From a distance, it is idyllic. Flocks of migratory birds glide along the rippling blue surface of the water, past vast shorelines of deserted white beaches, under the pristine winter sun.
All an illusion.
It is a wasteland of apocalyptic proportions.
A sea that was never supposed to be, created by an engineering disaster that sent the Colorado River rampaging into an ancient lake bed. It was two years before the breach could be repaired. And the Salton Sea was born.
The area was once a thriving resort, developed in the 1950s as the “Salton Riviera.” Chic towns sprung up along the shoreline in a land investment gold rush. Socialites and celebrities flocked to boat, swim, and water-ski at the popular marinas and clubs. Then a series of ecological disasters hit one after another, like plagues from God, devastating the region.
First came the recurring floods, causing massive property damage and driving residents out of the new developments. Investors pulled out of hotels and businesses, leaving a series of ghost towns along the shores. An agricultural spill from nearby farmland contaminated the Sea, killing millions of fish and hundreds of thousands of birds. An algal bloom poisoned millions more.
Now the whole region is mostly deserted, a curiosity stop for intrepid tourists.
Up close, all illusion fades. The blue water is a murky brown. The white beaches are formed of the pulverized bones and scales of millions of birds and fishes; the shoreline is littered with skeletons and dry white husks. Global warming has relentlessly shrunk the shoreline, exposing miles and miles of polluted mud. The mud bakes in the sun and turns into dust storms in the wind and desert heat; the dust, laced with the arsenic, selenium, lead, and mercury, renders the air unbreathable.
And the smell. In the cool winter months, there is only a slight whiff of sulfur, but soon the paralyzing heat will come, and the smell of dead and dying animals will draw swarms of flies and create an unbearable stench all summer long.
There are a few outposts of inhabited houses. Between is nothing but desert. Vast alien spaces. Stark desolation.
A dire warning of the consequences of mistreating the earth.
Cara drives the cracked main road along the shore, toward the GPS coordinates Ortiz has sent.
They lead to the ghost town of Bombay Beach.
She looks through the windshield at skeletons of houses half tumbled into toxic-looking green pools. Telephone poles with no wires, stretching out to the horizon like uneven lines of giant crucifixes. Rusted hulks of cars and appliances, all white-crusted with salt.
Farther up from the pale muck of the shoreline are abandoned buildings, many still filled with belongings, even cans and boxes of food, as if residents fled overnight without packing. The eeriness is compounded by the cryptic graffiti spray-painted on wall after wall.
Beyond the ten-block-by-ten-block grid of the town are paved streets with street signs—and no houses. The phantom blocks are inhabited only by dust devils and tumbleweeds. Beyond that, cracked roads just stop in the sand.
It is toxic. It is dead. It is her nightmares come to life, a postapocalyptic vision of life after a nuclear bomb. It, made manifest.
In the center of town, some houses and RVs are inhabited. There is a population of just under three hundred—some owners, some squatters. Stubborn previous residents. Misfits and criminals and iconoclasts.
On the outskirts, abandoned houses stand open to the elements, sand piling up in drifts in the corners. And the wind. The constant wind.
And yet, there is a terrible, menacing beauty to the place, which draws amateur photographers and artists. Some of the houses have been turned into art installations—masterpieces of graffiti, with creepy film tributes: THE HILLS HAVE EYES scrawled across the outside of one house, and IT RUBS THE LOTION ON ITS SKIN . . . on another.
The GPS coordinates lead her to a block on the edge of town, a crossroads where there is nothing but the shells of small houses. The windows have been smashed long ago, and the houses are swept clean by wind.
In the middle of a block is a whitewashed one-room house. Cara stops the truck some distance from the house to watch.
On one wall of the house, dozens of milk cartons are nailed to the plaster in tidy lines. A crude hand-painted sign sticks out of the sandy patch of yard outside:
HOUSE OF MISSING PERSONS
The wind rolls tumbleweeds past the truck, down the dusty road. Nothing else stirs.
