“It’s dark in there, I can’t see anything,” Dillan said. “Smells like a cave, though.”
A cave? Again, it made no sense to Kruse. That didn’t mean the viewing was wrong; sometimes they needed more than one session to collect a full picture.
“Well, how did I do?” Dillan asked.
“How do you think you did?”
“The target is in the desert, and it has something to do with finding Autumn. Am I right?”
“We’re done, get a good night’s rest.”
Dillan mumbled under his breath and opened the door, where Rachel stood in the hallway.
“How did it go?” she asked them.
“You know he can’t talk about it,” Kruse reminded her.
“Same old shit, just a different day,” Dillan said.
Rachel entered with a sketchpad under her arm and sat at the desk with perfect posture. Unlike Dillan, who slouched over the desk, Rachel sat poised like a model student, ready to begin. She made no small talk with Kruse, no jokes or complaints about how warm the room was. She was in her ready position with an charcoal black drawing pencil in hand. He dimmed the lights because she preferred the room darker than Dillan.
Kruse wanted to know more about Autumn’s location, where Quin had briefly reunited with his sister, and where he would likely retrieve her.
Instead, he showed her a card with the same coordinates that Dillan had viewed only moments earlier. He wanted to know if she’d see the same details in her session. “Coordinate 7545Q202,” he said.
She wrote them on her sketchpad and repeated the coordinates, “7545Q202,” then her pencil glided across the page in an upward arc. The first sketched line was the subconscious mind tapping into the signal. The coordinates were arbitrary, something Kruse had randomly assigned to what he was searching for somewhere out in the vast universe of the matrix. She was working off his intentions, where he thought she needed to go, and her mind was chasing after it like a search dog following an invisible scent. He watched over her shoulder as she drew lines and shades of black that she smeared with her fingers to create shadows of gray. Dillan was more like a police sketch artist, fast and efficient, but Rachel’s approach was like that of those artists who stand along the Seine River in Paris, capturing details on the horizon that you didn’t even know were there.
After twelve minutes, he spoke to her in a low, calm voice. “The gestalt, first impressions?”
“Rock and sand,” she said without lifting her eyes from her pad.
To Kruse it looked similar to Dillan’s drawing, a wall with jagged rocks. There was no way Dillan could’ve passed this information to her when they’d met in the hallway. And the room was soundproof. She was sketching the exact location with more detail, more enthusiasm. She drew boxes, larger than the ones Dillan had viewed.
“What’s your impression of those?” he asked, sitting next to her at the table. “What kind of proportions?”
“Pretty big, you could climb inside them.”
She drew a circle inside each box.
“Stay with that, describe it,” he guided her.
“Solid, has grooves or grips for fingers, like a…may I label it?”
The problem with labeling an object early in a session was that if the viewer was wrong, the entire session could go off on a tangent. But she was close enough to what Dillan had sketched. “Go ahead.”
“A wheel, feels like a steering wheel,” she said.
“Hmmm, are those vehicles, possibly Jeeps?”
She shook her head. “Smaller…golf carts.”
“Golf carts?” he said with disappointment.
“There are batteries or power cells on the ground,” she said, pointing to the smaller boxes she’d drawn.
Dillan had mentioned the batteries, so maybe they weren’t off target after all.
“They’re beneath an overhang,” she said.
“Is there a door?”
She nodded. “Steel door is on the left side, the carts are parked near it inside.”
“The carts are inside what?”
“A passageway.”
“A garage or cave?”
She looked up at him. “Are you labeling objects?” she asked.
“Sorry, continue.”
“Two carts at a cave entrance.”
“Good, what else—”
“People are here, men.”
“How many?”
“Three.”
He rarely asked them to draw people. It was too time-consuming and too difficult for viewers to capture accurately.
“Give me your impressions of the men.”
“An elderly man and a young one, they seem related and…” She dropped her pencil.
“What about the third person?”
