by Dean Koontz
“All right, sir.” I got out of the driver’s door.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you, Odd.”
“I understand, sir.”
“I trust you like a brother.”
“That’s good to hear, sir.”
“It’s just you might have come here under duress.”
“No problem,” I said, opening the back door on the driver’s side.
“It’s not every night of the week somebody wants to blow up the dam.”
I said, “Boring old Pico Mundo,” as I raised the tailgate.
After I opened all the doors and after Sonny circled the Ford, looking straight through it from every angle, I closed up what I had opened.
Tension reduced, the three of us gathered by the back of their cruiser as they remoted the headlights off. Billy Mundy wasn’t a titan like Sonny Wexler, but he had a few inches and thirty pounds of muscle on me. Standing with them, I felt like Lou the bear with two Ollies.
The lights were on for the length of the single-lane road that crossed the crest of the dam, and a series of spotlights lit the breast from the top. It really looked pathetic compared to Boulder Dam.
More heat lightning throbbed through the clouds far to the south, too far away for the trailing thunder to reach us, and for some reason the sight of it made me shudder.
“You hear about the C-4?” Sonny asked.
“Yeah.”
“That is major wicked stuff, ruinous. Who would want to do this?”
“People who know Bern Eckles.”
That surprised them. They had been on the force with him, and he was an embarrassment to them. Billy said, “Eckles, that sonofabitch, he’s away for life.”
“You could say these people go to the same church.”
Sonny shook his head. “Wackos. The world is full of wackos these days. All these wackos, it’s not going to end well.”
“Nothing like this ever happens with Baptists,” Billy said.
“Or even with Presbyterians,” Sonny said. “What can we do for you, Odd? What brought you all the way out here?”
That was an excellent question. I wished I had an answer. “The chief just asked if I’d come to the dam and, you know, sort of have a look around, you know, maybe walk across the service road there on the crest, just in general kind of see whatever there is to see, if there’s anything at all, which probably there isn’t, but it won’t hurt to give it a try.”
I sounded so lame, rambling toward incoherence, that I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d wanted to test my blood-alcohol level.
Maybe the only good thing about people thinking you were a hero once long ago is that they treat you seriously no matter how idiotic you might sound. Sonny and Billy nodded solemnly as I babbled, hearing more sense in my speech than I put into it.
“Sure,” Sonny Wexler said. “That’s a good idea. Go on out there and have a look.”
“Fresh eyes,” Billy Mundy said. “Always a good idea to get fresh eyes on a problem.”
“There were some prairie wolves around when we got here,” Sonny said, “bolder than usual. Give us a holler if they bother you.”
Some people in Maravilla County referred to them as prairie wolves, but most just called them coyotes.
“Yes, sir, I’ll keep a lookout,” I said. “But a coyote pack doesn’t worry me half as much as the lunatics who stole the C-4.”
“What we’ve been waiting to hear,” Sonny said, “is an incoming plane.”
Billy said, “If they load the C-4 in a plane and time it just right so it detonates as they crash the plane into the breast of the dam, there isn’t a thing we could do to stop them.”
“If you hear a plane,” Sonny advised me, “best do what we’ll do, which is run like hell.”
“I wouldn’t have thought of a plane,” I said.
Billy nodded. “We wish we hadn’t.”
Twenty-eight
Entering from the north, I walked more than halfway across the crest of the dam before I leaned against the guardrail and looked down the lighted spillway that sloped to the plunge pool. In a planned outflow, water would collect in the pool before brimming over the sill into the stilling basin, and in controlled volume it would pour from there into the dry riverbed.
I didn’t see anything suspicious. But of course I didn’t know whether the scene before me was as it should be; I had no idea what I was looking for.
Often it seemed to me that my psychic gifts ought to have been bestowed upon someone with a higher IQ than mine.
