"Hey," said Hernandez, squinting, "isn't that a chopper?"
"It sure as hell is."
"Not five minutes ago they told me it was still on the tarmac."
"Idiots."
Willer slid out his last butt and lit it up – Freddie the pilot always carried a couple of packs.
"Now we can get this show on the road."
He watched the helicopter approach, his feeling of frustration evaporating. They'd crash the canyonlands party of those bastards. There was a lot of country out there, but Willer felt pretty sure the action was up in the Maze, and that's where he'd direct the chopper first.
The black speck was beginning to resolve into something larger, and Willer stared with growing puzzlement. This was no police chopper, at least none that he'd ever seen. It was black and a lot bigger, with two pods hanging off either side like pontoons. With a sickening lurch it suddenly occurred to Willer what this was really about. The closing of the airspace, the black helicopter. He turned to Hernandez.
"You thinking what I'm thinking?"
"FBI."
"Exactly."
Willer swore softly. It was just like the feds to say nothing, let local law enforcement stumble along like blind idiots and then arrive just in time for the bust and the press conference.
The chopper banked slightly as it approached, slowed, and hovered for a landing in the parking lot. It leaned back as it settled down, the backwash from its rotors lashing up a blast of stinging dust. With the rotors still whapping, the side slid open, and a man in desert fatigues, holding an M4 carbine and sporting a backpack, hopped out.
"What the hell is this?" Willer said.
Nine more soldiers hopped down, several loaded with packs of electronic and communications gear. Last to jump was a tall man, thin, with black hair and a bony face, wearing a tracksuit. Eight of the men disappeared up the trail toward the church, jogging single file, while the other two stayed with the man in the tracksuit.
Willer sucked on the last of his butt, chucked it on the ground, exhaled, and waited. These weren't even feds – or at least any feds he knew.
The man in the tracksuit strode over, stopped in front of him. "May I ask you to identify yourself, Officer?" he said in the neutral voice of authority.
Willer let a beat pass. "Lieutenant Willer, Santa Fe Police. And this is Sergeant Hernandez." He didn't move.
"May I ask you to please step away from the cruiser?"
Again Willer waited. Then he said, "If you've got a shield, mister, now's the time to show it."
The man's eyes flickered, barely, toward one of the soldiers. The soldier moved forward – a brawny kid in a crew cut, face painted, all puffed up with a sense of duty. Willer had seen the type before in the Army and he didn't like it.
"Sir, please step away from the vehicle," the soldier said.
"Who the hell are you to tell me that?" He wasn't going to stand for this shit, at least not until he saw some gold. "I'm a detective lieutenant homicide in the Santa Fe Police Department and I'm here on official business, with a warrant, pursuing a fugitive. Who the hell gave you jurisdiction here?"
The man in the tracksuit spoke calmly. "I am Mr. Masago with the National Security Agency of the Government of the United States of America. This area has been declared a special operations zone, closed under a state of military emergency. These men are part of a combined Delta Force commando team here on a mission involving national security. Now, final warning: step away from the vehicle."
"Until I see–"
The next thing Willer knew, he was on the ground, doubled up, desperately trying to suck some air into his lungs, while the soldier deftly relieved him of his service weapon. Finally, with a great gasp, he got some air in, drinking it greedily. He rolled over, managed to get up on his hands and knees, coughed and spat, trying to keep from puking, the muscles in his stomach jumping and cramping like he'd swallowed a jackrabbit. He rode it out, got to his feet, and straightened himself up.
Hernandez was still standing there, dumbfounded. They'd pulled his weapon too.
Willer watched in disbelief as one of the soldiers went into his cruiser – his cruiser – with a screwdriver. He emerged a moment later with the radio in one hand, wires dangling. In the other he had the cruiser's keys.
"Surrender your portable radio, Officer," said the man in the tracksuit.
Willer sucked in another lungful of air, unsnapped the keeper, handed over the radio.
