Destroying Angel (20 page)

“Krantz?” Fayer said. “You’re not letting him get to you, are you?”

“Sully? Nah, who cares? He’s probably right, anyway.”

“No, he’s not, so quit apologizing for nothing. And if he mentions magic underwear one more time, I’m going to yank his tighty-whities so hard his nuts will explode.”

Krantz laughed. “Can Mormons say that?
Nuts?
”

“I just did. Now what’s up?”

He told her where he was and what they’d discovered. She listened in silence. When he finished she said in a flat voice, “Sounds like you’ve found them, all right. Or close enough.”

“So I’ll sit tight and wait for you to fly in with the cavalry?” Only silence on the other end. “Fayer? Dammit,” he said, assuming he’d lost the call.

“No, I’m still here.”

He shifted the phone to his other ear. “Talk to me. What’s going on?”

“You’re on the sat phone? I’ll call you back.”

The line went dead and he sat staring at the phone, confused and frustrated. A full minute went by, with Miriam and Eliza occasionally shining their beams in his direction, then continuing with an animated conversation—something about how many men Taylor Junior still had in his cult.

The phone rang.

“I’m on my cell,” Fayer said in a low voice. “Hope this doesn’t come back and bite me. Line might not be clean.”

“Who the hell is tapping your phone?”

“Probably nobody. But things are…weird. Never mind that. Look, I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but I don’t think they’ll give me resources for this.”

“What? Why not? You pulled strings to get us into the prison. Now we’ve found the main guy. Is it the military? Is this place a secret or something?”

“Yeah, some kind of secret. Or it was. It’s bloody hard to get any info. My hunch is old ICBM silos, big stuff in the Cold War,
abandoned about twenty years ago. The stuff is secret because nobody bothered to declassify the place. That’s my guess.”

“So why would that stop anything? This jerk killed forty-two people. It was a goddamn slaughter.”

“The military is not stopping anything. The problem is, nobody cares anymore.”

“You’re not making any sense. Nobody cares about the forty-two murders?”

“Krantz, I’m dead if this gets out. Literally dead. Executed.” She hesitated. “I
am
on stakeout. We’re following the governor of California.”

“The what? Governor Jimenez? He’s dirty? The same guy whose campaign was basically ‘I am an Eagle Scout who helps old ladies cross the street and once hitchhiked across America to return a dollar bill to its rightful owner’? That governor?”

“His problem isn’t corruption,” she said. “His problem is that he’s threatening to suspend agricultural exports from California.”

“He can’t do that.”

“No, he can’t. And he won’t.” A grim note entered her voice. “But he’s trying. The Department of Agriculture set up regional food-control boards. Jimenez is making noise about having them arrested if they enter the state. Says Californians are going to starve this year unless they feed their own state first. An unholy alliance of right-wing anti-federalists and Bay Area leftists in the legislature is goading him on.”

“Wow, that’s…I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t you watch the news?” she asked.

“Nobody has TV down here. Most people don’t have Internet either.” He hesitated. “So, you’re going after the governor of California. Who authorized that, the president?”

“It’s not just the principle of the thing,” she said, ignoring the question, “and the fact that what Jimenez wants is illegal. Imagine if the other agricultural states follow suit. Where does that leave Arizona? Nevada? New York? Starving to death, that’s where. We’ve got to worry about the whole country, not one state.”

Either way, it occurred to him that the federal government was setting up to do for the nation exactly what California was trying to do on the state level. Like that guy who’d come sniffing around Blister Creek last week. What was his name? Chip Malloy. Seemed harmless enough, although there was that strange thing with the armed guard. They were planning to nationalize the whole agricultural economy, that much was clear. Protect Americans, let the rest of the world starve.

“Our cult investigation is done,” she continued. “Finished. And that’s only the start. Counterfeiting is gone, drug interdiction is gone. They’re even reassigning the counterterrorism guys. Better hope some crazy from the Middle East doesn’t drive across the border with a truck full of fertilizer, because nobody is looking.”

He was quiet through this last part. All of it might be true—and it also occurred to him that if there were a crisis, maybe they’d forgive last year’s screwup and invite him back—but it didn’t change the fact that Taylor Junior was lurking out here, plotting another horrific attack. In fact, it made it worse. Even in the middle of an attack, there’d be less than even odds he could get anyone from the FBI to show up.

