Scott Matthews - The Assassin's list

Eight-thirty Tuesday morning Drake flew out of the nearby Hillsboro airport, one of the busiest executive airports in the country. His chartered plane flew east up the Columbia Gorge. On his left, Mount Saint Helens was crestless after the volcano of 1980, and on his right, the towering peak of Mount Hood.

Drake tried to relax on the short flight and think about what he needed to look for at the depot. He told the Senator he knew how to spot security weaknesses. When he did it before, the enemies were regional warlords and third-world military forces, not the security force of a highly guarded and sensitive American military depot. He didn’t even know what high-tech measures the military used today, especially since 9/11. If security was a lot better than it had been on bases when he was in the military, maybe there wasn’t a lot to worry about.

When he landed at the small airport in Hermiston, he was impressed to see that the Umatilla Depot Commander had a white Suburban and driver waiting for him. Drake identified himself and got into the passenger seat of the Suburban. The depot was located twelve miles west of Hermiston and the short drive through the sparse, high desert landscape didn’t take long. Not long enough to develop much of a conversation with his driver, who appeared to have been instructed to keep his mouth shut.

The sprawling, nineteen-thousand-acre installation, had one thousand and one concrete, steel-reinforced, earth-covered igloos stretched across the land. It stored twelve percent of the nation’s chemical weapon arsenal. Originally the old weapons had been designed by the Nazis. Nerve gas and mustard gas by the tons had been made, as lethal as anything ever developed for warfare at the time. After WWII, chemical weapon plants in the Russian zone were dismantled, put on railroad cars for the trip back to Russia, and reassembled. The West had seized samples of the weapons, but when it learned Russia was reconstructing the chemical weapon factories, it had to scramble to catch up and achieve parity with its old ally, now a new adversary.

But times had changed. The stockpiles of chemical weapons that had never been used were being destroyed. The job of the new Umatilla Chemical Demilitarization Facility (UMCDF) was to destroy all of the three thousand, seven hundred and seventeen tons of chemical weapons. That was what Lt. Col. Hollingsworth was supervising at the depot.

Under his command were six hundred and fifty civilian contract employees, and a National Guard infantry company. Another one hundred personnel lived on base to monitor the chemical agents, operate the incinerator, perform security operations, and conduct a highly important public affairs program. No one wanted to live near a chemical weapons facility, and the folks around the Umatilla Depot were no exception.

When Drake neared the depot, he saw the perimeter had a fence topped with barbed wire. There was a second, inner fence topped with razor wire.

“You ever have anybody try to get through your fences?” Drake asked the driver.

The driver, a National Guardsman in his twenties, answered with a snort, “Yeah, couple of drunk assholes tried it on a dare last year. They didn’t make it to the inner fence before the reaction team got there. Our electronic surveillance is the best in the world. No one’s going to breach our perimeter, sir.”

From the looks of the fences and the surveillance devices he could see spaced along the inner fence, he had to agree. If you were going to gain access to the depot, you weren’t going to do it by crashing through the perimeter fences.

At the main gate, security guards carefully checked his ID, even though he was escorted by the Commander’s driver. In the distance, an armed patrol moved along the inside of the perimeter fencing.

“You use perimeter patrols all the time, or just for the ceremony tomorrow?”

“Twenty-four seven, sir, twenty-four seven,” the driver answered, as he drove on to the cluster of buildings that housed the Commander and his staff.

A guard at the front door of the depot headquarters checked his ID again before escorting him to the Commander’s office. They walked down a hallway with a highly polished floor and photos of the depot’s operations on the walls.

Lt. Col. Hollingsworth was younger than expected. He was short, maybe five foot nine or so, a fireplug that probably led his men in calisthenics.

The commander stood behind his desk and watched Drake with a polite smile as he entered the room. He was used to dealing with politicians. Now he was being asked to answer to some security person for a guest speaker he’d already gone out of his way to protect.

“Colonel Hollingsworth, I’m Adam Drake. Thank you for making time to see me and go over the arrangements for tomorrow, on behalf of Senator Hazelton.”

“Mr. Drake, I took the liberty of calling the Pentagon to make sure the Senator had a son-in-law. I learned you were Special Forces. Your record is a little skimpy, though. That suggests several things to me. Would you mind telling me why you’re here?”

Drake smiled and said, “Colonel, you’re a careful man. I was Special Forces, and I am Senator Hazelton’s son-in-law. I’m also an attorney. I help the Senator from time to time.”

“That doesn’t tell me why you’re here, does it? But if the Senator is worried, I’m sure your trained eye will spot something my staff may have missed.”

The twinkle and challenge in the Commander’s eyes said, as clearly as anything, take a look, you won’t find anything even if you were Special Forces.

Commander Hollingsworth called his aide into his office, introduced her to Drake and then dismissed them both. His aide, Capt. Martinez, had short black hair, beautiful brown eyes and wore a uniform that sported airborne wings. She didn’t waste any time letting him know she was efficient, and more than qualified to serve as the Commander’s aide.

“Commander Hollingsworth told me you’re interested in our security arrangements for tomorrow. This depot covers a rectangular area of nineteen thousand, seven hundred and twenty-eight acres. There are two outer fences and roving security patrols. Two hundred reservists augment our civilian security force, and all of them are armed. Surveillance cameras monitor K Block, where the chemical weapons are stored in bunkers that have detectors for leakage and security breaches. This is a secure facility, Mr. Drake. I’m not sure what it is you want to see,” Capt. Martinez said stiffly, as they walked toward the Commander’s Humvee.

“Relax, Captain. I’m just here to see that the Senator is in good hands tomorrow. The curiosity is my own-call it professional interest. Where do your reservists come from?”

“The current rotation of reservists is from the Texas National Guard. They’re here for one year. They’ve been through the Army’s Special Reaction Training for this type of facility, and they’re good people.”

“I’m sure they are, Captain. What about your civilian security force? Do you hire and screen them, or does someone do that for you?”

Capt. Martinez looked away and briefly glanced down at her boots before she answered. Her right hand rested on the passenger door of the Humvee she was about to open for him.

“We screen and hire them ourselves. We only hire people with prior security training, mostly from the military, but some from the private sector. Not all of them have Special Reaction Training, if that’s what you’re asking. We run enough drills to make sure they know what they’re supposed to be doing. This isn’t everyone’s dream job, but we do get good people.”

“There’s not a lot to do out here, are there any problems here at the depot?”