Authors: David DeBatto
He spiraled below the helicopter, swinging free on the winch cable, his weight sliding him down the cable until he grabbed
the hook with his right hand, his flesh torn and burning. He was spinning madly and couldn’t reach the hook with his left
hand.
The helicopter turned sharply. He swung out wide from centrifugal force. The pilot was lowering the cable. At the same time,
the helicopter descended.
He managed to grab the cable with his left hand, gaining purchase, but he was still spinning. He was bleeding, blood running
down his right arm.
He hung on.
The helicopter rose, heading back toward the house.
He spread-eagled his legs to stabilize his rotation.
He saw the house below approaching. He saw Ben Yutahay standing in the driveway, the Mark 40 DeLuca had seen on the porch
resting on Yutahay’s shoulder, aimed at the chopper.
They were over the stables.
They were over the pool.
He wasn’t going to get a second chance.
Timing was key. He estimated the chopper’s forward speed at thirty or forty miles an hour, but hanging from the bottom of
a helicopter by a cable, it was difficult to be certain.
He saw Yutahay fire. He saw the grenade snaking up from the ground.
He let go.
The grenade missed the helicopter, hissing over his head as he fell.
He flew through the air, dropping from what he estimated to be a height of perhaps one hundred feet. He spread his arms and
legs wide to slow his acceleration. Falling free. Soaring. It was almost pleasant. He recalled a parachute jump he’d made
in Iraq, a night jump from a height of over six miles. Falling from the sky might not be a bad way to die.
Maybe some other day.
His timing was good. He braced himself, covering his face and turning sideways before slamming flat against the side of the
inflated tennis court dome. The blow knocked the wind out of him, and he nearly blacked out, but the ripstop nylon held, collapsing
under his weight and the force of the collision like an overinflated pole vault pad but cushioning his fall.
As the dome sprang gently back into form, DeLuca slid down the side and hit the ground hard. He wanted to scream in pain—apparently
the hook had struck him in the ankle, though he hadn’t noticed—but he had to regain his breath first.
He limped around the end of the dome, which blocked his view.
In the distance, the helicopter was changing its vector, rising and banking left, screaming off toward the airstrip. DeLuca
watched as it climbed, helpless to stop it, the sound of its engines growing fainter and fainter.
Ben Yutahay was at his side, putting his arm around DeLuca’s waist to support him.
“Are you all right?” Yutahay asked.
His ribs hurt if he inhaled too deeply—something was definitely cracked where the winch had struck him—and the palm of his
right hand was a bloody mess, but other than that, he was no worse for wear.
“I’m okay,” he told Yutahay. They watched as, a moment later, the white jet they’d seen parked on the landing strip screamed
into the sky.
“I hope you don’t mind that I shot at the helicopter, but I figured you for a goner anyway,” Yutahay said. “My artillery skills
are a little rusty.”
“I would have figured the same way. I’m only sorry you missed,” DeLuca said.
He crossed to the door to the tennis court dome, testing the knob to discover the door was locked. Yutahay moved to his side,
bidding DeLuca to stand back, lowering the sawed-off shotgun at the door, until he thought better and aimed ten feet to the
left of the door before firing. The blast blew a six-foot hole in the fabric. The air that rushed out was cool.
DeLuca ducked his head and entered first. Yutahay followed. DeLuca’d hoped to find a satellite dish array inside the dome,
but instead found only a tennis court, red clay, air-conditioned, the surface strewn with bright green tennis balls.
He found a towel and wrapped it around his hand, then went back outside. He looked at the house. A search was unlikely to
turn up anything, given Koenig’s thoroughness. DeLuca would have given anything to have a look at the laptop he’d seen on
Koenig’s desk.
He felt Ben Yutahay’s hand on his shoulder as he stared off to the east. There was no sign of the helicopter anymore, no sound
but the desert breeze.
“What about Marvin?” DeLuca asked. “Any signs?”
“Signs, yes,” Yutahay said. “I think I don’t want to agree with what they’re telling me.”
“What are they telling you?” DeLuca said.
“He stopped, about there,” Yutahay said, pointing to the front of the house. “I saw his boot heel but not his kickstand, so
I don’t think he got off the bike. I think he was talking to someone at the house. Then he took off at a high speed, because
you can see where his rear wheel fishtailed. He rode in that direction,” Yutahay said, pointing, “and then he turned right.
