Ultimate Thriller Box Set (2 page)

The connection ended.  Andy peered through his peephole again. The men looked like secret service. They had the blank stare dead-to-rights.

“Do you guys have ID?” he asked through the door.

 They held up their ID.

Andy swallowed, and swallowed again. He considered his options, and realized he really didn’t have any.

He opened the door.

“As soon as you're dressed, Mr. Dennison, we can take you to the airport.”

“How many days should I pack for?”

“No need to pack, sir. Your things will be forwarded to you.”

“Do you know what language I'm going to be using? I've got books, computer programs...”

“Your things will be forwarded.”

Andy had more questions, but he didn’t think asking them would result in answers. He dressed in silence.

The limo, while plush, wasn't accessorized with luxuries. No wet bar. No television. No phone. And the buttons for the windows didn't work.

Andy wore his best suit, Brooks Brothers gray wool, his Harvard tie, and a pair of leather shoes from some Italian designer that cost three hundred dollars and pinched his toes.

“So where in New Mexico am I going?” Andy asked the agents, both of whom rode in the front seat.

They didn't reply.

“Are we going to O'Hare or Midway?”

No answer.

“Can you guys turn on the radio?”

The radio came on. Oldies. Andy slouched back in his seat as Mick Jagger crooned.

Chicago whipped by him on both sides, the streets full of people even at this late hour. Summer in the city was around the clock. The car stopped at a light and three college age girls, drunk and giggling, knocked on his one way window and tried to peer inside. They were at least a decade too young for him.

Their destination turned out to be Midway, the smaller of Chicago’s two airports. Rather than enter the terminal, they were cleared through the perimeter fence and pulled directly out onto the runway. They parked in front of a solitary hanger, far from the jumbo jets. Andy was freed from the limo and led silently to a Lear jet. He boarded without enthusiasm. He'd been on many jets, to many places more exotic than New Mexico.

Andy was bursting with curiosity for his current situation, but sleep was invading his head. It would probably turn out to be some silly little international embarrassment, like a Pakistani Ambassador who hit someone while drunk driving. What was the Hindko word for intoxication? He couldn't remember, and since they didn’t let him take his books, he had no way to look it up.

At a little past four AM the pilot boarded and introduced himself with a strong handshake, but didn’t offer his name. He had no answers for Andy either.

Andy slept poorly, on an off, for the next few hours.

He awoke during the landing, the jolt nudging him alert when the wheels hit the tarmac. After the plane came to a stop, the pilot announced they’d arrived at their destination, Las Cruces International Airport. Andy rubbed some grit from his eyes and stretched in his seat, waiting for the pilot to open the hatch.

The climate was hot and dry, appropriate for the desert. The pilot informed Andy to remain on the runway and then walked off to the terminal. 

Andy waited in the powerful sun, the only human being in sight, his rumpled suit soon clinging to him like a close family. A minute passed. Two. A golden eagle rode a thermal in the distance, circling slowly. Andy wondered when his ride would arrive. He wondered why this town was called The Crosses. He wondered what the hell was so important that the leader of the free world woke him up at 3AM and flew him out here.

From the opposite end of the runway an Army Humvee approached. Andy noticed the tags, Fort Bliss. The driver offered him a thermos of coffee and then refused further conversation.

They drove west on Interstate 10 and turned onto highway 549, heading into the desert. Traffic went from infrequent to non-existent, and after they passed the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant; a large complex fenced off with barbed wire, they turned off road and followed some dirt trail that Andy could barely make out.

The Florida Mountains loomed in the distance. Sagebrush and tumbleweeds dotted the landscape. Andy even saw the skull of a steer resting on some rocks. This was the authentic West, the West of Geronimo and Billy the Kid. He'd been to several deserts in his travels; the Gobi in China, the Rub al-Khalia in Saudi Arabia, the Kalahari in South Africa... but this was his first visit to the Chihuahuan Desert. It left him as the others had—detached. Travel meant work, and Andy never had a chance to enjoy any of the places he’d visited around the world.

The Humvee stopped abruptly and Andy lurched in his seat.

“We're here,” the driver said.

