Authors: Jon Land
Day of the Delphi (9 page)
“Funny thing, Jimbo,” Farlowe told him. “Glove compartment got itself emptied.”
Farlowe stopped just to Big Jimbo’s right. As Kristen looked on, the old man reached up and brought the hood down hard on Jimbo’s head and shoulders. The man mountain screeched in pain. Farlowe let the hood bounce back up and grabbed a fistful of red hair. Before Big Jimbo could respond, the sheriff’s Colt Peacemaker was cocked dead center against his forehead.
“That jeep back there belongs to this here lady’s brother, Jimbo,” he said quite calmly. “Now there’s two things you’re gonna do. First, you’re gonna give me everything you took out of the glove compartment, since something important mighta been in there. And second, you’re gonna park the jeep right outside my office sometime in the next ten minutes. Have I made myself understood?”
Big Jimbo nodded.
“I think I wanna hear you say it.”
“Yes, Sheriff.”
Farlowe let the Peacemaker’s hammer release and pulled the gun back from the red-haired man’s forehead. “Much obliged.”
They waited near the garage’s entrance for Big Jimbo to retrieve the contents of David’s glove compartment. After Big Jimbo had handed them over, Farlowe led Kristen outside, keeping his eyes on the man mountain until they were halfway to his truck.
“Now, little lady,” he started, only then returning his trusty Peacemaker to its holster, “let’s see if we can figure out what your brother was trying to tell you he found.”
Farlowe gave Kristen the contents of the glove compartment and watched her quickly thumb through them. She got halfway into the pile and stopped. The wind ruffled the papers in her hand. She looked up from them at Farlowe.
“I think I’ve got something, Sheriff.”
“This is a receipt for a camcorder my brother bought three days before he disappeared,” Kristen explained, handing it to Farlowe.
“You thinking maybe he taped whatever it was he was trying to tell you he saw?”
She nodded. “And maybe he hid the tape somewhere. Maybe Big Jimbo still has it.”
Farlowe smiled slightly. “Nope. I don’t think he’d be thinking ’bout adding it to his video collection, under the circumstances.”
“Would you have shot him back there?” Kristen wondered.
“Big Jimbo talks a tough game, little lady, but he never woulda made me.”
“But would you have shot him?”
“My great-uncle on my mama’s side would have, I can tell you. Man by the name of Wyatt Earp.”
Kristen looked at Farlowe in surprise. “Wyatt Earp was your great-uncle?”
“Not what you’d call a close relation, but my mama always told me I had the same blood he did in my veins. She gave me that Peacemaker when I was all of sixteen and told me Wyatt had fired it himself on occasion. Thinking back, I guess that’s what made me want to become a lawman. I grew up down in the Panhandle in the last of the boon times. Spent my formative years as a Texas Ranger. Man, I could tell ya some stories … Later, maybe. Right now we’d best head out to where I’m pretty sure your brother may have used that camera he bought.”
Kristen used the drive to scrutinize the contents of her brother’s glove compartment more carefully. Other than the receipt, though, they seemed utterly routine: the registration; an insurance card; a number of gas company credit card charge slips that might aid her in piecing together the route he had taken across the country. Perhaps whatever had led to his desperate phone call Thursday night had not occurred near Grand Mesa at all. Perhaps it had happened several hundred miles away, and only as he neared Grand Mesa had David realized he was in danger. If that was the case, the charge slips might come in very handy indeed.
“Uh-oh,” she heard Farlowe mutter and looked up from the receipts to see thick clouds of chalky brown dirt
swirling in the air before them, stealing visibility in blizzard-like fashion.
swirling in the air before them, stealing visibility in blizzard-like fashion.
“In these parts, we call this a brown-out,” the sheriff explained. “It’s like them whiteout snowstorms they have in other parts. All kinds of theories as to what causes them and why they come mostly in the spring. Me, I can smell ’em just before they hit. Come and go fast, though.”
Farlowe slowed the truck to a crawl. The reduced engine sounds allowed the pounding wind to make its presence heard as well as felt. The truck shook from the pressure. For Kristen, the effect was akin to a New England northeaster, with dirt in place of snow or rain. A little over five minutes later it was over. The sky returned as quickly as it had disappeared. Farlowe gave the engine gas, but the 4 × 4 hesitated a bit, as if needing to shed the layers of dirt that had battered it too. He pulled over a short time later and reached behind him for a can of window cleaner and a rag.
