24 Declassified: Head Shot (2009) (17 page)

He took the field glasses and slipped the strap on around his neck. He and Frith started downhill, angling toward the shed. Jack said, “Let’s make sure it’s not a false alarm before alerting the others.”

Frith nodded, said, “Right.” He’d been carrying his M–16 so that its barrel pointed at the ground; now he held it level but off to the side. Jack reached inside his jacket to give his gun butt a little nudge, adjusting it in the holster so it would come free easier if he needed it in a hurry.

They came down on the flat and made for the shed’s southwest corner. Each step closer made it more evident that a tarp was fixed to part of the roof. Its tan, sandy color was much like the terrain at the top of the bluff—surely no coincidence. The ground around the shed was churned up with a lot of tire tracks, ruts, and broken earth.

Frith suddenly made a wide detour around a patch of ground. Jack froze, said, “Snake?”

Frith shook his head, showed a toothy grin. “Bear scat.”

Jack took a closer look. The ground was littered with animal droppings. A sizable pile, not human. He said, “You can tell they’re bear?”

Frith said, “Hell, yeah. I grew up in these parts and I live here now. The bear population has been allowed to grow until now they’re a real nuisance. They’re not afraid of humans and they like the taste of people’s garbage better than the food they can forage in the woods.”

Jack joked, “I’m warning you in advance. Zealots and killers are one thing but if I see a bear, I’m running.”

“Won’t do you any good. Bears’re fast. They can run faster than you can.” Frith eyed the pile with an outdoorsman’s discernment. “The spoor’s at least a day old so we’re probably in the clear.”

Jack noticed that they were both talking in low, hushed voices. He said, “I’ll tell you this: it wasn’t a bear that put that tarp on the roof.”

They continued onward, closing on the shed. Planks in the tilted west wall were cracked and splintered at about midbody height and bore fresh gouges and scrapings. The ground on the west side of the shed was noticeably torn up.

The south wall was a massed rubble of broken boards and beams. The edges of the canvas tarp hung down over the top of the pile. Football-sized rocks had been placed along the rim to hold it down and pin it in place.

Jack said, “I want to see what that tarp is covering up.” The heaped rubble on the south was too unsteady to climb. The east side, the building’s front, was in similar condition, a junk pile.

The long north wall looked more promising. The northwest corner of the shed was its most intact section. Part of the roof there was solid. Much of the wall was broken into slablike sections. There were a couple of empty window frames but the roof had fallen in, blocking a view inside.

Jack tackled the northwest corner. He took off the field glasses and set them down. He pulled his hat down tight on his head. A beam end protruded from the wall at about chest height. Jack hung on to it with both hands, testing it with his weight. It seemed solid enough.

Frith gave him a boost, allowing Jack to scramble up the side of the tilted wall and stand on the beam end. Jack reached up, grabbing the overhang of the roof with both hands, steadying himself. He chinned himself up to the top of the wall, booted feet scrabbling against the boards. He grunted and panted as he heaved his upper body onto the roof.

The wood creaked and groaned under him, giving him a bad moment, but it stayed in place. He got his feet under him and rose into a half crouch, ready to jump clear at the first sign of an imminent collapse.

He could see where a line of nails the size of railroad spikes had been hammered into the wood along the edge where the roof had broken off and fallen in. They anchored the near end of the tarp in place. They looked new. He really wanted to see what was underneath that tarp.

He dropped to his knees and lay prone on the roof. It seemed solid underneath him. He thought that if it had held the weight of whoever drove the nails it could hold his weight. He bellied his way to the edge.

The tarp was tough and nailed down tight. If he only had a knife . . . But the tarp wasn’t nailed down on the south side of the shed, it was held in place by rocks. He clawed at the canvas, trying for a hand-hold. The tarp sagged in the middle, there was some play in it. He grabbed a double handful of a fold in the fabric and started pulling it toward him.