On the lake side of the road, the regularly spaced lamps built into the guardrail cast some light upon the water that lapped gently at the tainter gates. But only ten or fifteen feet out, the lake went black, an inky immensity in this moonless, starless night.
In certain old movies set in World War II, Navy frogmen would approach a target underwater—bridge supports, ships in harbor—and surface just long enough to plant explosives. I didn’t know how many well-trained scuba divers would be required to attach more than a ton of C-4 to the dam, though probably at least fifty, each of them burdened with forty pounds of the stuff, schooling like fish. No. Impractical.
A boat was more likely than frogmen. Anyone guarding the dam would hear the boat coming, especially in this quiet. But they most likely wouldn’t be able to stop it in time, not just by hoping to pick off the pilot with sniper fire. If the boat had an electric motor, it could approach silently, raising no alarm.
Sonny and Billy hadn’t mentioned an attack from the water, but if they had considered an airplane loaded with C-4, they must have thought of a boat.
When I turned from the lake, I saw movement past the south end of the dam, beyond the last lights, a lesser darkness in the deeper dark. Squinting brought no further clarity, only the same impression of restless motion.
Reaching beneath my sport coat, keeping one hand on the Glock in its holster, I walked south to have a closer look. When I was about twenty feet from the end of the dam, the visitors’ shining eyes turned on me, three pairs mirroring the crest lamps, intently staring. As I came to a halt, they ventured a few steps out of the shadows.
During the past twenty-one months, coyotes had been a recurring presence in my life, beginning on the night before Stormy’s death, when three of them had stalked me outside a rusting Quonset hut on the abandoned grounds of a commune where once had lived people who believed that extraterrestrials had created human beings and that the ETs would soon return. Just four months before I found myself on the crest of the Malo Suerte Dam, I’d been through hard and desperate times in Magic Beach, California, during which I had been threatened by coyotes in packs.
On one such occasion, Annamaria had been with me, walking the wild rim of Hecate’s Canyon in Magic Beach, when a pack approached with such an obvious intention to make dinner of us that they should have been wearing bibs. Usually coyotes fear humans and keep their distance from us. A loud noise will frighten them off, as will a tossed stone that doesn’t even hit them. But the pack that came out of Hecate’s Canyon had exhibited no fear whatsoever.
I’d had no gun that night, because I’d loathed guns then as I did now. And we were on a greensward where I couldn’t find any of the impromptu weapons to which I often resorted: buckets, brooms, garden rakes, Granny Smith apples, cats that when thrown will reliably take out their fury not on the thrower but instead on the person at whom they’re thrown. I didn’t like throwing cats or animals of any kind, as far as that goes, but every once in a while, in a life-and-death situation, there was nothing to be done but grab a cat and throw it, or an angry ferret.
Anyway, as it turned out, I wasn’t without a weapon, after all, because Annamaria proved to be a weapon herself. She had said that the coyotes were not only what they appeared to be, and she’d stepped toward them instead of cowering, unfazed by their threatening demeanor. She spoke to them not as if they were bloodthirsty beasts, but rather as if they were naughty children who had gone astray and needed
to be put on the right path again.
Now, months later, as the lantern-eyed pack crept onto the crest of Malo Suerte Dam, daring to stalk me, I didn’t want to shoot them. I didn’t shout for help from Sonny and Billy, who were beyond the outlet-control building and not in my line of sight, because I didn’t want the coyotes to be shot by anyone. I’d had enough of killing to last me a lifetime. I might have to do it again, maybe more than once, but I didn’t have to do it here and now.
Ears flattened close to their skulls, teeth bared, hackles raised, tails tucked, they tentatively approached me, every muscle in their lean bodies taut. They were bony specimens, in need of a good meal; but it would be a mistake to conclude that they were weak. Were I not to use my pistol, just one coyote would be enough to finish me if it could not be frightened away.
I spoke to them as Annamaria had spoken to the toothy crew on the greensward near Hecate’s Canyon. “You aren’t only what you appear to be. You do not belong here.”
