Earthquake Games

by Bonnie Ramthun

  Daniel looked at her with sad eyes. “Already occurred to me,” he said. “Try being an adult male in a community when a woman is raped and murdered, Marcia. Right, Paris?”

  “Not me,” Paris said. “I’m suspected of being everything from a closet gay to an alien, but not a rapist.”

  “Why?” Joe asked.

  “Because I’m too good looking,” Paris said loftily.

  “So was Ted Bundy,” Rosen said. Paris frowned and opened his mouth, then shut it and looked down at his plate.

  “Women can be murderers, too,” Marcia said, and almost felt insulted when the men grinned at her as one. “Well, I could.”

  “You could,” Joe assured her. “Don’t worry, Marcia, we’ll suspect you if that makes you feel better.”

  “What a mess,” Paris said, his good humor restored. “And all is going to be revealed—what, at dawn tomorrow?”

  “Yes,” Joe said.

  “Yes,” Daniel said, looking afraid.

  “Yes,” Rosen said, looking as though he were ready to paint on war stripes.

  “Well, then,” Paris said, with a movie-star grin. “Let’s get to bed, shall we? I’ll set my alarm for what, three a.m.? We’ll get out of here by four and sunrise will be at six or so. Plenty of time to get there.”

  “No lights tonight,” Marcia suggested. “Let’s stay as quiet as we can.”

  “No sense in drawing the wrong kind of attention, eh?” Paris said with a mocking grin.

  “No sense in drawing any kind of attention,” Daniel said. “Of any kind.”

  Great Sand Dunes, Latitude 37.47.50, Longitude 105.33.20, San Luis Valley, Colorado

  The wind had not yet begun to blow the cool night wind that smoothed the dunes. Eileen woke, totally alert in an instant. There was a sound, an enormous sound, approaching.

  “What is that?” Alan whispered in the darkness beside her.

  “I don’t know,” she whispered back. For a moment she felt dizzy, unreal. Had Alan whispered to her, and had she whispered back? Or had they simply communicated mind to mind, like some science-fiction tale? His hand was real, though, fumbling for hers in the darkness and taking it into his own. His hand was larger than hers. Both their hands were cold. Eileen realized she was terrified. The sound grew louder.

  “Is it—” Alan started, then stopped with the caution of a deer coming to a halt in the brush, head held high and nostrils smelling the wind. Eileen pressed his hand, not daring to answer. She didn’t move. She wondered if their heat signature was sufficiently buried underneath the sand, or if their body outlines would show up in infrared detectors.

  The sound grew impossibly loud. It wasn’t the heartbeat of helicopter blades or the roar of tanks or the purr of trucks. It wasn’t the sound of a jet engine. Eileen thought dizzily that it sounded something like a boat engine in water, only that was impossible. The bubbling sound started to fade just as Eileen thought she had pinpointed the location. It was just over the ridge to their left, whatever it was, and it sounded huge.

  As quickly as it came, it was gone. The silence grew and stretched out. Eileen heard a tiny tapping at the tent door, and her heart leaped in fright before she realized it was sand. The early morning winds were starting to blow.

  “Was that the Tesla people?” Alan whispered.

  “I don’t think so,” Eileen said doubtfully, trying to get her breathing under control. “They’ll have to have equipment, and that means the Tesla machine. Maybe that was just a reconnaissance of the area to make sure no one is here.”

  “That sounds reasonable,” Alan whispered. His hand squeezed hers and let it go, a squeeze that felt like a kind of wink. We were both scared, said the squeeze, weren’t we?

  Eileen thought she would wait until dawn, sure that she couldn’t sleep any more that night. She heard Alan’s breath even out and take on the slow, measured breaths of sleep, and without thinking she lengthened her breaths to match his and felt herself drift back into sleep.

  24

  Great Sand Dunes, Latitude 37.47.50, Longitude 105.33.20, San Luis Valley, Colorado

  The sun approached over the earth. The dunes were dark but the sky was clear and light. The morning winds had blown themselves out and the sand was still and silken and unmarked.