She rested her elbows on the sketchpad, rubbing her temples. “Oh, God.”
“What?”
“He sees me! The others don’t, but he’s looking at me.” She pushed the sketchpad away, toward Kruse.
“Who?”
She turned to him. He couldn’t ignore the smoldering anger in her eyes.
“You know who, it’s Quin!”
Cornered. There was no way he could deny to Rachel that today’s target was indeed Quin. “I only want to know his whereabouts.”
“We’re spying on him?”
“No, we have his back,” Kruse said in a calming voice, “making sure he’s safe. Nogales is a dangerous place, Rachel. We want Quin to succeed, correct?”
She dog-eared a corner of the page, creasing it with her fingers. “Correct.”
“We gave him all the training, the support, and gear to bring Autumn home, remember?”
She nodded, staring at the drawing. “Yeah.”
“I would’ve told you and Dillan everything if I could,” he said. “But the protocols of RV don’t allow that.”
“You’ve told us that a million times,” she said. A small tremor in her legs rose up to her chest and her face as a tear splashed onto the page.
“How big is the cave?”
“I can’t see it anymore,” she said with a sniffle.
“Take a breath.”
“I can’t do it!”
“Can’t, or…won’t?”
“Pick up your phone and ask him yourself,” she said.
“That’s enough for today,” he said.
“Not exactly ending this session on a high note.” She stood, tore the drawing out of her sketchpad, handed it to him, and left him alone.
“Damn it!” he shouted, his words deadened by the soundproof panels on the walls.
He was too hard on them, and he knew it. In the early days of RV research he had given military recruits more time to practice their craft. His funding and assignments came from the slow-moving Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), an agency with a growing $4 billion budget that officially has 17,000 employees, two-thirds of whom are civilians. The talent pool Kruse had to work with was minuscule: ten or twelve people at a time. But he had to give them plenty of rest and time off between RV assignments so doctors could evaluate the health of each recruit. It was unnecessary, in Kruse’s opinion. There’s nothing dangerous about RV; it’s as natural as meditating.
His assignments reflected the times and the branch of the military requesting intelligence. In the 1980s, the navy needed intel on Russian submarines. Then in the early 1990s, the CIA requested intel on Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Kruse would task his viewers with assignments, then he’d return detailed reports and drawings to the appropriate branch. By the late 1990s, most of the assignments focused on the Middle East and the plague of religious fanatics that eventually slammed two airplanes into the Twin Towers, one into the Pentagon, and a fourth into a Pennsylvania field.
Kruse was asked why his team hadn’t predicted an imminent attack. He had explained the complexities of seeing and predicting future events.
“Isn’t that what you’re paid to do, see into the future?” one congressman had asked him in a private mee
ting.
Kruse had given him the abrupt answer, “We see the now. It’s the military’s job to respond to it.”
That comment was the reason Kruse and his research were jettisoned from the DIA’s 450,000-square-foot building in Washington to a state security hospital in Minnesota. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) had learned of Kruse’s work in parapsychology and it fit with their research in neuroscience. They wanted to know if he could give “meaningful work to psychiatric patients,” some of whom had already displayed “talents in intuition.”
Kruse had politely declined the offer; he was in the twilight of his career and had no interest in lab rat research.
But then he received a call from the director of Homeland Security, who convinced him to accept the new assignment. Kruse would build a paranormal team to locate terrorists. The funding would flow from the NIH, and he’d train recruits from within the cloistered halls of the hospital.
Remote viewing didn’t prevent 9/11, but Kruse had helped the Department of Homeland Security find and degrade terrorist cells on American soil in the years since. Even though it was more challenging to train psychiatric patients, if he could speed them through the learning curve, they were more reliable remote viewers than the general population. Outbursts like Rachel’s were common, and usually a sign he had brought them to a new level.
What was Quin up to? Kruse reached into his pocket and considered Rachel’s suggestion: call him.
