Authors: David DeBatto
“Pretty much due west,” Scott said. “North thirty-five degrees, four-point-seven-three-five-zero latitude and west one-zero-six
and forty-point-three-three-zero-seven longitude.”
“How far is it from me?”
“In feet or meters?”
“Feet’ll do.”
“Fourteen hundred exact,” Scott said.
“Thanks,” DeLuca said. “Say hello to your mother for me.”
He hung up.
“You’re right about the direction but you’re off about the distance,” DeLuca said.
“No I’m not,” Truitt said. “Your satellite is off.”
“The satellite can’t be…” DeLuca began, then remembered that Peggy Romano had recalibrated his GPS to read a hundred
yards west of true as a way of protecting him from Darkstar. “You’re right,” he said. “The satellite is off. And you can do
that in three dimensions, underground?”
Truitt shrugged.
“Do you want to help me get the men who killed Theresa? Do you want to help me solve this problem?”
Truitt thought a moment.
“What would I have to do?”
“We need a guide,” DeLuca said. “I want you to take me through Lechugilla to Sinkhole. Penelope says you’ve done it before.
Can you do it?”
“You’d never make it,” Truitt said.
“Let me worry about that,” DeLuca said. “Can it be done?”
Truitt stared at Burgess, angry that his secret had been revealed.
“Yes.”
“How long would it take?”
“Me, traveling alone?” Truitt said. “Forty-eight hours. One way.”
“How about a team of four?” DeLuca said.
“Five,” Burgess said. “You’re going to need more than one experienced caver. Not to mention that a chance to explore the far
reaches of Lechugilla is a chance I can’t pass up.”
“Six days,” Truitt said. “One way. But as I said, you’ll never make it.”
“We don’t have a choice,” DeLuca said. “I want you to get us there in forty-eight hours. We’re all fit and we all have rope
training.”
“You were limping when you walked across the parking lot,” Truitt said.
“It’s not a problem,” DeLuca said.
“Why would I want to help you?”
“Because we think the man who killed Theresa is in Sinkhole.”
Truitt looked at Burgess again, shaking his head.
“This is insane,” he said.
“Like I said, we don’t have a choice,” DeLuca told him. “Money’s not a problem—how long would it take to put it together?”
“I can help with the prep,” Burgess said.
“We could leave in the morning,” Truitt said. “It’s going to take us four hours minimum just to drive there.”
“I think I can arrange for somewhat faster transportation,” DeLuca said. “Meet us at the north gate of Kirtland at 0400 hours.”
“You sound like my father,” Truitt said. “I’ll meet you there at four o’clock.”
DeLuca found an e-mail from Walter Ford waiting for him when he got back to the RV.
David,
Thought you might be interested to know. One of my students decided to look into what happened to the rest of Koenig’s classmates
at Decatur Acad. Where are they now, etc. Took a while. He tracked down everybody but one, Daniel Berman, also a member of
the Key Club. Recall that the Key Club was an organization of young conservatives who thought the Vietnam War was just and
winnable and that Nixon was just the guy to win it. Not exactly ideologically mainstream at the time, and particularly not
among young people (as you may recall). Turns out that the reason we couldn’t find out anything about Daniel Berman was that
he changed his name before entering Yale, seeking something “less Jewish sounding,” according to his friends. The new name
was Carter Bowen. If that doesn’t ring a bell, Bowen is currently White House assistant national security adviser to the vice
president. Same guy who tried to argue that Saddam was buying enriched uranium from Nigeria and the guy who coauthored the
legal brief saying the president has the right to order the torture of prisoners if he so chooses, as long as the prisoner
is from a country not signatory to the Geneva Convention. Strongly opposed the resolution banning the assassination of foreign
leaders. And—served as vice ambassador at the U.S. embassy in Moscow during the time Koenig was posted there.
Don’t that blow a nice breeze up your boxer shorts?
Walter
DeLuca ordered his team to get a good night’s sleep, because they were going to need it. Peggy Romano told him that General
LeDoux wanted to speak with him in private and that she’d be in the motel bar for karaoke night if he needed any help. In
the RV, LeDoux came onscreen from a briefing room inside the Pentagon. DeLuca told his old friend what their plan was.
“I’m leaving Sami here to hold down the fort and to go bring Antonionus in while we’re gone. It might be leverage. I don’t
know how and I know it seems strange, but something tells me they’re connected. Plus, Sami doesn’t have the rope training
or the PT that the rest of us have.”
“Agreed,” LeDoux said.
