All the desert sounds and smells immediately disappeared. Only an airtight seal could erase all traces of the desert instantly. She became aware of the low hum of machinery as they made their way through a maze of hallways. When her escort hesitated, she knew they had reached him.
“Enter,” he said.
They stepped into a room that was colder than the corridor behind them.
“Remove the blindfold and unbind her.”
Her eyes resisted the fluorescent lights’ brightness, which was, of course, what he wanted. He, no doubt, had a vast amount of experience in disorienting prisoners. Is that what she had become? She fought the shudder rising from her soul— fought it and failed.
The smile never reached his lips, but she saw it in his eyes. She held on to enough sanity to be disgusted by the fact. As before, the desk he sat behind was immaculate, though this time they were in a state-of-the-art lab.
“Leave us.”
The driver scurried away.
“Do you know why I brought you here?”
Shaking her head, she rubbed the circulation back into her wrists. She resisted the urge to look around for clues as to where here might be.
“Errors have been made. Errors that cannot be corrected. Someone must pay for them.” He steepled his fingers, leaned forward. “Tell me what you know. Say no more or less than you need to in order to be accurate. You must not try to protect yourself or anyone else. In return, if I find you at fault, I can promise your death will be quick.”
He sat back and waited for her to begin.
Her legs started to tremble. She considered sitting in one of the chairs in front of her, but knew she wouldn’t dare. You did not sit in his presence unless he offered, and he never offered.
She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. A pitcher with water and ice, condensation forming on the glass, sat on his desk. He met her eyes, glanced at the pitcher, then leaned forward and poured a glass. Never taking his eyes from hers, he took a long drink, set the glass down, and leaned back again.
“Begin,” he said.
“At five yesterday morning, I received word Martin had requisitioned a helicopter. He didn’t file a flight plan until he arrived at White Sands. Once the pilot had recorded the flight plan, we intercepted the coordinates. I sent two men to intercept the girl’s body, before the helicopter arrived if possible. If not, they were instructed to engage the helicopter. We never heard back from them.”
She resisted the urge to defend her team. They both knew their qualifications. She didn’t know what had happened at Bitter Lake, but she knew they hadn’t screwed up. They’d been outplayed.
Silence filled the space between them.
If she cared one ounce for her life, she might have thought to defend it.
Since she didn’t, she waited.
“The two men you sent are dead. USCIS picked up their bodies at nine-twenty yesterday morning. You should have sent more than two. That was your first mistake.”
She didn’t contradict him.
“Explain to me how the body could have been stolen.”
“We injected it with RSF30, then dumped it close to town and called in an anonymous tip.”
“The call could have been traced.”
“No. We used the payphone at the corner of Third and Main.”
“Continue.”
“The police transferred the body to the morgue. Per our procedural plans for Phase Three, we staged this to look like a mob hit, but left the body within the zone. This guaranteed the Roswell ME would not conduct an autopsy. Instead, Dr. Kowlson would have to see it and sign off.”
She stopped, because she didn’t know what else to say.
She’d followed their procedural plan to the letter. When she’d received the text message indicating the body had been stolen, there had been no time to ask questions. Then again, in this organization, one did not ask questions. She’d taken the necessary steps to handle the situation.
“How was the body stolen?”
She’d agonized over this very question for the past twenty-four hours. She did not doubt her answer could, and probably would, cost her life. Even as she formed the words, she felt herself slide further into the darkness of the well.
“I don’t know.”
He leaned forward, steepled his fingers again. “Why do we have no recording of the theft?”
“Whoever broke into the morgue disconnected the security and replaced the tapes with clean ones.”
“Why weren’t backup monitor devices in place?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who was in charge?”
For the first time since she had committed her life to their cause, she didn’t answer a question.
His steps were slow and deliberate as he came around the desk. He stopped when he was behind her. He didn’t surprise her when he placed his hands around her neck, caressed the skin with his fingers. He didn’t surprise her, and yet she jumped at his touch. She knew the strength of his hands, remembered well watching him choke the life out of a man.
“Do not think to protect one of your men. Your loyalties lie with me and me alone.”
She closed her eyes against the feel of his breath on her skin. “Johnson was in charge of the lab, but I should have told him to set up additional perimeter security.”
“Of course, you should have.” He let his hand slide down her throat as if considering, then rejecting, the idea. “Which is why you will be the one to kill him.”
He stepped behind his desk, picked up the phone. “Bring Johnson here.”
Opening the right hand drawer, he pulled out a nine inch knife. “Use this.”
“I won’t.”
He sat back, ever the patient teacher. “Of course you will. Mistakes resemble cancer. Allowed to remain, they will grow. They must be cut out. Our mission is bigger than any one person. Bigger than you or me. Now you must prove your dedication. Are you willing to spill the blood of any man or woman in your unit? Will you stain your own hands in order to achieve our goals?”
The knock on the door ended her time of mercy.
“I can’t,” she said, tears catching in her throat.
