The Shimmer

57

Twenty seconds after the explosions, Page’s cell phone rang. He and Tori were staring toward the sky in the direction from which the shock waves had come. He pulled the phone from his belt and pressed the answer button.

“Did you hear them?” Medrano’s voice asked urgently.

“A small one, a big one, then another small one,” Page replied. “From the northwest. The only thing over there is the observatory.”

“That’s what I’m thinking, too. Where are you?”

“The airport.”

“Big surprise. I finally figured you were planning to use your plane tonight. A private plane can go just about anywhere, right?”

“Just about.”

“The nearest Highway Patrol chopper is ninety minutes away. I can’t wait that long. I want you to fly toward those explosions and find out what the hell happened.”

“The problem is,” Page said, “one of the places a private plane can’t go is prohibited airspace.”

“You’re telling me the observatory’s off-limits?”

“Usually a prohibited area has something to do with national security. I have no idea what that observatory has to do with any of that, but at the very least, I could lose my pilot’s license if I fly in there.”

“I can’t go in there, either,” Medrano said. “That’s federal property. I don’t have the jurisdiction to send in cruisers. Listen, I’ll try to get permission from the FBI. While I’m waiting, can you at least fly along the boundary of that area-maybe get high enough to try to see what happened?”

“That I can do. I have a police radio in my plane. What’s your frequency?”

Page wrote down the number, pressed the disconnect button, and returned his phone to his belt.

He looked at Tori. “This could be dangerous. You might want to think about not going up with me.”

“Could you use an extra set of eyes?”

“Always.”

“Then you’ve got company.”

58

A bullet tore up dirt near Brent’s left cheek. He flinched and ducked his head lower.

Where he lay was a sandy trough that might have been a dry creek bed. The parched land had absorbed the water from yesterday’s storm except that there seemed to be a puddle under him, soaking him. Then he realized that what he felt was the wet crotch of his pants where his bladder had let go.

The only thing that kept him from panicking was the television cam- era. I’m not going to lose this chance. He angled it up toward the black smoke that billowed from the downed helicopter. Then he pivoted to the right and aimed the camera toward the smoking ruin of the news van.

Now comes the hard part-staying alive to show this to somebody, he thought.

Anita was sprawled between him and the burning van. Her head lolled, and she looked weaker.

He squirmed toward her, stopping when he was halfway there. The guard at the observatory had a large area to scan with his rifle. From this new position, Brent hoped to be able to ease the camera over the edge of the trough and record what the gunman was up to.

Need to do something. I’m not just going to lie here.

He took a deep breath, braced his trembling muscles, and cautiously showed himself. Through the camera’s viewfinder, he saw the guard turning in his direction and raising the rifle. Brent managed to get down just before three bullets blasted dirt above him.

“Wouldn’t pay attention to the sign!” the guard yelled from be- yond the fences.

Brent had lost his handheld microphone. Now he relied solely on the shotgun mike attached to the top of the camera, although he had little hope that it would register the guard’s voice from so far away.

“Had to come barging in!” the guard continued. “All I wanted was to listen to the music!”

Music? Brent thought.

“I told you to get out of here!” the guard shouted. “But you had to keep pushing! You had to keep me from the music!”

What in God’s name is he talking about? Brent wondered.

“Trespassers will be prosecuted! That’s what the sign says!”

More bullets sprayed dirt above Brent’s head.

“And as soon as I get these gates open, I’ll prosecute you to hell!”

Brent crawled toward Anita, whose dark skin should never have looked so pale. He untucked the pen that bound the tourniquet and loosened the cloth, grimacing at the sight of the blood that flowed from her left arm.

“Need to free the circulation from time to time. Otherwise you might get gangrene.”

“Too much information,” she said weakly.

“Sorry.”

“Cold.” Anita turned her head to the side and made vomiting noises, but nothing came from her stomach. “Heart’s racing. Think I’m in shock.”

Brent retightened the tourniquet. He strained to push a large rock toward her, propping her sneakers on it. “This is supposed to help.”

“Where’d you learn all this?”

“I did a story about an emergency first-aid team.”

“And now you’re an expert? Lord, I wish I hadn’t asked. The cam- era.” Breathing rapidly, Anita noticed that Brent had set it down so that it pointed toward them. The red light was on. “You’re recording us?”

“Don’t you want to be a star?”

For a moment, Brent thought he heard an approaching engine. His pulse raced with the hope that the police had heard the explosions and were coming. But at once the faint drone stopped, and he feared he’d imagined it.

He picked up the camera and hoped that the smoke and flames would shield him as he hurried to the front of the burning van. Staying back from the heat, he aimed the camera along the side and focused on the guard, who stood before the inside gate. He seemed to be studying it.

He’s not sure if the fence still has any juice to it, Brent realized. When the helicopter crashed onto the fence, did it cut off the electricity, or will he get fried if he touches the gate?

The guard evidently decided not to take the chance. He swung to- ward the shed, ran past the truck piled with corpses, and vanished through the doorway.

“Anita!” Brent rushed over to her. “He went inside! I think he’s shutting off the electricity to the fence. If I’m right, he’ll soon come for us. Hurry! We need to move!”

She licked her dry lips and nodded. “Help me up.”

After he lifted her, she hooked her unwounded right arm around his neck. He linked his left arm around her waist. Holding the camera with his right hand, he helped her waver along the dirt road.

59

The elevation of Rostov’s airport was five thousand feet. Page climbed three thousand five hundred feet higher than that and headed west along the county road that, according to his aerial map, formed one boundary of the observatory’s prohibited airspace. That altitude provided a good perspective on the flat, sparse grassland off to the right.

Tori adjusted the microphone on her headset.

“Two columns of smoke.” She pointed.

Even at a distance, the white observatory dishes were obvious, including the one that was tilted sideways and aimed toward the south- east. One section of smoke was on the left side of the dishes, very close to them. The other was in front of the dishes, rising from a dirt lane that led from the observatory to the county road.

The dark smoke reminded Page uncomfortably of the gasoline tanker he’d seen explode in Santa Fe, just four days earlier.

As he guided the Cessna along the boundary road, he and Tori came parallel to the fires on their right, gaining a closer view. She removed binoculars from Page’s flight bag and peered through them, adjusting their focus.

“Wreckage near the dishes.” She sounded more troubled. “Rotor blades. Looks like a helicopter crashed.” She aimed the binoculars to- ward the lane. “The other fire’s coming from a vehicle. A van. It’s got a dish on it. Looks like a television news van.”

Page activated the police radio.

“Cessna Four Three Alpha calling Captain Medrano.”

Immediately Medrano’s voice crackled through Page’s headset. “Go ahead.”

“We’re seeing what appears to be a downed helicopter next to the observatory. It and a television news van are on fire.”

“What?”

“It isn’t clear what happened. I told you prohibited flight areas usually involve national security. Do you suppose there’s some kind of special government project there? The kind terrorists would want to attack?”

“The FBI must be worried about the same thing,” Medrano’s voice said starkly. “They gave you permission to take a closer look. They also gave me permission to send police cars in there.”

“Understood. I have clearance to enter.”

He banked to the right toward the columns of smoke. Through the canopy, the white dishes got bigger.

Tori kept staring through the binoculars.

“Do you see any survivors?” Page asked.

“No. Wait. Yes. But not at the helicopter. At the van. I see two people stumbling along the road. They’re heading in our direction. A man and a woman. It looks like the woman’s hurt.”

As Page flew closer, they came into his line of sight. Struggling along the dirt lane, the man held the woman up with his left arm. He was carrying something in his lowered right hand.

“Is that a television camera?” Tori asked in amazement. “My God, that’s the TV reporter who’s been looking for us.”

The woman’s knees bent. She slumped, dragging the man down with her, both of them toppling to the ground.

Tori adjusted the binoculars. “The woman’s covered with blood.”

Medrano’s voice blurted through Page’s headset.

“The FBI has rescinded your clearance! Turn around! Get out of there!”

Page frowned at Tori. “What’s going on?”

He was about to press the police radio’s transmit button, but Medrano kept talking.

“You must be right-this has something to do with national security! And somebody with influence must be involved! A special team is being sent in!”

Page kept flying toward the observatory.

“Do you copy?” Medrano’s voice demanded. “Your clearance to enter the prohibited airspace is no longer valid! Turn around!”

“The police radio’s been acting up lately,” Page told Tori. “All I hear is static.”

“Yeah, I don’t hear him, either.”

Page gestured toward the man and woman who’d toppled onto the lane. The woman was sprawled on her back while the man knelt be- side her, doing something to her left arm.

“How long do you think it’ll take for that special team to get organized?” Page wondered. “The nearest place they can come from is El Paso. Maybe farther away than that. My guess is it’ll take at least two hours for help to arrive. That woman might be dead by then.”

“Do you understand?” Medrano’s voice was loud enough to be distorted. “You do not have clearance to enter that airspace!”

Page shut off the radio. “It keeps overheating, too.”

Beyond the burning van, he saw that three high fences encircled the observatory dishes. An open-backed truck was parked near a shed- like building.

The dishes loomed. At a thousand feet, Page flew over them, made a turn, and headed back toward the man and woman sprawled on the lane.

As the plane went over the observatory, Tori peered straight down.

“That truck near the small building,” she said.

“What about it?”

“I think I saw…” She stopped suddenly.

“Your voice sounds strange. What’s wrong?”

“Corpses in the back.”

“Corpses?”

“A bunch of them,” Tori said.

Page immediately banked to the left. He flew in a circle and re- turned over the dishes, heading toward the truck. This time he positioned the plane so he could look down from his side.

In the back of the truck, bodies were dumped on top of one an- other, legs and arms splayed in every direction, so that he couldn’t count them. Some wore tan uniforms, others white lab coats.

“Jesus,” he said.

As he neared the couple on the lane again, the man looked up in desperation, but what Page concentrated on was the lane itself. Made of dirt, it appeared to be flat, but that didn’t mean there weren’t rocks or potholes that could blow a tire or snap off wheels, causing the plane to flip.

“Tory, is your seat belt tight?”

“Is there any other way for a seat belt to be?”

He pulled back on the throttle, causing the plane to lose altitude. At the same time he eased back on the yoke, tilting the nose slightly upward, reducing speed. To reduce speed further, he lowered the maximum flaps.

The plane sank toward the ground. At sixty knots, Page leveled the aircraft above the lane and felt it settle.

In most landings, he protected the nose wheel by touching down on the two main wheels first. For this kind of landing, however, the objective was to stop in the shortest distance possible, which meant there wasn’t time for the front wheel to settle gently onto the lane. In- stead Page landed on all three wheels. The moment he felt the jolt, he pressed his feet on the brake pedals and pulled back on the yoke. He came to a stop a mere two hundred feet from where he’d touched down.

In a rush, he shut off the aircraft’s engine, vaguely aware of the clinking sound of seat belts as he and Tori unbuckled them. He opened the door, jumped to the ground, grabbed a first-aid kit from under the back seat, and ran toward the couple on the lane.

Tori was next to him, matching his urgent pace.

They reached the man and woman, and yes, the man was the television reporter, looking more haggard than ever, his ear bloody, his suit and blond hair caked with dirt. But Page didn’t have time for any more details as he crouched next to the woman and tried not to think about the quantity of blood that soaked her clothes.

“Keep your head down!” the reporter urged.

“What happened to her?”

“She was shot! Keep your head down!”

“Shot?” Page unzipped the first-aid kit.

“The guard might be back by now.” Ashen, the reporter looked over his shoulder toward the observatory.

“A guard shot her?” Tori asked in confusion.

Page studied the necktie that served as a tourniquet.

“Did you do this?” he asked the reporter.

“It was all I could think of.”

“You probably saved her life.”

Page stared at the huge, ugly exit wound. He thought he saw bone. No time to clean it.

“Tori, open these packets.”

While she did, he pulled a small roll of duct tape from the kit.

“I’m sorry I don’t have anything for the pain,” he told the woman.

She didn’t reply. Her eyes were half open.

Tori handed him the open packets. He squeezed antiseptic cream into the wound and covered it with a wad of blood-absorbent material.

“Scissors,” he said, fumbling through the kit. “Need scissors.”

“Use this knife.” The reporter pulled one from his pants: a black folding knife with a thumb button on the side of the blade. “It’s hers.”

Page sliced off a section of duct tape. He wrapped it around the woman’s arm, then cut off another section of tape and applied it, too.

“I’ll cut while you wrap,” Tori said, taking the knife and the tape.

As he applied more tape, creating a pressure bandage, a red light caught his attention. It was on the television camera, which the re- porter angled in his direction, evidently recording the scene.

Page couldn’t allow himself to be distracted. He finished the pres- sure bandage and undid the tourniquet, waiting to see if blood would flow past the tape.

Dirt suddenly pelted him, accompanied by a distant cracking sound.

“What the…”

More dirt struck his face. Amid further distant cracking sounds, he saw puffs of dust rising from the road.

“Somebody’s shooting at us.”

“Oh, shit, the guard got the gates open. He’s coming,” the reporter moaned.

“Why is he shooting at us?” Tori asked. “Why are there corpses in that truck?”

Page stared past the burning van toward the huge dishes. The gates to all three fences were now open. A man stood outside the third gate and aimed a rifle, which bucked from the recoil.

Dirt exploded on the lane. The crack from the shot echoed.

“We’re just out of range,” Page said.

The man stepped forward and fired again. After a moment, a bullet tore up dirt a little closer.

“We need to reach the Cessna!” Page said. “Hurry! Before he gets closer!”

He put his arms around the injured woman’s legs and shoulders, lifting her. The smell of her blood was strong as he charged along the lane. Even though she was thin, she felt heavy, her hips sinking, her feet and arms flopping.

The reporter ran ahead of him, carrying the television camera.

Tori reached the Cessna’s passenger door and yanked it open, tilting the seat forward. Page stooped beneath the high wing and eased the wounded woman into the back seat.

“Get in there!” he told the reporter. “Buckle her seat belt! Buckle your own!”

As he hurried around the back of the plane, he heard Tori helping the reporter climb inside. A frantic glance down the lane showed him that the guard was running in their direction.

The guard stopped and fired. Dirt flew near the Cessna’s tail.

Somewhere in that dirt, a bullet’s ricocheting, Page thought.

He drew his pistol and aimed extremely high. If he fired straight ahead, his bullets would drop to the ground before they had a chance to come anywhere close to the distant target. By aiming high, however, he gave the bullets an arc that increased their range. Much of their force would be lost when they landed, but Page hoped they would strike near enough to the gunman to make him pause.

In rapid order, Page pulled the trigger six times. Six clouds of dust burst from the lane in front of the gunman, making him stumble back. Immediately Page ran along the left side of the plane and yanked open the door, scrambling inside.

Tori was in the passenger seat, fastening her belt.

Page jabbed the master switch, turned the ignition key, and worked the throttle. Abruptly the propeller spun, roaring. When he released the brakes, he felt the Cessna bump along the dirt lane. The two additional passengers added weight, reducing the engine’s power.

Come on! Page thought. Move!

Feeling the Cessna bump faster along the lane, Page imagined the guard racing to get within range. He braced himself for bullets that would tear through the rear windscreen and slam into his back-or that would damage the rear wings and make it impossible for him to get the Cessna into the air.

