"Never heard of him."
"His father is some Texan big shot with connections to the Justice Department. The problem is, this Carlton Williams knows the women were here last night and didn't return home."
"Shit!” Paul snapped. "Where are the women now?"
"They're still in the gatehouse basement."
"Has the U.S. Attorney found them?"
"I don't know. I ran up here as soon as I was able to put them off for five minutes. They're threatening to bring in a SWAT team if we don't cooperate."
"Threatening is good," Paul said, regaining some composure. "At least they didn't show up with a SWAT team. That gives us a good half hour, minimum. Let's activate a code red. You get to Randy Porter. Have him put everything onto Zip discs and then erase all the hard drives. Then get yourself and Randy to the hangar and rev up the chopper. I'll get Dr. Wingate and Dr. Donaldson down there after we shred paper files here in the office and have the egg room destroyed. Okay?"
"Roger!" Kurt said. He saluted before dashing out of the office and running full tilt down the corridor toward the fire door. Paul watched him until he disappeared. Paul then took a couple of breaths to bolster his gaining equanimity. When he felt he'd pulled himself adequately together, he returned to Spencer's office. Spencer and Sheila looked at him expectantly the moment he appeared.
"Well," Paul said. "It appears that we're going offshore sooner than we expected…"
