Dark Target

by David DeBatto

  She wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but it was like a flash of light, without the light. Like somebody was taking her picture with a flashbulb, but she’d blinked at the last minute, except that she hadn’t blinked, and now there was a bright blue streak on the back of her retina, but she couldn’t say why, except that she was looking at a woman, and then the woman sort of… melted, and now the woman was gone.

  Ruby couldn’t breathe.

  Ruby couldn’t move.

  For a second, she thought she’d dreamed what she’d just experienced. As she collected her wits about her, Ruby then thought what she’d seen was a woman being struck by some sort of invisible lightning. And lightning brought with it thunder, which, at so short a distance, should have been deafening—Ruby had heard only a soft crackling, and then a snap.

  And then the woman was gone.

  Maybe it was a dream, Ruby thought. Or maybe the image had been sent to her by somebody, the way some people saw the image of the Virgin Mary in the frost on a windowpane—maybe it meant Ruby had been singled out to be a witness to something special, except that she could still see the look of fear on the woman’s face, and the pain she felt as she burned. Ruby could definitely smell something had burned, like the time she was trying to fry ants with a magnifying glass with her friend Cody and accidentally lit her own hair on fire. The picture of the woman melting was not an image Ruby cared to carry with her—it frightened her—but how was she going to get rid of it? Maybe if someone explained it to her.

  Perhaps Brother Antonionus would know. He seemed knowledgeable about such matters.

  Far away, in a darkened control room, lit only by the light of a liquid crystal display, a conversation:

  “Collateral target acquired.”

  “Positive lock?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Biometrics?”

  “Calibrating. One twenty-nine point five-four centimeters. Twenty-eight point two-six kilograms.”

  “Human?”

  “Probable orthodontia.”

  “A child?”

  “Female. Recommendations? Awaiting instructions.”

  “Abort.”

  Three weeks later, a Mexican girl named Rosario Flores, from the town of Hermosillo, in the state of Sonora, was arrested in the kitchen of a Mexican restaurant in Tucson by agents from the INS who’d received a tip that the owner employed illegal immigrants. She’d been taken into custody and searched, whereupon it was discovered that she was wearing a set of dog tags she said she’d found in the desert, hanging from a branch of a palo verde tree in an arroyo. The dog tags belonged to a woman named Cheryl Escavedo, a sergeant first class in the Arizona Army National Guard. A call to her unit by INS revealed that she’d been recently reported missing from her job at an entry-processing center in Albuquerque, New Mexico. INS was asked to hold Rosario Flores in custody.

  Flores was cooperative and told INS that she’d been taken to the border in a windowless step-van, along with twenty-five or so other people, all willing to pay the coyote three hundred dollars apiece to get them into the United States. They’d been let out of the van in the dead of night, somewhere in the desert, to relieve themselves, got back in the van and drove north in the darkness and transferred to a windowless tractor-trailer, to be let out again in a warehouse in Tucson. For all she knew, she could have crossed the border anywhere from Yuma to El Paso. She was sorry she’d taken the dog tags. She found them when she was looking for a place to go to the bathroom. She hadn’t known what they were. She didn’t want to go back to Hermosillo. Couldn’t she please stay?

  When Escavedo’s Jeep was found abandoned near Spirit Mountain, on the Tohono O’Odham reservation, at the side of a road called Camino del Diablo, not far from the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Testing Range, the Pentagon was informed. The Jeep appeared to have been hit by lightning, the local authorities said, probably after it had been abandoned. The tribal police asked the Pentagon what they wanted them to do.

  The Pentagon said they’d send somebody out to investigate, and to sit tight until he arrived.

  Chapter Two

  TWENTY YEARS AGO, WHEN COUNTERINTELligence agent David DeLuca was a rookie cop with the Yuma police department, his first thought, looking into a missing person and an abandoned vehicle on or near the reservation, would have been that the disappearance was alcohol related. It was simply, unfortunately, a fact of life. The girl he’d been sent to find had lost both parents to alcohol, had been raised by a grandmother, no longer living, and an uncle—it wasn’t unusual either to see the habits of substance abuse passed down from one generation to the next. Yet the girl had been a straight-A student at Goldwater High in Somerton, a lifelong teetotaler who’d worked in a shelter for Cocopah women from homes where alcohol abuse had led to other forms of abuse. Ben Yutahay, the tribal policeman who’d met him to assist in the investigation, ruled out alcohol. His son Marvin had known Cheryl in high school and said she didn’t drink, even then, when everybody did.

