The Shimmer

by David Morrell

  “That isn’t going to happen,” Page said. Before he could say anything more, a phone rang in the office.

  “Gotta get back to work.” The gangly clerk ran toward the door.

  As it banged shut, Page took another look toward the road, hoping their conversation might have given Tori time to catch up. But there was no sign of the Saturn. More clouds had gathered, filling the sky. His side ached when he carried his suitcase into the room.

  If things had been different, it would have felt good to shave and shower, to get the smell of the smoke and the violence off him, but all Page thought was that he could bear anything-even what had happened the previous night-if only Tori had followed him to the motel as she’d said she would. If only she hadn’t left him again.

  If only she didn’t have cancer.

  The bruise where he’d been kicked was larger than he’d expected, dark purple ringed with orange. Trying to ignore it, he put on a fresh pair of jeans and another denim shirt. Kind of predictable, pal. He took the 9-millimeter pistol out of his suitcase, removed the magazine, made sure it was full, and checked to make sure there was a round in the firing chamber. You examined it before you left the house yesterday, he thought, aware that people whose occupation involved carrying a gun tended to display obsessive-compulsive behavior.

  Or maybe he just needed to narrow his thoughts.

  The gun was a Sig Sauer 225. It held eight rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. Not a lot of firepower compared to pistols with double-stacked magazines, but the 225’s virtue was its compact size. He considered it an ideal concealed-carry pistol. The company didn’t make them any longer, and this particular gun had belonged to his father.

  He holstered it on his belt, put on a windbreaker to conceal it, grabbed a baseball cap from his suitcase, and opened the door, ready to go looking for Tori, although he knew where he’d find her: the viewing area.

  About to get into his car, he heard tires crunching on gravel and looked toward the road, surprised to see the blue Saturn coming through the parking lot toward him. Tori’s red hair was vivid through the windshield. When she stopped in front of unit 11, his knees felt weak.

  “I figured you’d left me behind,” he said through the open window.

  She showed him a paper bag. “I got this for you.”

  Page almost frowned in confusion before he smelled the food.

  “You said you hadn’t eaten since yesterday. I hope a burger and fries work for you. Anything else would have taken too long.”

  “They’re perfect.” Emotion made his knees more unsteady. “Thanks.”

  “You need to keep up your energy. This’ll be another long night.”

  “Thanks. Really. I mean it.”

  “Get in,” she said impatiently.

  He did so, and pulled off the baseball cap.

  “Better put this on. Reporters are looking for a woman with red hair.”

  She nodded and took it.

  As she drove, Page bit into the hamburger and recalled uneasily that this was what he and Chief Costigan had eaten the evening before.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “When I see the lights again, everything’ll be fine. They’ll make me forget what happened last night.”

  “The trick is to distract your mind by paying attention to the small details. But I wasn’t thinking about last night. How are you feeling?”

  Tori hesitated. “I never realized anything was wrong with me until the doctor phoned to tell me the results of my mammogram. Now I’m so self-conscious that I swear I can feel the thing growing in me.”

  “On Tuesday, it’ll be gone.”

  “I’d like to just reach in and claw it out with my fingers.”

  “I love you.”

  Tori looked at him. “You said that last night, too.”

  Ahead, three TV news helicopters were silhouetted against the dark, cloudy sky. Vehicles were parked along both sides of the road. Taking his own advice, Page distracted himself by paying attention to small details and looked to the right toward the ruin of the World War II airbase.

  He saw someone unlocking a gate. The man wore sturdy shoes, loose-fitting pants, a T-shirt, and an overshirt that hung below his belt. He was in his forties, bald and sinewy, with rigid shoulders and an air of authority. When he motioned for two dark Chevy Surburbans to drive onto the property, he had the manner of someone who was used to giving orders.

  There was now a second sign on the gate.

  “Tori, I want to check something. Please stop for a second.”

  She looked at him reluctantly but applied the brakes as they came close to the gate. Page lowered his window and leaned out to get a better view in the dwindling sunset.

  The older sign warned:

  PROPERTY OF U.S. MILITARY

  DANGER

  HAZARDOUS CHEMICALS

  UNEXPLODED ORDNANCE

  The new one announced:

  SOON TO BE

  AN ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

  RECLAMATION SITE

  The authoritative man stepped through the gate, locked it, and noticed Page.

  “Parking’s not allowed on this property.” He pointed toward the signs. “Restricted area.”

  Page waved to indicate he understood.

  Another man got out of one of the vans. He had a German shepherd on a leash. The authoritative man just stood there, staring at the car until Tori drove on.

  “What was that about?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure.” Page looked back and watched as the two Suburbans drove toward the collapsed, weed-choked, rusted airplane hangars.

  Finally he couldn’t see them any longer, so he directed his attention ahead, toward the crowd. As Tori neared it, Page noticed that the county had brought a half-dozen more portable toilets. But they weren’t going to be enough. The crowd filled the entire parking lot all the way to the fence, onlookers standing where corpses had lain the previous night. People were on the road, forcing Tori to steer into the opposite lane. Medrano and other Highway Patrol officers struggled to keep order.

