Strangers (68 page)

“Right there’s the problem of doing business with the government,” Ernie told the priest. “You’re dealing with the very people who decide what’s legal and what isn’t. It’s like playing poker with God.”

Faye said, “The BLM’s despised around these parts. No bunch of bureaucrats is more high-handed.”

“That’s what we gathered from reading the
Sentinel,
” Dom said. “Now, Ginger and I might’ve figured the Thunder Hill business was just coincidental, that the BLM just happened to go after that land the same time as the crisis on I-80. But the way the government dealt with Brust and Dirkson
after
the land was seized was so extraordinary it made us suspicious. When the ranchers hired attorneys, when stories about the cancellation of their leases began appearing in the
Sentinel,
the BLM did a sudden about-face and offered compensation, after all.”

“That’s not a bit like the BLM!” Ernie said. “They’ll always make you drag them into court, hoping litigation will wear you down.”

“How much were they willing to pay Brust and Dirkson?” Faye asked.

“The figure wasn’t revealed,” Ginger said. “But it was evidently darned good, because Brust and Dirkson accepted it overnight.”

“So the BLM bought their silence,” Jorja said.

“I think it was the Army working secretly through the BLM,” Dom said. “They realized the longer the story was in the news, the more chance there was of someone wondering about a link between the crisis on I-80 that Friday night and the unorthodox seizure of land the very next morning, even if the two events were ten or twelve miles apart.”

“Surprises me somebody
didn’t
make the connection,” Jorja said. “If you and Ginger could spot it this long after the fact, why didn’t anyone think of it then?”

“For one thing,” Ginger said, “Dom and I had the enormous benefit of hindsight. We know there was a lot more going on during the days of the crisis than anyone suspected at the time. So we were specifically
looking
for connections. But that July, all the hoopla about a toxic spill diverted attention from Thunder Hill. Furthermore, there was nothing extraordinary about ranchers fighting the BLM, so nothing in the situation linked it in anyone’s mind with the I-80 quarantine. In fact, when the BLM made that totally out-of-character offer to Brust and Dirkson, a
Sentinel
editorial praised the repentant attitude of the government and prophesied a new age of reason.”

“But from what you’ve told us,” Dom said to Faye and Ernie, “and from what else we’ve read, that was the first and last time the Bureau of Land Management dealt reasonably with ranchers. So it wasn’t a new policy—just a one-time response to a crisis. And it’s too coincidental to
believe that the crisis evolving at Thunder Hill was unrelated to the crisis simultaneously under way here along the interstate.”

“Besides,” Ginger said, “once our suspicion was aroused, we got to thinking that if the trouble that night
had
been related to Shenkfield, there’d have been no need for the Army to use DERO troops for security. Because the soldiers stationed at Shenkfield would already have full security clearance in all matters related to that base, and there would’ve been nothing about a Shenkfield crisis too sensitive for them to see. The only reason DERO would’ve been called in is if the crisis was utterly unrelated to Shenkfield, involving something the soldiers at that base were not cleared for.”

“So if there’re answers to our problems,” Brendan said, “we’ll most likely find them at the Thunder Hill Depository.”

“We already suspected the story about a spill was less than half true,” Dom said. “Maybe there was no truth to it at all. Maybe the crisis had nothing to do with Shenkfield. If the real source was Thunder Hill, the rest was just smoke they blew in the public’s eyes.”

“It sure feels right,” Ernie said. He had finished dinner, too. His silverware was neatly arranged on the plate, which was almost as clean as before dinner, evidence that his military discipline and order had not departed him. “You know, part of my service career was in Marine Intelligence, so I’m speaking with some experience when I say this Shenkfield stuff truly does smack of an elaborate cover-story.”

Ned’s frown exaggerated his pronounced widow’s peak. “There’re a couple of things I don’t understand. The quarantine didn’t extend from Thunder Hill all the way down here. There were miles of territory in between that weren’t sealed off. So how did the effects of an accident on Thunder Hill leap-frog over all that distance and come down on
our
heads, without causing trouble between there and here?”

“You’re not dull-witted,” Dom said. “I can’t explain it, either.”

