Remaining low, Lockhart watched the guard continue firing to- ward the departing airplane-he kept squeezing the trigger even after he ran out of ammunition. As the lowering sun made the dust look scarlet, the guard glared toward the sky, then turned and took long, angry strides back toward the first of the three fences.
Lockhart was to the guard’s right, just behind him and about two hundred yards away. Bullets from an M4 could travel that far, but Lockhart couldn’t depend on where they would hit. To stop the guard, rather than merely startle him, he needed to get closer.
Satisfied that he wasn’t in the guard’s line of vision, he stood, tucked the radio into the duffel bag that hung from his shoulder, picked up his M4, and broke into a run. As the man passed the burning van and got closer to the observatory, Lockhart increased his pace, the duffel bag bumping against his side. His thick-soled shoes crunched on the pebbly soil, but the breeze was blowing in his direction, so the slight sound wouldn’t carry.
He couldn’t allow the man to reach the door to the shed. He strained his legs to their full length. Charging across the scrub grass, he ignored the sweat that dripped from his face.
The guard reached the first gate.
Lockhart raced nearer.
The guard reached the second gate.
Lockhart had seen the difficulty that the guard had experienced when trying to shoot through the three fences. Continuing to rush forward, he simultaneously veered toward the lane.
Need to shoot through the open gates, he thought.
A hundred yards.
Abruptly the guard stopped walking toward the tiny building.
Does he hear me? Lockhart worried.
The guard turned, but instead of looking in Lockhart’s direction, he came back and reached for the first open gate. As he started to close it, he froze at the sight of Lockhart racing toward the lane.
Lockhart stopped, raised the M4, fought to control his breathing, and leveled the rifle’s sights on the target. His exertion made his arms unsteady. Years of combat training enabled him to brace his muscles and keep the barrel from wavering.
The guard raised his weapon and tried to shoot first, but nothing happened-he’d used all his ammunition when he’d fired at the air- plane. He turned and ran toward the middle gate.
Lockhart pulled the trigger. The selector switch on his rifle was set to deliver bursts of three shots. The first group missed. He took a deep breath, held it, and fired again.
The guard lurched but kept running. He passed through the second gate and headed toward the final one, each frenzied step taking him farther away, making him a more difficult target.
Lockhart fired another burst, and again the guard seemed to lurch. But he made it past the open-backed truck, disappearing into the darkness beyond the shed’s open door.
Cursing, Lockhart fired into the void of the door. His ammunition ran out, so he ejected the empty magazine, pulled a fresh one from his duffel bag, slammed it home, freed the bolt, and fired yet again through the open door.
Then he realized how out in the open he was and what an excellent target he made now that the guard had been given the opportunity to reload. He darted to the left of the lane, stopping where the three lines of fences provided some cover, and dropped to the ground, making himself a smaller target.
Unfortunately, while the fences gave him some protection, potentially deflecting bullets, they also protected the guard.
Lockhart studied the open door.
I hit him twice. I’m almost positive. He’s probably bleeding to death in there.
The void taunted him.
Sure. It’s just a matter of time. I’ll wait for a while and let him bleed out. After that, there’ll be no problem getting inside.
Right. No problem.
Abruptly the door was slammed shut.
In the weakening light, Lockhart stared at it. Cautiously he stood, walked to the lane, and went through the three open gates. He looked for blood on the lane but didn’t see any.
I didn’t hit him after all. He just stumbled.
Aiming his weapon, he approached the closed door. It was solid metal. Yesterday, when he’d arrived with Colonel Raleigh and the team, he’d noticed how thick it was. He had no doubt that it locked automatically, just as he had no doubt that similar thick metal lined the entire concrete structure. The pad next to the door would require a specific sequence to unlock it, and it wouldn’t matter if the colonel knew the numbers that had been used yesterday-the guard would almost certainly have changed that sequence by now.
Even if I had grenades, I wouldn’t be able to get through that door, Lockhart thought.
He studied the ground again but didn’t see any blood.
He walked to the open-backed truck and smelled the corpses before he saw them.
To vent his frustration, he shot the security camera above the door and a security camera on one of the fence poles. There were plenty of others to destroy, and he did so, one after the other. Now the guard wouldn’t be able to see what he was doing, but the destruction didn’t really accomplish anything because Lockhart had no way of getting inside.
The colonel isn’t going to be happy.
Lockhart waited several seconds before making himself reach for the two-way radio in the duffel bag.
61
Page landed as softly as he could, keeping the nose wheel off the ground as long as possible so the injured woman wouldn’t feel a jolt. He taxied from the runway toward the airport’s adobe office, where the man in frayed coveralls stood waiting.
After shutting off the engine, Page quickly got out, tilted the seat forward, and eased the woman from the back seat. She remained unconscious.
The man in the coveralls rushed to help.
“The ambulance is on the way,” he said as they set her gently on the pavement, using the Cessna’s shadow to keep her out of the sun.
Page heard the wail of approaching sirens.
“The Highway Patrol’s on its way, too,” the man said.
