The Shimmer (33 page)

The odor of death became stronger.

We're not prepared, Raleigh thought. Mindful of his responsibility for Dani's safety, he kept his voice level. "Let's go back to town."

Two days later, a detachment of cavalry arrived, their dust cloud visible from a distance. At sunset, Raleigh rode with them to the part of the road from which he'd seen the lights.

Their plan was to use surveyor's instruments to get two separate bearings on the lights, plotting map coordinates that would allow them to determine how far away and where the lights were.

But the moment the lights appeared, the horses went crazy. Whinnying loudly, they kicked and bit one another. A trooper on foot, clinging to the reins of his mount, was dragged along the ground. A hoof fractured his skull. The other panicked horses galloped into the gloom, leaving the soldiers to make their cautious way back to town on foot, all the while ready with their rifles.

A week later, eight Army biplanes flew to Rostov from Fort Bliss. The intervening time had given Raleigh the chance to choose a location for an airstrip and start supervising its construction. The rationale for the airstrip was that it provided an out-of-the-way place at which to secretly train pilots for America's entry into the war.

The actual purpose, however, was to establish a location from which the biplanes could conduct aerial surveillance beyond the Mexican border, looking for a weapon that the Germans might be testing. When he wasn't on duty, Raleigh found himself spending more and more time with Dani Marie Brown.

Part of the training for student pilots involved flying at night. He used the night instruction as an opportunity to send his students to try to determine the origin of the lights, but he was forced to discontinue those missions. As the trainees flew toward the lights, they diverted and attacked one another--with apparent deliberation, two planes actually collided, killing the instructor and student in each.

Thereafter training occurred only during daylight.

Fears about an invasion from Mexico were validated on March 9, 1916, when gunmen led by Pancho Villa staged a night attack on the New Mexican town of Columbus. Within two days, Congress voted to pursue Villa. "Black Jack" Pershing led five thousand soldiers into Mexico, where they remained for most of the year. Although they engaged in numerous battles with Mexican troops, they never located Villa, but that didn't matter. The mission was largely a training exercise, allowing American soldiers to absorb battle experience.

In April 1917, America entered the war.

Raleigh participated in the Mexican campaign, using his biplane to scout for enemy positions. Afterward he returned to Rostov and married Dani Marie, but within weeks of his marriage, he was on a ship bound for France.

The lights and the possibility of a new German weapon being tested along the Mexican border were forgotten by the Army. There were too many tangible weapons to worry about, particularly mustard gas. But on many nights, as Captain Raleigh tried not to think about the next day's combat, he longed for his wife and the son she'd given birth to.

After the war ended in November 1918, he returned home in time for Christmas. Snow fell--unusual but not impossible in that area of Texas. He had survived thirty-nine dogfights with German aviators and thanked God that he was able to be with his wife and son. But even though he was finally safe, he had nightmares. Not about the war, though. Instead his disturbing dreams made him experience the floating, drifting sensation of the lights. Each evening he went out to stare at them. In March 1919, he purchased a biplane that had been used in the war, many of which had become available at cheap prices because the military no longer needed them.

A week after he took possession of the plane, he took off at dusk from the now overgrown airstrip where he'd trained pilots three years earlier. As the darkness thickened, he flew toward the lights.

The sound of his engine receded into the gloom.

Neither he nor the plane was ever seen again.

Chapter 56.

In the dank complex beneath the abandoned airbase, Col. Warren Raleigh remembered seeing photographs of a dashing young man in a uniform, a strong-looking woman next to him, a biplane in the background. He remembered hearing about the Rostov lights and his great-grandfather's mysterious disappearance.

Raleigh's great-grandmother had raised her son alone, demonstrating the strength that had drawn her husband to her. Her only show of emotion came each night. While her parents took care of the baby, she went out to the area where her husband had disappeared.

She watched the lights, waiting for him to return.

Night after night, winter and spring, she stared at them.

Inexplicably, her face became red and swollen. Blisters developed.

One night, when strands of her hair began to fall out, she finally did something she would never have imagined doing--she took her son, moved from the once reassuring area where she'd grown up, and rented an apartment in noisy, disturbing El Paso. There she learned to be a seamstress, sewing at home while looking after her son.

El Paso led to Denver, Chicago, and finally Boston as she tried to get farther and farther from the lights. Despite the passage of years, she never remarried.

She died from skin cancer.

A voice interrupted Raleigh's thoughts.

"Sir, Fort . . . is . . . call . . . you."

He peered up from his desk. His earplugs muffled sounds. "Say again, Lieutenant?"

"Fort Meade wants you on the phone. Scrambler code 2."

As Raleigh reached for the phone on his desk, the lieutenant continued, "And even though it isn't night yet, we're getting extremely powerful readings."

Raleigh nodded. This time he didn't take the risk of removing an earplug as he pressed a button on his phone and engaged the scrambler.

"Colonel Raleigh here."

"This is Borden," a woman's voice said faintly. She was the director of the weapons research team at Raleigh's headquarters near the fortress-like National Security Agency in Maryland. "We're receiving unusually strong readings from the observatory."

"Yes, one of my people here just told me we're getting strong readings, also."

Borden's voice continued, "I reviewed the data parameters for previous versions of this study. As we know, the pattern's cyclical. Sometimes the signals are almost impossible to detect. Other times they're pronounced. But until now, the highs and lows have been in the same range. These are the highest readings we've ever seen--and that includes what happened where you are, back in 1945. The reason I contacted you isn't just to make a report. I'm asking you to reconsider your strategy." She paused. "Colonel, are you certain you want to stay at your location?"

