“The bizarre circumstances of his rampage prompted many people to start their weekend early and come here to satisfy their curiosity about the unexplained lights that ignited the killer’s frenzy. Those lights have been seen in this area for as long as anyone can re- member. Tonight, during our special live broadcast at 9, I’ll do my best to show them to you and explain what they are. Before then, Sharon Rivera and I will coanchor expanded editions of our 5 and 6 o’clock broadcasts. The bystander who shot the killer was a woman. The police haven’t released her identity, but I’ll do everything I can to find out who she is and be the first to talk to her. This is Brent Loft. I’ll see you at…”
“Shit,” Page said.
He looked out the window. The previous evening, the road in front of the motel had been almost deserted. Now a stream of vehicles went past, heading to the right, in the direction of the observation platform.
Page realized that Tori’s car keys were still in his jeans. He rushed from the office, got into the Saturn, and waited for a break in traffic that allowed him to go in the opposite direction, into town. That side of the road was deserted.
The previous evening, the Rib Palace’s parking lot had been only half full, but now it was crammed with vehicles, few of which were pickup trucks. A lot of the cars had rental-company envelopes on the dashboards. Police cruisers were bunched together at one end.
Page hurried inside, where a wave of noisy conversation swept over him. After scanning the animated people at tables and in booths, he caught a glimpse of red hair on his left and noticed Tori sitting at the counter, drinking coffee. An empty plate was in front of her. All the seats were taken, but she was at the counter’s end, so he was able to go over and stand next to her.
She glanced in his direction but didn’t say anything. He couldn’t tell if she looked troubled because of last night or because he stood next to her.
“Are you okay?” He kept his voice low.
“You have my car keys.”
“Last night I put them in my jeans by mistake. Sorry.” He gave them to her.
“You were sleeping so hard, I didn’t want to wake you by searching through your pockets,” Tori said.
“It would’ve been okay. I wouldn’t have minded being wakened. We need to…”
“Talk. Yes.” Tori reached in her purse and put money on a check that the waiter had left.
The smell of hamburgers and French fries filled the air, reminding Page that the last meal he’d eaten had been the night before, but food was the last thing he cared about as he followed her outside.
“Where’s my car?” she asked in the parking lot.
“Over there. The second row.”
More vehicles drove past, heading in the direction of the observation platform.
When Tori got behind the steering wheel, Page took the passenger seat, assuming they would sit in the parking lot while he did his best to get her to explain why she’d left him. Instead she started the car and steered toward the road. She found a gap in traffic and joined the vehicles going toward the observation platform. She didn’t say a word.
“Please,” Page said, “help me understand.”
“I have breast cancer,” Tori replied.
Page suddenly felt cold. In shock, he managed to ask, “How bad?”
“I’m having surgery this coming Tuesday. In San Antonio.”
“San Antonio?”
“My Santa Fe oncologist set it up. The plan is to rest at my mother’s house, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell her over the phone. I wanted to do it in person.”
Page’s balance tilted dizzily. “Why didn’t you tell me? How long have you known?”
“The biopsy results came back a week ago.”
“You had a biopsy?” Page asked. “I had no idea.”
“In my oncologist’s office. I didn’t need to go to the hospital-she did it with a hypodermic. After you left for the airport on Tuesday, she called to tell me when the surgery was scheduled.”
“So you just packed your bags and left?” Page couldn’t adjust to his bewilderment. “Why didn’t you talk to me about it? You know I’ll give you all the support you need.”
Tori drove slowly, held back by the line of cars. After a few minutes, she spoke again. “My doctor thinks we found the cancer in time. She thinks surgery, combined with radiation, will get rid of it.”
“Under the circumstances, that’s the best news you could have.”
“I didn’t tell you about it because…” Tori drew a breath. “Because I’m tired of feeling alone.”
“Alone?” Page felt something in him plummet. “I don’t understand.”
“We live in the same house, but I’m not sure we live together. When you come home from work, I ask how your shift went, and you recite a list of crimes that you investigated.”
“That’s how my shifts usually go.”
“It’s the way you tell me, cold and flat, as if your shift happened to somebody else and you’re disgusted with the world.”
“Dealing with terrible things day after day has that effect.”
“As often as not, after work you go to a bar and drink with other cops. Do you talk with them about the crimes you investigated?”
“It’s not like group therapy or anything. We just drink a few beers and tell jokes or whatever.”
“Lately you do it after every shift. When you finally get home, we eat something I made in the crockpot. Otherwise the food would burn or get cold because I never know when you’ll actually come through the door. Instead of talking, we eat in front of the television. While you keep watching television, I go to bed and read.”
“But that’s what you like to do,” he protested. “You enjoy reading.”
“I’m not trying to place blame,” Tori said. “Each of us is who we are. On the days you’re not working, you go to the airport. As you told me once, nonpilots think flying a plane is all about feeling free and enjoying the scenery. But you like to fly because there’s so much involved in handling a plane, you can’t think about anything else. You can’t let the emotions of your job distract you while you’re control- ling the aircraft. That’s your defense against the world.