After long minutes of surveillance, she makes the decision. She turns off the engine, and gets out of the truck.
She has dressed in the hunters’ clothes. Two pairs of khaki trousers, a sweater and both parkas, to bulk herself up and create a male silhouette. And of course, the hunting cap pulled over her hair, shielding her face.
The numerous pockets of the outer parka conveniently hold weapons. A knife. The Taser she hasn’t fired. A flare gun. And a real one, a Beretta. There will be a price to pay for using a gun. There always is. But here, she has no real choice. She must be prepared for all eventualities.
The weight in all the pockets help make her body heavy, like a man’s, and she lumbers with the hunter’s graceless stride toward the door of the cottage. Or rather, the doorway, as the actual door had been ripped away long ago.
She hovers in front of the dark opening for a moment, listening.
There is silence . . . nothing but the swirl of wind.
She steps inside.
The small, square space is completely empty, except for a table in the center of the room and the walls, where more rows of precisely lined-up milk cartons are nailed into the plaster, each with a photo of a person, a narration, and the word MISSING.
A gallery of lost souls.
A large open book lies on top of the table.
She steps to the table and looks down.
The book is a visitor guest book. A manila envelope sticks out of the pages.
She removes the envelope and opens it . . . to find the final instructions.
Chapter Eighty-Four
Singh is just past Palm Springs, less than twenty miles from Palm Desert, when her phone chimes with Ortiz’s email.
It is the briefest of instructions, ordering the hunters to drive west on the 10.
So she drives.
The second email comes when she is on the long, uninhabited stretch of freeway skirting the south edge of Joshua Tree National Park to the north, and the top of the Salton Sea to the south. This time, a set of GPS coordinates that would have her turn south and drive the eastern edge of the Sea.
She drops down from the 10 onto Highway 111, driving through a corridor of massive date palm groves, through the town of Mecca and onto the North Shore.
She passes through the Salton Sea State Recreational Area, where an old yacht club in the shape of a battleship has been refurbished into a community center. A delicate purple-and-orange sunset colors the sky, stunningly reflected in the silvery water of the enormous lake. Pelicans glide past reflections of palm trees. A glimpse of the former glory of the place.
But the old yacht club is the only sign of new life. Beyond that, only shells of abandoned concession stores, tightly boarded up and covered in graffiti, overlook the water.
Then there is just bare desert highway and the long salt-crusted stretches of sand down to the water’s edge. The wind is constant, pushing at the car. The shadows of sunset creep over fields dotted with desert wildflowers, gray-green sage bushes, craggy low hills.
She motors through a lonely intersection with just two buildings: an abandoned auto repair shop with metal sun canopy, and a liquor store/video rental store. Both wide open to the elements. A tall palm tree sways precariously in the wind.
So completely abandoned, she shivers.
And then it is dark.
Behind her, she sees headlights, approaching fast. Lights that are set up from the highway, higher than a standard car. A large vehicle.
She watches in her side mirror as the vehicle bears down on her, shoot
s out into the opposite lane to overtake her.
A truck, with an enclosed shell over the bed.
She looks out her side window to catch a glimpse of two men in the front seat. A man with a red hunting cap driving.
She freezes. It is all she can do to keep her eyes ahead, to keep her hands steady on the wheel.
Could these be the hunters?
She has seen no one else for miles. No cars, no people. And these men are on the direct route to the GPS coordinates. Two of them.
For a moment, she is paralyzed with indecision.
She speeds up gradually, so she can keep pace without coming too near. On the dark desert highway, they are in plain sight ahead. They have come from behind, so they will not suspect her of following them.
So she follows.
Chapter Eighty-Five
Roarke and Epps drove out of the bleak arroyos of the Anza-Borrego Badlands and hit the highway circling the Salton Sea just as the sun was going down. And Epps got his first glimpse of it.
The look on his face was pure consternation as he stared through the windshield in a stupor. “What the hell is this place?”
