Stealthy Steps

by Vikki Kestell

  Inside it was still. Quiet. My first impression was that no one had been inside the doorway since the last time I’d been here—not that I remembered leaving by this door the last time I’d left the mountain. My exit that night had been accomplished under some kind of autopilot.

  I stepped inside the mountain’s secret door and watched the mechanism shoot the locking bolts home. After a quick look around, I unlaced my boots and donned the pair of soft-soled shoes I wore when I was out sneaking around in public. I left my boots by the door.

  As I trod down the first tunnel, nothing seemed disturbed or changed from before. By the time I entered the large, main tunnel I was more certain that no one but me had gone in or out by the ironclad door behind the outcropping, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t found the cleft where I entered the lab. I still had a way to go.

  I reached the beam and squeezed through the hole behind it then crouched and listened. I heard nothing but the utter silence of the tunnels. I started forward, very glad I was wearing my soft-soled shoes.

  The tunnel began its steep, downward descent. I never had liked the feeling of going deeper into the mountain, the sensation of the mountain’s weight pressing down upon me, the unsettling impression of the air growing thin and the tunnel walls closing in on me.

  It was no different this time. My nerves were on edge. The mites, perhaps feeling my disquiet, hummed softly in my ear.

  I regulated my breathing, kept it slow and steady, and counted my steps as a distraction. I had not gone far when the narrow beam of my flashlight glanced off an object lying on the tunnel floor.

  Nothing should be here! Had my instincts been wrong?

  I scanned the light over the floor until it fell again upon the object against the tunnel wall. It was a book, lying open with its pages face down. I stared . . .

  “Dr. Bickel’s lab book!” My whisper filled the tunnel and then floated away. I bent and retrieved the precious record. Several pages were bent and dirtied. I smoothed them as best I could and then tucked the book into my backpack.

  My heart still hammered in my chest, but it was slowing, returning to normal. I wiped a shaking hand over my eyes.

  I had to have dropped his lab book myself. This proves that Cushing did not find this route. She wouldn’t have left it here.

  I moved forward cautiously, but my senses told me that I was alone in the tunnel. The nanomites, too, were quiet. When I, at last, emerged into the lab, I was convinced that Cushing’s people had not found my entrance to the mountain.

  The lights ringing the cavern still dimly illuminated the open space and, although I knew it to be impossible, I felt as though Dr. Bickel had to be close by. I wended through the stacks of old furnishings from the sixties and toward the lab.

  The remains of Dr. Bickel’s small but meticulously organized laboratory lay smashed and broken on the cavern floor. I wandered through the ruin and observed that some of the equipment was missing. Intact parts may have survived Cushing’s warmongers and been taken away, but all that remained now were fragments and broken pieces.

  Shattered glass covered the floor where the nanocloud’s case had stood. The mites chipped a little, but not much. They had to know where we were.

  Were they mourning as I was?

  Swiping away tears, I made my way over to Dr. Bickel’s old living quarters. His desk had been emptied, his computers removed. The desk lay on its side, riddled with holes. His tiny bedroom was stripped. Workers had brought in cinder blocks and cement and bricked up Dr. Bickel’s exit to the munitions bunker on the west side of the mountain.

  I wandered into his little kitchen, opening cupboards, drawers, and refrigerator. I don’t know what I was looking for.

  Yes, I guess I did. I was looking for him, for Dr. Bickel. I knew I would not find him. I was longing for the sense of family we’d shared during that summer: two souls without kin who’d found kinship during my infrequent visits to the mountain. I was looking for the kindness Dr. Bickel had shown me in his simple way. They’d removed his body and I would not find him or recapture the sweetness of those days, not here, not anywhere.

  I’d lost my parents. I’d lost Aunt Lu. I’d lost Dr. Bickel. I had nothing left I could lose—except my freedom.

  Cushing will not get that, I vowed.

  I slammed the refrigerator door, yanked open the freezer, and gasped: After nearly two months, the twin parfait glasses were still lovely. I could even make out the strawberries and kiwi slices pressed against the lightly frosted sides.

