Gideon's Corpse

36

A pale light appeared in the mouth of the cave. Gideon raised his head. His mouth felt like damp chalk, his lips dry and cracking, and his bare back ached from sunburn. Propping himself on his elbow, he looked at Alida, still sleeping, her blond hair spread across the sand. As he gazed at her, she opened her eyes.

“We’d better get going,” he said.

“No.” Her voice was husky from disuse.

Gideon stared at her.

“Not until you take off these cuffs.”

“I told you, I don’t have a key.”

“Then lay the links on a rock and pound them off. If we’re going to find water, we’ve got to split up.”

“I can’t risk you running off.”

“Where am I going to run to? Anyway, in case you hadn’t noticed, I believe you. Look at you. You’re no terrorist.”

He glanced back at her. “What changed your mind?”

“If you were a terrorist,” she went on, “you would have tried to use that fake six-gun on me as soon as I’d served my purpose. No—you’re just some schmuck who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. So can we please take these damn cuffs off?”

Gideon grunted. He certainly wanted to trust her. “I’ll need a piece of stiff wire and a knife.”

She plucked a small knife and a thin key ring from a pant pocket, the latter of which he quickly straightened out. Then, using the key ring as a pick and the tip of the penknife as a tension wrench, he sprang the simple lock in a matter of thirty seconds or so.

“You lied to me. You could’ve picked that lock anytime.”

“I had to trust you first.” He looked around, picked up two empty beer cans—no doubt left by hunters—and stuffed them into his pockets. The cans would come in handy when and if they found water.

“Anything more of value in those saddlebags?” he asked.

“Why?”

“Because I’m not carrying them any farther.”

She dug out a lighter and a few candy bars and slipped them into her pockets. Then they exited the mine and started walking south, staying to the wooded ravines and valleys as much as possible, moving apart but keeping each other in sight. They looked for water but found no sign. It was June, before the summer rains: the driest time in New Mexico.

The dry washes eventually came together into a deep ravine with sheer granite walls. As they climbed down it, Gideon heard the sound of an approaching chopper; moments later a fast-moving Black Hawk passed less than two hundred feet above them, doors open, M143 guns mounted left and right. It swept away and vanished beyond the walls of the ravine.

“Jesus, did you see those guns?” Alida said. “You think they’d shoot us?”

“They’ve already tried.”

At noon, they finally found water: a small puddle at the bottom of a pour-off. They threw themselves down and lapped up the muddy fluid. Then they lay back in the shade of the overhang. As the water settled their thirst, a raging hunger took hold.

After a few minutes, Gideon roused himself and gobbled down the rest of the granola bar. “What about those candy bars?”

She pulled out two Snickers bars, which had melted in the heat. He tore the wrapper off one end of his and pressed the bar into his mouth, like toothpaste, swallowing as fast as he could.

“More?” he asked, his mouth still half full.

“That’s all.” Her own face was smeared with chocolate and mud.

“You look like a two-year-old the morning after Halloween.”

“Yeah, and you look like her snot-nosed baby brother.”

They filled the old beer cans with water and continued on, exiting the far end of the ravine and climbing another ridge.

As the day wore on, the chopper traffic increased, along with occasional fixed-wing aircraft flying in patterns. He had no doubt their pursuers were using infrared and Doppler radar, but the intense heat of the day—and the heavy tree cover—kept them safe. By late afternoon they were approaching the southern end of the Bearhead, an area that Gideon started to recognize.

At sunset, they finally reached the end of the mountains. They crept up to the top of the last ridge and—falling to their bellies and peering through the cover of a thicket of brush oaks—looked down on the town of Los Alamos, home of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Manhattan Project, and the atomic bomb.

Despite its remarkable past—at one time its very existence had been top secret—Los Alamos looked like any other government town, ugly and generic, with fast-food joints, prefab apartment complexes, and nondescript office buildings. What made it different was its spectacular setting: the town and labs spread out on a series of isolated mesas projecting from the flanks of the Jemez Mountains. At over seven thousand feet, it was one of the highest-altitude cities in the United States. Originally chosen for its inaccessibility and remoteness, it was surrounded by sheer thousand-foot cliffs on one side and cut off by lofty mountains on the other. Gideon could just see, beyond the town, the immense crack in the earth known as White Rock Canyon, at the bottom of which, flowing unseen, the Rio Grande roared through a series of rapids and cataracts.

To the south of town Gideon could make out the major Tech Areas, heavily fenced areas dotted with huge, warehouse-like buildings. The look of the place caused him to shiver. Was it really the sanest idea to break in there? But he could see no alternative. Someone had framed him. He had to find out who.

He rolled on his side and took a long drink from the dirty beer can. He handed it to Alida. “As I hoped, the air search seems to be sticking mostly to the north.”

“So what now? Cut the fence?”

He shook his head. “That’s no normal fence. It’s loaded with infrared sensors, motion sensors, pressures, alarm circuits—and there are video cameras hidden along its length. Even if we did get through, there are other, invisible rings of security I know nothing about.”

“Cute. So we find a gap, go around?”

“There are no gaps. The security in the Tech Areas is pretty much fail-safe.”

“Seems you’re shit out of luck, Osama.”

“We don’t have to evade security. We’ll go right in through the front gate.”

“Yeah, right, with you at the top of the FBI’s most wanted list.”

He smiled. “I don’t think I am. At least not yet. They have every reason to keep their pursuit of me secret. They think I belong to a terrorist cell—why broadcast to the cell that I’ve been identified, that I’m on the loose?”

Alida frowned. “I still think it’s insanely risky.”

“There’s only one way to find out.” And he rose to his feet.