Authors: Douglas Preston
He saw the glint of something ahead in the light, heard a flurry of movement, a shape moving in the trees. He threw himself behind a trunk, crouching, waiting—and a horse came into view, stamping and eyeing them nervously. The woman’s paint horse.
Riderless.
The men fanned out, surrounding the nervous animal, which pranced about, flaring its nostrils and backing up.
Fordyce realized what had happened. A fury seized him for the moment before he got his breathing back under control. He rose, holstered his pistol.
“Lower the lights,” he said evenly. “You’re spooking it.”
He approached the horse, hand out, and the horse came closer, nickering. He took the halter. The horse was missing its saddlebags, and the bridle had been tied to the saddlehorn. This was a horse that had been deliberately turned loose.
Once again, he had difficulty breathing and had to make an effort to hide his rage. It wouldn’t do to show weakness in front of the men. As the men and dogs came up, he turned to them. “We’ve been following the wrong trail.”
This was followed by a stunned silence.
“At some point back there, probably way back, they turned the horse loose and continued on foot. We’ve been following the horse. We’ll have to backtrack and find where they turned off.”
He looked around. His team consisted of NEST officers, some in bad physical shape, soaked with sweat. There were FBI agents detailed to NEST, the dog handler, and some local law enforcement that somehow managed to tag along. The group was too big.
“You—” He pointed to the least-fit local lawman—“and you, and you, take the horse back down. It’s evidence, so keep chain of custody and turn it over to the forensic team.”
He looked around. “We’re going to have to move a
lot
faster. There are too many of us.” He ruthlessly cut out some more deadwood, sending them back with the horse, waving away murmurs of protest.
Kneeling, he spread out the USGS topo maps, then took out the sat phone and dialed Dart. God, how he hated to make the call. As it rang, he looked around at the group he’d just dismissed, still standing around like cows. “What the hell are you waiting for? Get going!”
“Status.” Dart’s thin voice spoke, no preliminaries.
“We don’t have him yet. They decoyed us away with the horse. We’re going to have to backtrack.”
A sharp exhale of displeasure. “So our choppers are in the wrong area?”
“Yes.” Fordyce glanced at the map he’d spread out. “They should be redeployed deeper in the mountains. My guess would be an area called the Bearhead.”
He heard a rustle of paper. Dart was looking at the same maps.
“We’ll shift our aerial teams over there.” A pause, then Dart asked: “What’s his plan?”
“I’d guess he’s just running. Simple as that.”
“We need him. And there’s something else. I’ve gotten reports of your people firing indiscriminately at them. This is totally unacceptable. We need them alive, damn it. We need to question them.”
“Yes, sir. But they may be—probably are—armed. They’re terrorists. The FBI rules of engagement are crystal clear that deadly force may be used in the case of preservation of life under the doctrine of self-defense.”
“First of all, there’s no proof that
she’s
a terrorist. She may be…temporarily under his influence. And as for the rules of engagement, you deliver me two dead bodies and I will be very, very unhappy. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir,” said Fordyce, swallowing.
“Agent Fordyce, the only reason you’re where you are right now is because I don’t have anyone else on scene. Just you and twelve other special agents who were unable to make a simple collar. And who can’t find him despite overwhelming advantages in manpower and equipment. So I ask you: are you going to get him or not?”
Fordyce stared hotly into the darkness of the mountains. “We’re going to get him, sir.”
A
PALE LIGHT APPEARED
in the mouth of the cave. Gideon raised his head. His mouth felt like damp chalk, his lips dry and cracking, and his bare back ached from sunburn. Propping himself on his elbow, he looked at Alida, still sleeping, her blond hair spread across the sand. As he gazed at her, she opened her eyes.
“We’d better get going,” he said.
“No.” Her voice was husky from disuse.
Gideon stared at her.
“Not until you take off these cuffs.”
“I told you, I don’t have a key.”
“Then lay the links on a rock and pound them off. If we’re going to find water, we’ve got to split up.”
“I can’t risk you running off.”
