The Shimmer

by David Morrell

  Page’s throat felt terribly dry. After swallowing, he managed to speak. “She must have gotten tired and spent the night in a motel.” Even as he said it, he didn’t believe it.

  “Then why didn’t she call to tell me not to worry? Which is exactly what I’m doing.” The elderly voice quavered. “What if she had an accident?”

  “I don’t think that’s likely, or I’d have heard something.” Page tried to sound convincing. “But I’ll see what I can find out.”

  Three hours later, en route to investigate a high school stabbing, he received a call from the duty officer at the police station.

  “There’s no record that Tori was in a traffic accident either in New Mexico or Texas, and nothing about her being admitted to any hospital along the route she was driving.”

  Page breathed out in relief, but he knew what the report meant and what he was forced to do next-he didn’t see another option.

  “Put out a missing-person report.”

  6

  Early Thursday morning, the phone rang. Page set down his coffee cup and grabbed the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “Dan Page?” a man’s voice asked. It had a Southern accent and a raspy tone, as if it belonged to a smoker.

  “Speaking.” Page realized how tightly he held the phone.

  “This is Police Chief Roger Costigan in Rostov, Texas.”

  “Where?” Page’s mind swirled. He reached for a pen.

  “Rostov, Texas. We’re southeast of El Paso, about fifty miles from the Mexican border.”

  Page felt a knot in his stomach. “You found my wife?”

  “Victoria Page,” the voice said, as if reading from a list. “Caucasian. Five foot six. One hundred and twenty pounds. Red hair. Green eyes. Driving a dark-blue 2008 Saturn Outlook.” The voice gave the license number.

  “That’s her.” Page’s brow felt cold.

  “One of my officers spotted her car at the side of a road early this morning. He found her nearby.”

  Page had the sensation of holding his breath. “Is she…?”

  “She’s fine. You don’t need to worry on that score. She hasn’t been hurt. She wasn’t in any danger.”

  “No accident?”

  “No, sir.”

  “She hasn’t been injured?”

  “That’s correct, Mr. Page. She’s just fine.”

  Thank God, Page thought. But troubling questions immediately flooded through him.

  “If she wasn’t injured, then why was her car at the side of the road?”

  “That’s difficult to explain.”

  “I don’t understand. Is she there? Can you put her on the phone?”

  “No, sir. She isn’t with me.”

  “Then how can I talk to her?”

  “I guess that’s up to her,” the voice replied. “We told her you’re looking for her, but she didn’t react.”

  “You’re not making sense. Is she alone?”

  “As much as I can tell.”

  “Then what in God’s name is she doing in…” Page looked at the note he’d made. “Rostov, Texas?”

  “It’s a little complicated. You’ll understand better if I tell you in person. The main thing is, no law’s been broken. She’s here of her own free will.”

  “You say it’s better if you tell me in person?”

  “Maybe ‘show you’ would be more accurate.”

  “Why are you being so damned cryptic, Chief?”

  “I’m not trying to be. Believe me, this is an unusual situation. I’m afraid I can’t explain it over the phone. You’ll just have to see for yourself.”

  “Whatever the hell is going on, you can expect to show me this afternoon.”

  “Mr. Page, I’m afraid you’ll need a lot longer than that to get here. You’re in Santa Fe, right?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Well, our nearest major airport is in El Paso, and we’re a couple of hundred miles from there. There’s no way you can get here by this afternoon.”

  “Do you have any airport at all?”

  “There’s a little one that the ranchers use, but…”

  “Then I’ll see you at five o’clock.”

  7

  Page phoned the police station and told the duty officer that he couldn’t come to work that day and probably wouldn’t be in until Monday. He packed a suitcase, grabbed his flight bag, and drove to Santa Fe’s small airport. After carrying his luggage into a reception area, he said hello to a young woman behind a counter. She had the newspaper sitting on the counter in front of her, but before she could mention the front-page article, he turned left into a computer lounge, where he studied reports of the weather in New Mexico and Texas. The forecasts indicated a chance for thunderstorms in a couple of days but no immediate problems.