"Surrender your nightstick, cuffs, pepper spray, and all other weapons and communication devices. As well as any other keys to the vehicle."
Willer obeyed. He could see Hernandez being put through the same drill.
"Now we will walk up to the church. You and Officer Hernandez will go first."
Willer and Hernandez walked up the trail toward the church. As they passed the Disputation Chamber, Willer noticed the monastery's laptop lying in the dirt outside the door, smashed to pieces; lying near it was a broken satellite dish, trailing wires. Willer got a glimpse of soldiers busy inside, setting up racks of electronics. One was on the roof erecting a much larger dish.
They went into the church. The singing had stopped and all was silent. The monks were huddled at one end in a group, guarded by two of the commandos. One of the soldiers gestured for Willer and Hernandez to join them.
The man in the tracksuit stepped forward in front of the silent group of monks. "I am Mr. Masago from the National Security Agency of the Government of the United States of America. We are conducting a special operation in this area. For your own safety, you will be required to remain here, in this room, with no communication to the outside world, until it is over. Two soldiers will remain here to serve your needs. The operation will take between twelve and twenty-four hours. All the facilities you need are here: bathroom, water, a small kitchenette with food in the refrigerator. I apologize for the inconvenience."
He nodded at Willer, pointed to a side room. Willer followed him in. The man shut the door and turned, speaking quietly, "And now, Lieutenant Detective, I'd like to hear all about why you're here and who this fugitive is."
Chapter 6
THE SUN HAD risen hours ago and the hidden valley had turned into a dead zone, an inferno of boulders reradiating the pounding heat of the sun. Ford hiked along the dry wash at the bottom, musing that Devil's Graveyard seemed an even more appropriate name during the day than it did the previous twilight.
Ford sat down on a rock, unshouldered his canteen, and took a small sip. It was only with considerable effort that he stopped himself from drinking more. He screwed the top back on and hefted the canteen, estimating that about a liter remained. On a flat rock at his feet he carefully spread out his map, which was already beginning to come apart at the folds, and took out a pencil stub. He gave the tip a quick touch-up with his penknife and marked off another quadrangle futilely searched.
His feelings of being close to discovering the fossil had started to fade in the harsh reality of the landscape he had been tramping around in since dawn. Three big canyons and many smaller ones came together in an absolute chaos of stone – a dead land gutted by erosion, ripped by flash floods, scarred by avalanches. It was as if God had used it as a dumping ground of Creation, a trash heap of all the leftover sand and stone he couldn't find a use for elsewhere.
On top of that, Ford had seen no sign of any fossils at all – not even bits and pieces of petrified wood, so common elsewhere in the high mesas. It was a lifeless landscape in every sense of the word.
He shook the canteen again, thought what the hell, took another sip, checked his watch. Ten-thirty. He had searched about half the valley. He still had the other half left to explore, along with any number of side canyons and dead-end ravines – at least another day's work. But he wouldn't be able to finish unless he found water; and it was pretty clear there was no water in this infernal place. If he didn't want to die of thirst, he would have to set off for the river absolutely no later than dawn the next day
.
He folded up his map, slung the canteen over his shoulder, and took a quick bearing with his compass, using as a landmark a sandstone needle that had split off from the canyon face and was leaning at a precarious angle. He trudged across the sandy flat, crossing yet another dry watering hole, his sandals kicking up white alkali dust. He got back into the rhythm of his stride and quickened his pace, passing the needle and turning up a fingerlike wash behind it. He had eaten very little that morning – a few tablespoons of rolled oats boiled in a tin cup – and his stomach had that hollow feeling, by now familiar to him, of a hunger beyond mere hungriness. His legs ached, his feet were blistered, his eyes were red from the dust. On a certain level, Ford welcomed these mortifications of the flesh, the denial of bodily comfort. Penitence itself was comforting. On the other hand, there was a point where discomfort, pushed too far, became itself an indulgence. Right now, he was well into the danger zone, a place where there was no room for accident or error. A broken leg, even a sprained ankle, would be a death sentence: with so little water he would die before any rescue effort could find him. But this was nothing new; he had taken far worse risks in his life.
