect. She smirked like she’d won a bet.
“Any update?” she asked. Ben had lingered in Wyoming after Reggie had left, to finalize the report and reconnect with the Park LE team, some of whom had been there when Ben was working at Yellowstone all those years ago.
He looked toward the window. The world outside was all white and gray and familiar. He could still feel the other place — the hiss and the light and that awful clean feeling when a bad plan finally lays down.
“Nothing new,” he said. “For now.”
She nodded. “Good. Our little gift was well-received,” Julie said, as if she were reading the weather. “USGS. Park Law. DoJ. Our lawyer. Three reporters who have more enemies than friends, and are always hungry for an easy billionaire philanthropist to pick off. Everyone says the word ‘expedited’ like it means anything.”
“Good,” he said. He set his go-bag by the door and pushed it an inch farther away with his boot.
Hope tugged his sleeve and pointed at the ceiling. “B’loon,” she said solemnly, as if filing an official request.
Reggie lifted a donut bag like a magician. “I can make that happen,” he said.
“You have balloons in there?” Ben asked.
“No, dummy. Doughnuts.”
“But… she asked for a balloon.”
“And she’ll get a doughnut, and she’ll forget she asked for a balloon. Any questions?”
Ben rolled his eyes again.”
“Don’t make a mess,” Julie said.
Reggie ignored her.
They ate at the table they always ate at, near the front window, elbows bumping, Julie’s laptop nudged aside but still open to a screen full of tidy trouble — she was always working, always on call.
Onscreen, Ben eyed Julie’s messages and saw that Tamsin had texted a photo of a government conference room and a paper cup with a smiley face drawn on it.
Ben chewed and watched his daughter try to share a donut with the dog by smashing it onto the dog’s forehead. The dog accepted the ritual with grace. Reggie accepted it as a necessary rite of passage for both dog and human child.
Julie did not accept it all, and burst into action, cleaning and scolding.
“We got a text from the Park LE guy,” Julie said, sliding him her phone while wiping doughnut off the wood floor with a paper towel.
Site’s been sealed, and I’m filing all the statements tomorrow. Get some sleep, and don’t worry about us — I’ve got it from here.
He slid it back. “Nice.”
Reggie spread cards on the table with the grim authority of a casino dealer who’d seen too much. He reached to the edge of the table and slid over a rectangular piece of wood.
“Cribbage,” he announced. “Winner gets to name the next job. Loser does the dishes and also apologizes to the state of Wyoming.”
“You were in Wyoming for like ten minutes,” Julie said.
“Those minutes were formative,” Reggie said.
“And you’re doing the dishes,” she added. “I have cooked anything. And neither have you. Why are there even dishes?”
“Ben’s going to make chili?”
Ben smiled. “Chili does sound good right now.”
“See?” Reggie said. “That causes dishes.” He turned back to the cribbage board on the table in front of the trio, flourishing with his hands.
Ben let the cards sit there. He stood, added a log to the stove, and watched the new flame study the old coals and decide to join in. He breathed and let the heat unclench the last of the cold that had gotten into his bones.
“I sent the kid a note,” Julie said, not looking up from her screen. “Anonymous thank-you routed through a lawyer routed through a station routed through a friend. He’ll be fine.”
“He did a brave thing at the right time,” Ben said. “That’s more than most would be able to pull off.”
Julie nodded without argument. “He might be someone to keep tabs on, in the future. Plus, that Leon guy’s cooperating,” she added. “His statement lines up with the paper trail. It reads… tired.”
“He was,” Ben said. “He will be.”
Reggie tapped the deck against the table. “You going to tell me we’re never going back to Yellowstone again so I can believe you for twelve hours?”
“We’re never going back to Yellowstone again,” Ben said, and smiled when Reggie pointed at him and yelled, “Liar!” like he’d won.
