Valley of Death

by Gloria Skurzynski

  Leesa shrugged a little and replied, “You don’t really need to, Jack. I’m all right now. I have a ride, so I won’t have to hitch.”

  Jack couldn’t believe the change that had come over Leesa. Hours ago, she’d been a weepy, scared girl full of guilt. Suddenly she’d become this take-charge action heroine like he saw on television shows, putting her trust in a stranger she’d met only five minutes before, telling Jack she didn’t need him now. “I’m going with you,” he announced. In this weird, surrealistic, nighttime scene, with a girl who’d been part of a hate group and a college kid who didn’t look old enough to report anything scarier than a dog show, Jack felt like he was the only normal character with his head on straight. Someone had to keep touch with reality, and it appeared that job was going to fall on him.

  They climbed into Jesse’s Jeep, Leesa sitting in the front seat, and Jack pushing junk around in the back to find enough room for him to squeeze in. The floor was littered with empty soda cans. Other cans, full ones, rolled around, hitting Jack’s feet when the Jeep started moving. An open sleeping bag hung over the back seat and trailed into the tailgate. Boxes full of notebooks and loose papers slid around in the tailgate. The Jeep smelled like pizza, which was no surprise since there were two smashed pizza cartons stuffed between the seats.

  “Here, hold this,” Jesse said, tossing the camcorder over the seat into Jack’s hands.

  That thing must have cost a ton of money! And there Jesse was, throwing it around like a candy bar. “So where are we going?” Jesse asked.

  He meant the question to be for Leesa, but Jack answered. “Route 190. But we’ll get stopped at the barricade at the old Harmony Borax Works, and that’ll be the end of all this. Especially when the police see Leesa in here.”

  “So,” Jesse said, glancing at Jack in the rearview mirror, “we shouldn’t let them see Leesa. Or you.”

  Leesa seemed to be on the same page as this guy. “Jack and I will hide,” she said. “We can scrunch down on the floor of the back seat while you talk your way through the barricade.”

  “That’ll work. Hey, Jack,” Jesse called to him, “look in one of those boxes back there. Find a baseball cap that says NBC, and in the same box you’ll see a pair of glasses—they make me look older,” he explained to Leesa.

  “How old are you really?” she asked.

  “Nineteen. I’m a freshman. But I’ve been doing this since I was 16. I’ve even had some stories on national TV.”

  “How many?” Jack wanted to know.

  “Well, one so far. About a guy who claimed to have psychic powers. Said he could control the slot machines in Las Vegas with his thought waves. He really did seem to be able to. When I followed him around with my camcorder, he kept hitting one jackpot after another.”

  “And that story got on national TV?” Jack asked, unbelieving.

  “Yeah. On News of the Weird.”

  Oh, great! Jack thought. “Let me ask you something. Is that a real press card you showed us?”

  “It is. So’s the one hanging from the visor. But I’ll be honest with you—press cards like this aren’t hard to get. You just join a certain freelance photographers’ organization and pay the very big dues they ask for, and they send you the card. So it’s real, but it’s not what you’d call major-league credentials. But it works. Some of the time.”

  What was Jesse getting them into? Leesa seemed intent on going ahead with her mission, putting her trust in this college kid, this would-be reporter, who would have to bluff his way to where she wanted to go. She started to talk to Jesse, telling him about everything that had happened from the time the Landons reached Skidoo. In a little while she stopped and said, “Slow down. We’re coming to the turnoff.”

  “OK, Leesa, get in the back,” Jesse told her. “Get on the floor and cover yourself and Jack with the sleeping bag.”

  “Wait a minute!” Jack said. “You don’t even know where we’re supposed to go if we do manage to get through the barricade.”

  “So tell me.”

  “OK.” Jack was in this so deep already that he might as well play it out. “I have this theory,” he said, “that other members of The Unit are planning to make a rescue attempt. I mean, it could happen.” Jack had imagined the whole thing. “They could come from Darwin Falls and drive past Stovepipe Wells on Route 190, leave their vehicles, and strike out across the desert. Anyway,” he added weakly, “that’s my theory.”