“When I learned about my cancer, I imagined the clamped-down look you’d get when I told you-the look you always get when you have emotions you don’t want to deal with. I decided I couldn’t go on that way. If I had a disease that might kill me, I didn’t want to feel alone any longer. Going to the airport is your escape. Tuesday morning, after my doctor called, I decided to escape in a different way.”
The car became silent.
Needing to distract himself, Page looked toward the sky, where clouds drifted in from the east. He glanced to the right. Beyond a barbed-wire fence, he saw the collapsed, rusted hangars from the military airstrip that had been shut down at the end of World War II. Vehicles were parked along the fence. Ahead, the procession continued, but some of the cars turned into the opposite lane and parked along the other side of the road. A glance toward the side mirror revealed cars stretched out behind the Saturn, some of which were pulling off and parking wherever they found gaps.
Tori broke the silence. “That’s why I grabbed at the memory of the lights. When I sat in that coffee shop outside El Paso and noticed Rostov on the map, the excitement of seeing those lights came back to me. Before I knew it, I couldn’t wait to get here and see them again. It’s been a long time since I felt that kind of emotion.”
“I feel as if I’m being compared to the way your father behaved that night.”
“Not at all. You’re a kind, decent man. My father was impatient and harsh. You’re nothing like that. But I need someone who feels positive.”
Page thought of the five children and the female driver who’d died in the head-on collision. He thought of the driver of the gasoline tanker who’d burned to death. He thought of his friend who’d been shot to death by the man who’d crashed into the gasoline tanker.
He couldn’t free
his memory of all the people who’d been shot the previous night.
And now Tori had cancer.
“Feel positive?” He shook his head. “I’m not sure I know how to do that. But I saw the lights, too. That’s got to count for something.”
Tori didn’t respond.
“We’ll watch them together,” Page said, hoping. “I’ll learn from you.”
He heard the distant rumble of helicopters. Ahead, three of them hovered a safe distance apart. The choppers all had large letters on the undersides identifying the television stations to which they belonged. Their nose cameras were aimed at the line of vehicles.
Near the observation platform, a crowd faced barricades and the police officers who guarded them. Someone sold food from a van marked BEST TACOS IN TEXAS. Reporters stood in front of cameras next to news trucks with broadcast dishes on top. Page recognized the reporter he’d seen on the television at the motel office, the one with the rumpled suit.
“Tori, don’t stop,” he warned. “The TV people know a woman shot the killer. Sooner or later, they’ll find out it was you. They’ll never let you alone.”
But she didn’t seem to hear. All she did was stare toward the field where she’d seen the lights.
“They’re ruining it,” she said.
27
As the sun began its descent, the Black Hawk helicopter sped through the sky at 160 miles per hour. Ignoring the muffled vibration of the engines, Col. Warren Raleigh glanced to the left toward where the Davis Mountains stretched along the horizon. A moment later, he peered ahead toward clouds drifting in from the direction of the Gulf of Mexico.
Below, cattle grazed on sparse grassland that seemed to go on forever.
“Big country.” The pilot’s voice came through Raleigh’s headset.
“Some ranchers down there own a half-million acres,” Raleigh said into his microphone. “Lots of privacy.”
At 6 that morning, Raleigh and his team had flown from Glen Burnie Airport near the NSA’s headquarters in Fort Meade, Mary- land. Their aircraft had been a Falcon 2000 owned by INSCOM but registered to a fictitious civilian corporation. It flew them two-thirds of the way across the continent to the Army airbase at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. There they’d picked up equipment that Raleigh had ordered to be ready for them. They’d also added two members to their team. One was human-an Army dog handler. The other was a German shepherd.
The helicopter they’d transferred to was unarmed. In its cargo- transport configuration, without the dramatic-looking missile launchers and Gatling guns, it wouldn’t attract any more attention than most other helicopters, Raleigh thought, especially in an area where the majority of eyes that would see it belonged to cattle and coyotes.
He glanced at his watch. “We should be there just about now.”
“Exactly on schedule, sir.” The pilot gestured ahead toward a gleam of white.
The ten radio dishes grew rapidly larger. It had been three years since Raleigh had visited this facility. He’d personally supervised the installation of the new equipment and arranged for one of the dishes to be aimed toward an area near Rostov. Now he was impatient to return.
Through his headset, he heard Sergeant Lockhart telling the men, “One minute to touchdown.”
Raleigh watched the dishes get closer. Each was so huge that it dwarfed the combat helicopter. As an array, though, they were beyond huge. The only word that occurred to Raleigh was “monumental.” Not easily impressed, he found their intense whiteness to be awesome.
When the helicopter descended past the three concentric rows of fences, its whirling blades created a dust storm. He felt the skids touchdown and the helicopter’s weight settle. Then the speed of the blades diminished, their sound becoming a whistle, and Lockhart opened the rear hatch, motioning the men to grab their packs and hurry out.