“Where am I going to run to? Anyway, in case you hadn’t noticed, I believe you. Look at you. You’re no terrorist.”
He glanced back at her. “What changed your mind?”
“If you were a terrorist,” she went on, “you would have tried to use that fake six-gun on me as soon as I’d served my purpose. No—you’re just some schmuck who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. So can we
please
take these damn cuffs off?”
Gideon grunted. He certainly wanted to trust her. “I’ll need a piece of stiff wire and a knife.”
She plucked a small knife and a thin key ring from a pant pocket, the latter of which he quickly straightened out. Then, using the key ring as a pick and the tip of the penknife as a tension wrench, he sprang the simple lock in a matter of thirty seconds or so.
“You lied to me. You could’ve picked that lock anytime.”
“I had to trust you first.” He looked around, picked up two empty beer cans—no doubt left by hunters—and stuffed them into his pockets. The cans would come in handy when and if they found water.
“Anything more of value in those saddlebags?” he asked.
“Why?”
“Because I’m not carrying them any farther.”
She dug out a lighter and a few candy bars and slipped them into her pockets. Then they exited the mine and started walking south, staying to the wooded ravines and valleys as much as possible, moving apart but keeping each other in sight. They looked for water but found no sign. It was June, before the summer rains: the driest time in New Mexico.
The dry washes eventually came together into a deep ravine with sheer granite walls. As they climbed down it, Gideon heard the sound of an approaching chopper; moments later a fast-moving Black Hawk passed less than two hundred feet above them, doors open, M143 guns mounted left and right. It swept away and vanished beyond the walls of the ravine.
“Jesus, did you see those guns?” Alida said. “You think they’d shoot us?”
“They’ve already tried.”
At noon, they finally found water: a small puddle at the bottom of a pour-off. They threw themselves down and lapped up the muddy fluid. Then they lay back in the shade of the overhang. As the water settled their thirst, a raging hunger took hold.
After a few minutes, Gideon roused himself and gobbled down the rest of the granola bar. “What about those candy bars?”
She pulled out two Snickers bars, which had melted in the heat. He tore the wrapper off one end of his and pressed the bar into his mouth, like toothpaste, swallowing as fast as he could.
“More?” he asked, his mouth still half full.
“That’s all.” Her own face was smeared with chocolate and mud.
“You look like a two-year-old the morning after Halloween.”
“Yeah, and you look like her snot-nosed baby brother.”
They filled the old beer cans with water and continued on, exiting the far end of the ravine and climbing another ridge.
As the day wore on, the chopper traffic increased, along with occasional fixed-wing aircraft flying in patterns. He had no doubt their pursuers were using infrared and Doppler radar, but the intense heat of the day—and the heavy tree cover—kept them safe. By late afternoon they were approaching the southern end of the Bearhead, an area that Gideon started to recognize.
At sunset, they finally reached the end of the mountains. They crept up to the top of the last ridge and—falling to their bellies and peering through the cover of a thicket of brush oaks—looked down on the town of Los Alamos, home of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Manhattan Project, and the atomic bomb.
Despite its remarkable past—at one time its very existence had been top secret—Los Alamos looked like any other government town, ugly and generic, with fast-food joints, prefab apartment complexes, and nondescript office buildings. What made it different was its spectacular setting: the town and labs spread out on a series of isolated mesas projecting from the flanks of the Jemez Mountains. At over seven thousand feet, it was one of the highest-altitude cities in the United States. Originally chosen for its inaccessibility and remoteness, it was surrounded by sheer thousand-foot cliffs on one side and cut off by lofty mountains on the other. Gideon could just see, beyond the town, the immense crack in the earth known as White Rock Canyon, at the bottom of which, flowing unseen, the Rio Grande roared through a series of rapids and cataracts.
To the south of town Gideon could make out the major Tech Areas, heavily fenced areas dotted with huge, warehouse-like buildings. The look of the place caused him to shiver. Was it really the sanest idea to break in there? But he could see no alternative. Someone had framed him. He had to find out who.