  “Cool, dude,” Jesse told him. “You be the navigator when we get past the checkpoint. Now, both of you better cover up for this undercover operation. That’s a joke, guys, but do it.”

  Leesa quickly crawled into the backseat, then she and Jack started grabbing soda cans off the floor and throwing them into the cardboard boxes. “Don’t you want your camcorder up there?” Jack asked Jesse. “If you’re going to look like a reporter, you’ll need it, won’t you?”

  “No. Give me that black press bag that’s on the backseat next to the window. It’s got bigger video equipment plus other cameras and rolls of film and tape. Hand over the tripod, too.”

  When Jack found the right bag, he saw that it was unzipped. A glance inside revealed equipment worth thousands of dollars, all jammed together helter-skelter without even any partitions to keep valuable cameras from banging into one another. Jack couldn’t imagine that kind of carelessness—if his dad saw that, he’d blow a gasket. Jesse had to be incredibly rich not to care about how badly his cameras got hammered.

  “What does your father do?” Jack asked him.

  “He owns a casino and a couple of hotels, which is how I was able to find out where you were staying—through my hotel connections. So, give me the camera bag and cover yourselves with the sleeping bag. I see the barricade lights up ahead.”

  Like everything else in the Jeep, the sleeping bag smelled of pizza. Jack and Leesa pulled it over themselves as they flattened their bodies on the floor. When the Jeep stopped, they couldn’t see anything, but they could clearly hear Jesse speaking to the officer who’d halted him. Jesse’s voice sounded deeper now, more mature and very calm. “Good evening, officer.”

  “You can’t go past here. This whole area has been cordoned off.”

  “I’m a member of the press corps, officer. I’m covering this story for national news. Here’s my press pass.”

  There was silence. Jack could imagine the officer examining the card by flashlight, then turning the light on Jesse, who now happened to be wearing very serious-looking glasses and an NBC cap. “Where is it you want to go?” the officer asked.

  “Just a little way up Route 190 so I can get a few shots for my network. If you or one of your men wants to accompany me, that would be fine. That would be great, in fact.”

  Jack sucked in his breath. What if the officer agreed?

  “I can’t spare anyone,” the officer said. “All right. I’ll give you ten minutes, but you can’t go any farther than that little rise just ahead. That’s all. Take your video shots and then get out of here.”

  “Thanks,” Jesse said. The Jeep started to move again. As it lurched forward, Leesa’s elbow bumped into Jack, but he knew better than to yell out.

  “How much longer do you think we’ll have to stay down here?” she whispered.

  “Not too much longer, I hope,” Jack muttered. “I’m suffocating.”

  His watch was not the kind that showed the time in the dark. After what he thought must be about five minutes—during which the Jeep never stopped moving—he cautiously moved the sleeping bag off his head.

  “You guys OK back there?” Jesse asked. “You can get up now.”

  Jack gulped air, glad to be able to breathe again. “So what good is all this?” he asked. “I mean, we have to turn back right away, don’t we? I heard the man say you could only stay for ten minutes.”

  “Yeah, that’s what he said.” Jesse kept driving, making no attempt to turn around. “So we’re on Route 190—how far do we go?”

  He wasn’t
going to turn back! Oh well—“Maybe about 15 miles,” Jack answered. He wished he had the map—he hoped he was remembering it correctly. “We should stop a few miles before we get to Stovepipe Wells.”

  “And then what?”

  Leesa leaned forward, her arms folded on the top of the passenger seat. “And then I’m going to walk across the desert to where Ashley is being held and ask them to let her go.”

  The Jeep swerved suddenly to the side of the road and slid to a stop. Turning around to face Leesa, Jesse asked, “You’re going back to The Unit?”

  She nodded. “Yes. You’ll get your big scoop.”

  Taking off the baseball cap, Jesse smoothed his curly black hair. “I don’t think I want a scoop that bad. Not just because I’ll be prosecuted for letting you do that, Leesa, but because it sounds like the wrong thing to do.”

  So Jesse had a conscience after all. Maybe between the two of them, he and Jack could talk Leesa out of her crazy plan.

