Day of the Delphi

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Authors: Jon Land

BOOK: Day of the Delphi
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For the men and women of the U.S. Special Forces
 
DE OPPRESSO LIBER
 
From oppression we will liberate
“Testing one, two, three …”
The miniature tape recorder spit his voice back at him and David Kurcell hit the STOP button. Satisfied with the test, he rewound the tape and raised the Sony back to his lips.
“Two o’clock A.M.,” he said softly, gazing down from the hillside. “Picked up convoy on Route 16 near Hoocher’s Gap ninety minutes ago. Followed it onto unmarked road after a half hour of driving. Trucks show no markings, no license plates. Troop concentration inside base heavy.”
David placed the Sony on the ground by his side and brought the binoculars back to his eyes. A new figure had appeared on the base below, the first one David had detected not in a standard army uniform. The man wore black slacks and a black turtleneck. He was so broad that his shirt looked to be stuffed with padding. He towered a full head over the troops he passed as he moved by the trucks. Even in the dark, David could tell there was something strange about his straw-colored hair, something wrong. It stopped short of the big man’s ears and rimmed his scalp, as if only those strands protected by a bowl had survived his last trim. The thought made David reach up to his long brown locks and run a hand through them.
He heard a distant rumble and turned his binoculars away from the base toward the unmarked road that ran before it. Holding them with one hand, he picked the Sony up and pressed RECORD. “Three more trucks approaching. Also no
markings, no license plates. Identical in all respects to the ones I tailed here.”
Again the trucks were of the heavy transport variety, modern and sleek. Space-age eighteen-wheelers built of shiny hard green steel. Probably armored. David followed them as they edged toward Miravo Air Force Base, a former Strategic Air Command site that had been shut down two years before.
His heart continued to pound with excitement. He wasn’t going to mess things up; not this time, not again. He had learned his lesson a few months before as a feature writer for his college newspaper when a dorm mate who worked in the school’s infirmary insisted that three students had contracted the AIDS virus after brief stays there. After the story ran, though, the source had disavowed his statements, leaving David with only a few scribbled notes for corroboration. He had been dismissed from the paper’s writing staff as a result, his dream of becoming an investigative journalist marred forever. Embarrassed and alienated, he barely managed to finish the rest of the semester before dropping out and heading west in his Jeep Wrangler.
By mid-April he had met up with some friends who were camping in the Colorado Rockies. David was halfway through a six-pack late that first night when a quartet of heavy transports had rolled down the road just barely in view.
“Man,” one of his friends mused, “this is getting to be a habit.”
“Huh?” uttered David, already trying to chase the beer from his system.
“Three nights, three convoys. What the fuck?”
His curiosity piqued, the next day David accompanied his friends only as far as the next town to pay a visit to the local electronics store. From there he returned to the hills and began his vigil with the tape recorder and a camcorder ready at all times. This time he wasn’t going to fuck up. This time he was going to get hard evidence. His dream had
been returned to him and he wasn’t about to squander the chance.
Still, he had been ready to give up the wait after three eventless nights when tonight, in the dead quiet of the Colorado dark, he heard the trucks coming from a half mile away.
David was already behind the wheel of his Jeep Wrangler when the convoy passed. Knowing it wouldn’t be hard to follow, he pulled out well back and drove slowly by moonlight, keeping the low rumble of the convoy within earshot Without headlights, the slight bends in the road became treacherous curves that had the Jeep Wrangler clinging for dear life.
The longest hour of his life passed before the headlights of the convoy illuminated the shape of the mothballed SAC base. David had hidden the Jeep Wrangler and found this vantage point in the hills overlooking the base five minutes later. That was a half hour earlier, and now this second convoy had arrived. He followed the big trucks all the way to the entrance through his binoculars. They wheezed to a halt and waited for the gate to be opened.
Hurriedly David lifted the camcorder from his pack and brought it to his eye in place of the binoculars. He wasn’t sure if the night would yield much, especially from this distance, but it would be enough to show these latest trucks entering the base. He had no idea what he was onto here. Whatever it was, though, without documentation it might as well be nothing.
He was trying for better focus on the camcorder when the sound of a jet engine burst from the air above him. A plane swooped out of the sky on slow descent for the base. David followed its approach and watched a line of lights snap on beyond the row of buildings lining the base’s center. Runway lights. He returned the camcorder to his eye.
The camera caught the sinking plane as it dropped beneath the buildings. Instantly the big trucks revved their engines and headed in convoy fashion for the lights of the runway.
“Damn,” David muttered, lowering the camcorder. “Damn!”
The base’s buildings would shield from him whatever happened next. Either the contents of the six trucks were going to be loaded onto this plane, or vice versa. And from this vantage point there was no way to determine what those contents were. He had only one choice, one chance: get onto the base and film the troops in the midst of the loading process. David’s mouth had turned desert dry, but the canteen stayed in his pack. He stowed the camcorder next to it and pulled his arms through the straps. Then he sprinted down the hillside for the steel fence enclosing the base.
He reached it barely four minutes later after easily avoiding the cursory vigil being performed by the patrolling troops. Scaling its ten-foot height nonetheless remained formidable, and David crept toward a darkened corner totally out of view from the guards, a corner, he noted with satisfaction, where the barbed wire was missing.
David took a running start and hit the fence just three feet from the top. The rest was easy. He scrambled over the top and hit the ground. He took a quick look around him and then started off, keeping to the dark reaches of the base on a circuitous route to a building very near the runway. After a few deep breaths, he pressed himself against its side and moved toward the upward spill of the runway lights.
