Dark Sky (The Misadventures of Max Bowman Book 1) (17 page)

Wednesday morning.

I knew we each had a phone call to make before we left the hotel and headed further north.

I gave PMA back his cell phone so he could make his. It didn’t matter if he had it now. It didn’t matter anymore if anyone had hacked his phone or was tracking our movements through it. As Mr. Barry Filer had said, this was going to be the last stop. I told him to call his mother, not to say too much, but just to tell her he was okay and with me.

I went into the bathroom to call Jules. It was six a.m. our time, which meant it was eight a.m. in New York. Which also meant I woke her up.

“Hlllowww?” she mumbled.

“It’s Max,” I said. “Don’t yell and don’t hang up.”

“Where are you?” she said sleepily and with confusion.

“Kalispell, Montana.”

Pause.

“WHAT?”

“Kalispell, M…”

“I HEARD YOU.”

Pause.

“Wait…you’re Max again?”

“I was always Max, I…”

She groaned with the pain of the eternally-in-the-dark. I kept going.

“Look, I haven’t slept with anybody else. You know I don’t lie, unless it’s about something stupid just to keep you from getting pissed off.”

“You don’t think I would get pissed off about you fucking somebody else? Where the hell is your mind? Oh, yeah, Montana. What the HELL are you in Montana for???”

“Not sure.”

“You’re really in some kind of trouble, aren’t you?”

“Normally I would use this as a punchline, but I’m serious - if I told you anymore, they might have to kill you.”

I could feel her tears welling up over the phone.

“What the hell…I thought they just gave you stupid shit to do…what the hell, Max? What the hell is this?”

“I don’t know. But I should be home probably day after tomorrow. Don’t worry.”

“You’re doing that bullshit thing where you pretend everything’s going to be fine. I hate that bullshit thing, Max, I hate bullshit. Are you really going to get home?”

“If I have anything to say about it.”

Another pause.

“I…I don’t want to talk anymore. If you can’t tell me what’s going on, I…I can’t do it.”

“Yeah, I get it.” I stopped a moment. “I love you, Jules.”

A pause.

“FUCK YOU!”

Not the reaction I hoped for.

“YOU DON’T TELL ME THAT FOR THE FIRST TIME WHEN YOU’RE GOING TO DIE! THAT’S REALLY FUCKED UP, MAX!”

“Yeah. I guess it is.”

She hung up.

I looked at the phone as if it might have some words of wisdom for me, but all it had was a big DISCONNECTED on its screen. I got up from where I was sitting, off the lid of the toilet, and went back out in the living room.

Where PMA was yelling at Angela.

“Goddammit, Mom, I’m okay, stop freaking out already!”

He hung up on her just as my phone rang again. I answered.

“Do you love me because you’re going to die or because you love love me?”

“The second one,” I said.

“I love you too,” Jules said crying. “So DON’T DIE.”

She hung up again just as the kid got his mom back on the phone.

“I’m sorry, Mom, I just…I just wanted to let you know I was all right. Don’t…don’t worry about me. I’ll call you again soon.”

A pause as she said whatever she was saying.

“Goodbye, Mom.” He hung up again.

We looked at each other, two emotionally-stunted males trying our best to deal with women who were scared to death of what was going to happen to us.

“We should get going,” I said.

“Yeah,” he agreed.

“What do you think they’re going to do to us?”

We were heading north on Route 93, north to God-knows-what, when the kid turned to me and asked that perfectly valid question.

And I really had no idea.

“I don’t think they’re going to kill us. They don’t have to bring us to Montana to do that.”

“So we shouldn’t worry, huh?”

“Well…there are other things you can do to a person.”

He looked at me in confusion.

“What does that mean?”

I shrugged, because I didn’t really know. It was my gut talking. And my gut was screaming at me to turn the car around.

It was going up to the low sixties today, the kind of weather I liked the best. The big sky country was beautiful, the mountains on either side of us were magnificent.

I’d have to come back here another time when my life wasn’t completely fucked.

Jan told us to turn left off the state highway and take a small gravel road that seemed to disappear into the woods. I thought my cyber-beloved was double-crossing me, until I saw a marker to the side reading, “Sonnenrad, 8 miles.”

The road made for a long and rough ride - it was narrow and not in very good condition. A beat-up pick-up came from the other direction and we both had to get over to our respective shoulders to allow both of us to occupy the same patch of road at the same time. If this was designed to look like a road to nowhere, it succeeded in its aspirations.

Soon, however, we saw some small buildings in a clearing in the distance. As we got closer, we could see that they were all shapes and sizes and, together, they made up a strange hodgepodge that resembled a community. Some homes looked like they had literally been constructed from nearby trees and shrubs. Some looked like the kind of prefab houses you could order online. Then there was a modest gathering of mobile homes all parked to the side, as if the owners had decided to consign themselves to their own movable ghetto.