  The last thing he always did was look for announcements about prohibited areas. These warned pilots about airspace they weren’t al- lowed to enter, often because of security issues. A pilot who trespassed into a forbidden area was liable to find his or her plane flanked by fighter jets giving angry orders to land at the nearest airfield.

  There weren’t any flight restrictions in New Mexico, but Page was surprised to discover that the Rostov area of Texas did have one. Puzzled, he clicked a button to get more information and learned that the prohibition involved an array of radio astronomy dishes twenty miles northwest of the town. The concern wasn’t related to national security. Rather, the observatory was off-limits because planes flying over the dishes were liable to cause electrical interference that blocked at- tempts to collect radio signals from astronomical phenomena such as solar flares and spiral galaxies.

  Fine-I’ll just stay away from it, Page thought.

  He pulled charts from his flight bag and quickly plotted a course to Rostov. As Chief Costigan had told him, the town was a couple of hundred miles southeast of El Paso. Nowhere near San Antonio.

  His emotions in turmoil, Page stepped through a door onto the airport’s tie-down area. There, in warm sunlight, numerous small aircraft were secured to the concrete by ropes attached to their wings and tails. One of them was Page’s Cessna. Feeling the pressure of time, he warned himself to slow down as he inspected the plane’s exterior. After each flight, he always had the fuel tanks filled. Now he drained a small amount of fuel into a cup to assure himself that there weren’t any water bubbles or other contaminants.

  Stay focused, he told himself.

  After untying the plane, he got inside, attached his maps and flight plan to a clipboard strapped to his thigh, and took a deep breath.

  Pay attention, he thought. No matter how much I want to reach Tori, what matters now is the plane. Pay attention to flying the plane.

  He took another deep breath and went through his preflight checklist.

  What in God’s name is Tori doing in Rostov, Texas?

  He used his radio to ask the ground controller for permission to taxi to the takeoff area. Five minutes later-less than two hours after he’d received the phone call from Chief Costigan-he was in the air, flying to Texas.

  8

  The man with the M4 carbine stood in the shade of the small concrete-block building and savored the last of his cigarette. The temperature was a pleasant, dry 85 degrees, but habits from his two tours of duty in Iraq stayed with him, and he avoided direct sunlight as much as possible.

  Because it was midmorning and the sun was on the opposite side of the tiny building, Earl Halloway wasn’t able to enjoy the rugged majesty of the Davis Mountains to the north. Instead his view consisted of seemingly endless clumps of sparse brown grass.

  Tumbleweeds stuck to a chain-link fence fifty yards from him. The fence was twelve feet high and topped by barbed wire. Signs along it declared:

  SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AREA

  NO ADMITTANCE

  To Halloway’s left, nine huge radio observatory dishes were pointed in various directions toward the sky, and another was tilted so that it pointed horizontally. It had a t
ruck next to it, along with scaffolding and a small crane, as if it were undergoing repairs. The dishes could be seen from quite a distance, a conspicuous intrusion on the landscape.

  At the road ten miles away, a similar warning sign was attached to a locked gate that prevented access to the lane. People who stopped their cars to stare toward the far-off dishes usually lingered for only a short time until boredom prompted them to resume their journey.

  The chain-link fence was one of three around the dishes. It wasn’t electrified-nobody at the installation wanted the nuisance of dealing with ranchers whose cattle happened to wander up to the fence and get barbecued. Even so, there had never been a case of anyone being foolish enough to climb it. The second fence was constructed entirely of razor wire, and the third fence was electrified, its numerous prominent signs warning, DANGER! HIGH VOLTAGE!

