Runaway Heart (47 page)

     
She sat in silence pondering it. "You're right. It makes no
sense."

     
"Right, none at all. So that means something
is
out
there—something
they don't want anybody to see."

     
"But there was nothing there. You saw. The place was
deserted. There was no lab. They couldn't move a whole science facility in a
day."

     
"It's not the missing lab. It's the other thing that's
missing that's got me puzzled."

     
"What other thing?"

    
 
"The toxic
waste pit. Where the hell was that?"

     
"Huh?"

     
"Izzy told us they were digging it even before the tribe
left, that it was a huge hole in the ground. But we didn't see a toxic waste
site. . . no dumping platforms or flow tanks, no sealed concrete hatches,
nothing. So where the hell is the toxic waste station?"

     
"My God, you're
right"

     
"Yeah. That happens with me about once every ten years or
so."

     
"What're you thinking?"

     
"I'm thinking maybe that hole they were digging wasn't for a
waste pit," Herman said. "These DARPA spooks love their underground
facilities. The Dulce Lab at Area Fifty-one was underground. What if this
chimera testing lab was built underground and the no-fly zone is because they
don't want pictures from the air of the chimeras playing war games and doing
training exercises out in the desert? What if the research lab is in that hole?
After Herman filed his discovery motion this morning they just went
underground, pulled the dirt up over their heads and disappeared."

     
There it was—his big ugly idea. Now it was out in the open,
sitting between them, ruining his Monkfish with Champagne Sauce and her Lobster
Florentine. The idea leaked intellectual pollution onto their expensive feast.
. . because, if they accepted this as truth there was really no turning back
for either of them.

     
"You're right. You're right, Jack. Izzy said they were
digging it even before the tribe left; so, at the very least— even if they
changed their minds about dumping—there would still be a huge hole in the
ground—and there isn't."

     
"Right. I think Amato knew what was out there and when
Krookshank allowed Herm's motion, he called 'em. By the time we got there
everything was safely underground. That means somewhere in this big complicated
mess we've got lawyers lying. Unique concept, huh?"

     
"What do we do?"

     
"I think we need to go back and see Izzy. Get him to draw us
a map of exactly where that pit was."

     
All of a sudden they weren't hungry, so they had the waiter bag up
their food.

     
"Was everything to your liking?" the handsome maitre d'
asked skeptically as he handed them two tinfoil containers twisted into the
shape of ducks.

     
Hard question,
Jack thought. Everything most certainly
wasn't
to his liking. In fact, he was scared to death. The last thing he wanted
was to sneak back out to Indio and crawl under a barbed-wire fence with a knife
between his teeth. But the guy looked so sad that they hadn't eaten, that Jack
assured him, "Everything was tremendous." He held up the two
containers of artistically packaged food. "Just ducky," he added
softly.

I
t was eight at night and the temperature
in the desert near Indio was dropping faster than Jack's meager stock
portfolio.

     
He and Susan were kneeling in a sand culvert with Chief Ibanazi
and three other members of the Ten-Eyck tribe. A war party.

     
Everyone was dressed in jeans and tennies, except for Izzy, who
had added a chic leather vest from Brioni and a headband from Costume National.
He looked like a painting of Cochise as they knelt in the moonlight. Jack had
his trusty hunting knife in a leather scabbard on his belt, determined to put
it between his teeth at some point during the raid. They were all packing
handguns, nine millimeters mostly. But Russell's cousin, Carlos Ibanazi, had a
scoped 30.06.

     
"It's down here about another quarter mile," Izzy
informed them in a stage whisper worthy of any of the great Warner Bros.
Indians.

     
"Okay," Jack nodded. "Susan, you're rear guard. You
have the cell phone. If we need help you know what to do."

     
"I'm through being rear guard.
You
be rear
guard."

     
"You can't go with us," he argued. "Too
dangerous."

     
"Then, I hope you brought your handcuffs," she shot back.
Her eyes were flashing angrily and he could see there would be no stopping her.
"Either that, or we can do what I suggested before—call the cops and let
them
sneak in here," she added.

     
"No cops," he said.

     
"I still don't see why not," Susan argued.

     
"Because as an ex-cop I can tell you we're shitty at covert
ops. We always start by announcing stuff over bullhorns. We need to catch one
of these chimera things out in the open
before
we add all the police
confusion."

     
It was good logic, but she still seemed worried about their
safety; that was okay, because Jack was worried about their safety, too.

     
"Okay, show time. Let's do it," Jack said, borrowing
that tired line from just about every corny action film he'd ever seen.

     
They stood to the side and let Russell Ibanazi take the point.

     
Izzy headed down the culvert, his three-hundred-dollar tennies
making squeaking sounds in the fine sand.

     
Jack Wirta, renegade commando and complete medical mess, took the
second position. Behind Jack was Carlos, who on the ride out from L.A. never
stopped complaining about the assholes who stole his Rolls. As he gripped his
long scoped rifle he asked Jack over and over if, as an ex-cop, he knew how to
catch car thieves.

     
"Gee, Carlos," Jack had finally said, trying to calm him
down, "that's a tough one. But, since you got it back, if it was me, I'd
just forget about it."