He hiked on, filled with conflicted feelings. The wash turned in a tight curve against a wall of sandstone, forming an undercut some fifteen feet high, creating a half-moon of shade. Ford rested for a moment. A single juniper tree stood nearby, stock-still as if stunned by the heat. He took a couple of deep breaths, fighting the impulse to drink again. Up the canyon he could see where part of the cliff face had collapsed into a gigantic rockslide, a five-hundred-foot pile of car-sized boulders.
In that pile of boulder's he saw something. The smooth face of one of the boulders was turned at just the right angle to receive the raking light of the sun. And there, outlined with perfect clarity, was an exquisite set of dinosaur footprints – a large, three-toed dinosaur with massive claws, which had evidently crossed what had once been an ancient mud flat. Ford slung his canteen back over his shoulder and walked to the base of the slide, feeling an electric surge of energy, all his weariness evaporating. He was on the right trail, literally and figuratively. The T. Rex was here, somewhere in this maze of rocks – and God only knew, these might be its very footprints.
That was when Ford heard the noise, just audible against the vast silence of the desert around him. He paused, looking up, but only part of the sky was visible among the towering rocks. It grew louder and Ford concluded it was the faint buzz of a small plane. The sound faded away before he could pinpoint it in the blue sky above. He shrugged and climbed up the heap of fallen rocks to examine the footprints more closely. The rock had cleaved along the bedding plane, exposing a ripple-marked surface of mudstone, almost black in color, compared to the brick-red of the layers above and below. He followed it with his eye and traced its continuation as a dark stripe running through the surrounding formations, about four inches in thickness. If these were T. Rex footprints – and they certainly looked like them – that dark layer was like a marker – indicating the layer around which the T. Rex would probably be found.
He climbed down and continued working his way up the small canyon, but after a few more turns it boxed up into cliffs and he was forced to turn back. At that point he heard the sound of the small plane again, louder this time. He looked up, squinting against the glare of the hot sky, and saw a flash of sunlight off a small aircraft passing almost directly overhead. He shaded his eyes, but it disappeared in the harsh glare. He pulled out his binoculars and searched the sky, finally locating it.
Ford stared in surprise. It was a small, windowless white aircraft, about twenty five feet long, with a bulbous nose and a rear-mounted engine. He recognized it immediately as an MQ-1A Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicle.
He tracked it with his binoculars, wondering what the heck the CIA or the Pentagon would be doing flying a highly classified piece of aviation over what was essentially public land. This Predator, Ford knew, was the operational version of something that had only been in the planning stages when Ford was with the CIA; it was a drone using ICCG technology, an Independent Computer-Controlled Guidance system, which allowed the aircraft to operate independently when temporarily out of contact with its remote human pilot. This greatly diminished the personnel requirement necessary to fly the drone, allowing it to be operated by a three-man ground team with a portable ground station instead of the usual thirty-foot trailer and team of twenty. Ford noted that this Predator carried a pair of Hellfire C laser-guided missiles.
He watched it pass by, flying west. Then, perhaps five kilometers from his position, it banked in a lazy turn and came back around toward him. It was losing altitude and gaining speed – fast. What in the world was it doing? He continued watching it through the binoculars, spellbound. It appeared to be engaged in a simulated attack.
There was a faint puff and the Predator seemed to take a small leap upward – it had just launched one of its missiles. This was unbelievable: who or what could possibly be the target? A split second later, with a profound shock, Ford realized who the target was:
Himself.