Raleigh found the question touching. One of his many secrets was that he and Borden met each month at a Baltimore hotel room, where they allowed themselves to pretend they had emotions unrelated to their careers. Her question wasn't merely about protecting the program. It suggested that she was actually concerned about his safety.

"Colonel, can you hear me?" Borden's voice asked.

"Yes," he finally said, "I hear you. Thank you for your input, but I'll be staying. All these years, this is where the program has been headed.

Without a team on-site, we'll never know the truth. I can't leave."

This wasn't just where the program had been headed, though. It was where his life had been headed since he'd first heard about the lights when he was a boy.

*

PART FOUR

TRANSFIGURATION

Chapter 57.

Twenty seconds after the explosions, Page's cell phone rang. He and Tori were staring toward the sky in the direction from which the shock waves had come. He pulled the phone from his belt and pressed the answer button.

"Did you hear them?" Medrano's voice asked urgently.

"A small one, a big one, then another small one," Page replied.

"From the northwest. The only thing over there is the observatory."

"That's what I'm thinking, too. Where are you?"

"The airport."

"Big surprise. I finally figured you were planning to use your plane tonight. A private plane can go just about anywhere, right?"

"Just about."

"The nearest Highway Patrol chopper is ninety minutes away. I can't wait that long. I want you to fly toward those explosions and find out what the hell happened."

"The problem is," Page said, "one of the places a private plane can't go is prohibited airspace."

"You're telling me the observatory's off-limits?"

"Usually a prohibited area has something to do with national security. I have no idea what that observatory has to do with any of that, but at the very least, I could lose my pilot's license if I fly in there."

"I can't go in there, either," Medrano said. "That's federal property.

I don't have the jurisdiction to send in cruisers. Listen, I'll try to get permission from the FBI. While I'm waiting, can you at least fly along the boundary of that area--maybe get high enough to try to see what happened?"

"That I can do. I have a police radio in my plane. What's your frequency?"

Page wrote down the number, pressed the disconnect button, and returned his phone to his belt.

He looked at Tori. "This could be dangerous. You might want to think about not going up with me."

"Could you use an extra set of eyes?"

"Always."

"Then you've got company."

Chapter 58.

A bullet tore up dirt near Brent's left cheek. He flinched and ducked his head lower.

Where he lay was a sandy trough that might have been a dry creek bed. The parched land had absorbed the water from yesterday's storm except that there seemed to be a puddle under him, soaking him. Then he realized that what he felt was the wet crotch of his pants where his bladder had let go.

The only thing that kept him from panicking was the television camera. I'm not going to lose this chance. He angled it up toward the black smoke that billowed from the downed helicopter. Then he pivoted to the right and aimed the camera toward the smoking ruin of the news van.

Now comes the hard part--staying alive to show this to somebody, he thought.

Anita was sprawled between him and the burning van. Her head lolled, and she looked weaker.

He squirmed toward her, stopping when he was halfway there. The guard at the observatory had a large area to scan with his rifle. From this new position, Brent hoped to be able to ease the camera over the edge of the trough and record what the gunman was up to.

Need to do something. I'm not just going to lie here.

He took a deep breath, braced his trembling muscles, and cautiously showed himself. Through the camera's viewfinder, he saw the guard turning in his direction and raising the rifle. Brent managed to get down just before three bullets blasted dirt above him.

"Wouldn't pay attention to the sign!" the guard yelled from beyond the fences.

Brent had lost his handheld microphone. Now he relied solely on the shotgun mike attached to the top of the camera, although he had little hope that it would register the guard's voice from so far away.

"Had to come barging in!" the guard continued. "All I wanted was to listen to the music!"

Music? Brent thought.

"I told you to get out of here!" the guard shouted. "But you had to keep pushing! You had to keep me from the music!"

What in God's name is he talking about? Brent wondered.

"Trespassers will be prosecuted! That's what the sign says!"

More bullets sprayed dirt above Brent's head.

"And as soon as I get these gates open, I'll prosecute you to hell!"

Brent crawled toward Anita, whose dark skin should never have looked so pale. He untucked the pen that bound the tourniquet and loosened the cloth, grimacing at the sight of the blood that flowed from her left arm.

"Need to free the circulation from time to time. Otherwise you might get gangrene."

"Too much information," she said weakly.

"Sorry."

"Cold." Anita turned her head to the side and made vomiting noises, but nothing came from her stomach. "Heart's racing. Think I'm in shock."

Brent retightened the tourniquet. He strained to push a large rock toward her, propping her sneakers on it. "This is supposed to help."

"Where'd you learn all this?"

"I did a story about an emergency first-aid team."

"And now you're an expert? Lord, I wish I hadn't asked. The camera." Breathing rapidly, Anita noticed that Brent had set it down so that it pointed toward them. The red light was on. "You're recording us?"

"Don't you want to be a star?"

For a moment, Brent thought he heard an approaching engine.

His pulse raced with the hope that the police had heard the explosions and were coming. But at once the faint drone stopped, and he feared he'd imagined it.

He picked up the camera and hoped that the smoke and flames would shield him as he hurried to the front of the burning van. Staying back from the heat, he aimed the camera along the side and focused on the guard, who stood before the inside gate. He seemed to be studying it.