Empire of Dust (44 page)

After she was sure Tony was all right, Laika had gone to Yazzie's body and begun to search it. She was going through his wallet when the others came up. "Anything interesting?" Joseph asked. "Pretty weird that an Indian Affairs guy broke our covers."

"He's got Bureau of Indian Affairs creds, all right. But they're
his
cover." She held up a card they all recognized.

"Brian Foster. Federal Bureau of Investigation. We've killed a fed."

"Oh, my God," Tony muttered, looking genuinely stricken.

"Take it easy," Joseph said. "Don't forget he'd have killed you." He shook his head. "It does make things tricky, though."

"Maybe not," said Laika. "Who's necessarily going to know that we were responsible? True, somehow Yazzie—or Foster—followed us here, but it's possible he hadn't reported it yet. We get his body out of here, along with his car, and who's to know he was ever here in the first place? And if we take along Father Alexander's corpse, there's no link to us at all."

"Sure," said Joseph. "After all, what have they got? Dead priests, black helicopters, more dead men in fatigues, and Michael LaPierre's fingers all over everything. The doctors from the National Science Foundation's Division of Special Investigations were never even here."

"That means we've got to work fast. The explosion we heard must have been the dam breaking, and the flood was a result. Investigators will be all over this place in a few hours. But the first thing we
have
to do is get back to that kiva."

They took a truck and drove it back up through the canyons. The sand and the soil was wet, but no more than it might have been after a desert rainstorm. Puddles in rock indentations were the only indication of how great an amount of water had flowed through the canyons. It was amazing, Laika thought, how thirstily this land soaked up moisture. Like Ezekiel Swain himself, she thought, and grimaced at the memory.

Between the three of them, they retraced LaPierre's route easily enough. They frequently came across the corpses of LaPierre's men who had been drowned in the flood. They were badly battered by their contact with the rocks. Despite their mutilations, some of them still showed bullet wounds, now washed clean by the water, and others were burned red or charred black by the flamethrowers of their comrades who had turned on them. None was alive. The combination of the flood and the prisoner, whatever he was, had left no wounded.

In twenty minutes they arrived at the mouth of the round canyon. There were more corpses here. From their condition, it was obvious that most of the deaths had come from people being swept against the rocks rather than drowning, and Laika realized once again how lucky they had been to have been tied to the massive cross, which had taken most of the impact of their wild ride.

The trucks had been tipped over, but they found a still working flashlight in one of them, and shone it down the dark mouth of the kiva opening. The dim glow revealed a sodden mess of charred and shot corpses. The reek of burned flesh and mud was overwhelming, but Tony volunteered to climb down and see if there was any trace of the prisoner who had been there.

"Forget it," Joseph said. "Not with that hit you took. I'll go."

The ladder had been swept away; Joseph dropped down inside. It was only a few feet, but he landed sickeningly on a body half covered with mud. Laika tossed the flashlight down to him, and he began his search.

"There are five bodies," he called back up. "All are wearing fatigues. One of them's LaPierre. He's badly burned, but his ID was in his back pocket—it's still readable."

"Leave it there," said Laika. "Any sign of the prisoner?"

Joseph was silent for a moment. Then he called up, "An empty casket lined with lead. The mud's thick down here, but if he's got a human form, I'd see him. He's not here."

They extended their arms down into the kiva, and when Joseph jumped up and grabbed them, they pulled him out. The three looked around the canyon, and their gazes hung for a long time on the opening that led north through more canyons, and eventually out to the desert.

"We'd never find him now," said Laika, expressing what they were all thinking. "Those canyons are a maze for miles. He could be hiding in any of them, or he could keep moving, out onto the desert. We couldn't even start the search before this place will be crawling with officials coming in to see what damage the flood caused."

"But we can't just let him go," Tony said, holding his chest. "You heard what Father Alexander said—he's dangerous. There's no end to the trouble he could cause."

"We have no choice," Laika said. "We leave now." Her firm stride back toward the truck left no room for argument.

Back at the mission, they took Special Agent Foster's body and Father Alexander's dried corpse and placed them in the trunk of the Fury. Then Joseph got into the Fury and Laika and Tony climbed into the Blazer, and they drove away from the Mission of San Pedro, passing no one on the way.

When they came out onto the paved road several miles from the mission, they could see, far to the north, the black dots of small planes moving toward the area south of the Dead Horse Reservoir. They continued to drive south for another twenty miles before Laika pulled off onto a dirt road and drove blindly into the desert.

When the road ended, Laika and Tony got into the Fury, and Joseph drove it another few hundred yards over the dirt and scrub until they found a small gully. They took Foster's ID, and buried him and Father Alexander in a shallow grave, setting flat rocks over it in as natural a pattern as they could, to keep away predators. Then they turned off the Fury's engine and rolled it down into the gully. Someone would have to be right on top of it to notice it, and Laika thought the chances of it being found anytime soon were remote.

Then, in the Blazer, they headed back toward Gallup. It was a long drive, but they would arrive before dark.

They stopped just over the New Mexico border near Shiprock, and Laika made a call, informing the person who answered with a simple "Yes?" that Kelly would need another vehicle in Gallup. "Acknowledged," the voice said, and Laika knew a car would be waiting for them when they arrived back at the motel.