  Eileen, under the sand, awoke at a sound. It was the beating-heart sound of a helicopter. A Blackhawk by the tempo of the rotors and engine, and she was right. She could have guessed that they would come in a Blackhawk, the military transport helicopter. It rose over the skyline, a black humped shape like a surfacing whale, and she reached out to wake Alan. He clasped her hand in his own. His hand was cold and damp. Her heart was kicking in her chest and she struggled to breathe normally and deeply. Whatever had patrolled the sand last night had not seen them. Their prey was coming into the trap.

  Someone on that helicopter should have a bruise over his heart. Someone on that helicopter should have DNA that matched the curly pubic hair found on the dead body of Krista Lewis. Someone on that helicopter had posed Jim Leetsdale’s dead body by a cannon.

  Someone on that helicopter was a murderer, not the person holding her hand.

  The Blackhawk was lit by the rising sun as it came into sight, but it dropped into the shadows as it came down into the dunes. It swirled into a landing at exactly the spot she’d stood the day before. The blades kicked up a hurricane of sand then slowed to idle speed. The Blackhawk was painted in desert colors, tan with splotches of white and light gray. She could see the pilot behind the glass, and for a terrified moment she thought he was looking straight at her.

  Then the man looked down and raised a container to his lips. He was opening a Thermos in his lap and staring out the window as he did, that was all.

  Someone stepped out of the helicopter. Eileen saw with a fierce pulse of satisfaction that the man was Jacob Mitchell. He was dressed in khakis that looked faintly military. He wore a broad-brimmed Stetson. Another two men dropped lightly to the ground behind him, both also in civilian clothing. Three uniformed soldiers jumped from the helicopter and lowered a box shrouded in canvas to the sand. The box was big enough to give the three men trouble as they hauled it out of the helicopter.

  “The Tesla machine,” Alan whispered. “That must be it.”

  Eileen nodded and squeezed his hand to make him let her go. Her fingers were going numb. It was five o’clock.

  The soldiers dropped several packages out of the helicopter, things that looked like ordinary supplies, perhaps tents and food and water. Then they hopped back on board with nods and waves. They showed all the excitement of parcel deliverymen. One of the other civilians jumped lightly into the helicopter as the rotors started to speed up. Jacob Mitchell and the other man put their faces into their elbows as the sand whipped up around them.

  Then the helicopter was gone over the ridge, leaving only a dwindling sound like a fading heartbeat.

  “Only two of them,” Eileen whispered. “I think we can walk up on them without a problem.”

  “What time is it?” Alan whispered back. “How much time do we have?”

  “It’s five-fifteen. We have less than forty-five minutes.”

  “If I can get out of the tent when they’re turned the other way, they won’t know where I came from,” Alan said. Eileen raised her eyebrows.

  “I?” she hissed. “What do you mean, I?”

  “I think you should stay here,” Alan whispered. “What if they shoot on sight? Somebody needs to watch and see what happens.”

  “That somebody should be you,” Eileen said. “I’m a police officer. This is what I do for a living, Mr. Baxter.” She peered at him in the gloom of the tent, and she could see a stubborn set expression to his mouth. Prom, she thought despairingly.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Alan whispered angrily. “We can start to argue and then we’ll fight and the tent will collapse and we’ll roll down right to their feet. Then we’ll see what happens.”

  Eileen put both hands over her
mouth to hold in a great honk of laughter. She put her face to her sleeping bag and her stomach muscles heaved for a few moments. Finally she lifted her face and looked over at Alan.

  “Don’t do that again,” she said, grinning like a fool, like someone who wasn’t within fifty yards of a pack of serial killers. “We’ll go together, if you won’t stay here.”

  “I don’t want you to go,” Alan whispered. His eyebrows were drawn together and his face was flushed in the dim light from the tent opening.

  “We go together,” Eileen said. “Let’s get this over with, Mr. Baxter.”

  Great Sand Dunes, San Luis Valley, Colorado

  It was Humvee versus Blackhawk, a showdown at the Techno Corral, and Joe was sure that the Blackhawk was going to win. It could fly, after all, out of this crappy dragging sand. The Blackhawk stood at the top of a dune crest, blades slowly revolving at idle speed. Three uniformed soldiers stood halfway down the dune, hands at their side arms and looking at the posse with faces like planks.