They started down Old Canyon Road again after the windows were clear. Farlowe drove for ten or twelve miles, keeping the pace slow enough for him to survey everything that they passed by. Suddenly he pulled over and climbed out of the 4 x 4, leaving the engine on. Kristen joined him on the road and watched the sheriff kneel down gingerly. Stray blowing dirt created a film over his glasses and speckled his beard and hair. After a few seconds he rose, his knees creaking, and proceeded further down the road, only to kneel down again.
Kristen joined him in a crouch the third time he stopped. “What is it?”
“Tire marks. Trucks, big ones. Looks like a whole convoy came to a sudden halt right in this area not too long back.”
Kristen gazed about. “But there’s nothing around here.”
“Could be something made the lead truck come to a quick stop. Maybe an animal dashed out in front of it. Caused a chain reaction. Whatever the case, there were trucks, all right, several of ’em. Since Old Canyon Road
leads nowhere fast, I can’t tell you where they were headed.”
leads nowhere fast, I can’t tell you where they were headed.”
She followed Farlowe back to the 4 x 4. He pulled back out onto the road and continued on at an even slower pace, looking for more signs of the convoy. The minutes and miles passed in silence. He slowed again after passing the abandoned air force base he had mentioned, then stopped altogether and climbed out.
“That’s funny. Those trucks didn’t get this far,” he announced after careful inspection of the road. “Trail they left ends at the base.”
Kristen fixed her gaze on the chained entrance to Miravo. “But it’s deserted. What could they have been doing there?”
“Why don’t we go inside and have ourselves a look?”
“Can you do this?” Kristen asked from behind Farlowe as he aimed his Peacemaker at the lock holding the chain in place over the gate.
“I’m the law, little lady. I can do anything my little heart desires. Cover your ears now.”
She did as she was told but the reverberation still stung them. The lock shattered. Farlowe pulled the chain off and swung open the gate.
Before them, Miravo Air Force Base boasted all the eeriness of a ghost town. Windows of many of the buildings had been boarded up. Beyond the buildings and hangars, the runways and tarmacs were collecting dirt. Where once upwards of a thousand people had occupied this SAC base, there was no one. Wind whistled by the steel hangars and Quonset huts. The sunlight struggled to glimmer off their rusting hulks.
Duncan Farlowe checked the soft ground just inside the base entrance, kicking dirt and then smoothing it with his feet. He moved about stiffly; crouching had obviously become too much of a chore for him.
“The trucks came in here, all right,” he told Kristen. “And lots more than just that one convoy we found evidence
of back on the road.” He managed to half bend over. “They pulled through the gate and eventually headed …” He paused to check the ground more closely and brought his hand up. “ … that way.”
of back on the road.” He managed to half bend over. “They pulled through the gate and eventually headed …” He paused to check the ground more closely and brought his hand up. “ … that way.”
Farlowe was pointing toward the airfield that occupied the area beyond the last row of buildings. He led Kristen toward it and inspected the runways when they got there, apparently with little satisfaction.
“Concrete this firm doesn’t leave signs like that good ol’ roadbed that got us here,” he said, ruffling his foot through the layer of dirt that had accumulated. “Could be some planes been landing. Could be they haven’t.” The sheriff turned suddenly toward Kristen. “You say that phone call came at night?”
“Morning, actually. Around three A.M. your time.”
“Now that’s interesting.” He moved to the edge of the main runway and followed the line of lights, stooping to check each one. “Bulbs are still present. Seems strange folks would abandon a base and leave the bulbs behind … .”
“They could have forgot.”
“Didn’t let me finish, little lady. See, the thing is these bulbs don’t show much dirt and their filaments are barely worn. I’d say they been inserted sometime in the past month.”
“Trucks and planes,” Kristen muttered. “Then something could have been flown out of here!”
“Or flown in. To be loaded onto those trucks, or unloaded from them. Either way, as I figure it, could be your brother got close enough to get a real good look at the proceedings.”
Farlowe swung and fixed his gaze on the hillsides almost hidden from view by the tight clutter of buildings enclosing the airfield.
“Except he couldn’t have seen anything from up there in those hills. The trucks, yeah, but not the planes. Means he musta come down and entered the base. Maybe got to use his brand-new camera to record what they was holding.”
“But we don’t know he was here at all,” Kristen reminded, afraid of what it meant if David had been inside. “Without the tape, we can’t prove anything.”
“Might not need the tape to prove it, little lady.”
“Your brother was ‘bout the age I was when I started out with the Rangers,” Farlowe picked up, as they walked across Old Canyon Road toward the nearby foothills that had once been rich in silver. “Back then, if it was me, I’d want to park my jeep out of sight, but within fast reach. Like to know I could get out in a hurry if I had to. ’Cept now I don’t do nothin’ in a hurry, save for drawing Uncle Earp’s Peacemaker. That’s something that don’t leave you so fast.”
