BAD DEEDS: A Dylan Hunter Thriller (Dylan Hunter Thrillers) (6 page)

“Tell you the truth, before I returned the call to your secretary in Washington to schedule this meeting, I did a bit of homework about you. I read a few of your pieces online, and what people say about you. You don’t seem afraid to be politically incorrect or make waves.”

Annie directed a glance Dylan’s way. “As I know, only too well.”

“Most important to me, though, is you have a Washington media platform. Our industry can’t get its story out in that town. All the other papers there are in bed with our enemies. Yours seems to be the exception. And if I haven’t misjudged you, maybe you are, too. At least I hope you’ll give us a fair shake.”

“Dan, I promise only to take this story wherever the facts lead.”

Adair chuckled. “Well. If that’s the case, then I don’t have a goddamned thing to worry about. Let me show you around … Will, I’m expecting a call. Could you hold the fort?”

Whelan didn’t look at him or answer, but slid into the swivel chair Adair had vacated. Adair grabbed a worn buckskin jacket from a hook on the wall and led them back outside.

Hunter offered Annie his arm as she stepped down from the van.

“‘
Fiancée,’
huh?” she whispered, looking mischievous.

He shrugged. “Just maintaining our cover.”

She poked him in the ribs with her elbow.

The dismal morning overcast had broken up, leaving tattered gray streamers in the ice-blue sky. Shafts of sunlight stabbed here and there through the trees, glittering off the crusty ice and patches of open water on Queen Creek.

The WildJustice campsite spread out along the bank of the stream, which meandered through the remote center of the Allegheny Forest. Dozens of tents of various sizes, shapes, and colors dotted the landscape. From the dirt access road on the hillside above, they looked like bright, ungainly flowers scattered under the dark hemlocks and pines. A community tent, big, rectangular, and bright yellow, stood in an open area; it served as the central gathering place for meetings and nightly entertainment. Nearby, a broad fire pit still smoldered from last night’s bonfire.

One side of the large tent was tied open. For several minutes nearly a hundred people wandered in, ready to hear what their leader had to say. Most remained standing, shifting on their feet and rubbing their cold hands. Some, not knowing how long the meeting might last, sprawled on cloth folding chairs or nylon sleeping bags that they brought from their own tents.

Zachariah Boggs stood with Dawn Ferine at the opposite wall, waiting patiently while the stragglers entered and the murmur of conversations died down. His eyes roamed from face to face, passing instant judgments born of long experience.

Most were young, in their twenties and thirties, though some were gray and old enough to have attended Woodstock. Their appearances and dress ran from L.L. Bean to organic farm to urban grunge. Many, he knew, had come here for little more than the adventure of role-playing—to become “green revolutionaries” for a week or two. They would carry home tales to impress their timid, more conventional friends, stories to prove their environmental commitment and moral superiority. He was glad that he wouldn’t see most of them again.

Others, though, were sincere in their love of nature, righteous in their indignation about environmental degradation. The thought caused his eyes to move instinctively to Dawn’s. She looked up at him just as she had the first time, seven years ago: with the unconditional, irresistible adoration of a devoted acolyte, a woman willing to follow him anywhere. Yes, those others were like Dawn: peaceful, passionate followers.

But not true soldiers. Vital to the cause, of course. But lacking the philosophic rigor, the unswerving focus, the sheer emotional
toughness
to do everything necessary. His eyes swept once more over their expectant faces. All watching him. He felt the faint, familiar pangs of sad loneliness. No, they were not like him. So few were like him.

Which was why only those few, though not Dawn—
especially
not Dawn—could ever know certain things about him.

Things he had done.

Things he was about to do.

He took a step forward, then began to speak …

Adair led them out a short distance onto the pad and stopped.

“Normally, it’s so noisy here with the pumpers going that you wouldn’t even hear me. So I told the guys to knock off for a few minutes.” He tapped his boot on the pad surface. “We’re standing above the Marcellus Shale Formation. It’s a layer of sedimentary rock over a mile down, and it runs all the way from the southern half of New York, down through much of Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, West Virginia, and into far western Maryland and Virginia.”

