“I hear you, Chief. You can call over there and talk to them about it. I’m just telling you what they told me. They said you could dump some kind of radioactive something or other into the pipeline at one end, and then all you’ve got to do is follow the flow of the radiation.” Tom looked down as he spoke, picking at the index finger on his left hand. Then he looked back up and shook his head. “I can’t understand why we’re even involved. I mean, it’s a pipeline leak for crying out loud.”
Victor sighed and resumed his careful study of the ceiling tiles: white, textured, recessed, not very interesting to look at. “That’s just it, Tom. We’re not involved. They only let us know about what was happening in case we got reports about all the flights over the pipeline paths. You know, terrorism fears, that kind of shit.”
“Well, like I said, I don’t really care, I’m just relaying the information.” Tom rubbed his palms together and stood, taking a moment to straighten his pants before speaking. “I mean, they’ve been flying over the pipelines off and on for two weeks and haven’t found a leak yet. I thought this idea sounded interesting.”
“Well, I’ll think it over and maybe make a call to the lab to ask about it. But I’m not going to suggest something like that unless I’m damned sure it isn’t going to screw something up. Last thing I need is to look like an idiot, or worse.”
“I hear you, Chief.” Tom held his hands out at his side, shrugged, and stood. “Ask for Ted Ross if you call,” he turned to go and spoke over his shoulder, “that’s who I talked to.” And then Tom was through the door and disappeared down the hallway, back into the bureaucratic void.
Victor thought it over. It really wasn’t their area. There didn’t seem to be any kind of security issue other than the general paranoia that seemed to grip nearly everyone these days and led them to suspect that everything under the sun could somehow be related to terrorism. But Victor knew better, didn’t he? The real problem was that they put a certain amount of oil into a pipeline at one end and got slightly less out at the other end. Before the terror obsession no one would have called him because they would have called it what it was: a pipe leak. But it was a pipeline. It was an oil company. It was Southern California. There were Islamic crazies all over the place, and Los Angeles was an easy place to hide. It wouldn’t be insane to think there could be a security issue of some kind. Would it?
Victor turned to stare out his window. The executive offices on the tenth floor had fantastic ocean views, but his view, from the second story, was partially blocked by a low hill near the back of the refinery property. He could see a distant blue at the far right and left, but straight on was an ugly rise of earth, over which ran the massive above-ground pipeline that connected the Southwest Petroleum refinery to the terminal that sat out at the edge of the Long Beach harbor. The terminal transferred the finished petroleum products through an underwater line that ran to the tankers parked off shore. But Victor couldn’t see the terminal or the tankers from his office, just the hill, and the galvanized pipeline running over it.
In his rare moments of reflection, his obfuscated view struck him as symbolic: a perfect example of how his life had gone poorly. From his second floor window, Victor often felt as though he was looking out on his own mediocrity. It was a constant reminder that he’d settled, checked out, walked from a career that had been on a fast track, and for what? A shitty pension and an hour and a half commute?
Five years before he’d been Special Agent Victor Jones, a senior field agent with an expertise in organized crime. After a three year operation that ended in a series of landmark arrests in the tri-state area, he’d been singled out by the Director of the FBI for his perseverance, his skill, his judgment, his leadership. He was on his way. But not long after, a shootout in a warehouse in Newark left him with a minor flesh wound to the shoulder and a wife who demanded that he take retirement