  Ben, Marvin, and DeLuca stood in the desert, the light growing in the east and only the last few brightest stars still shining overhead.

  “If that’s lightning,” said Ben Yutahay, squatting in the dust next to the abandoned Jeep, “it’s the funniest lightning strike I’ve ever seen. Not that it can’t do funny things. I saw a guy once who got his shoes blown off by a direct hit but other than that, he was fine. But this is strange.”

  “How so?” DeLuca said. He’d worked with Yutahay twenty years ago and had considered him a friend, though they’d gone separate ways and not stayed in touch, DeLuca back east to the Boston P.D., Yutahay transferring over to the tribal authority, where he headed up a unit of “Shadow Wolves,” so dubbed by the media for the way they could track the immigrant-smuggling “coyotes” and narcotraficantes through the desert, preferring the early morning and twilight hours, when the low sun cast long shadows that made the tracks stand out against the desert floor. With F-16s from the 56th Fighter Wing in Gila Bend making practice bombing runs in the Goldwater Proving Grounds and Marines completing their desert training before heading off to the Middle East, it was a particularly dangerous place to be an illegal immigrant. DeLuca and Yutahay had left the motel at four in the morning. After a late flight to Phoenix and the puddle-jumper to Yuma, it had been after midnight when DeLuca checked in. He was exhausted, and yet the desert sunrise somehow revived him.

  “Usually when lightning hits a car, it runs down the outer surface to the ground. Sometimes it melts the tires or the windshield wipers but it leaves what’s inside alone. That’s why people are safer in lightning storms staying in their cars. Sometimes you get a side flash where the electricity runs along the surface from the car to something more grounded, like a tree or a saguaro, maybe. These tires are fine and there’s no side flash. All the damage is inside. But like I said, you can’t always predict what lightning is going to do. If you could, it wouldn’t be lightning.”

  His hair was going gray, and he’d put on about forty pounds since DeLuca had last seen him, but other than that he was the same, with the same dry sense of humor that DeLuca remembered. His son Marvin was a spitting image of his younger self, DeLuca thought. Marvin had come along because, Ben said, Marvin was finally thinking of learning a trade and making an honest living in law enforcement, instead of sneaking around digging up rocks to sell at the big gem shows in Los Angeles or Santa Fe. Marvin was crouched next to his father, who was pointing at something under the car.

  “This is her uncle’s car,” Yutahay said over his shoulder. “I wonder how she got it.”

  Ben stood and crossed to where DeLuca was scrutinizing the horizon. It was beautiful rough country, and though he was happy in Massachusetts, sometimes he still missed the desert.

  “The car stopped before the rain came, anyway,” Yutahay said. “There aren’t any splatter marks under the car. The electrical system is a mess. I can’t tell you exactly but from the sloshing, I th
ink she had plenty of gas.”

  “Can you tell what time of day? Or night?”

  “The weather report said the rain started falling around eleven, so it had to be before that, but probably not much before. The headlights were left in the on position, but she left these in the car,” he said, handing DeLuca the flashlight and the NVGs, both Army issue. “Why would she leave these in the car if it was dark out?”

  The flashlight still worked. The batteries in the NVGs had drained.

  “Full moon?”

  Yutahay shook his head.

  “Quarter moon,” he said. “Partly overcast that night, too.”

  “Maybe she thought she didn’t need them?”

  Yutahay smiled.

  “Indians can’t see in the dark any better than you can, David,” Yutahay said. “Maybe she was in a hurry and forgot them. The tracks she left were of a person in a hurry. I wonder why, though? If she had car trouble, why not stay with the car?”

  “Cell phones work out here?”

  Yutahay shook his head.

  “Maybe she saw the lights of a house?” DeLuca said.

  “Nobody’s lived around here for a thousand years,” Yutahay said.