“The plane’s blowing dust!” the reporter shouted from the back. “I can’t see the guard!”

Which means the guard can’t see the plane, Page thought. But that won’t stop him from shooting toward us.

Their speed reached fifty-five knots. Page pulled back the yoke and felt the aircraft leave the ground. He stayed low, wanting to gain more speed before he went higher. Right now distance was the key, not height. When he thought he’d gone a sufficient distance, he eased farther back on the yoke and pointed the plane’s nose toward the horizon.

He was abruptly aware that his shirt was soaked with sweat.

“Tori, take the controls.”

He put on his headset. It muffled the engine’s roar as he activated the radio system.

“Taking back the controls,” he said.

He couldn’t contact Medrano on the police radio. After all, his excuse for entering the prohibited airspace was that the police radio had failed. Instead he used the plane’s standard radio. Although Rostov’s airport didn’t have a control tower, he hoped someone in the office would hear him.

“Rostov traffic. Cessna Four Three Alpha has an injured passenger. A gunshot victim. We need an ambulance at the airport. My ETA is five minutes. Rostov.”

“I hear you, Four Three Alpha,” a voice said through Page’s head- set. It belonged to the man in the frayed coveralls who’d given Page his rental-car papers. “I’ll get that ambulance.”

Page tilted his head toward the reporter in back. “How is she?”

“Unconscious. But it looks like the duct tape sealed the wound.”

To Page’s right, the stock pens outside Rostov came into view, as did the courthouse on the main street. People and vehicles seemed everywhere, exploring the town before night settled and they went to the viewing area.

He descended toward the airport northeast of town, but not before he took a hard look at the collapsed, rusted hangars and the cracked, overgrown airstrip on the abandoned military airbase in the opposite direction. There wasn’t any sign of the vehicles he’d seen on the base the evening before. Beyond the ruin of the airbase, he frowned toward the boulders that looked like giant cinders strewn in a chaotic semi – circle, all that remained of the volcanic rim that had spewed them to the surface eons earlier.

60

Lockhart lay on the ground and spoke into the radio.

“The plane’s taking off. There’s a lot of dust, but I can see that the guard’s still running and firing.”

“Shoot the son of a bitch,” Raleigh’s voice ordered.

“I’m not within accurate range, sir.”

“Get closer.”

“Yes, sir.” He scanned the sky. “It looks like the plane escaped.”

“By tomorrow there’ll be no way to contain this. If I hadn’t put a quarantine on that place, there’d be police cars all over there by now. I don’t want anybody guessing what that facility really does. After you take care of the guard, destroy all the equipment in the observatory. Make it look as if he did it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Remaining low, Lockhart watched the guard continue firing to- ward the departing airplane-he kept squeezing the trigger even after he ran out of ammunition. As the lowering sun made the dust look scarlet, the guard glared toward the sky, then turned and took long, angry strides back toward the first of the three fences.

Lockhart was to the guard’s right, just behind him and about two hundred yards away. Bullets from an M4 could travel that far, but Lockhart couldn’t depend on where they would hit. To stop the guard, rather than merely startle him, he needed to get closer.

Satisfied that he wasn’t in the guard’s line of vision, he stood, tucked the radio into the duffel bag that hung from his shoulder, picked up his M4, and broke into a run. As the man passed the burning van and got closer to the observatory, Lockhart increased his pace, the duffel bag bumping against his side. His thick-soled shoes crunched on the pebbly soil, but the breeze was blowing in his direction, so the slight sound wouldn’t carry.

He couldn’t allow the man to reach the door to the shed. He strained his legs to their full length. Charging across the scrub grass, he ignored the sweat that dripped from his face.

The guard reached the first gate.

Lockhart raced nearer.

The guard reached the second gate.

Lockhart had seen the difficulty that the guard had experienced when trying to shoot through the three fences. Continuing to rush forward, he simultaneously veered toward the lane.

Need to shoot through the open gates, he thought.

A hundred yards.

Abruptly the guard stopped walking toward the tiny building.

Does he hear me? Lockhart worried.

The guard turned, but instead of looking in Lockhart’s direction, he came back and reached for the first open gate. As he started to close it, he froze at the sight of Lockhart racing toward the lane.

Lockhart stopped, raised the M4, fought to control his breathing, and leveled the rifle’s sights on the target. His exertion made his arms unsteady. Years of combat training enabled him to brace his muscles and keep the barrel from wavering.

The guard raised his weapon and tried to shoot first, but nothing happened-he’d used all his ammunition when he’d fired at the air- plane. He turned and ran toward the middle gate.

Lockhart pulled the trigger. The selector switch on his rifle was set to deliver bursts of three shots. The first group missed. He took a deep breath, held it, and fired again.

The guard lurched but kept running. He passed through the second gate and headed toward the final one, each frenzied step taking him farther away, making him a more difficult target.

Lockhart fired another burst, and again the guard seemed to lurch. But he made it past the open-backed truck, disappearing into the darkness beyond the shed’s open door.

Cursing, Lockhart fired into the void of the door. His ammunition ran out, so he ejected the empty magazine, pulled a fresh one from his duffel bag, slammed it home, freed the bolt, and fired yet again through the open door.

Then he realized how out in the open he was and what an excellent target he made now that the guard had been given the opportunity to reload. He darted to the left of the lane, stopping where the three lines of fences provided some cover, and dropped to the ground, making himself a smaller target.

Unfortunately, while the fences gave him some protection, potentially deflecting bullets, they also protected the guard.

Lockhart studied the open door.

I hit him twice. I’m almost positive. He’s probably bleeding to death in there.

The void taunted him.

Sure. It’s just a matter of time. I’ll wait for a while and let him bleed out. After that, there’ll be no problem getting inside.

Right. No problem.

Abruptly the door was slammed shut.

In the weakening light, Lockhart stared at it. Cautiously he stood, walked to the lane, and went through the three open gates. He looked for blood on the lane but didn’t see any.

I didn’t hit him after all. He just stumbled.

Aiming his weapon, he approached the closed door. It was solid metal. Yesterday, when he’d arrived with Colonel Raleigh and the team, he’d noticed how thick it was. He had no doubt that it locked automatically, just as he had no doubt that similar thick metal lined the entire concrete structure. The pad next to the door would require a specific sequence to unlock it, and it wouldn’t matter if the colonel knew the numbers that had been used yesterday-the guard would almost certainly have changed that sequence by now.

Even if I had grenades, I wouldn’t be able to get through that door, Lockhart thought.

He studied the ground again but didn’t see any blood.

He walked to the open-backed truck and smelled the corpses before he saw them.

To vent his frustration, he shot the security camera above the door and a security camera on one of the fence poles. There were plenty of others to destroy, and he did so, one after the other. Now the guard wouldn’t be able to see what he was doing, but the destruction didn’t really accomplish anything because Lockhart had no way of getting inside.

The colonel isn’t going to be happy.

Lockhart waited several seconds before making himself reach for the two-way radio in the duffel bag.

61

Page landed as softly as he could, keeping the nose wheel off the ground as long as possible so the injured woman wouldn’t feel a jolt. He taxied from the runway toward the airport’s adobe office, where the man in frayed coveralls stood waiting.

After shutting off the engine, Page quickly got out, tilted the seat forward, and eased the woman from the back seat. She remained unconscious.

The man in the coveralls rushed to help.

“The ambulance is on the way,” he said as they set her gently on the pavement, using the Cessna’s shadow to keep her out of the sun.

Page heard the wail of approaching sirens.

“The Highway Patrol’s on its way, too,” the man said.

Page didn’t look forward to that conversation.

Tori and the reporter joined them.

Tinted by the red light of the sunset, the reporter faced him.

“I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself.” He had the television camera on his shoulder, and it took some effort for him to hold it with his left arm while he extended his right hand. The sleeve of his suit coat was torn. “Brent Loft.”

“I know who you are,” Page said.

Loft missed his tone, evidently pleased that Page recognized him. “And I certainly know who you are.”

“Excuse me?” Page asked.

“You have red hair,” Loft said, turning to Tori. “You’re the couple I’ve been looking for-Daniel and Victoria Page, from Santa Fe. I’ve done my homework. You stopped the shootings on Thursday night.”

“Is that camera still on?” Page asked.

“It’s worthless if it isn’t.”

Page had been through so much that his emotions nearly over- whelmed him. His need to shield Tori almost made him yank the camera from Loft’s hands and hurl it onto the concrete.

The approaching sirens helped him keep control.

He took a deep breath.

“Can’t this wait? It’s not something we want to talk about right now. We saved your life. With luck, we got your friend back here in time. Isn’t that worth something? Give us a break.”

Loft glanced in the direction of his unconscious companion and nodded. As he turned back to Tori, the sirens wailed closer.

“I have only one question.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“Really. Just one question.”

“What is it?” Tori demanded. “I’m tired of hiding from you. Let’s get this over with.”

“I can understand how your husband was able to do what he did. He’s a professional, trained to take charge in emergencies. But you’re a real estate agent. In your place, most people would have panicked. Somehow you found the strength to pick up a pistol and stop the gunman. Your courage was remarkable. How on earth were you able to do that?”

“There wasn’t a choice,” Tori answered. “He was trying to kill my husband.” She looked directly at Page, then back to the reporter. “How could I not have tried to protect my husband?”

“So you’re saying it was love that gave you courage?” Loft asked.

“Yes.” Tori looked again at Page. “Love gave me courage.”

Loft lowered the camera and studied each of them. “Thank you for saving Anita and me.”

The sirens became terribly loud. An ambulance sped into view and skidded to a stop next to the airport’s office, followed closely by a Highway Patrol car. Attendants jumped from the ambulance, hurrying to unfold the wheels of a gurney. One carried an emergency kit as they rushed toward the woman lying on the pavement.

Medrano got out of the patrol car, put on his Stetson, straightened to his full height, and took powerful strides toward Page.

His voice was strong. “I told you not to fly into that area.”

“That’s news to me,” Page said. Next to him, the ambulance attendants put an oxygen mask over the woman’s face and attached an IV line. “You said the government gave me clearance to ignore the restriction.”

“And then they revoked it. I warned you to get out of there.”

“If you told us to leave, we didn’t hear it,” Tori said. “The police radio stopped working.”

Loft stepped forward, balancing the television camera on his shoulder, focusing it on Medrano.

“Captain, I’m Brent Loft from First-on-the-Scene News in El Paso. This couple did an amazing thing. At great risk to their lives, they landed their aircraft on hazardous terrain at the observatory so they could stop a guard from killing us. In fact, as you can see, he’d al- ready shot my partner. They loaded us on their plane and took off. The entire time, I was afraid the maniac would fire another grenade at us.”

Medrano was taken by surprise. “Grenade?”

“He’d already used one to shoot down a helicopter. Then he fired one at our van.”

“Why was he firing grenades?”

“I have no idea, any more than I know why he piled all those corpses onto the back of a truck.”

“Corpses… in a truck?”

“A lot of them. Enough to fill it. He kept babbling about wanting to listen to music.” Loft continued aiming the camera. “Something bad is going on over there, Captain. You need to get your men to that observatory before God knows what else happens.”

Medrano opened his mouth to say something, then decided against it. He hurried to his cruiser, where he reached for the micro- phone on his police radio and spoke urgently into it.

Loft lowered the camera and aimed it toward the ambulance attendants as they lifted the woman onto the gurney.

“How’s she doing?” Page asked.

“Lost plenty of blood,” an attendant answered.

“She’d have lost more if it weren’t for the guy with the camera.”

“I’ll use that quote when I edit this,” Loft said.

He stepped quickly over to the ambulance and began talking to the attendants at the open doors. He used his free hand to gesture persuasively. The next thing, he climbed into the back.

Page shook his head. “I hate to say this, but I think we’re going to be seeing a lot more of him on television.”

Siren blaring, the ambulance rushed away.

The man in the frayed coveralls came over to them. “I’ll help you push your plane to a tie-down spot.”

“Actually, we’re going up again,” Page told him.

The man frowned toward the dimming sky. “Never liked flying at night.”

“We still have something to settle. Am I right, Tori? Or maybe you don’t feel the need any longer.”

“More than ever,” Tori said. “Let’s finish this.”

62

The hum had become so intense that it felt like a drill boring into Halloway’s skull.

Soon, he thought. Soon I won’t hear it any longer. Soon the only thing I’ll hear will be the music.

But despite his determination, he needed all of his willpower not to be distracted while he finished rigging the booby trap. The design-learned in Iraq-consisted of two trip wires. The first was stretched across the upper part of the stairs. If an assault team some- how managed to force the door open up there, they’d respond to their training and check for traps. After they spotted the wire and the grenades it was attached to, they’d disengage it, then proceed down the stairs. The second wire-in shadows, stretched across a lower part of the stairs-was the killer.

As he worked, the hum made Halloway’s hands want to shake, but he refused to let that happen. Grinding his teeth, he tied the wire to a cluster of concealed grenades. Satisfied that the work had been done correctly, he carefully descended the remainder of the stairs.

At the bottom, he increased speed along the hallway and entered the surveillance room, where he saw that even more screens had gone blank. One of the few that was working showed the man who’d shot at him as he raised his M4 and fired.

Another screen went dead.

Well, that’s okay, Halloway thought. I wasn’t going to be watching the monitors anyhow.

He picked up his reloaded M4 and went down the hallway to the door marked DATA ANALYSIS. Inside, he’d already placed five other M4s on a table, along with numerous hundred-round magazines and a small stack of grenades. If an assault team tried to stop him from listening to the music, he planned to show them just how furious that would make him.

The room still smelled of death, mostly because of the dried blood that covered the floor. But Halloway didn’t have time to clean it. Any- way, when the music started, the scent of cinnamon would replace the stench of the blood. Because he didn’t know how to manipulate the electronic instruments, he’d kept all of them on, their panels glowing continuously.

The only switch he felt confident using was the one that activated either the speakers or the headphones, and the only knob he knew how to control was for the volume. While he’d prepared the booby trap, he’d kept the sound coming from the speakers. It had been loud enough that he could hear the static from a distance. More important, he’d been able to hear growing hints of music emerging from the static. Those half-heard alluring echoes were what had made him capable of working despite the agony of his headache.

Now the music was more than just hints and echoes. Strengthening, it drifted and floated. Halloway felt its eerie tones lifting him. The pain of the drill boring into his brain mercifully receded. The hum diminished, overcome by the sensual melody that again brought the taste of orange juice and vodka.

He closed his eyes. The woman he danced with whispered into each of his ears. Kissed them. Drew her tongue along them.

It left his ears wet. He put his hands to them and opened his eyes long enough to see what was on them.

Blood was dripping from his ears.

63

Raleigh finished yet another phone call in a successful effort to keep law enforcement away from the observatory. The voices in the urgent conversation had sounded distant because he couldn’t take the risk of removing his earplugs now that it was almost dark outside and the static on the audio monitors was beginning to resolve itself into music.