  Paris stood against the purple door of Babe, his hands in his pockets, his shirt as immaculately crisp as the day before. How the hell he managed that, Joe had no idea. What he did know was that these three goons were going to keep them from Eileen and the killer Tesla machine.

  He looked at Rosen, as blank-faced as the soldiers, and at Daniel and Marcia. Marcia had the same despairing look on her face that Joe knew he had on his own. Daniel looked furious, an expression Joe hadn’t seen before. Daniel Grantham seemed like a low-key guy, a scholar with the light bones and flat muscles of a bicycle rider. He seemed more bird than man. Yet here he was with his jaw muscles clenched, hands in fists, his hair askew on his head, his eyes red and savage.

  “These are not your dunes,” Daniel said in a low voice.

  “I’m a deputy with the Alamosa sheriff’s department,” Rosen interrupted. “We’re on a search and rescue mission and we have authority here, as you well know.”

  “You’re not allowed in this part of the dunes,” the lead soldier said. Joe recognized the insignia of a captain but couldn’t read the nametag from the distance separating them. The captain had the robot-soldier look, all blond hair and freezing blue eyes and muscles on his muscles. If there was a person in there, Joe couldn’t see it. Inside the helicopter the pilot looked out, bored, picking his teeth with a toothpick.

  “This is not military property,” Rosen said.

  “This is my property, as a citizen,” Daniel said. “And technically, you work for me.”

  The helicopter had swept over a dune and caught them as their GPS receivers led them back to Babe the hummer for the second time. Joe was ready to scream with frustration. They’d gotten up at three in the morning, the five of them alert without coffee, wide-eyed as owls in the low flicker of Paris’s penlight flashlight. They’d shouldered their packs and headed out by three thirty. The fifth dune they’d climbed showed Babe the hummer at the bottom, their own tracks leading up the opposite slope. Paris consulted his GPS and Marcia consulted hers. She and Daniel exchanged worried looks. They both recalibrated their machines.

  At five fifteen, Babe appeared in front of them once again. The sky was lightening. Three sets of tracks led out of the little hollow; two sets leading out and one set leading in. It was impossible, but there the hummer was. They had gone in an enormous circle again. They no longer had time to walk to the center of the dunes before six o’clock. Joe was beginning to believe the dunes weren’t going to let them get there at all.

  “We need to drive in,” Joe said.

  “So much for the element of surprise,” Paris said, and shrugged.

  “If we can get there at all,” Marcia said. Her face was a pale circle in the false dawn, her eyes black holes. She sounded worried and afraid. Joe wasn’t afraid. Then the helicopter sound thudded in their ears and the Blackhawk swept over the dune.

  Joe was afraid now. He wasn’t afraid of the three soldiers in front of him. He dealt with soldiers every working day, armed ones and flag officers and men who’d seen the elephant, as Kipling said, men who’d killed other men. Joe knew these men wouldn’t kill their little posse. They weren’t part of the earthquake people, they were being used by them. But they were soldiers, and they had their orders. Joe was afraid of the Tesla machine, he was afraid of the New Madrid earthquake. And he was afraid for Eileen, all alone without him.

  “Enough of this,” Marcia said suddenly, in her teacher voice. She stepped forward and put her fists on her hips. “Look. We know about your project. We’re here to stop it, if we can. The machine that you carried out here in that Blackhawk is a Tesla machine and it’s going to kill about a million people today if we don’t stop it. It’s going off at 6:45 this morning. You’re due back here before noon, aren’t you?”

  The soldiers never moved. The rising sun, relentless, started creeping down the dune face toward them.

  “It’s an earthquake machine,” Joe said. “I have the simulation here. I can show you. You can’t let this happen.”

  “You’re not allowed in this part of the dunes,” the captain repeated. His pale eyes didn’t change, and Joe thought despairingly of UFO nuts trying to sneak into Area 51. They, too, had desperation and courage. They were nuts, and Joe knew that his group sounded just like them. Nuts. They weren’t going to reach the human inside the soldier. To him, they were the ones who weren’t really human.