Still frowning, Ned said, “Another thing: The Depository doesn’t need a lot of land, does it? From what I’ve heard, it’s underground. They’ve got a couple of big blast-doors in the side of the hill, a road leading up to the doors, maybe a guard post, and that’s it. The three hundred acres you mentioned—the area around the entrance—is plenty big enough for a security zone. So why the land-grab?”

Dom shrugged. “Beats me. But whatever the hell happened up there on July sixth, it prompted two emergency actions on the part of the Army: first, a temporary quarantine down here, ten or twelve miles away, until we witnesses could be dealt with; second, an immediate enlargement of the security zone around the Depository, up there in the mountains; a secondary quarantine that’s still in effect. I have a hunch…if we’re ever
going to find out what happened to us—what’s
still
happening—we’re going to have to dig into the activities up on Thunder Hill.”

They were all silent. Though everyone was finished with dinner, no one was ready for dessert. Marcie was using her spoon to draw circles in the greasy residue of turkey gravy on her plate, creating fluid and temporary moon-forms. No one moved to clear away the dirty dishes, for at this point in the discussion, no one wanted to miss a word. They were at the crux of their dilemma: How were they to move against enemies as mighty as the U.S. Government and Army? How were they to penetrate an iron wall of secrecy that had been forged in the name of national security, with the full power of the state and the law behind it?

“We’ve put together enough to go public,” Jorja Monatella said. “The deaths of Zebediah Lomack and Alan, the murder of Pablo Jackson. The similar nightmares that many of you have shared. The Polaroids. It’s the kind of sensational stuff the media thrives on. If we let the world know what we think happened to us, we’ll have the power of the press and public opinion on our side. We won’t be alone.”

“No good,” Ernie said. “That kind of pressure’ll just make the military stonewall like hell. They’ll construct an even more confusing and impenetrable cover-up. They don’t crack under pressure the way politicians do. On the other hand, as long as they see us stumbling around on our own, fumbling for explanations, they’ll be confident—which might give us time to probe for their weak spots.”

“And don’t forget,” Ginger warned, “apparently Colonel Falkirk advocated killing us instead of just blocking our memories, and we’ve no reason to believe he’s mellowed since then. He was obviously overruled, but if we tried to go public, he might be able to persuade his superiors that a final solution is required, after all.”

“But even if it’s dangerous, maybe we’ve got to go public,” Sandy said. “Maybe Jorja’s right. I mean, there’s no way we can get inside the Thunder Hill Depository to see what’s going on. They’ve got lots of security and a pair of blast-doors built to take a nuclear hit.”

Dom said, “Well, it’s like Ernie told us…we’ll have to just stay loose and search for their weaknesses until we find a way.”

“But it looks like they don’t
have
any weaknesses,” Sandy said.

“Their cover-up has been falling apart ever since they brainwashed us and let us go,” Ginger said. “Each time one of us remembers another detail, that’s another gaping hole in their cover-up.”

“Yeah,” Ned said, “but seems to me they’re in a better position to keep patching the holes than we are to keep poking new ones.”

“Let’s can the goddamn negative thinking,” Ernie said gruffly.

Smiling beatifically, Brendan Cronin said, “He’s right. We must not
be negative. We
need
not be negative because we’re meant to win.” His voice was again infused with the eerie serenity and certitude which arose from his belief that the revelation of their special fate was inevitable. At moments like this, however, the priest’s tone and manner did not comfort Dom, as they were meant to but, for some odd reason, stirred up a sediment of fear and muddied his emotions with anxiety.

“How many men are stationed at Thunder Hill?” Jorja asked.

Before Dom or Ginger could respond with information they’d gleaned from the
Sentinel,
a stranger appeared in the doorway at the head of the stairs that led up from the motel office. He was in his late thirties, lean and tough-looking, dark-haired, dark-complexioned, with a crooked left eye that was not coordinated with his right. Though the downstairs door was locked, and although the linoleum on the stairs did nothing to quiet ascending footsteps, the intruder appeared with magical silence, as if he were not a real man but an ectoplasmic visitation.

“For God’s sake, shut up,” he said, sounding every bit as real as anyone else in the room. “If you think you can plot in privacy here, you’re badly mistaken.”