“We’ve waited a year,” he said. “I don’t want to sit on my hands until Taylor Junior crawls out of his hole, but if you think maybe another week or two—if you think it will blow over and you can bring resources—we can keep watch and wait.”

“Get out of your bubble, Krantz. This volcano thing isn’t going away, not anytime soon. It’s already thrown thirty times as much crap into the atmosphere as the entire Krakatoa eruption. It’s the biggest eruption in seventy thousand years, and it’s not done yet. Some volcano guy at the University of Hawaii says another big blast is building in the caldera. Think about how much the climate is screwed up already. Now double that and make it last for three years. That’s the
best
-case scenario.”

Krantz didn’t know anything about volcanoes, climate, or agriculture, but he understood the political ramifications. The world was about to tear itself apart. And when that happened, who could be bothered with infighting in a small polygamist cult in the middle of the desert?

“You still there?” she asked.

“Yeah.” They were both quiet for several seconds. “I guess there’s nothing more to say.”

“No. I’m really sorry.” Another silence. “Take care of yourself out there, Krantz.”

“Yeah. Thanks. You too.”

He hung up and rubbed his thumb along the edge of the phone for a long moment before he went back to share the bad news with Miriam and Eliza.

“The way I see it, we have two choices,” Miriam said when he finished. “Go back and wait—and I don’t care how many checkpoints we set, the camera doesn’t lie. Taylor Junior can infiltrate at will.”

“And the other option?” Krantz asked.

“We go in, guns blazing. The three of us, plus every man in Blister Creek. And women too. Carol Young. Delilah Johnson.
That woman at Yellow Flats—Rebecca. She’s no friend of Taylor Junior either. We raise thirty, forty people who know how to use firearms and aren’t afraid to use them.”

“It’d be a massacre,” Eliza said. “Any way you look at it. Imagine we fight our way down and then they detonate more chemical warheads. Kill themselves and take us with them.”

“You got a better suggestion?” she asked.

“We can’t do this alone—it’s a job for the professionals. A SWAT team. Don’t you think, Steve?”

“We don’t have a SWAT team,” he said. His mind turned over the possibilities. None of them seemed promising.

“Lights off!” Miriam said.

They flipped off the flashlights. Krantz heard the rumble of a vehicle, and then a pair of dim lights flashed in the darkness a few dozen yards away. He grabbed the women and pulled them to the ground.

The truck crunched across the ground, coming toward them. Fortunately, it wasn’t using its beams, only the parking lights. But if it continued on its present course, it would run directly over them.

“Krantz!” Miriam hissed.

She struggled to get her arm free, and he realized he’d been pinning her in place. She fumbled for her gun, and he saw what she meant to do: wait until it was on top of them, then come up shooting. Eliza was struggling too, and she had her gun out before he could stop her.

The moonlight caught the vehicle in silhouette. It was a Humvee with a machine gun in back, mounted on a rotating turret. A man sat at the gun, protected by a gun shield of plate metal. Another man sat by his side, holding an assault rifle.

“Stay down!” Krantz said.

Miriam grunted her frustration but stopped struggling. Eliza lay still.

At the last moment, when he thought they’d have to jump up and shoot whether they liked it or not, the Humvee veered to one side. It crept by a few feet to their right, tires crunching stones and crushing dry animal bones.

A light flicked on in the cab. Krantz couldn’t help himself and lifted his head. There were two more men inside. The passenger studied a map that he was unfolding beneath the overhead light. The driver leaned over the wheel to peer into the darkness. Krantz felt a shock of recognition. Beside him, Eliza drew in her breath. She’d seen it too.

The Humvee picked up speed. It hit a sandy patch, revved, and then pulled up a rise onto rock and hardpan again. Moments later it disappeared into the night and the engine faded in the distance.

“What was that about?” Miriam asked, sounding peeved. “We had the element of surprise.”

“Did you see the guns?”

“So what? We’re armed too. We had the jump on them.”

“Come on, Miriam. We’ve got three nine-millimeter handguns. No time to set up the sniper rifle. And even if we could shoot through the door or get behind that gun shield, all it takes is one guy and he mows us down.”