The streets, such as they were, were mostly made of mud and the parked vehicles ranged from bright new shiny 4x4s to old battered trucks that looked like they were made of more rust than metal. There was a single massive electricity line traveling overhead with smaller wires hanging down from it like some sort of power spaghetti, spreading every which way - some to junction boxes and some directly to the homes themselves.   

“Is this a town?” asked the kid as I wondered how many septic tanks were buried in the immediate area.

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

Neither of us could tell what the hell it was. It obviously wasn’t a planned community, but it
was
grandly posing as a gated one – because, blocking our way ahead in the road was the kind of red and white tapered horizontal beam you’d find at a train crossing - and to the left side of it, a small makeshift guard booth made of tin or maybe just aluminum foil, who the hell knew?

We stopped a few feet from the gate and a big burly hairy man in his thirties who looked like Tony Soprano crossed with a bear came out of the booth. He wasn’t wearing a uniform, just a large brown sweater with a hole or two in it, black work pants with a hole or three in them, and muddy boots. I rolled down the window to meet today’s very first special guest.

“Good day, gentlemen,” he said in dramatically-courteous fashion as he waddled up to our rental. “And how are you doing today in all of your endeavors?”

“Not bad, how about yourself?” I answered sweetly.

“Oh, I’m doing AMAZINGLY well. It’s a beauteous day every day here in God’s country.”

“Yeah, I suppose it is. I’m here looking for Black Sun…”

“Are you, sir?” He gave me a skeptical and suspicious look.

“Yeah, is there a problem?”

“Well, sir, very few non-official vehicles make their way down this road. Can you provide any documentation as to the nature of your business?”

I began counting the holes in his clothing. I was up to six when I decided this was really a whole of lot of horseshit.

“I don’t know, can you provide me with any documentation demonstrating you have any official connection with Black Sun? That you actually have the power to detain me?”

He blinked back at me.

“Sir, they entrust me with the…”

Horseshit.

“What’s your name?”

“Claude Bachman.”

“Well, Claude, I’m Max Bowman, currently on an assignment from the CIA.  This is Jeremy, he’s General Donald Davidson’s grandson. And I’ve obtained the maximum insurance possible for this rental vehicle, which means I don’t give a shit if I ram it through this fucking plywood gate of yours.”

It took him a few seconds to process all that, so I kept counting. Nine holes. I was about to ask him to turn around so I could continue, when Claude suddenly broke out into a huge laugh.

“Well, Mr. Bowman, you won’t have to resort to that sort of measure, believe you me!  Very good to meet you – and an honor to meet young Jeremy here, a descendent of such a great man!”

He offered a hand. I shook it. He squeezed way too hard, just like he did everything way too hard.

“Black Sun is two more miles down the road, through our lovely little town here. I hope you’ll forgive me, we just have to be TREMENDOUSLY careful around here. The government, you know. They want to burn our little hamlet to the ground.”

“Why’s that?”

He lost his tremendous and amazing joviality in a heartbeat.

“Because they know we oppose them!”

“In what way?”

“In all ways! They want to defile our purity. Take our country away. And we, sir, are not going to allow that to happen.”

“Well, as long as you’ve got it under control.”

“That’s why we’ve come here, sir. We’ve put our trust in The Dark Sky people. We know that when our time of need comes, it is THEY who will be standing on the side of righteousness. 

“So…this town is here because of them?”

“Word gets out, sir. We would be tremendously honored to join them when the Day of Struggles begins.”

“The Day of Struggles.”

“Absolutely. We all know it’s coming.”

We stared at each other a moment.

“So, can you open the gate…?”

“ABSOLUTELY, sir!”

As he waddled back to the booth, I looked inside its open door and saw a giant Samurai sword standing in the corner. He hit a button that raised the gate. I called to him.

“Nice sword!”

“It’s AUTHENTIC!” he boomed proudly.

Of course it was. I nodded and drove on.

The faces of the residents of Sonnenrad watched us with curiosity and suspicion as we slowly made our way down the main “street” of the “town.” There was a grocery store, a pharmacy, a dry cleaners and some kind of rickety café, which looked so filthy that the food probably killed any rodents that might threaten it. There was also a church of sorts with a nailed-together wooden cross over the door – oh, and more than a few confederate flags flying proudly over homes.

“This place is freaky,” the kid said in the understatement of the millennium.

The faces kept staring at us like we were aliens - the outer space kind, not the Hispanic kind. If we were the latter, I had a feeling our car would have been on fire.

“Yeah. When that Day of Struggles comes, I’m not sure this will be a viable first line of defense.”

Then we saw it.

Down the road, maybe another mile or so, nestled in a small valley, appeared a large five-story black building surrounded by a large grouping of modern army barracks.

“Black Sun?” the kid said.

“Don’t know what the hell else it would be.” I answered.

As we got close, we approached another checkpoint, a checkpoint much different than the one occupied by the tremendously good gentleman with the samurai sword. This was a full-on for-reals military-style checkpoint, the kind that made you frightened even though you hadn’t done anything. The high-security booth was manned by two bad asses wielding submachine guns - and wearing the very same blood-red Dark Sky uniforms that Michael Winters had described from memory.