“Was that what you wanted to see me about?”
LeDoux looked uncomfortable.
“I’ve been advised,” he said, “in terms I’d have to describe as unambiguous, to relate to you the rules of engagement. I’m
not exactly sure where this is coming from, and I’m trying to find out, but it’s definitely the highest levels. Personally,
I don’t agree with it, I’m going to go on the record to say, and I’ve been trying to run interference for you, but it’s ugly.
Passing this over to you isn’t something I’d do to a friend, but I guess that’s what we get for fraternizing all these years.”
“If it’s bad news, just give it me straight, Doc,’” DeLuca said. He recalled that LeDoux had had a meeting at the White House
with Carla White and with the vice president’s security adviser—Carter Bowen.
“I guarantee you’re not going to like this. Basically, they don’t want to go to trial with this, David. They don’t want publicity
of any kind. They don’t want a three-star general sitting in jail and they don’t want the ex-head of STRATCOM giving out press
statements. They don’t want any book deals. They don’t want any lawyers. They don’t want this on
The O’Reilly Factor
or the nightly news. General Koenig has been designated for termination, by any means necessary. That goes for whoever is
with him. That’s what they want me to tell you.”
“You’re giving my team a Direct Action mission,” DeLuca said. He wasn’t angry, but he wasn’t happy either. “Is that what you’re
saying?”
“Officially, Koenig has been declared an enemy combatant,” LeDoux said. “Equivalent to Mohammed Al-Tariq or Chemical Ali or
anybody else. Ordinarily, this would be given to the CIA, but there are reasons why the CIA can’t be involved right now.”
DeLuca knew it had happened before, particularly in matters where national security needs trumped the right to trial in a
court of law, and he understood that since passage of the Patriot Act, restrictions on the use of preemptive termination had
been relaxed. He could also imagine that the decision to execute a United States general was not one entered into lightly.
He understood the rules of warfare. He wasn’t so sure he agreed with how flexible the definition of war was becoming.
“And if he comes walking out waving a white flag?”
“We’re not recognizing any white flags,” LeDoux said.
DeLuca stared at the screen a moment.
“Message received,” he said, logging off before his friend could say anything more.
He knew how difficult it had been for LeDoux to pass the order on, because he knew it was not an order he’d be able to give
to any member of his team. It was, simply, an order he would have to take on himself.
He found MacKenzie at the bar, nursing a beer and staring at the bubbles. When he asked her if everything was okay, she said
things could be better.
“Could be worse, too,” DeLuca said. “There could be a guy up on stage singing ‘Moondance’ on an Ovation guitar with his eyes
closed. What’s wrong?”
She continued to look at her beer, as if embarrassed.
“You know I grew up in California, right?”
“Malibu,” he said. “Surfer girl.”
“Well yeah, but we didn’t live in the rich part of Malibu.”
“I didn’t know there was a poor part.”
“There is,” she said. “The part we lived in was prone to mudslides. I got caught in one. We were in the car and my father
was driving. I was six. We were crossing this bridge when it hit us. I guess just the tail end of it. It’d been raining all
day. Anyway, for a second, I got covered, and then my father reached in and pulled me out. Ever since then, I haven’t been
so big on caves. I like staying on top of the ground just fine.”
“If you want off the mission tomorrow…”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” she said. “Okay? I just don’t want anyone thinking, she’s just a scared girl. I surfed the big
water at Waimea side by side with the boys when I lived in Hawaii. I just thought it would help if somebody else knew. Your
son told me you had a fear of flying before you did the HALO jump in Iraq. You tell anyone?”
“Yeah,” he lied. “The anticipation is worse than the reality. That’s the whole deal, really. You going to be able to sleep?”
“I’ll give it another try,” she said, leaving three dollars on the bar. “Thanks.”
“Don’t forget, Mack,” DeLuca said. “You’re going to have a lot of fathers tomorrow who can reach in and pull you out.”
“Good night,” she said.
CAPTAIN MARTIN INFORMED THE BASE AT KIRTland to expect a crew of civilians from the University of New Mexico at 0400 hours,
to be flown to the town of Carlsbad City, and from there, they would proceed with government survey work. The cover story
was that they were going to locate a site for a new radar platform to service the White Sands missile range. The team wore
orange coveralls over UNM T-shirts, shorts, and lightweight hiking boots. DeLuca had chosen a twenty-year-old Cessna for transport,
as nondescript an airplane as he could find. A white University of New Mexico van was waiting for them at the Carlsbad airport.