He sent a text instead: We’d better get started soon. Time is running out.
At the tunnel entrance, Quin was sitting in the driver’s seat of the golf cart with Hawk next to him. Moments earlier, Quin had felt a presence, as if somebody were watching him. He looked over his shoulder again onto the desert hills that met a blue-black sky punctured with pinholes for stars. Nothing. Whatever it was, it had moved on.
Jimmy was in the other cart, pouring his grandfather another cup of tea, for courage and strength. Quin took only two sips; he needed his focus for what lay ahead of them. The test run would take them through the underground corridors littered with man-made debris and nature’s own surprises—and who knows what else.
“This is a good thing,” Hawk said.
“What do you mean?” Quin asked.
“You’re doing all of this to reunite what’s left of your family. I’m proud of you. Four years ago when Helene brought you home, all I saw in you was a lost spirit. You’ve changed, you’ve grown.”
“Thanks, Hawk.” Those were the exact words Quin needed to hear.
“You’re a good influence on Jimmy, too,” Hawk said, lowering his voice. “He respects you.”
He looked over at Hawk’s grandson seated in the other golf cart, gazing into the glow of his phone.
“If anything happens to me, check on him once in a while.”
“Nothing will happen to you.”
“I’ll die before you, that’s for sure,” Hawk said. “And when it happens, make sure my daughters don’t waste money on a big funeral. Have my ashes mixed with Lily’s. Her urn is a clay pot on my mantel. Spread our ashes to the winds on Hinhan Kaga Paha. Jimmy knows the place.”
“Stay by my side, Hawk, and nothing will happen to you.”
“You suppose there’s bats down there?” Hawk asked, pointing into the blackness of the cave.
Quin laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Jimmy said.
“Could be bats down there,” Quin said. “Keep your head low.”
“And snakes, too?” Hawk said.
“Keep your feet up,” Quin teased.
Jimmy looked up from his phone. “How can we drive with heads down and feet up?”
“And then, of course, there’s chupacabra,” Quin said.
“Chupa-what?”
“Blood-sucking dog, or something like that,” Quin said as he described the warnings his parents had given him as a boy. He was teasing Jimmy for the same reason his parents had done it to him—to keep him close and prevent him from wandering.
“Bullshit,” Jimmy said.
“I’m ready, let’s go,” Hawk said, finishing his tea.
“I’ll lead, you stay close,” Quin said to Jimmy.
He stepped on the pedal and the cart leapt forward into the tunnel, down the shifting sands of the ramp, their headlights bouncing up and down as they rode. He heard Jimmy following close behind. Hawk acted as the navigator, holding Quin’s phone with the map lit up on the screen. There were so many side tunnels not even shown on the map, it was important to have Hawk checking the map often.
If everything went well, they should make it to the exit tunnel within thirty minutes. Lopez would be waiting there to ensure they could actually get out. Then they would clock themselves on the return journey. In theory, once they were in the tunnels, they would be safe. Quin’s experience in bounty hunting, however, had taught him that once you had possession of a fugitive, you had to move quickly.
The sand on the flats had softer sand than the ramps and the walls were narrower than Quin had expected. He hit a rut and the cart leaned on Hawk’s side, scraping sand off the wall. Jimmy cursed and slowed, then speeded up to close the distance. This routine of surging and fading continued for ten minutes until they came to a sudden stop. Something was blocking their path. Quin got out of the cart with Hawk and inspected it.
“What?” Jimmy called out.
“Dirt pile,” Hawk said, kicking it with his boot.
“Drive over it,” Jimmy said.
“We have to clear it,” Quin said.
Jimmy moaned and joined them as they used their hands, scooping away the sand, flattening the pile along the floor of the tunnel.
“Why would somebody leave a heap of sand here?” Jimmy asked as they worked.
“It came from there,” Quin said, pointing to the low ceiling.
Jimmy and Hawk looked up at a gaping crevice.
