At The Edge

22

Maria sped down to La Jolla with Nate and returned the same day. Her mother took Nate to visit a Florida cousin, also a Fischer, who had a sprawling place, almost a mansion, with kids about Nate's age. Even Dan didn't want to know exactly where they were.

The moment Maria returned, she knew Dan had become a man obsessed. Motioning, he took her outside to the far corner of the backyard.

"They know too much. They knew to look in your purse. They knew to be at the restaurant. They knew we would be in court. They've got the house or the office bugged or both."

"That's pretty hard-"

But at the house he began ripping up everything, looking under furniture and pulling up the carpets. It took only twenty minutes to find the spike mike. Two hours later a detective and the phone company found the illegal tap. At least now the flow of information would stop.

The sign on Luna's was the worse for wear. In yellow neon, with part of the elements burned out, it looked like Lua's with a big gap after the u. Inside you could smell the burned oil hanging in the air, watch the waitresses with near-popping buttons, and listen to truck drivers hack their morning phlegm while washing down bacon and eggs with black coffee. It was 4:00 a.m.

"No one has ever figured out where to spit," Dan said as Maria curled her lip in disgust. "So I think they all swallow it."

"You just love grossing me out, don't you?"

"Not me."

"They teach you that at… where did you say you went to law school? Cal Northern in Chico?"

He nodded.

"You talk like a cowboy except when you forget yourself."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, I don't know, that you put on this country-boy effect."

"Most of the girls think it's cute."

"The girls probably do. What about the women?"

"Sometimes I get the feeling that this 'save the world' stuff is like a telephone pole up your ass."

Maria laughed. "Oh, let's get down and dirty."

"You asked. Besides, I'm serious about what I believe," Dan said. "I think the best solution to saving the planet is to harvest and replant temperate forests at a rate that is perpetually sustainable."

"I'm sorry about Lynette, but fighting with me won't bring her back."

Dan paused. "I know; I'm sorry; it's a distraction."

"Perhaps a distraction other than pounding on me, please. And stop being scared to death to be sincere. Why don't you encourage me by being yourself?''

"What do you mean?"

"You graduated from Harvard."

"You've been spying on me."

"Daddy's been spying on you." They rose to leave and he helped her on with her jacket.

"Now you look really embarrassed," she said.

She put her hand on his shoulder and looked in his eyes. "I have my good side. You just need to get there." They walked outside the cafe. The sun was just over the horizon, the sky tinged with red, the moon still full. It was cold, and the coastal wind whipped through the parking lot. "Wait," she said as they were walking to their cars.

"Yeah?" he said, turning toward her. "What's the matter?"

"These people are big-time dangerous. I don't think you should go."

"We've got it-"

"All planned. I know. It's all set up, but who cares? It doesn't matter. Listen to me. You have Nate. You're all he's got. He doesn't have a mother. You should think of him and put him first. We don't need to do this. I can go in with the state inspectors and just see what I can see."

"Oh, and they're going to show you all their secrets."

"Dan, I know how you feel, but who says you'll learn anything by sneaking around outside?"

"I can try."

"You swore you wouldn't go in the buildings. Look at me, you bastard. Tell me."

"I won't go in the buildings."

"Or any old mines."

"I'm not promising about that. I want to figure out what they're doing with that pipe, and the tank, and the old shack or mine, or whatever it is. And if I knew that, I might figure out why they feel the need to kill people." He grabbed her shoulders. "They almost caused a holocaust at the courthouse. They murdered Lynette. What'll they do next? You make the diversion and don't worry about me. I'll be fine."

"All right. Forget it. Do your damned macho thing. I'll see you when you get out."

"All right," he said as he turned back to his truck, obviously wanting to leave before she tried again to talk him out of it.

"Please be careful," she said in a tired voice.

Kenji seemed amazingly calm as he sat across the desk from Groiter. Kenji had come to Groiter's office, meaning that he would want him to do something he might not want to do.

"I think you have to get more directly involved. This isn't working out."

"There was no way to predict that his secretary would get in that car."

"It didn't work. Nothing else matters," Kenji said.

