“I’m sorry—” Skyler started.
Hannah overrode him. “Just work your magic, OK?” She shooed him out of her office.
Skyler went back downstairs and explained the situation to Lance. He hadn’t even finished talking when Lance closed his laptop and stood up. “We’re gonna do what we should have done to begin with.”
“What are we gonna do?”
“Pay a visit to Oliver Meeks.”
Half an hour later, Skyler and Lance were driving north on Route 45.
*
Guns ‘N’ Roses blared from the stereo. Skyler wasn’t a fan. But it was Lance’s car. Skyler shouted, “Any reason we shouldn’t fly?”
“Don’t want this going into the system,” Lance shouted back.
Skyler nodded. Made sense. He gazed mindlessly at the billboards and exit signs flying past.
On the outskirts of Fort Worth, they got snarled in a weird parade. People were walking on the interstate—walking on the goddamn interstate—monopolizing two lanes and sprawling into a third, with bikers guarding them. The bikers did not look like the bearded Harley-riding species native to Texas. They rode Japanese machines and wore ripped denim. So did the walkers—the ones that weren’t wearing tutus, or less. A gigantic sculpture of an eight-armed alien bobbed along in the middle of the parade.
Lance guffawed. “That’s a new one for the first contact syndrome files.”
Skyler rolled down his window. “Are you going to Burning Man?” he shouted.
“Yeah, man! You got a message?”
“For who?” Skyler screamed.
As the car moved on, he barely caught the answer: “For them!”
Big rigs zipped by on the other side of the divider, hazing the air with fumes. Skyler rolled the window up. “They’re going to a festival in the Nevada desert,” he said, “to send messages to the aliens with smoke signals. Or emanations of togetherness. Or something.”
“Thank crap there aren’t any aliens,” Lance said. “I would hate to imagine their reaction.” He laughed. “They’ve got a long way to walk.”
“We have a long way to drive.”
And Skyler wished it were further. He did not want to pay a visit to Oliver Meeks. Not with Lance’s Sig Sauer and his own Glock subcompact lying on the back seat, covered by the ugly old Blue Devils hoodie Lance kept around for when the air-conditioning was turned too low.
“You’re one in a million,” Lance sang along with Axl, slapping time on the wheel. “Yes that’s what you are. You’re one in a million, you’re a shooting sta-a-ar …”
CHAPTER 24
Jack wedged his left hiking boot into a crevice and pushed off with his right foot. He wrapped his right hand around a protrusion of red ribbed sandstone and hauled himself up. Sweat poured off his body. Little as he liked to admit it, he wasn’t twenty anymore. Gone were the days when he could do 100 push-ups without getting out of breath. Which made it all the more important for him to test himself, pushing the limits of his 39-year-old muscles.
Grunting and straining, he heaved himself onto the top of the sandstone formation. He glanced down at the near-vertical rock he’d climbed, and rose to his feet. The wind licked the sweat off his face. Holding his arms out for balance, he walked along a narrow ridge. The rock dropped away steeply for a hundred feet on either side. The ridge dipped down and then rose again into a bridge—a natural arch carved by wind and erosion. On all fours, crawling like a monkey, Jack reached the top of the arch.
He sat down and gave himself a round of applause.
You had to take your victories where you could get them.
There’d been no victories for Firebird Systems lately.
Following the confiscation of their boilerplate unit, the FAA had filed charges against Firebird for violating the Atomic Energy Act. Meeks had filed a motion to have the charges dropped, but their lawyers warned that it could take months—if not years—before they were cleared of wrongdoing. Meanwhile, their test and launch facility remained off-limits as being ‘material to an ongoing investigation.’
The engineering and design team had quit. Not all at once, but in ones and twos. They were understandably terrified lest Firebird’s legal troubles should taint their future careers.
Just as well their salaries no longer had to be paid.
Jack had been absolutely gobsmacked to learn how much the lawyers charged.
Firebird’s investors had made clear that they would not be funneling any more money into what they now saw as a lost cause.
