Radiant Dawn (39 page)

Mrachek's arm snaked around Stella's arm and yanked her off-balance. Her other dry little hand poked Stella's windpipe with three ramrod stiff fingers, gave it a little jab to emphasize how quickly she'd come upon death.

"Don't—ever—touch—me," she hissed in Stella's face.

"Can somebody get me some aspirin?" a tired man's voice split the moment before things could get any uglier.

Mrachek froze, giving Stella room to disentangle herself. She turned to face the interloper, and she, too, froze. It was the killer they couldn't keep in a cage, the one they'd been fighting over. Her breath stung in her throat, and she couldn't bring herself to speak. Unconscious, bound and sedated, he'd intrigued her, because he frightened her captors. Awake and advancing on her, with a fiberglass brace on his left arm like a battering ram, he scared her half to death for just a moment before she could wrap herself in the blanket of her native anger. "See to him, and get him out of here," Mrachek muttered, then returned to her screen-gazing.

"What're you doing out of your cage?" Stella asked, trying to sound bolder than she felt.

"I've got a powerful bad headache, and I need to get some sleep," Storch said. "I'd be much obliged if you could make it happen, ma'am."

Stella nodded and crossed the room to the first aid dispensary, but she watched Storch like a rabid dog on a weak leash. His eyes flicked around the sickbay, taking in the luggage and Mrachek at her computer. He showed no reaction other than a mute, quizzical expression that quickly melted back into the default of incredibly tense neutrality.
He doesn't know what's happening, either. He's not one of them, not quite, not yet.
But he wasn't in the same boat as her. They were going to use him, and for something far harder than their plans for her. She opened the case and found several packets of ibuprofen, then stiffened as she felt his breath on her neck. She turned and saw that he was still standing across the room. What was he doing to her? It made her angrier, as it made her more afraid.

"So," he said, visibly uncomfortable, "looks like moving day. Where're you headed?"

"Nobody tells me anything, soldier. I'm not one of them." She came over and pressed the packets into his broad, knobby hand. "I'm a dual-purpose hostage-guinea pig, right, Doctor?" Mrachek was lost in contemplation.

He looked at the packets and dropped them on the examination table. "I can't take these, ma'am. Just plain old aspirin'll do fine." He rubbed his temples, and his jaw muscles bulged as he bit back a new surge of pain. She could almost see the blood vessels in his temples and in his eyes dilate and writhe. "And please don't stand so close, no offense. It's just—your perfume—it makes me…sick."

"I'm not wearing perfume, asshole," she said. "I didn't think anyone who'd killed so many people would whine about a little headache."

"I've had this headache off and on for going on nine years," he said.

"Gulf War syndrome?"

"You could call it that."

"You're an even bigger whiner than I thought, then."

The braced left arm came up, and Stella flinched, but it only grazed his forehead, hovering before her long enough to see he had no thumb, and his palm was shot through with a starburst of scars where the hand was messily sewn up. He backed away from her and rooted around in the dispensary case until he found what he was looking for. He unscrewed the lid off the aspirin bottle and tipped it back into his mouth, gobbling down at least a dozen. "Mind if I keep the bottle?" he asked.

"I told you, it's not mine. What about you? You're one of them, now?"

"What do you know about it, ma'am?"

"I know they were going to kill you before, and now you're one of the merry men."

"I don't see where I have much choice in the matter," he answered, keeping hold of a cool he evidently was far from feeling. "I don't much care for the way they do things, but we have a common enemy."

"So you're going to help them murder Radiant Dawn."

"It's war, ma'am. I didn't fire the first shot. They've got it coming."

"That's what the Nazis said. Do you have a hard-on for killing them, or just killing in general?"

"I'm not a machine, ma'am. They hurt me and mine, they're going to pay. And you talk an awful lot for a guinea pig." He turned and made to walk out of the sickbay, and she was about to call him another name, just for the all-important sake of having the last word in, when he staggered and flopped against the examination table. His shoulders shook, and she heard something that might've been a choked sob escape from his audibly chattering teeth.