  Grief and anger, long suppressed, refused to stay stuffed inside any longer. Swinging my arms, I swept the counter clean, sending dishes crashing to the floor. Whatever my hands found, I threw against the rock walls. I yelled. I cursed. I screamed at Cushing while I demolished what remained of Dr. Bickel’s kitchen.

  I pitched a fit even Genie would have been proud of—until, sobbing, I sank to the rock floor of the kitchen. And then I fell into an exhausted sleep against the refrigerator door.

  Perhaps an hour later, I woke and rose from the floor. I felt better for having released the pain I’d not allowed myself to feel before. Something else, though, had lodged in my heart during the torrent, something hard and angry. I had only one bitter word to describe it: Cushing.

  I stretched my cramped muscles and headed toward my exit. I’d seen what I’d come to see and would not return here. As I bypassed the ruined lab area, I wondered why Cushing kept power on to the cavern since she had plundered all it offered.

  Perhaps she sends her lackeys here every so often, I mused, to reexamine the place, maybe to bring in fresh eyes to look it over.

  I had another thought: Maybe she thinks the nanomites could still be here in the cavern, still hiding. They would need power to survive—and they’re no good to her ‘dead.’

  At the cleft in the wall, I took my last look at Dr. Bickel’s lab. I nodded to myself, feeling that anger growing fiercer, my resolve hardening. Everything pointed to Cushing, to her continued search for the nanomites. She still intended to find them, capture them. Misuse them.

  “Over my dead body,” I whispered.

  Chapter 21

  I stood in front of my kitchen window surveying the cul-de-sac and neighborhood, still chewing on what I’d overheard in Cushing’s meeting and what I’d seen in Dr. Bickel’s old lab under the mountain.

  Cushing has no idea where the nanomites are, but she is close to zeroing in on me—and if she finds me, she finds them.

  The pressing reality of my situation was clear: I needed to leave.

  To leave meant to go elsewhere. “Elsewhere” implied a real place and a “real place” would require planning and money.

  I needed more money, and I needed it desperately—and yet I was as good as broke.

  One bit of information I’d picked up during Cushing’s meeting had given me hope—although it hadn’t dawned on me until a few minutes ago: Cushing’s team had not found Dr. Bickel’s safe house. His online purchases had been delivered to that house, and Cushing’s team had made no mention of it. Was it still undiscovered?

  The pounding beat of loud music heralded the arrival of our least-popular neighbor. Mateo rounded the curve in his Camaro and zipped into his driveway. I was surprised to see the muscle car since I assumed Corazón had done exactly as I’d told her and had abandoned Mateo’s prized vehicle at the Sunport’s departures gate. Airport security would have towed the car and placed it in impound.

  Mateo had driven a much humbler vehicle for a number of weeks. Now, obviously, he’d located the Camaro and gotten it out of hock.

  I wonder how much he paid in impound fees? A sardonic grin tugged at the corner of my mouth. It wasn’t nice of me, but “not nice” was growing on me.

  I smiled, too, at the Mateo who stalked up his front steps. He was a changed man, meaning he’d gone down in the world since the day of his arrest. I loved that word “gone” as it applied to Mateo: Gone was his crew. Gone was his old swagger. Gone were the
wild parties he used to throw.

  Yup, he’s definitely been demoted, I gloated. I assumed his demotion was due to Corazón’s departure with the drug money and the police visit afterward, confiscating that block of drugs.

  Can’t say I was sorry.

  All we need “gone” now is Mateo himself.

  Mateo slammed the Camaro’s door behind him and hurried into the house. My eyes searched for Emilio and didn’t find him. The kid was clever at keeping out of Mateo’s way. He stayed out of the house whenever Mateo was home and returned when he was away—and Mateo was away most nights lately, leaving at twilight, not returning home until the early hours of the morning.

  Eyes narrowed, I mused, Where does he go? What does he do all night? Whatever his nocturnal activities consisted of, I was convinced they would not be legal.

