"Gulf War syndrome?"
"You could call it that."
"You're an even bigger whiner than I thought, then."
The braced left arm came up, and Stella flinched, but it only grazed his forehead, hovering before her long enough to see he had no thumb, and his palm was shot through with a starburst of scars where the hand was messily sewn up. He backed away from her and rooted around in the dispensary case until he found what he was looking for. He unscrewed the lid off the aspirin bottle and tipped it back into his mouth, gobbling down at least a dozen. "Mind if I keep the bottle?" he asked.
"I told you, it's not mine. What about you? You're one of them, now?"
"What do you know about it, ma'am?"
"I know they were going to kill you before, and now you're one of the merry men."
"I don't see where I have much choice in the matter," he answered, keeping hold of a cool he evidently was far from feeling. "I don't much care for the way they do things, but we have a common enemy."
"So you're going to help them murder Radiant Dawn."
"It's war, ma'am. I didn't fire the first shot. They've got it coming."
"That's what the Nazis said. Do you have a hard-on for killing them, or just killing in general?"
"I'm not a machine, ma'am. They hurt me and mine, they're going to pay. And you talk an awful lot for a guinea pig." He turned and made to walk out of the sickbay, and she was about to call him another name, just for the all-important sake of having the last word in, when he staggered and flopped against the examination table. His shoulders shook, and she heard something that might've been a choked sob escape from his audibly chattering teeth.
Before better judgment reminded her of her all-too recent brush with death at the hands of Mrachek, she raced to him. Her hands stopped short of touching his back, but she felt her resentment of him falling apart under the piteous weight of his obvious suffering. Everyone in this tomb was damaged goods, and she'd been prepared for him to be the worst of them all. But in the last few minutes, he'd talked to her more than anyone had since her capture. He lacked either the sense or the insecurity to rise to her barbs, and she was starting to see why she couldn't stop being mean to him. It was a strange and scary feeling, one she'd never had to endure for more than a few minutes before she scared the object of it away.
"What's wrong with you? Can't hold your aspirin?"
"This…place…makes me…sick." Words struggled to escape his lungs, which sounded as if they were filling up with phlegm, or collapsing. She knew enough about Gulf War sickness to recognize that it had a myriad of symptoms, but that many took the form of environmental sensitivity. Exposure to fossil fuels, certain drugs, in fact just about any inorganic compound which released fumes, aggravated the condition. But most Gulf War sufferers that she'd seen—on TV, never in the flesh— looked ravaged, devoured and weakened. This man looked hale, tanned and healthy, trembling fits notwithstanding. Built more like a marathon runner or a swimmer than the hulking brutes who comprised the Mission militia, he might've been faking it if he looked like the kind of man who could stand to seem weak in front of a woman. This guy didn't look as if he could stand to be weak in front of himself. "Get along…You can't…help me."
Stella grabbed his arms and maneuvered him onto the examination table. He didn't resist, she doubted he could've. "Here," she said, reaching under the table and fumbling around on the utility shelf. She found what she was looking for and handed it to him. His hands were shaking too badly, so she tied it over his face.
With a sterile gauze mask over his mouth and nose, he immediately began to breathe easier, and his eyes stopped tearing. They focused on her, weighing her, but not judging her. She looked away, but he filled the room for her, and there was nowhere in or out of it that she could go and get away. She had to make him hate her, or this would only get worse.
"You Mexican?" he asked, his voice softer and clear, but sleepy.
"My parents were from Mexico, but I'm an American citizen. The white doctor won't have anything to do with you."
"I was just gonna say…you're a real pretty…" the next word was a sustained snore.
Stella wouldn't remember how long she watched him sleep. She was too busy trying to figure out how to make him hate her.
31
The tenth of July set records in Death Valley and the surrounding regions, but not for heat. The second cloudburst in as many weeks visited upon the hottest place on the globe spasms of flashflooding that resculpted the terrain like hatchets in clay. As the afternoon guttered out into early evening and the shadows began to bubble up out of fissures in the cracked desert floor, the air felt almost humid on Special Agent Cundieffe's face.