The words “national security” were a powerful invocation. With the cooperation of the FBI, Raleigh had again stopped the Highway Patrol from entering the restricted area. He’d arranged for equipment to be delivered that would allow an assault team to break into the observatory. After they eliminated the guard and cleaned the facility so that outside agencies couldn’t question its true purpose, Raleigh would make sure the bastard’s autopsy revealed a high blood level of crack cocaine, explaining his psychotic behavior.

With one crisis dealt with, but anticipating more, he set down the phone, stepped from the command center, and surveyed the eight men poised in front of the numerous electronic consoles. Their faces reflecting the glow of instruments, they turned dials, refining and adjusting the incoming signals. In response to his orders, they’d turned off the audio capability of their monitors. Their earplugs were firmly in place.

Raleigh thought about his great-grandfather, who in 1919 had flown toward the lights and never been seen again. His great- grandmother had taken her two-year-old son and moved to Boston, but despite the distance that she’d put between herself and the lights, she hadn’t been able to keep them out of her thoughts. Her memories of the lights and her husband became the bedtime stories she told her son, who grew up dreaming about them. When he was twenty and skin cancer finally killed his mother, he hitchhiked all the way to Texas. He needed to hitchhike because the Great Depression continued to ravage the nation. Using his legs and his thumb was the only way he could afford to make the trip. His name was Edward. His mother’s story about his father’s disappearance had so obsessed him from when he was a child that he was drawn to Rostov the way religious people are drawn to holy places. It took him three months to get there. When he finally arrived, his belt was cinched so tightly that it barely kept his pants up. His shoes had holes in them. His shirt was tattered. His face was browned by the sun.

The dry-goods store that Edward’s mother had told him about was still in business-although barely, judging from the meager samples in the front window. A bell rang when he opened the door. A tired- looking, gray-haired man and woman looked questioningly at him from behind a counter. Despite their age, he could see the resemblance immediately.

“I’m your grandson,” he announced.

They gaped. Before they could ask any questions, he said the thing he had wanted to say all his life.

“Tell me where to go to see the lights.”

They gaped even more.

Edward helped at the dry-goods store. He also found part-time jobs, painting barns and repairing wooden sidewalks in exchange for new shoes, clothes, and the extra food his grandmother needed to prepare. In Boston, meat had been a luxury, but not in cattle country.

His grandmother’s beef and potatoes helped him regain the weight he’d lost on his trek.

Every night Edward borrowed his grandfather’s battered Chevrolet pickup truck and drove out to see the lights-or to try to see them, because they didn’t appear.

“Are you sure they’re real?” he asked his grandparents. “Have you ever seen them?”

“Yes,” his grandmother said, and his grandfather nodded in agreement. “It’s been a while since we tried, though.”

“My mother swore she saw them a lot.”

“At first she couldn’t see them, either,” his grandfather explained. “It took quite a while.”

“My father believed in them enough to risk his life,” Edward said, beginning to feel angry, as if something were being hidden from him. “So where are they? Why can’t I see them?”

“Some people just can’t,” his grandmother said matter-of-factly.

“Why not?”

“No one knows.”

That left him feeling more exasperated than ever.

On the days when he couldn’t find work, he hiked through the area where the lights were said to appear. He stood where his father had built the airfield during World War I. Weeds and grass filled the un- paved runway, the length of which was just barely visible. The adobe buildings that had functioned as hangars were piles of dirt. He studied the distant rim of black boulders that looked like huge cinders- the aptly named Badlands.

He stared to the south toward Mexico.

“No one ever found the wreckage of an airplane?” he asked his grandparents.

“Some of his former students tried. They flew fifty miles-all the way to Mexico. A couple of them actually flew into Mexico. They went back and forth in what they called grids, but no one ever found your father or his plane.”

“But nobody just disappears.”

“The wings were covered with linen and hardened by shellac. If the plane crashed and burned, the debris could have been blown away by the wind.”

“And his body?”

“Coyotes. God bless him, John’s bones could have been carried off.”

“I want to see the lights.”

“Maybe you’re trying too hard.”

The next day, Edward dug postholes on a ranch until he earned enough to buy a bottle of whiskey-something that wasn’t easy to locate because even though Prohibition had ended four years earlier, Rostov had voted to remain “dry.”

At dark Edward drove out to the old airfield, sat on the ground, opened the bottle, and began sipping. Until then the only alcohol he’d ever sampled was beer, but the chance of obtaining beer in Rostov turned out to be even slimmer than that of finding whiskey. Be- sides, he wanted something strong.

It burned his throat. He felt its heat go all the way to his stomach. He gagged and almost threw it up.

At least it acted more quickly than beer would have. Because he wasn’t used to it, he didn’t need much before he felt off balance, as if something in his skull were tilting. Soon his tongue felt thick. His eyes became heavy. The moon and stars went out of focus.

“Come on!” Edward shouted. “Let me see you!” His words were slurred. “I’m not trying hard anymore! I’m relaxed! More than relaxed!” He laughed giddily and took another sip. “Hell, I’m drunk…

“Drunk as a… skunk…

“Damned… stinkin’… drunk.”

He closed his eyes. Fought to open them. Closed them again.

And passed out.

The night brought a cool breeze that wavered Edward’s hair and caressed his cheeks. He dreamed of being on a boat, floating on a current. His mind drifted, rising and falling.

He woke to the glare of the rising sun. But when he managed to lift his heavy eyelids, he saw darkness off to his right. The stars and the moon were still there, but mostly he saw darkness.

On his right.

On his left, the rising sun persisted, and when Edward lifted his painful head from the dirt on which he lay, he saw that the sun was, in fact, a floating ball of light.

Groggy, he watched it divide, becoming red and yellow. The two orbs dissolved into four, adding blue and green. They split into eight, adding orange, purple, brown, and a blinding silver. Pulsing closer, they grew larger, their shimmer more intense.

There was something else, some kind of sound he couldn’t identify, a hiss or hum or possibly distant music, as if from a radio station that had faded almost beyond hearing.

Even though his mother had said that the lights had frightened her the first time she’d seen them, Edward hadn’t expected to have the same reaction. After all, the lights had caused his mother and father to fall in love. If it hadn’t been for the lights, Edward would never have been born. His father had been so mesmerized by the lights that he’d done everything possible to try to find where they came from.

But as the colors of the lights increased before him, dispelling the darkness, what Edward felt wasn’t the fear his mother had described. It was worse than that.

It was terror.

His mother had been a fervent churchgoer. Each Sunday, she’d made Edward go with her, always staying at the back, coming in late and leaving early so that people wouldn’t see the lesions on her face.

He recalled very little of those Sunday mornings except his impatience to go and play-and a particular sermon that the minister had delivered. The subject was Christ’s transfiguration, a word that Ed- ward, then ten years old, hadn’t understood but that he asked his mother to repeat several times afterward until he memorized it- because the sermon had made an unnerving impression on him.

In the gospels, the minister had said, Christ took three of the apostles to the top of a mountain, where he transformed himself into his true radiance. His clothes became as brilliant as the sun. The light was so blinding that the apostles fell to the ground, lowering their eyes in fear. When they finally looked up again, Christ had changed back to human form.

“Rise,” he told them. “Don’t be afraid. Don’t tell others about this vision.”

The minister had used this passage to explain how glorious heaven would be, how brilliant and spellbinding. But that hadn’t made any sense to Edward. How could something be both glorious and terrifying at the same time? It seemed to him that heaven should make someone want to rush toward it rather than fall to the ground in fear.

That story about Christ’s blinding light gave Edward nightmares- perhaps because it merged with his mother’s story about the lights and his father’s disappearance. In years to come, he would often think about it. After his mother died, he even spoke to the minister about it, although the minister didn’t seem to get his point, which was that it might not be so easy to tell the difference between good and evil. If a vision of goodness made the apostles afraid, was it possible that a vision of evil would make them walk toward it? That would be logical because evil was tempting. But in a sane world, shouldn’t evil be terrifying and goodness tempting? Why was everything reversed?

“That’s God’s way of testing us,” the minister said.

“But why do we need to be tested?”

“Because our first parents were tested and failed. We are their fallen children. We need to prove that we won’t repeat their sin.”

“The choice ought to be clearer,” Edward persisted. “The story only tells me that it’s hard to know the difference. If Christ showed the apostles a vision of heaven, shouldn’t it have been so wonderful that he’d have urged them to spread the word? Why did he tell them to keep it a secret?”

“That passage isn’t clear.”

“How’s this for a theory, Reverend? What if heaven’s so radiant that it’s terrifying? Maybe people shouldn’t know what it’s really like until they finally get there and it’s too late to back out.”

“I’ll pray for your soul.”

Now the brilliance of the lights made Edward as frightened as the apostles had been at the sight of Christ’s heavenly radiance. He told himself that his reaction was wrong, that he ought to be entranced by the shimmering beauty he was finally seeing.

I came all this way and tried so hard to see you.

You’re glorious. I ought to feel awestruck.

Maybe his fear was a sign of how truly good the lights were, he thought. But then he was struck by something more than awe.

The lights changed. Clouds of the darkest thunderstorm suddenly churned within them. Lightning flashed at their core. As thunder punished his ears, he saw a figure amid the clouds, a young man in a uniform who looked like the photographs Edward had seen of his father. The man held out his hand, beckoning for Edward to step into the clouds and join him.

Edward screamed. Turning, he ran.

Without realizing it, he charged along the airstrip that his father had built and had flown from countless times, years ago. He stumbled, falling on stones, scraping his jaw. He scrambled to his feet and ran harder.

He heard a wail and realized that it was coming from him, that he couldn’t stop screaming.

The next thing he knew, people were all around him, grabbing him, trying to calm him. He’d raced all the way back to town and had been so frenzied that he hadn’t realized how far he’d gone. Standing in the middle of the main street, he was surrounded by townspeople, most of whom wore nightclothes and held lanterns or flashlights.

“Edward, what’s the matter?” his grandfather asked in alarm. “What happened to you?”

“Clouds. Lightning,” Edward blurted.

“What’s he talking about?” someone asked. “Look at the stars. The sky’s perfectly clear.”

“Lights. Clouds in the lights.”

“I smell whiskey.”

“Thunder. Saw a man in the clouds.”

“… reeks of it.”

“My father.”

“Look at the blood on his chin. He’s so drunk he fell down.”

“Edward, where’d you get the whiskey?” his grandfather demanded.

“Good’s terrifying,” Edward blurted. “So bright…”

“Too drunk to make sense.”

“Where’s my truck, Edward? Did you wreck my truck?” his grand- father asked sternly.

“Evil feels welcoming,” Edward raved.

His grandfather shook him. “Answer me, Edward. Where’s my truck?”

“Well, I’ve got better things to do than waste a good night’s sleep on a drunk,” someone said. “Come on, Sarah. Let’s go back to bed.”

“Saw my father,” Edward persisted.

“Damn it, Edward, just be honest and tell me if you wrecked my truck.”

The next morning, Edward walked to where he’d left the truck, near the old airstrip. For a long time, he stared toward the southern horizon. Had he been so drunk that he’d hallucinated?

No, he didn’t believe that. He was convinced that the whiskey had long since worn off by the time he’d seen the lights.

I wasn’t drunk when it happened. I know it! I know what I saw.

He started the truck, drove back to town, left it outside the dry- goods store, and hitchhiked two hundred miles to El Paso, where he joined the Army.

From that moment he had one ambition-to read the reports his father had written about the lights. Edward had no doubt that those reports would be hard to obtain, but he was certain of something else-that the son of a revered World War I ace would advance quickly in his military career.

He judged correctly. It turned out that many officers of importance had served with his father during the expedition into Mexico, and later in France and Germany. By 1942, after Pearl Harbor and America’s en- try into World War II, Edward had risen quickly to the rank of captain in Military Intelligence, a branch he’d pursued because it gave him the best chance of learning where his father’s reports were located.

On a rainy October afternoon, after having searched in Washing- ton, D.C., and at the Presidio in San Francisco, Edward uncovered hints that took him back to El Paso’s Fort Bliss. From a disintegrating box in a musty Quonset hut filled with hundreds of similar long- forgotten boxes, he withdrew documents that his father had written twenty-four years earlier.

They were yellow with age. The words looked painfully typed. The ink on his father’s signature had turned from blue to brown.

Edward read the reports, then read them again. And again. The text was revealing, especially the section in which his father maintained that the lights had somehow caused his student pilots to at- tack one another in night training. His father had become convinced that somehow the lights could be used as a weapon.

64

Anita had an IV line leading into her right arm. Prongs from an oxy- gen tube filled her nostrils. Behind her, a beeping monitor indicated her pulse, blood pressure, and heart rhythm.

“The doctor says you need surgery, but you’re going to be okay,” Brent told her, sitting next to her bed.

She managed to nod and raise her eyelids slightly, groggily at- tempting to see him. Her dark skin was only slightly less pale.

“The bullet broke your arm,” Brent continued. “The doctor says that’s why the pain feels so deep. The bone needs to be set.”

Again Anita managed a slight nod.

“They’re going to take you to the operating room now,” Brent said. “When you wake up, I’ll be here. That might not be the most thrilling promise. Maybe I’m the last person you want to see. All the same, like it or not, when you wake up, I’ll be here.”

Anita tried to raise her uninjured arm.

“Save your strength,” Brent said.

She reached weakly for his hand.

Brent held it.

“You did damned good today,” he told her. “You never stopped trying. You never gave up. I promise-you’ll win an Emmy. You deserve it.”

Her hand drooped. After easing it onto the bed, Brent heard foot- steps behind him. Two nurses entered, ready to wheel her to the operating room.

He went out to the echoing corridor, where hospital visitors gave him troubled looks as they passed him. His torn coat sleeve flopped at his side. His hair was rumpled and dusty. Dirt and blood smeared his suit.

His producer waited for him. “You really want to go on the air looking like that? You’ll scare the hell out of some of your viewers.”

“Good. Let them realize what it takes to get a story.”

They walked quickly toward the elevator.

“Did you see the video I got on that camera?” Brent asked.

“Dynamite. We’re editing it now.”

“I’ll do a commentary. We could use sections of it tonight, then run all the footage as a one-hour special.” Brent pressed the elevator’s down button. “The other stations won’t come near us in the ratings.”

“How are we going to connect the lights with what the guard did?”

“We don’t need to. Run the stories back to back. Viewers will make the connection on their own. We won’t be accused of misrepresenting. Get me to the viewing area. I have a feeling this story’s about to become even more sensational.”

“Sharon’s anchoring the show at the moment.” The producer braced himself as if he expected an outburst.

Brent nodded. “Why not? I’ve been hogging the camera. She deserves more airtime.”

“That’s a surprising answer, coming from you.”

“One thing Anita made me realize is, sometimes two people can get a better story.”

Brent looked down the hallway toward where Anita’s gurney appeared, the nurses wheeling her from the room.

“Is she really going to be okay?” the producer asked.

“The bullet didn’t just break her arm. It shattered bones,” Brent told him. “The doctor warned me that he might not be able to save it.”

65

In the gathering darkness, Page and Tori climbed into the Cessna. Behind them, the airport’s office had a light over the door. Other lights gleamed through the windows. Page was careful not to look in that direction. Human eyes needed thirty minutes to adjust fully to the dark. Bright light could ruin night vision in an instant, with the result that another thirty minutes would be required.