The tarp was heavy and didn’t want to move. He tugged the fold over the edge of the roof. Now he could rest his arms on the roof and pull the canvas down toward him. He had the advantage of gravity and his weight working for him. He heaved and pulled.

The tarp yielded, folding toward him. There was the sound of rocks falling down the other side of the shed. Jack kept pouring it on. More rocks fell until there weren’t enough of them to hold the tarp in place.

The tarp fell through the hole in the roof, except where it was nailed down on Jack’s side. It didn’t fall far. Something underneath was holding it up.

Jack stuck his head over the edge and looked down. The tarp was draped over a whalelike shape that filled the collapsed shed, nearly reaching what was left of the roof beams. He reached inside the hole, heaving the tarp toward him with both hands, slowly uncovering what lay beneath.

He said, “Huh!” He was too out of breath to say anything else. He sounded part surprised, part triumphant.

Frith stood with his head tilted back, looking up, but he couldn’t see what Jack saw. He called, “What is it?”

Jack said, “The blue bus.”

THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 12 P.M. AND 1 P.M. MOUNTAIN DAYLIGHT TIME

Silvertop, Colorado

There was no stopping Jack, he had to see the thing through. Now that he knew what lay within the collapsed shed, he had a better idea of how to proceed and the tolerances of the structure he was scrambling around on. He was avid for clues but not at the cost of breaking his neck.

The bus was fitted into the shell of the shed so that its front was at the east end. Jack toed the edge of the roof and jumped down through the gap to the top of the bus. It was a short drop, only a few feet; the shed was low and the bus was tall. He came down toward the rear of the vehicle, the impact of his landing making a hollow booming sound. He landed on his feet, knees bent to absorb the shock.

The shed had been knocked down around the bus. Debris hemmed it in on all sides. He kicked the rest of the tarp off the roof; it hung down like a curtain from where it was nailed to the roof. Sunlight streamed in through the hole in the top of the shed.

The roof of the bus was slightly curved but provided solid footing. He knelt facing the right side, thinking to hang over the edge so he could look through the windows.
But there was nothing to hang on to and he didn’t want to risk sliding off the edge headfirst.

He walked across the roof to the front of the bus. Rubble was piled up to the top of the hood but no higher. The right front door was blocked by too much debris to allow him to open it. He stepped down on to the hood and hunkered down there, facing the windshield. It was opaque with a coating of dust. He rubbed his sleeve against it to clean it and peered through the pane.

The interior was dark, thick with shadows. Jack put his face up close to the glass, holding a hand against the side of his face to screen out the glare.

The bus was empty.

That surprised him. He couldn’t see much through the gloom, but as far as he could tell the bus contained no bodies. As far as he could tell.

He had to know for sure. He sat down on the hood. He was able to reach down and pick up a rock from the top of the pile of debris crowding the vehicle. He picked up a big one and brought it down hard on the center of the windshield. The glass puckered where the leading edge of the rock hit it, a spiderweb of cracks radiating out from the point of impact.

He struck again, harder. The spiderweb expanded, the pane becoming translucent as if frosted in the center.
He bashed it a few more times, turning his head away from it to protect his eyes in case of flying glass shards.

The windshield was made of safety glass. It held until it reached its breaking point and then it came apart all at once, disintegrating into a mass of crystal cubes that looked like several shovelfuls of miniature ice cubes. They went crashing into the bus, clearing out the windshield frame.

A wave of heat and stink came pouring out through the opening. The bus had been shut up tight, all windows closed, causing massive heat to build up inside. The stink was the smell of decay. Jack caught a whiff of it. He felt his gorge rise and he had to fight to keep from gagging.

The gloom inside the bus
was not static but dynamic, fl
owing, pulsing—buzzing. Its source was a horde of flies, much of which came pouring out of the hole. Jack climbed on top of the bus’s roof and walked to the rear of it, filling his lungs with fresh air.

