Senator Hazelton introduced him to Secretary Rallings, his aide, and the Secretary’s two-man security detail. The Secretary of DHS was shorter than he appeared in his pictures, but no less distinguished. In his late 60s, he looked every bit the former Ivy League boxer he was, powerful in his upper body, with a pugnacious bulldog face. He reminded Drake of Winston Churchill.
His aide was a bright young MBA type hoping a stint in Washington would establish a foothold for his career. The two bodyguards were the aide’s perfect foil, a reassigned FBI agent and a former Hostage Rescue Team leader. They introduced themselves, and their former careers, in a not so subtle way. The message was clear-stay out of our way because we’re the pros.
There was another person in the party, and from the disgusted look on her face, she hadn’t been told Drake was included. Her eyes tightened when she saw him, and her mouth turned down at the corners. It wasn’t a frown, exactly, but it sure wasn’t a smile.
Drake shook hands with the two men traveling with the Senator. He knew them both. Bob Allen was a former Oregon State Trooper and the Senator’s personal bodyguard. Tim Richards was the Senator’s chief of staff.
As soon as they were all seated in the Gulfstream, the pilot announced they would be airborne shortly for the flight to Hermiston, one hundred eighty-five miles east up the Columbia River Gorge. The Secretary and the Senator were seated across from each other in the first row of seats, with their security details seated behind them. Drake and the others accommodated themselves in the remaining eight seats.
Drake made a point of sitting across from Liz Strobel. As they accelerated to lift off, Strobel lost control of her composure and hissed over the roar of the engines, “You agreed to keep me informed, and now you’re trying to do my job. I resent this!”
“I’m not here to do your job, Administrative Assistant Strobel. I’m here to protect the Senator, at his request,” he said with a smile. “You have the Homeland to protect, but you never know when a Senator might run into a crazy constituent. Surely you don’t have a problem with that?”
“What I have a problem with is you. I stuck my neck out for you and your father-in-law. I’m not jeopardizing my career just because you’re seeing terrorists behind every bush.”
Drake leaned toward Strobel and invaded her personal space. “You’d better pray I’m wrong, and this is just a figment of my misguided imagination. You’ve never seen a terrorist, let alone fought one, and you don’t have a clue how they think. God help us that you’re supposed to be protecting us. All you care about is your pathetic little career. Stay out of my way, and remember the day you may have underestimated the enemy, and me.”
The rest of the short flight to Hermiston was quiet. The Secretary and the Senator talked quietly while everyone else enjoyed the scenery. Strobel sat stiffly in her seat, staring out the portside window at the river below. Drake thumbed through the Sports Illustrated he’d brought, and hoped Strobel was right and he was wrong about seeing a terrorist in every Umatilla depot uniform.
At 8:30 a.m., the pilot announced they were approaching their destination and began their descent to the small town of Hermiston. Its small municipal airport was just twelve miles east of the depot.
As the Gulfstream taxied toward the terminal, Drake spotted Mike’s white Yukon parked next to the one-story building that served as the city’s municipal airport terminal and flight control tower. Mike stood next to his SUV wearing a Mariner’s baseball hat, sunglasses, and a lightweight windbreaker and jeans. Drake knew the windbreaker concealed more than Mike’s lean body.
When they were allowed to deplane, Drake led the Senator’s small party over to Mike and introduced them. While Mike was getting everyone seated, and the Secretary and his people were escorted to the vehicles the Army had provided, Drake walked over to the pilot.
“We should be back in two hours. On the outside chance we might need to get out of here quickly, I’d appreciate it if you’d stay in or near the plane. I’m not expecting trouble, but I want you to be ready in case something happens. There are a lot of people who don’t appreciate what’s being done at the weapons depot. There are enough nuts around to make me nervous. If I call, or my friend Mike, next to the Yukon, calls, have the plane ready to take off the minute we get here. We’ll be about fifteen minutes out.”
When he got back to the Yukon, everyone was seated for the ride to the depot.
“Any trouble with the locals when you told them you wanted to park next to the terminal for a while?” Drake asked.
“Not after I told them to call the Senator’s office. They’ve been visited by so many dignitaries, they’re used to the drill. You ready to roll?”
“Roll on, amigo. Let’s see if the depot security staff is as alert as the airport people were.”
Leaving the terminal area, they drove past a Bell 407 medical evacuation helicopter, with letters designating it as one of the life flight helicopters from the nearby Good Shepherd Medical Center. The pilot’s door on the right was open, and Drake could see the pilot sitting inside.
“Looks like they’re ready for any eventuality here. Were you able to get the stuff we talked about?”
“Everything’s in the back,” Mike said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder. “We going to be able to get all this stuff past security?”
“Shouldn’t be a problem. The Senator cleared it for us. We have ID. If we’re busted, I’ll just tell them I didn’t know anything about the stuff you brought. At least I’ll be able to get the Senator through.”
“Funny,” Mike said, without wasting a glance at Drake.
“When we get there, I’ll accompany the Senator to the ceremony. You stay with the Yukon. My main concern is if anything happens during the ceremony, there won’t be adequate transportation for everyone. They’ve promised VIP Humvees for the Secretary and the Senator, but I want to make sure we’re able to get him out if we need to. If anything goes down, I’ll get him back to you, and you get us back to their emergency center.”
Mike drove out of the airport and turned onto the Hermiston Highway toward I-84 and the Umatilla Weapons Depot to the west. The flat land on both sides of the highway was colored in spring green, shading to early summer brown. Overhead, contrails of fighter aircraft flying patterns over the depot crossed the sky.
“When we get to the main gate, show our ID. Ask them to call Lt. Col. Hollingsworth and tell him we’ve arrived,” Drake directed. “He’s expecting us. We’ll be escorted directly to an area behind the speaker’s stage. We should be there early enough to do a quick walk around.”
The drive from the airport to the main gate of the depot took ten minutes. It was nine o’clock when they arrived, and there were only a half dozen cars ahead of them at the security checkpoint. Drake was pleased to see that identification was carefully checked for every passenger in the cars ahead of them. The undercarriage of each vehicle was searched with a mirror, and a German shepherd walked around each car to detect explosives.
When it was their turn, the Army sergeant matched picture ID with every person in the vehicle and checked each of them off his visitor list before calling Lt. Col. Hollingsworth. The sergeant then signaled for their escort, and a tan desert camo-colored Humvee pulled out to lead them.
The depot grounds were inspection-ready neat for the ceremony. The few soldiers Drake saw were all wearing starched BDUs and spit-shined boots. The command center looked like it had a fresh touch up of paint, and the barracks off to the right had walkways lined with white rocks leading to their front doors. Lt. Col. Hollingsworth obviously had his command standing tall for the ceremony.
The $1.2 billion chemical incinerator the Army was dedicating rose in front of them as they drove on into the depot. It was a modern-looking complex that covered a football field with its conveyors and furnaces and miles of piping. It didn’t appear that much different from newer chemical plants seen around the country.