He rolled on his side and took a long drink from the dirty beer can. He handed it to Alida. “As I hoped, the air search seems to be sticking mostly to the north.”
“So what now? Cut the fence?”
He shook his head. “That’s no normal fence. It’s loaded with infrared sensors, motion sensors, pressures, alarm circuits—and there are video cameras hidden along its length. Even if we did get through, there are other, invisible rings of security I know nothing about.”
“Cute. So we find a gap, go around?”
“There are no gaps. The security in the Tech Areas is pretty much fail-safe.”
“Seems you’re shit out of luck, Osama.”
“We don’t have to evade security. We’ll go right in through the front gate.”
“Yeah, right, with you at the top of the FBI’s most wanted list.”
He smiled. “I don’t think I am. At least not yet. They have every reason to keep their pursuit of me secret. They think I belong to a terrorist cell—why broadcast to the cell that I’ve been identified, that I’m on the loose?”
Alida frowned. “I still think it’s insanely risky.”
“There’s only one way to find out.” And he rose to his feet.
T
HERE WERE NO
floor buttons in the elevator, just a key, and an armed marine to operate it. Dart entered the elevator; the marine, who knew him well, still carefully checked his ID—knowing Dart would reprimand him if he didn’t—then grasped the key and gave it a single turn.
The elevator descended for what seemed forever. As it did, Dr. Myron Dart took a moment to collect his thoughts and take stock.
As N-Day approached, entire sections of Washington had been evacuated and secured by large numbers of troops. Every square inch had been searched and re-searched with dogs, radiation monitors, and by hand. Meanwhile, the country held its collective breath, speculating endlessly on just where in Washington Ground Zero might be.
Many across the country were fearful that the massive response in DC would force the terrorists to pick another target. As a result, other large American cities, from LA to Chicago to Atlanta, were in a panic, with residents fleeing, tall buildings emptying out. There had been riots in Chicago, and citizens had pretty much evacuated themselves from anywhere near Millennium Park and the Sears Tower. New York City was a mess, with entire swaths of the city abandoned. The stock market had lost fifty percent of its value and Wall Street had shifted most of its trading operations to New Jersey. A long list of American landmarks had become shunned, with nearby residents fleeing—from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Liberty Bell. Even the Gateway Arch in St. Louis was generating panic. It had become a theater of the absurd.
Along with the speculation and panic came the inevitable recriminations over the stalled investigation. NEST had come under a tidal wave of criticism, second-guessing, and public furor. They said it was incompetent, chaotic, disorganized, choking in bureaucracy.
Much of the criticism, Dart had to admit, was valid. The investigation had taken on a life of its own, a Frankenstein, a
lusus naturae
not subject to central control. He was not surprised.
It was, indeed, inevitable.
The marine glanced at him. “Excuse me, sir?”
Dart suddenly realized he had murmured out loud. God, he was tired. He shook his head. “Nothing.”
The elevator doors whisked open onto a passageway carpeted in blue and gold. A wall clock announced eleven
PM
, but this deep underground, under these circumstances, time of day had become essentially meaningless. As Dart stepped out, two more marines appeared, flanking him and leading him down the corridor. They passed a room full of people sitting at a monstrous wall of computer screens, all talking simultaneously into headsets; another room that contained a podium with the presidential seal, television cameras, and a bluescreen. There were conference rooms, a small cafeteria, temporary military barracks. Finally, they reached a closed door with a desk placed before it. A man behind the desk smiled as they drew near.
“Dr. Dart?” he asked.
Dart nodded.
“Go right in. He’s expecting you.” The man reached into a drawer and pressed something; there was a buzz and the door behind him sprang ajar.
Dart stepped through the door. The president of the United States sat behind a vast, unadorned desk. Two miniature American flags stood at opposite ends of it. Between them was a row of phones in various bright colors, like something you might see in a playroom. On a side wall were half a dozen monitors, each tuned to a different station, their audio output muted. The president’s chief of staff stood silently to one side, hands folded in front. Dart exchanged nods with the chief, who was famously taciturn, and then turned his attention to the man behind the desk.