Raleigh returned the pilot’s salute and jumped to the ground, joining his team a safe distance from the swirling dust. As the chopper lifted off and headed back toward Fort Bliss, a second Black Hawk appeared on the horizon.
The eight men were in their midtwenties. Their hair was short but not to the extent that they seemed obviously military. Each wore sturdy shoes, slightly oversized jeans, a T-shirt, and a loose outdoor shirt that hung over his belt, concealing a Beretta 9-millimeter pistol. That handgun wasn’t a match for Raleigh’s beloved M4, but until somebody figured out a practical way to conceal a carbine, the pistol would have to do. Besides, there were several M4s in the crates of equipment he’d ordered.
Apart from the magnificent observatory dishes, the only above- ground structure was a concrete-block shed from which two guards wearing khaki uniforms emerged into the sunlight. They held their carbines in a deceptively casual way, but Raleigh noted that they could make the weapons operational in an instant.
One of the guards had strained features, as if he were in pain.
“‘I hear a voice you cannot hear,’” the man said.
Under other circumstances, his seemingly deranged statement would have made Raleigh frown, but instead he immediately replied, “‘Which says I must not stay.’”
The guard continued, “‘I see a hand you cannot see.’”
“‘Which beckons me away,’” Raleigh said.
With the code recognition completed, the guard saluted. “Welcome to the facility, Colonel.”
“Your name is…?”
“Earl Halloway, sir.”
Raleigh remembered the name from documents he’d read en route. “Saw combat in Iraq. Former Army Ranger. Correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then there’s no need to salute me any longer.”
“It’s a good habit, sir.”
“Indeed it is. In case you’re curious, those lines come from an eighteenth-century English poet: Thomas Tickell.”
“I’m afraid I never heard of him, sir.”
“Nobody has. Posterity wasn’t kind to him.” But it’ll be kind to me, Raleigh thought. “You look uncomfortable, Earl. Is anything wrong?”
“Just a headache, sir. It’s nothing. I took some aspirin. It’s going away.”
But the tight expression on his face made Raleigh think the head- ache was doing anything but fading.
The second chopper interrupted them, roaring over the fences and setting down where the first had been. The moment the dust settled, the trainer got out with the German shepherd. Staying clear of the dog, the team hurried to unload wooden crates.
“Earl,” the colonel said.
“Yes, sir?”
“When I radioed ahead, I gave instructions for the two Suburbans in the underground garage to be ready to go.”
“It’s been taken care of, sir,” Halloway responded. “They’re out back.”
“Then all we need is for you to give us the keys.”
Halloway hesitated. “You might want to come inside first, sir.”
“Oh?” Raleigh frowned. “Why would I want to do that?”
“There’s something you should know about.” He looked even more pained. “If I’m right, sir, you’re here because of the music.”
“The music?” Raleigh was astonished. “You actually know about the music?” How bad has security gotten out here? he wondered.
“I heard it last night, sir.”
“You heard it?”
“And not long afterward, you contacted us to say you were coming, so I figured there was a connection. The radio dish that’s angled to- ward Rostov.”
“Make your point, Halloway.”
“I’m guessing it’s aimed toward whatever caused the music.”
Raleigh was stunned. One of the military’s most secret projects and this former Army sergeant was talking about it as if it were common knowledge.
He tried not to reveal how disturbed he felt.
“All right, Earl, show me what you think I should see.”
Leaving the team outside to prepare the vehicles, Raleigh followed the guard into the small concrete-block buildi
ng. After passing through the two security doors, they went down an echoing metal stairwell into the glowing lights and the filtered, cool air of the underground facility. As they entered a surveillance room, Raleigh heard a voice that he at first suspected belonged to another guard. But then he scanned the numerous monitors that showed the area around the dishes, and to his surprise, one of the screens turned out to be a television set.
“You watch TV in here?” He made no attempt to hide his displeasure.
The screen showed a crowd in front of police barricades. In the foreground, a reporter in a rumpled suit held a microphone and faced a camera.
“What the hell is going on?” Raleigh demanded.
“They started broadcasting this on the early-morning news. You were probably in the air by then, so you didn’t hear about it. Twenty people were shot to death last night.”
“Bad things happen all the time. Why should it concern me?”
Earl pointed toward the reporter on the television. “This guy was the first reporter on the scene. He kept talking about the lights, what- ever they are.”
“The lights?” Raleigh stepped closer to the television. “Wait a minute. You’re telling me the shootings happened in Rostov?”
“Five miles away from it at what they call the observation plat- form. Apparently the gunman went crazy because of the lights. He started screaming, ‘You’re all going to hell,’ and opened fire on a bunch of tourists.”
Raleigh’s muscles tightened. It’s happening again, he thought.
“That reporter made a big deal about the lights being the reason for the killings, and all the other reporters followed his lead,” Halloway went on. “Now people are coming from every direction to try to see them. The town’s turned into a zoo. If you’re headed over there, I thought you’d want to know.”
The Shimmer Page 10