Page didn’t look forward to that conversation.
Tori and the reporter joined them.
Tinted by the red light of the sunset, the reporter faced him.
“I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself.” He had the television camera on his shoulder, and it took some effort for him to hold it with his left arm while he extended his right hand. The sleeve of his suit coat was torn. “Brent Loft.”
“I know who you are,” Page said.
Loft missed his tone, evidently pleased that Page recognized him. “And I certainly know who you are.”
“Excuse me?” Page asked.
“You have red hair,” Loft said, turning to Tori. “You’re the couple I’ve been looking for-Daniel and Victoria Page, from Santa Fe. I’ve done my homework. You stopped the shootings on Thursday night.”
“Is that camera still on?” Page asked.
“It’s worthless if it isn’t.”
Page had been through so much that his emotions nearly over- whelmed him. His need to shield Tori almost made him yank the camera from Loft’s hands and hurl it onto the concrete.
The approaching sirens helped him keep control.
He took a deep breath.
“Can’t this wait? It’s not something we want to talk about right now. We saved your life. With luck, we got your friend back here in time. Isn’t that worth something? Give us a break.”
Loft glanced in the direction of his unconscious companion and nodded. As he turned back to Tori, the sirens wailed closer.
“I have only one question.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Really. Just one question.”
“What is it?” Tori demanded. “I’m tired of hiding from you. Let’s get this over with.”
“I can understand how your husband was able to do what he did. He’s a professional, trained to take charge in emergencies. But you’re a real estate agent. In your place, most people would have panicked. Somehow you f
ound the strength to pick up a pistol and stop the gunman. Your courage was remarkable. How on earth were you able to do that?”
“There wasn’t a choice,” Tori answered. “He was trying to kill my husband.” She looked directly at Page, then back to the reporter. “How could I not have tried to protect my husband?”
“So you’re saying it was love that gave you courage?” Loft asked.
“Yes.” Tori looked again at Page. “Love gave me courage.”
Loft lowered the camera and studied each of them. “Thank you for saving Anita and me.”
The sirens became terribly loud. An ambulance sped into view and skidded to a stop next to the airport’s office, followed closely by a Highway Patrol car. Attendants jumped from the ambulance, hurrying to unfold the wheels of a gurney. One carried an emergency kit as they rushed toward the woman lying on the pavement.
Medrano got out of the patrol car, put on his Stetson, straightened to his full height, and took powerful strides toward Page.
His voice was strong. “I told you not to fly into that area.”
“That’s news to me,” Page said. Next to him, the ambulance attendants put an oxygen mask over the woman’s face and attached an IV line. “You said the government gave me clearance to ignore the restriction.”
“And then they revoked it. I warned you to get out of there.”
“If you told us to leave, we didn’t hear it,” Tori said. “The police radio stopped working.”
Loft stepped forward, balancing the television camera on his shoulder, focusing it on Medrano.
“Captain, I’m Brent Loft from First-on-the-Scene News in El Paso. This couple did an amazing thing. At great risk to their lives, they landed their aircraft on hazardous terrain at the observatory so they could stop a guard from killing us. In fact, as you can see, he’d al- ready shot my partner. They loaded us on their plane and took off. The entire time, I was afraid the maniac would fire another grenade at us.”
Medrano was taken by surprise. “Grenade?”
“He’d already used one to shoot down a helicopter. Then he fired one at our van.”
“Why was he firing grenades?”
“I have no idea, any more than I know why he piled all those corpses onto the back of a truck.”
“Corpses… in a truck?”
“A lot of them. Enough to fill it. He kept babbling about wanting to listen to music.” Loft continued aiming the camera. “Something bad is going on over there, Captain. You need to get your men to that observatory before God knows what else happens.”
Medrano opened his mouth to say something, then decided against it. He hurried to his cruiser, where he reached for the micro- phone on his police radio and spoke urgently into it.
Loft lowered the camera and aimed it toward the ambulance attendants as they lifted the woman onto the gurney.
“How’s she doing?” Page asked.
“Lost plenty of blood,” an attendant answered.
“She’d have lost more if it weren’t for the guy with the camera.”
“I’ll use that quote when I edit this,” Loft said.
He stepped quickly over to the ambulance and began talking to the attendants at the open doors. He used his free hand to gesture persuasively. The next thing, he climbed into the back.
Page shook his head. “I hate to say this, but I think we’re going to be seeing a lot more of him on television.”
Siren blaring, the ambulance rushed away.
The man in the frayed coveralls came over to them. “I’ll help you push your plane to a tie-down spot.”
“Actually, we’re going up again,” Page told him.
The man frowned toward the dimming sky. “Never liked flying at night.”
“We still have something to settle. Am I right, Tori? Or maybe you don’t feel the need any longer.”
“More than ever,” Tori said. “Let’s finish this.”
62
The hum had become so intense that it felt like a drill boring into Halloway’s skull.
Soon, he thought. Soon I won’t hear it any longer. Soon the only thing I’ll hear will be the music.