The only color of light that didn’t compromise night vision was red. As a consequence, the two flashlights Page kept in his flight bag came with a choice of lenses, clear or red. He switched to the latter and used a cord to hang the flashlight around his neck. Tori did the same.

In the dark, human eyes had difficulty seeing anything that was straight ahead. For that reason, Page focused on murky objects to the right and left, doing a slow scan to make sure it was safe to switch on the engine.

“Clear!” he shouted through his open window, warning anyone in the vicinity to stay away.

He turned the ignition key, and the engine roared to life. He used his left thumb to press the radio button on the Cessna’s controls, speaking into his headset’s microphone, addressing any active planes in the area.

“Rostov traffic, Cessna Four Three Alpha is taxiing to one five.”

He tested the brakes, did another scan of the shadowy area around him, and guided the plane along the yellow taxiway line.

“Tori, the way you answered that reporter’s question…”

“I told you this afternoon. For the first time, I feel as if I under- stand you. Maybe I should have asked to go along with you in your police car so I could get an idea of what you go through each day. The terrible things people do to one another.”

“I didn’t talk about them because I didn’t want you to feel what I do.”

“Thank you for trying to shield me.” She fell silent for a moment, then spoke again. “Whatever the cancer doctors say after my operation on Tuesday, whether my life is going to be short or long, I can’t imagine not sharing it with you. And I don’t want you to stop being a policeman. You’re too good at it. Now quit talking and get this crate in the air.”

Page taxied past the indistinct shapes of airplanes in the tie-down area and reached the entrance to the runway. The final checklist helped him to calm his emotions and concentrate on the task ahead.

He radioed his intentions, then increased speed along the runway. At fifty-five knots, he pulled back the yoke. The plane rose through the darkness.

Looking down, he noticed a steady stream of headlights moving toward the blocked-off observation area. The vehicles were parking along the road in a line much longer than the one the evening before. The viewing area had floodlights pointed toward the concrete barriers, presumably to emphasize that the place was off-limits. The lights from three helicopters showed where they hovered, keeping a safe distance from one another. Listening to their radio communications, Page learned that they were television news choppers.

“A wonderful clear sky,” Tori said. “Look at the glow from the streets and houses in Rostov. And there-headlights from cars driving in from Mexico. I can actually count six pairs.”

Page banked the Cessna in a slow, gentle circle, using the flood- lights at the observation area as a reference.

“How high do you plan to go?” Tori asked.

“Enough to get above everything,” he answered.

“Sounds like the way to run a life.”

66

The concrete barriers were wide enough for Medrano to stand on. Raising his left hand to shield his eyes from the glaring floodlights, he watched in dismay as the crowd got larger.

“This area’s closed!” he shouted through a bullhorn. “Turn around! Drive back to town!”

Amid the clamor of the crowd, someone yelled back at him, “This road’s public property! My taxes paid for it! I’ve got a right to stay here as long as I want!”

“It isn’t safe!” Medrano responded. “I’m telling you, go back to town!”

“You know where you can go?” somebody shouted. “To hell!”

People stretched to grip the top of the barriers and climb over.

“What is it you don’t want us to see?” a woman demanded. “What are you hiding?”

“Turn off those damned floodlights!” a man complained. “They hurt my eyes!”

“Yeah, those aren’t the kind of lights we came for!”

No sooner did police officers pull one group of people off the barricades than another group tried to climb them.

Three helicopters roared above the viewing area, keeping a distance from one another, aiming their landing lights and exterior television cameras toward the commotion.

I don’t have anywhere near enough officers, Medrano thought, surveying the chaos.

Somebody yelled, “If you won’t let us over those barricades, we’ll go around them! My wife’s got Alzheimer’s! We’re here for the miracle!”

Medrano watched helplessly as hundreds of people headed down the road and veered toward a field on the right. But some went in the opposite direction, toward the abandoned military airfield, and that was one place Medrano definitely couldn’t let anyone go.

“Stop them from getting onto that airbase!” he shouted to his officers. “They’ll blow themselves up!”

Jumping from the barricade, Medrano bent his knees as he landed on the road’s gravel shoulder. Breathless, he straightened and ran to- ward the base. There, a man and a furiously barking German shepherd warned people not to climb the barbed-wire fence.

Suddenly the floodlights failed. People shouted in alarm. As darkness enveloped him, all Medrano saw were the residual images of the glaring lights imprinted on his eyes.

Somebody must have sabotaged the generator! he thought.

But it wasn’t only the generator. Automobile engines and head- lights suddenly failed. In place of the helicopters’ hectic thumping, the only sound from the air was the whistle of slowing rotors.

Medrano flinched from the sound of a massive crash. It took him a stunned moment to realize that one of the helicopters had plum- meted to the ground. The impact echoed from the field on the opposite side of the road, accompanied by a soaring fireball.

A second crash reverberated from the same direction. Medrano crouched sightlessly, worried about where the third crash would occur.

On the road. There wasn’t one impact but several as the final helicopter dropped onto cars, crumpling and shredding metal as rotors tore into asphalt. An explosion knocked him backward.

67

Raleigh watched the chaos on the monitors. The night-vision capability of the outside cameras made the panicked crowd have a surreal greenish glow.

Did that cop really believe all he needed to do was put up concrete barriers and everyone would stay away?

Floodlights had gone dark. Cars and their headlights had become inoperative. Helicopters had fallen from the sky. Just one explanation could account for all that-a massive electromagnetic pulse, similar to one from a nuclear blast, had sent a power surge through all the electronic equipment in the viewing area, destroying it.

Exactly as predicted, Raleigh thought. He’d reinforced the outside cameras and the entire underground facility with multiple layers of electromagnetic shielding. The office behind him had three times the amount that the rest of the building had.

“Sir, the readings are becoming more intense,” a member of his team said, watching a computer screen.

Despite his earplugs, Raleigh thought he felt a slight vibration. Or was he imagining it?

He glanced toward the shielded door to the command center.

“You’re channeling the signal through the dish above us?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. The signal’s being relayed to the observatory and then up to a satellite. The satellite is beaming the signal to the White Sands Missile Range. But I don’t know if the circuits can handle this much power. We’ve never tested them at this level before.”

68

July 23, 1942.

“Anybody here know what nuclear fission is?” the general in charge of the emergency intelligence meeting asked.

Like the other officers at the long metal table, Capt. Edward Raleigh did not.

“I’m not sure I do, either,” the general admitted. “Apparently if you smash two sections of uranium together, and you do it with enough force, you can create a bomb with more power than anybody’s ever imagined. Some scientists argue that the explosion could set off a chain reaction that would destroy the world, but most conclude that it could be controlled to the extent of vaporizing a city.”

“General, with all due respect,” a colonel asked, “you’re serious about this?”

“Three years ago, Einstein wrote a letter to the president alerting him that tests had validated the theory. Apparently Einstein’s contacts in the European scientific community warned him that the Germans were stockpiling uranium, and moving aggressively forward with nuclear-fission research. At that time, of course, we weren’t in the war, but now we are, and the president’s about to order a top- secret program to create a nuclear weapon as soon as possible.

“The scientist in charge will be Robert Oppenheimer. He was a Red sympathizer during the ’30s, so the FBI’s doing a thorough back- ground check. Our job will be to maintain security at a place called Los Alamos in New Mexico. It’s marked on the map behind me.”

A major went to the map and indicated the exact spot. “Santa Fe and a few other towns are a half-day’s drive away. Otherwise there’s nothing but ranches in the area.”

“Which we’re confiscating,” the general said. “Los Alamos is a boy’s camp in the middle of nowhere. Oppenheimer went there when he was a kid. It’s on top of a mesa, with one road up and one road down, easily contained. Oppenheimer’s thinking about using that mesa as the principal site for designing the bomb. We’re going to make sure nobody eavesdrops.”

“Sir, there might be another out-of-the-way place that’s equally suitable,” Edward took the opportunity to say.

The general looked unhappy about being interrupted. “And where would that place be?” he asked impatiently.

“West Texas. Outside a town called Rostov. Nothing’s there except millions of acres of ranchland. We built an airstrip there before we entered the last war. It was a good place to hide the pilots we were training so the Germans wouldn’t suspect how actively we were preparing to help the Allies.”

“Oppenheimer’s got his mind set on Los Alamos.”

“Rostov may offer another advantage,” Edward pressed. “There might be fission already occurring there.”

The general began to look interested. “Continue, Captain.”

Edward focused his remarks so that they related exclusively to nuclear fission. He described his father’s reports and concluded by saying, “There’s no doubt the lights are powerful. Ultimately my mother died from the skin cancer they gave her. One theory is that they’re caused by radioactive elements in the soil. If the rays can be channeled, and used as a weapon…”

The general held up a hand, cutting him off. “Put it in writing. I’ll submit it to Oppenheimer.”

“Yes, sir.”

But Edward knew what happened to reports.

A week later, during the next meeting, the general announced that Los Alamos would be the primary site for designing the atomic bomb.

Edward contained his disappointment.

Then the general surprised him by adding, “The Germans are pursuing the development of a second major weapon.”

The room became silent.

“It may be related to nuclear fission, or possibly it’s based on a totally different principle. All we know is that since Germany invaded Norway in 1940, they’ve sent a disproportionate number of soldiers there-a half-million occupiers in a country of two million people. Many of those soldiers are in a position that strategically makes no sense-surrounding a small valley in the middle of Norway. The valley’s called Hessdalen.”

The general looked directly at Edward. “Reports indicate that those soldiers are providing security for scientists investigating strange lights that appear there.”

“Lights, sir?” Edward tried not to show the emotion building in- side him.

“With effects that apparently range from mass hallucination to religious rapture. Some people went blind from looking at them.

Others became violent-even murderous. Still others developed cancerous lesions. There’s no telling if any of it is real, but Germany’s committed to exploring those lights as a possible weapon, and once they get interested in something, you know damned well we need to do the same. Even if the lights are bogus, all Hitler needs to do is start the rumor that he’s figured out how to use them as a weapon and de- ploy it anywhere he wants. Sometimes psychological warfare can win more battles than tanks.”

A colonel spoke up: “Sir, are these lights similar to the west Texas phenomena that Captain Raleigh was talking about?”

“That’s the conclusion the president came to. If Hitler’s using them as smoke and mirrors to distract us from his nuclear-fission program, we can do the same thing. Captain Raleigh, you’re ordered to take an exploratory team to whatever this town is in west Texas.”

“It’s called Rostov, sir.”

“To prove how apparently serious we are, two of Oppenheimer’s researchers will accompany you. They’ll send equipment from the University of Chicago. The Army Corps of Engineers-which is building the Los Alamos facility-will contribute a dozen men. There’ll also be a rifle platoon to make a show of providing security. If it turns out there is something useful about these lights, so much the better, but I’m willing to bet that the main thing we’ll accomplish is to drive Hitler crazy by making him think we’re not only commit- ted to this project but actually making progress. As a bonus, you’ll act as a diversion from what’s happening at Los Alamos.”

Before the end of the month, Edward’s team flew on a C-47 military transport plane to Fort Bliss, then drove ten trucks of men and equipment to Rostov. As soon as they reached the old airfield, they set up tents and unpacked electronic instruments, activating a generator to provide an independent source of power.

Oppenheimer’s researchers scanned the ground with Geiger counters but couldn’t find any trace of radioactivity.

“You’ll need to scan a lot more ground than that.” Edward pointed past the Badlands. “The lights come from way over there.”

“I hope we made a big enough fuss about getting here,” one of the researchers said. “German spies keep watch on Oppenheimer and anybody associated with him. Since we’re here, word is bound to get back to Germany.” The gangly, bespectacled man scanned the featureless horizon. The only things in sight were two jackrabbits and five scattered cows trying to eat the meager grass. “Hell, nobody would bother to come here if it wasn’t desperately important.”

The sunset was spectacular. As darkness thickened, the air cooled, making them cross their arms across their chests.

“So, where are the lights?” a soldier asked.

“They don’t always come out. Give them time,” Edward answered.

“Anybody got a smoke?”

An engineer went into the sizable main tent and leaned his watch toward one of the glowing instruments. “It’s 9:20. This has been a long day. If something doesn’t happen by 10 o’clock, I’m heading for my cot.”

“You might need to give the lights more time than that,” Edward said. “They don’t exactly appear on a schedule.”

“Well, wake me if you see Hitler’s new secret weapon. Not that it’ll be easy to sleep with that generator droning.”

“And the static coming from that directional radio,” a researcher said. “Doesn’t matter what frequency I use. That’s all I receive.”

“No, there’s something in the background. But I can barely hear it.”

Somebody chuckled. “Probably a Mexican radio station playing mariachi music.”

“Look, what’s that over there?”

“A shooting star. Wow. Haven’t seen one since I was a kid. I’ve been living in the city for so long, I almost forgot what they look like.”

“There’s another one.”

“No, that one’s not a shooting star. It’s too low on the horizon, and it’s lasting too long.”

“A bunch of them. They look like skyrockets. I bet we’re seeing fireworks from across the border. Does anybody know if it’s a Mexican holiday?”

“Hey, whoever’s in that tent, stop turning up the volume on that radio. The static’s hurting my ears.”

“Nobody’s in the tent,” one of the researchers said. “The static’s getting louder on its own.”

“And the fireworks are getting brighter,” a soldier said. “Look at all those colors. They remind me of the Northern Lights. I saw them once when I was a kid and my dad took me camping on Lake Michigan.”

“But these are to the south. And they’re awfully low on the horizon,” an engineer reminded him. He turned and stared toward the tent. “Are you sure nobody’s screwing with that radio? Now the static’s louder than the generator.”

Abruptly the static ended.

So did the shooting stars or the skyrockets or the Northern Lights-or whatever they were. The horizon turned completely dark.

So did the glowing instruments in the tent. The generator stopped droning.

“What the hell happened to everything?”

“Gentlemen,” Edward said, “welcome to the lights.”

69

Page frowned when something changed on the ground behind the Cessna. The glow of the spotlights abruptly went out.

Tori noticed it, also. “Something happened behind us.”

He banked the aircraft to the left and returned in the direction from which they’d come. But the landscape no longer appeared the same. “Where’s the observation area? I don’t see the floodlights.”

“Not only that,” Tori said, “I don’t see any headlights. There was a whole line of traffic a couple of minutes ago. Now the road’s invisible. And the helicopters-I don’t see their lights anymore, either.”

“Their radio transmissions have stopped,” Page told her, puzzled.

Below them, a fireball suddenly illuminated the darkness. Two other explosions followed. Startled, Page saw the twisting impact of a helicopter crashing onto vehicles at the side of the road, its distant rumble reaching him. Huge chunks of metal flipped along the ground. The spreading flames revealed specks of people racing away in panic.

“God help them,” Tori murmured.

Shock waves bumped the plane.

“Maybe we should head back,” Page managed to say.

“No, it can’t be a coincidence. Somehow what’s happening down there has to be connected to the lights. We came up here to do something-if we don’t finish this now, I don’t think I’ll ever have the strength to try it again.” Tori paused. “I want to find the truth.”

“Whatever you want,” Page assured her. “We’re in this together.”

