China Lake (36 page)

When I got out the silence was powerful. We were in the lee of the hill, and not even the wind reached our ears. I looked over at Garrett. He was standing beside the car, loading his Winchester, deadly serious. The cartridges slid into the rifle with a soft metallic click.

I said, ‘‘Over this hill.’’

He slung a backpack across his shoulders. ‘‘I’m on your six.’’

We climbed quickly. He was surefooted over the sandy ground, quiet and intent behind me, carrying the rifle at his side. After fifteen minutes we approached a saddle between two hills. The wind kicked through the gap. We crept forward until we could see down the slope. Below on the flat lay the dusty cabin and trailers of Angels’ Landing.

We crouched behind a large rock. Garrett scanned the compound.

He said, ‘‘Nothing. No vehicles, no activity, no movement inside the cabin.’’

Still, we watched for five more minutes before leaving cover and starting downhill toward the camp. The wind twisted and teased, and the sun hit us from all angles. If anyone was watching us, we were easy targets.

The first structure we came to was the ramshackle barn. It was empty except for a guano-spattered red pickup that looked as if it hadn’t been driven in years. Anxiously I peered up into the rafters. There hung the bats, sound asleep. I touched Garrett’s arm, urging him back quietly.

Outside, he said, ‘‘They were out of here before the kidnapping.’’

‘‘They have another bolt-hole. Maybe we can find a clue to where it is.’’

We checked the trailers, looking for a message, a footprint, any sign that Luke had been here, anything that might indicate where he had been taken, but found nothing. Finally we came to the cabin. Its grimy windows were covered from the inside with aluminum foil. The front door was locked. Tacked to it was a notice that the police had searched inside under authority of warrant.

I said, ‘‘Let’s try the window.’’

The rusty screen squeaked loose, and to my surprise the window slid open. Pushing aside the venetian blinds, I climbed in.

Immediately I bumped into a cold metal object. The blinds clanged out of my way and I saw that it was a large freezer, the kind with a glass lid to display the contents. Inside it, mottled with freezer burn, were packages of Lean Cuisine, haunches of meat, Reddi-Wip canisters, and the body of Peter Wyoming.

He lay pale beneath a blanket of frozen lilies. His lips were blue, his brush-cut hair white with frost. Shock zipped through my gut and I jumped backward into the blinds, just as Garrett came through the window.

He said, ‘‘Holy shit.’’

I clung to his arm, steadying myself.

He said, ‘‘Didn’t you say the Remnant expects him to be resurrected?’’

‘‘Yeah. This is what I call hedging your bets.’’

‘‘How the hell did the cops miss this?’’

I kept staring at Pastor Pete. ‘‘They didn’t. They would have taken this away.’’

He tightened his grip on the rifle. ‘‘The Remnant’s been here since the search. Recently.’’

My pulse crackled. I edged around the freezer. The rest of the room, crazily, looked exactly as it had the first time I had been here—black Naugahyde furniture, dust motes riding the stale air. The heat was oppressive. The wooden floor creaked under my feet.

I went into the kitchen. Dishes were drying in a rack, and the sink was wet. A side door had a key in the latch, and it was unlocked. Outside, a tumbleweed scratched at the window, emaciated gray branches raking the screen. I opened the refrigerator: boxes of Entenmann’s low-fat brownies and more canisters of Reddi-Wip.

From the living room Garrett called, ‘‘Evan, take a look.’’

He was bending over the freezer, pointing to a note card taped in a corner.

He said, ‘‘Check the bedrooms and let’s get the hell out of here. This is too freakin’ weird.’’

I had gone ten feet when I heard a scraping noise. I froze. Slowly I turned. So help me, I stared at Pastor Pete, and the pounding of my heart made it look as if he were shivering in the freezer.

‘‘Garrett.’’

He looked around. Then we both heard it: the sound of something scraping against wood.

‘‘It’s under the floor,’’ I said.

He backed away from the freezer, rifle now pointed at the floorboards, finger on the trigger. The heat squeezed me.

I pointed at the center of the room. He swung the Winchester. All I could think of was the scene in
Aliens
where they burst through the floor and grab Bill Paxton from below. I backed against the wall and gestured for him to do the same.

‘‘Angle of fire, Garrett.’’

If somebody under the floor had a gun, they’d probably fire straight up. He stepped back. Jinked the rifle up snug against his shoulder. Looked at me, eyes questioning. Then he shouted, ‘‘Come out. You’re surrounded.’’