Roarke had been here before, ages ago, on one of the endless summer vacations his academic parents dragged him and his brother on in their youth. Memory had faded, probably because it was impossible to hold the sheer weirdness of it in your mind. It was like something out of Mad Max.
Epps couldn’t stop staring as the agents drove past scenes from the Apocalypse.
A Volkswagen bus half-sunk in a slimy pool of white. Stark driftwood trees in a mosaic of cracked mud. Toxic chemical lakes burping bubbles of sickly green and orange. Pieces of rusted machinery, crumbling boat docks, artifacts from the boomtown days—now ghostly pale, crusted with salt. A rotting armchair stuck out of what looked like sand, but what Roarke knew to be the crushed bones of fish and birds. Beyond it, a bedframe appeared to float in the water.
Roarke’s anxiety spiked as he looked out over his darkest fears for the future.
Is this what we’re headed for? With an unstable narcissist at the helm of the nation, how long before the inevitable?
Epps gave him a stark, sober look, and Roarke would have bet money his agent was thinking the same thing. It was impossible not to.
Ortiz’s GPS coordinates led them through the outskirts of town to a block of abandoned houses with gaping, glassless window frames, random armchairs and lawn equipment scattered in the sandy plots.
The nearest match to the coordinates was the white shell of a one-room house, with a painted sign stuck in the sand plot of yard:
HOUSE OF MISSING PERSONS
On the side wall dozens of milk cartons were nailed in tidy lines. Even from the car, the agents could see the faces on each carton.
“The fuck?” Epps said.
“Ortiz’s idea of a joke,” Roarke answered grimly. But also, anyone stopping at the house would look like just another desert tourist, checking out the local found art.
Roarke reached for the glove compartment, took out a Maglite, slipped it into his coat pocket.
Both agents drew their weapons and got out of the SUV. They fanned out wide, then moved in on both sides of the doorway missing its door.
They took positions on either side of the entry, and Roarke called in, “FBI. Drop your weapons and come out with your hands in the air.”
There was silence . . . nothing but the drone of the wind . . .
Roarke grabbed for his Maglite and shined it inside. The small, square space was empty, except for a table with a large open book. There were no inner doors—it was the only room.
Roarke holstered his Glock, stepped to the table, while Epps remained guarding the door.
The book was a visitor guest register. A manila envelope stuck out from the pages.
Roarke seized it, shoved his hand inside . . . then turned it over, vainly shaking it.
It was empty.
He turned to Epps, spoke through a dry throat. “The hunters . . . they must have gotten here already. They took the directions with them.”
They stood inside the empty house . . . surrounded by the faces of the lost.
Chapter Eighty-Six
The sky is fully dark, now, the road lit only by the brightness of the moon, and Singh is easily able to follow the truck from half a mile behind. She feels exposed on the empty highway. She can only hope that she is far enough behind the hunters that it never occurs to them to suspect a tail.
The faint red taillights slow ahead, and the truck makes a sudden right turn into a dark patch of what must be another palm grove.
Singh’s heart starts to race.
By the GPS, the coordinates Ortiz gave are still over five miles away.
Has she been following a local, all this time?
Should she continue on to Bombay Beach?
She slows the Lexus as she approaches the turnoff. Through the corridors of palms, she can see the dark silhouettes of buildings.
It is an abandoned motel, situated on a sea of sand. Several low white structures in rows, every door and window boarded up. The avenues between the buildings lined with more palm trees. A husk of a boat lies in the midst of a sea of tumbleweeds taking over the landscaping.
Singh stares out toward it as she approaches the drive. And then, abruptly, she makes the turn.
She steers cautiously as she enters the drive from the side. There is no trace of the truck she has been following. The huge old-style MOTEL sign towers at the end of the complex, three rows of low buildings away, where the former lobby must be. She is barely creeping the car now—
A figure looms up in her headlights. She slams on the brake. The car shudders as the engine stalls out. A man stands in the middle of the dark road. Dressed in camouflage and a hunter’s cap.
