Feeling as if he hadn’t slept in a month, Craig kept moving. His head pounded, his body ached from the ordeal at the Laughlin railroad bridge, from the frantic chaos of the fruitless NEST search.
He wondered when, or if, Major Braden would decide to announce an all-out evacuation of the city. But he also knew the final decision would be made in Washington — and there was no telling what they might decide.
Craig thought of Paige, hoping she was getting a good night’s rest at the Rio. For now, he thought it was best if she didn’t know he wanted to question her Uncle Mike. While Jackson and Goldfarb checked out Dennison’s repair shop, Craig thought Waterloo was his last, best hope.
Though it was just a little after four in the morning, Craig rapped again on the front door of the DAF Manager’s house. The doorbell didn’t seem to work, so he pounded loudly enough to wake anyone in the bedroom, as well as several neighbors.
Finally giving up, he crunched across the nugget-size lava rock spread throughout Waterloo’s front yard. Cholla, prickly pear, and bristly yucca had been meticulously arranged in a landscape with larger rocks and scrub oak, but much of it had gone to weeds, untended for some time. He wondered if Waterloo’s wife Genny had been the gardener in the family. He wondered why Waterloo hadn’t at least bothered to pick up the newspapers tossed in his driveway.
Letting himself through the fence gate, he walked around back to where he could peer through the bedroom windows. Pressing his face against the glass, he discerned shadowy details by the light of a glowing clock radio.
With a chill down his spine, he thought of Carl Jorgenson lying dead inside his bathroom, poisoned by the Eagle’s Claw. He hoped the same thing hadn’t happened to Waterloo.
Instead, he found the bed empty, neatly made. Apparently, the DAF Manager had never even come home the night before. He glanced at his watch again to confirm the time. Something was wrong.
Craig didn’t have much time. He took a deep breath, pacing back and forth in front of the bedroom window, wondering what to do, impatient to make a decision. He had wanted to use a little more finesse instead of breaking the door down — but he remembered again what had happened at Jorgenson’s trailer, at the Hoover Dam, at the Laughlin railroad crossing, at the home of Bryce Connors.
And he thought again of the missing nuclear weapon.
Waterloo had run, just as Craig had expected PK Dirks to do — perhaps he had fingered the wrong man.
He found a sliding glass door at the patio; the cheap lock popped open easily when Craig pushed against it. He called out again, identifying himself, but heard no sound from inside.
Waterloo either wasn’t home — or he was lurking in the shadows with a loaded rifle. Once again, Craig wished he had brought his backup with him — but even now Goldfarb and Jackson would be mounting their investigation of the slot-machine repair shop.…
In a hurry but also cautious, Craig began to look around, switching on only one or two small lights at a time.
It took him no more than ten minutes to find an appalling collection spread across the dining room table, as if Waterloo just didn’t care any more: a dozen Eagle’s Claw leaflets, maps of southern Nevada, the Test Site, the Nellis Air Force Range, and a hand-drawn sketch of Groom Lake with topographical lines penciled in. Waterloo had scattered the papers on tables, next to notepads, as if frantically making plans, double-checking his destination, throwing supplies together.
Getting ready.
In a cardboard box by the coffee table, Craig found booklets with alarming titles: Unarmed Combat to Kill, The Political Sellout of America, and The ANFO Solution — Ammonia Nitrate Fuel Explosives. With ice in his stomach, he flipped through the documents.
Craig felt as if the wind had been knocked out of him. All this time he had been working with Waterloo, feeding him information on Nevsky’s “accident” investigation. “We have found the enemy, and he is us,” he muttered.
Feeling sick to his stomach, he found a telephone in the kitchen, looked up the Rio in the phone book, and dialed the number with leaden fingers. He had to tell Paige.
But she didn’t answer. The phone in her room rang a dozen times.
“I’m sorry, sir. Your party isn’t available.” The Rio operator seemed too perky for so early in the morning. “May I leave a message?”
“No, uh, no thanks.”
“Thank you, and have a wonderful day.”
Where could Paige be at 4:30 in the morning? Why didn’t she pick up the phone? He had convinced himself that Waterloo might have switched off his pager and disconnected his home phone — but Paige would never do that, not in her hotel room.
He swallowed hard, knowing her devotion to “Uncle Mike” and her concern for him.
What if she had stumbled upon his militia activities? Waterloo had disappeared, and now Paige seemed to have vanished as well. What had she gotten herself into?
He ran for the door and his car, roaring off into the pre-dawn stillness toward the Rio.