Music? Brent thought.
“I told you to get out of here!” the guard shouted. “But you had to keep pushing! You had to keep me from the music!”
What in God’s name is he talking about? Brent wondered.
“Trespassers will be prosecuted! That’s what the sign says!”
More bullets sprayed dirt above Brent’s head.
“And as soon as I get these gates open, I’ll prosecute you to hell!”
Brent crawled toward Anita, whose dark skin should never have looked so pale. He untucked the pen that bound the tourniquet and loosened the cloth, grimacing at the sight of the blood that flowed from her left arm.
“Need to free the circulation from time to time. Otherwise you might get gangrene.”
“Too much information,” she said weakly.
“Sorry.”
“Cold.” Anita turned her head to the side and made vomiting noises, but nothing came from her stomach. “Heart’s racing. Think I’m in shock.”
Brent retightened the tourniquet. He strained to push a large rock toward her, propping her sneakers on it. “This is supposed to help.”
“Where’d you learn all this?”
“I did a story about an emergency first-aid team.”
“And now you’re an expert? Lord, I wish I hadn’t asked. The cam- era.” Breathing rapidly, Anita noticed that Brent had set it down so that it pointed toward them. The red light was on. “You’re recording us?”
“Don’t you want to be a star?”
For a moment, Brent thought he heard an approaching engine. His pulse raced with the hope that the police had heard the explosions and were coming. But at once the faint drone stopped, and he feared he’d imagined it.
He picked up the camera and hoped that the smoke and flames would shield him as he hurried to the front of the burning van. Staying back from the heat, he aimed the camera along the side and focused on the guard, who stood before the inside gate. He seemed to be studying it.
He’s not sure if the fence still has any juice to it, Brent realized. When the helicopter crashed onto the fence, did it cut off the electricity, or will he get fried if he touches the gate?
The guard evidently decided not to take the chance. He swung to- ward the shed, ran past the truck piled with corpses, and vanished through the doorway.
“Anita!” Brent rushed over to her. “He went inside! I think he’s shutting off the electricity to the fence. If I’m right, he’ll soon come for us. Hurry! We need to move!”
She licked her dry lips and nodded. “Help me up.”
After he lifted her, she hooked her unwounded right arm around his neck. He linked his left arm around her waist. Holding the camera with his right hand, he helped her waver along the dirt road.
59
The elevation of Rostov’s airport was five thousand feet. Page climbed three thousand five hundred feet higher than that and headed west along the county road that, according to his aerial map, formed one boundary of the observatory’s prohibited airspace. That altitude provided a good perspective on the flat, sparse grassland off to the right.
Tori adjusted the microphone on her headset.
“Two columns of smoke.” She pointed.
Even at a distance, the white observatory dishes were obvious, including the one that was tilted sideways and aimed toward the south- east. One section of smoke was on the left side of the dishes, very close to them. The other was in front of the dishes, rising from a dirt lane that led from the observatory to the county road.
The dark smoke reminded Page uncomfortably of the gasoline tanker he’d seen explode in Santa Fe, just four days earlier.
As he guided the Cessna along the boundary road, he and Tori came parallel to the fires on their right, gaining a closer view. She removed binoculars from Page’s flight bag and peered through them, adjusting their focus.
“Wreckage near the dishes.” She sounded more troubled. “Rotor blades. Looks like a helicopter crashed.” She aimed the binoculars to- ward the lane. “The other fire’s coming from a vehicle. A van. It’s got a dish on it. Looks like a television news van.”
Page activated the police radio.
“Cessna Four Three Alpha calling Captain Medrano.”
Immediately Medrano’s voice crackled through Page’s headset. “Go ahead.”
“We’re seeing what appears to be a downed helicopter next to the observatory. It and a television news van are on fire.”
“What?”
“It isn’t clear what happened. I told you prohibited flight areas usually involve national security. Do you suppose there’s some kind of special government project there? The kind terrorists would want to attack?”
“The FBI must be worried about the same thing,” Medrano’s voice said starkly. “They gave you permission to take a closer look. They also gave me permission to send police cars in there.”
“Understood. I have clearance to enter.”
He banked to the right toward the columns of smoke. Through the canopy, the white dishes got bigger.
Tori kept staring through the binoculars.
“Do you see any survivors?” Page asked.
“No. Wait. Yes. But not at the helicopter. At the van. I see two people stumbling along the road. They’re heading in our direction. A man and a woman. It looks like the woman’s hurt.”
As Page flew closer, they came into his line of sight. Struggling along the dirt lane, the man held the woman up with his left arm. He was carrying something in his lowered right hand.
“Is that a television camera?” Tori asked in amazement. “My God, that’s the TV reporter who’s been looking for us.”
The woman’s knees bent. She slumped, dragging the man down with her, both of them toppling to the ground.
Tori adjusted the binoculars. “The woman’s covered with blood.”
Medrano’s voice blurted through Page’s headset.
“The FBI has rescinded your clearance! Turn around! Get out of there!”
Page frowned at Tori. “What’s going on?”
He was about to press the police radio’s transmit button, but Medrano kept talking.
