The Shimmer (40 page)

Even though the night air was pleasantly cool, the effort soaked his shirt with sweat, but he'd never felt more satisfied by exertion.

Thinking of the corpses in the truck and the threat the bastard inside was to the mission, he inwardly chanted, Come on, baby, burn.

He imagined the crazy prick trying to breathe through a wet towel while he coughed his guts out. Sooner or later, the outside door would open. Lockhart had a distant view of it as he rushed from fire to fire, focusing exclusively on the intake vents, throwing on more dead brush. Lumber left over from a construction project made the flames dance higher. He kept looking at the door. The moment Halloway showed himself, Lockhart would teach him why it was a bad idea to ruin things for the colonel.

The fires roared. But Lockhart now heard a louder sound. Staring toward the west, he saw the lights of a swiftly approaching Black Hawk helicopter. Finally, he thought. The colonel said the equipment would arrive that would get me through that door.

He grabbed his M4 and ran. The landing pad had been destroyed by the wreckage of the exploding chopper. He stood under a floodlight and waved both arms to get the pilot's attention, then motioned toward the area just beyond the open gates. Soon the Black Hawk settled onto the lane, its nose pointed through the gates toward the steel door of the concrete-block shed.

"What took that chopper down?" the pilot shouted as the Black Hawk's rotors whistled to a stop.

His face tightened as Lockhart explained.

A special-ops team leaped from the side hatch, assault rifles in hand.

"You're telling me that truck has corpses piled in the back?" the pilot demanded. Seeing three coyotes leap from the truck, things dangling from their mouths, he shook his head in disgust.

"The colonel said you'd bring equipment we could use to get through that door," Lockhart said. "What have you got? Claymores?

Detonator cord?"

"For this guy, I've got something better."

A minute later, the chopper lifted off, hovered a hundred feet above the lane, and fired a rocket.

From a safe distance, Lockhart watched with joy. He'd wanted something to get him through the door. But this was so much better.

With a satisfying roar, the rocket blew the whole damned concrete shed into pieces.

Chapter 72.

Brent stood on the motor home, describing the chaos of the crowd below him. Mindful of what had happened the night before, he'd almost decided to do his commentary from the ground or from something modestly higher.

But how the hell would that look? I'm supposed to be the toughest reporter in the business, and I do my spot on a picnic table?

Even so, every time the crowd jostled the motor home and forced him to correct his balance, he remembered what it had felt like to plummet to the ground. No camera operator had enough of Anita's determination to be willing to get on the roof with him. The producer had finally put a remote camera up there. It and the handheld cameras among the crowd, as well as the nose camera on the chopper, would provide ample coverage. But there wasn't any question where the viewers' attention would be--with the guy risking his life on the motor home's roof while all the other television reporters looked like wimps, doing their spots from the ground.

When the floodlights went out, Brent made a dramatic moment of it.

"Did somebody sabotage the lights?" he asked before realizing that his own lights had gone out, also--not to mention the lights on the cameras, the cars, and the choppers.

Jesus, don't tell me I'm off the air.

Blinded by the sudden darkness, he groped toward the ladder at the side of the motor home. People banged against the vehicle, shouting in panic. He wavered, reached the ladder, started down, and froze as helicopters plummeted to the ground, bursting into flames.

Shrapnel flying past him, Brent hugged the ladder and waited for the shock waves to subside. His eyes were level with the motor home's roof. He looked directly over the concrete barrier toward the field beyond the viewing area.

A glow approached.

At first Brent thought it was the residual image that the broadcast lights had imprinted on his eyes. But then he realized that what he saw stretched a hundred yards from right to left. The glow got bigger and closer, so strong that it dispelled the darkness, a tidal wave of colors rushing angrily across the grassland toward him.

Maybe the microphone is still working!

He spoke frantically into it. "Tonight this reporter is seeing the most powerful manifestation yet of the Rostov lights, stretching across my field of vision and approaching the crowd that has gathered here."

The glow became harsh.

"Lightning appears to be flashing inside it! The effect on the spectators is tremendous."

People in the crowd wept, wailed, and prayed. But the sounds they made weren't loud enough to shut out the growing hum of the lights speeding toward them.

"The air's getting hotter!" Brent shouted. "Grass is catching fire!

Wait a minute, something's racing from the lights! The microphone's almost too hot to hold! My face is . . ."

He screamed.

Chapter 73.

When the Black Hawk blew the concrete shed apart, Lockhart and the assault team whistled in approval. A hole gaped, pointing the way downward.

"Now let's toast the son of a bitch!" Lockhart said.

Without warning, all the floodlights went off, plunging the area into darkness. Tensing, he told himself it was only because of the damage the explosion had inflicted. But before the chopper could land, its lights went off, also.

So did its engine.

Abruptly losing altitude, it walloped fifty feet onto the ground, rotors whistling, skids snapping. The only illumination was from the fires.

No, I'm wrong, Lockhart thought. To the southeast, where the abandoned military base was located, a glow attracted his attention.

Even with his eyes straining to adjust to the darkness, it was impossible to ignore.

"What the hell is that?" a member of the special-ops team shouted.

"I don't know, but it's getting brighter! And it's coming this way!"

"Hit the ground!"

For an instant, Lockhart thought it was a missile streaking toward them, but as he landed on his chest, he realized it was a beam of light.

The light was composed of spinning colors--red, green, yellow, blue.

It shot from the horizon, hissed across the ground, and radiated heat as it passed over him. He smelled smoke from his hair and swatted out embers.