Several floods perched on nearby buildings added more illumination to the scene before him. The plane, a powerful transport, sat squarely on the runway two hundred yards away. The big man with the straw-colored hair that didn’t seem to match his head stood next to it, hands coiled by his sides. As David watched, he signaled the first of the trucks parked in a neat row to approach. Instantly the lead rig backed up toward the plane’s open cargo bay. David’s heart rose in anticipation, then quickly sank in disappointment when he saw the truck actually slide enough up the ramp to hide the loading process from him. The man in black disappeared into the bay after it. There would be no shots now of
whatever was being carted onto or off the trucks, no way David could get close enough to make use of the camcorder.
Still surveying the scene, he had a sudden inspiration. A hundred yards away, one of the latest trucks to arrive had just slid to a halt apart from the others on the tarmac, its rear angled diagonally toward him. No guards were in the area; all of those he could see were concentrated around the waiting plane.
David made his decision between heartbeats. The night continued to cloak him for a brief stretch into his dash, but then he was in the open, breath tucked deep in his gut. In the end he figured the idling engine had kept the truck’s occupants from hearing the thumps of his steps across the asphalt. He reached the truck’s rear and placed his back against it. His shoulders sagged inward and he realized its cargo door had already been raised, a canvas flap dangling in its place. David reached up and pulled the flap away in order to peer inside the hold.
The sight within confused him at first until he looked closer. His breath turned to icicles. His blood seemed to thicken and slow.
“My God …”
David wasn’t sure whether he uttered the words or merely thought them. Trembling, he dropped into a crouch and pulled the pack from his shoulders. He eased the camcorder out and brought it to his eye. Pan for a few seconds, zoom in, and then get the fuck out of here. His hand shook as he struggled to hold the camcorder steady. He completed a quick sweep of the truck’s contents and rotated the lens for a close-up.
“Hey!”
The shout jolted him. He twisted around and caught a glimpse of two soldiers bolting toward him from the runway before he swung and charged off for the front of the base.
“Stop!”
Gunshots split the night when he refused to oblige. Brief flurries of rapid thuds followed him between a pair of buildings that dissolved back into the sea of darkness.
What was going on here? What in God’s name was happening?
He had to get out, had to get the tape out, and stuck the camcorder in his jacket when the fence came into view.
He threw himself up onto it without breaking stride. He grabbed steel link just a foot from the top this time. But here the barbed wire was still intact, and his right hand exploded in pain as he pulled himself up and over.
He felt the wire dig deeper into his flesh when he dropped off the fence onto the other side. He landed with a thud, fell, and clawed his way back to his feet. The air burned in his throat. He couldn’t catch his breath, yet he didn’t dare slow up. He crossed the road and raced into the hills toward the Jeep Wrangler. He reached it, heaving for air. A quick glance at his right hand showed a deep, bloody gouge stretching across the length of the palm. David held it against his chest while his left hand worked the keys from his pocket and then yanked open the door. Fighting back nausea, he climbed into the jeep’s cab and stowed the camcorder on the passenger seat. His left hand wedged the key home and twisted.
The Jeep Wrangler jumped to life.
David left the headlights off as he roared down onto the unmarked road, the jeep’s pedal dangerously close to the floor. He balanced the wheel with the heel of his ruined right hand while his left tore a sweat-soaked strip of his shirt away. Using his teeth, he managed to turn the strip into a makeshift bandage and then wrapped it about his right palm as tight as he could. He knew some back roads that would help him elude pursuit, but he would have to take them at top speed with only a single hand for control.
He sped by the first of the back roads and screeched into reverse. A fearful glance in the rearview mirror revealed no signs of pursuit and he pulled down the turnoff, switching on his headlights.
“Come on! Come on!”
David fought the jeep for more speed. He tried to close his right hand over the steering wheel, but a bolt of pain
shot through it. He yanked the hand off and felt a fresh surge of blood soak through the makeshift bandage. The jeep took a bump hard, jostling the camcorder from its perch on the passenger seat. David stretched his mangled hand over to secure it. Blood oozed over the camcorder’s steel housing, but the tape inside remained safe, untouched.
His eyes darted nervously once more to the jeep’s rearview mirror. Still no headlights shined back at him.
David’s insides rattled as another jarring bump gave the jeep’s shocks all they could take. He was checking the rearview mirror again when a wave of nausea hit him. He managed to get the Wrangler stopped just before the vomit flooded his throat.
“Oh, God,” he muttered after the last heave out the open door left him breathless. “Oh, God.”
David drove on.
His plan had been to drive toward the sun, toward the light and the first hint of safety. A police station, a highway patrol barracks—anything. But it was clear now he couldn’t make it that far. The pain in his dripping hand had made him woozy. He kept biting into his lower lip in an effort to cling to consciousness.
Suddenly his headlights caught a roadside sign in their spill. David slowed the jeep and tried to focus. The sign flapped in the breeze, evading the light. David flipped on his high beams to capture its words: GRAND MESA.
The years had spared enough of the sign’s wood to make that much out, along with an arrow pointing to the right.
A town! It had to be a town!
David swung right at the next turn-off and pushed the jeep on.
 
At the outskirts of Grand Mesa, a motel flashed a vacancy sign that was missing half its bulbs. There were a dozen or so units laid out in an L and only a trio of cars in the parking lot.
David maintained the sense of mind to drive by the motel
and park the Wrangler three blocks past it in the lot behind a combination gas station/repair shop. Walking back toward the flashing vacancy sign, he kept his bad hand pressed against the pocket he had tucked the camcorder in to reassure himself it was there.
He would check into the motel and call his sister. It was five A.M. back in Washington. An hour from now she would be rising for another long day as chief of staff for Senator Jordan of Florida. David had always made fun of her for being a flunky. Now her position might be the only thing that could save his life.

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