  Tori parked at the end of the line of cars. Costigan’s windbreaker was on the front seat, and she snatched it up as she stepped from the Saturn. But as she stared toward the crowd a hundred yards up the road, she faltered.

  “You okay?” Page asked.

  “Too many people. I don’t think I want to go any farther.”

  “Fine. We don’t need to do anything you don’t want to.”

  “Maybe I can see the lights just as well from here,” Tori said uneasily. “Maybe the viewing area’s only an arbitrary spot.”

  “Why don’t we stay here and find out?” Page suggested.

  “Yes.” She shivered and put on the windbreaker. “After last night, I don’t want to go near a crowd.”

  33

  Raleigh waited at the fence until the blue Saturn drove on.

  There were several troubling things about the man who’d leaned out the window to read the new sign that explained his team’s presence here. The man’s features were guarded, revealing nothing about what he thought. His hair was short-not military short but shorter and neater than was common among civilians. And his eyes were attentive, as if he analyzed everything he saw.

  Definitely not just a tourist, Raleigh thought.

  He kept waiting until the Saturn was obscured by the long line of cars that were parked along the side of the road. Then he turned to the dog trainer who had the German shepherd on a short leash.

  “Put the fear of God into anybody who tries to come over that fence.”

  As the trainer turned on his flashlight, Raleigh walked ahead of the two dark Suburbans, their only illumination coming from parking lights. He motioned for them to follow, leading them along what had once been a heavily traveled dirt road, its furrows now cluttered with weeds.

  After a hundred yards, the last rays of sunset showed a wide row of collapsed airplane hangars to the left. Their corrugated metal ha
d long since rusted. Scrub brush grew among them. Dirt had drifted against them. A lot of this was the work of nature, but some of it had been deliberately arranged to make the ruin look more dilapidated than it actually was.

  Raleigh held up his hand, signaling for the vehicles to stop. He surveyed the old runway. Its concrete was visible only here and there, most of it covered with dirt. Weeds grew where numerous cracks had been baked into the pavement by the sun.

  His grandfather had once stood here. It made Raleigh feel tremendously proud that a circle was about to close, that a mission his grand- father had started so long ago was finally about to be accomplished.

  In World War II, when the hangars and the runway were freshly constructed, this would have been a scene of intense noise and activity, enough to make one’s heart pound. Hundreds of airmen had trained here every month, practicing bombing runs and aerial dog- fights in a place so remote that only the cattle, coyotes, and jack – rabbits were inconvenienced by the commotion. But training airmen had just been the cover story.

  A breeze swept dust across the decay. When the darkness was thick enough to conceal them from prying eyes, Raleigh pointed toward a hangar that seemed less collapsed than the others. The Suburbans followed, and he tugged away a section of corrugated metal, revealing a space large enough to allow a vehicle to enter the hangar.

  Once they were inside, Raleigh pulled out a flashlight and examined a thirty-foot-high pile of debris that appeared to be the result of a clean-up effort long ago. Pushing aside some of the debris, he un- covered the edge of a camouflaged radio dish that was aimed toward a similar dish at the observatory. After verifying that the dish hadn’t been disturbed, he edged behind some of the debris and pushed a button.

  A portion of the concrete floor rumbled as it descended to form a ramp. Lights shone up from below, activated by the same button. His footsteps crunching on dirt, Raleigh walked down the ramp into a rush of cool underground air. The Suburbans followed him slowly, and the moment they reached the bottom, he stepped to a wall, where he pushed another button. The ramp ascended, becoming part of the ceiling.

  As the men clambered out of the vehicle, Raleigh said, “Sergeant, assemble the team.”

  Seconds later, they stood in a row before him.

  “Gentlemen.” His voice reverberated off the concrete walls. “You’re beneath Hangar 8 of an airfield that was a training facility for U.S. military flight teams during World War II. The hangar and this area weren’t part of that effort, however. Only personnel with top-secret clearance were allowed in the hangar, and even fewer were allowed down here. The explanation was that the prototype for a new bomber was being assembled in the hangar and readied for testing. Trainees cycled through the program so quickly that they never stayed long enough to wonder why the bomber wasn’t completed and flown.

  “You’re familiar with the race to develop the atomic bomb during the Second World War. The location for that project’s main research facility, Los Alamos, was on a remote, difficult-to-reach mesa in New Mexico. This underground area enjoyed similar advantages and had a similar purpose. If it seems out of the way now, imagine how truly out of the way it was in 1943, when the project began. The objective was to develop a weapon quite different from the atomic bomb. In a way, Hangar 8 and Los Alamos were racing against one another as well as the enemy. Of course Los Alamos won the race. In fact, the first atomic bomb was detonated at what’s now called the White Sands Missile Range, just two hundred and fifty miles north of here, and after two of those bombs ended the war in the Pacific, the urgency to develop a parallel weapon lost its force.”

  Raleigh chose his next words with care. “In addition, there were what might be called difficulties in conducting the research here.”