     
"Can't forget about it," Carlos said. "Nobody
steals my car. Gonna get the fuckers." He wouldn't shut up about it. It
was making Jack wish he'd never stolen the damned thing.

     
Behind Carlos Ibanazi was Bobby Horsekiller, who looked like he
really could kill horses: six feet of gristle and bone stacked under mean eyes
and a cruel mouth. Jack was glad he hadn't stolen Mr. Horsekiller's Rolls.

     
Susan was behind Horsekiller, and bringing up the rear was
somebody named Digby. Jack hadn't caught the last name, but he sure didn't look
like a Digby. He looked like an Indian version of Andre the Giant, all three
hundred fifty-plus pounds of him. His tennis shoes looked like tuna boats. The
guy was immense.

     
So, off they went Indian file. . . apparently no lack of
political
correctness there either, because that's what Izzy called it.

     
When they finally reached a large, metal drainage pipe Izzy
stopped. Jack pumped his fist up and down, like John Wayne in
The Green
Berets,
to announce that the column was coming to a halt. It was a
cool-looking signal, and when you did it, everybody was supposed to put on the
brakes. Trouble was, Carlos wasn't watching and climbed right up Jack's already
tortured back. Then they all ran into each other. In a remarkable demonstration
of human kinetic energy the entire column went down.

     
"Shhh," Russell said as he regained his balance and
stood. "Okay, this drainage pipe goes under the perimeter fence. When I
was a kid, this was my way off the reservation to score girls after my folks
were asleep. On the other side is an open field, and we'll have to stay very low.
In this full moon we can be seen over a long distance in the desert, unless we
get on our bellies." He looked at Jack and the others, who all nodded.

     
"Okay, show time. Let's do it," Izzy said, sounding even
sillier than Jack had.

     
They crouched down and duck-walked through the four-foot-high
metal drainage pipe that was full of rust and unimaginable stuff that slithered
away in the dark. Jack could hear Digby grunting somewhere back there as he
lumbered along.

     
Soon they emerged on the other side and came up behind Russell who
had proned out on the sand. Everybody stretched out next to him.

     
Jack had a pair of old Bushnell binoculars around his neck, but he
was lying on them and they were now punching a hole in his already injured
chest. After he dug them out he could feel the hunting knife poking him as
well. Maybe now would be a good time to slip it neatly between his teeth. White
Eyes prepares for battle . . .

     
Instead he focused the binoculars and began scanning the open
terrain between where they were and the reservation beyond. Some pretty good
tires out there—looked
like they still had lots of tread on them. He panned left and
brought the old stables into view.

     
"We got some choices to make here," Izzy was saying.
"Those are the stables off to the left about a quarter mile . . . you can
just see them in the moonlight. That's where the open pit was dug."

     
Jack kept his Bushnells on the stables and sharpened the focus.
They looked deserted.

     
"Or, like I said in war council, we could try the old tribal
long house and sweat lodge over there couple a hundred yards to the north
toward the mountains," Izzy whispered.

     
The war council had taken place two hours earlier at a Denny's
restaurant off the Indio Highway. Jack had a cheeseburger with fries, Susan had
the California salad, Russell, Carlos, and Bobby all ordered tuna melts. Jack
thought it was unusual food for a war council. Indians preparing for battle
should fast and ask the Great Spirit for courage. Digby made it worse by
ordering everything else on the Denny's menu.

     
Izzy had showed Jack a map of the reservation he'd drawn and
pointed out where the two pits that the government dug were located. "Over
by the old stables and near the sweat lodge," Izzy said. It was the first
time Jack had heard there were
two
pits.

     
Now, hours later, they were on their stomachs while Jack looked
across the desert at the stables through his Bushnells, trying to make a
decision: stables or sweat lodge?

     
"Let's stick with the stables," Jack finally said,
partly because he always tried to stay out of buildings where naked men sat in
circles sweating, and partly because it was two hundred yards closer, and he
still remembered the elbow crawls he'd been forced to do at the Police Academy.

     
So they were off crawling across the desert on their stomachs.
Halfway there Izzy stopped to catch his breath. "See anything?" Izzy
said.

     
Jack's back was killing him so he dug into his pocket for his last
two Percocets. He slipped the pills into his mouth, then brought the binoculars
up and scanned the stables.

     
Jack shook his head. "Seems deserted."

     
Izzy was looking at the stables with a puzzled frown.
"Y'know, I thought that stable was in the wrong place this afternoon when
we were out here. It used to be about forty yards to the east, I'm almost
sure."

     
"How?" Jack said, thinking he was sounding more and more
like a real Indian.

     
"This was my old trail. I used it all the time when I was a
kid. I'm sure the stables used to be further east. Don't you remember, Carlos?
They were over by that big Joshua tree."

     
"I never went to the stables much," Carlos answered.
"I had my brother's Jeep after he went into the Marines."

     
"Why move the stables?" Digby asked. It was his first
sentence since he'd said "Pass the ketchup" two hours ago.

     
"I don't know," Izzy said. "But I've taken this
route a hundred times and I'm telling you they moved 'em."

     
"Maybe to dig the pit. . . then they put the stables back for
camouflage, but not in the same exact spot," Susan volunteered.