“Yes.” Tori savored the word. “Together.”

Avoiding the updraft of the flames and debris, Page flew south to- ward the murky horizon.

“What are those dark lumps ahead?” Tori asked.

“The Badlands.”

Tori pointed. “Something’s beyond them.”

“I don’t see anything.”

“Faint red lights. Three of them.”

Page concentrated. “I still don’t see them.”

“They’re getting brighter.”

“Where are they coming from? Give me a heading.”

Tori looked at the indicator. “One hundred and forty degrees.”

“All I see is blackness.”

“They’re dividing. They’re even brighter now. They’re changing from red to blue and green and yellow. How can you possibly not see them?”

“Maybe if I went lower.”

“They’re dividing again.”

Page eased back on the throttle. The aircraft gradually descended, the sinking, floating sensation reminding him of what he felt when he saw the lights.

Except that this time, he didn’t see them.

“So many now. They’re like a rainbow rippling across the ground,” Tori said, her voice strange. “They’re moving toward the observation area.”

“I’m as open as I can possibly be. Why can’t I see them?”

As Page descended farther toward the darkness, all at once he did see the lights. It was as if a veil had dissolved, but the colors weren’t rippling the way Tori had described.

They writhed in anger.

“Something’s wrong.” Page shoved in the throttle and raised the nose.

A yellow filament shot up, like a flare from a solar storm. It lengthened until it snapped free, condensing into a twisting mass that sped higher.

Climbing, Page banked to the right.

The light kept coming.

He banked to the left.

The light did the same.

Transparent, iridescent, pulsing, it suddenly filled the cockpit. Page could no longer hear the plane’s engine. Instead he heard a rushing wind. Shades of yellow swirled around him. Images flickered.

He saw an aquarium filled with wavering plants and a model of a shipwreck, but the plants were actually cuttlefish, their tentacles resembling ferns, and parts of the shipwreck were more cuttlefish that had cleverly camouflaged themselves to match their surroundings.

And now his father was pointing toward more and more cuttlefish, and his mother, who would die from breast cancer within the year, was smiling because her husband and son were getting along for a change.

And Page heard a voice within the rushing air. It was his father.

“Sometimes we need to learn to see in a new way.”

The engine stopped.

The yellow vanished.

Without warning, Page found himself in darkness, his night vision blunted by the residual image of the light. He strained his eyes, desperate to see out through the canopy. With relief, he found that the difference between the glow of the stars and moon above him and the darkness below him was enough for him at least to identify the horizon.

The ground straight ahead seemed darker than the areas around it. Lumpy.

Page frantically realized that, trying to escape the pursuing light, he’d become disoriented and turned the aircraft toward the Bad- lands. The silence was dismaying. Normally his headphones muffled the sound of the engine, reducing it to a drone. But now he heard nothing.

The instrument panel was dark. The radio was dead.

His father had told him repeatedly what to do in case of an engine failure. The first thing was to put the aircraft into a glide. At a speed of sixty-five knots, the Cessna would lose a thousand feet for every nine thousand feet that it glided. In theory, this provided enough time to choose a location for an emergency touchdown-ideally a field, or even a road. During the day, the options would be visible, but in the dark, it wasn’t possible to know if a stretch of blackness was grass or rocks or a chasm.

At least the moon and the stars made the dark lumps of the Bad- lands look different from the flatness around them. Page kept the Cessna gliding at what he could only estimate was sixty-five knots. With the airspeed indicator not visible, he needed to rely on the feel of the aircraft, on thousands of hours of judging how it handled at various speeds.

They continued to drop.

“Tori, make sure your seat belt’s tight! Just before we touch down, open your door! The impact of landing might twist the fuselage and wedge the door shut!”

He decided not to add, And trap you inside.

To minimize the possibility of a fire, Page twisted the fuel selector dial to the off position, sealing the fuel lines. The closer they got to the ground, the more his eyes worked sufficiently for him to distinguish the lumps of the Badlands.

Tori saw them, too.

“Will we clear them?” she shouted.

“That’s the plan.”

“A damned good one.”

The Cessna glided lower. Time stretched. A minute felt like forever.

“My skin feels burned,” Tori said.

Page frowned, touching his cheek. “So does mine.”

“I saw my father,” she said.

“What?”

“When the light swirled around us, I saw my father. I was a little girl. He was dragging me to the car. I hit him, trying to get away so I could look at the lights.”

“I saw my father, too.”

The dark ground sped closer.

“I love you,” Tori said.

“I love you.”

The boulders loomed.

“Brace yourself.”

Skimming over the Badlands, Page thought he felt a wheel strike something. At once the uneven darkness was gone, replaced by what seemed to be grassland. But anything could be under the Cessna- rocks that would snap the wheels and flip the aircraft, or a fence that could do the same thing.

They were over the old military airbase, Page realized. Floating, he tried to hold off landing as long as possible, not only because that made for a theoretically softer impact but because as long as they were still in the air, they remained alive.

He couldn’t help thinking about the unexploded bombs below him.

70

Blood dripped from Halloway’s nostrils. He stopped dancing long enough to wipe the back of his right hand across his mouth. Seeing the red liquid on his knuckles, he felt troubled, but only for a moment. That blood didn’t matter anymore than the blood trickling from his ears did.

The woman in his arms mattered.

The glass of vodka and orange juice, always full-that mattered.

Most of all, the music mattered. Halloway remembered his youthful dreams of becoming a rock star, of having the world at his feet, of being able to give orders and do anything he wanted. He’d practiced with his guitar until his fingers had calluses. He’d written song after song. He’d followed rock bands from city to city, doing his best to be indispensable, buying drugs for them, getting girls for them, trying to persuade them to listen to his songs and maybe record them and maybe even let him sing in the background because good buddy Earl deserved repayment for all the favors he’d done.

Pretty soon, he’d be the guy people followed and got girls and drugs for.

But one city became another and another, just as one band became another and another, and one day Halloway realized that nobody was ever going to record his songs, just as they damned sure weren’t going to let him sing. What was he, some kind of moron, that he didn’t grasp that they were laughing at him and using him?

He went back to Providence, worked as a busboy in a restaurant, got his girlfriend pregnant, and joined the Army. The next thing he knew, he was killing people instead of singing to them.

The sadness of his life spilled over him as he danced to the heart- breaking music. His eyes blurred with tears. When he used his right hand to wipe them, he managed to see that there was a lot more blood on his knuckles than there’d been a minute ago. Frowning, he used his left hand to wipe his eyes. Seeing red liquid on those knuckles, he realized that blood was streaming from his tear ducts as well as his ears and his nose, but that didn’t matter, either-because then it occurred to him that his eyes were blurred for another reason.

He smelled something other than the cinnamon hair of the woman. Coughing, he looked toward the hallway beyond the open door, but he couldn’t actually see the hallway.

A haze filled it.

71

Lockhart piled more dead grass and tumbleweeds on the fire he’d built over the air-circulation pipes. The area around him blazed from spot- lights that had been activated at sunset, casting a grotesque glare over the huge dishes. The lights were so powerful that he felt their heat.

Or maybe it was the heat from the fire, which rose about five feet into the air now. After shooting every surveillance camera Lockhart could find, he’d searched the area for another way to get into the complex.

Damn it, the place is airtight, he’d thought.

Immediately he’d realized that of course the facility couldn’t possibly be airtight. There had to be pipes to pump the air in and out. Otherwise people inside would suffocate.

In the end, Lockhart discovered three sets of them, hidden among the dishes.

He didn’t have matches. Muzzle flashes from his M4 had done just fine, however. First he’d piled dead grass and tumbleweeds over the pipes. Then, shooting into them, he’d had no trouble starting fires.

The trick was to keep hurrying from one fire to another, constantly adding more brush. It quickly became obvious which pipes were which. Smoke was sucked into one and blown upward from another. Even though the night air was pleasantly cool, the effort soaked his shirt with sweat, but he’d never felt more satisfied by exertion.

Thinking of the corpses in the truck and the threat the bastard in- side was to the mission, he inwardly chanted, Come on, baby, burn.

He imagined the crazy prick trying to breathe through a wet towel while he coughed his guts out. Sooner or later, the outside door would open. Lockhart had a distant view of it as he rushed from fire to fire, focusing exclusively on the intake vents, throwing on more dead brush. Lumber left over from a construction project made the flames dance higher. He kept looking at the door. The moment Halloway showed himself, Lockhart would teach him why it was a bad idea to ruin things for the colonel.

The fires roared. But Lockhart now heard a louder sound. Staring toward the west, he saw the lights of a swiftly approaching Black Hawk helicopter. Finally, he thought. The colonel said the equipment would arrive that would get me through that door.

He grabbed his M4 and ran. The landing pad had been destroyed by the wreckage of the exploding chopper. He stood under a flood- light and waved both arms to get the pilot’s attention, then motioned toward the area just beyond the open gates. Soon the Black Hawk settled onto the lane, its nose pointed through the gates toward the steel door of the concrete-block shed.

“What took that chopper down?” the pilot shouted as the Black Hawk’s rotors whistled to a stop.

His face tightened as Lockhart explained.

A special-ops team leaped from the side hatch, assault rifles in hand.

“You’re telling me that truck has corpses piled in the back?” the pi- lot demanded. Seeing three coyotes leap from the truck, things dangling from their mouths, he shook his head in disgust.

“The colonel said you’d bring equipment we could use to get through that door,” Lockhart said. “What have you got? Claymores? Detonator cord?”

“For this guy, I’ve got something better.”

A minute later, the chopper lifted off, hovered a hundred feet above the lane, and fired a rocket.

From a safe distance, Lockhart watched with joy. He’d wanted something to get him through the door. But this was so much better. With a satisfying roar, the rocket blew the whole damned concrete shed into pieces.

72

Brent stood on the motor home, describing the chaos of the crowd below him. Mindful of what had happened the night before, he’d al- most decided to do his commentary from the ground or from some- thing modestly higher.

But how the hell would that look? I’m supposed to be the toughest re- porter in the business, and I do my spot on a picnic table?

Even so, every time the crowd jostled the motor home and forced him to correct his balance, he remembered what it had felt like to plummet to the ground. No camera operator had enough of Anita’s determination to be willing to get on the roof with him. The producer had finally put a remote camera up there. It and the handheld cameras among the crowd, as well as the nose camera on the chopper, would provide ample coverage. But there wasn’t any question where the viewers’ attention would be-with the guy risking his life on the mo- tor home’s roof while all the other television reporters looked like wimps, doing their spots from the ground.

When the floodlights went out, Brent made a dramatic moment of it.

“Did somebody sabotage the lights?” he asked before realizing that his own lights had gone out, also-not to mention the lights on the cameras, the cars, and the choppers.

Jesus, don’t tell me I’m off the air.

Blinded by the sudden darkness, he groped toward the ladder at the side of the motor home. People banged against the vehicle, shouting in panic. He wavered, reached the ladder, started down, and froze as helicopters plummeted to the ground, bursting into flames.

Shrapnel flying past him, Brent hugged the ladder and waited for the shock waves to subside. His eyes were level with the motor home’s roof. He looked directly over the concrete barrier toward the field beyond the viewing area.

A glow approached.

At first Brent thought it was the residual image that the broadcast lights had imprinted on his eyes. But then he realized that what he saw stretched a hundred yards from right to left. The glow got bigger and closer, so strong that it dispelled the darkness, a tidal wave of colors rushing angrily across the grassland toward him.

Maybe the microphone is still working!

He spoke frantically into it. “Tonight this reporter is seeing the most powerful manifestation yet of the Rostov lights, stretching across my field of vision and approaching the crowd that has gathered here.”

The glow became harsh.

“Lightning appears to be flashing inside it! The effect on the spectators is tremendous.”

People in the crowd wept, wailed, and prayed. But the sounds they made weren’t loud enough to shut out the growing hum of the lights speeding toward them.

“The air’s getting hotter!” Brent shouted. “Grass is catching fire! Wait a minute, something’s racing from the lights! The microphone’s almost too hot to hold! My face is…”

He screamed.

73

When the Black Hawk blew the concrete shed apart, Lockhart and the assault team whistled in approval. A hole gaped, pointing the way downward.

“Now let’s toast the son of a bitch!” Lockhart said.

Without warning, all the floodlights went off, plunging the area into darkness. Tensing, he told himself it was only because of the damage the explosion had inflicted. But before the chopper could land, its lights went off, also.

So did its engine.

Abruptly losing altitude, it walloped fifty feet onto the ground, rotors whistling, skids snapping. The only illumination was from the fires.

No, I’m wrong, Lockhart thought. To the southeast, where the abandoned military base was located, a glow attracted his attention. Even with his eyes straining to adjust to the darkness, it was impossible to ignore.

“What the hell is that?” a member of the special-ops team shouted.

“I don’t know, but it’s getting brighter! And it’s coming this way!”

“Hit the ground!”

For an instant, Lockhart thought it was a missile streaking toward them, but as he landed on his chest, he realized it was a beam of light. The light was composed of spinning colors-red, green, yellow, blue. It shot from the horizon, hissed across the ground, and radiated heat as it passed over him. He smelled smoke from his hair and swatted out embers.

Throwing sparks, the light struck a satellite dish that was tilted sideways in the direction of the airbase. At once the light was redirected so that it rocketed upward from a dish pointed toward the sky. It reminded Lockhart of World War II movies in which powerful spotlights searched the sky for enemy bombers making a night raid.

Though it was only one beam of light, the multicolored radiance hurt his eyes. It soared higher, stretching toward heaven until it reached something up there and threw off sparks before it suddenly blazed on a downward angle, streaking toward something on the ground far away to the northwest. It left a tube of pulsing light that continued to crackle over the ground and pointed upward from the dishes.

“I’m on fire!” somebody yelled. His teammates hurried to swat at the man’s flaming clothes.

Lockhart held his hands over his ears. The beam of light hissed and crackled, but there was another sound-static that might have been a hum that might have been high-pitched music, threatening to split his eardrums.

74

July 16, 1945.

Just before dawn, the first atomic bomb was detonated outside Alamogordo in remote southern New Mexico. As the blinding, mushroom-shaped fireball rose thirty-eight thousand feet into the air and burned ten thousand times more fiercely than the exterior of the sun, the project’s director, Robert Oppenheimer, recited a passage from the Bhagavad Gita in which God reveals his true, awesome, terrifying form to a disciple.

“‘If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one,’” Oppenheimer quoted. “‘Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds.’”

At the same time, all telephone and radio messages ceased to be acknowledged by or sent from the military airbase outside Rostov, Texas, two hundred and fifty miles southeast of Alamogordo. Of particular concern was the status of the facility beneath the airbase, where research on an alternative weapon of mass destruction had been in progress since 1943.

After six hours of attempts to reestablish communication, the Army sent a P-40 Warhawk fighter plane on a reconnaissance mission from Fort Bliss. It arrived at 2 in the afternoon. Flying over the airfield, the pilot reported no activity whatsoever.

“I see open hangars. Trucks and aircraft at the side of the runway. A B-24’s at the end of the runway, looking as if it’s about to take off, but the propellers aren’t moving. In fact, nothing’s moving. I don’t see any people.”