  Halloway could have sat in an air-conditioned security room and watched monitors that would show any intruder’s futile attempt to get over the third fence. If such a thing ever happened, he and the other guards would go out afterward to clean up the mess. No smoking was permitted in the sterile facility, so his cigarette break was the only reason he ever needed to step outside. He justified his addiction by telling himself that cameras and monitors were no substitute for eyeballing the landscape in person to make sure everything was as peaceful as it seemed. After all, one of his fellow Army Rangers in Iraq had been a sniper who could disguise himself so well that an enemy could walk across a field and not know the sniper was there un- less the enemy stepped on him.

  This line of thought made Halloway uncomfortable. All he’d wanted was a peaceful smoke, and now he’d gotten himself brooding about snipers. Time to get back inside, he decided. After taking a final satisfying drag from his cigarette, he dropped it to the ground, crushed it with his boot, and gave the bleak vista a final assessment.

  Twenty miles to the southeast was a town called Rostov, but he’d never been to it-no one from the facility had ever been there. It was strictly off-limits. We don’t want them thinking about us, he’d been told emphatically when he’d signed on for what was supposed to be easy duty.

  But after three months of being confined here, Holloway couldn’t wait for his replacement to arrive-an event that was set to occur in just two weeks. Sure, the food was better than what he’d been given in Iraq. Plus the installation had alcohol, which he hadn’t been able to get in Iraq. He couldn’t complain about the Internet downloads of the latest movies, some of which weren’t yet available on DVD.

  But what he really wanted was to get laid.

  Thinking again about snipers, he tapped the security-code buttons on a pad next to the entrance. When he heard a buzz that indicated the lock had been freed, he opened the metal door and stepped in- side. Immediately the observatory’s filtered, cooled, sterile air encircled him. He shoved the heavy door back into place, making sure the electronic lock engaged. Then he unlocked a secondary door, stepped through, secured that one as well, and descended metal stairs that ended at a long corridor lit by a row of overhead lights.

  9

  The underground facility was large. A subtle vibration filled it.

  When Halloway had arrived three months earlier, he’d thought nothing of the vibration, but as the days had accumulated, he’d be- come increasingly sensitive to the faint, omnipresent hum that he suspected had something to do with the installation’s electrical generator-or else with the activity of the huge radio dishes. No one else seemed aware of it, but for him it had become distracting enough that, even though he’d taken to wearing earplugs when he went to bed, he wasn’t able to sleep soundly.

  He passed two doors on the left and turned right into a large room filled with numerous closed-circuit television monitors that showed every approach to the installation. The images were in color and displayed excellent definition. At night they had a green tint as heat sensors registered the difference between the rapidly cooling grassland and the constant temperature of animals or human beings.

  His counterpart on this shift, a man with large, strong hands, sat in a metal chair and flipped through a sports magazine, occasionally glancing at the screens. It was poor discipline, but after months of in- activity, Halloway understood how hard it was to keep staring at those damned monitors.

  “Smoking’s bad for your health,” the man said without looking up. His name was Taggard.

  “So’s getting shot at. I figured a bullet was more to worry about than a cigarette.”

  “This isn’t Iraq.”

  “Thanks for the geography lesson. Putting on weight isn’t good for you, either, but that hasn’t stopped you from mainlining those candy bars you keep in your desk. How many do you eat a day? Ten? Fifteen?”

  Taggard chuckled. With so little to do, they’d taken to ribbing each other constantly. “Yeah, I really ought to be on the Stairmaster instead of reading these magazines. I’ll get on that first thing tomorrow.”

  “I’m going to take a leak,” Halloway said.

  “After that, maybe you could sit here a while and let me wander around.”

  Now it was Halloway’s turn to chuckle.

  He stepped back out into the corridor and went farther along. On the left, an open door was marked DATA ANALYSIS. Through the opening, he heard static and peered in at a bored, bald, bespectacled researcher who studied a computer screen. All kinds of electronic equipment occupied the numerous shelves that lined the walls around the room. Red indicator lights glowed, and needles pulsed. One device provided a visual depiction of the static, which looked like chaotically shifting dots. The sound was harsh and brittle and re- minded Halloway of a radio searching for a hard-to-find station.