The leader of the pack halted, and the other two drew nearer to it, closing up what had been a three-prong attack pattern. Their pointy ears were no longer back against their heads, but were instead pricked, as though they were interested in what I said.
Their mouths cracked wider, however, and they regarded me with malevolent grins.
Again echoing Annamaria’s admonition to that other pack, I said, “The rest of the world is yours … but not this place at this moment.”
Back in the day, I hadn’t understood what she had meant by those words. Now I thought perhaps I did.
Far to the south, pulses of heat lightning billowed deep within the heavy clouds, again too distant for the associated thunder to reach us.
Although their backs were to the southern sky, and though the celestial flare was too faint to cast even a wan reflection upon our immediate surroundings, the three coyotes shivered, as if aware of the storm light and affected by it.
“I am not yours. You will leave now.”
They didn’t depart, didn’t move so much as an inch, but neither did they growl.
The coyotes in Magic Beach had not at once obeyed Annamaria. They had been stubborn, or maybe whatever wished to use them had been stubborn.
And so I repeated, “You will leave now.”
The predatory trio looked around as though confused, as though unsure how they had gotten where they were. Their hackles smoothed, and although they nervously licked their chops, they no longer bared their fearsome teeth. Ears pricked, regarding me not with hostility or hunger, only with curiosity, they warily backed away.
“Leave now,” I repeated.
They turned and slunk off the crest of the dam, toward the darkness out of which they had appeared.
When they paused in the pale light of the narrow shadowland that separated the brightness of the dam crest from the blackest night, I watched them watching me, and I knew they were now only what they appeared to be: coyotes or prairie wolves, whichever you preferred. Briefly, some vicious twisted spirit had entered them and had overridden their fear of me. But for all its malice, it was a weak entity that obeyed a simple order to leave once its presence had been recognized and resisted.
The coyotes moved away into the blinding dark, gone as if they’d never existed. I felt again the mysterious nature of the world, its deeply layered and profound strangeness.
I wondered at my inability, until now, to understand what Annamaria had recognized in the coyotes in Magic Beach and why she had felt that she could command them to leave us alone. Considering that I saw the spirits of the lingering dead and bodachs—whatever they might be—it troubled me that I had not realized she could perhaps see other entities unknown to me, such as spirits that were not and never had been human, that sprang from origins even darker than the worst specimens of humanity.
I’d long known Annamaria possessed some power of her own, that she had well-guarded secrets. She, too, was more than she appeared to be. I had come to believe that her powers, whatever their nature, were greater than mine. But now I was chagrined to realize that I had failed to grasp how we were at least in one way alike: Some things visible to us were invisible to the vast majority of human beings, even if perhaps each of us saw different things from what the other perceived.
At the railing once more, I peered toward the farther reaches of Malo Suerte Lake, which were cast in such perfect blackness that I couldn’t discern either those waters or anything of the shore that embraced them. When I turned my attention down to the water lapping against the dam, I couldn’t see it, either, not really see it, for it was black, as well, and I could know that it slopped against the tainter gates below me only because reflections of the crest lights undulated upon its surface.
Standing there, I was overcome by the certainty that, since returning home to Pico Mundo, I had failed to see much more than just the malicious entity that had sought to use the three coyotes against me. A monstrous act of terrorism would soon be perpetrated. The truth of it, the approximate place and the general nature of the threat, had been revealed to me in a prophetic dream; or if they had not been fully revealed, they had at least been strongly suggested.
Yes, I could see what others could not, but seeing wasn’t the same as understanding. I had been given perceptions that Sherlock Holmes would have envied; but I didn’t have Sherlockian wit to make the most of what I saw. With fewer clues than I possessed, Holmes routinely puzzled his way to the mystery’s solution, with little or no violence. In spite of my hatred of violence, I more often than not had to bludgeon and shoot my way to a resolution.