"Next time I'll supervise."

"And now we haven't even got the taps. We don't have a clue what's going on."

"I'll take Maria Fischer. With Corey. We'll bleed everything she knows; then we'll deep-six her. It's that simple."

"That simple, huh?"

"It'll take some planning."

"Why do you need Schneider?"

"Because there has to be a villain, and it can't be me or you."

Groiter's confidence was boosted by his photo of two corpses-a dead Catherine Swanson and the photographer-he had retrieved from Corey. If everything went to hell and Kenji began to get dangerous, he would use it.

"OK. But this time make it work. Find out everything she knows and then bury her where nobody will ever find her."

When Kenji left, Groiter went to a phone booth at the nearest strip mall. He found Corey at home. Now that he called her regularly he had learned her patterns.

"You were brilliant," he reiterated as if he hadn't said it five times before. "It's incredible that he stuck his secretary in that car."

''I don't understand it,'' she said. ''I just don't understand. Why would he do that?"

"Papers said she was doing him a favor, taking it to the mechanic. It was a last-minute deal."

"Shit."

"Maybe he knew it was dangerous. Maybe he was acting like the king who has a taster eat his food to see if it's poisoned."

"He's still walking around," she said. "Whatever the reason. I used up a perfectly good bomb on a dumb bitch."

"So next time we'll do it together. And wouldn't you rather do them both? One right after the other?"

"I would."

"And what if we got her to talk. Admit they were taking money."

''Could we make a video and show it to the movement?''

"Sure. Why not? But we need a place to take her." There was a pause.

"I know a perfect place."

"I'll call you soon to hear your ideas."

Groiter felt that at last he was making progress. She was starting to rely on him.

Dan watched the fence, listening intently for dogs or people. Only after seeing the fence for the second time, observing the meticulously coiled razor wire, did he contemplate his enemies' determination to protect their secrets.

It was 7:00 a.m. The forest was drippy with moisture, cool and dark. Angled shafts of early-morning sun barely penetrated the upper layers of the forest. The ground was in deep shadow. The clarity and pureness of a spring day made emerald green of the grasses and trees.

Nothing moved. The owls were perched, and the daytime predators were not making themselves known. A dusky-footed wood rat had scurried by, no doubt looking for the nearest windfall.

For 2? hours Dan attempted to retrace the route he and Maria took the day of the car chase. Finally he recognized the large barrier logs and the hemlock they'd used to bridge the windfalls. Now he crouched just outside the double chain-link fence. Not a dog in sight. The diversion seemed to have worked.

Because of its warm-when-wet properties, he wore wool head to toe. That was at Maria's insistence. She even found him wool pants. Wool was not only warm, she said, but unlike fabrics like Gore-Tex it was also quiet when moving through the forest. No matter how hard she had tried to make her assistance seem trivial, it was endearing.

She had gone in with the biologists as a public representative. Whatever that was. The whole concept of self-appointed public do-gooders marching around on private land irritated Dan. After all, the government was supposed to represent the public, and the bureaucrats were bad enough without volunteer bureaucrats. Yet here he was using the very system he hated in order to snoop and trespass. The world was a complicated place.

He wondered if there were electronic sensors or infrared beams that would enable them to detect him when he passed through the fenced area. The thought was hard on the nerves. He had been acting like a fearless commando around Maria. Now, by himself, without an audience, how brave was he? It was that precise thought that brought a curse to his lips and brought out the wire cutters.

Quickly he snipped the heavy chain-link fencing. Pushing himself so he wouldn't mentally freeze and crawl back under his bush, he cut quickly, and in seconds he had chopped up a three-foot section and bent it inward. Sweating profusely, he tossed the cutters through the hole in the first fence and crawled through after them. He used the same technique on the second fence and was soon on the far side.

No alarms had sounded. Moving slowly through the woods with a light pack on his back, he stayed in the thick undergrowth and used a compass along with the handheld GPS, moving toward the area of the tank. He had no idea where the lab was located or what other amenities might be found on the property. Every time he stepped, he made a sound unless he deliberately disciplined himself. After more than a few crackles and snaps, he decided to take off his boots and socks and put them in his pack. This enabled nearly silent movement. His tender feet could feel any twig about to snap and the leaves were moist enough that they were a mere whisper against his skin.

