The next morning as Mac was driving out of town he used a burner phone to call Basil. When they were connected, Mac didn't mince words as he provided an update of the events of the previous day. He sternly enquired, "someone obviously knew where and how I would arrive in Billings, your people set all that up, how secure do you believe your organization to be?"
Given all the trouble Mawbey had gone to in order to transport Mac back and forth across the border, he snapped back at him rather harshly. But after a full moment of silence, Basil allowed that he didn't know how it happened, but anything was possible. "Look, I have a large staff. A lot of people work for me. Could a 'mole' have infiltrated the organization? Maybe. It just doesn't seem likely". Mac couldn't see that Basil was jotting down a note and had handed it off to an assistant and the search for an interloper was underway even before their telephone call had ended.
As soon as he hung up with Basil, Mac called his Uncle. Not via the congressional switchboard, this time he punched in his private cell number. The Senator picked up despite the 'caller unknown' warning. "Did you send that kid to find me?" Mac asked without so much as a greeting. "That kid", his Uncle said, "is a 21 year-old political intern and he says you stuck a gun in his face. What the hell are you pursuing that's so important that you have to point a gun at someone?"
That his Uncle had knowledge of that detail told him everything he needed to know.
The "kid" had been sent to track him, and there had to have been contact between his Uncle and someone in the Borealis Media Group to know where to look. It also meant the kid managed to escape from the woods, a fact that gave Mac some relief.
"How did he know where I'd be?" Mac asked.
"Tell me what you are up to and I will", the Senator replied.
At this point Mac decided there was no longer any reason to maintain any subterfuge and he briefly summarized the situation.
"I caught wind of some clandestine, military-styled activity going on along the border between North Dakota and Canada and I agreed to go there, find out what was going on, and report that to Borealis", Mac explained.
"But we tracked you first to South Dakota", his Uncle responded.
"That was just to throw you off, I spent a few nights camping in the Black Hills before continuing the journey", Mac said.
"So what is going on up there?", his Uncle asked rather seriously.
"I don't know. I've heard some recorded radio chatter, I've seen some photos taken from the ground and on orbit. There is some sort of private army up there, people who look and act like military. It's impossible for me to believe this is the work of a foreign government, it's simply too deeply embedded in North America. I assume you know what's going on there, this has to be the Pentagon doing something on the shady side of legal. Why don't you tell me now, I'll report it to Basil and stand down, come home", Mac offered.
"Listen to me, this is not a military op, at least not one I've been read in on, and I see everything. But if you're taking it this seriously, so will I. You share whatever intel you turn up and I'll shake the trees in Washington to get to the bottom of it", the Senator proposed.
"Deal", said Mac, "there's no way this isn't a matter of national security".
"Tell Mawbey to look into one of his employees, Lisa Garrett. She's not on my payroll, but she sold you out for pocket change", Fielding said, keeping his part of the bargain as the call ended.
Two hours outside of Minot, Mac's phone rang again and he answered. It was Basil who had some new information and it wasn't good. His people had uncovered paperwork that showed a packaged tiny nuclear reactor, assembled in Belarus, was delivered a month ago to a shell company in Seattle. That cargo apparently disappeared in the mist after leaving the shipping dock on a private freight truck headed east along the US and Canadian border. How an unlicensed nuclear reactor could enter the US without triggering at least a dozen warnings seemed impossible.
"What does that mean?", Mac asked, "are they assembling some sort of weapon?"
Basil explained that his team didn't think so. The packaged unit was a small micro modular nuclear reactor, the smallest type of nuclear reactor (under 20 megawatts), small enough to be shipped on a truck but powerful enough to supply electricity for an entire town. Though illegal in the US, these have been pitched as a solution for powering remote communities in Alaska, providing steady electricity for AI data centers, universities, mines, and remote military bases.
"Given that hardware could cost fifty to one hundred million dollars, it seems certain this is the work of a nation state, probably the US military. Maybe it's time for you to pull out and we make everything we have public and let the chips fall where they may. This looks to be more dangerous than we first assumed, too dangerous for you to just hike into the middle of it", Basil warned.
"Except that my Uncle swears the Pentagon isn't running any kind of special operation on the north border, and I believe him. He seemed as much in the dark about all this as we are. And if it's not a legitimate operation then it's illegal as hell and needs to be exposed. We can't rule out this isn't the work of some ultra-nationalist group funded by a crazy billionaire. We have a lot of those in America these days you know?", Mac said, smiling at his implication being made directly to a billionaire.
"Look, I'm going to continue the mission, slip into the field of operation undetected. I'll gather enough intel to get this thing shutdown and make one helluva news story for you in the process. I'll get back to you as soon as I'm in the thick of it", Mac told him.
"Oh, one more thing, fire Lisa Garrett ASAP, she's at least one of your leaks".
Mac hung up the phone before Basil could reply.