The gate itself was composed of two giant, twenty-feet high sliding doors made of solid metal fencing – the same kind of metal fencing that encircled the entire, seemingly-endless perimeter of the Black Sun complex. At various points along the fence, towering high in the air, were guard stations where what looked like trained snipers perched, ready to take out whoever needed to be taken out.

This didn’t look like a training facility. It looked like a fucking prison.

The main guard at the checkpoint lacked the ebullience and élan of Claude Bachman. He didn’t inquire as to the state of our health. Instead, he curtly looked us up and down with a severe expression. He wasn’t too much older than PMA.

“Yes?”

“We’re here to see a Mr. Barry Filer. I’m Max Bowman.”

He hit his tablet with his finger a couple of times.

“You’re expected, Mr. Bowman, but alone.”

“I have Jeremy Longetti with me.”

The guard looking inside at Jeremy Longetti for a long minute.

“Does he have ID?”

“No sir, he flushed it down a toilet.”

The guard had nothing to say about that. Instead, he walked away from our car as he whipped out his small walkie-talkie device. When he was out of earshot, I saw him start talking to whoever was on the other end. It was a very short conversation.

He came back and asked us to get out of the car. Then he and his partner searched us thoroughly. Another guard seemed to appear out of nowhere and began searching through our car. He even used one of those mirrors-on-a-pole to look underneath the rental to make sure we didn’t have any bombs strapped there. These people didn’t take chances.

When all that was finally done, the main guard handed us two badges that said “Visitor” in blood-red letters.

“Pin these on. Drive straight ahead to the tall black building and check in at the front desk. They’ll know what to do with you there.”

I handed the kid his badge as the gates creaked open. He mouthed “What – the – fuck” at me and I shrugged.

We drove through the facility, past Dark Sky officers drilling young recruits. It reminded me of Parris Island, the Marines facility located down in South Carolina. My brother signed up with the USMC during the Vietnam War and my parents took me to his graduation from boot camp. There were a lot of angry drill sergeants yelling at a lot of sweaty recruits everywhere on the base. This was similar, only this was no official military organization, this was a private company playing soldier, getting ready for their own for-profit wars.

The streets here were paved, wide, pristine and clean. In fact, everything was pristine and clean at this place, since it couldn’t have been more than a few years old. Andrew Wright had certainly directed a few billion towards its construction and, at the same time, made sure it was so far off the grid that people could easily disappear here. The Day of Struggles wouldn’t have a chance. 

We arrived at the black building, which had a huge Dark Sky logo rotating on the roof. I parked in front of it. A few seconds later, the entrance doors automatically opened and we entered the belly of the beast – and it was a magnificent belly, I had to say. The lobby was three stories tall with a giant black metallic – what else? - American Eagle covering the forty-foot back wall. Under the eagle, a receptionist sat at a long black granite desk, patiently waiting for us to cross the length of a football field that stood between us and him. He was another humor-deprived young man in a blood-red uniform.

“Mr. Bowman and Mr. Longetti?”

We nodded in unison as we walked towards the desk.

“So, that town or whatever it is down the road,” I began. “What’s…”

“Mr. Bowman, I’m going to ask you to turn around and walk back out of the building. You’re to be taken to The Barn.”

“The Barn?” I asked. “Are we to be milked?”

“It’s the name of the building in the back of the facility.” He craned his neck to look past us and through the glass entrance doors. “As a matter of fact, your vehicle is here.”

We turned. It was a black SUV identical to the fleet we encountered in Branson – not exactly a surprise to either of us. We turned and started to head back out the way we came in.

“Um, no, Mr. Longetti, you’re to remain here.”

PMA turned back to the receptionist.

“You’ll be…” The receptionist reviewed his computer screen with a slightly confused expression, then looked up again. “…someone will be meeting you here shortly.”

The kid looked at me.

“It’s their ballpark,” I said. “Wait here. I’ll be okay.”

I turned and headed out to the waiting SUV. I really didn’t know if I was going to be okay. It wasn’t a good sign that they were splitting us up, but I assumed this was to safeguard the kid, which I was all in favor of.

The driver of the SUV was yet another young gentleman in a Dark Sky uniform with a serious case of being serious. He had me get in the back seat and drove towards the back of the facility, past all the barracks, a mess hall, a few other one-level office buildings, a gymnasium, their equivalent of a PX store…and then, into the weeds. We had driven through a back gate in the tall metal fencing and were now driving through the wild grass, because there was no real road back here, just vegetation that had been run over a couple hundred times until it formed a path of sorts.

The only thing back here was The Barn.

We came over a small hill and there it was, all by its lonesome, about a hundred feet or so ahead. I assumed it was The Barn, it sure as shit was shaped like a barn, even though it was jet black and appeared to be made of solid steel. We drove around the back of it to where two other lookalike SUVs were parked, pulled up beside them and stopped. My driver helpfully pointed out a nearby door, I got out of the vehicle and thanked him. He said nothing in return.