  “Why not?” DeLuca asked.

  “Why would they want to?” Yutahay said. “There’s nothing here. It’s too far from anything. Sometimes the Cocopah would spend the summers up in the high country with the Pai Pai or the Kumeyaay after spring planting, near where Cheryl’s uncle keeps his trailer, but not here. The other thing I’m curious about is the mud on her tires.”

  “What about it?”

  “It’s red,” Yutahay said. “I don’t know of any dirt like that around these parts.”

  Under the driver’s seat, DeLuca found a book in a brown paper bag. The book was a coffee-table sized hardcover entitled Lechugilla: Jewel of the Underground, and it had been signed on the title page by the photographer, a man named Josh Truitt who’d written: “Sometimes to expand your horizons, you have to dig beneath them. Happy birthday, love, Josh and Theresa.” DeLuca showed it to Yutahay. The photographs were of exotic cave chambers, crystal formations and that sort of thing.

  “Does that seem like an odd thing to bring along on a trip?” DeLuca asked his old friend.

  “Maybe it was in her car before she left and she didn’t want to leave it behind when she switched cars?” Yutahay speculated.

  “But she left it behind here,” DeLuca said.

  “She left here in more of a hurry,” Ben Yutahay said. He showed the book to his son. “You ever hear of this place?”

  Marvin Yutahay looked at the book.

  “Heard of it,” he said. “It’s off limits to gem hunters. You gotta get a permit to get in.”

  “Why’s that?” DeLuca asked the younger man.

  “Lotta good stuff inside,” Marvin said with a shrug. “That’s what I’ve heard.”

  “I think I’m done here,” Ben said. “The trail leads this way. You good?”

  “I’m good,” DeLuca said, throwing the book back in the car. “Hey—I could be home shoveling the driveway right now. This is a walk in the park.”

  “Actually, the park is that way,” Yutahay said, pointing toward the sun.

  It was only two days earlier that DeLuca had come home from the Burlington Mall with his wife, fighting the traffic on 128, to find a message on his answering machine: “Dave, Phil LeDoux. Listen, pack your duffle and get your ass down here ASAP. Sorry to break up your second honeymoon, but we’ve got something we want you to handle for us. Call the SATO office at Hanscom and have them book you on a flight to Washington tonight. Then call down to McNair and have them arrange a room for you at the BOQ. I’ll see you in my office tomorrow morning at 0800. Say hi to Bonnie for me. Out here.”

  He’d been back from Iraq for less than a month, in theory recovering from the neck injury he’d sustained when he’d been thrown through the windshield of a Humvee. The truth was, his neck was fine, and he was bored. Bonnie had seen how eager he’d been to get another assignment, his first as the leader of “Team Red,” a special ops counterintelligence unit that came with a hospital bed promotion from staff sergeant to chief warrant officer 2 with a presidential waiver of warrant officer school thrown in. It had been a mistake to let his enthusiasm show, because she’d taken it personally, despite his protestations to the contrary.

  The Army specialist driving the car that picked him up at the Fort McNair bachelor officers’ quarters was probably twenty or so but looked fifteen in his “pickle suit,” the Army dress-green or “Class A” uniform. On the advice of LeDoux’s aide, Captain Martin, DeLuca had worn a uniform as well, if only to avoid all the post-9/11 checkpoint hassles the Pentagon Force Protection Agency was subjecting civilians to. Inside the Pentagon, he got lost several times, looking for LeDoux’s office, where every hallway looked the same to him, and he hated to ask for directions unless he absolutely had to. Outside LeDoux’s office, he’d cooled his heels, thumbing through back issues of Army Logistician, Defense Weekly, Soldiers Magazine, and the Army Times. He’d allowed himself to become excited by the idea that he’d finally be doing the kind of interesting work he’d always dreamed of doing. Frankly, the Arizona desert was beautiful, and it was nice to get a little warm weather, but all the same, finding a missing person wasn’t exactly the kind of work he’d anticipated.

  Yutahay must have sensed something.

  “You seem a little down,” Yutahay said. “I’m happy to leave it alone if you’d prefer, but I just thought I’d ask, in case you wanted to talk.” Yutahay led the way, followed by DeLuca, with Marvin bringing up the rear in the procession.