And aiming a rifle straight through the windshield at her.
For a split second she is frozen in his sights.
Then a shadow moves behind him in the glare of the headlights . . . and the man jumps a foot in the air, convulsing, before he crashes to the ground.
The figure behind him darts forward, stoops over him . . . Singh sees a gleam of silver blade . . . and a dark geyser opens in the pale flesh of his neck.
Singh gasps. Her heart is beating so fast that for a moment she cannot breathe.
The killer stands and looks in through the windshield at her, eyes flashing reflectively, a shine like cat’s eyes in the dark.
Lindstrom.
She stoops again and stands, now holding the dead man’s rifle. She slings it over her shoulder, strides to the driver’s side of the Lexus, and yanks at the door handle.
Locked.
Lindstrom looks through the glass, waiting. And after a beat, Singh presses the button to unlock the door.
Lindstrom reaches beside Singh to kill the headlights.
“There are more,” she says. Then she grasps Singh by the arm and jerks her out of the car, pulling her into the dark, toward the labyrinth of palm trees.
Completely by instinct, Singh moves with her.
In the shadowed corridor of the palm grove, Lindstrom stops on the sand. The intense light of the moon filters through the canopy of palm fronds.
The women face each other in the moonlight. And suddenly, against all reason, Singh is flooded with intense relief, almost euphoria. “You are safe. You escaped.” She cannot believe the sheer luck of it.
And then the relief fades, as a primal fear wells up from the depths of her being.
Lindstrom’s face is streaked with blood from the man she has just killed. Dark crimson drips from her hair. But it is so much more than that. There is something not entirely human about her. She is an animal. She is an avatar. Killer of hundreds of men. This is goddess energy, archetypal energy, and it is terrifying to be in its presence.
Singh feels her heart rise to her throat.
Lindstrom turns away from her, to stare out through the trees, down the dirt avenue in the dark. “He has another
guard on the opposite drive.”
She reaches to her neck, unzips and strips off the parka she is wearing. There is another underneath it. She extends the first coat to Singh. Singh takes it automatically.
“There are cars coming in,” Lindstrom continues. Her voice has a husky quality, almost erotic, yet it is strangely affectless. “There’s a signal. Blink twice, then again twice. Then the guard comes to the car, escorts them in.”
“For what?” Singh manages, in confusion. “You have escaped.”
“Escaped who?” Lindstrom says.
Singh glances toward the motel. “The hunters. Ortiz.”
Lindstrom tilts her head, frowning. “They never had me.”
“But . . .”
Lindstrom looks at her. “Ortiz is in there,” she says, in that strangely toneless voice. “You know Ortiz?”
“I know he is a monster.”
“Yes,” Lindstrom agrees flatly. Her eyes graze Singh’s face. “The men who are coming. I think he’s selling turns.”
At first Singh is unable to think through her revulsion. “But he cannot. How can he? They never did have you,” Singh says. But there is a dark understanding growing in her mind, a feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach.
“No,” Lindstrom says. “He came prepared. He has a backup. He’ll do this with or without me.”
Singh stares at Lindstrom as the full, horrific truth dawns.
If the hunters do not deliver, there is another woman inside that Ortiz intends to use in Lindstrom’s stead.
The former lobby of the motel is merely a frame now—windows and door boarded, the check-in counter still hovering eerily in the middle of a wall that no longer exists.
Singh stands with Lindstrom in a dark concrete cubicle that once housed a small laundry room, her face pressed to the rough plywood of a boarded-up window.
A crack in the plywood gives her a view into the motel lobby. The long room has been swept fairly clean and there are klieg lights on stands in various places, and video equipment. An obese young man hunches in a chair at a table behind the equipment, smoking. A swarthy man Singh recognizes as Ortiz stands over him, pointing at a screen, giving orders as he gestures behind him . . .
Hunger Moon (The Huntress/FBI Thrillers Book 5) Page 25