“Come on, Gemma. We need to get going.”
Zander pulled me to my feet. With great care, he helped me stand. Gamble took my other arm.
“Hi, Gemma. Good to see you.”
I almost laughed. Agent Gamble had never seen me, and he wasn’t seeing the “real me” now. He had seen my identical twin—not that she bore any resemblance to the woman I’d glimpsed in the truck mirror.
“Hey,” I managed. “Thanks for coming. Um, where’s . . . the helicopter?”
He didn’t comment on my appearance, but the lines around his eyes scrunched with a keen curiosity. “Bit of a problem there. Cushing’s handler, whomever it is, has managed to commandeer resources from all over the state—including the FBI. Our helicopter is in the air now, looking for you and Dr. Bickel. On to Plan B we go.”
I sagged against Zander and grimaced. “Great. W-what’s Plan B?”
“Well, we’re going to put you and Dr. Bickel in my trunk.”
I looked my question toward him.
One side of his mouth turned up. “I’m part of the official FBI search team. Zander here is a certified chaplain doing a ride along.”
I squinted at Zander.
“I didn’t mention that I was a chaplain? Only takes a few weeks of training.”
While I shook my head, they ushered me toward Gamble’s waiting car and Gamble filled me in. “Here’s the deal: We’ve already passed through the roadblocks and checkpoints along I-25. The troopers and other agencies have checked our credentials and the car; they know we’re legit. So, we’re going to put you and Dr. Bickel in my trunk and RTB. Return to base. Nothing out of the ordinary. The ride won’t be comfortable, but it’s our best shot at getting you back to Albuquerque under Cushing’s nose.”
“. . . More important . . . get Dr. Bickel . . . safe—”
“No, Gemma, it’s not,” Dr. Bickel interrupted. “I believe I can save you, Gemma, you and the nanomites, but we must get to my lab. It’s the only way.”
I started to lose it then. “No. No! I . . . d-don’t care about me—all this . . . to get to you, to get you away from . . .”
A wave of panic and dizziness hit me. I couldn’t breathe and started to hyperventilate. My legs buckled, and Zander and Gamble together caught me.
“I-I . . . no, no, no . . .”
I felt one side of my brain shatter; I couldn’t walk right. Talk right. Think right.
The remaining nanomites could not maintain.
It’s as though I’ve had a stroke.
“Gemma? Gemma!” Zander sounded frantic.
Above his panic, Dr. Bickel shouted, “We have to go! The nanomites are too damaged to sustain what they’ve done to her! Her only chance is in my lab.”
He leaned close to me. “Dear girl, I ask you to trust me. Please.” To Gamble he barked, “We need a means for the nanomites to feed while we’re driving. An extension cord from your auxiliary power jack to Gemma.”
“Down the road. We’ll stop and get one. Let’s get that truck better hidden, first.”
Things moved quickly after that. Zander moved the truck further into the piñon grove. Dr. Bickel climbed into the trunk first and scooted toward the back. Zander and Agent Gamble lifted me and laid me in front of Dr. Bickel. The two of us, Dr. Bickel and I, lay on our sides with our knees pulled up.
Agent Gamble squatted near the bumper and spoke. “We will be stopping to get an extension cord. After that, we’ll be passing through several checkpoints, but we should clear them without difficulty. I don’t think I need to tell you this, but if we are stopped, make no sound.”
Dr. Bickel answered, “Yes; we understand.”
Gamble shut the trunk, and we were left in the dark, close confines. His car roared to life and bumped over uneven ground. Dr. Bickel, his arm about my waist, cushioned me from the worst of the jolts. Then we were on even pavement, speeding away.
We drove ten or fifteen minutes before the car stopped. Zander got out, came back minutes later. We drove on, then pulled off onto a shoulder.
The rumble of Gamble and Zander’s voices came to us in the trunk, but none of their words did. A moment later, Gamble pulled the back seat down, exposing the trunk.
“Okay. I’ve connected the other end to the aux jack up front. You need this end?”
“Yes,” Dr. Bickel answered. He grasped the cord and placed its end in my hand, folded my fingers over it. “Like this, Gemma? Are they feeding now?”