  “I’m swell,” DeLuca said. “I just thought I’d be doing something different. When I took the job, I’d been led to believe…”

  “That you wouldn’t be shuffling around in the dust with an old Indian?” Yutahay said.

  “I’m not complaining,” DeLuca said. “I might have thought this was something the MPs could have handled, that’s all.”

  “Maybe the fact that they sent you makes it important,” Yutahay said. “They wanted the job done right. Personally, I always give missing person cases top priority. When I was in Vietnam, before I met you, my brother was MIA. I was artillery but he was infantry. I’d rather know somebody was dead than not know what happened to them. I think that’s why I became a tracker.”

  “I guess I just sounded like an asshole,” DeLuca said. “I apologize.”

  “I know what you mean, though,” Yutahay said. “You want a challenge.”

  DeLuca felt guilty for complaining. The fact was, he’d been told he’d be leading a team on special assignments, and then, his first job out of the box, he’d been loaned to a joint command, briefed in LeDoux’s Deputy Commander, G-2 office by a Colonel Oswald from NRO who’d told him, in a tone of voice DeLuca found condescending, “One of our people from STRATCOM in Colorado, a 71 Lima buck sergeant in the archives section named Cheryl Escavedo, has turned up missing and the trail seems to lead to southern Arizona.” He’d handed DeLuca Escavedo’s Army 201 personnel file. “Before she disappeared, she apparently swiped some classified information from one of the databases at The Mountain. They’ll fill you in better when you get there, but first we want you to go to Arizona and have a look-see. Folks at STRATCOM are pretty worked up. Call your team in if you see the need but check with us first—we’d like you to handle it alone if you could.”

  “I recommended you when Colonel Oswald came to us because I know you used to live there and you know the territory,” DeLuca’s friend General Phillip LeDoux had said. “Plus, we want to keep you busy. I actually thought we’d have something for you before this, but for now, this will give you a chance to do some good and work on your tan.”

  “So you’re giving me busy work?” DeLuca had thought, though he held his tongue.

  Every once in a while, Yutahay bent down to touch the earth, squinting at the dust or fingering a branch or twig.

  “You
went from here over to Boston P.D., right?” Ben said, breathing easily despite the rough terrain. “You do missing persons there?”

  “Whenever it came up,” DeLuca said. “I was with homicide for a while. I was working elder and disabled abuse cases before I reenlisted, busting the shitheads who were abusing elderly and special needs people in shelter homes. That’ll throw a cloud over your sunny disposition toward your fellow man. Assuming you still have one. Lotta homes run by the low-life scums where half the caregivers were ex-cons.”

  “Why’d you reenlist?” Yutahay said.

  “I lost my sister in 9/11,” DeLuca told him. “They never found her either.”

  “Aw geez,” Yutahay said. “I’m sorry if what I said before made you think I thought you didn’t understand.”

  “I was the one being the asshole,” DeLuca said.

  Yutahay paused at a turn in the trail.

  “That’s interesting,” he said.

  “What is?”

  “Look at the spine on this saguaro,” Yutahay said. “Right there—this one. That’s blood.”

  “It’s in an odd location for someone to bump into,” DeLuca said.

  “I don’t think she bumped into it,” Yutahay said. “Not by accident, anyway. The blood is too deep on the needle. And the needle is bent. So’s the one next to it. Like she was using it to cut herself.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “I don’t know,” Yutahay said, looking down. “There’s blood on the ground, too. She stood here for a few minutes, I think. I wish it hadn’t rained. Why do you think she cut herself?”

  “Snake bite?” DeLuca said. “To drain the poison?”

  “Plenty of ’em out here,” Yutahay said. “I haven’t seen any signs of them so far, but that doesn’t mean they’re not here. What are you looking at?” he asked his son.

  “At what?” Marvin said.

  “That’s what I asked you,” Ben said. “You keep staring at those cliffs.”

  “Just looking,” Marvin said. “This is Spirit Mountain, right? There’s supposed to be some ruins up there. Cliff dwellings. A guy told me.”