So there was no money coming in, nor any prospect of it, and at this rate, they’d soon run out of funds to pay the lawyers.
The process was the punishment.
Firebird Systems hadn’t done anything wrong. And no doubt they’d be able to prove it eventually. The facts were on their side. But that didn’t matter. The government could destroy a company—for whatever opaque reasons of its own—simply by forcing it to defend itself in court.
Meeks refused to give up. He was still working on the water engine, although there was a limit to what he could do without access to their machine shop and CAD workstations.
He’d also taken up shooting. He had gone out one day and bought a 20 gauge Mossberg tactical shotgun and an Arsenal 1911 .45 caliber handgun. He’d been practicing at the Smokin Gun Club in Mesquite.
It was fairly obvious to Jack that this new enthusiasm hadn’t come out of nowhere. Meeks had gotten interested in shooting after Jack’s close call at the test and launch facility. But Meeks just said he needed something to do, to kill time.
Fair enough.
What else was Jack doing out here, in the Valley of Fire state park, but killing time, and trying to forget how shit everything was?
Not that it was working. Here he sat on top of a majestic sandstone formation, gazing at one of the most striking views in America, and instead of enjoying the peace, he was thinking dark thoughts about lawyers’ hourly rates.
He shook himself out of it. The wind had dried his sweat. He slid his daypack off one shoulder and swigged some Gatorade. Then he took out his camera and framed a shot of the valley.
The setting sun behind Jack threw the shadow of the rock ridge across the valley floor. Dry gullies and patches of blooming poppies lay in twilight. The rock formations on the far side of the valley, still lit by the sun, glowed a stark red against the darkening eastern sky.
Beautiful.
Somewhere in the distance, a coyote yowled.
The lonesome sound amplified the silence of the desert.
Jack spotted his own tiny shadow on the valley floor. He stuck up a victory sign and photographed the shadow. He had to admit that the superzoom of his new Nikon Coolpix lived up to the name.
Couldn’t tell if the shadow had his hand facing out or in.
Either way worked.
Jack chuckled to himself and stowed his camera. His fingers brushed cool wooden beads in the bottom of his daypack.
His mother had sent him a rosary.
Since the first contact event, she and his father had rediscovered their Catholic faith. She wrote that his father—a lapsed Catholic in the mould of so many Irish emigrants—had begun going to Mass every morning. Every morning.
Jack looked at his watch. As a matter of fact, his father must be kneeling at Our Lady of the Angels right this moment, a continent and an ocean away.
Sentimentally missing his parents, he started to lift the rosary out of his daypack—
—and his phone rang, destroying the silence.
Was there any wilderness spot in America where you couldn’t get a signal these days?
Unknown number. Jack picked up, for the hell of it.
“Hey, Jack! Privjet!”
Jack nearly fell off the rock in surprise. “Alexei?”
“How are you doing, you lazy bastard?”
“Oh, racing fast cars, dating strippers, the usual,” Jack said, grinning. Although he had avoided getting in touch with his old friend Alexei,
as he didn’t want to be a downer, he was delighted to hear from him now. “What do you think, then? We’re living in the world of Star Trek.”
“Star Trek is American,” Alexei said. “You should watch some Russian sci-fi sometime. Everybody dies. Anyway, where do you think I am now?”
“I have absolutely no idea.”
“I am in Star City for training.”
“Did you fail your fitness exam? You’ve got to lay off the vodka, Alexei.”
“Yes, giving up vodka will be hard. I’m going on the Spirit of Humanity! You are talking to one of the two cosmonauts selected for the mission.”
Jack let the phone fall away from his ear. Eyes squeezed shut, he silently shouted: Fuck! Oh bloody HELL …
The unfairness of fate took his breath away.
But his natural generosity overcame his piqued reaction. He brought the phone back to his ear. “That’s bloody brilliant, Alexei! Congratulations.”
“I hope to get on board before they notice their mistake,” Alexei cackled. He was plainly thrilled to bits.