“Y-yes.” As the mites drew on the electricity, the precipice I stood so near receded a tiny bit.
Maybe . . . maybe there’s a chance . . .
***
I slept through most of the drive to Albuquerque, slept until the car stopped and the trunk popped open. The night was fading; morning was not far off.
Gamble leaned in. “Need my tools.” He pulled a leather pack from the well in the side wall of the trunk.
Zander spoke from near the bumper. “Let me, Gamble. Let’s just say I’ve had more practice—I’ll be faster than you.”
They moved away, and I heard tinkering sounds.
“Wha . . .”
“I believe we are at Zander’s house and they are exchanging license plates with his vehicle.”
“But . . .”
“Gamble’s car has government plates. I think swapping his plates for Zander’s is a precaution,” Dr. Bickel whispered.
“Let me, Gamble. Let’s just say I’ve had more practice—I’ll be faster than you.”
Zander had a past that stood in stark contradiction to his vocation, and it still confounded me. How could he have changed so completely? Could God do that? Change a person’s heart that radically?
Moments later we were driving again. Not long after, Gamble parked and popped the trunk.
I closed my eyes against the early morning light while Zander and Gamble lifted me out. Truth be told, I felt rather like a feather floating from the trunk to the ground—but when they set me on my feet, my legs buckled under the weight. Zander’s arms around me kept me from collapsing.
The hours of sleep had not reenergized me much. In the trunk’s dark recesses, even with the electricity from Gamble’s auxiliary jack, the nanomites had only maintained. The moment I released the extension cord, their needs began to pull on me.
I was as weak as water, fragile as dust.
“Gemma.” Dr. Bickel got close to my face, his anxious eyes swimming in front of me.
“Yeah . . .” Even my tongue felt weak. I tried to look around, because I didn’t know where we were, but the parking lot seemed familiar.
“Hold her face up to the light. Yes, like that. To the extent that they are able, nanomites will use solar power to recharge themselves. That should take the drain off Gemma.”
He was right. A trickle—a thin, intermittent stream of juice—began to flow, first into my clouded thinking, then into my will to live, lastly into my body. I shuddered as a little strength seeped into my muscles. I put more weight on my legs and stood on my own. I was wobbly, shaking all over; once more, Zander kept me from stumbling.
I shaded my eyes with one hand and looked around again, my confused mind trying to figure out where we were. Yes, we were in a parking lot and, yes, it seemed familiar. In the direction of the ball of fire rising on the horizon, open space surrounded us. In the distance were houses.
The bright light was too much for my eyes to bear, so I turned my back on it. When I raised my chin, I saw more open space with trails leading away from the lot. My gaze lifted higher . . . and the mountain loomed before us—the weapons storage facility. Dr. Bickel’s old lab.
I sucked in an anxious breath. As close as the mountain might seem, I knew exactly how far we were from it.
“The mountain . . . too far . . .”
Dr. Bickel did not answer me. “Agent Gamble, do you have the wire cutters?”
“Yep.”
Dr. Bickel signaled Gamble and Zander. They each grasped one of my arms, and we moved down the
trail in the direction of the base’s boundary fence, Dr. Bickel in the lead. Then he tossed his answer to me over his shoulder. “We’re going into the tunnels, Gemma. You leave the getting there to us.”
At Dr. Bickel’s urging, our party picked up its pace. A couple of hikers stared at us with curious expressions.
A man walking his dog stepped off the trail and let us pass.
“Beautiful morning,” the man said.
“Um, yeah. Have a good one,” Zander added.
I felt the man’s concern boring into my back when we passed him, Zander and Gamble supporting me between them.
We must look like the fugitives we are. Surely someone will call the police.
Zander chanced a backward recon.
“How we doing?” Gamble whispered.
“Uh, I think we’re okay. No one is rushing back toward the lot or making a phone call.”
Gamble grunted. “So far, so good.”
The trail approached the base’s perimeter fence and turned south and east. Dr. Bickel raced ahead on his scrawny legs, following the fence line. I lifted my head and saw when he’d reached the tree, the scrub piñon growing out of a shallow arroyo. The tree’s branches were low to the ground, but I knew what lay near its trunk and roots—I remembered following Dr. Bickel’s map and instructions.