Andy craned his neck and looked around. Three hundred and sixty degrees of desert, not a building nor a soul in sight.

“You're kidding.”

“Please get out of the Humvee, sir. I'm supposed to leave you here.”

“Leave me here? In the desert?”

“Those are my orders.”

Andy squinted. There was nothing but sand and rock for miles and miles.

“This is ridiculous. I'll die out here.”

“Sir, please get out of the Humvee.”

“You can't leave me in the middle of the desert. It's insane.”

The driver drew his pistol.

“Jesus!”

“These are my orders, sir. If you don't get out of the Humvee, I've been instructed to shoot you in the leg and drag you out. One...”

“I don't believe this.”

“Two...”

“This is murder. You're murdering me here.”

“Three.”

The driver cocked the gun and aimed it at Andy's leg. Andy threw up his hands. “Fine! I'm out!”

Andy stepped out of the Humvee. He could feel the heat of the sand through the soles of his shoes.

The driver holstered his weapon, hit the gas, and swung the Humvee around. It sped off in the direction it had come. Andy watched until it shrank down to nothing.

He turned in a complete circle, feeling the knot growing in his belly. The only thing around him was scrub brush and cacti.

“This is not happening.”

Andy searched the sky for any helicopters that might be flying in to pick him up. The sky was empty, except for a fat desert sun that hurt his eyes.  Andy couldn’t be sure, but the air seemed to be getting hotter. By noon it would be scorching.

He looked at his watch and wondered how long he could go without water. The very idea of it made his tongue feel thick. A day, maybe two at most. It would take at least two days to walk back to the airport. He decided to follow the truck tracks. 

“Andrew Dennison?”

Andy spun around, startled. Standing twenty yards away was a man. He wore loose fitting jeans and a blue polo shirt, and he approached Andy in an unhurried gait. As the figure came into sharper focus, Andy noticed several things at once. The man was old, maybe seventy, with age spots dotting his bald dome and deep wrinkles set in a square face. But he carried himself like a much younger man, and though his broad shoulders were stooped with age, he projected an apparent strength.
Military
, Andy guessed, and upper echelon as well.

Andy walked to meet the figure, trying not to appear surprised that he'd just materialized out of nowhere. The thoughts of vultures and thirst were replaced by several dozen questions.

“I'm General Regis Murdoch. Call me Race. Welcome to Project Samhain.”

Race offered a thick and hairy hand, which Andy nervously shook. It felt like shaking a two-by-four.

“General Race, I appreciate the welcome, but I think I've been left out of the loop. I don't know...”

“All in good time. The President wants to fill you in, and you're to meet the group.”

“Where?” Andy asked, looking around.

The General beamed. “Almost a hundred years old, and still the best hidden secret in the United States. Right this way.”

Andy followed Race up to a pile of rocks next to a bush. Close inspection revealed that they'd been glued, or maybe soldered, to a large metal plate which spun on a hinge. The plate swivelled open, revealing a murky stairwell leading into the earth.

“Cutting edge stuff in 1906, now kind of dated.” Race smiled. “But sometimes the old tricks are still the best.”

Race prompted Andy down the sandy iron staircase and followed after closing the lid above them. The walls were concrete, old and crumbling. Light came from bare bulbs hanging overhead every fifteen steps.

Only a few hours ago I was asleep in my bed, Andy thought.

“Don't worry,” Race said. “It gets better.”

After almost two hundred steps down they came to a large metal door with a wheel in the center, like a submarine hatch. Race stopped in front of the door and cleared his throat. He leaned closer to Andy, locking eyes with him.

“Three hundred million Americans have lived during the last century, and you are only the forty-third to ever enter this compound. During your time here and for the rest of your life afterwards, you're going to be sworn to absolute secrecy. Failure to keep this secret will lead to your trial and inevitable execution for treason.”

“Execution,” Andy repeated.

“The Rosenbergs were numbers twenty-two and twenty-three. You didn't buy that crap about selling nuclear secrets, did you?”

Andy blinked. “I'm in an episode of the X-files.”

“That old TV show? They wish they had what we do.”