"Have you ever had to fire your weapon?" the Delta Force lieutenant asked Martin Cundieffe.
"Never in the line of duty," Cundieffe answered. "Force has never been my strong suit. That's why the Lieutenant Colonel had the good sense to send you gentlemen along." He smiled at the lieutenant and the other three commandos, but the smile was growing tired. They'd been having a lot of fun at his and the Bureau's expense for the last couple of days, and despite his resolve to represent his agency in the best possible light, they were getting to him. He turned to Special Agent Hanchett and whispered in her ear, "See that next time we get an FBI tactical squad to accompany us. I don't care what the Colonel says, this is disruptive to the search. His people are contributing nothing but static." Hanchett nodded and made a note on her laptop.
They were over the Ubehebe Crater, about sixty-five miles north of Furnace Creek, sweeping the bottom of a grid at the outer edge of the search pattern. An FBI helicopter, an FBI pilot, and a cargo of totally useless, foulmouthed, insolent counterterrorism specialists. Cundieffe regretted the deal he'd struck with Lt. Col. Greenaway for the thousandth time, but there was no helping it for the present. He had prepared a new report for Deputy Assistant Director Wyler this morning, in which he posited that the search had become a secondary layer of obfuscation to deflect the Bureau from the objective. Greenaway had concentrated his own searches in the southeast quadrant, going back over twice-examined territory and flatly refusing to allow FBI agents onboard. In speculations he dared not forward to Wyler just yet, he'd alleged that Greenaway already knew where the enemy was, and was circling to either contain or contact them. Perhaps he'd tipped his hand too soon, misreading Greenaway as more than just another assassin. But it would still come down to a race, as it would have, anyway.
The hole beneath them was half a mile wide and six hundred feet deep, the result of a seismic convulsion a few thousand years ago which had created a starburst-shaped corona of cinders six miles wide. A gravel parking lot was dotted with a few campers and pickups, and a ranger's truck beside public restrooms. Two of the commandos spotted land features and vehicles with binoculars. Suspicious groupings of vehicles were tagged and the numbers fed to Hanchett, who ran checks on NCIC and the California DMV database. They had found twelve stolen cars and two felons with outstanding warrants, but no terrorist militia, and no stockpiles of napalm. Cundieffe spent four hours in the air each day, then eight in the Bureau's HQ at China Lake, reviewing reports from agents up and down the state, as well as DEA and INS data from the border region. Then he went back up in the air for another four hours until just before dawn, scanning the desert floor through infrared goggles, looking for telltale heat signatures of underground activity. The night searches had yielded only a few drug smugglers and off-road enthusiasts on state parkland. He slept for four hours, and spent his first four hours each morning drafting reports and requisitioning more men.
The Bureau was talking to the Mexican Federal Police, who had pledged their support but taken serious issue with the United States Navy crossing their borders in gunships. Lt. Col. Greenaway had successfully pushed all Navy personnel onto the ground search, and placed his own officers in all the choppers, and was probably crossing the border out of the sanctioned search grid. It was enough to make one seriously
wonder what side they were really on.
"—for Special Agent Cundieffe?" a tinny voice crackled in his ear. He pressed the earphone deeper into his ear and swung the microphone up under his nose.
"This is Cundieffe. Say again?"
"SA Tufts here, sir, in Tango Rainbow Seven. We're at mappoint seventy-two, thirty-eight, returning from completed sweep of grid twenty-nine. We're almost out of fuel, so we're turning back. But I saw a wrecked truck off a dirt side road in Titus Canyon. It matches the description of the Storch vehicle posted in the ready room."
"Tufts, that notice also made note of the date the vehicle was recovered, at mappoint thirty-two, nineteen, nearly a week ago."
"I know that, sir, but it's the same make and model, with the back window shot full of shotgun blasts. Someone dumped it here."
Cundieffe cut Tufts off and hailed the pilot.