“You must be right-this has something to do with national security! And somebody with influence must be involved! A special team is being sent in!”
Page kept flying toward the observatory.
“Do you copy?” Medrano’s voice demanded. “Your clearance to enter the prohibited airspace is no longer valid! Turn around!”
“The police radio’s been acting up lately,” Page told Tori. “All I hear is static.”
“Yeah, I don’t hear him, either.”
Page gestured toward the man and woman who’d toppled onto the lane. The woman was sprawled on her back while the man knelt be- side her, doing something to her left arm.
“How long do you think it’ll take for that special team to get organized?” Page wondered. “The nearest place they can come from is El Paso. Maybe farther away than that. My guess is it’ll take at least two hours for help to arrive. That woman might be dead by then.”
“Do you understand?” Medrano’s voice was loud enough to be distorted. “You do not have clearance to enter that airspace!”
Page shut off the radio. “It keeps overheating, too.”
Beyond the burning van, he saw that three high fences encircled the observatory dishes. An open-backed truck was parked near a shed- like building.
The dishes loomed. At a thousand feet, Page flew over them, made a turn, and headed back toward the man and woman sprawled on the lane.
As the plane went over the observatory, Tori peered straight down.
“That truck near the small building,” she said.
“What about it?”
“I think I saw…” She stopped suddenly.
“Your voice sounds strange. What’s wrong?”
“Corpses in the back.”
“Corpses?”
“A bunch of them,” Tori said.
Page immediately banked to the left. He flew in a circle and re- turned over the dishes, heading toward the truck. This time he positioned the plane so he could look down from his side.
In the back of the truck, bodies were dumped on top of one an- other, legs and arms splayed in every direction, so that he couldn’t count them. Some wore tan uniforms, others white lab coats.
“Jesus,” he said.
As he neared the couple on the lane again, the man looked up in desperation, but what Page concentrated on was the lane itself. Made of dirt, it appeared to be flat, but that didn’t mean there weren’t rocks or potholes that could blow a tire or snap off wheels, causing the plane to flip.
“Tory, is your seat belt tight?”
“Is there any other way for a seat belt to be?”
He pulled back on the throttle, causing the plane to lose altitude. At the same time he eased back on the yoke, tilting the nose slightly upward, reducing speed. To reduce speed further, he lowered the maximum flaps.
The plane sank toward the ground. At sixty knots, Page leveled the aircraft above the lane and felt it settle.
In most landings, he protected the nose wheel by touching down on the two main wheels first. For this kind of landing, however, the objective was to stop in the shortest distance possible, which meant there wasn’t time for the front wheel to settle gently onto the lane. In- stead Page landed on all three wheels. The moment he felt the jolt, he pressed his feet on the brake pedals and pulled back on the yoke. He came to a stop a mere two hundred feet from where he’d touched down.
In a rush, he shut off the aircraft’s engine, vaguely aware of the clinking sound of seat belts as he and Tori unbuckled them. He opened the door, jumped to the ground, grabbed a first-aid kit from under the back seat, and ran toward the couple on the lane.
Tori was next to him, matching his urgent pace.
They reached the man and woman, and yes, the man was the television reporter, looking more haggard than ever, his ear bloody, his suit and blond hair caked with dirt. But Page didn’t have time for any more details as he crouched next to the woman and tried not to think about the quantity of blood that soaked her clothes.
“Keep your head down!” the reporter urged.
“What happened to her?”
“She was shot! Keep your head down!”
“Shot?” Page unzipped the first-aid kit.
“The guard might be back by now.” Ashen, the reporter looked over his shoulder toward the observatory.
“A guard shot her?” Tori asked in confusion.
Page studied the necktie that served as a tourniquet.
“Did you do this?” he asked the reporter.
“It was all I could think of.”
“You probably saved her life.”
Page stared at the huge, ugly exit wound. He thought he saw bone. No time to clean it.
“Tori, open these packets.”
While she did, he pulled a small roll of duct tape from the kit.
“I’m sorry I don’t have anything for the pain,” he told the woman.
She didn’t reply. Her eyes were half open.
Tori handed him the open packets. He squeezed antiseptic cream into the wound and covered it with a wad of blood-absorbent material.
“Scissors,” he said, fumbling through the kit. “Need scissors.”
“Use this knife.” The reporter pulled one from his pants: a black folding knife with a thumb button on the side of the blade. “It’s hers.”
Page sliced off a section of duct tape. He wrapped it around the woman’s arm, then cut off another section of tape and applied it, too.
“I’ll cut while you wrap,” Tori said, taking the knife and the tape.
As he applied more tape, creating a pressure bandage, a red light caught his attention. It was on the television camera, which the re- porter angled in his direction, evidently recording the scene.
Page couldn’t allow himself to be distracted. He finished the pres- sure bandage and undid the tourniquet, waiting to see if blood would flow past the tape.
Dirt suddenly pelted him, accompanied by a distant cracking sound.
“What the…”
More dirt struck his face. Amid further distant cracking sounds, he saw puffs of dust rising from the road.