“You can, and you will—here and now. Or I will do it for you. If I do it, the price will be higher to cover your cowardice. I will find his family and kill them as well. Two daughters and a son.” His eyes met hers. He smiled.
“Enter.”
Johnson entered the room, and she picked up the knife.
LUCY WOKE TO BANGING on the door.
She’d fallen asleep on his bed, and he was draped over the recliner in a position that ensured he’d have a crick in his neck. They’d stayed up late, looking back through the data, trying to make sense of all that had happened.
“Dean, wake up.”
“I’m awake.”
“I’ll slip into the bathroom. Answer your door.”
“No.” He flopped sideways on the chair, trying to get comfortable.
“We’re government agents.”
“Which is why you should answer your door.”
“Terrorists rarely knock.” He opened one eyeball. “It’s housekeeping. They’ll go away if we’re quiet.”
She threw a pillow at him and he used it to block out the morning light.
“Dean, It’s Jerry. Open up. I need to talk to you.”
Lucy rolled out of the bed and Dean catapulted out of the chair. They hit the floor on opposite sides of the bed in a bizarre synchronized dance.
“Hang on, Jerry.” Dean tucked his weapon into the back of his pants and snatched his shirt off the floor.
Lucy scooped her laptop into her backpack along with her weapon, and left it unzipped. She pushed down her hair and nodded at Dean. He jerked the door open.
Jerry no longer resembled the man who had gone AWOL seventy-two hours before.
His tears had been replaced by a hard, cold resolution. But more than the change in demeanor, Lucy noticed the physical wounds.
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br /> He had deep cuts over much of his face and arms, as if he had crawled through a cactus patch with no heed for himself. His right eye was nearly swollen shut. The skin around it had purpled. Instead of defeated, the man who stood before them had been emboldened. Like he’d been through hell and had emerged ready for battle.
Dean pulled him into the room and checked the corridor before he slammed the door.
“Jerry, what happened to you?” Lucy forgot the story she had concocted to explain her presence in Dean’s room. Jerry wouldn’t have noticed if she had been wearing a clown’s suit complete with a bright red nose.
“I found the people who killed Angie is what happened.” He paced between the bed and the bathroom, glancing occasionally toward the high window. “Thought they had me. Well they didn’t reckon who they were up against. Shouldn’t have messed with a former artillery man. Should have picked somebody else and somebody else’s woman. I’ll kill every one of them even if I have to go back and do it one at a time.”
“Slow down, Jerry. Sit and tell us what happened.” Dean nodded toward the chair.
Jerry ignored him and kept pacing. “Soon as I slow down, they’ll be here. I have less than a twenty-minute lead. I came to ask for your help.” He reached in his pocket and unfolded a sheet of paper.
Lucy leaned forward to take it, but Dean got their first. “What are these numbers, Jerry?”
“You know what they are—you’ve been in the military.”
Dean didn’t confirm what Jerry said. He didn’t deny it, either. “What are those, Jerry? What’s happened to you?”
Lucy tried to take a closer look at Jerry’s eye, but he pushed her away.
“Dean knows what they are. They’re the coordinates for where it went down.”
“How did you get these?” Dean asked.
“I had LoJack installed on Angie’s car a few years ago. Remember the story about her hitching back from Grand Junction? That sort of thing happened all the time. She’d be content with Roswell one day and gone the next—and lost.”
Jerry kept moving the entire time he talked. Lucy also noticed he’d glance at the window every few seconds. She wondered if he’d slept at all since they’d last seen him. How much caffeine had he consumed? What else had he taken? His eyes were dilated, and he was breathing too fast. Studying him, she realized his face was flushed and not because of what he was telling them. She estimated his blood pressure at over one-eighty.
A man of his size couldn’t sustain that level for long. Adrenaline put every biological system under enormous amounts of stress, and the body could only endure it for a finite amount of time before crashing. In Lucy’s medical opinion, Jerry wouldn’t last another twenty-four hours. She tried to catch Dean’s eye, but he remained focused on Jerry.
“So you accessed her LoJack logs.” Dean pulled a couple bottles of water from the mini-fridge, put one in Jerry’s hand.
“Yes.” Jerry took a long drink, then set the bottle on the table. “I went to where she’d been that night. I knew they’d come back. So, I set me up a blind, and I waited.”
“Why didn’t you call Sheriff Eaton, Jerry?” Lucy wanted to make physical contact, wanted to settle him down, before he stroked out. But every time she shifted closer, he started pacing again.
“You saw how Eaton acted, Lucy. He wouldn’t even let me see her body. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s on their side.”
“You can’t believe that.” Lucy kept her voice calm.
“I don’t know what to believe. I think you and Dean are clean. I did some checking and according to the neighbors you got back here at four that morning.”
Lucy noticed Dean’s eyes narrow, but he still didn’t speak.
“Angie and I didn’t even leave George’s parking lot until four. I don’t see how you could have killed her while you were both here—together.”
Lucy blushed. She again glanced at Dean, but he never took his eyes off Jerry.
“What did you do next?” Dean asked. “What did you do when they came?”