The blinds clanged against the windowsill in the wind.

He said, ‘‘We’re armed. Come out with your hands up.’’

Nothing.

‘‘I am not a patient man.’’ Raising the rifle toward the ceiling, he fired.

The noise jolted me. Plaster showered on the floor. He brought the weapon down again. The scraping started, consistently now.

‘‘It’s moving,’’ I said. ‘‘Toward the window.’’

He shouted at the floor. ‘‘We’re tracking you. Come out or I’ll shoot.’’

In front of the freezer the floor rose up.

I said, ‘‘Jesus God.’’

A figure emerged from beneath the floor. Garrett rushed forward, rifle aimed.

He was pumped, juiced. ‘‘Down on your knees! Do it! Do it!’’

‘‘Don’t shoot!’’ It was Glory, climbing out from a crawl space beneath the cabin’s floor, hands in the air.

Brian squinted at Paxton. He said afterward that he could barely find his voice, not believing what the man had just said. ‘‘A jet?’’

‘‘You’re gonna get us one F/A-eighteen, fully loaded,’’ Paxton said. ‘‘We want Sidewinders, Shrikes, CBW warheads, fuel-air bombs.’’

‘‘This is a joke.’’

‘‘I don’t joke.’’

Brian sat back, incredulous. ‘‘This is your ransom demand?’’

Tabitha said, ‘‘He’s serious, Bri. The Remnant wants to kick ass for Jesus.’’

Seeing how scared she was, he thought that she had guts saying that.

‘‘Woman, watch your mouth,’’ said Paxton, still looking at Brian. ‘‘You’re gonna get me a jet armed with every weapon the navy tests at China Lake. I’m talking biological warheads, nukes if you got ’em.’’

Brian said, ‘‘You’re crazy.’’

‘‘You’re gonna get me a jet, and you’re gonna fly into the Sierras and drop it down low, under the radar. Disappear off the screen, and it’s gonna look like you crashed into a mountain, way that air force pilot done a couple years back.’’

Brian was dumbstruck. The Craig Button incident: Every pilot remembered it. The air force captain had broken away from his formation on a training mission and vanished. For weeks his A-10 ground attack jet remained missing, and speculation ran wild that he had stolen the jet and landed at a secret airstrip, with plans to commit a terrorist bombing. In the end the truth proved equally bizarre. Wreckage was found high up a peak in the Colorado Rockies—the plane and Button’s remains, but not the bombs he’d been carrying. The air force concluded that he had committed suicide.

And Paxton wanted to use Button’s self-destruction as a blueprint for action. He was saying, ‘‘What you do, you hug the terrain, keep it under the radar till you get to a landing site in the high country. We’ll have your boy waiting there.’’ He pushed up the brim of his cap with his thumb. ‘‘And I know you wouldn’t fire on any landing site where your boy was waiting for you.’’

Brian said, ‘‘You’re out of your mind.’’

‘‘No, I ain’t. It’s easy as pie.’’

‘‘You want me to steal an F/A-eighteen? Just stroll into the weapons shed and load up on warheads like I’m shopping at Costco? Fix you a picnic hamper of assorted missiles, tell my CO, ‘Hey, gotta give this jet to some psychos, be back after lunch’? You’re fucking nuts. Besides, if you haven’t noticed,’’ he said, leaning close to the Plexiglas, ‘‘I’m in jail for
murder
.’’

Paxton sucked on his teeth. ‘‘I’ll fix that.’’

Brian’s mouth slowly dropped open.

‘‘I’ll get you out, and I don’t mean no jailbreak. I’ll get you released free and clear, get the charges dropped. If you get the F/A-eighteen.’’

Brian held still, thinking this guy had set him up. Paxton killed Peter Wyoming and framed him just to get him to this point.

Paxton said, ‘‘I’m leaving this room in three minutes. Decide.’’

The man was crazy, Brian thought. Crazy enough to kill Luke if he didn’t stop him.

Paxton turned to Tabitha. ‘‘Show him.’’

She raised her hands from her lap, where they had lain out of sight under the counter. Brian drew back. A series of tiny cuts notched her wrists and palms.

She said, ‘‘He marked the spots where the tendons are easiest to sever. If I disobey him he’s going to cut me until my hands are paralyzed.’’