But despite his determination, he needed all of his willpower not to be distracted while he finished rigging the booby trap. The design-learned in Iraq-consisted of two trip wires. The first was stretched across the upper part of the stairs. If an assault team some- how managed to force the door open up there, they’d respond to their training and check for traps. After they spotted the wire and the grenades it was attached to, they’d disengage it, then proceed down the stairs. The second wire-in shadows, stretched across a lower part of the stairs-was the killer.
As he worked, the hum made Halloway’s hands want to shake, but he refused to let that happen. Grinding his teeth, he tied the wire to a cluster of concealed grenades. Satisfied that the work had been done correctly, he carefully descended the remainder of the stairs.
At the bottom, he increased speed along the hallway and entered the surveillance room, where he saw that even more screens had gone blank. One of the few that was working showed the man who’d shot at him as he raised his M4 and fired.
Another screen went dead.
Well, that’s okay, Halloway thought. I wasn’t going to be watching the monitors anyhow.
He picked up his reloaded M4 and went down the hallway to the door marked DATA ANALYSIS. Inside, he’d already placed five other M4s on a table, along with numerous hundred-round magazines and a small stack of grenades. If an assault team tried to stop him from listening to the music, he planned to show them just how furious that would make him.
The room still smelled of death, mostly because of the dried blood that covered the floor. But Halloway didn’t have time to clean it. Any- way, when the music started, the scent of cinnamon would replace the stench of the blood. Because he didn’t know how to manipulate the electronic instruments, he’d kept all of them on, their panels glowing continuously.
The only switch he felt confident using was the one that activated either the speakers or the headphones, and the only knob he knew how to control was for the volume. While he’d prepared the booby trap, he’d kept the sound coming from the speakers. It had been loud enough that he could hear the static from a distance. More important, he’d been able to hear growing hints of music emerging from the static. Those half-heard alluring echoes were what had made him capable of working despite the agony of his headache.
Now the music was more than just hints and echoes. Strengthening, it drifted and floated. Halloway felt its eerie tones lifting him. The pain of the drill boring into his brain mercifully receded. The hum diminished, overcome by the sensual melody that again brought the taste of orange juice and vodka.
He closed his eyes. The woman he danced with whispered into each of his ears. Kissed them. Drew her tongue along them.
It left his ears wet. He put his hands to them and opened his eyes long enough to see what was on them.
Blood was dripping from his ears.
63
Raleigh finished yet another phone call in a successful effort to keep law enforcement away from the observatory. The voices in the urgent conversation had sounded distant because he couldn’t take the risk of removing his earplugs now that it was almost dark outside and the static on the audio monitors was beginning to resolve itself into music.
The words “national security” were a powerful invocation. With the cooperation of the FBI, Raleigh had again stopped the Highway Patrol from entering the restricted area. He’d arranged for equipment to be delivered that would allow an assault team to break into the observatory. After they eliminated the guard and cleaned the facility so that outside agencies couldn’t question its true purpose, Raleigh would make sure the bastard’s autopsy revealed a high blood level of crack cocaine, explaining his psychotic behavior.
With one crisis dealt with, but anticipating more, he set down the phone, stepped from the command center, and surveyed the eight men poised in front of
the numerous electronic consoles. Their faces reflecting the glow of instruments, they turned dials, refining and adjusting the incoming signals. In response to his orders, they’d turned off the audio capability of their monitors. Their earplugs were firmly in place.
Raleigh thought about his great-grandfather, who in 1919 had flown toward the lights and never been seen again. His great- grandmother had taken her two-year-old son and moved to Boston, but despite the distance that she’d put between herself and the lights, she hadn’t been able to keep them out of her thoughts. Her memories of the lights and her husband became the bedtime stories she told her son, who grew up dreaming about them. When he was twenty and skin cancer finally killed his mother, he hitchhiked all the way to Texas. He needed to hitchhike because the Great Depression continued to ravage the nation. Using his legs and his thumb was the only way he could afford to make the trip. His name was Edward. His mother’s story about his father’s disappearance had so obsessed him from when he was a child that he was drawn to Rostov the way religious people are drawn to holy places. It took him three months to get there. When he finally arrived, his belt was cinched so tightly that it barely kept his pants up. His shoes had holes in them. His shirt was tattered. His face was browned by the sun.
The dry-goods store that Edward’s mother had told him about was still in business-although barely, judging from the meager samples in the front window. A bell rang when he opened the door. A tired- looking, gray-haired man and woman looked questioningly at him from behind a counter. Despite their age, he could see the resemblance immediately.
“I’m your grandson,” he announced.
They gaped. Before they could ask any questions, he said the thing he had wanted to say all his life.
“Tell me where to go to see the lights.”
They gaped even more.
Edward helped at the dry-goods store. He also found part-time jobs, painting barns and repairing wooden sidewalks in exchange for new shoes, clothes, and the extra food his grandmother needed to prepare. In Boston, meat had been a luxury, but not in cattle country.
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