  Difficulties, indeed.

  Raleigh looked around the subterranean chamber. Even after all these years, rust-colored smears were visible on the walls, but they had nothing to do with rust.

  “With the end of the war, there was no longer any need to train massive numbers of military flight teams, and the cover story lost its effectiveness. So for a number of reasons, the airfield was shut down. Except for this underground facility, the base was allowed to deteriorate. This area wasn’t exposed to the elements, however, and apart from minor water damage, it adjusted extremely well to remaining in hibernation. Indeed, from time to time, it received maintenance checks in case its mission should ever be reactivated. Fifteen years ago, I did exactly that.

  “I reactivated it.”

  34

  “Anita, are you sure this angle will work?”

  Brent raised his voice so that he could be heard above the noisy crowd. He and his camerawoman stood on top of a Winnebago motor home that the owner-a local car dealer-had agreed to let them use in exchange for free publicity.

  Like Brent, Anita had gotten only a few hours of sleep since coming to Rostov. There’d been too many people to interview, too many locations to scout. Her eyes looked heavy under her baseball cap. Her outdoor clothes, with their numerous pockets, seemed even more baggy than when they’d started.

  My suit looks worse, Brent thought. A day earlier, that would have depressed him, but now-as he peered down at his scuffed, dusty shoes-he almost smiled at the new image he was creating for himself.

  “You’ll be on the right side of the screen,” Anita answered. “The horizon’ll be on your left.” She looked so tired, he wondered how she had the strength to keep the heavy camera balanced on her shoulder. “It’s a clear shot. If we tried this on the ground, the crowd would get in the way, but from high up like this, they won’t be in the shot at all unless you ask me to tilt down.”

  “Perfect. Stay focused on me unless I indicate otherwise. Tell Jack and the guy in the chopper to keep their cameras panning across the crowd the entire time, just in case something happens.”

  “In case what happens?”

  “Just make sure they’re ready. And I definitely want a shot of that guy.” Brent pointed down toward a tall, gray-bearded man who wore a biblical robe, held a staff, and looked like Charlton Heston playing Moses in The Ten Commandments.

  He frowned toward the east, where the dark clouds were getting thicker. That rain better wait until I finish the broadcast, he thought.

  “Okay, time to prep a guest.”

  “Button your shirt. Straighten your tie,” Anita advised.

  “No way.” Brent rubbed his bristly whisker shadow. “I want CNN to see how hard I’m working.”

  “How hard we’re all working.”

  “Right.”

  At dawn, after a night of chasing interviews, Brent had experienced a moment of powerful inspiration when he’d seen his reflection in a car window and cringed at how terrible he looked. He’d been reminded of an old black-and-white movie about a reporter racing against the clock to prove the innocence of a prisoner about to be electrocuted on Death Row. In the movie, the reporter barely had time to eat, let alone change clothes and shave. At the end of the movie, when he burst into the governor’s office with the proof, he looked like he’d suffered through hell to get the story.

  At that moment, the idea had hit him: How can the viewers, or the CNN brass, know how hard I’m working if I make it look easy? I’ve been doing this wrong. What viewer gives a shit if I’m wearing a perfectly pressed suit? Most of them don’t even own a sports coat. For them, wearing jeans is dressing up.

  I’ve got to make them realize that I’m one of them-that I’m killing myself to get the story for them.

  And with that epiphany, he had done a complete about-face.

  In addition to exhaustion, Brent suffered from too much coffee and not enough real food. Doughnuts and tacos had been just about all he’d eaten, always on the go. Except for when he drove with Anita, he never had a chance to sit down, and even then, he wasn’t resting. He was making hurried notes or using his cell phone-which wasn’t easy since the reception here was for shit.

  He couldn’t let up. He needed to make sure
he got to anybody who might have even the slightest information to contribute, and he had to get there before the other reporters. He wanted everyone else feeling behind the curve, certain that anything they did would look like an imitation of what he’d already accomplished.

  But there was a cost. His stomach had a sharp, burning sensation. His hands had a slight tremor. He felt light-headed from exhaustion and lack of food.

  Legs stiff, he climbed down the ladder to the crowd below. The noise of so many impatient conversations gave him a headache. The day light was gone now, and the sky was black and starless, but there were plenty of other sources of illumination: headlights, spotlights set up by the authorities and the television crews, flashlights carried by the curious. Brightly lit figures cast stark shadows, lending the scene a surreal quality.

  His coanchor, Sharon, waited for him at the bottom of the ladder, her big hair sprayed perfectly into place. Anger made her more beautiful.

  “Well, I’ve got to give you credit,” she said crisply. “You finally got what you wanted-you really screwed me today.”

  “Was it as good for you as it was for me?”

  Someone bumped against them, shoving through the crowd.

  “Keep going,” a woman urged her male companion. “We can’t see anything from back here. Get close to the fence.”

  “I was supposed to be the one giving the reports to CNN,” Sharon complained. “I was supposed to anchor today’s broadcasts, all by myself.”