•

Eighteen miles southwest of the Tranquility Motel, at Shenkfield Army Testing Grounds, all the buildings—laboratories, administration offices, security command center, cafeteria, recreation lounge, and living quarters—were underground. In the blazing summers on the edge of the high desert and in the occasionally bitter winters, it was easier and more economical to maintain a comfortable temperature and humidity level in underground rooms than in structures erected on the less-than-hospitable Nevada barrens. But a more important consideration was the frequent open-air testing of chemical—and occasionally even biological—weapons. The tests were conducted to study the effects of sunlight, wind, and other natural forces on the distribution patterns and potency of those deadly gases, powders, and superdiffusible mists. If the buildings were aboveground, any unexpected shift in the wind would contaminate them, making unwilling guinea pigs of base personnel.

No matter how involved they became in work or leisure, the staff of Shenkfield never forgot they were beneath the earth, for they had two constant reminders of their condition: the lack of windows; plus the susurration of the piped-in air coming through the wall vents, and the echoing hum of the motors that fanned the air along the pipes.

Sitting alone at a metal desk in the office to which he had been temporarily assigned, waiting impatiently and worriedly for the phone to ring, Colonel Leland Falkirk thought:
God, I hate this place!

The never-ending whine and hiss of the air-supply system gave him a headache. Since his arrival on Saturday, Falkirk had been eating aspirin as though they were candy. Now he tipped two more out of a small bottle. He poured a glass of ice-water from the metal carafe that stood on the desk, but he did not use it to wash down the pills. Instead, he popped the dry aspirin into his mouth and chewed them.

The taste was bitter, disgusting, and he almost gagged.

But he did not reach for the water.

He did not spit out the aspirin, either.

He persevered.

A lonely, miserable childhood filled with uncertainty and pain, followed by an even worse adolescence, had taught Leland Falkirk that life was hard, cruel, and utterly unjust, that only fools believed in hope or salvation, and that only the tough survived. From an early age, he had forced himself to do things that were emotionally, mentally, and physically painful, for he had decided that self-inflicted pain would toughen him and make him less vulnerable. He tempered the steel of his will with challenges that ranged from chewing dry aspirin to major tests like the outings that he called “desperation survival treks.” Those expeditions lasted two weeks or longer, and they put him face-to-face with death. He parachuted into a forest or jungle wilderness, far from the nearest outpost, without supplies, with only the clothes on his back. He carried no compass or matches. His only weapons were his bare hands and what he could fashion with them. The goal: reach civilization alive. He spent many vacations in that self-imposed suffering, which he judged worthwhile because he came back a harder and more self-reliant man than he’d been at the start of each adventure.

Now he crunched dry aspirin. The tablets were reduced to powder, and the powder turned his saliva to an acidic paste.

“Ring, damn you,” he said to the telephone on the desk. He was hoping for news that would get him out of this hole in the ground.

In DERO, the Domestic Emergency Response Organization, a colonel was less a desk-jockey and more a field officer than in any other branch of the Army. Falkirk’s home base was in Grand Junction, Colorado, not Shenkfield, but even in Colorado, he spent little time in his office. He thrived on the physical demands of the job, so the low-ceilinged, windowless rooms of Shenkfield felt like a many-chambered coffin.

If he had been engaged upon any mission but this one, he might have established temporary unit headquarters up at Thunder Hill Depository. That place was also underground but its caves were huge, high-ceilinged, not like these tomb-sized rooms.

But there were two reasons he had to keep his men away from Thunder
Hill. First, he dared not draw attention to the place because of the secret it harbored. Several ranchers lived in the highlands along the road leading to the gated Thunder Hill turnoff. If they spotted a fully equipped DERO company moving into the Depository, they’d speculate about it. Locals must not start wondering about Thunder Hill. Two summers ago, he’d used Shenkfield as a red herring to divert attention from the Depository. Now, with another crisis building, he would stay here at Shenkfield again, so he would be in position to spread the same kind of disinformation to the press and public that he’d spread before. The second reason he set up HQ at Shenkfield was because he had certain dark suspicions about everyone in the Depository: He trusted none of them, would not feel safe among them. They might be…changed.