“Is this tunnel collapsing?” Jimmy asked.
“Looks like it,” Quin said, masking his own anxiety.
Jimmy went into panic mode. “Let’s go back. You don’t want to be down here either,” he said to Hawk.
“Quin decides.”
He considered the possibility of turning back; they were still closer to the entrance ramp than the exit. But there was one problem. “We can’t turn the carts around, it’s too narrow,” Quin said.
“Drive in reverse,” Jimmy said.
“No tail lights. We couldn’t see where we’re going.”
“We got flashlights.”
“The carts are too slow in reverse.”
“We’ll walk back.”
Quin ended the debate. “We’re continuing forward.”
He and Hawk got back into their cart and drove twenty yards as Jimmy sat in his without following. Quin knew he was contemplating an exit. Rather than slow down, Quin sped up, leaving Jimmy alone in the darkness, taking a risk that he’d back up and leave. Moments later, the headlights from Jimmy’s cart grew brighter as he closed the gap.
Hawk set his hand on Quin’s knee. “See? He’s following because he trusts you.”
Quin drove faster into the haze of bouncing headlights and dust. He was in a rhythm, only scraping the walls occasionally. The narrow passageway and rock walls whizzed by, making their speed of 45 miles an hour feel more like 80. He squinted ahead at what looked like a dead end and then realized this tunnel turned to the right. He slowed to make the turn; the new tunnel was wider, with a higher ceiling, too. He stopped and waited for Jimmy to pull up alongside them.
“Where are we on the map?” he asked Hawk.
Hawk zoomed in with his callused fingers. “This is the first turn. One more coming up.”
Jimmy skidded to a stop. “Whoa, now we got head room.”
Quin realized this manmade tunnel interested a natural cave. It felt cooler and musty, and Quin heard dripping from the ceiling. He stepped out of the cart and shone a flashlight at the walls. There were cave drawings, painted in red, over ten feet a
bove them: an image of an eagle and a herd of animals with horns.
“I wonder who drew that,” Jimmy said in awe.
“Could’ve been a tribe,” Hawk said.
“Most likely the Hohokam,” Quin said. “They were the only tribe to build canals and irrigation systems for their crops. They knew how to find water,” he said, remembering a story his mother had told him about life in the desert. He walked forward onto a rock ledge and shone his light onto a bubbling stream that was cutting its way through the rock. Around him were signs of modern visitors: empty water bottles, propane tanks, a rusted camp stove. Above him, he spotted bats hanging from the ceiling, fluttering their wings and waking up. Other bats were dropping from the ceiling and flying; a river of bats headed into the darkness.
“Whoa, that’s crazy!” Jimmy aimed his flashlight up.
“It’s a sign,” Hawk said.
“Good or bad?” Quin asked.
“Good, there’s another way out of here if we need it.” Hawk pointed to an uneven path that twisted along the banks of the stream.
Quin joined Hawk back at the golf cart, grabbing his phone off the seat. He was curious to see if he could get a cell phone signal in here. Upon entering the tunnel, he had set his phone in airplane mode to save power. He changed it back now and his phone chirped.
“What was that?” Jimmy asked.
“I have a text,” he said, realizing it was from Agent Kruse: We’d better get started soon. Time is running out.
Quin couldn’t agree more. Instead of responding to Kruse, he texted: Lopez: Are you there?
A moment later his phone chirped: Yes. What’s taking so long?
Quin thumbed his reply: Blazing a trail down here. Should be there soon.
He opened the map again and handed the phone back to Hawk. “Let’s go. Agent Lopez is waiting for us on the other side.”
After thirty minutes of driving, he turned into the connecting tunnel driving at top speed, threading the needle, with Jimmy right behind them. They were climbing an incline and Quin felt the cart’s wheels slipping. He eased off the accelerator. Jimmy’s headlights grew brighter and without warning, he rear-ended them.
In The Company of Wolves_Follow The Raven Page 17