He reached into his jacket pocket, drew out a piece of dark rock and tossed it to Hunter, who caught it and turned it over in his hand.

“That’s a chunk of Marcellus shale from this site. It came from sediment deposited 400 million years ago. Under time and pressure, the sediment compressed into black shale, trapping the organic matter that later became petroleum and natural gas. The Marcellus is the second-largest natural gas play on earth. It’s—”

“‘Play’?” Annie asked.

“Sorry. A ‘play’ is a natural gas reservoir that we're working. The Marcellus is located here in the East—the country’s biggest natural-gas market. And it’s the most important source of energy since 1859, when Edwin Drake drilled the first commercial oil well just west of here in Titusville.”

Adair pointed to the derrick in the center of the pad. “We have to drill down over a mile to reach the shale. The hole is called the ‘wellbore.’”

He turned to them. “Lots of folks worry that our drilling will pollute their water. The first thing you need to know is that we drill down
way
past the groundwater that people use for drinking water. The deepest groundwater lies only about three hundred feet deep. Well,
thousands
of feet of solid rock separate the shale layer from the aquifer at the surface. It’s physically impossible for what we’re doing over a mile below the surface to pollute the aquifer.”

“But can’t your pipes break or leak?” Hunter asked.

Adair shook his head. “You see, after we do the first drilling phase, we insert what we call a ‘conductor casing’—that’s a steel pipe, almost fourteen inches in diameter—down the hole about sixty feet. We then pump cement down through the pipe and out of it, filling the entire hole around it. The cement fixes the casing in place, and it also creates a second barrier to protect the groundwater. And we pressure-test the casing to make sure there are no leaks.”

Adair began to cross the pad, heading toward the derrick.

“But that’s just the beginning. Next, we insert the drill back inside that casing and continue drilling three-to-six-hundred feet, down past the aquifer. Then we insert a
second
pipe inside the first one, and fix that casing into place with a new layer of cement. We repeat this process again, with a
third
casing and cement layer inside the first two, which goes down two-to-three-thousand feet. When we reach the shale layer, we use special equipment to change the path of the wellbore and start drilling horizontally through the shale. And we finish with a
fourth
pipe. It goes all the way to the end of the well, also surrounded by a layer of cement. That’s the pipe that ultimately carries the natural gas back to the surface.”

He paused to let his words sink in. “All those concentric rings of steel and cement,” he said, making circular gestures, “create multiple barriers to protect the groundwater. And as I said, the fracking process itself takes place thousands of feet below the aquifer, separated from it by millions of tons of impermeable rock. So you see, leaks of natural gas or any of our chemicals into the groundwater are simply impossible.”

“All those precautions,” Annie said. “It’s certainly not the impression I’ve gotten from what I’ve seen and heard in the media.”

“Tell me about it,” Adair said, scowling.

“But what about chemical leaks up here at the surface?” Hunter asked.

“When we first arrive and clear the area, we build this protective, leak-proof pad of multiple layers of felt and plastic.” Adair’s hand swept around the site. “And as you can see, the whole pad is surrounded by a berm, to further contain any spills. Same goes for that wastewater holding pit over there”—he pointed to what looked like a rectangular pond—“where we temporarily store the water we pump from the wells. That’s completely lined, too. Eventually, we pump out that water and truck it away … You should know that my company has
never
been cited for a single health, environmental, or safety infraction.”

“Until now,” Hunter said.

“Yeah,” he said, looking grim. “Until now.”

“You and I stand in one of the most magical and majestic places that remain on earth,” Zachariah Boggs began. “Each day, I look up at the giant trees towering over us; each night, I look up at the most star-filled sky in the Northeast; and each time, I stand humbled with a sense of awe.”

The crowd listened, captivated by his voice, as they always were.

“We have come here because this sacred place is now threatened. What is happening here, with swarms of drillers and loggers and killers of animals, has been allowed to happen everywhere on earth. At some place, at some moment, those of us who revere the earth must make our stand.”

He looked down, stomped his boot on the ground.

