More than anything else, Storch would come to wonder why he didn't just call the police that night. He wanted to believe the raid wasn't by his own government, that his friend Harley Pettigrew wasn't a terrorist, that he hadn't killed himself.
And, craziest of all, he found he wanted to believe his father had been right. With only the moon following him, Storch drove to Owens Valley.
He reached the Convict Lake rest stop shortly after midnight. He cruised the parking lot, empty but for a station wagon filled to the windows with dirty laundry and trash. An old woman in a matted frightwig slept against the wheel in a foxhole she'd burrowed out of the scraps of her life. A bumper sticker epitaph: I CRAPPED OUT AT THE SHOWBOAT CASINO-HOTEL, LAS VEGAS.
The restrooms were murkily lit by flickering fluorescents filled with dead and dying moths and flies, casting spastic, fluttering wing and leg shadows on the slimy walls. All the toilets were blocked with a heady primordial stew that looked to be on the verge of birthing a whole new ecosystem. His gorge rising in his throat, Storch reconned the place thoroughly, then wandered out into the desert behind the visitor's center.
He would have missed the faultline if not for the plaque. Peering into the moonlit sands, he made it out, like a zipper in the earth, running to the San Francisco Bay to the north and Riverside to the south. He walked along the faultline, kicking rocks into it and beginning to feel stupid. Then he saw it: a lily blooming out of the fault, a perfect flower basking in the lunar glow. It was a girls' hand.
He went back to his truck and got a shovel.
4
People often observed that Special Agent Martin Cundieffe bore an uncanny resemblance to the nerdy, bespectacled character actor Wally Cox, if Wally Cox had gone bald before age twenty-five. He looked like the kind of guy who never gets laid, who has no friends excepting other geeks on the Internet, and who still lives with his parents. All of which was true, and all of which made Cundieffe the kind of FBI agent Hoover would've been proud to have in his service. Cundieffe never tired of being treated like a naive weakling, because he never tired of being underestimated. It opened doors that stayed closed to those who looked like they knew what they were doing. Opening doors, learning secrets, made Martin Cundieffe tingle. It was all he knew or needed of physical pleasure.
Right now, as he was passing through the third of five checkpoints in the nearly deserted corridors of the Federal Building in Los Angeles, on his way to an emergency briefing with officers of the Navy at five in the morning, he felt an especially strong tingle that zapped through his mind, undiminished by the hour, let alone by his section chief's order that he sit in on the meeting, and do nothing else. Deputy Assistant Director Wyler, head of the counterterrorism section, at least did not underestimate Martin. Lane Hunt, the special agent in charge of the LA field office's counterterrorism squad, was in Riverside, following up on a bank robbery by Aryan militiamen, but Wyler had asked for him, Martin Cundieffe, the unit's resident bookworm.
In the half-hour since he'd received the call to go in, he'd compiled a file of all recent suspected anti-government activity in the western United States, cross-referenced by military service, as per Wyler's instructions. It wasn't as complete or as updated as Martin would've liked—he'd simply printed out the thirty-six dossiers he'd had activity on in the last six months—but it would more than suffice for scaring the Navy brass out of their shorts, if that was what they wanted.
Cundieffe reached the fourth checkpoint and presented his photobadge. A guard in dress blues took it, scanned it through a reader and held it up to his face like a bar bouncer. Cundieffe obligingly smiled the lopsided, squinty grin that matched the photo and was rewarded with a wave-through.
Although he'd never had occasion to deal directly with the Navy himself, Cundieffe could read sailors as well as he could anyone else, which was extremely well. These checkpoints were more cobbled together than his report; this sudden case of paranoia, on top of the emergency meeting itself, painted a picture of a fat old man waking in the night on his soft mattress in his big bed in his sprawling mansion, convulsing with terror at finding its veil of security penetrated—and something missing. Cundieffe had a good idea of what he'd be hearing this morning by the time he reached the fifth checkpoint, where he presented the sealed envelope delivered by special courier four minutes after the call. The secrecy agreement within it was more Byzantine by half than anything he'd seen before, and the ink on it smeared under his hand. He'd found five glaring typos just glancing at it.