  My memory of a box crammed with money and of Corazón dumping that money into her handbag was quite vivid.

  Money. A little notion slithered into my head. It was a bold little notion, an audacious idea. An idea I entertained only because of the circumstances pressing in on me.

  MATEO LEFT HIS HOUSE about the same time each night. When his Camaro backed out of his driveway late the next evening, my nondescript old beater was already parked on a curb down the street. To anyone passing by, my car was empty.

  The pumping bass signaled his approach. When he flashed by me, I turned on my engine and followed.

  It wasn’t hard keeping up with him. Mateo drove without caution, without care, his music blaring. He hit Central and turned left, away from downtown. He drove for miles until he was way west of downtown.

  I stayed far enough back that I didn’t think he would notice me. It wasn’t until the traffic began thinning that I started worrying. That’s when Mateo turned off his music and slowed. I figured the closer we got to his destination, the more care he would take.

  I think I was right.

  We turned south and drove a couple more miles. The surrounding area grew darker and more derelict. More oppressed-feeling. I hadn’t known that Albuquerque had neighborhoods this bad: boarded up homes, abandoned vehicles, no streetlights, trash everywhere. I stepped off the gas and slowed, letting my car fall even farther back.

  Up ahead, in the middle of the next block, Mateo turned into an alley. I knew it would be insane to follow him down the block. Instead, I came to a stop and slowly drove in reverse. At the first corner, I made a quick right turn followed by another right. I parked on a curb, out of sight should Mateo double back. I didn’t like leaving my vehicle where it was, but I didn’t have much choice.

  I got out and patted the empty shopping bags under my oversized shirt. Satisfied, I retraced my route on foot, trotted farther down the block, and crept into the alley’s mouth.

  I heard whispers right away, Mateo’s and someone else’s. I froze in place.

  “I’m telling you, someone was following me.”

  “What you want me to do?”

  “I want you to keep two guys posted here all night, that’s what. Any car comes by and slows down, you send one guy back to me.”

  “Okay. I’ll get Héctor.”

  The voices moved away from me and I followed. I couldn’t see them very well, but they couldn’t see me either. I kept the whispers ahead of me until I saw a crack of faint light.

  They’d opened a door. The door slammed behind them, cutting off the voices.

  I walked by the door and tried to get a sense of the building they’d entered. I stole down the alley to where the building ended. I thought it was an old store of some sort, completely fenced, all the windows heavily barred and darkened.

  The nanomites were silent. Perhaps they knew by now that once I’d made my mind up, nothing they did could change it. Maybe they had come to the conclusion that “fighting” me at this time and in this place would only make what I was doing more dangerous—and they would be right.

  I didn’t need any distractions right now.

  I slunk back to the door and waited. Héctor and the other guy would be coming out soon.

  They did. When the door opened, I was ready. I slid in behind them as they sauntered through it, so close to them that I could smell them, feel the heat of their bodies as I slipped inside.

  “What was that?” one of the men whispered.

  “What was what?”

  I didn’t hear the rest. The door closed behind me and I was inside.

  I crept away from the door and through a short, dim hallway. At the end of the hall hung a thick curtain of fabric strips that screened out light from the next room. I peeked into the room and then stepped through the curtain and immediately to the side.

  A man cradling some kind of short rifle in his arms jerked his head up and frowned at the curtain’s movement. When he saw nothing further, he turned his attention elsewhere.

  Dear Reader, I’d never been in a drug house before, so I don’t know what I expected. I mean, I’d caught glimpses of meth houses on Breaking Bad (not a show I’d recommend or that I watched regularly), but I hadn’t been around drugs in real life. I scanned the room to get my bearings.

  For one thing, I hadn’t expected it to be so hot in there. Miserably hot. The building was just one long main room, and every window was sealed shut, covered in sheets of cardboard and strips of duct tape. Ratty, threadbare curtains hung over the cardboard.