Ordered to land and investigate, the pilot banked into a final approach. At two hundred feet, he finally did see something moving- a man in uniform staggering down the runway’s centerline. The pilot performed an emergency go-around and watched the man in uniform continue staggering until he collapsed at the end of the runway.

After landing, the pilot did a quick scan of the area but still didn’t see any people among the motionless trucks and aircraft. He rushed to the man he’d seen collapse. The man was semiconscious, moaning. His uniform had a colonel’s insignia and was covered with blood. His face was burned. Identification in a pocket revealed that his name was Edward Raleigh.

The pilot ran to a truck, hoping to use it to drive Colonel Raleigh out of the sun, but the truck refused to start. Every other vehicle also refused to start. The best he could do was give the colonel elementary first aid and struggle to carry him into a hangar. There the pilot found the corpses of numerous military personnel, all of whom were covered with blood from their ears, noses, tear ducts, mouths, and other orifices. Some faces had hemorrhaged so badly that their skin had disintegrated.

The corpses were in positions that suggested a desperate effort to take cover, huddling against walls or aircraft or equipment. At least twelve soldiers seemed to have shot one another. Moans led the pilot to a few survivors, all of whom were bleeding, semiconscious, and delirious.

When the pilot radioed his report, he was told to stand by. Ten minutes later, an authoritative voice told him, “Stay where you are. Try to help Colonel Raleigh. Do not go anywhere else on the base. Two C-45s are being dispatched with a medical team. After they arrive, return to Fort Bliss and report immediately for debriefing. With that exception, do not discuss what you’ve seen with anyone. I repeat-do not go anywhere else on the base.”

While the first C-45 did in fact carry medical personnel, the second brought a security team whose purpose was to investigate the integrity of the underground facility. A similar scene of devastation awaited them: most of the men dead from burns and hemorrhages, a few survivors moaning in pain. Again some victims seemed to have shot one another. Blood covered the walls.

Within three days, the airbase was shut down. The official explanation for the deaths was that a massive fuel leak had caused a devastating fire. The planes and other equipment were removed to various other bases. The entrance to the underground facility was sealed. Signs warned trespassers about unexploded bombs.

75

Lockhart and the special-ops team hurried away from the beam of light. Clutching their M4s, they reached the hole the rocket had made when it blasted the concrete shed. Stairs led downward, where a glow revealed smoke.

“We came with tear-gas capability,” the special-ops leader told him.

They pulled gas masks from their equipment backpacks. Motioning for him to stay back, they hurried down the stairs.

Lockhart crouched to protect himself from the heat that the beam of light gave off.

“I see a trip wire!” a voice yelled.

“Step over it! Stupid bastard should have hidden it better!”

Lockhart heard boots clattering farther down the metal stairs. Without warning, he was thrown back by the force of an explosion below. Another trip wire! he realized. Landing hard on rubble, he groaned from the pain. Screams at the bottom of the stairs dwindled until the only sound was the hiss-crackle-hum from the beam of light.

And the unearthly music, which now had an eerie, throbbing quality. He had believed that it came from the beam of light, but now, as he squirmed shakily to his feet, it was obvious that the music echoed from the bottom of the stairs.

He picked up his M4, moved to the gaping hole, and looked cautiously down. The glow beyond the smoke showed him that the stairs were now a tangle of twisted metal and bodies.

Outraged, Lockhart slung his assault carbine over his shoulder. The right banister dangled from where its metal was anchored in concrete. It wobbled when he put his weight on it. Holding his breath, sweating, he climbed down the railing, hand over hand.

At the bottom, he tried not to cough from the bitter smoke. After surveying the mangled bodies, he had no doubt that there was nothing he could do to help.

He took a gas mask from a dead man and put it on. It made him feel smothered, but at least it stifled his need to cough. The smoke drifted past its lenses.

The music continued pulsing.

Some of the corpses had grenades. Lockhart took a few, then un- slung his M4 and inched forward, ready to shoot at any movement.

The glow from the walls intensified. He inched along a hallway, reached an open door on the right, and threw a grenade into it, quickly ducking back. Amid the glare of the explosion, he heard glass and metal blowing apart.

He continued through the swirling smoke and reached an open door on the left-the source of the music. Pulling a pin from another grenade, he was about to free the arming lever when a weak voice came from inside.

“Don’t. I’m sick. All I want to do is listen to the music. Let me die listening to the music.”

“You’re Halloway?” he replied without moving into the doorway.

“Used to be.”

“Used to be? That doesn’t make sense.”

“Do you like vodka and orange juice?”

“You’re still not making sense.”

“You don’t taste vodka and orange juice?”

“All I taste is smoke.”

“The first time I got drunk, it was on vodka and orange juice,” the weak voice said, its owner having trouble breathing.

“Well, this’ll be your last,” Lockhart replied angrily.

“Please… just let me listen to the music a little longer. It’s all I have.” The voice sucked air. “I can’t even dance any longer.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, but I guarantee your dancing days are over.” Lockhart continued to hold the grenade, his fingers over the arming lever. “You shouldn’t have messed with the colonel’s project.”

“The colonel’s a prick.”

Lockhart hesitated. “You’re right about that.”

He was suddenly aware that the floor felt unsteady.

“Did you ever want to be a rock star?” Holloway managed to ask.

Lockhart had once heard a man breathing through a hole in his throat. That same liquid wheezing sound was what he now heard.

“Rock star? Wasn’t high on my list.”

“What did you want to be?”

“Never thought about it.” Unbidden, Lockhart remembered the Harley-Davidson he’d left a couple of miles away.

As he prepared to throw the grenade, he frowned, feeling the walls tremble.

“I didn’t know it was possible to bleed from so many places at once,” Halloway murmured, his voice sounding more gurgly. “I’m pretty much dead already. Just let me go listening to the music.”

Amid the smoke, the roof vibrated, a chunk of concrete dropping from it. Lockhart had the sense that everything was somehow connected to the music.

He imagined riding the Harley.

The floor shifted enough that he had trouble keeping his balance.

“Yeah,” Lockhart said, “Colonel Raleigh’s a prick. What you did, was it worth it?”

“Hell, yes.” Halloway coughed up something thick.

“Hell’s where you’re going. I doubt there’s music, though.”

Lockhart threw the grenade into the room and stepped back, put- ting his hands over his ears. The blast shook him. He heard flying debris clatter from the room. What he didn’t hear any longer was the music.

The corridor kept trembling. As more chunks fell from the walls and the ceiling, he turned and hurried as quickly as he could through the smoke. Hand over hand, he climbed the wobbling metal banister, fearful that it would snap.

At the top, he heard the crackle-hiss-hum of the beam of light and emerged into its hovering glare. When he threw away the gas mask, he noticed that the air had the odor of an electrical fire.

The earth vibrated.

He ran through the three open gates, charging along the lane. All he could think of was the motorcycle and how he’d love to ride it forever.

He stretched his legs farther, racing faster.

When he was about a mile from the observatory, he felt the heat of an explosion behind him. The shock wave made him stagger. He looked over his shoulder and saw the observatory erupting. The dishes blew apart. The most dramatic detonation took place in the sky, like the hugest skyrocket he’d ever seen. But it seemed much farther away than a simple rocket could go.

The only explanation he could think of was that a satellite was exploding.

76

Raleigh felt a vibration.

“Does the floor seem unsteady?” he asked the men in front of the electronic instruments. The earplugs made his voice sound distant.

“Everything’s starting to tremble,” a man acknowledged. “I’m hearing some kind of hum.”

“Push your earplugs in deeper.”

“They’re in as far as they’ll go.”

“Then use the noise-reducing headphones.”

Raleigh and the rest of the team put them on.

“I still hear a hum,” the man said faintly.

On a video monitor, Raleigh saw the flames from the crashed helicopters. Otherwise the area was dark, people reacting in panicked confusion, the green of the night-vision camera making them look grotesque. Another monitor revealed how out of control the German shepherd had become. Jaws snapping, it lunged at its trainer.

Shoot it, Raleigh urged.

The trainer did in fact reach for a pistol under his shirt, but the dog’s snapping jaws made him lurch back and fall. The trainer fired once into the air as the animal leaped over him, yanked the leash free, and rushed into the night.

“The hum’s getting worse,” someone said, his voice thickly muffled.

“The table’s rattling.”

“Jesus, my nose is bleeding.”

The signal’s too strong! The shields aren’t working! Raleigh thought in alarm.

On a different screen, a tidal wave of light streaked across the range- land, igniting the grass beneath it. A beam shot from it, rocketing to- ward the old airbase. It reached the hidden dish and sped through it in the direction of the observatory.

Abruptly all the monitors went dark, the shields on the cameras failing.

A man’s eyes dripped blood.

Raleigh backed away.

“Turn off the equipment!” somebody yelled.

“No!” Raleigh shouted, continuing to step back. “Keep everything on as long as possible!”

“My ears!”

Someone vomited blood.

Raleigh reached the entrance to the office, stepped inside, closed the steel door, and locked it. The room had three times the electromagnetic shielding that the rest of the facility had. He hurried to the monitors on his desk and watched the men outside.

Some realized what Raleigh had done and rushed to the door, pounding on it. The frantic movement of their lips showed Raleigh that they begged to be let in. A man picked up an M4 that had a grenade launcher attached to it and pushed the others away.

He fired at the door.

Raleigh felt the concussion. On the monitors, he saw the smoke from the explosion and the damage the shrapnel had done to some of the team. But the door was intact. Screaming silently, the man fired another grenade, again with no effect on the door. But the pain that the explosion and the shrapnel inflicted on the rest of the team made someone pick up his carbine and shoot the man who held the grenade launcher.

The man with the carbine then shot three other members of the team, proving that the force associated with the lights did indeed provoke irrational violence. Testing that theory was why Raleigh had made firearms easily available to them. A moment later, the man dropped the carbine and pressed his hands over his skull, his face contorting in agony.

The monitors on Raleigh’s desk went dark, the shields on the cam- eras failing.

Raleigh sank to the chair behind his desk. Stunned, he tried to tell himself that he’d truly never believed he would actually need to take refuge here. The shielding on the rest of the facility was so massive that he’d been confident it would hold. But there’d been only one way to test its limits.

He looked at his watch. It was 9:47. A long time until sunrise. But hey, no big deal. I’ve got food and water to get through the night. It shouldn’t be a problem to wait until after dawn before I leave.

The overhead light dimmed, the generator failing.

Stay calm. If the generator fails, that’s no big deal, either. I’ll just put my head on the desk and do what’s normal at night: sleep. The time’ll speed by.

Those poor bastards out there…

The lights went out. Raleigh found himself immersed in the deepest darkness he’d ever experienced.

I’m safe. That’s what matters. In the morning, I’ll have all the light I want.

Sleep.

When Raleigh put his head on the desk and closed his eyes, he saw imaginary speckles that seemed to be on the backs of his eyelids-a trick of the brain. He opened his eyelids, and the darkness seemed thicker.

A slight ringing in his ears made him uneasy until he decided that the ringing was normal when ambient sound was blocked.

It’s there all the time. Normally other sounds mask it.

Even so…

Could I be hearing the lights?

No, he couldn’t allow himself to panic.

Think of something else.

Like what?

But the answer came automatically.

My grandfather.

77

Edward Raleigh never recovered from whatever had happened to him at the Rostov airbase on July 16, 1945. The officers who wrote the Army intelligence reports felt relieved. A man in a state of permanent catatonia wasn’t likely to tell anyone about a weapon of mass destruction that might be more powerful than the atomic bomb.

With the awesome success of Oppenheimer’s project, the president and the military decided there wasn’t any point in trying to develop a backup, especially when its elements were so little understood and so destructively unpredictable.

And unreliable. The lights didn’t reappear for two months, and then only dimly.

Japan’s unconditional surrender reinforced the decision. One super- weapon was sufficient to control the world’s destiny. But then the Soviets developed their own atomic bomb, and as the nuclear race intensified, the research done at Rostov was so well buried that it was forgotten.

Edward Raleigh spent the next twenty-five years in an Army mental hospital, visited every day by his wife, whom he’d married while he was stationed at the Presidio in San Francisco in 1939. Their son was named Robert. A devout Roman Catholic, Edward’s wife refused to remarry. To do that, she would need to divorce her husband, and she believed that a divorce would damn her soul.

In 1970, the mounting expenses of the Vietnam War forced the U.S. military to cut back on full-time medical care for personnel whose treatment went as far back as the two World Wars. Edward’s wife moved him from the hospital to her apartment, where her life gained greater purpose as she devoted herself to taking care of him.

By then her son was twenty-nine and himself a father with a son named Warren. Growing up, Warren visited his grandfather and was by turns horrified and fascinated by the bearded old man who sat unmoving in a rocking chair in the living room, always wearing pajamas and a housecoat, always watching television-although if his grandfather was aware of anything he watched, no one could tell.

Warren was thirteen when a stroke killed his grandmother. At the funeral, everyone said she had been a saint. He never forgot how in- tensely his parents talked about what to do with the “old man,” as they called him.

“We don’t have room,” his mother insisted, while his father, a war- rant officer in the Army, argued that they didn’t have the money to put the old man in a facility.

In the end, Grandfather came to live in their small unit at Fort Bragg, and Warren was given the responsibility of taking care of him after school while his mother went to her part-time job at the base’s PX. Warren didn’t mind. His friends were allowed to come over, and they weren’t too grossed out by the wrinkled, shrunken, white-haired, white-bearded old man. He just sat there, watching whatever television programs they decided to watch.

He never moved on his own, but he could be made to walk if he was prompted, and he could be made to chew if food were put into his mouth. Also, he was pretty good about going to the toilet. All Warren needed to do was lead him into the bathroom every two hours, pull down his pajama bottoms, sit him down, and come back five minutes later. If the old man needed his rear end cleaned, Warren used a wet brush. Disgusting, sure, but Warren discovered that he could get used to a lot of things in exchange for the new video game his father let him buy every week.

One day after school, Warren was alone-which was what it felt like whenever he was in the living room with his grandfather- playing a video game that had a lot of floating, drifting balls of light. His grandfather shocked the hell out of him by speaking.

“The lights.”

Warren dropped the video game control, turned toward his grand- father, and gaped.

“I saw them,” the old man said.

“You can talk?” Warren asked in astonishment.

His grandfather didn’t seem to hear him. Instead the old man just kept talking, his voice hoarse. A lot of it Warren didn’t understand- stuff about Texas, an airbase, lights, and an underground research station.

“Rostov.” Whatever that meant.

“Ears bleed. Nose. Tear ducts. Burns. Time sped up. God help me. Alice.” That was the name of Warren’s grandmother. His grandfather began to weep.

Warren ran to get a Kleenex and wiped his grandfather’s bearded face.

“It’s all right, Grandpa. I’ll help you. What are you trying to say?”

Warren’s grandfather stopped talking then. It was days before Warren realized that when he’d wiped his grandfather’s tears, he had stood between his grandfather and the balls of light in the video game.

His parents thought he was lying.

“No, he talked for five minutes,” Warren insisted.

“What about?”

Warren told them.

“Lights,” his father said. “My mother talked about the research he’d been doing down in Texas, something about lights.”