Race opened the door and bade Andy to enter. They'd stepped into a modern hospital. Or at least, that's what it looked like. Everything was white, from the tiled floors and painted walls to the fluorescent lights recessed into the ceiling. A disinfectant smell wafted through the air, cooled by air conditioning. They walked down a hallway, the clicking of Andy's expensive shoes amplified to an almost comic echo. It could have been a hundred other buildings Andy had been in before, except this one was several hundred feet underground and harbored some kind of government secret.

Andy asked, “This was built in 1906?”

“Well, it's been improved upon as the years have gone by. Didn't get fluorescent lights till 1938. In '49 we added the Orange Arm and the Purple Arm. We're always replacing, updating. Just got a Jacuzzi in '99, but it's on the fritz.”

“How big is this place?”

“About 75,000 square feet. Took two years to dig it all out. God gets most of the credit, though. Most of this space is a series of natural caves. Not nearly the size of the Carlsbad Caverns two hundred miles to the east, but enough for our purpose.”

“Speaking of purpose...”

“We're getting to that.”

The hallway curved gradually to the right and Andy noted that the doors were all numbered in yellow paint with the word
YELLOW
stenciled above them. Andy guessed correctly that they were in the Yellow Arm of the complex, and was happy that at least one thing made sense.

“What's that smell?” Andy asked, noting that the pleasant scent of lemon and pine had been overtaken by a distinct farm-like odor.

“The sheep, over in Orange 12. They just came in last week, and they stink like, well, sheep. We think we can solve the problem with Hepa filters, but it will take some time.”

“Sheep,” Andy said. He wondered, idly, if he'd been brought here to interpret their bleating.

The hallway they were taking ended at a doorway, and Race ushered Andy through it and into a large round room that had six doors along its walls. Each door was a different color.

“Center of the complex. The head of the Octopus, so to speak. I believe you've got a call waiting for you.”

In the middle of the room was a large round table, circled with leather executive-type office chairs. Computer monitors, electronic gizmos, and a mess of cords and papers haphazardly covered the table top as if they'd been dropped there from a great height.

Race sat Andy down in front of a screen and tapped a few commands on a keyboard. The President's head and shoulders appeared on the flat-screen monitor, and he nodded at Andy as if they were in the same room.

“Video phone, got it in '04.” Race winked.

“Mr. Dennison, thank you for coming. You've done your country a great service.”

The President looked and sounded like he always did, fit, commanding, and sincere. Obviously he'd had a chance to sleep.

“Where do I talk?” Andy asked Race.

“Right at the screen. There's a mike and a camera housed in the monitor.”

Andy leaned forward.

“Mr. President, I'd really like to know what's going on and what I'm supposed to be doing here.”

“You were chosen, Andy, because you met all of the criteria on a very long list. We need a translator, one with experience in ancient languages. You've always had a gift for language. My sources say you were fluent in Spanish by age three, and by six years old you could also speak French, German, and some Russian. In grade school you were studying the eastern tongues, and you could speak Chinese by junior high.”

Only Mandarin
, Andy thought. He couldn't speak Cantonese until a few years later.

“You graduated high school in three years and were accepted to Harvard on scholarship. You spent four years at Harvard, and wrote and published your thesis on giving enunciation to cuneiform, at age nineteen.

“When you left school in 1986 you lived on money left to you by your parents, who died in a fire three years before. After the money ran out you got a job at the United Nations in New York. You were there less than a year before being fired. During a Middle East peace talk you insulted the Iraqi ambassador.”

“He was a pervert who liked little girls.”

“Iraq was our ally at the time.”

“What does that have to do with—”

The President held up a hand, as he was so accustomed to doing with reporters.

“I'm not sitting in a seat of judgment, Andy. But you're entitled to know why you were chosen. After the UN fired you, you started your own freelance translation service, WTS. You've been making an average living, one that allows you to be your own boss. But business has been slow lately, I assume because of the Internet.”

Andy frowned. In the beginning, the World Wide Web had opened up a wealth of information for a translator, giving him instant access to the greatest libraries in the world. But, of course, it gave everyone else access to those libraries too. Along with computer programs that could translate both the written and the spoken word.