Chapter 7
MADDOX CLIMBED OVER the last ridge and paused to survey the canyon below. Here, two canyons joined to become one larger canyon, creating a rock amphitheater with a smooth floor of yellow sand. He was breathing hard, having hiked like a bat out of hell to reach this junction, and he was beginning to feel lightheaded – whether from the heat or thirst he couldn't say. He mopped the sweat from his brow and neck, dabbing carefully at the swollen areas where the bitch had kicked and scratched him. The grazing bullet wound on his thigh throbbed painfully, and the sun was burning the hell out of his bare back. But his biggest worry was water: it had to be a hundred degrees and the sun was now almost directly overhead. Everything shimmered in the heat. The ache of his thirst was growing by the minute.
His eyes traced the deep cleft of the central canyon. This was the canyon the Broadbents would be coming down.
He swallowed, his mouth feeling like it was filled with old paste. He should have thrown a canteen into his car before he took off after them – but it was too late now, and besides, he knew Broadbent and the bitch had to be suffering from thirst at least as much as he was.
Maddox cast his eyes around for a good position from which to kill them. The many boulders that had rolled down from the canyon rims gave him plenty of options. His eye roamed the talus slopes, picking out a spot where a couple of giant stones had jammed up – directly opposite the canyon his quarry would walk out of. It was an ideal place for an ambush, even better than the one from which he'd killed Weathers. But he needed an easy shot: he had two kills to make instead of one and Broadbent was armed. On top of that, he didn't feel too good.
He wasn't going to screw around anymore; no more talk, no bullshit, just kill the bastards and get out of this hellhole.
He picked his way down the ridge, slipping and sliding as he went, grabbing on to scrub and sagebrush for balance. At one point a coontail rattlesnake, hiding in the shade of a rock, jerked into an S-coil and buzzed. Maddox gave it a wide berth; it was the fifth one he'd seen that morning. He came to the bottom of the wash, hiked across, and scrambled up the talus slope, all the while being careful not to leave tracks. He paused at the cluster of boulders and looked around for more rattlers, seeing none. It was in the direct sun and hotter than hell, although it provided an ideal view of the opposite side. He unslung his .223 AR-15 and sat down Indian style, the gun laid across his knees. He gave the weapon a quick check, and then, satisfied with its operability, moved into shooting position. Two boulders leaned together, forming a V, which made a perfect firing notch. He rested the barrel in it, crouched, and sighted through the 4x scope, panning the rifle back and forth. A better field of fire could not be asked for: he was looking straight down on the canyon they would exit from, two sheer walls of sandstone with nothing but a flat bed of sand in between. There was no cover, no bushes, no place to run except back up the canyon. The
scope's built-in digital range finder told him his targets would be 415 yards away when they came around the last bend; he would let them come on for at least another two hundred yards before firing. It would be clean shooting without a breath of wind.
Despite his aches and pains, Maddox smiled as he previsualized the kill, the rounds knocking the bastards back, their blood spraying on the sand behind them. The air smelled of dust and heated rocks, and he felt a momentary dizziness. Jesus Christ. He closed his eyes and repeated his mantra, trying to bring some clarity and focus into his mind, but he was too thirsty to concentrate. He opened his eyes, looked down the canyon again. They would be at least another ten minutes. He reached in his pocket and removed the notebook; greasy, dog-eared, no more than six inches by four. He was amazed at how insignificant it looked. He flipped through the pages. It was numbers, some kind of code – and there, on the last page, two big exclamation points. Whatever it meant, it wasn't his concern; Corvus would know what to do with it. He shoved it back into his pocket, shifted position, and wiped his sweating neck with his handkerchief. Despite his exhaustion, he could feel the buildup of adrenaline, the clean edge of awareness that came before a kill. The colors seemed brighter, the air clearer, sounds most distinct. This was good. This would see him through the next ten minutes.
He gave his rifle a final check, more as a way of keeping himself occupied. The weapon had lightened him by almost two bills but he'd gotten good use out of it. He stroked the barrel and pulled his hand back: it was burning hot. Christ Almighty.
He reminded himself that he wasn't doing this job for money, like some hired hit man. He was doing it for higher motives. Corvus had sprung him from prison; and he had the power to put him back in. That created a true sense of duty in Maddox.
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