“Did you see the driver?” Eliza asked. She sounded shaken.

“What about him?” Miriam said.

“It was our guy,” Krantz said. “The bastard himself.”

“You mean Taylor Junior?” Miriam said. “We should have tried. The window was open—I could have jumped up and fired through the window before they ever saw me.”

“And the others would have shot you.”

“Would have been worth it,” Miriam said.

“Would David agree?” Eliza asked. “And Diego?”

Miriam fell silent.

“Never mind, it’s over,” Krantz said. “We didn’t have enough time to think it through. But now I want to know where they’re going, armed like that.”

“They’re not running down to Walmart to pick up tampons and toilet paper,” Miriam said.

“No, I think not.”

“But now we can follow the tracks the way they came,” Eliza said. “And find our way inside while they’re gone.”

“I’m all for that,” Miriam said.

“Here’s what worries me—” Krantz started.

The ground lifted beneath his feet. Eliza grabbed his arm, but he lost his balance and took her down with him. Miriam somehow kept her feet, and she turned on her flashlight, which cut crazy loops like a child’s sparkler.

Too late
, he thought.
They blew themselves to hell.

The ground kept shaking, and his mind reeled. Only four escapees. The rest dying underground.

He was so fixed on this idea that it took a moment to realize there was no sound. They should have heard an explosion as a concussion of air blew out the doors of the hidden base. But there was nothing except a dull rumble that he felt in his bones more than heard.

An earthquake.

He’d lived through half a dozen in California, including the big Northridge earthquake when he was a boy growing up in
Orange County. At almost the instant he made this realization, the earthquake was over.

“Was that what I think it was?” Miriam asked as they climbed to their feet.

The ground trembled slightly, and he braced himself for another major shock, but none came.

“They used to do earthquake drills when I was a girl,” Eliza said. “Duck and cover. Nobody said anything about lying face-to-face with a rotten cow.”

“That’s not a dead cow I’m smelling,” Miriam said.

Krantz smelled it too—a sharp, acrid scent that cut through the low-level putrefaction of the animal corpses. He groped until he found his flashlight, then broke the darkness with the beam. Eliza turned on her light too, and all three of them cut across the landscape, searching.

“Run!” Eliza suddenly cried. She grabbed Krantz’s arm and heaved him into motion. Miriam sprinted into the lead.

They stumbled and staggered across the desert for several minutes. His head suddenly swam, and he felt dizzy, off balance, as if the ground were still rolling beneath his feet. He tried to stop, but Eliza and Miriam took his arms and forced him to keep moving. Finally he could go no more, and no amount of coaxing could get him moving. He dropped the duffel bag, bent over, and put his hands on his knees. For a moment he thought he’d pass out, and then the nausea began to fade.

“That was close,” Eliza said. “But I think we’re okay now. Look, no more bones.”

Krantz’s head pounded. He straightened and looked at Eliza with new appreciation, aware that her quick thinking had saved their lives. From what, he wasn’t quite sure.

“The pond was bubbling and fizzing,” Eliza said. “Did you see that? Like someone tossed in the world’s biggest block of dry ice. And suddenly I thought about the dead animals. Guess I should have gone for the rebreather, but all I could think about was getting out of there.”

“You think it was the earthquake?” Krantz asked. “Stirring up a big gas bubble or something?”

“Maybe,” Eliza said. “We’re close to the mantle around here. They’re even building a geothermal plant north of here in the San Rafael Swell.”

“I read once about a lake in Africa that kills entire villages,” Miriam said. “Gas forms at the bottom and comes up all at once.”

Eliza nodded. “Must be like that. I bet that’s what killed all those animals—and that man too.”

“For a minute there, all I could think about was the chemical attack last year,” Krantz said. “And that maybe Taylor Junior buried something nasty out here that came up.”

“I never thought about that,” Eliza said. “But no, I bet it’s been going on a long time, and that’s why the base was abandoned.”

“Either way, I’m glad we’ve got the breathing gear,” Krantz said. He still had the duffel bag, but he had dropped his flashlight. Eliza had lost hers too, but Miriam still carried her Maglite. “Think this has something to do with the volcano?” he asked.