“I’m fine, Cara,” Lonnie said. “It has been a long time.”
“So, what brings you here?” Cara asked.
Linus stepped forward. “Is it about those guys?”
“Yes, it is, Linus,” Trooper Wyatt answered. “We obtained some pictures we think may be them. Can you verify if these two men are the ones you saw last night?”
She handed him the color printouts Commander Stark had given her.
Linus looked at them, and right away said, “Yep, these are them.” He pointed to Nousiri’s picture.
“This one was called Nikola by the other guy. They didn’t mention the blond one’s name, but these are definitely their pictures.”
“Anything else you can remember about them? Things they said, maybe. Or where they may have been headed?” asked the trooper.
“No,” Linus said. “Marcus, though, he speaks fluent Albanian. He heard everything they said, something about a mission and cutting Marcus’s balls off.”
Cara smacked her husband on the shoulder. “Linus! Tia’s listening!”
“Sorry, baby.” He turned to the girl and said, “Don’t listen when Daddy says that.”
“Dad!” Tia said in whiny thirteen year old exaggeration, “I know what balls are.”
Cara’s eyes got huge. “Young lady, get in the back, now!”
“But Mom!” she protested, “I want to listen to Trooper Wyatt. I bet she knows what balls are, too!”
“Move it!” Cara shouted in a strong Norwegian accent. Her arm jutted out and she pointed her finger toward the door, her face red with embarrassment. Turning to her husband, Cara said. “How could you talk like that in front of your daughter?”
“Sorry, I forgot she was here.”
“Bye, Trooper Wyatt,” Tia said as her mother took her by the arm to the back of the house.
“Mom, can I be a trooper when I grow up?” The girl’s voice trailed off as the door closed.
Lonnie shook her head and grinned. “You have quite a girl there, don’t you? She’s going to be a handful when she gets a little older.”
“She already is more than I can handle,” Linus said.
Trooper Wyatt turned back to the topic of the two men. “So, you said they threatened Marcus?”
“Look, Lonnie. You really need to talk to him. Marcus heard everything those guys said, but didn’t translate it all to me. I know you don’t want to talk to him, but he’s the one who can answer your questions.”
Her expression grew stoic and business-like again. “You said he was out on a trap line. When is he getting back?”
“He wasn’t supposed to be back until tomorrow, but he unexpectedly popped in a couple of hours ago to get some gas, and then drove to Eielson. Said he couldn’t talk. He was in a hurry to get to the base and would fill me in later. He may be back at the cabin now.”
She took a deep breath and said, “Man, what a reunion this is going to be.”
Linus offered no response other than a nod and sympathetic expression. Lonnie attempted a friendly smile, but her nervousness showed through. “Thanks for the information, Linus. Tell Cara and the kids I said goodbye. I’ll stop in to visit more sometime later.”
She walked out to her waiting cruiser. Once in the car, she radioed dispatch to report that she was en route to Marcus Johnson’s cabin at six-mile Johnson Road.
A few minutes later, Trooper Wyatt arrived at the little cabin Marcus called home. Her heart pounded within her chest as she pulled up the long driveway. In the dark, a thin wisp of smoke rose from the chimney, pale in the illumination of the three-quarter moon that hung in the sky.
She approached the cabin and climbed the step onto the landing that led to the front door. There were no lights on inside, and no vehicle parked outside. She banged on the door with the handle of her Maglite.
No answer.
She knocked again. Still no answer.
It was 18:00. She decided to return to the pipeline pump station to talk with Bannock again, then try back in half an hour.
Trooper Wyatt drove up to the pump station. Bannock was just coming on shift and readily verified that the men in the picture were beyond a doubt the two men he had seen. He went back over the details he had given her the previous night, adding nothing new to the story.
“So I guess they really are terrorists, eh?” Bannock said.
“Just a possibility,” Lonnie replied.
“Uh, Trooper Wyatt?” he said. “Those are CIA identity sheets. I’ve tracked down men all around the world with one of those in my hand.”
“Oh,” she replied. “I guess you would recognize one of these.”
He changed his tone, raising one of his eyebrows. “I was thinking all last night about what Islamic Terrorists would be doing at a power substation way out here in the middle of nowhere. And then I had a couple of ideas.”
Bannock paused, an eyebrow cocked up as if dramatically trying to draw her into his thought process. It looked like a poorly done impression of a Sherlock Holmes character.
Lonnie waited for him to continue. He stayed quiet until she grew irritated with his melodramatic attempt.“And your idea is?”
Charlie smiled and leaned forward, cocking his head as if he were about to tell a secret. “Well, two things come to mind.” His voice was just above a whisper.
“First, the power was knocked out through the whole electrical intertie system simultaneously. This substation does not control the whole intertie, which runs from Anchorage, through the Mat-Su valley up to here, then across to Delta and down to Valdez. That means these guys were not working alone, but with others in at least two or three other cities along the intertie.”
“Okay, that makes sense.” She recalled what Commander Stark had said about the findings at the other outermost substations.
“Second,”