  Which is pretty much what’s going on, he concluded.

  The subtle vibration intensified, giving Halloway the start of a headache.

  “It sounds a little different than yesterday,” he said, causing the man with the glasses to look up.

  “Hello, Earl,” the researcher answered. “Yes, there’s more activity, and it’s getting louder. There’s been a general increase all week.”

  “What do you figure is going on?”

  “Probably nothing. Sometimes the static seems to be accumulating toward something. Then it backs off. According to the computer, that’s been the rhythm ever since this observatory was built fifteen years ago.” The researcher turned toward a sequence of knobs. “I’ll realign the dish and see if the pattern gains any definition. Monitoring local ambient electrical discharge is a good way to see if the equipment’s functioning properly.”

  Halloway was aware that the dish the scientist referred to was the one tilted toward the horizon, as if undergoing repairs. He had no doubt, however, that the dish was pointed exactly where it was sup- posed to be-southeast, toward an area near Rostov.

  In theory, the dishes gathered radio pulses from deep space and coordinated them. A lot of heavenly bodies generated them, the researcher had explained, and a lot were still echoing from the Big Bang. A complex computer program translated the signals into images that looked like photographs, depicting nebulae, novas, black holes, and other astronomical wonders.

  Halloway hadn’t known what any of that meant when he’d arrived at the installation three months earlier, but the sameness of each day had bored the researcher enough that he was happy to explain how a radio observatory worked. Despite the explanations, Halloway had no illusions about what was really going on. A radio observatory didn’t need razor wire and high-voltage fences. The M4 with which he and the other guards were equipped was one of the best assault carbines on the planet, complete with a grenade launcher and a laser sighting system. That was a hell of a lot of security to protect a facility that studied black holes.

  Even before a helicopter had transported him to this remote area of west Texas, Halloway had been convinced that this felt like a spook operation rather than a project for the National Science Foundation. Within days of his arrival, he’d seen enough to use his laptop to Go
ogle information about how radio observatories could be employed by espionage agencies. He’d become convinced that the dishes above this huge bunker weren’t pointed at nebulae, novas, and black holes. They were aimed at satellites that scooped radio signals from the atmosphere.

  They were also aimed at the moon. Radio signals all over the world “leaked” into outer space, his Internet research had informed him. The moon intercepted many of those signals, however, and a properly focused radio observatory could collect them as they bounced back to Earth. By sorting through the various frequencies and choosing those favored by major terrorist organizations or foreign governments hostile to the United States, a facility like this could relay valuable information to intelligence analysts in places such as Fort Meade, near Washington, D.C.

  Halloway hadn’t picked that location at random. Fort Meade, he knew, was the headquarters of the National Security Agency. Yes, this was a damned spook operation, he was sure of it, but if the technician-whose name was Gordon-wanted to keep lying, claiming it was a scientific project that mapped deep space, Halloway was fine with that. The little game they played was about the only thing that interested him. That and the mystery of why one dish was aimed horizontally toward Rostov. The technician could jabber all he wanted to about “monitoring local ambient electrical discharge.”

  Give me a fucking break, Halloway thought. Something’s going on near Rostov, and a lot of this billion-dollar facility is being used to try to figure out what it is.

  10

  Page landed midroute at the airport outside Roswell, New Mexico. The sun-baked area was where the American UFO craze had begun in 1947, when a rancher had discovered debris from a large fallen object that the military described first as a flying disc and then as a weather bal- loon. The different explanations may simply have been an example of flawed communication, but conspiracy theorists had seized on those differences to claim a government cover-up. Ever since then, Roswell had become the unofficial UFO capital of the world, so much so that every Fourth of July the town had a UFO Festival where skeptics and so-called experts debated while actors from science fiction movies signed autographs and enthusiasts dressed up as “little green men.”