Immune (23 page)

For once, Heather was too shocked to respond.

Mark's eyes settled on Jennifer's bed. Now he knew what had been bothering him. Something about the sheet was wrong. Jennifer had always been meticulous in the way she made her bed, but this morning she had left the sheet untucked, the end extending just below the end of the bedspread.

Drawn forward by his curiosity, Mark knelt down. Only the lower left corner of the sheet was un-tucked, as if the bed had been made and then the corner had been pulled out later.

Ignoring Heather's questioning gaze, Mark lifted the corner of the mattress.

"Oh shit, Jen. What have you done?"

There, stuffed under the mattress, lay all four of the alien headsets.

The canyon walls cascaded away before them. If not for the pounding dread in her heart, Heather would have marveled at the newfound stamina that had let her run along beside Mark with no need for a break during the entire trip out to the place they called The Mesa. On the steep slope far below, camouflaged amidst the thorn thicket, lay the hidden opening to the starship cave.

Heather and Mark had left the alien headsets beneath Jennifer’s mattress. With the search parties beginning to comb this area, the danger that they would be found with those in their possession was too great. Heather wasn’t sure what Mark thought Jennifer had done, but the vision that had played out in her head upon seeing the headsets left her praying that she was wrong.

Mark studied the surrounding countryside carefully.

“I don’t see anyone. How about you?”

Heather concentrated, noting every detail of her surroundings, a new vision forming before her mind’s eye.

“I think the search parties are still an hour or so away from here.”

Mark raised an eyebrow. “And how did you come up with that?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care. How did you read that article so fast? How did we just run all the way out here? You can believe me or not.”

“Okay. I wasn’t trying to make you mad.”

Heather took a deep breath. “Let’s just get down and check on the ship before they come.”

Mark led the way down the steep slope going much more slowly now. With every step down that slope, the weight of impending disaster dragged more heavily at Heather.

“Oh no!”

Mark scrambled forward, leaving Heather’s gaze unobstructed. On the slope below, where there had always been a holographic illusion masking the entrance, a huge cave opening yawned.

Following Mark as quickly as she dared, Heather stumbled into the cave’s inky blackness. Not only was the holographic illusion that had masked the entrance gone, so was the soft magenta glow inside.

As her eyes adjusted to the reduced light level, she could see the curving outline of the ship, still resting where it always had. She moved forward reluctantly, her earlier vision coming back in full force, her worst fears confirmed. Either Jennifer had found some way to power down the whole thing or it had just died.

Mark rushed forward, disappearing up inside the hole. Somehow, Heather could not muster the will to follow him. She knew what he would find, all the doors closed, the few rooms he could enter dark and lifeless.

After a couple of minutes, she stepped to the hole in the ship’s belly.

“Mark,” Heather called. “We have to get out of here. The lead search party is going to hit this canyon in a few minutes.”

Almost immediately, he jumped to the cave floor, wiped at his face with the back of his hand, and turned toward the exit.

“Jennifer did this.”

“Probably.”

“I can’t believe she didn’t even tell us. She came out here and shut down the ship, knowing they would find it without the cloak.”

“They would have found it anyway.”

“She should have told us before she did it. She goddamn well should have told me.”

Heather didn’t know what to say. The way the tears streamed down her cheeks, she doubted she could say anything anyway.

Mark and Heather stopped at the cave entrance, took one last long look at their ship, then turned and began the long journey home.

"Thanks, Billy."

Billy “Grinning Wolf” Enoso held out a disk fresh from the CD drive on his computer.

"You know you can count on me whenever you need something. Especially for something as interesting as this."

Tall Bear shook his friend's hand. "Yeah. Just make sure you keep it quiet. This is some bad medicine,
comprende
? Loose lips could get you and I both killed."

Grinning Wolf's mouth twitched, although the laughter stayed confined in his black eyes. "Never liked anybody enough to talk to them anyway."

"Good. Glad you got a chance to see me then."

Tall Bear stepped into his Jeep Cherokee, slid the disk into the CD player, and pulled out onto the dirt road, which led back toward town.

For all their technological pride, sometimes the feds were so stupid you just had to laugh. In World War II, the US had come up with the brilliant idea of using native Navajo people as code talkers, passing messages that the Japanese were unable to break. There had even been a recent movie about it. Yet here he was, communicating across the Internet with his source in DC via sound files recorded in Navajo.

True, he hadn't been bold enough to do it from his own computer. The government monitored people based on flags, those mystical keywords that attracted the attention of the computer gods. Having been the first on the scene of the Los Alamos truck ambush and subsequently on national TV in opposition to an FBI search had provided enough of those flags to ensure Tall Bear’s communication would be monitored. Even the FBI could probably figure out what language he was using in those communications.

As the voice on the CD began speaking, Tall Bear found the tension rising in his shoulders and upper back. He didn't know what he had been expecting, but this wasn't it.

The Lakota Sioux had a term for greedy, scheming, nonnative people:
Wasi'chu
. Tall Bear had always liked the way that rolled off his tongue when he was angry. And right now the Wasi'chu in Washington, D.C., had him thoroughly pissed and pretty much scared shitless.

The man named Jack Gregory had given him a headful of information about what was going on at Los Alamos, information that had gotten the former director of the National Security Agency and most of Jack's team killed. Tall Bear had used his own sources to verify Jack's information, but this latest recording stunned him.