Titus Canyon cut a narrow, winding twenty-six mile rain gutter through the eroded ramparts of the Grapevine Mountains, between Death Valley and Beatty, Nevada. The trail that wound through it was closed through the heart of the summer, sand-blasted signs hanging from chains snaked across either end proclaimed that flashflooding had washed the roads out. For a fugitive who knew the terrain, it was a perfect route for fleeing the state, because the sheer walls of limestone, sand and crystalline concrete shadowed the rutted trail, affording excellent coverage, even from an air search. Today, the trail stood out as a ribbon of livid green through the blinding bone-colored mountains. The local flora had made the most of the previous week's rainstorm, and with the further encouragement of this morning's downpour, had run riot in the alkaline sand: spiky, unforgiving balls of rocknettle already choked the trail in spots, with here and there a splash of orange poppies and globemallow, shoots of sacred datura and wispy veils of white gravel ghost, like standing shrouds of mist. Where there was an inch of space, or a day of rain, nature went berserk in its variety and hostile generosity.
Cundieffe studied the canyon as it unfurled beneath them through binoculars, poring over the bleached remains of the ghost town of Leadfield; the picked-over bones of a bighorn sheep scattered at the foot of a cliff; the sparkling decay of crystalline fields and scummy brown pondlets in the crooks and spreading hollows of the canyon.
They were hovering over the map point, but Cundieffe could see nothing. Through the telescoping lenses, the furrowed waves of undulating earth became an angry, ancient abstract painting, or an image of capillary tissue seen through a stereo microscope. Paradoxically, this let him focus and let loose his insecurities about the size of the search. He was searching a section of tissue removed from a body called the earth, for a foreign object—and like that, a brilliant flare of sunlight off chrome filled his vision and burned a violet phosphene nova onto his sight. "Come around this point ninety degrees," he shouted to the pilot, and looked again. Ignoring the chuckling whispers of the Delta Force contingent, he ordered the pilot to set down.
The pilot fretted and hemmed and hawed, but finally negotiated a stable landing place of sorts on a plain of brittle, dried mud at the floor of a bowl beside the trail. The canyon walls recorded a war between gods, strata burrowing into each other, lines of accreted geologic time plunging under invading rock of radically variant composition, as if the land itself here sometimes turned to water. Perhaps when the rainstorms had been more generous here, this had been a cauldron-lake, for at least part of the year, but for nature, this would have been more than enough. Cundieffe had heard of aquatic plants, frogs, and even "primitive" fish which could seal themselves in a membrane of water and sleep for decades, perhaps even centuries, until water came again. Cundieffe imagined the ground beneath him churning with forgotten species resurrected by the fleeting rainstorm, and plotted the shortest path to solid rock.
The skids settled a good couple of inches into the crust, and Cundieffe leapt out, splaying his hands out before him as a rough hand shoved at the small of his back. He hit the ground running and awkwardly caught up with his own forward momentum, the ground beneath his feet crumbling like petrified ash, turned and shielded his eyes from the portable sandstorm from the prop wash, watched the Delta Force commandos fan out to form a secure perimeter around the chopper. Unassisted, Hanchett climbed down and, steadying herself against the chopper deck, reached back in and dragged out an evidence kit. A few of the commandos joked about her bringing too much makeup, another answering back too loud that they didn't make enough makeup for a face like that, but she didn't give them the satisfaction of a blush as she crossed the mud flat towards him. She was a credit to her gender and to the Bureau, Cundieffe thought. He felt very warmly towards her.
"Too hot for this shit," one of the commandos groaned.
"Actually," Cundieffe broke in on their griping, "today's temperature is far below the average for this time of year. The high record was set on this day in 1913, and it was one hundred thirty-four Fahrenheit at two-thirty in the afternoon. Right now, it's six-thirty PM, and the temperature is only a little above ninety-four. The focus of our search is up that box canyon there, less than a quarter mile to the northwest of our present position. If you gentlemen can maintain your unparalleled professionalism and expedite rather than hinder our collection of evidence on this site, we can be in the air again before sunset. Agreed?"
They looked at each other, equal parts bewilderment and relief. "We'll sit tight," the lieutenant said finally. "You call out, if you need help."