I found one of those circles of glass in the sand where he veered, and another where he turned. I think he was running from
somebody. Then the tracks of his dirt bike lead up to the edge of the cliff. I don’t think he knew it was coming because there’s
no sign that he hit his brakes, and I think he must have been going maybe sixty to eighty miles an hour. There’s maybe a three-hundred-foot
drop. I was going to climb down to see if I could find his bike or his remains when I sensed that you might be in trouble.”
“We can send some men down there when we search the house. You can go with them if you’d like,” DeLuca said, even though he
doubted they’d find anything.
“Who do you think he was running from?” Yutahay said, looking DeLuca in the eye. “Can you tell me?”
DeLuca wished he could.
“I think Cheryl had an affair with Koenig. He wouldn’t let her end it. I think Marvin came here to tell Koenig to back off.
He was in love with Cheryl Escavedo.”
Yutahay looked as if he was about to break down, but only for a moment. He blinked once, then took a deep breath, steeling
himself.
“I’m glad that he was in love,” he said at last. “It would be a hard thing, to die without ever knowing that. I don’t think
he ever loved his wife. He married her because she was pregnant, but I don’t think he ever loved her. Maybe it’s a good thing
to know that you are going to die because of love. Do you think?”
DELUCA GOT HIS HAND ATTENDED TO AT THE Kirtland Base Hospital, telling the doctor he’d had a rope-climbing accident. He’d
cracked his seventh rib with a torn costochondral joint and sustained a badly bruised medial malleolus in his right foot,
for which the doctor prescribed Tylenol and rest. He could do the Tylenol part, but rest was out of the question, at least
for now.
He called a full briefing in the RV, with Colonel Oswald and General LeDoux split-screened on the plasma monitor. Oswald explained
the reasons why the team had been only partially read on about Darkstar. Sykes seemed annoyed, judging by his body language,
but the others accepted the explanation at face value. When Oswald was finished speaking, he asked if there were any questions.
“I just don’t understand how it is that we don’t have the technology to find this thing,” Vasquez said. “I mean, we built
it, right? It’s like a Klingon Bird of Prey or something.”
“We built it to be invisible,” Oswald said. “To radar, infrared, opticals. We did a good job. And it only changes its signature
when it fires, for a few seconds. We’d have to know exactly where to look, and exactly when to look. Other than that, this
thing is a needle in a haystack as big as the sky.”
“What about the danger of a matter/antimatter reaction,” DeLuca asked, touching on an element that Oswald had omitted from
both this briefing and the previous one. If his team was going to be read on, then they were going to be read on all the way—no
more bullshit. MacKenzie’s eyes widened as if she’d just seen a Kate Spade bag on sale for four dollars.
Oswald looked uncomfortable, uncertain how to answer.
“What Agent DeLuca is referring to,” General LeDoux said, “is a new kind of reactor powering the laser. Do you want me to
get the hard science on this or would you settle for my own understanding?”
“Yours will be fine,” DeLuca said.
“My understanding is that the possibility is virtually nil,” LeDoux said. “At the same time, ‘virtually nil’ is not the same
as ‘nil.’ What would actually happen in a cataclysmic detonation, since we can’t build an antimatter bomb small enough to
test, is just theory. So far.”
“So what do we do?” Sami asked. “I mean, why don’t we send the Third Army into Colorado and surround Cheyenne Mountain and
say, ‘Come out with your fucking hands up’? Pardon my French. We don’t have the resources or something?”
LeDoux shook his head.
“You’re it. You are the resources,” he said. “I should tell you, people at the Pentagon have their jockey shorts twisted up
around their ears, thinking that the knowledge of this has gone as far as it has. I’ve been arguing with them from the start
about your need to know exactly what it is you’re dealing with, but the fight, as I understand it, goes all the way to the
White House, where the feeling is that this is the biggest secret since Enigma. The op stays black, maximum discretion. I
can get you all the toys you need, but as far as personnel goes, you’re it.”