Paxton leaned toward Brian. ‘‘I’m talking discipline, fungus. You don’t do it, the lady gets cut.’’ He reached out and lifted Tabitha’s chin with his index finger. ‘‘She thinks she’s all tore up right now. She has a lot to learn.’’

Brian looked at Tabitha, appalled. She was pegging him with her eyes, hanging on to him through open terror. He spoke later about that look, said it hit him like a blow. But he also said that looking at her, he felt himself focus, felt himself assess the threat and the tactics needed to repel it. He felt himself enter the zone.

He said, ‘‘You can actually get me out of here?’’

Paxton nodded.

And perhaps, Brian thought, he could. This was liar’s poker. The Remnant would not readily give Luke back. And he would never supply the church with weapons. So which of them could pull off the bigger bluff?

Tabitha mouthed the word,
Luke
.

He slowly nodded.

Paxton said, ‘‘Ninety seconds.’’

‘‘I can’t get nukes,’’ Brian said. ‘‘And air-to-air missiles will be useless to a ground-based combat unit.’’

‘‘You leave us to decide what’s useless and what’s not,’’ Paxton said.

That was when Brian felt himself putting on his game face. ‘‘A biological warhead—that’s tricky, but manageable. I’ll have to take the warhead from its secure storage facility at China Lake.’’

Paxton stilled.

‘‘But I’d never be able to load a missile with a live BW warhead on a Hornet. The weapons techs would see it and take me down at gunpoint.’’

‘‘Don’t you lie to me.’’

‘‘You want a warhead? I can get you something with the power to wipe out the West Coast. Is that good enough for you?’’

Paxton’s chilly blue eyes crackled to life. ‘‘Might do.’’

‘‘Forget the F/A-eighteen. If a Hornet disappeared—’’

‘‘I want the jet.’’

‘‘If I go missing in an F/A-eighteen they’ll launch an immediate search-and-rescue effort, multiagency, high-profile—navy, air force, coast guard. The Sierras will be crawling with feds.’’

‘‘What are you, yellow?’’

‘‘Tabitha, tell him what a brass-balled son of a bitch I am.’’

She said, ‘‘He has a heart of death, Isaiah. He’d kill you as soon as look at you.’’

Paxton snorted.

‘‘Listen to me,’’ Brian said. ‘‘The Hornets at China Lake are an advanced prototype, constructed from an alloy that embeds a unique tracking signature in the airframe. The Pentagon can trace them via satellite and pinpoint their location anywhere on the globe. Even if they’ve been painted over or stashed in a hangar. You go near one of these jets, you send the FBI a greeting card. Get it?’’

Come on
, he was thinking,
buy it
. Paxton merely looked at him.

‘‘The jet isn’t the weapon you want. It’s big and loud and obvious. But a warhead’s portable and stealthy. It won’t hinder your ability to hit and run. And if I do it right, it’ll take days before China Lake notices it’s missing. That, you asshole, is the weapon you want.’’

Paxton considered it. ‘‘Days?’’

‘‘Yeah.’’ Brian watched him. ‘‘If I do it, Luke and Tabitha go home with me.’’

"And I go home with the warhead."

"Yes."

"Yes." ‘‘Deal.’’

Paxton stood up. ‘‘Don’t let nobody follow us outta here. If they follow, Tabitha’s hands turn to meat.’’

Then they were gone, and Brian was pounding on the door. He wanted to talk to Detective McCracken, and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. But before the guard could come he heard a girl’s voice saying, ‘‘Don’t do that.’’ A new visitor was sitting down across from him, a teenager with elaborate blond hair, wearing a blouse with the name Candi stitched above the pocket. ‘‘Ice told you, don’t let anybody follow. Just sit tight for a while.’’ Then she smiled at him and said, ‘‘Are you saved?’’

‘‘I was keeping vigil.’’

Glory was sitting on the cabin’s black Naugahyde sofa, hands pressed between her knees, rocking back and forth. I was pacing the floor. Beneath us, Garrett scuffled around the crawl space. After a minute he pulled himself up through the opening.

‘‘Nothing down there but canned hams and a hundred boxes of potato flakes. And a tunnel, looks like it leads to the barn.’’

Glory pushed her hair out of her eyes and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. Sweat trickled down her chest. With the dust streaking her face and arms, she looked more like Lara Croft than ever.
Tomb Raider Millennium Edition: The Quest for SPAM
.

I squatted down in front of her, getting to eye level. I had to handle this right. I couldn’t just slap her. She kept rocking, looking away from me.