The Fallen and the Elect
Page 70
Chapter 42
After a couple of hours, the drive through the desert could be boring and taxing for those not accustomed to the endless landscapes of mineral-laced painted rocks structures and gray-green sagebrush blanketing the desert floor. Gary would have preferred to have taken the company plane out to Las Cruces. It was down for major maintenance and wouldn’t be available for nearly another eighteen hours. There were no aircraft immediately available either through the company’s contracted charter service.
Although the flight from Los Angeles to Tucson was under two hours, after working part of the morning before going to the airport and then driving over four hours from the Tucson airport, twice Gary found himself drifting lanes and his eyelids felt like two bags of cement. Gary was exhausted as the high-ridged mountains in the distance walled off the fading blue sky invaded by night. Las Cruces was only a few miles away and, knowing the excellent work of Sheila whenever she scheduled his business excursions, his comfortable business-class hotel room would be awaiting him.
Gary was confident the lawyers were working hard to secure guardianship so his assigned escort team would not have any problems with legally extracting Dr. Cochrane from the institution. His major concern was not having heard from Dr. Petroyev in more than 24 hours. Before heading to the hotel, his first stop in the town would be the airport. He wanted to check with the operations office to find out the scheduled arrival time of the company jet en route from Mexico. If luck was on his side, they would already have arrived with the special package and called it an early evening. He’d been calling Sheila frequently, just in case the team had tried to call his office directly, but she hadn’t heard anything either. No text messages or emails on his smartphone meant chances were they were either still finishing investigating what happened at the site or were airborne on their way to Las Cruces. It wasn’t until he checked into his hotel room that he received the call.
“Where the hell have you been?” Gary barked when he answered the phone.
“We had an in-flight emergency. We diverted to Durango. I didn’t have a signal till just a couple of minutes ago. We’ve got the repairs completed and now we’re refueling,” Dr. Petroyev answered.
“When’re you scheduled to arrive here in town?”
“We should be there tomorrow sometime in the morning; remember, working around being found co...” The call dropped. Static flooded the earpiece of Gary’s phone, then a fast warbling tone. No matter how many times he tried calling back, he couldn’t get through. After nearly 15 minutes of attempting to reconnect, he decided to wait until the doctor’s arrival the next morning.