It wasn’t that long ago, but it seemed a lifetime.
His instructions had told me to look for this same scrub piñon up against the base’s fence. He’d described the tree’s shape and said it was down in an arroyo, what New Mexicans call a gully or a “wash.” I was to crawl under the branches of the bushy tree, and I would find, he wrote, that flash floods had washed the earth from around the tree’s roots and scoured the soil out from under the fence.
When we joined Dr. Bickel at the piñon, he motioned to Gamble. “You first, Agent Gamble. Crawl under this tree and follow the arroyo toward the fence. You’ll see a place where runoff has washed the dirt out from under the fence. We’ll have to push Gemma from this side while you pull her from yours. Can you do that?”
“I’m a Marine. You only need to ask once.” He clambered the few feet down into the arroyo, got on his face, and belly-crawled under the tree. Minutes later, his face peeked back out. “Cruz. Bring Gemma now.”
Zander and Dr. Bickel helped me down into the streambed, and I dropped to my hands and knees. I crawled a little way toward Gamble before collapsing onto my stomach. Gamble reached for both of my hands and yanked me two feet forward. Then another two feet. The brush pulled at my hair and scratched my face; the gravel scraped my chest and legs. Gamble didn’t stop until he was hauling me up out of the arroyo on the other side of the fence. I hung over his arm, more ragdoll than I wanted. Moments later, a disheveled Zander and Dr. Bickel joined us.
They studied the rutted patrol road a few feet ahead, and I think the import of what we were doing was sinking in: We were on the wrong side of the base’s perimeter fence in broad daylight, still quite a distance from the flanks of the mountain. To reach the hidden door into the tunnels, we would have to traverse half a mile of open ground, cross several base patrol roads, cut through the PIDAS surrounding the mountain, cross the mountain’s access road, and climb the steep slope toward the rocks that hid the doorway—in the open light of day, visible to anyone who might be looking.
The odds would not be ever in our favor.
We hunkered close to the ground to get our bearings but, even in my foggy state of mind, I knew the way by heart. A second patrol track, not far away and leading toward the mountain, intersected the one along the fence. I pointed. “That direction. Stay . . . right of that dirt road. Keep the road in sight, but . . . walk along the low ground as much as possible. The hollows will keep us out of sight . . . some of the time.”
Gamble grunted, acknowledging the reality of our situation. If we were caught, his career was over.
I sighed. If we were caught, the loss of his career would be the least of Gamble’s worries.
He and Zander took hold of me, and we started in the direction I’d indicated, the terrain already sloping upward. No one spoke; we just moved and kept moving, using the hollows between the undulating mounds for cover, keeping to the dry beds where runoff had scored deep cracks in the sandy soil.
Above our heads, the rounded mountain grew larger, the PIDAS more imposing.
I wondered why we hadn’t seen or heard any vehicles above us on the paved access road on the other side of the PIDAS yet. Workers entered the restricted area at an access point on the west side of the mountain. Some of the WWII munitions bunkers dotting the mountain’s flanks had been converted to laboratories and offices for Top Secret projects.
The mountain seemed very quiet to me. Too quiet. It was Monday morning, the start of a new work week, after all. We should have seen multiple vehicles along the road—and the likelihood of those drivers catching sight of our unsanctioned hike was high.
Dr. Bickel must have read my mind. “Odd. Not much traffic inside the PIDAS today,” he whispered.
Did Cushing know we were headed for the cavern where Dr. Bickel had hidden last spring? Were we walking into a trap? I didn’t, for some strange reason, sense that we were.
Well, was it fate, giving us another break? Or was it the intervention of ubiquitous Providence?
God, maybe?
I mumbled an earnest, but omni-directed, “Thank you. Whoever you are.”
You know who I Am.
My legs buckled; I collapsed between Gamble and Zander.
“Come on, Gemma,” Gamble whispered. “Don’t give out on us. I’m a big guy, but I don’t think I’ll make it up the mountain with you slung over my shoulder.”