  Men and women, their mouths and noses covered with dust masks, lined a row of perhaps three tables, placed end-to-end. Each worker had two plates of powder in front of him or her, and they scooped, measured, and mixed the two powders together, and spooned exact amounts into tiny baggies.

  The workers placed their filled baggies on a nearby tray that was then passed to a woman who weighed the baggies, zipped them closed, and laid them in small boxes. The work was conducted under the watchful eyes of two armed gangbangers, one at either end of the table.

  At a desk over on the other end of the room, two men huddled over a laptop and some kind of machine. One of the men periodically came to the table and collected the small boxes of bagged drugs. Then he would enter numbers into the laptop and hand the drugs off to someone else.

  Three additional armed gang members stood watch at various points around the room. All the guards had shaved heads and ink creeping up the left side of their necks. All of them wore the same stony expressions. The guards cradling guns kept their eyes on the workers at the tables, the guys at the desk, and even the two guards at either end of the tables.

  More important to me than the guards and the workers at the tables was Mateo. His arms folded across his chest, he observed everything.

  And I watched him.

  Mateo is in charge here, I decided. What I had planned would likely get him in trouble with Dead Eyes. For a second time.

  Mentally I shrugged. I had no compassion to spare for him.

  I slipped over to the two men huddled at the desk. Their laptop was connected to the machine, and they were feeding cash into the machine. It shuffled and counted the money and logged it in a spreadsheet on the laptop.

  It was all very organized and efficient.

  I wandered around in the main room, familiarizing myself with its layout and with Mateo’s operation. After watching for a while, I’d noted a restroom and a second door not far from the restroom. I didn’t know yet where this second door led.

  When a worker needed to use the restroom, he or she had to raise a hand. One of the guards checked that the worker had not hidden any drugs on his person. A guard waved the worker toward the restroom and watched until he returned.

  Built into the same wall as the restroom door was a disgustingly filthy kitchenette where the guards got coffee. The coffeepot’s glass sides were pretty much black from frequent use and little washing. The kitchenette’s sink wasn’t much better than the coffeepot. I thought dying of thirst preferable to drinking from the sink’s grimy faucet.

  Only the one entrance, I also noted. The single entrance/exit simplified the g
ang’s security but turned the building into a death trap for the workers. The whole setup was pretty appalling. The men and women sitting at the table might have agreed to do the illegal work, but I couldn’t believe they had agreed to the slave conditions I witnessed.

  I didn’t want to put any of the workers at risk. I knew Mateo returned home in the wee hours of the morning. I assumed he left at the end of his “shift.”

  So I waited. I sat down against a wall near an unused corner of the room. I’d been out in the night, away from a power source for a while. I placed my hand over a nearby wall outlet and let the mites feed.

  After I’d squatted in the corner for about hour, the two men at the counting table signaled Mateo. I stood, stretched, and sidled over to them. They handed a block of money wrapped in clear plastic wrap to Mateo. He studied the laptop’s screen then took the money toward the other door not far from the restroom. I followed right behind.

  Mateo opened the door. It led to a simple closet—but the closet housed a safe. The safe stood about five feet tall and, by the looks of it, had to weigh a ton. I peered over Mateo’s shoulder as he dialed in the combination.

  The door to the safe swung open and Mateo placed the block of cash on a shelf about halfway up the interior of the safe. The shelf already held wrapped blocks of money. Lots of them. The safe had another shelf above the money. I counted a couple of handguns and boxes of ammunition on the top shelf.

  My glance dropped to the floor of the safe. As I said, it was a big safe. Four boxes were stacked on the safe’s floor. I didn’t know what was in them. Just then, Mateo closed the safe’s door and twirled the combination dial.

  I backed away from the closet. Even when the night’s work was over, I was sure they would not leave the money unguarded, but at least the workers would be out of the way. So now, it was just a matter of waiting for the workers to go home.

  I returned to my corner. The heat in the room got worse as the night wore on. All those bodies and no ventilation.

  Phew!

  I kept my head up and tried to remain vigilant. It was hard.