When he saw who else was waiting at the door to the briefing room, it snapped into place. Ted Atherton, the Assistant Deputy Director of Investigations leaned against the door frame, sharing a whispered joke with Wyler. Behind them stood an irritable-looking man whose ID tag marked him as CIA. A craggy older man with a silver beard and a black military uniform regarded him with biblical contempt, and scowled blackly at Cundieffe's hapless grin. Cundieffe fell in behind this last man after wordlessly passing a copy of his report to his boss. One by one, they passed the Marine at the door.
He was even more stunned by who wasn't here. Over two-thirds of the seats in the briefing room were empty. The Special Agent in Charge of LA was absent, likewise his assistant, likewise anybody else Cundieffe recognized from the field office. Each of the players present sat alone, sans the inevitable delegation that accreted around them. Dark suits meshed with the murky shadows, pale faces and winking insignia floated like a banquet of ghosts, feasting on secrets.
Cundieffe took a seat beside Wyler, who slid the report back to him and nodded gravely. "Marty," he whispered, "have you ever heard of a criminal investigation being run by the victim?"
"Excuse me, sir? No—I haven't."
"You have now."
The last few filed in and took their places at the two long tables spanning the conference room, and the Marine shut the door. There were only six civilians to the military's nine. Rear Admiral Wayne Meinsen leaned on the podium, his wattled jaw propped on one hand.
"What you're about to hear has been passed on to the Joint Chiefs and Pentagon Intelligence only an hour ago, gentlemen. The SAC of this field office has been briefed, and is en route to Washington to sit in on the executive conference with the FBI director. The President hasn't been notified yet, and, God willing, he'll never have to tell the people about it, because we're going to fix it.
"Four hours ago, a security breach occurred at our China Lake Weapons Station. Due to the, ah, unorthodox nature of the incident and the limited intelligence gathered so far, this briefing will be more rumor control than anything else. Here are the facts, such as they are.
"At oh-one hundred hours exactly, station radar picked up a MH-60 Seahawk helicopter on approach. The pilot correctly identified itself to security at the storage quadrant of the station, and proceeded to instruct for an impromptu inspection. The duty officer logged the request, as well as the order that the senior CO not be notified. Five minutes later, he logged a visual on two helicopters on final approach: a Black Hawk and another that he identified only as 'Russian'. That is his last entry. Shortly thereafter, the security measures and monitors and the entire staff of the station were incapacitated by a weapon of undetermined nature. For the next hour, we have only deductive intelligence about what went on inside."
Chatter boiled up among the officers, hardened career military and intelligence men all. Cundieffe kept his mouth shut, but his mind was spinning several feet above his poker-faced skull. Hostile invasion of a domestic military base. It exceeded the most audacious scheme ever cooked up by the militia-prone braggarts he monitored.
Wyler surprised him by interrupting the already aggravated Admiral. "No corroborative visual fix on the helicopters. No security video. And they used your own codes to get in."
Oliver Froud, Naval Intelligence, cut the Admiral off, this time. "The second helicopter did not register on radar at all, and neither of them showed up when they took off. We haven't determined the cause of that. No acti
ve satellites were over the base during the occupation, and nothing showed up on the shots taken just after we knew something was wrong. All internal security measures were disabled in the security center, and incoming security checks were intercepted. All the tapes were bulk-erased. The clearance codes used to approach the base were previously thought to be uncompromised."
More mumbling. Cundieffe caught the smile behind his boss's hand. "No casualties, either?" Wyler asked. "I thought softkill technology—"
"Please, please, hold your questions. No, there were no direct casualties. As near as we can tell, the base was saturated with some kind of electromagnetic field which disabled the entire garrison of eighty men, and all electronic equipment in a two square mile area. All of them experienced seizures and unconsciousness, but no other ill effects. One man fell down a flight of stairs and broke his leg. Another man bit off his tongue. The first response team on the scene swept the area for chemical and bioweapons agents, and came up clean."