“But Sami still has a point,” Dan Sykes said. “You say Koenig’s been running this through NORAD. If he wrote the codes that
let him do that, why can’t we unwrite the codes and reset the system? Or just pull the plug on Cheyenne? I mean, literally,
take the cord out of the wall socket and watch all the lights go out and move everything to NORAD II for the time being?”
“We can lock him out, or try to,” Oswald said, “but we can’t pull the plug, for obvious reasons. We can’t blind him without
blinding ourselves. As far as NORAD II goes, General, why don’t you tell them?”
“I was going to call you about this if you hadn’t called me first, David,” LeDoux said. “Sinkhole came online last night at
0200 hours. We had a team meet Koenig’s jet when it landed at Peterson but he wasn’t on it. If he’s at Sinkhole, we need to
get him out. Unfortunately, Sinkhole is even more secure than Cheyenne, and all the access codes have been changed. It’s always
been last resort, the deepest underground facility in the world and entirely self-contained. We can’t break in, at least not
without drawing a whole lot of attention, and we can’t shut it down. Once again, this illustrates the weakness of a system
designed to keep intruders out but which can apparently do very little once the firewalls are breached. Right now we can’t
even communicate with it, but we’re assuming whoever is in there is going to pick up the phone eventually.”
“And say what?” MacKenzie asked. “What does he want? That’s what I don’t get. His gig is blown—we know what he’s doing. I
mean, we do, right? So what does he have left?”
“We’re not sure what he wants,” LeDoux said. “Colonel?”
“Department M-3 out of DOD’s PSYOPS is a watchdog unit that, since 1994, has run periodic evals on military personnel at the
highest levels,” Oswald said. “Basically it’s a room full of Army shrinks who read reports and hopefully identify any psychological
problems in leadership before they manifest themselves. They’re supposed to have access to everyone right up to the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, but there’ve been some at that level who’ve resisted. It’s a good program, but it was originally Hillary
Clinton’s idea, so you can imagine how well-received that was. At any rate, one of the doctors there has been trying to flag
Koenig for years. Unfortunately, we didn’t listen to him. He thinks Koenig is certified paranoid-schizophrenic, possibly even
to the point where he hears voices. But very special voices that tell him what to do and empower him. The doctor also thinks
Koenig’s managed to surround himself with true believers, something like a personality cult, within STRATCOM.”
“I was planning on talking to Lieutenant Carr, to see what he knows, after he gets over his headache,” DeLuca said. “I’ll
brief you on what I find out.”
“You can cancel that,” LeDoux said. “Lieutenant Carr killed himself last night.” DeLuca had sent Carr to the brig at Kirtland,
but he hadn’t thought to post a suicide watch. “Apparently he didn’t want to answer any questions.”
“Apparently,” DeLuca said.
“That might illustrate what we mean by Koenig’s developing a cult following. What we’ve been trying to avoid,” Oswald said,
“is any sort of Randy Weaver/Jim Jones/David Koresh-type situation where the guy feels pushed up against the wall. But that’s
what we have, with the obvious difference that the man is holed up, literally, but instead of a guy in a cabin with a high-powered
rifle keeping everyone at bay, this time the weapons are outside the cabin, and we’re the hostages. We’re obviously not going
to make any concessions, but until we hear from him, we’re working blind. The White House is very concerned. I’ve got a meeting
later today with Carla White and with the vice president’s national security adviser.”
“So what we need to do,” DeLuca said, “is either find a quiet way into Sinkhole, or find a way to talk Koenig into coming
out. Is that the mission now?”
“You got it,” LeDoux said. “Needless to say, this is time-sensitive. We’ll work on it from this end, but we’re open to anything
you can come up with. I’ll send you the schematics on Sinkhole, but as you’ll see, it’s pretty impenetrable.”
“We’ll get back to you,” DeLuca said.
He asked his team to brainstorm while he paid a call on Penelope Burgess. An overcast sky had broken into a hard, driving
rain that was probably snow at the higher elevations.
She lived at the end of Cliff Road, out toward Vulcan Peak and the Petroglyph National Monument, at the east end of town.
The house was a log cabin, surrounded by pine trees, with a wrap-around porch that afforded a view of Tijeres canyon below,
though at the moment that porch appeared to serve primarily as a woodshed, keeping her supply dry for the winter. A plume
of smoke drifted up into the rain from the stone chimney at the center of the cedar shake roof.