Empire of Dust (36 page)

"Are you okay?" asked Tony, as he put a hand on her shoulder.

She shook it off and straightened up. "Yes. I'm fine." She looked at Ezekiel Swain atop the Indian, telling herself that she would not be sick again, that she could look at this thing and take it.

The Indian looked dead. His body size was only half what it had been, and Swain's bulk was increasing in direct proportion to the dead man's shrinking. Swain seemed contented now, like a baby sucking from its mother's breast. In another minute he would be filled, his thirst slaked. Then other difficult decisions would have to be made.

Laika looked toward the car and saw the form of Miriam Dominick sitting in the backseat. Then Laika looked at Tony with hard eyes. "And how are
you
?"

He knew what she meant. He looked embarrassed, angry at himself, and as betrayed as all of them felt. Joseph's face was solemn as he listened, with no trace of smugness.

"No matter who that agent was working for," Laika said, "one thing's for sure. A trap was set for us that was going to work only if we took this road. And there was only one person responsible for us taking it. It was a setup, and I was fooled as easily as you were, Tony."

"From the very start . . . the rock slide," said Joseph softly. "It was all set up to make us believe in her. And whoever did the drawings—she was in on it with them. She knew beforehand what and where."

Laika looked at Joseph apologetically. "And you were the only one who saw the truth."

"No," said Joseph, looking as contrite as she'd ever seen him. "You saw the truth whether you realized it or not, because you had her come with us. No matter what else I said, I
believed
in her. I believed in her even more than you did, but I wouldn't let myself say it." He shook his head. "What a sucker. It was all so obvious, and I didn't see it—because I didn't
want
to." He smiled. "If you want to believe, you won't let facts and logic stand in the way, and I didn't, God damn it. And I almost got us all killed. I'm the skeptic, and I didn't do my job."

Laika looked at the car. "I'm going to do mine," she said. "I'm going to find out who the hell is behind this, and if it's Skye, I'll go to Langley and I'll kill the bastard with my bare hands."

She stormed toward the car, and Tony and Joseph followed. Tony felt as though he were being ripped apart. He—all of them—had been betrayed, led to their intended deaths by the woman he thought he had loved, the woman whose lies would have sent him to his death, had Laika not, he now realized, called her bluff. He had loved her, and now he might have to be a party to her death.

"All right," he heard Laika bark, as she pulled open the door on Miriam's side, "who the hell are you with, and what—" Her words stopped in a sudden hitch of breath. In another second Tony was at her side, looking into the backseat.

Miriam was sitting up, but her face had gone white and was damp with sweat. The seat back all around her was red with blood.

"A round went through the car," Joseph said, moving past Laika and Tony and easing Miriam onto her side. A heavy blood trail followed as her body shifted. There was no exit wound. The bullet, spent by its passage through the trunk lid and the backseat, had lodged in her body.

Joseph moved her gently so that he could see the entrance wound in her back. He winced and shook his head. Tony knew the bullet would have been deformed by its passage through the metal. By the time it struck her, it had probably been as large as a silver dollar.

Miriam was breathing hard and seemed to be trying to talk. Tony knelt on the ground by the open door and put his face close to hers. "I'm . . . sorry," she said slowly. "I love you. I came . . . with you. Wanted to . . . die with you."

"You came," Laika said coldly, "because it would have given your game away if you hadn't."

"Shut
up
!" Tony said, opening his eyes wide in the hopes that no tears would come.

"No . . ." Miriam said. "She's right . . . I had to come."

"Who are you with?" Laika asked.

Miriam closed her eyes, then opened them again.

"Good people," she said, looking past Tony at Laika.

"And what do these good people know?"

"Everything."

"They know where we're heading?"

Miriam nodded slightly. "The mission." Her face twisted with sudden pain, and she looked back at Tony. "Take my cross," she said to him, and her gaze moved downward to indicate the gold cross that hung on the chain from her neck.

He reached behind her head, at the soft curls on the back of her neck, and undid the clasp. Then he held the cross and the chain in his hand. "Keep it," she said. "Remember me . . . I didn't know—"

She paused, her eyes fixed on his face. It took a long moment for Tony to realize that she wasn't going to continue.

He didn't move when he felt Laika's hand on his shoulder. "We have to get on our way," she said, but he remained on his knees, looking into the open eyes of her dead face. "Come on, Tony. We don't have the time for this."

He whirled around and looked up at her. "Leave me alone," he said. "Will you just
leave me alone
?"

"For what, Tony? To grieve? If you're planning to grieve for her, just remember one thing—until I said that she had to come with us, she was ready to say goodbye to you this morning. She was going to stand there and watch you drive away up the mountain. You just think about that in your grief." Laika turned away from him. "Come on, Joseph, we've got some cleaning up to do."

Tony stood up, wiped the tears from his eyes, and slipped the cross and its chain into his pocket. Laika was right: Miriam had betrayed him. He didn't want to believe it, but he had to, and now he had to help his team.

E
zekiel Swain was sitting on the road next to the wizened corpse of the Indian from whom he had fed. A satisfied smile bubbled from his round face.

Laika choked down her revulsion. "You're through with this?"

Swain made a deep rumble in his throat. "Hit the spot."

Laika took in the situation at a glance. They had four bodies and a vehicle to get rid of, and it looked as though Tony was ready to help again. The Blazer was a more sound choice for mountain and desert driving, which made the Camry expendable.