“No mistake, mate. You’re the best they’ve got. What role will you be taking?”
“Co-pilot, EVA specialist, and of course my favourite, hydroponics. On the Spirit of Humanity, everyone must have two jobs. Or three.”
Alexei had mis-named the ship twice now. “Spirit of Destiny, mate,” Jack said, sniggering. He couldn’t say it without cracking up. “Spirit of Destiny.”
“Oh, yeah. You know, that sounds very stupid in Russian.”
“It sounds worse in English. I should say, British. SoD.”
Alexei laughed, although Jack suspected he didn’t get it. Alexei only bothered to learn English slang if it was really dirty. Sod was an old epithet, born of a homophobic past and not heard so much anymore, though it still sounded vile to Jack. “To be precise, Spirit of Humanity sounds stupid in Russian, too,” Alexei said. “But the ship itself, Jack, the ship will be a thing of beauty. The first real spaceship we have ever built!”
“They’re being very secretive about it, aren’t they? Are you allowed to share any of the specs?”
“Of course, it’s not classified,” Alexei said blithely. “First of all, the propulsion system will use our new reactor design. So you can imagine how happy the siloviki are about that. The engine is from NASA. That’s also new. It will use water for the reaction mass!”
Jack froze. “Water?”
“Yes, NASA is copying the aliens!”
Oh no, they’re not.
Jack’s pulse raced.
They’re copying us!
Concealing his consternation, he asked Alexei for as many details of the new drive as he could reveal. He hung up at last with good wishes for the intensive training Alexei was about to undergo. He immediately dialed Meeks.
“Leave a message.”
“Ollie, I’ve just learned something rather startling. We’ve got to discuss this ASAP. I’m on my way back now.”
Jack shoved his phone into the side pocket of his daypack. He began to climb down.
It was harder on the way down. That’s what Inga always used to say, and she was right.
Jack tended to be defensive of his new hobby, because he knew that it looked wet, as if he’d taken up Inga’s favorite pastime as a substitute for Inga herself. That really wasn’t it at all. He’d started hiking in the desert because he had the 4WD, and time on his hands.
He reached the top of the ridge, dropped to his haunches, and slid his right foot down the near-vertical rock face he had to descend.
He did think about Inga often when he was out here, but he didn’t miss her. They had never been perfectly suited—he’d fancied her like mad, of course, but she was too pragmatic and humorless. He could practically hear her saying now, “It is absurd to go climbing alone.”
Well, yes, Inga. It is absurd. Perhaps that’s why I do it.
“When you attempt a steep face, you should always rope on.”
I can’t be arsed with ropes, Inga. Takes all the fun out of it. I always wanted to spacewalk without a tether, too. See what it felt like.
“Bouldering is actually more dangerous than climbing. You can get hurt very badly.”
Jack glanced down between his feet. The encroaching shadow bled the color from the sandstone. The distance back to the slope didn’t look short, and his arms trembled with tiredness. He’d rested too long, talking to Alexei.
He let go with his left hand and reached down with his left foot, probing for that nice deep crevice he’d used on the way up. The dusk hid the horizontal ribs in the sandstone.
“Anyway, it is important to have the right equipment,” Inga said smugly, lacing up the La Sportivas she would wear for an afternoon of bouldering with the local club.
Jack found the crevice. He let his weight down onto his left foot.
His chunky hiking boot slipped.
His body scraped down the rock face, driving his breath out in a shout of fear.
His entire bodyweight hung from his right fingertips. He scrabbled with his left hand and both feet, desperately seeking a hold.
Burning, aching, his fingers gave way. He slid down the rock face with a scream.
CHAPTER 25
As they drove the last miles towards Bunkerville, NV, Lance honked and shot the middle finger at any driver unfortunate enough to wind up ahead of him. Skyler thought about pointing out that he was drawing unnecessary attention, but decided against it. Lance was in a foul temper. Understandably so. Their journey had taken a solid 36 hours—twice as long as they had planned on. For miles around Dallas, and then again outside Albuquerque, they’d crawled along in stop-and-go traffic.