He waited a few minutes for the worst of it to clear before returning to the front of the bus and squatting on the hood. The smell was still pretty rough. He’d have covered his mouth and nose with a handkerchief or piece of cloth if he’d had one but he didn’t, so he had to make do. He held his breath and stuck his head through the windshield frame.

The stench came from masses of dried blood on the inside of the bus. The central aisle was smeared with it. So were the three steps leading down to the front door. The bus had seemed sealed tight but the flies had gotten inside. They always do, somehow.

The safety glass had come apart in cubes that looked like rock salt. There were no jagged, razor-edged shards. Jack brushed aside the fragments on the hood. He crouched almost double, sticking a foot through the frame and stepping down to the driver’s seat. The driver’s area was free of blood.

Jack eased himself through the frame into the bus. It was like stepping into a baker’s oven. Sweat sprang out from every pore. He breathed through his nose as shallowly as possible. A cloud of flies buzzed around him. He waved his hand in front of his face, batting them away, but they kept coming back.

He took out a small flashlight from one of his pockets and switched it on to dispel some of the murky shadows. He made his way down the aisle toward the rear of the bus, the flashlight beam gliding over rows of seats, the floor and walls. Some seats were bloodstained but most were not. A few side windows were cracked but none had been broken. No bodies were in view. He ducked down to shine the light under the seats but there were no bodies there, either.

He worked his way to the back of the bus. It lacked an emergency rear door. A mass of dried blood stained the floor and back panel. It was reddish-brown and several inches thick. The evidence seemed to indicate that there had been a number of bleeding bodies at the back of the bus, that they had been dragged to the front and out the door.

Jack figured he had seen all there was to see for now. The forensics team could take it from here. He wanted out.

He went to the front of the bus, using the driver’s seat as a stepping stone to climb through the windshield frame and out on to the hood. He hopped up on the vehicle’s roof and went to the rear. He boosted himself onto the top of the shed and jumped off. He landed on the ground with knees bent, rolling on his shoulder to absorb the impact.

Anne Armstrong, Holtz, and Sanchez had joined Frith and they were all waiting for him. Bailey was still back at the vehicles keeping watch. Sanchez said to Jack, “You look pretty shook, man.”

Jack took some deep breaths, filling his lungs with clean air. He could still taste the blood reek in his nostrils and at the back of his throat. Holtz had a canteen. Jack took a mouthful of warm water, swished it around in his mouth, and spat it out. He drank some more before returning the canteen.

Anne Armstrong said, “What did you find?”

Jack told them. Armstrong said, “What do you make of it?”

Jack said, “I’m only guessing based on what I saw. The Zealots didn’t just pull a disappearing act on Thursday morning. There was a purge, too. One faction cleaning up on a dissident element, say. The victims were killed or wounded at Red Notch. Maybe some were killed and some only wounded. The entire compound cadre cleared out in the blue bus and some other vehicles. Our witness Skeets said there was a convoy of a couple cars and trucks along with the bus. The victims were in the bus.

“Somewhere along the way but most likely here at Silvertop the bodies were disposed of. The bus was backed into this shed, which was a wreck already. The killers finished the job, probably by battering it down with one or more of their other vehicles. It wouldn’t take much to bring the walls down considering the age and state of disrepair of the shed. You could do it with a pickup truck or SUV. The west wall is broken in at just about the right height for a truck bumper and there are fresh scrapes and gouges on the boards.

“What the collapsed shed didn’t hide was concealed under the tarp. It’s the same color as the surroundings and would blend right in with the scenery.
Especially to any air searches doing a flyover.”

Sanchez said, “I don’t get it. Why go to all that trouble?”

Jack said, “The blue bus was a liability. Too big, too obvious, and too well- known. And one more reason: the surviving Zealots didn’t need it anymore. They were able to leave in the other vehicles that made up the convoy. Which tells you another thing—there couldn’t have been too many Zealots left out of the original two dozen or so.”