When last Pico Mundo was threatened, I had put the pieces together a few minutes too late, saving some potential victims, but not nineteen. And not her.
I looked at my wristwatch. Nine o’clock. Not only minutes were slipping through my fingers, but also the lives of those I might fail to save.
When I returned from the dam, Sonny Wexler said, “Anything?”
“You must’ve thought of a boat, sir. An electric boat?”
Billy Mundy shook his head. “It couldn’t get close enough. A hundred yards out from the dam, there’s a loose-woven net of steel cables shore to shore. Starts about two feet above the high-water line and goes almost all the way to the bottom.”
“One-inch-diameter cable,” Sonny added. “You’d need acetylene torches and a few hours to get through it—and either night or day, you’d draw a lot of attention to yourself.”
“The net’s to keep recreational boats and jet skis from getting too near the dam,” Billy explained. “If a swimmer was in the water when tainter gates were opened, he might be pulled in and over the spillway. Or dragged under by a current and drowned.”
“Can the net be raised and lowered mechanically?” I asked.
“Sure. From the outlet-control building. But no one’s getting in there as long as we’re guarding the place.”
Sonny Wexler said, “And the chief’s sending backup. Two more guys will be here soon.”
I knew why Chief Porter made that decision, and I was reminded of Jim’s and Bob’s driver’s licenses. I fished the plastic rectangles from a jacket pocket and handed them to Sonny.
“I told the chief I’d give you these. They’re conspirators in all this. Very bad guys.”
As he and his partner examined the licenses, Billy Mundy said, “Memorable faces. We’ll know ’em if we see ’em.”
“You won’t be seeing them,” I said. “Those are just for you to give to the chief.”
Sonny frowned. “We won’t be seeing them? How’d you get their licenses, anyway?”
I said only, “The chief knows all about it, sir.”
Their stares were of the kind that make the most law-abiding citizens feel as if there’s a crime to which they should confess.
I didn’t look away from them, met the eyes of one and then the eyes of the other. They didn’t look away from me, either.
Peripherally, I was aware of heat lightning to the south, as if an alien spa
ceship or a colossal creature of light passed through the shrouding clouds along the horizon, but the storm wasn’t here, wasn’t now.
At last Sonny tucked the licenses in the breast pocket of his uniform shirt. “I thought you came home just to come home, but I guess there’s more to it than that.”
“Well, sir, I’m sure glad to be home, it’s where I belong, but there’s always more to everything than there seems to be.”
“That’s as true as it gets,” said Billy Mundy.
Sonny put one of his enormous hands on my shoulder. “You be careful out there, Odd.”
“Yes, sir. I want to be.”
I drove the Explorer all the way along the service road to the state highway before the connection occurred to me. It wasn’t one I wanted to make, but I knew immediately that it was right.
For the time during which they had stalked me, the coyotes at the dam had been more than they appeared to be. Some dark spirit had taken possession of them.
Earlier in the day, shortly after dawn, when I’d encountered the coyote on the street where I’d parked the Big Dog motorcycle, it must have been more than it appeared to be, as well.
And at the safe house, when I’d come downstairs to the kitchen for dinner, Deacon Bullock had at that moment entered through the back door, carrying a shotgun. His wife, Maybelle, had said to him, Seein’ as you’re alive, must’ve been a false alarm like you thought.
Dang coyote, Deke had said. Slinkin’ around, maybe hopin’ for one of the chickens we don’t even raise, set off a motion detector.
Indicating the sunlight at the windows, she had said, Early for one of their kind bein’ on the hunt.
It was a bonier specimen than usual, he’d replied, maybe too hungry to wait out the sun.
That coyote, like the others in my day, must have been more than it appeared to be.
The four who had been the only members of the cult that shot up Green Moon Mall—Eckles, Varner, Gosset, Robertson—had been pretend satanists, men with a taste for murder, cruel sadists who dressed up their barbarism with occult nonsense that had nothing to do with real devil worship.