Those parades.
Parades was the wrong word, Skyler had decided. Movements better described the crowds of people walking along the highways of the Southwest. Skyler had talked to more of the walkers while traffic was stalled—they were friendly. (Or maybe just stoned.) Many were on their way to Burning Man.
Black Rock City was going to be a megalopolis this year.
Others didn’t seem to know where they were going. “Out west,” or “To the mountains.”
Skyler said to Lance, “I believe what we are seeing here is the spontaneous beginning of a Great American Bug-Out.”
A movement, or many movements, planned by no one, coordinated via social media, driven by amorphous hopes and fears.
“If they get up in the mountains,” Lance said, “they’re gonna die.”
“It’s amazing how peaceful the whole thing is,” Skyler pondered.
The police had clearly thrown in the towel, faced with the impossible task of removing tens of thousands of people from the freeways. A few patrol cars spun their lights, diverting the movement off Route 40 into central Albuquerque. Like that was going to improve the traffic situation. The walkers blew kisses at the cops, tossed paper airplanes.
“They won’t be peaceful for long when they run out of weed and Mountain Dew,” Lance said.
And a while later: “Don’t any of these people have jobs? Homes to go to? Don’t answer that.”
The masses had come unmoored long before this, Skyler thought. They were ready now to drift up into the sky.
How was this going to end? He shared Lance’s fear that it would end badly.
ENTERING BUNKERVILLE.
Lance clicked the car stereo off, jerking Skyler back from his melancholy musings into an even less inspiring present.
“Can you reach in the back seat and get my piece?” Lance said.
Skyler did as he was asked. Lance laid the gun between his thighs. He turned off into a residential neighborhood. The headlights flashed on trees shading empty sidewalks.
“This kind of burg is dead after eight o’clock,” Lance said. “Reminds me of my hometown. Except without the clunkers up on blocks.”
The houses stood on full acre lots, with green watered lawns signalling affluence.
“How are we gonna play this?” Skyler said. He was so sc
ared his voice came out croaky. He despised himself for it.
“First we case the place.” Lance slowed down. He nodded to their left. “That’s it. OK, the lights are on, but there’s no vehicle in the driveway. Meeks is home alone. Perfect.” He drove on, circling the block. “Meeks shares the house with the test pilot who used to work for Firebird.”
“Kildare. I met him at Vegas airport,” Skyler said. He couldn’t forget Kildare’s fury when they confiscated the boilerplate unit. It had been a pleasure to humiliate the arrogant Brit. But as night follows day, Skyler’s triumph had turned to shame. He did not want to confront Kildare again. “So he’s not here? How do you figure?”
“He drives a Toyota truck, parks it in the driveway. Meeks parks his car in the garage, but he needs the other garage space free so there’s room for him to get out.”
“That’s right, he’s in a wheelchair.”
“Yeah.”
They came around the block. Lance backed into Meeks’s driveway and parked with the nose of his Escalade facing out. Before they started their journey he had changed the license plates for fake ones, of which they had an official NXC-issued stash.
Too late, Skyler said, “Shouldn’t we wait until he’s asleep?”
“Dude. No. We need to talk to him.”
Lance slotted his Sig Sauer into his special holster. The suppressor fitted through the hole in the bottom of the holster, poking down alongside his leg. Skyler wedged his Glock into the waistband of his jeans. He pulled his t-shirt over it, as if to hide what he’d become. As if there was any hope of that, when he was with Lance.
Lance rang the front doorbell, bold as brass.
A chain rattled. The door swung back.
A man in a wheelchair wheeled around the door one-handed, holding the door open with his other hand, and stared narrowly up at them. Stubble shadowed his bony jaw. A tartan blanket covered his lap.
“FBI,” Lance said, holding up his badge with his thumb over the NXC logo. “We would just like to discuss a couple of things with you, Mr. Meeks. OK if we come in?”
Freefall: A First Contact Technothriller (Earth's Last Gambit Book 1) Page 15