Throwing sparks, the light struck a satellite dish that was tilted sideways in the direction of the airbase. At once the light was redirected so that it rocketed upward from a dish pointed toward the sky.

It reminded Lockhart of World War II movies in which powerful spotlights searched the sky for enemy bombers making a night raid.

Though it was only one beam of light, the multicolored radiance hurt his eyes. It soared higher, stretching toward heaven until it reached something up there and threw off sparks before it suddenly blazed on a downward angle, streaking toward something on the ground far away to the northwest. It left a tube of pulsing light that continued to crackle over the ground and pointed upward from the dishes.

"I'm on fire!" somebody yelled. His teammates hurried to swat at the man's flaming clothes.

Lockhart held his hands over his ears. The beam of light hissed and crackled, but there was another sound--static that might have been a hum that might have been high-pitched music, threatening to split his eardrums.

Chapter 74.

July 16, 1945.

Just before dawn, the first atomic bomb was detonated outside Alamogordo in remote southern New Mexico. As the blinding, mushroom-shaped fireball rose thirty-eight thousand feet into the air and burned ten thousand times more fiercely than the exterior of the sun, the project's director, Robert Oppenheimer, recited a passage from the Bhagavad Gita in which God reveals his true, awesome, terrifying form to a disciple.

"'If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one,'" Oppenheimer quoted. "'Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds.'"

At the same time, all telephone and radio messages ceased to be acknowledged by or sent from the military airbase outside Rostov, Texas, two hundred and fifty miles southeast of Alamogordo. Of particular concern was the status of the facility beneath the airbase, where research on an alternative weapon of mass destruction had been in progress since 1943.

After six hours of attempts to reestablish communication, the Army sent a P-40 Warhawk fighter plane on a reconnaissance mission from Fort Bliss. It arrived at 2 in the afternoon. Flying over the airfield, the pilot reported no activity whatsoever.

"I see open hangars. Trucks and aircraft at the side of the runway.

A B-24's at the end of the runway, looking as if it's about to take off, but the propellers aren't moving. In fact, nothing's moving. I don't see any people."

Ordered to land and investigate, the pilot banked into a final approach. At two hundred feet, he finally did see something moving-a man in uniform staggering down the runway's centerline. The pilot performed an emergency go-around and watched the man in uniform continue staggering until he collapsed at the end of the runway.

After landing, the pilot did a quick scan of the area but still didn't see any people among the motionless trucks and aircraft. He rushed to the man he'd seen collapse. The man was semiconscious, moaning.

His uniform had a colonel's insignia and was covered with blood. His face was burned. Identification in a pocket revealed that his name was Edward Raleigh.

The pilot ran to a truck, hoping to use it to drive Colonel Raleigh out of the sun, but the truck refused to start. Every other vehicle also refused to start. The best he could do was give the colonel elementary first aid and struggle to carry him into a hangar. There the pilot found the corpses of numerous military personnel, all of whom were covered with blood from their ears, noses, tear ducts, mouths, and other orifices. Some faces had hemorrhaged so badly that their skin had disintegrated.

The corpses were in positions that suggested a desperate effort to take cover, huddling against walls or aircraft or equipment. At least twelve soldiers seemed to have shot one another. Moans led the pilot to a few survivors, all of whom were bleeding, semiconscious, and delirious.

When the pilot radioed his report, he was told to stand by. Ten minutes later, an authoritative voice told him, "Stay where you are. Try to help Colonel Raleigh. Do not go anywhere else on the base. Two C-45s are being dispatched with a medical team. After they arrive, return to Fort Bliss and report immediately for debriefing. With that exception, do not discuss what you've seen with anyone. I repeat--do not go anywhere else on the base."

While the first C-45 did in fact carry medical personnel, the second brought a security team whose purpose was to investigate the integrity of the underground facility. A similar scene of devastation awaited them: most of the men dead from burns and hemorrhages, a few survivors moaning in pain. Again some victims seemed to have shot one another. Blood covered the walls.

Within three days, the airbase was shut down. The official explanation for the deaths was that a massive fuel leak had caused a devastating fire. The planes and other equipment were removed to various other bases. The entrance to the underground facility was sealed.

Signs warned trespassers about unexploded bombs.

Chapter 75.

Lockhart and the special-ops team hurried away from the beam of light. Clutching their M4s, they reached the hole the rocket had made when it blasted the concrete shed. Stairs led downward, where a glow revealed smoke.

"We came with tear-gas capability," the special-ops leader told him.

They pulled gas masks from their equipment backpacks. Motioning for him to stay back, they hurried down the stairs.

Lockhart crouched to protect himself from the heat that the beam of light gave off.

"I see a trip wire!" a voice yelled.

"Step over it! Stupid bastard should have hidden it better!"

Lockhart heard boots clattering farther down the metal stairs.

Without warning, he was thrown back by the force of an explosion below. Another trip wire! he realized. Landing hard on rubble, he groaned from the pain. Screams at the bottom of the stairs dwindled until the only sound was the hiss-crackle-hum from the beam of light.

And the unearthly music, which now had an eerie, throbbing quality. He had believed that it came from the beam of light, but now, as he squirmed shakily to his feet, it was obvious that the music echoed from the bottom of the stairs.

He picked up his M4, moved to the gaping hole, and looked cautiously down. The glow beyond the smoke showed him that the stairs were now a tangle of twisted metal and bodies.

Outraged, Lockhart slung his assault carbine over his shoulder. The right banister dangled from where its metal was anchored in concrete.