He found himself wishing he had brought a handgun. Fear did that. In the more rational confines of his office, he had come up with several good reasons not to bring a weapon of any kind. After many minutes he came to a lightly graveled road. In most places the gravel had sunk into the soft ground, leaving a surface that was partially dirt. It appeared that heavy vehicles used the road frequently. He wondered if the workers came and went at night so as not to attract attention.

Shrinking into the forest, he began to parallel the road, and in a few minutes he came to what resembled the letter Y. The ground was becoming rapidly steeper. The trees remained giant with few breaks in the overhead canopy, the road largely winding around their trunks. Where a tree had been removed, a telltale patch of blue sky shone through.

There was nothing to distinguish the fork of the Y bearing right from the one bearing to the left except that the left-hand fork rose at a steeper gradient. If he were correct about his position relative to the main buildings, the road to the right probably led to the gate. The one to the left had an unknown purpose and was therefore the more intriguing. He decided to keep to the left and look for the tank and the boards on the side of the mountain.

He walked what he guessed was a hundred yards before he came to a small clearing. At the edge of the clearing, but back under the tree canopy and nearly out of sight from the air, he found the man-made reservoir, some forty feet in diameter. It looked to be about five feet deep. Like an aboveground backyard pool, it appeared to have a liner, but its sides were made of concrete. Leading in two directions from the reservoir was a four-inch-diameter plastic hose. One hose went in the direction Dan had come; the other went nowhere and was coiled near the edge of the clearing.

Vehicles obviously frequented the area; this reservoir must be a center of activity. Looking to the far side of the clearing, he saw a portable toilet. In front of the plastic structure, a heavy man sat in a chair not far from what looked like a boarded-up mine shaft. The man was reading a book with a bloodred cover. Although still in the bushes and virtually invisible, Dan nearly stepped into the clearing. The thought was unnerving. Stooping down, he removed a pair of field glasses from his pack.

Dan saw that the man was armed with a prominently displayed semiautomatic pistol. With the binoculars he saw what looked to be an underground tunnel entry that was not seriously boarded up; someone had merely leaned the lumber against the rock face and over the opening. Somehow, he guessed, the reservoir and the mine were connected. In fact, the coiled-up line could have led from the reservoir to the mine. He had to look in that mine shaft. Removing his camera from the pack, he took several photos at slow-shutter speed from a tiny collapsible tripod.

As he studied the guard, it became apparent that he was not watching the area. In the movies someone would knock him out, but the whole notion of attacking a potentially innocent man and giving him a concussion was out of the question. He would just have to hope the guy didn't look around.

If they were operating in secret, it made sense that they would close everything down for an inspection. He wondered if Maria's group would observe this area or if they would be led around it.

Within about forty feet of the mine entrance, there was heavy forest. Moving as quickly as he could, he walked around the perimeter of the clearing, careful to remain far enough back in the trees to stay hidden.

When he arrived at the forest edge nearest the mine entrance, he quickly put on his socks and boots. It made him feel less vulnerable. The guard turned a page and didn't pause to look up. A heavy black holster with cuffs and pepper spray on his belt completed the police-officer look that private-security people often affect. The man could, Dan realized, be an off-duty cop.

It would only take one glance for the guard to see a man running in the open to the mine. Even peripheral vision might do it. Maybe he shouldn't try. To psych himself for the sprint, he made himself think of all the reasons the man wouldn't risk shooting him on sight.

He forced himself to breathe deeply and slowly, took a last look around, and ran on his toes, as quietly as he was able, all the way to the mine entrance. In seconds he moved. three boards to the side, then slipped in. In a few more seconds he had the boards back in place. Not a sound came from the guard. Dan waited a moment for his heart to slow. Light shone through the wooden slats, creating a halo near the entrance. Behind him it was black and cool. Reaching into his pack, he pulled out a penlight and played it around the confined space. On the rock wall were pegs; on the pegs hung eight yellow suits smeared with gray, dustlike particles of soil.