“I planned to pick them off one-by-one. It would have worked too, until the UAVs showed up.”
“What’s a UAV?” Staring at the men, Lucy realized she was the only one in the room lost.
“Dean knows. We had them in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, even Iraq.”
“You saw one?”
“Saw one? It chased me for the last thirty- six hours.”
“That’s impossible.”
“It’s not impossible. It happened. I guess I know what happened.” Jerry stumbled to a halt and ran a hand over his face. He noticed the cuts and scars as though seeing them for the first time and fell silent.
He slumped down on the bed, ran his hand over the comforter.
Lucy knew he’d become lost in a memory. The comforter was the same one he’d sat on when Eaton had called, when he’d first heard of Angie’s death. Tracing the geometric pattern, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he glanced up, the caged animal expression had retreated.
“I crawled underneath some rocks, like we did in Iraq. A man can lie in the desert for days if he sets up his blind right. I had. I saw them drive up in a military Jeep.” Jerry paused and let his words sink in. “That’s right—a military Jeep. But they weren’t military unless the U.S. Government had a reason to kill Angie. Plus these guys weren’t in uniform, and they didn’t act military. You know what I mean.”
He threw Dean a pointed look. “Something was off about them. No real chain of command. It’s hard to explain. As for the Jeep, maybe they stole it. I don’t know. You have the coordinates on the sheet I gave you, so I’ll let you draw your own conclusions. It was oh-two-hundred hours.”
Jerry closed his eye, probed the wound with his fingers. “Three men stepped out. I didn’t have a clear line on them. They were pulling something. Psycho number one walked toward me to take a leak. I had him in my night scope, and I had a silencer. I was confident I could take the other two out, before they knew I was there. I took the shot, and he went down. As luck would have it, he was the operator.”
“The what?” Lucy sat down beside Jerry, not too close, but close enough to put her hand on his arm.
“An operator is the remote pilot to a UAV—an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. Britain has developed a spybot that can fit in the palm of your hand. The Predator that crashed in Arizona in 2006 weighed ten thousand pounds. I don’t know what model they had, since this one mostly chased me. I would guess mid-range.”
Jerry rose and went to the window. “After I’d taken him out, the other two started offloading the UAV. I didn’t have a clear shot, so I waited. They finally came looking for their operator—with their weapons drawn and readied.”
“And you opened fire.” Dean interrupted, more comment than question.
But Jerry took to it like a bull to a red flag.
“Yeah, I opened fire. What was I supposed to do? It was a matter of minutes before they found the first body. I used what I had, the element of surprise and my gun. If you tell me these people—whoever they are—stole a military Jeep, I might believe you, but I’m not believing that they stole a UAV, too. If they bought it, they’re extremely well financed. The only other possibility I can think of is someone on the inside is dirty and checked it out on supposed maneuvers. I’m telling you, they didn’t just steal it.”
“Someone would have reported it missing,” Dean admitted.
“Exactly. Equipment that expensive—”
“How much are we talking, Jerry?” Lucy felt as if she were trying to catch up fast.
“Last I heard, the mid-range bots ran close to a quarter of a million dollars. What chased me certainly belongs in that middle range.”
“I think I did see something about them on the news,” Lucy said. “We considered using them for border security.”
“We have been, for years,” Jerry said. “Along the north and the west borders, anyway. Not here. So, what was one doing in Chaves County? Let me tell y
ou these babies can light up the night, and it did. They immediately saw the body.”
“And the rest was history.”
“I fired two more shots, so they’d take cover, which they did. Their backup operator knew his stuff, though. Chased me halfway across the desert. I’ve been running since then.”
“How did you get away?” Lucy asked.
“A robot may be smart, but it can’t think.” Jerry’s panther-like grin startled her, and she realized what a formidable enemy he would be. He stood, finished the water, and set the bottle on the table, glancing again at the window. “I can’t stay here, and I don’t know what to do with that information, but I have a feeling you do.”
Dean shook his head, handed the paper back. “I don’t know why you’d think that.”
“A man has a lot of time to think while he’s running. Things become clear when your life is about to end and the woman you love is lying on a slab.” Jerry stepped into Dean’s space. His hands remained at his side, but his arms were shaking as he clenched his hands into fists. “Seems odd to me that you showed up a month before this happened. You’re either in on it, or you’re not. If you’re not, you’ll help me.”
“Sorry, man. I can’t help you. I’m a bartender. You need to take this to Eaton.”
Jerry stared at him in disbelief. “Haven’t you been listening?”
“I have been, and I still think you should go to Eaton.”
Lucy stared at Dean, unsure she had heard him correctly. She had her hand on the backpack, ready to pull out the secure phone. Dean’s hand closed tightly over hers.
“We’ll go with you,” Dean said.
“That’s the best you can do?”
“What else did you expect? Let’s take this to Eaton.”
Jerry stopped at the door, with his hand clutching the knob. “You know I can’t do that, Dean. You do what you need to do. I’m going after the other two men who were operating the UAV. They were at the site where Angie was killed. Either they had a hand in her death, or they know who did.”
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