They took 62 south to Dark Canyon Road, turning left after thirty minutes onto an unimproved road that changed to gravel,
stopping at the base of a canyon where Truitt parked the vehicle and got out. No sign marked the way to the cave entrance,
but DeLuca trusted that Truitt wasn’t lost.
They hiked in just as the day was breaking, crossing landscape that bore the approximate topology of an egg carton, all peaks
and valleys with sharp declivities but rarely anything flat or moderate. If the pace Truitt set on the trail to the cave entrance
was indicative of the pace he intended to set inside, DeLuca knew he was in for a grueling forty-eight hours. Atop a short
ledge, Truitt dropped his pack and donned his climbing harness as the others followed suit. “Anybody who has to piss or take
a dump,” he said, “find a bush. Once inside, we triple-Ziploc our by-products and pack the burritos out. In about ten minutes,
you’re going to be soaked in sweat from the heat and the humidity, so travel in your shorts and pack your coveralls to put
on when we rest. We sleep in the dirt. There’s potable water inside, so we’re going to camel it from pool to pool to cut down
on the weight we carry. We’re climbing a modified frog system. I’ll do the rigging. You’ve got food?”
“MREs,” Sykes said. “Yummy yummy.”
“What we want is maximum calories per cubic gram, but that’s up to you. You said you were bringing ropes?”
DeLuca dropped a pair of packs on the ground.
“That’s it?” Truitt said. “That’s the length I told you we’d need? That can’t possibly be enough.”
“That’s actually twice what you said we’d need,” DeLuca said, “compliments of DARPA. Tenth Mountain out of Fort Drum was testing
this stuff, but it’s still classified. They told me you were going to like it.”
Truitt opened one of the packs and examined the rope DeLuca had brought.
“What is this? Six millimeters?”
“Four. It’s a Teflon-Kevlar microweave.”
“Kevlar doesn’t stretch,” Truitt said. “Without shock absorption, you weaken your anchor points. This takes abrasion?”
“The Teflon protects from abrasion and the braid provides the stretch,” DeLuca said.
“Cool,” Truitt said. “Can I keep this when we’re finished?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody get so excited about rope,” Sykes said.
The cave entrance was protected by a sealed door, much like the hatch on a submarine, at the bottom of an unmarked twenty-meter-deep
pit in the earth set into a hillside. Truitt tied onto a permanently fixed bolt, and one by one, the team rappelled down through
a narrow mouth, gathering around the hatch below, where Truitt punched in the code he had obtained from the Park Service,
turned the handle, and the hatch swung open, revealing a corrugated tin culvert with a series of ladder rungs leading down
into the darkness. A strong wind blew from the hole at what Truitt said averaged sixty but often reached eighty miles an hour.
“We leave this place the way we found it,” Truitt said, looking from face to face. “I’m going to move fast and push you, but
monitor your bodies and if you have to rest, don’t be too proud to say so. A few years ago, a woman got careless and broke
her leg, less than half a mile in, and it took fifty volunteers almost a week to get her out, so don’t fuck up. Maintain body
awareness. Maintain rope awareness. Check your gear. I have extra LEDs for your headlamps and extra cells but conserve your
energy, biological and electrical.”
Truitt was first down the culvert, followed by Sykes, Vasquez, and MacKenzie, with DeLuca and Burgess bringing up the rear.
Wind roared through DeLuca’s helmet as he descended. At the bottom, he found Truitt standing at the top of a fixed rope leading
down into a black abyss. The lights on their helmets illuminated only the nearby rock—the abyss seemed bottomless, the darkness
around them a consuming thing that was somehow both magical and terrifying.
The fixed rope led an easy hundred meters down to a ledge that Truitt identified as Boulder Falls, a vertical drop that Truitt
took first, abseiling down and then calling up from the bottom, his voice distant and tinny. They followed in the same order
as they had entered, but this time, when DeLuca left the rock to find himself free-pitching in a black void, he felt entirely
strange and oddly alone, floating and somehow out-of-body, swinging on a pendulum without visual cues, the opposing forces
of gravity and centripetal force pulling at his guts in a way that challenged his senses. Beyond the lip, the pit opened into
a bell shape, until his headlamp failed to reach the surrounding surfaces. A glance below made him shiver, certain that he
would reach the end of the rope and fall and never stop falling. He slid faster, the rope slipping through his gloved hand.
He saw the lights of his teammates as he reached the bottom, where he disconnected from the rope and danced down a short pile
of breakdown, getting out of Penelope’s way as she descended above him.