“Somebody’s shooting at us.”
“Oh, shit, the guard got the gates open. He’s coming,” the reporter moaned.
“Why is he shooting at us?” Tori asked. “Why are there corpses in that truck?”
Page stared past the burning van toward the huge dishes. The gates to all three fences were now open. A man stood outside the third gate and aimed a rifle, which bucked from the recoil.
Dirt exploded on the lane. The crack from the shot echoed.
“We’re just out of range,” Page said.
The man stepped forward and fired again. After a moment, a bullet tore up dirt a little closer.
“We need to reach the Cessna!” Page said. “Hurry! Before he gets closer!”
He put his arms around the injured woman’s legs and shoulders, lifting her. The smell of her blood was strong as he charged along the lane. Even though she was thin, she felt heavy, her hips sinking, her feet and arms flopping.
The reporter ran ahead of him, carrying the television camera.
Tori reached the Cessna’s passenger door and yanked it open, tilting the seat forward. Page stooped beneath the high wing and eased the wounded woman into the back seat.
“Get in there!” he told the reporter. “Buckle her seat belt! Buckle your own!”
As he hurried around the back of the plane, he heard Tori helping the reporter climb inside. A frantic glance down the lane showed him that the guard was running in their direction.
The guard stopped and fired. Dirt flew near the Cessna’s tail.
Somewhere in that dirt, a bullet’s ricocheting, Page thought.
He drew his pistol and aimed extremely high. If he fired straight ahead, his bullets would drop to the ground before they had a chance to come anywhere close to the distant target. By aiming high, however, he gave the bullets an arc that increased their range. Much of their force would be lost when they landed, but Page hoped they would strike near enough to the gunman to make him pause.
In rapid order, Page pulled the trigger six times. Six clouds of dust burst from the lane in front of the gunman, making him stumble back. Immediately Page ran along the left side of the plane and yanked open the door, scrambling inside.
Tori was in the passenger seat, fastening her belt.
Page jabbed the master switch, turned the ignition key, and worked the throttle. Abruptly the propeller spun, roaring. When he released the brakes, he felt the Cessna bump along the dirt lane. The two additional passengers added weight, reducing the engine’s power.
Come on! Page thought. Move!
Feeling the Cessna bump faster along the lane, Page imagined the guard racing to get within range. He braced himself for bullets that would tear through the rear windscreen and slam into his back-or that would damage the rear wings and make it impossible for him to get the Cessna into the air.
“The plane’s blowing dust!” the reporter shouted from the back. “I can’t see the guard!”
Which means the guard can’t see the plane, Page thought. But that won’t stop him from shooting toward us.
Their speed reached fifty-five knots. Page pulled back the yoke and felt the aircraft leave the ground. He stayed low, wanting to gain more speed before he went higher. Right now distance was the key, not height. When he thought he’d gone a sufficient distance, he eased farther back on the yoke and pointed the plane’s nose toward the horizon.
He was abruptly aware that his shirt was soaked with sweat.
“Tori, take the controls.”
He put on his headset. It muffled the engine’s roar as he activated the radio system.
“Taking back the controls,” he said.
He couldn’t contact Medrano
on the police radio. After all, his excuse for entering the prohibited airspace was that the police radio had failed. Instead he used the plane’s standard radio. Although Rostov’s airport didn’t have a control tower, he hoped someone in the office would hear him.
“Rostov traffic. Cessna Four Three Alpha has an injured passenger. A gunshot victim. We need an ambulance at the airport. My ETA is five minutes. Rostov.”
“I hear you, Four Three Alpha,” a voice said through Page’s head- set. It belonged to the man in the frayed coveralls who’d given Page his rental-car papers. “I’ll get that ambulance.”
Page tilted his head toward the reporter in back. “How is she?”
“Unconscious. But it looks like the duct tape sealed the wound.”
To Page’s right, the stock pens outside Rostov came into view, as did the courthouse on the main street. People and vehicles seemed everywhere, exploring the town before night settled and they went to the viewing area.
He descended toward the airport northeast of town, but not before he took a hard look at the collapsed, rusted hangars and the cracked, overgrown airstrip on the abandoned military airbase in the opposite direction. There wasn’t any sign of the vehicles he’d seen on the base the evening before. Beyond the ruin of the airbase, he frowned toward the boulders that looked like giant cinders strewn in a chaotic semi – circle, all that remained of the volcanic rim that had spewed them to the surface eons earlier.
60
Lockhart lay on the ground and spoke into the radio.
“The plane’s taking off. There’s a lot of dust, but I can see that the guard’s still running and firing.”
“Shoot the son of a bitch,” Raleigh’s voice ordered.
“I’m not within accurate range, sir.”
“Get closer.”
“Yes, sir.” He scanned the sky. “It looks like the plane escaped.”
“By tomorrow there’ll be no way to contain this. If I hadn’t put a quarantine on that place, there’d be police cars all over there by now. I don’t want anybody guessing what that facility really does. After you take care of the guard, destroy all the equipment in the observatory. Make it look as if he did it.”
“Yes, sir.”
The Shimmer Page 25