“This is that place. This is that moment. We have come here to do
whatever is necessary
to stop those who are raping the earth.”

Boggs could gauge the effect of his words by the complete stillness in the tent, by the subtle changes in expressions on the faces before him. He began to pace slowly back and forth before them, mesmerizing them with both sound and motion.
Like a snake charmer
, Dawn had once described it.

“Our enemies say that we put nature over humans. And our enemies are
right
. I make no apologies. For what has man wrought? From hunting to agriculture, from mining to logging, from building to drilling, what we absurdly call ‘human civilization’ has collided violently with our planet’s fragile ecosystem. We have driven countless species and indigenous cultures to extinction. And now the heavy-heeled carbon footprints we leave behind threaten the very future of all life on earth!”

He paused after the angry crescendo, then dropped his voice to evoke sad concern.

“Removing just a single strand from the web of life threatens to unravel its entire fabric. The seminal thinker of ecology, George Perkins Marsh, understood this. He wrote that ‘Man is everywhere a disturbing agent. Wherever he plants his foot, the harmonies of nature are turned to discord.’ And the spiritual prophet of preservationism, John Muir, understood it, too. ‘How narrow we selfish, conceited creatures are in our sympathies!’ he said. ‘How blind to the rights of all the rest of creation! If a war of races should occur between the wild beasts and Lord Man, I would be tempted to sympathize with the bears.’”

Boggs paused as a burst of laughter and applause filled the tent. As he knew it would. He loved that quotation and used it a lot. It never failed to generate that reaction.

“Once our final casing is in place, we’re ready to start hydraulic fracturing of the shale—what everyone now calls ‘fracking,’” Adair continued. “Follow me over here, and I’ll show you what’s involved.

They threaded their way through a bewildering maze of pipes, valves, trucks, tanks, and hoses. Adair pointed to an area where four large pipes rose vertically from the ground in jointed segments, like metallic totem poles. Each stood about ten feet tall, linked to a spider web of smaller pipes and valves.

“Those are our wellheads. After we finish drilling, we insert a perforating tool into them. Starting way down at the very end of the wells, the tool blows holes through the casing and into the shale. We then pump a mixture composed almost entirely of water and sand into the pipe. That slurry pushes out of the pipe holes at high pressure, and into the shale, forcing open small cracks that extend a few hundred feet. When we pump the water back out of the pipe, the sand remains behind in the cracks, holding them open. The natural gas then flows out of those fractures, right through the porous sand, and back up the pipe. We repeat this perforation process all along the horizontal casing, and we seal off each section when we’re done.”

Adair pointed out and explained the various pieces of equipment: tanker trucks that hauled several million gallons of water to and from the site; big rectangular containers that held the sand and “frac fluid”; boxy white trucks containing chemicals; blender trucks to mix them; and flatbed trucks bearing large yellow engines—the “pumpers” that forced the slurry down the pipes.

“Drilling horizontally from this one site,” he said, “our wells radiate outward for thousands of feet. We pay local landowners handsomely for their underground mineral rights, too. Most are thrilled because until we came along, the economy was tough around here. Our monthly royalty payments have been a godsend to them. Companies like mine also employ lots of locals. And the out-of-state truckers and drilling teams fill the area motels and restaurants.”

“I’ve seen the changes,” Hunter said. “When I was a kid, my dad used to take me here to go hunting. The whole area has really boomed since then.”

“And for all these economic benefits, here and across the country, each drilling operation takes up just a few acres. Even then, what you see here is only temporary. When we first arrive, we remove the topsoil and store it nearby. When we’re done, we replace that soil, then plant local grasses, flowers, and shrubs, creating meadows. The only things we leave behind are a few short wellheads in the middle of the grass, and a little access road.”

He stopped and smiled again. “And that, in a nutshell, is fracking.”

“All this equipment and expertise must cost a fortune,” Annie said.

Adair nodded. “About five million bucks for a single well. And sometimes you get a dry one, too. They don’t all pay off for us. Although with the latest seismic and electronic testing techniques, our geologists have gotten really good at finding the right spots to drill.”