They trudged along the hillsides, covering paths wide enough to handle the Jeep Wrangler. Every time Farlowe found a spot to his liking, he stopped and kicked the dirt about. A few times he leaned over and ran his hand through it. Mostly he just walked with thumbs cocked in his pockets.
“Here,” he said all of a sudden, thrusting a finger downward even before making a careful check of the spot. “Your brother’s jeep, or another damn like it, was parked right here.” He eased himself into a crouch to point out what he had picked up to Kristen. “Sunken tire marks. And here, in these ruts, this is where your brother hauled ass out.” His finger came up and pointed down Old Canyon Road. “That way.”
“Toward Grand Mesa.”
Farlowe nodded and held up a handful of dirt. “See this? Matches the dirt I found stuck in the treads of his jeep’s tires.”
“He got as far as the motel in town and called me.”
“Seems to be the case,” Farlowe affirmed somberly.
“He was trying to tell me what he saw happening on the base.”
“Yup,” Farlowe said, already in motion up a swirling path that cut between adjacent hillsides.
At the top the gap widened to create a gully that provided a clear view into the front of Miravo Air Force Base. As Farlowe had suggested, though, the row of buildings kept the outlying runways hidden from sight. Kristen watched the old sheriff check the dirt with his eyes and then his hands.
“Nothing up here to suggest this is where your brother perched himself,” he said, “but it’s the perfect hiding place. I’m betting he was here. Only thing we don’t know now is—”
Kristen saw the expression on Farlowe’s crusty face change, as if a shadow was suddenly cast over it. In a blur of motion difficult for even a young man, he had torn the Peacemaker from its holster and fired two shots that whizzed by Kristen’s side toward the hillside behind her. There was a gasp and she turned to see a man holding a rifle crumpling, his hands reaching for his midsection. In the next instant Farlowe threw himself toward her. The impact took both of them to the ground.
Crack!
A bullet sliced a chasm cut out of the hillside directly where Kristen’s chest had been. A series of muted echoes followed, and more dirt and shale showered over them.
“Yup,” muttered Farlowe, Peacemaker still in hand, “this is the place, all right.”
More gunshots rang out from both south and west, then east again as another man replaced the one the sheriff had shot.
“I’d say they got us surrounded, little lady,” Farlowe said after Kristen assumed a sitting position next to him in the cover of the small gully.
He held the Peacemaker near his chest.
“And I only got three bullets left. Rest are in the truck, ’long with the radio.”
Kristen found herself not only terrified but also deeply
saddened. The fact that they had been ambushed by men with the obvious intention of killing them did not bode well for the fate of her brother. Up till now she had been clinging to the hope he had simply stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and was being held prisoner or might still be on the run. Now she realized whoever was behind what David had uncovered, what he had witnessed inside the base, would stop at nothing to prevent their secret from being revealed. If they were trying to kill her and Farlowe, then …
saddened. The fact that they had been ambushed by men with the obvious intention of killing them did not bode well for the fate of her brother. Up till now she had been clinging to the hope he had simply stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and was being held prisoner or might still be on the run. Now she realized whoever was behind what David had uncovered, what he had witnessed inside the base, would stop at nothing to prevent their secret from being revealed. If they were trying to kill her and Farlowe, then …
The sheriff saved her the trouble of completing the thought. “They’ll be closing in on us now,” he said as soon as the gunshots had abated. “Know they got us boxed in. No reason for them to rush.”
“What can we do?”
“I could make a run for the truck, or …”
Farlowe, seemed to change his mind in midsentence. He sniffed at the air, a narrow smile stretching across his lips.
“ … we wait.”
“Wait? Wait for wh—”
And that’s when she felt it, just as a slight wisp of wind at first, but then a gush against her face a few breaths later.
Another brown-out! Duncan Farlowe had sniffed the air and known it was coming!
“Cover your eyes and mouth as best you can,” he instructed as swirls of dust began to whip about in dozens of mini-tornadoes. The air darkened with them. The sun was already gone. “Take my hand and follow me when I pull you.”
Kristen had her sleeve over her eyes. “Follow you?”
“Yup. I know these hills as well as I know my own face. I’m figuring our gunslingin’ friends don’t have quite that advantage.”
The blowing dirt filled his mouth and turned his last few words to little more than garble. He spat it out and then tied the red bandanna that had circled his neck over the lower part of his face.
“Come on!” Farlowe rasped from behind his bandanna, tilting his wide-brimmed hat low to better shield his eyes.
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