Cundieffe hadn't even had to ask. He was afraid of agreeing too quickly, because then he was sure the lieutenant would feel obligated to send along his two least-disciplined men as an "escort." He made a tight, lipless smile to indicate his resignation, and led Hanchett up into the narrow box canyon.
Hanchett insisted on carrying the evidence kit herself. The canyon was scarcely wide enough for them to walk abreast, and Cundieffe took the lead, though he had a harder time keeping his smooth-soled leather shoes under him than Hanchett, who had thought to wear boots.
The rutted trail up the canyon was more of a gutter, not quite flat, and choked in a thick carpet of eroded sand, packed to the consistency of asphalt by the rain that had pried it loose from the canyon walls. The walls themselves loomed forty feet above them on both sides, the jagged, interlocking facets of the opposing faces testifying to a bygone cataclysm that had split this mountain neatly into halves. They were walking up into a jaw of earthbone, that would take far less of a seismic upheaval to close it again. Cundieffe picked up his pace, though Hanchett dogged him by less than a full stride, and almost caught him several times when the sand gave way under him.
"Sir?" Agent Hanchett called. "May I ask what might be deemed an impertinent question?"
To his mild chagrin, he had a harder time than she did finding his breath, but he managed, "Go ahead, Hanchett. And—" huff "—don't call me sir. We're both garden-variety field agents."
"Yes, Agent Cundieffe, but—well, perhaps you're unaware of it, but the entire task force holds you in the highest esteem, and has expressed nothing but admiration for your handling of the case since you stepped in, but…"
"That's untrue in my experience, but thank you, Agent Hanchett. Was that your impertinent question?"
"No sir, I was going to ask—are you absolutely positive this is the best disposition of our resources at this time?" She stopped, and Cundieffe gratefully settled back against a rock wall and caught his breath, looked at her quizzically. "I didn't mean it like that, I apologize. I had no intention of second-guessing you, sir, but, Agent Tufts' report sounded a bit speculative, and I—well, many of us on the task force have had occasion to question his observations in the line of duty. And, well, if you saw something, then that settles it, but we've come close to a half-mile from the landing point, and we haven't seen anything."
"Look at the ground, Hanchett," Cundieffe said. This canyon could not possibly accommodate a vehicle of the description of Storch's truck, and in the other direction, according to the survey map, is a sheer wal
l fifty feet high. That was where I saw the wreck of a vehicle, which would indicate that the vehicle in question was driven into the canyon off the cliff, with intent to dispose of it. The vehicle I observed, though partially obscured by a fan of eroded soil, was not corroded, and the chrome reflected light back. It's been there after the first rainstorm, but probably before last night's. So, if you've no more doubts—"
"I'm sorry, si—Agent Cundieffe. I never meant to question your—"
"Forget it, Agent Hanchett. We have some ground to cover, so let's get a move on."
Three turns of the canyon later, they found it.
The truck lay nose down in the basin of the dead end of the canyon, the walls like termite-gnawed wood spilling petrifying sand over its matte black hood and one exposed wall of the truckbed. A chuckwalla, a fearsome-looking lizard nearly a foot long, scurried out the shattered windshield and sought cover as they picked a careful path to the truck.
The truck had not been here long. Cundieffe's guess from the air had been spot-on. It had been exposed by last night's storm. It was an uncomfortable revelation, to say the least. The Highway Patrol and Death Valley Junction sheriff's deputies who pursued Storch out of Furnace Creek had claimed to have fired several dozen shotgun rounds at the truck, yet the vehicle they'd recovered had shown no damage from gunfire. Cundieffe had not taken the discrepancy seriously because, well, there was the damnable truck, with the plates and matching VIN numbers on the engine block and doorframes, everything tallied up with Storch's DMV records, and Storch was the one who'd left Sheriff Twombley's office, according to several witnesses in town, and the surviving deputy himself, when he recovered his senses.
But that had not been the truck. This was the truck that had fled the Furnace Creek massacre, Cundieffe was sure of it. The license plates might match, the VIN numbers might even match, but unless there were two Zane Ezekiel Storches walking the earth, the man who'd killed Sheriff Twombley and his deputy was, it now appeared, someone else entirely.
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