“Sorry.” I snorted a weak laugh, visualizing Zander or Gamble laboring up the mountain’s steep slope with helpless me hanging in a fireman’s carry.
“Glad you haven’t lost your sense of humor,” Zander observed.
“Yeah, ’cause God knows, we don’t want to die without a chuckle on our lips,” Gamble snarled.
“We are not going to die, because God does know.”
“Sure, pal.”
No one spoke again until we reached the barbed wire just below the PIDAS. Gamble didn’t waste time trying to heave me over the wires. He pulled a tool from his pocket, unfolded it, and clipped the bottom strand. When it fell away, Dr. Bickel, on his belly, crawled under it and up to the patrol road that ran around the outside of the PIDAS. He motioned to us.
Zander and Gamble pulled me through and we joined Dr. Bickel.
“All right, Pastor Cruz. We don’t stop until we hit the PIDAS. Got it?”
“Got it.”
Between the patrol road on this side of the PIDAS and the paved road on the opposite side lay about fifty yards—fifty yards with zero cover. And we had to stop at the PIDAS and cut through both fences before we could race to the relative cover of the three rocks.
“Wait.” It took me a second to catch my breath. “On other side . . . three rocks. One tall. Two short. Head there.”
“Three rocks. Got it.”
“And . . . tracks. Brush . . . them.”
Dr. Bickel nodded and stripped off a branch of sagebrush. The other two men stood, lifted me until my knees were off the ground, and raced up the incline to the road. They kept running, crossing the road, heading directly toward the PIDAS, dragging me with them. Dr. Bickel swept away the tracks they left at the edge of the road and on the other side.
The four of us slammed up against the PIDAS. Gamble dropped me and pulled out his tool.
The last time I’d been here, the nanomites had cut through the heavy chain link fence. All I’d had to do was point my finger, and their combined lasers had done the rest.
Not today. They hadn’t spoken in a while. I knew they were as depleted as I was, running on fumes, so to speak. We were in this together, the nanomites and I—live or die, we were in it together.
Gamble swore, severing the heavy links one by one, but taking
longer than any of us wanted.
Gemmmmma Keyes.
The nanomites startled me.
“What?”
Vehicle.
“Gamble! Car!”
“Down! Everybody down! Lie as flat as you can. Do. Not. Move.”
We all heard it now—the roar of a gunned engine, the shift of gears.
Gamble and Dr. Bickel dropped next to each other. Zander threw me to the ground next to them and laid down beside me. We lay on the ground like four parallel sticks of wood—about as concealed as a clown in clover.
I tried to shrink into the very dirt. Our hopes rested in the weeds that grew along the PIDAS and the speed at which the vehicle was approaching. And the slim possibility that whomever was driving had not been alerted to the presence of trespassers inside the base’s fence.
The patrol jeep came closer and I heard it slowing; at the same time, my heart accelerated until I thought it was going to burst from my chest and bleed into the grit and weeds under me—because there was no way anyone driving by would not, could not, see us.
A slow warmth seeped from me, spread upward, flowed out, toward Zander.
“Nano?”
Bbbbbe still, Gemmmmmmma Keyes.
The warmth flowed toward Zander, and he exhaled a great sigh as he felt it. Felt them. I was astonished. The nanomites were expending what little strength they had left to shield us? To hide us? Could they do it?
The patrol truck screeched to a halt not far away. Boots hit the road and clomped to the edge of the hill where it sloped away.
“The report said three or four?”
“Yeah. Do you see anything?”
“Not yet.”
We could hear boots walking along the road. I imagined the two airmen training their binoculars on the ground we’d traversed. Would they also turn them toward us? We lay scant yards from them. How long could the nanomites keep up their screen?
“I don’t see anything, do you?”
“Nope.”
“Let’s drive farther down the road.”
“Roger that.”
The truck they had left idling shifted into gear and drove on.
No one moved for a few seconds—then we rose in concert and Gamble went back to his clipping of the PIDAS. He worked at a furious pace, because we knew the patrol could return any moment. He sat back on his haunches and kicked the fence where he’d been working. A corner of fencing next to the post broke free.
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