“Texas?”

“Outside a nothing town called Rostov. His father had something to do with lights, too. Way back in the First World War. I never figured it out.”

“Aren’t there some letters?” Warren’s mother asked.

“Letters?”

“Between his father and mother. I remember Alice showed them to us. According to her, Edward treasured anything to do with his father because he was just a toddler when his father disappeared,” she said. “Some of the letters came from France during the First World War. They mentioned something about lights.”

“Yes, I remember now. Where did we put Dad’s stuff?”

After a twenty-minute search, they found the letters in the bottom of a box in a closet. They took them into the living room and clustered around the white-bearded figure in his rocking chair.

“Yep, look at this,” Warren’s father said. “‘I dream about the lights. I can’t wait to come back and find them.’ January twentieth, 1918. Wow. Dad, what do you know about this?”

But Warren’s grandfather was again catatonic.

The next afternoon, as Warren played the video game, his grand- father pointed toward the floating, drifting lights and began to tell a story that he’d kept locked within him since 1945-about a secret facility under a remote airbase in Texas and a weapon of unknown power.

Spellbound, Warren felt as if electricity straightened the hairs on his arms. From then on, he told his friends that his father had chores for him to do after school. He hurried home and put on the video game. As the floating, drifting balls of light appeared, his grandfather talked increasingly about the lights.

But one day, when Warren rushed home, his mother met him out- side and told him to be quiet because his grandfather was asleep in the bedroom. This disappointed Warren because he wanted to hear more about the lights and what had happened that terrible morning in 1945.

He played a video game, got bored, and decided to see if his grand- father was awake. Opening the door, he found that the bed was empty. A window was open.

He called his mother, who hurried home. Although the two of them drove along every street on Fort Bragg, they couldn’t find him. Military policemen widened the search. The police outside the base widened the search even farther.

Hospitals, shelters, churches, parks. Warren’s grandfather wasn’t at any of them.

“How the hell can an old man disappear?” Warren’s father demanded.

“I think I know where he went,” Warren said.

“Maybe he figured out where Alice is buried and decided to visit her,” Warren’s mother suggested.

“No. He went to Rostov,” Warren said.

“Rostov? Texas?”

“The airfield where he got hurt. He’s always talking about it. I think that’s where he went.”

“How could an old man get to Texas?”

“I’m not saying he got there. I’m just saying I bet that’s where he went.”

The police sent a missing-person bulletin to Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, all the states between North Carolina, where Fort Bragg was located, and west Texas.

Three days later, the Rostov police chief phoned. Yes, Warren’s grandfather had managed to get there. He’d been found at the old airfield.

He was dead.

78

Raleigh felt the table beneath his head begin to vibrate. In the darkness, he straightened. The room seemed warmer, enough to make him sweat.

Of course it’s warmer, he thought. The generator failed. The air conditioner isn’t working.

But if that’s the case, then the air-circulation pump isn’t working, either, he realized. The only oxygen I can get is in this room.

The darkness made him imagine that the room was smaller than it was.

Relax. Take slow, calm breaths. There’s plenty of air.

The ringing in Raleigh’s ears persisted, aggravated by the earplugs. The noise-reducing headphones pinched the sides of his head. Sweat trickled from under them. He wiped the sweat away with his hands.

Thirst made him wish that he’d thought to put bottles of water on the table while the light was dimming. When he came to his feet, the darkness intensified the scrape of the chair. He turned to the left, ex- tended his arms, and shuffled across the floor, pawing the empty space. Sooner than he expected, his fingers touched the smooth metal of the filing cabinet.

No problem.

The bottles of water were in the top drawer. He groped inside and tucked three of the bottles under his left arm. He gripped two energy bars with his right hand and shuffled back toward the desk.

He bumped a sharp corner. Cursing, he quickly set down what he carried and rubbed his throbbing hip.

The accumulating humidity made his nostrils moist. After wiping them with a handkerchief, he felt his way around the table to where his chair again made a screeching sound. He took three long swallows from a bottle of water, wiped moisture from his lips, tore open the wrapping on an energy bar, and suddenly felt queasy.

The water he’d swallowed had an aftertaste, as if there were metal in it. Was it starting to turn bad?

Will it make me throw up?

The metallic taste became stronger.

Sweat trickled down his face. As the table continued vibrating, the darkness seemed less absolute, perhaps because his eyes were adjusting. He could almost see the water bottles.

Of course. I’ve always had great eyesight.

The blackness developed shades of gray. He definitely saw the outline of the bottles. That was the good news. The bad news was that the ringing in his ears was sharper, and the metallic taste almost made him gag.

The bottles were coming into view, but a haze surrounded them.

Damned sweat’s getting in my eyes. He wiped them with the back of a hand, but the bottles remained blurred, even though the gray of the room was now so pale that he could see a hint of the table.

And the energy bars.

And his hands.

The effect was similar to the way night fades just before dawn. Through blurred vision, Raleigh was able to distinguish the filing cabinet. He saw walls and the metal door across from him, every- thing still hazy.

Again he rubbed his eyes to clear them of sweat. The room was now light enough that he could see colors, the orange wrappers on the energy bars, the blue labels on the water bottles, the red on his hands.

Red?

Drops of blood covered the table. His shirt was blotched with it. In dismay, he realized that the metallic taste hadn’t come from the water and the moisture on his face hadn’t been sweat. It was blood running from his tear ducts and his nose.

He screamed.

The illumination came from the floor, the walls, and the ceiling.

Raleigh lunged toward the door, unlocked it, and yanked it open. A glare made him shield his eyes.

The team lay before him. Covered with blood, those who were still alive groaned. One man had the strength to aim his M4 at him.

Raleigh stooped to grab the carbine with the grenade launcher but didn’t need to use it-the man with the M4 passed out, his gun clattering to the concrete floor.

Raleigh charged over the bodies, yanked open another door, and raced into the chamber where the now useless Suburbans were parked. The glare was even brighter as he hurried toward the stair- well that led to the surface.

If I run fast enough, maybe I can go far enough.

I wasn’t exposed as long as the rest of the team. Maybe I won’t bleed out.

Chest heaving, he pounded up the stairs. He reached the door to the outside, turned the knob, rammed his shoulder against it, but couldn’t make it budge. He jabbed numbers on a pad next to the door, entering the unlock sequence, but the door still wouldn’t budge.

Of course! Raleigh thought. Without electricity, the code pad can’t work!

Wailing uncontrollably, he hurried down the steps, raised the carbine, and fired a grenade at the door. The explosion threw him off balance. When the smoke cleared, he saw that the door hung askew. A glare showed beyond it.

As blood dripped from his face, he rushed up the stairs, entered the ruins of the hangar, and sprinted outside. Behind him, a massive light intensified, but straight ahead lay the darkness of the road.

Keep running!

He managed only three long, frenzied strides before something bounded from the darkness and struck his chest, knocking him onto his back. Jaws snapped at his neck. The German shepherd. Its face was bloody. In a frenzy, the dog drove its teeth toward Raleigh’s neck.

He grabbed its throat, trying to push it away. It clawed and writhed. He couldn’t keep hold of its blood-slicked fur.

About to tear into his throat, it suddenly stopped and stared be- yond his face. The blood on its muzzle reflected churning lights. With a yelp, it spun and raced into the darkness.

Raleigh struggled to his feet and staggered forward. The impact of falling had knocked his headphones off. The flow of blood had loosened his earplugs. Without their protection, he heard a hiss-crackle- hum behind him.

And something else.

The motor of an airplane.

Of all the stories his grandfather had told him, the one that haunted him the most was about how Raleigh’s great-grandfather had flown a World War I biplane toward the dark horizon in an effort to learn the origin of the lights. As a boy, Raleigh had imagined that biplane going farther and farther away, getting smaller, receding into the distance, becoming only a speck.

Vanishing.

My great-grandfather.

Turning, he was nearly blinded by a wave of lights speeding toward him. In the distance, grassland was ablaze, the flames adding to the glare, the smoke reflecting it. He gaped toward the twisting colors, the dominant hue of which was orange and reminded him of the sun.

Something moved inside them.

A biplane swooped into view, its orange at first indistinguishable from that of the flares around it. The biplane had two seats, one behind the other. In the rear seat, a young man worked the controls. He wore a uniform and goggles. Even at a distance, it was obvious that he was handsome.

He had a mustache. The tail of a scarf floated behind him.

Before Raleigh understood what he was doing, he started along the old airstrip. He knew he ought to run toward the road, but ever since the age of thirteen, all of his thoughts had been about the lights and their secrets.

When he was eighteen, he’d come to this airbase and searched it, finding a way into the underground facility. Like his grandfather, he’d joined the Army with the purpose of rising through military intelligence. At last he’d gained the authority he needed to track down his great-grandfather’s reports about the lights, to follow clues that led him to his grandfather’s reports about the lights.

The biplane swooped nearer.

Without warning, the engine stopped.

The biplane disappeared. It was instantly replaced by a small, single-wing aircraft, a Cessna, the engine of which was silent, its propeller fluttering uselessly. Raleigh saw a man and a woman through the canopy. Their faces were twisted with fear.

The plane was about to crash.

79

One moment, Page was trying to guide the Cessna over the Badlands and onto the murky grass. The next, swirling colors enveloped the plane. If time had seemed prolonged during the gliding descent, it became even more so now.

The Cessna appeared not to be moving.

A beam of light shot from the colors that pulsed on the right side of the aircraft. It produced so much illumination that he could see the collapsed hangars of the old airfield. The beam of light streaked into one of them and angled toward the northwest in the direction of the observatory.

In the distance, the beam surged into the sky, deflected off something-a satellite, Page guessed-and rocketed toward the ground even farther northwest.

“I hear an engine!” Tori shouted.

“It isn’t ours!”

A shadow passed through the colors on his left.

“Another plane!” Page yelled.

Not just another plane. A biplane of a type that dated back to World War I. A young man with a mustache and goggles was behind the controls in the rear seat, the tail of a scarf fluttering behind him.

Other images swirled within the colors: a man herding cattle, a woman on horseback riding along a dark road…

A handsome young man-James Deacon-leaning against a fence, staring toward darkness.

A teenager on a motorcycle racing across a murky field.

Soldiers holding their heads as if they feared their skulls would explode.

Edward Mullen shooting toward the lights, then firing into a crowd.

Tori sitting on a bench at the viewing area, gazing spellbound toward the shadowy distance.

At once all the images vanished, including the biplane. Its engine could no longer be heard.

The Cessna resumed its glide. The lights, which were now behind it, provided enough illumination for Page to see the weeds and dirt on the old runway.

“We’re coming in short!”

The ground rose swiftly.

“Someone’s ahead of us!” Tori yelled.

“What?”

“There’s a man staggering along the runway!”

Page saw him then. Wavering, a man gaped at the Cessna, his head and clothes soaked with what had to be blood.

“Tori, get your door open!” Page yanked up the lever on his own door and pushed. He saw rocks among the weeds before the runway.

The Cessna couldn’t stay in the air any longer. He pulled the controls back, raising the nose, hoping to keep the front wheel above the rocks. The left wheel struck and collapsed. He felt the plane drop on that side. The left wing dragged along the ground, then buckled. Snagging, it caused the fuselage to twist to the left.

The propeller struck earth, a blade breaking off and flipping away, the torque yanking the engine out of its housing. Dust billowed over the canopy. As the fuselage kept tilting violently to the left, Page found that he was lying on his side. The snapping and grinding of metal was matched by the crunch of the plane skidding over dirt. The shock of stopping would have slammed Page’s chest against the controls if his seat belt and shoulder harness hadn’t been tight, but even so, the snap of his chest against the harness made him feel as if he’d been punched.

He had trouble breathing.

“Tori,” he managed to say, “are you all right?”

She didn’t answer.

“Tori?”

“I think I’m okay.”

Thank God, Page thought. “We need to get out in case there’s a fire.”

His door was wedged against the ground. In pain, he managed to free his seat belt and harness.

“Climb through your door!”

With the fuselage on its side, Page was able to half stand and help Tori unbuckle her harness. He pushed at her hips, helping her get through the door on the right. Wincing, he pulled himself up, squirmed through the open door, crawled over the side, and dropped to the ground.

His chest ached, but the pain hardly mattered when he smelled aviation fuel.

“Run!” he shouted. But Tori didn’t need encouragement. She charged forward onto the old runway. Flanking her, Page ran as hard as he could.

Ahead, the man they’d seen on the runway had collapsed. Without hesitation they knelt beside him, turning him onto his back. Even with all the blood, Page knew he’d seen this man before. On the previous night, he and Tori had driven past the abandoned airbase. A man in his forties, bald and sinewy, with rigid shoulders and an air of authority-he’d been unlocking the gate.

“Can you stand? Page asked. “We need to get you out of here.”

The man mumbled something that sounded like “great-grandfather.”

Page and Tori lifted him to his feet, guiding him along the old run- way. The beam of light continued radiating through one of the hangars, streaking toward the northwest, soaring into the sky, then angling down toward something on the far horizon. The air was filled with a hiss-crackle-hum that smelled like an electrical fire. Page felt his hair standing up.

Struggling to get the man to the road, Page looked over his shoulder, and was stunned by how much brighter the lights were. Explosions tore up ground in the distance: bombs from long ago. The grass fire spread toward the runway. When the flames reached the Cessna, the fuel tanks erupted, sending a fireball into the sky.

The hiss-crackle-hum became unbearable. As heat from the beam of light threatened to set Page’s clothes on fire, the sky was abruptly filled with what seemed a gigantic skyrocket, higher and farther away than any fireworks could reach. It sent huge trails of sparks flying in every direction.

“What the hell is that?” Tori asked in amazement.

The sparks radiated high and low, far and wide across the heavens. Blazing tendrils showed every color imaginable, so massive a display that Page was stopped in his tracks, awestruck.

The sky seemed on fire.

At once the ray of light ceased.

It vanished at the same time as a blast lit the horizon, off in the direction of the observatory. The colors drooped in the sky. The sparks fell, their luster fading. As the hiss-crackle-hum went silent, the only illumination came from the grass fires.

Coughing from smoke that drifted over him, Page found that he was able to move again. He and Tori urged the man through the darkness. They reached a fence, lifted the man over it, passed between parked cars, and sank onto the road.

A new sound filled the night. The sound of hundreds of people crying.

“Great-grandfather,” the man said.

People stumbled past them. Some got into cars, but the vehicles wouldn’t start. Others called the names of loved ones. Pleas for help from God or somebody, anybody, blended with moans. A crowd gathered on the road, plodding along it, people looking like refugees from a war zone as they made their way toward Rostov. Sirens wailed from the direction of the town.

The fires showed Medrano climbing onto a pickup truck.

“Everybody stay calm!” he yelled. “We’ll take care of you! Help’s on the way!”

Page looked at the stranger they’d set on the road. His face was dark with blood.

“Hear those sirens? Just hang on, and you’ll be okay,” Page tried to assure him.

The man didn’t respond. At first Page worried that he had died, but then he saw that the man’s eyes were open, unblinking, staring at something that might have been far away, or else locked in his mind.