Nervous laughter all around. This was thrilling. The Navy, a Delta Force Commander, even the CIA were scared. The harder they were, the more disturbed they looked, he noted; the act violated their most deeply cherished rules of engagement. Whoever the thieves were, they played by a totally different field manual. Cundieffe thought of the peculiar custom of the Plains Indians, called counting coup. Bands of warriors would steal into forts and mark their white enemies' heads with charcoal or paint, to show them how safe they really were. He doubted the Admiral would appreciate the anthropological precedent, however, and so kept it to himself.
Captain Roger Stenson, Naval Intelligence: "As far as our best intel goes, softkill option weapons don't exist. The Pentagon's research on all nonlethal projects was shelved in '94. Our friends at JSOC—" a nod to the black-uniformed officer "—have made use of subsonics and chemical incapacitants, but nothing like an EMP wave ever got past the testing stages. The KGB and GRU only did minimal research on those projects under the Soviets, with the same results. France, Germany, Japan and South Korea are all still trying it, but, again, they can't induce a seizure in a single subject in a lab, let alone an entire base. There are about fourteen private corporations around the world pursuing EMP weapons technology as a sideline, but they're years away from anything remotely like what the Admiral has described."
"I think the Admiral's here to report a flying saucer," said Willis Kopko, the NSA rep. More laughter.
The Admiral flushed so red Cundieffe expected him to spit blood. "Please, would you shut the hell up until I've finished the goddamned briefing? Thank you. Now, a sentry from the north gate and one on the flight control tower made their routine check-ins every thirty minutes during that time, and received the proper countercodes until oh-three hundred. They were on a tape. At oh-two hundred five hours, a civilian outside the base saw two helicopters flying low over the desert, headed east. They were inside for only an hour, and when they left, they were loaded down."
"Shithouse mouse, it's an inside job," said Sibley, the CIA rep. "They've got your fucking codes, back to front."
"At oh-three ten," Meinsen went on, "the security hut personnel had come to and phoned in the breach. We scrambled helicopters and alerted NRO, who snapped these Keyhole satellite prints of the area."
He stood back as the lights dimmed, and a projection of a satellite photograph came up on the wall. Cundieffe studied it for a few moments, feeling as if he was looking at one of those Magic Eye stereogram prints that his mother seemed to think he enjoyed. A blocky spiderweb lay tacked out on the desert, bedizened with dewy spots of luminescence that indicated vehicles and other large heat sources. This was China Lake. Around it, the desert spread like the rumpled sheets of a vast bed. With digital enhancement, Cundieffe knew, the Admiral could zoom in to examine cacti and Joshua trees and shotgunned beer cans until Y2K day, but he wouldn't find any helicopters. The stormy, purple knot his face had become told all in the room that he was well aware of this. He nodded toward the military end of the room, though Cundieffe hadn't seen anyone move to address the group. "Yes, Mort?"
Lt. Col. Mort Greenaway of Delta Force cracked his knuckles over his report and fixed Meinsen with his fierce gaze. Cundieffe could see in those eyes that he'd already been braced by the Admiral, and was plenty peeved about something. Cundieffe could easily enough read the tight-beam message that leapt from the Admiral: Mort, did your Delta assholes pull some kind of psycho wargame maneuver on one of my bases?
And the equally naked broadcast from Greenaway, who'd just tumbled on to why he, and not a SEAL Team Commander, was here: Admiral, has one of your elite units gone rogue?
When he finally spoke, the Lieutenant Colonel's fingers twisted and tugged at his beard. "A Black Hawk has a range of three hundred eighty miles. Unless they can refuel in the air. Can you at least say with any conviction that they're still in the desert?"
"No other radar stations picked up anything but fixed-wing aircraft in the region. We've set our eyes on all the roads in and out of the area, and have patrols checking all freight vehicles passing through. I think it's safe to assume they've gone to ground somewhere in the Mojave."
"Shit, that narrows it down," Sibley hissed. "You only read one helicopter, when two were visually confirmed. If they can't be reliably tracked on radar, you may as well start looking in Mexico."