Those outfits, he was certain, served as a barrier against some kind of toxin. Next to the suits there were bottles of compressed air. Of course, if it were an old sulphur mine, it could be that the earth had acted as a retort and created acid. He had read about that. But if that were true, why would these people want to go down inside?

Dan knew nothing about mines, nor did he understand the use of toxic suits. For that reason his next thought pushed bile up his throat. He had to explore inside to learn what concerned the people who owned it. He had to see what lay at the end of the plastic pipe.

Fear is just a state of mind, he told himself as he began to put on one of the larger-looking suits, leaving seven suits on the wall and one empty peg. Even a casual glance would reveal that an intruder was down the shaft.

On the suit's headpiece was a light that could be turned on by twisting the portion that housed the lens and the bulb. A mask fitted with the air supply sealed off his face. He checked the regulator and verified that the tank was nearly full. It was similar to the scuba regulators he had used when diving off Hawaii. With everything on, including gloves, no portion of his body was exposed. He removed the mask and let it hang around his neck, thinking that he would wait until the air turned bad. As he walked, he remembered stories about miners and canaries. The need for such a bird would imply that bad air might not be easily sensed. Doubt filled him as he stopped to put on the mask and turn on the regulator.

As he continued deep into the mine, there was an unsettling sense of aloneness. Beyond the beam of his light, darkness housed the lurking unknown. Other than the sounds of his footsteps and his deep breaths, there was silence. Without the breeze there was an uncommon stillness.

Down the center of the mine ran an old set of rails, miniature by train standards but sufficient to handle a half ton of ore in a tiny car that could be pushed by men or pulled by cable. In many places the rails were loosened from the dilapidated ties. The mine could be a century or more old, he realized.

The rock sidewalls and ceiling of the shaft were blue-gray in color and the floor relatively smooth but overlaid with fine gray-white dust, except along the walls, where shards of rock had been pushed to make walking easier. There were old rotten timbers overlaid with new. In many places only the original timbers remained in place. It looked like a reasonably serious but temporary patch job.

After hundreds of yards he came to a Y and followed the plastic pipe down the left fork. Going a little farther, he came to a vertical shaft. The horizontal shaft ended about twenty yards beyond the downturn. Above the vertical shaft were beams, one of which held a large rusted metal pulley. Next to it, affixed to a new timber, was a smaller and shiny stainless-steel pulley that held a Vi-inch cable that ran onto a power drum. Affixed to the cable were stirrups that would enable a person to ride the cable down the shaft.

Over the edge he could see only darkness at the end of the headlamp's reach. Cracking open his air mask, he noticed a noxious odor, like gasoline. It wasn't suffocating, but it was clearly noticeable, and it was coming up the shaft.

Dan walked over to the power winch and examined it. Two buttons on a handheld box controlled the winch motor. It had to be operated from where he stood, which meant that for one man to go down on the cable, another had to run the controls.

Hunting around the machinery, he found a toolbox with a screwdriver. By jamming the screwdriver in alongside the power button, he discovered it would stay in the on position. This way he could at least ride the cable down. To come up, he planned to climb, although he wondered what he would do if it were hundreds of feet down. He studied the drum. The way it looked, there couldn't be over a couple of hundred feet of cable. That was reassuring. Looking down the shaft once again, he studied the walls and noted with satisfaction that they were irregular. At least near the top there were outcroppings large enough to stand on, which meant he could rest and climb. No way could a man climb a 1/2-inch cable without footholds.

Still, it was a serious risk. He knew that if he never came out Maria would find a way to get the police into the compound and maybe with luck she would guess where to look. But it was a slim chance that she could find him if something went wrong. He hesitated. He had his son to think about. His mother would give it a valiant try, but she was getting along in years. It would be hard for her to raise a nine-year-old boy to manhood all by herself. Dan's father was dead and his brother was single and running the ranch. Katie would try but how would she deal with Nate and a panic attack at the same time?

Nate was a good reason not to go down. He found himself sweating and breathing deeply.

Then he heard voices.