Before better judgment reminded her of her all-too recent brush with death at the hands of Mrachek, she raced to him. Her hands stopped short of touching his back, but she felt her resentment of him falling apart under the piteous weight of his obvious suffering. Everyone in this tomb was damaged goods, and she'd been prepared for him to be the worst of them all. But in the last few minutes, he'd talked to her more than anyone had since her capture. He lacked either the sense or the insecurity to rise to her barbs, and she was starting to see why she couldn't stop being mean to him. It was a strange and scary feeling, one she'd never had to endure for more than a few minutes before she scared the object of it away.

"What's wrong with you? Can't hold your aspirin?"

"This…place…makes me…sick." Words struggled to escape his lungs, which sounded as if they were filling up with phlegm, or collapsing. She knew enough about Gulf War sickness to recognize that it had a myriad of symptoms, but that many took the form of environmental sensitivity. Exposure to fossil fuels, certain drugs, in fact just about any inorganic compound which released fumes, aggravated the condition. But most Gulf War sufferers that she'd seen—on TV, never in the flesh— looked ravaged, devoured and weakened. This man looked hale, tanned and healthy, trembling fits notwithstanding. Built more like a marathon runner or a swimmer than the hulking brutes who comprised the Mission militia, he might've been faking it if he looked like the kind of man who could stand to seem weak in front of a woman. This guy didn't look as if he could stand to be weak in front of himself. "Get along…You can't…help me."

Stella grabbed his arms and maneuvered him onto the examination table. He didn't resist, she doubted he could've. "Here," she said, reaching under the table and fumbling around on the utility shelf. She found what she was looking for and handed it to him. His hands were shaking too badly, so she tied it over his face.

With a sterile gauze mask over his mouth and nose, he immediately began to breathe easier, and his eyes stopped tearing. They focused on her, weighing her, but not judging her. She looked away, but he filled the room for her, and there was nowhere in or out of it that she could go and get away. She had to make him hate her, or this would only get worse.

"You Mexican?" he asked, his voice softer and clear, but sleepy.

"My parents were from Mexico, but I'm an American citizen. The white doctor won't have anything to do with you."

"I was just gonna say…you're a real pretty…" the next word was a sustained snore.

Stella wouldn't remember how long she watched him sleep. She was too busy trying to figure out how to make him hate her.

The tenth of July set records in Death Valley and the surrounding regions, but not for heat. The second cloudburst in as many weeks visited upon the hottest place on the globe spasms of flashflooding that resculpted the terrain like hatchets in clay. As the afternoon guttered out into early evening and the shadows began to bubble up out of fissures in the cracked desert floor, the air felt almost humid on Special Agent Cundieffe's face.

"Have you ever had to fire your weapon?" the Delta Force lieutenant asked Martin Cundieffe.

"Never in the line of duty," Cundieffe answered. "Force has never been my strong suit. That's why the Lieutenant Colonel had the good sense to send you gentlemen along." He smiled at the lieutenant and the other three commandos, but the smile was growing tired. They'd been having a lot of fun at his and the Bureau's expense for the last couple of days, and despite his resolve to represent his agency in the best possible light, they were getting to him. He turned to Special Agent Hanchett and whispered in her ear, "See that next time we get an FBI tactical squad to accompany us. I don't care what the Colonel says, this is disruptive to the search. His people are contributing nothing but static." Hanchett nodded and made a note on her laptop.

They were over the Ubehebe Crater, about sixty-five miles north of Furnace Creek, sweeping the bottom of a grid at the outer edge of the search pattern. An FBI helicopter, an FBI pilot, and a cargo of totally useless, foulmouthed, insolent counterterrorism specialists. Cundieffe regretted the deal he'd struck with Lt. Col. Greenaway for the thousandth time, but there was no helping it for the present. He had prepared a new report for Deputy Assistant Director Wyler this morning, in which he posited that the search had become a secondary layer of obfuscation to deflect the Bureau from the objective. Greenaway had concentrated his own searches in the southeast quadrant, going back over twice-examined territory and flatly refusing to allow FBI agents onboard. In speculations he dared not forward to Wyler just yet, he'd alleged that Greenaway already knew where the enemy was, and was circling to either contain or contact them. Perhaps he'd tipped his hand too soon, misreading Greenaway as more than just another assassin. But it would still come down to a race, as it would have, anyway.