  “Keep driving,” Leesa told him. “Or if you don’t want to, I’ll just get out here.”

  Overhead, the thump of helicopter rotors started faint but grew louder and louder until the chopper was right above the Jeep. Then a bright spotlight shone down on them and an amplified voice ordered, “You in the Jeep. Turn around and go back.”

  Jesse stared long and hard at Leesa. “Tell me what to do, Leesa. If you want me to make a run for it in the Jeep, I’m willing. I don’t think they’ll shoot at us, and my dad will probably bail me out of jail.”

  Smiling at him, Leesa answered, “Let’s do it then. Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Driving as though he thought he could actually outrace a helicopter, Jesse roared down Route 190 in the dark while Jack and Leesa clung to the handholds above the doors.

  All the while the chopper’s bright searchlight beamed down on them, and the amplified voice kept telling them to stop immediately and give themselves up.

  One thing was good—the light illuminated not only the Jeep, but the fringe of desert alongside the highway. Jack kept searching for trucks, for vehicles, for any sign that the Darwin Falls members of The Unit might have driven off road as a starting point for their ambush attempt. He was sitting directly behind Jesse, with his face pressed against the glass, because if the bad guys really were out there, they’d be on the left side of the road.

  They’d gone no more than six miles when Jack yelled, “Wait, I see tire tracks!”

  “So what?” Jesse shot back.

  “They’re fresh tracks. The wind hasn’t blown them away. They might be from the guys we’re looking for. Turn around, Jesse, and follow those tracks.”

  Jesse must have watched too many car chases in the movies, because he slammed the brakes so hard the Jeep spun out in a circle, throwing Jack and Leesa around like punching bags. Then Jesse jammed the gearshift forward and headed right into the desert. “Jack, take this camera pack,” he ordered. “I have to pay attention to my driving, so I want you to get out the big video camera with the holding strap on top—see it? It’s the best one for shooting in dim light.”

  Trying to keep his balance as the fast-moving vehicle bounced around, Jack reached over the seat to bring the heavy camera bag into the back. He had no trouble finding the video camera—it was the professional kind that had a great big lens and sat on a cameraman’s shoulder. “Put it up here beside me,” Jesse instructed, “so it’s all ready to go when I need it.”

  Just as Jack dropped the video camera onto the front seat, they hit a bump in the sand that knocked him backward. Unconcerned, Jesse asked him, “Do you know how to work a camera?”

  “Not a video camera, but I’m pretty good with prints or slides.”

  “Cool. Find yourself a camera in that bag. Each one is already loaded with film.”

  “You mean you want me to shoot pictures?”

  “Sure. You’ll be my backup photographer. I take video, you take stills.”

  Under safer circumstances, it would have been like getting turned loose in a candy store. Jack saw five cameras in the bag—he didn’t know which one to pick, because they were all expensive cameras with the kind of fancy lenses even his father couldn’t afford. He chose a Nikon with an 80–200mm zoom lens, but he had to hold onto it tightly because the wild ride kept getting bumpier, and he didn’t want the Nikon to fly up against the ceiling of the Jeep and get smashed. He’d already ruined one piece of equipment that day, and that was enough.

  “Hold on!” Jesse yelled, revving the engine as he tried to get traction on the desert floor. The Jeep sped up a little hillock of sand and then—they were airborne! They must have flown 12 feet before they hit the desert again with a bone-jarring bounce. Jesse gunned it, but the Jeep had had enough. Its tires dug into the sand and spun. The harder Jesse depressed the accelerator, the faster the tires spun, and the deeper they sank into the sand. That was it—they weren’t going any farther.

  “OK, everybody out!” Jesse ordered. “Jack, start shooting at anything that moves.”

  Since the helicopters qualified as moving items, Jack took pictures of them, but not when they were directly overhead because the downwash from the rotor blades practically blew him away. He covered the lens with his hand to protect it from all the blowing sand.