While the world was busy arguing about how and when the United States should release the alien nanite serum, a multi-billion-dollar black market in the stuff had sprung up. Apparently, the going bid for an individual dose of the nanite serum was 250 million dollars. Every old sick billionaire and every cartel drug lord was desperate to get his hands on some of that juice.

Several of the families of the kids who had participated in the nanite clinical trials had already sold their blood for several million dollars per pint. Even though there was nothing illegal about that, the government had hushed it up and placed all of the families under secret service protection to prevent kidnappings.

But what worried Tall Bear were the whispers about Dr. Stephenson and his connections at the top levels of the US government, connections that were rumored to go much deeper than official. While you could pretty much discount most Washington rumors, these had come from a source that was rarely wrong. And what they whispered of was a third and far more dangerous alien technology.

How it could be more dangerous than this nanite crap, Tall Bear couldn't imagine. Didn't want to.

The CD recording ended, and Tall Bear brought the Jeep to a stop. He ejected the CD, got out, and laid it on the gravel, directly in front of his rear tire. Back in the driver's seat, Tall Bear spun his wheels, grinding the disk into a hundred pieces, sending them flying into the desert amidst a plume of dust and rocks.

Despite all the help Tall Bear had provided thus far, he had reserved a final decision on Jack Gregory and his girlfriend. Now that decision was made. It was time to pay one more visit to the high hogan.

"Where's my chopper?" Dr. Stephenson's voice crackled with annoyance.

"Sorry, sir. It was in the hanger for maintenance. A replacement is on its way now."

"I don't care if it's missing a blade. Get me a chopper here in the next thirty minutes or find yourself another job. Are you understanding me?"

"Yes, sir." The deputy director's secretary swept from his office, her face pinched and drawn.

Stephenson turned his attention back to the information streaming into his laptop. Unbelievable. After all these years, they had finally found the Second Ship. That damn Admiral Riles had ended up doing him the biggest favor he could imagine, and all because of the search for his rogue agents.

It was unfortunate that the search team that had stumbled across it had been a herd of local yokels with an AP reporter in tow. By now, they had climbed all over the thing. Oh well, the military was en-route to take control of that entire canyon, starting with the impact cavern. By this time tomorrow, that whole area would be under his direct control, a massive extension of Rho Division.

Stephenson picked up his cell phone and dialed.

"Major Adams." The voice on the other end was crisp with military efficiency.

"Major, this is Dr. Stephenson. What's your situation?"

"We have secured the cavern and escorted all the civilians back to the top of the canyon. I have a platoon of MPs establishing local security, but until we get a larger unit in here, we'll only be able to keep everyone back a few hundred meters."

"That'll be fine. I am going to be flying out there in the next half hour. Make sure you have someone up on the rim to clear a spot for my chopper to land."

"That won't be a problem, sir."

Stephenson flipped the phone closed and leaned back in his chair. Elizabeth might like to play the part of the abused secretary, but she was damn efficient. Whatever it took, she would have that chopper here on schedule. Then he'd get his first look at the starship that shot down his Rho Ship.

But first he had a call to make. Even he couldn't keep the president waiting forever.

Halfway through his call with the president, Elizabeth signaled that his helicopter had arrived, something that annoyed him even further, since he couldn’t get the damn politician to shut up. Surely, the president had some other schmuck on his staff who could brief him on this situation. As it was, Stephenson didn’t have much information to give.

By the time the deputy director’s helicopter settled down atop the finger of land above the starship crash site, Dr. Stephenson was having difficulty maintaining his traditional cool demeanor. He felt like a kid again, almost like he had on that day thirty years ago beneath Groom Lake, when he had been the one to open the Rho Ship.

As he stepped out of the aircraft into the gusts kicked up by the whirling rotor, Major Adams stepped forward to meet him.

“Follow me, sir.”

Stephenson didn’t like the major, but he admired the man’s efficiency. No fawning small talk about how he enjoyed his flight. Adams was strictly business. He knew what Stephenson wanted and wasn’t going to waste any time accomplishing the mission.

The top of the mesa was quickly becoming a madhouse. Several of the search parties had now converged on the area, so that the number of locals now surpassed the number of FBI agents. And the FBI appeared none too pleased that the military had taken control of the site.

A reporter yelled after Stephenson, but he ignored the man. Overhead, two news choppers circled, one of them a traffic copter from Santa Fe. The military needed to get some more reinforcements in here fast or they were going to have a hard time keeping all the press away, much less the horde of curious people that must be heading this way as fast as they could rent horses, mountain bikes, or even private helicopters.

The canyon slope was steep and shale covered, but within fifteen minutes, Dr. Stephenson found himself at the entrance to the gaping hole in the side of the canyon. The military police had thrown up a generator, which belched smoke and echoed loudly out into the canyon as it pumped current through the cables that led into the cavern. Just inside the entrance, a bank of flood lamps illuminated the cave in garish brightness, the edges of the craft casting stark, motionless shadows against the back wall.

The starship drew him forward. Its sides were smooth and rounded, a circular ellipsoid, as opposed to the cigar shape of the craft that sat within his high bay back at Rho Division. The walls and ceiling of the cave showed clear evidence of the force of the impact with which this ship had come down, yet the starship’s skin showed no sign of trauma.

Dr. Stephenson’s gaze swept the dust-covered floor of the cave. Shit. The whole thing was covered with fresh footprints. He could just imagine the search team that found it jumping up and down, running here and there, whooping, hollering, and acting like the pack of idiots they were.