The three of them extricated the car from the ditch and removed their belongings, then put the corpses of their three attackers into the car with Miriam's body. Laika offered Tony the option of burying the woman, but he declined. "No time for that," he said shortly.

They pushed the car over the cliff at a place where the brush was heavy, and listened as it continued tumbling downward, until the sound of a massive crunch indicated that it had fetched up against several trees. There was no sign of it from where they stood. It might be months, even years, before it was found.

Then they covered up the blood on the road by kicking loose dirt over it. As they were finishing, Joseph said to Laika, "We just have one problem with the new wheels. There's no trunk. So where does Mr. Gobble ride?"

"With us," Laika said, glancing with distaste at the oily, corpulent body and edematous limbs of Ezekiel Swain. "He is, like it or not, our guide on this great adventure."

"Might be a good idea to keep him tied up."

"I was planning on it."

"Think he'll mind?"

"He didn't mind riding in the trunk."

"Are you sure?" Joseph said. "He didn't seem too happy when he popped out this morning." Laika recalled the pain of the attack, and stopped moving for a moment. "Sorry. What was it like?"

"I've heard the worst possible pain for a man is a kidney stone," said Laika. "You ever have one?"

"Once."

"Multiply it by a hundred, and then add sheer terror."

"Ouch." Joseph nodded toward Tony, who was putting their things in the Blazer. "You think he's okay?"

"No, I don't. I think he can function as well as ever, but
okay
? Would
you
be?"

He answered with another question. "Who the hell are these 'good people' she was talking about? Was she working for Skye?"

"I don't trust Skye. I think he might have been behind the surveillance that was placed on us in New York, and I think he might have had something to do with that mass assassination. Kyle McAndrews, the sole survivor, certainly thought so.

"Still, I don't see how Skye could be behind this. Why would he want us dead? And those sand drawings, however they were done, had to be beyond what he could have ordered up. A hoax of that magnitude? You can run an operation like he's doing with the three of us fairly quietly, but somebody would start asking questions if Skye was requisitioning helicopters—
if
that's how it was done."

"What if somebody above Skye is behind it?" Joseph suggested. "That at least would account for Popeye's involvement."

She shrugged. "Or it could just be that some outside party was paying Popeye more money. Agents have turned before." She looked around at the ground, and saw no trace remaining of the battle or the deaths, except for a sisal cowboy hat that had fallen from one of the Indians' heads. She picked it up and dusted it off. "Time to talk to Swain."

Ezekiel Swain, now replenished, was amenable to traveling in restraints, once he realized that it was the only way the operatives would take him to the Divine. "Symbiosis," he said, and the heavy word sounded like a bass section of a choir.

"Or cooperation," said Laika. "Call it whatever you like." She placed the hat on his head. It was much too small, but at least it covered part of his face. "You mind wearing this? In case anybody in a passing car looks over. You, uh, look a little. . . ."

"Dead?"

"Yeah."

Joseph sat in the back seat with Swain, who was bound with strong nylon cords. He sat on the passenger side, since Laika didn't want him behind the driver. They kept the windows open to reduce the stench that came from Swain's body, but even so, Joseph was pressed all the way over against the door.

As they slowly made their way down the mountain, Swain seemed to enjoy the predicament, and grinned at Joseph. "Sorry," he said. "Forgot use deodorant this morning. . . ." Then he gave a low, gurgling laugh.

"Jesus," said Joseph. "This is like being in
Weekend at Bernie's
with Sam Kinison in the title role."

"
Liked
that movie," Swain said. "Sequel sucked."

A
t the bottom of the mountain, they came out into the open again, a land of sage and rocks. They went north on 666 toward Shiprock, passing the rock formation that had given the town its name, but turned left on Route 64, went back into Arizona, and headed northwest. They crossed the Utah border near Mexican Water, and traveled due north.

"We're going to start needing some guidance right about now," said Joseph, after they had passed the town of Monticello. "You have any feelings about which way we should go?" he asked Ezekiel Swain, as he closed up his laptop.

The big head nodded. "Keep going. I'll tell. When."

A half hour later, they turned at Swain's direction onto an unmarked dirt road that led straight into the desert. After less than a mile, it started to descend, winding its way down among constantly rising canyon walls, twisting and turning until the ops seemed to have no idea in what direction they were headed.

Several other roads crossed theirs, but seemed to go nowhere in particular, like the one they were on. "Are you sure this is right?" Laika asked, glancing at Swain in the mirror.

"Right," he grunted, and smiled. "Close."

As they turned a corner and momentarily emerged from a high-sided canyon, they were surprised to see, in the sudden distance across the rims of several canyons, a great manmade wall. "What the hell is that?" Laika asked.

Joseph opened his laptop and consulted some maps he had downloaded. "It must be the dam that created Dead Horse Reservoir," he said. "Yum. Wouldn't you love to drink out of
that
?"

"No," said Swain, then smiled. "But, Dead
Man
Reservoir . . ."

"Nice," Joseph said.

They descended once again into a canyon, and from then on drove in shadow, for the rock walls on either side were so steep that the sun's rays penetrated them only briefly, if at all. After what seemed like several more miles, they came to the narrowest canyon they had seen. A closed gate of rusted metal spanned its width.