  “Think,” Marcia said suddenly. “Damn you, think. Why are there only a few of these people out there today? There’s only, what, four or five people doing their little experiments. Why? Shouldn’t there be fifty people wandering around taking notes and getting in the way? That’s the way government experiments run. Three people for every one that actually works. Quality assurance to make sure everything is filled out in triplicate. Radios and camcorders and tracking equipment. There’s none of that today, is there? Why not? I’ll tell you. Because they’re doing something bad. Something secret because it hurts people. We can show you . . .” She trailed off, breathing hard, her hands clenched. The captain frowned slightly and shifted a little in the sand.

  “It doesn’t matter what we’re here for, Captain,” Rosen said. “What matters is the law, and I represent the law. You may not stop us because we are not on a federal base. If you continue to stand in our way, I will arrest you.”

  One of the soldiers snorted, and the blue-eyed captain made a short, sharp movement with his hand that chopped off the other soldier as though gagged. The captain was still for a few moments, looking at Rosen as though he were a new and interesting species of ant.

  “You’re not allowed in this part of the dunes,” he said finally. Marcia and Daniel groaned in unison, Paris shifted against the hummer and Joe clenched his teeth shut on a very bad word. Rosen stood like a man at a chessboard contemplating his next move as the seconds ticked by.

  Joe looked at his watch. Six-twenty.

  Great Sand Dunes, Latitude 37.47.50, Longitude 105.33.20, San Luis Valley, Colorado

  “Hello, Mr. Mitchell,” Eileen said pleasantly.

  Jacob Mitchell spun around and the look on his face was a pleasure to see. His mouth dropped open, his eyes bulged, his face turned gray in the dawn light. His companion dropped the balled-up tarpaulin in his hands and started to reach toward his armpit.

  “No no,” Eileen said, raising her gun and aiming very carefully. “Let’s put our hands right on top of our head, shall we?”

  “Do it, Scott,” Mitchell said. He put his hands on his head as though it were the latest fashion at dinner parties. His eyes had lost their surprised look and he smiled at Eileen and Alan, who stood behind her.

  “You’re Alan Baxter, yes? What are you doing here—oh.” Mitchell stopped, looking back and forth between Alan and Eileen. “I wasn’t aware that you’re father and daughter. How interesting.”

  Behind Mitchell the Tesla device sat on the sand, revealed at last. It was beautiful. Two wooden platforms held a series of what looked like metal spools,
each one sprouting wires from the top like multicolored hair. The wires twisted together into a thick braid that led into the bottom of a glass globe of the earth.

  Eileen focused on Mitchell and tried to ignore the globe. It caught the eye, round and glowing and colored green and blue and brown. In the midst of the wire and the metal spools it looked totally out of place, like a work of priceless art caught inside a piece of industrial machinery.

  On the sand next to the machine sat a black car battery on a wooden crate, a car battery with wires that led into the metal structure that held the cool glowing crystal of the globe.

  “You run the Tesla machine with a car battery?” Alan asked. Mitchell narrowed his eyes but his voice remained light and friendly.

  “Jim Leetsdale, right? He left you something on his computer, or in his files? I was surprised when you took his computer so quickly. I didn’t expect you’d be able to break his encryption or his system. Ah, well, water under the bridge.” Mitchell started to lower his hands and raised them again as Eileen made a slight movement with her gun.

  “We’d like to stop your experiment for today, Mr. Mitchell,” Eileen said, her voice as calm and friendly as she could make it. “We’re going to escort you back to Alamosa, and we’ll find out if your DNA, or your friend Scott’s here, matches the DNA from material left on Krista Lewis’s body. If not, you’re free to go.”

  “Why didn’t you just arrest me in Colorado Springs?” Mitchell asked, a smile playing on his lips. He seemed totally unafraid. Eileen felt a freezing doubt sweep her and suppressed it.

  “I think you know,” she said. “I know about the New Madrid. I don’t know why, though I’d like to find out. But officially, Mr. Mitchell, I’m just here to talk to you in the Great Sand Dunes because that’s where Krista Lewis was raped and killed. By placing yourself in the vicinity of the crime, you allow me to bring you in for questioning. We’re also going to get a court order for DNA testing.”