The hole beneath them was half a mile wide and six hundred feet deep, the result of a seismic convulsion a few thousand years ago which had created a starburst-shaped corona of cinders six miles wide. A gravel parking lot was dotted with a few campers and pickups, and a ranger's truck beside public restrooms. Two of the commandos spotted land features and vehicles with binoculars. Suspicious groupings of vehicles were tagged and the numbers fed to Hanchett, who ran checks on NCIC and the California DMV database. They had found twelve stolen cars and two felons with outstanding warrants, but no terrorist militia, and no stockpiles of napalm. Cundieffe spent four hours in the air each day, then eight in the Bureau's HQ at China Lake, reviewing reports from agents up and down the state, as well as DEA and INS data from the border region. Then he went back up in the air for another four hours until just before dawn, scanning the desert floor through infrared goggles, looking for telltale heat signatures of underground activity. The night searches had yielded only a few drug smugglers and off-road enthusiasts on state parkland. He slept for four hours, and spent his first four hours each morning drafting reports and requisitioning more men.

The Bureau was talking to the Mexican Federal Police, who had pledged their support but taken serious issue with the United States Navy crossing their borders in gunships. Lt. Col. Greenaway had successfully pushed all Navy personnel onto the ground search, and placed his own officers in all the choppers, and was probably crossing the border out of the sanctioned search grid. It was enough to make one seriously wonder what side they were really on.

"—for Special Agent Cundieffe?" a tinny voice crackled in his ear. He pressed the earphone deeper into his ear and swung the microphone up under his nose.

"This is Cundieffe. Say again?"

"SA Tufts here, sir, in Tango Rainbow Seven. We're at mappoint seventy-two, thirty-eight, returning from completed sweep of grid twenty-nine. We're almost out of fuel, so we're turning back. But I saw a wrecked truck off a dirt side road in Titus Canyon. It matches the description of the Storch vehicle posted in the ready room."

"Tufts, that notice also made note of the date the vehicle was recovered, at mappoint thirty-two, nineteen, nearly a week ago."

"I know that, sir, but it's the same make and model, with the back window shot full of shotgun blasts. Someone dumped it here."

Cundieffe cut Tufts off and hailed the pilot.

Titus Canyon cut a narrow, winding twenty-six mile rain gutter through the eroded ramparts of the Grapevine Mountains, between Death Valley and Beatty, Nevada. The trail that wound through it was closed through the heart of the summer, sand-blasted signs hanging from chains snaked across either end proclaimed that flashflooding had washed the roads out. For a fugitive who knew the terrain, it was a perfect route for fleeing the state, because the sheer walls of limestone, sand and crystalline concrete shadowed the rutted trail, affording excellent coverage, even from an air search. Today, the trail stood out as a ribbon of livid green through the blinding bone-colored mountains. The local flora had made the most of the previous week's rainstorm, and with the further encouragement of this morning's downpour, had run riot in the alkaline sand: spiky, unforgiving balls of rocknettle already choked the trail in spots, with here and there a splash of orange poppies and globemallow, shoots of sacred datura and wispy veils of white gravel ghost, like standing shrouds of mist. Where there was an inch of space, or a day of rain, nature went berserk in its variety and hostile generosity.

Cundieffe studied the canyon as it unfurled beneath them through binoculars, poring over the bleached remains of the ghost town of Leadfield; the picked-over bones of a bighorn sheep scattered at the foot of a cliff; the sparkling decay of crystalline fields and scummy brown pondlets in the crooks and spreading hollows of the canyon.

They were hovering over the map point, but Cundieffe could see nothing. Through the telescoping lenses, the furrowed waves of undulating earth became an angry, ancient abstract painting, or an image of capillary tissue seen through a stereo microscope. Paradoxically, this let him focus and let loose his insecurities about the size of the search. He was searching a section of tissue removed from a body called the earth, for a foreign object—and like
that
, a brilliant flare of sunlight off chrome filled his vision and burned a violet phosphene nova onto his sight. "Come around this point ninety degrees," he shouted to the pilot, and looked again. Ignoring the chuckling whispers of the Delta Force contingent, he ordered the pilot to set down.