Page reached over and gripped Tori’s hand. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

“We’re alive,” she answered. “Can’t get much better than that.”

The siren blared closer, red and blue lights flashing in the dark.

80

Anita woke periodically in the night, gradually recovering from the effects of the anesthetic. This time, when she opened her eyes, sun- light drifted between slats in blinds, revealing the hospital bed she lay on. Her left arm was in a cast, the weight of which added to the deep pain in her arm.

“The bullet did a lot of damage to the bones in your arm,” a voice next to her said with effort, “but they were able to save it.”

Anita looked to her left and found someone in the room’s other bed. She recognized the voice-it was Brent’s-but she couldn’t see his face, which was covered with bandages.

“I told you I’d be here when you woke up,” he said, his voice muffled. “I’m a man of my word.”

Anita frowned. “What happened to you?”

“I chased that story until it caught me.”

Still groggy from the drugs she’d been given, Anita said, “I don’t understand.”

“I got too close to it.” Brent’s voice dropped. “I got burned by it.”

“Burned?”

“I don’t think I’ll be going to Atlanta. In fact, I don’t think I’ll be coanchoring with Sharon anymore, either. But given what the story cost us, I can guarantee that you and I will get that Emmy.”

Anita tried to sit up. She was desperate to make sense out of what he was saying.

“You were burned?”

“The doctors aren’t sure how bad the scars will be. They talked about skin grafts and specialists. If I’m lucky, I might be able to do some investigative reporting as long as my face is in shadows when I’m on camera.”

Anita couldn’t speak for a moment.

“Lo siento.”

“Since I’m probably going to be in El Paso for quite a while, I guess I’d better start learning Spanish. What did you just tell me?”

“I’m truly sorry.”

“Thank you. We made a good team.”

“We’re still a good team,” Anita said.

“All the same, I think you’d better start looking for another partner.”

“Do you like Mexican food?”

“I don’t know what that’s got to do with anything, but the truth is, I tried the stuff once and hated it.”

“That’s because you didn’t eat in the right place. You haven’t tasted anything till you dig into my mother’s chicken enchiladas.”

81

“A massive electrical storm?” Costigan leaned back behind his desk. Although he wore his uniform and gunbelt, he still had the bandage around his head. It made him look vulnerable.

“A huge cell of dry lightning. That’s what the feds say happened,” Medrano told him. “All kinds of government types got involved, particularly the FBI and the National Science Foundation. The NSF runs the observatory. Or used to. The facility blew up last night.”

“From dry lightning.” Costigan looked confused. “Is that even possible? Could something like that disable the power systems in a couple of hundred vehicles? Not to mention several helicopters and a Cessna?”

“Whether or not it’s possible isn’t the point. That’s the official explanation for what happened, and with all the television cameras disabled last night, we don’t have pictures to prove otherwise.”

“What about the satellite that exploded? Half the southern United States saw it.”

“Space debris blew it apart. What looked like sparks was the wreckage burning as it entered the atmosphere. The fact that it happened at the same time as the dry lightning is entirely coincidental. There’s no way the government’ll admit that it was experimenting with a weapon that uses electromagnetic energy.”

Church bells rang across the street, announcing the start of the Sunday service.

“A weapon?” Costigan frowned. “You think that’s what was going on?”

“I was there, and I promise you that what I saw wasn’t dry lightning. I can think of only one thing that stops engines and generators and everything else that depends on electricity or magnets. You know anything about astronomy?”

“Enough to tell the difference between it and astrology.”

“Ever since I was a kid and saw my first comet, I’ve had a telescope,” Medrano said. “I subscribed to Astronomy magazine for as long as I can remember. Black holes, supernovas, spiral nebulae. They’re all pretty sexy. But solar storms are my personal favorite. I don’t dare look at the sun through a telescope, of course. I need to rely on films taken by special cameras in observatories. Solar storms give off flares that look like the flicking end of a giant whip. They can get as hot as a hundred million degrees. They radiate the electromagnetic energy of ten million atomic bombs.”

Costigan listened intently.

“They tend to run in eleven-year cycles,” Medrano continued. “From almost no activity to spectacular eruptions. At their peak, the electromagnetic waves have so much strength that when they reach Earth they can knock satellites out of orbit, shut down power plants, and turn television broadcasts into static. The Northern Lights are caused by them. What I saw last night looked like a combination of the two: Northern Lights and solar flares.”

“Solar flares. An awful long way from the sun.”

“I’m not saying they were solar flares. I’m just saying that’s what they looked like. An electromagnetic burst from somewhere on the ground would explain a lot of what happened last night.”

“But what caused it?”

“That’s another way of asking what the lights are. Here’s a theory. The Earth’s core is hotter than the surface of the sun.” Medrano shrugged. “Maybe there are fault lines around here that allow electro- magnetic waves to find their way to the surface.”

Costigan thought about it. “As good an explanation as swamp gas, quartz crystals, radioactive gas, and temperature inversions, I suppose.”

“Well, whatever’s going on, I won’t let this get any worse,” Medrano said. “Most visitors have had enough and are going home on their own. But just to make sure, as of tonight we’re blocking the road. Anybody who wants to drive in that direction will need to take a long detour. The viewing area, the portable toilets, the roadside plaque, the concrete barriers, the parking lot-everything’s being removed. That place will look like just another section of a field by the time we’re finished. Meanwhile, the feds are cleaning up the mess at the observatory and the airbase. We’ll probably never know what went on there. They won’t let us in. And we’ll never officially know what happened at White Sands last night, either.”

“White Sands?” Costigan asked. “The missile range?”

“Yeah, it’s all over the news, and the conspiracy theorists are having a field day. Some kind of ray hit a target at White Sands-a mockup of a town. I think we can guess where the ray came from. Apparently it destroyed the mockup town, blew apart the monitoring station, and obliterated a half-dozen other buildings five miles away, not to mention taking out the electricity for the entire base, including the batteries in their vehicles. The ray was too visible for them to deny it happened. Reports are that twenty military technicians were killed. Civilians watching the night sky from Alamogordo claim they saw a blinding light. The Army attributes all this to a massive explosion at a munitions depot. The explosion was caused by dry lightning, they said.”

“That dry lightning sure gets around.” Costigan’s features were suddenly creased with exhaustion.

“Are you okay?” Medrano asked.

Across the street, the church bells kept ringing.

“Maybe I’ll stroll over there later,” Costigan said. “It’s been a while.”

The police dispatcher knocked on the open door. “Mr. and Mrs. Page are here to see you.”

“Show them in.”

When Page and Tori stepped into the doorway, Costigan smiled. “It’s good to see you, even if you do look a little sunburned.”

“So does Captain Medrano,” Tori said.

“Seems we’re in the land of the midnight sun,” Medrano replied. “We discussed your phone call. You’re right that we’re going to need you here to fill in some of the gaps. But at the moment we have plenty of other details to take care of. So if you can get back here in ten days, that’ll be fine. Mrs. Page, you mentioned that you’re going to have surgery Tuesday morning in San Antonio. Will ten days give you enough time to feel strong enough to travel?”

“We’ll see,” Tori said.

“We can always set up a video conference call, if necessary. I hope it isn’t anything serious.”

Page and Tori didn’t reply.

82

The Falcon 2000 jet took off from the airbase at Fort Bliss and started its four-hour flight toward Glen Burnie Airport near Fort Meade, Maryland. It was piloted by Army Intelligence personnel, who were also affiliated with the NSA. Its passengers were a medical team and Colonel Raleigh.

The colonel stared straight ahead, his eyes blinking occasionally, but otherwise making no movement.

“How long has he been like this?” someone asked.

Because Raleigh was catatonic and couldn’t turn his head, he wasn’t able to identify the speaker.

“Apparently since twenty-two hundred hours last night,” someone replied. That man, too, was out of Raleigh’s line of sight.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“The best I can say right now is trauma-induced paralysis. I don’t know if it has a physical cause, a psychological one, or both. He’ll need to be tested.”

“Considering the mess we found in that underground facility, I’m not surprised he freaked out.”

“Not a very scientific term, but yeah, basically that’s what happened. He freaked out.”

“Do you think he can hear us?”

“I have no idea. His ears were bleeding. There might have been permanent hearing loss. Or else the shock of what happened might have put him in a state of psychological disassociation.”

“Yeah, but the thing is, what did happen? The cameras down there stopped working. The digital recordings were all wiped. All we’ve got are the bodies. Except for the men who were shot, those other poor bastards bled to death before we got to them.”

“Unless the colonel starts communicating, we might never know.”

Incapable of movement, Raleigh kept staring straight ahead.

The hiss of the jet engines gradually changed to the drone of a propeller and a piston-driven motor. The interior of the Falcon dissolved, giving him a back-seat view of a biplane skimming above a dark field while stars glistened.

He wore goggles and a scarf, one end of which fluttered behind him. He worked the controls and drifted toward the horizon.

Ahead, colors shimmered, beckoning.

83

The waiting room had plastic chairs linked together. A television was bolted to an upper corner of the room, tuned to the Home and Gar- den channel. At the entrance, a hospital volunteer sat at a desk and wrote down the names of people who came in, letting them know that coffee, tea, and water were available on the table behind her.

Page sat next to Tori’s mother. After a while, their tension kept them from making small talk. Page flipped through a two-month-old issue of Time, then looked at the television, where a woman wearing gloves and holding a trowel gave viewers a tour of her flower garden.

“How long do you suppose it’ll take?” Margaret asked, looking pale.

“I guess it depends on what they find and how much needs to be removed.”

“My poor baby,” Tori’s mother said.

A woman wearing a surgical gown and bonnet walked into the waiting room. She scanned it, saw the two of them, and came over. Her expression was difficult to read.

It’s far too soon, Page thought. Something’s gone wrong.

The woman sat next to them. “There’s been a mistake.”

“Oh, dear God,” Margaret said.

“Maybe Tori’s films and records got confused with someone else’s,” the surgeon continued. “Or maybe there was something wrong with the equipment when the tests were given.”

Page sat forward. “I don’t understand. What are you saying?”

“Your wife doesn’t have cancer.”

“What?”

“There’s no trace of it.”

Page felt off balance.

“A mistake?”

“That’s the only way I can explain it. Her mammogram and CAT scan both show a sizable mass that might have spread to the chest wall.”

Tori never told me it was that serious, Page thought.

“But that mass definitely isn’t there now,” the surgeon said. “On occasion, tumors go into remission, but they don’t just vanish in a week. Somehow the equipment must have malfunctioned, or your wife was given someone else’s results. We’re working to find out what happened.”

“My wife’s going to be all right?” Page managed to ask.

“She should be fine, and I can tell you for certain that she doesn’t have breast cancer.”

Tori’s mother wept.

84

Page had his own theory.

Equipment hadn’t malfunctioned. Records hadn’t been mislabeled. Test results hadn’t been misrouted.

Back in Rostov, while he’d been buying a fresh shirt and jeans in a clothing store, he’d heard a customer ask a clerk about the lights.

“My wife has diabetes,” the customer had said. “We heard this place makes miracles happen, like at Lourdes. If she sees the lights, she’ll be cured.”

At the time, Page had thought, Cured? Wouldn’t that be nice?

And now it had happened.

Tori had been cured. They returned to Rostov for the further questioning and to sign their statements. By then Costigan no longer had the bandage around his skull, and his short gray hair revealed a scar along the side of his head.

“Haven’t seen any sign of the lights since everything happened,” Costigan told them. “Captain Medrano and I drove Harriett Ward out there. If anybody can be depended upon to see the lights, it’s her. She says they’re gone. What’s the phrase she used? ‘In remission.’”

“Yes,” Tori said. “In remission.”

Page took her home to Santa Fe-but it didn’t seem like home any longer. She said she kept thinking of Rostov, dreaming about the lights, and Page was dreaming about them now, too.

The insurance payment for the crashed Cessna helped him buy a thirty-year-old replacement. A year later, Page and Tori flew back to Rostov. They rented a car and drove to Costigan’s office, where the police chief was coughing from what he said was a bad summer cold, although Page had a strong idea about the true source of this ex- smoker’s cough.

“We’re thinking about moving here,” Page said. “Any chance you have a job open?”

“A deputy’s pay isn’t much.”

“But the cost of living here isn’t much, either, and I can earn some extra cash as a mechanic at the airport.”

Costigan cleared his throat. “Truth is, there might be an opening for my job.”

“I’m sorry to hear it,” Tori said, looking closely at him.

“Don’t be,” he said with a smile. “I learned a long time ago, nothing lasts forever. But I’m not ready to go yet, so for the time being, the deputy’s job is yours if you want it.”

“I do,” Page said.

“And we’ve got so many artists moving here from Austin, Santa Fe, and Sedona, the real estate market’s picking up,” Costigan told Tori. “I don’t suppose it’ll surprise you that there’s something about the colors here that attracts them. I think you could earn a living.”

“I’d like to try,” she responded. “One thing I know-we won’t be lonely here. We made some good friends.”

“You did indeed.” Six months later, Page became the police chief. After Costigan’s funeral, he and Tori drove out to where they guessed the viewing area had been. Medrano had meant what he’d said-once everything was removed, the place looked like just another section of a field.

They arrived at sunset, got out of the car, and watched the horizon. As the darkness settled, they saw the headlights from cars approaching from Mexico. They saw a shooting star. They saw a hint of a shimmer beyond the Badlands.

“You think that’s the start of the lights coming back?” Page asked.

“It might be,” Tori answered. “Harriet says they have cycles, weak and strong. Maybe she’s right. But I guess I really don’t need to see them. Even back in town, I canfeel them. That’s enough.”

“More than enough,” Page agreed. “They match what people bring to them. If you need something to believe in, they’ll inspire you, but if you built a wall around yourself, you won’t be able to see them. If you’re angry, they’ll make you angrier. If you want to turn them into a weapon, they’ll use that weapon against you and make you realize just how terrifying a weapon can be.”

“Plus, if you hope hard enough for a miracle,” Tori said, “they can make one happen.”

The headlights of a car approached. It pulled up next to their car, and a man rolled down a window.

“Hey, isn’t this where those weird lights used to show up?”

“Lights? Don’t know anything about them,” Page said. “We’re just admiring the stars.”

“Probably a lot of bunk anyhow.”

“So we hear,” Tori said.

The car drove on, its taillights fading into the darkness.

“Want to head back?” Page asked.

“I’m ready. If that shimmer out there is in fact the lights, we’ve probably seen enough.”

In the car, Page hesitated before turning the ignition key.

“What’s wrong?” Tori asked.

“Just remembering what this place used to look like, what I felt when I saw you on the bench, staring toward the horizon. I almost lost you. But because of the lights, that didn’t happen. What they are to you, that’s what you are to me. I love you.” Page made a point of saying that every day.

Emotion filled him. “Did you ever read the plaque that was at the side of the road?”

“No. I figured it would be touristy, like it was written by somebody in the Chamber of Commerce.”

“Not quite,” Page told her. “As near as I can recall, it said, ‘Welcome to the Rostov lights. Many people have claimed to see them, but no one has ever been able to explain them. If you’re lucky enough to experience them, decide for yourself what they are.’ Well, I know what they are to me.”

Page kissed her.