The news on the radio finally reported the incident at the Dead Horse Reservoir. An explosion had blown away two of the dam's taintor gates and piers, allowing half the contents of the reservoir to rush unimpeded into the canyons south of the dam. There was as yet no explanation for the explosion, but investigators were on the scene, and foul play had not been ruled out. At least three people at the dam were known to have been killed as a result of the explosion, but it was not yet known whether the flooding had caused any loss of life.

"You know what I think?" said Joseph, when the story was over. "I think the prisoner somehow got through to somebody, the way he did to Swain, and talked them—or
thought
them—into becoming a saboteur."

"Why?" asked Laika. "Didn't he know that LaPierre and his troops were coming?"

"Doubtful. That might have been just a very pleasant surprise for him. And that the bomber struck when he did turned out to be a very pleasant surprise for us."

"But why would the prisoner have wanted the area drowned?" Laika asked.

"Shit happens," Joseph said. "At the very least, it might have destroyed his jailers, and by drawing attention to the area, he might have been found by someone other than the clergy. Red Cross or the park service finds a bunch of drowned priests and a closed casket, they open it to see what's inside. When they do . . ."

"When they do," Tony concluded, "the same thing happens that happened when LaPierre did it."

Joseph nodded. "The shit hits the fanatics. The big question now is what you report, Laika."

She had been thinking about that very thing for miles.

"At least we know," Laika said thoughtfully, "that Agent Daly didn't try to kill us at Skye's order. He was with LaPierre all the way. So I think we can at least report our involvement in the LaPierre business. And there's no reason we can't report that Daly turned and tried to kill us. Hell, we might as well give the location of the car with his body."

"Don't see why not," Joseph said. "But isn't it likely Daly had to be out here on Company business? And I suspect his official assignment was to keep an eye on us, though we don't have to mention that to Skye. But that brings up one niggling thing that really bothers me. I don't think any of us believe Skye's been open with us about the whole reason for our operations. I think he's looking for more than just supposed paranormal occurrences for us to debunk."

"But if he is," Tony said, "it would have to come down as a directive from above."

Joseph nodded. "Right And if it were from above, why the hell would it be a CIA operation within the United States in the first place? Why not the feds? It's their jurisdiction, not ours. Foster bird-dogging us—as well as his willingness to kill one of us—shows that there's no interagency cooperation on this project. On the contrary, the feds
suspect
us of something. And if all that's the case . . ." Joseph looked out the window at the desert dusk. ". . . Then maybe somebody turned Skye the way LaPierre turned Daly."

Laika saw the picture. "Skye's looking for the prisoner, too. And as far as he's concerned, we're just his stooges."

"He knows about the weird occurrences that happen when the prisoner's near," said Tony, picking up the thread. "And he's sent us out to debunk these things just to narrow his target area."

"And," said Laika, "in the hopes that maybe we'll latch on to a
real
paranormal incident, one we can't explain away. When that happens, he's got a good idea where the prisoner is." She sighed. "It makes sense, but we don't have any proof."

"It's solid enough a theory, though, that it might be wise to keep our knowledge of the prisoner from Skye," Joseph said. "He doesn't know about it in New York, so why tell him about any of it?"

T
he report from Laika Harris was waiting for Richard Skye the next morning. It had come in over an encrypted data line at midnight. Skye was not totally surprised by what it said. He had suspected that his three operatives might have been somehow involved in the LaPierre incident.

All he had known about it was that Michael LaPierre had been found dead, along with approximately seventy other men dressed in military fashion and bearing weapons, near the site of an old mission in southern Utah. The deaths were due primarily to drowning after the floodwaters of the bombed dam had rushed down upon them, although some of the bodies had been shot and burned by flamethrowers. But no one could explain precisely what LaPierre and these men had been doing there. Laika Harris's report filled in the gaps.

It seemed that the operatives had infiltrated LaPierre's operation, but had been captured, and LaPierre had revealed the entire plot to them before they were able to escape by turning LaPierre's troops against each other. The breaking of the dam did the rest. The report read in part:

The mummified corpses as well as the sand drawings were the first part of the plot by Michael LaPierre to overthrow the United States government and establish a right-wing theocracy, with himself at the head. The disparate and bizarre elements of the plot were intended to fulfill LaPierre's distorted view of biblical prophecy, and act as a trigger for a radical right revolution using 144 cells in areas throughout the country. Some of the matches between prophecy and LaPierre's actions seem rather illogical, but after having been in contact with LaPierre, we are all of the opinion that he was quite mad.

The desert setting was to fulfill the prophecy that the Messiah (LaPierre himself, in his view) would come out of the wilderness: "Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God." (Isaiah 40:3)

The bombing of the dam was carried out by one of LaPierre's agents, but the timing was in error, and was to have come after LaPierre and his people had vacated the area. The biblical injunction was: ". . . in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water. . . ." (Isaiah 35:6-7)

The sand drawings were to be interpreted as the "signs and portents" that would herald the Second Coming, with LaPierre as the new Messiah: "And I will show wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath." (Acts 2:19) The drawings were executed with one of the helicopters and an attached motorcycle found at the site.

LaPierre admitted being responsible for the mummified corpses, though he did not say how the drying process had been accomplished, and we saw no mechanisms at the site that might give an answer. The corpses were intended to frighten those who would oppose LaPierre and were based on a verse from the Book of Revelation: "And if any man will hurt them [referring to the prophets, of whom LaPierre considered himself one], fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies." (Revelation 11:5)