Wyler threw his hands up. "We've all been sitting here shitting biscuits listening to this, and wondering why we're here at five in the morning when the President hasn't even been told yet. What the fuck did they take, Wayne?" Cundieffe's ears burned to hear such language from his own supervisor's lips.
"Just four tons of twenty-five year old napalm in fifty-five gallon storage barrels. Just enough Vietnam-era incindergel to torch a small city."
This time, there was no mumbling. A few pens clattered on tables, more than a few indrawn breaths, but in between, Cundieffe could hear sweat breaking out of pores. A crisp plastic snap resounded in the silence, and Cundieffe looked over to see Lt. Col. Greenaway's hand was black with ink from his broken pen. He made no move to clean himself, staring into Meinsen, his fist drizzling fat droplets of ink all over the desk.
Atherton drummed his bony mortician's fingers on the thin report in front of him. "That just doesn't make any goddamned sense, Admiral. A tight operation like you described, and they just took napalm? What the hell would terrorists with effective softkill technology want with something as crude as napalm? They may as well have stolen a catapult."
"Shows what you fucking idiots know," Lt. Col. Greenaway said, his voice receding down a tunnel that led back to Vietnam. "Four fucking tons of nape, my God." Most of the uniforms present today had served in Nam, and it loomed over them like a shadow whenever talk turned to mass troop commitments and limited wars for political goals. Now it had followed them home. Right now, it was taking a bite out of the Lieutenant Colonel. Cundieffe took copious notes.
"It's bullshit," Atherton said.
Cundieffe tapped Wyler on the shoulder, scribbled on his yellow legal pad. "NOT TERRORISTS! VIGILANTES!" Wyler's eyes stalled on the note, and he leaned in close to Cundieffe. "What the hell?"
"Sir—"
"I think my assistant has something to offer," Wyler said. Cundieffe knew he was meant to see his boss's smile, this time.
"Well, it's just—"
"Go ahead, then."
"—Thinking out loud, really—"
"Out with it, young man!"
Cundieffe sucked in a deep breath of the room's stuffy, recycled air, and shuffled his files. "Well, in my, ah, experience, anybody who takes up arms against the government usually expects to have to take lives. If they don't, they're not terrorists. These, um, intruders of yours went to great lengths to do exactly the opposite: they didn't harm anyone, when they could've massacred the whole base and taken everything. In their hands, then, the napalm is useless as a lever of extortion, because we know they won't hurt people."
"That's what I'm thinking," Sibley replied
. "They won't hurt sailors because they're armed forces themselves, or vets. But that hardly dismisses them as a threat."
"Hate crime," Atherton, buffing his glasses on his tie. "Tomorrow, they'll melt down Chinatown, or Watts, or the Fairfax District."
"Hell, why not the fucking White House?" Greenaway shot back, grinning.
"Maybe it isn't even for them," said Roger Stenson, the Defense Intelligence Agency civilian liaison. "They could sell it to another group who isn't so squeamish."
"Again, I don't think so, sir." Cundieffe was running now. Wyler's hand seized his wrist like a parent trying to steer a toddler away from a bear-trap. Wyler didn't fret that he'd get hurt; he just wanted the bait for himself. "You see, if they were planning to drop the napalm on a politically or racially motivated target, or even to sell it, secrecy would be paramount. They have to know this'll provoke as large a counterterrorist operation as can be managed in secret, and they have to know they'll never get to keep it for long, let alone deliver it on a target. Napalm has to be dropped from a plane or a helicopter, and there are dozens of ways to kill lots of people that are infinitely more efficient than napalm."
"We're aware of that, son," Meinsen said. "Are you still just thinking out loud, or do you have a point?"
"I think I—what I'm getting at, sir, is just this: that the theft may be more for your benefit than theirs. Maybe it's their way of trying to tell you they're going to do something, to challenge us. This reads more like vigilantism than terrorism." Blank stares from all but Lt. Col. Greenaway, who seemed to be trying to melt him with his gaze. Cundieffe could almost feel it working. "Admiral, have you ever heard of counting coup?" Oh nuts, where'd that come from?
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