  When the helicopter moved farther away and Jack was no longer caught in the downwash, he swivelled around to peer through his zoom lens at the desert sands. His spirits soared, because ahead on the sand sat three pickup trucks and two off-road vehicles, all parked randomly with their doors open, as though the occupants had jumped out of them fast. He’d been right! Someone—probably members of The Unit from Darwin Falls—had driven out into the desert, trying to connect with the kidnappers! About 200 yards straight ahead of him, through the zoom lens, he saw several moving shadows, but they were hard to interpret because the choppers’ searchlights had not yet illuminated that part of the desert.

  Amid the confusion of blowing sand, the noise from the helicopters, and the excitement of spotting the bad guys, Jack almost missed hearing Leesa. She was holding out her hand to him, shouting to be heard. “Good-bye, Jack. Thanks for everything. Tell your parents I’m doing this for them.”

  “Wait! What makes you think those guys are going to give up Ashley? Maybe they’ll just keep both of you.”

  In the illumination from the Jeep’s headlights, Leesa shrugged as she answered, “It’s a chance I have to take. For Ashley.” Then she turned away from him and began walking, a lone figure crossing the desert at night, heading into danger. He dropped the camera from his eyes to watch her. Leesa’s long black braid swayed against Jack’s red sweatshirt. From above, the helicopter’s searchlight beamed down on her as if she were an actress on a stage, a tragic actress going forth to a destiny that no one could predict. He remembered her fear that The Unit might want to punish her, and a lump rose into his throat. Why hadn’t he tried harder to stop her?

  “Get pictures of her, Jack, get pictures,” Jesse kept calling to him. With the video camera on his shoulder, Jesse was following Leesa’s progress, then zooming in on the Darwin Falls cell members in the distance, then back to Leesa, and all the time he kept moving forward toward the action. Clicking his own shutter—but without much enthusiasm—Jack followed Jesse.

  “Over there, Jack, over there!” Since his right hand operated the video camera, Jesse pointed with his left. Maybe the helicopter pilots had finally clued in on what Jesse was pointing to in the darkness, because suddenly one of the choppers dipped toward them and then veered away and up. Its searchlight picked out the militia members, eight of them, who were running bent almost double, holding automatic weapons in their hands.

  Sweeping his own zoom lens in an arc, Jack thought he might be seeing something else farther away. Was it—yes. Maybe. The SWAT team! Uniformed men were crawling forward, coming closer to—to what? The barricade where Ashley was being held? Jack could barely make it out through the telephoto lens. “Don’t miss any of thi
s, Jack,” Jesse kept yelling.

  Forget it! Jack didn’t care how many pictures he took with Jesse’s Nikon. Jack’s sister was out there, held prisoner by desperate men. “Here, take your camera,” he told Jesse, thrusting the Nikon at him. “I’m going after Ashley.”

  He took off running as fast as he could, which wasn’t very fast because of the sand. It was that same slow-motion nightmare all over again where he kept hoping he’d wake up and all the Landons would be safe at home at Jackson Hole. But this wasn’t a nightmare, he was wide awake and terrified for his sister.

  He didn’t get very far before a man appeared like a ghost out of the shadows and caught hold of him. The man was dressed in a uniform of desert camouflage, but that didn’t mean anything, because the bad guys as well as the good guys could show up wearing the same kind of uniform. His heart pounding in his ears, Jack cried, “Let me go! What do you want?”

  “I’m SWAT team. Who the devil are you?”

  “I’m Jack Landon,” Jack yelled. “Ashley’s my sister. I need to find her.”

  The man barked, “You’re staying right where you are. What do you think you’re doing out here anyway? This is a secure area. No civilians allowed.” His grip on Jack’s shoulders was so tight that Jack couldn’t move forward at all, not even an inch. But he could see, because both helicopters were now beaming light on the action.

  Everything seemed to be happening at once. The Darwin Falls men, all eight of them, moved closer to the barricaded dugout while the SWAT team stayed flat on the ground, less than 50 feet away. Under the blinding illumination of the searchlights, the whole thing looked like a scene from Hades. Figures dashed back and forth from shadow to light, light to shadow, with yells and shrieks punctuating the night. Jack strained to see the barricaded bunker, now in light, now in darkness. Where was Ashley?