The Shimmer

41

Chilled by his drenched clothes, Brent stood at the back window of the broadcast truck and stared into the murky rain. Behind him, Anita and Luther Hamilton slumped against a wall, sipping tepid coffee from plastic cups.

The news producer watched as a technician and a cameraman finished stowing the equipment. “Time to head back to the motel.”

Lightning flashed, showing Brent the last of the crowd hurrying desperately through the rain toward their cars. Several limped or held themselves in pain.

“I wish we could get a shot of that.”

“I’m not sending any camera operator out in that lightning,” the producer said. “The storm’s predicted to last several hours. Nothing else is going to happen here tonight. It’s time to get some sleep.”

“Who needs sleep when there’s a story this big?”

“And who needs a reporter who passes out from exhaustion?”

“Where’s Sharon?” Brent asked with suspicion.

“Back at the motel. She’s resting so she can anchor the morning broadcast from here.”

“No way. I’ll coanchor with her.”

“Not unless you get some rest. I know you want to show viewers how hard you’re working, but you’re starting to look scary.”

When the truck started, making the floor unsteady, Brent sat next to Anita and fastened his seat belt. “Are you hurt?”

“Bruised.”

“You did good work today.”

“And last night,” Anita emphasized. Something flashed in her dark eyes.

“And last night,” Brent acknowledged. “Tomorrow morning, are you ready to do more?”

“My car still needs repairs.” Anita’s face was pinched with fatigue. She peered up from under her baseball cap toward the producer. “Am I still getting overtime?”

“You bet. CNN is underwriting our expenses.”

The truck bumped as the driver steered onto the road.

“But I don’t know what else is left in the story,” the producer said. “After what happened tonight, the police say they’re shutting down the viewing area. Nobody’ll be allowed there tomorrow night. Maybe not for a long time to come.”

“The police can try, but after what we transmitted just now, there’ll be plenty more curiosity seekers here tomorrow,” Brent said. “It’ll be Saturday. People will make a weekend of it. They won’t like coming a long way and not getting a chance to see the lights. Cops, barricades, an angry crowd-all that makes for great television.”

“Tomorrow night,” the producer agreed. “But what about in the meantime?”

“Lots of angles. I need to track down the woman who killed the shooter. Also, somebody told me there’s a radio observatory around here. I bet I can tie that in somehow-extraterrestrials or whatever. And I want to find out more about that airbase from World War II. Maybe we can get a shot of where that kid got himself blown up back in 1980.”

“Johnny,” Hamilton murmured.

“What?”

“His name was Johnny.”

“Right.”

The producer said, “Brent, if you start wandering around that air- field, you’re liable to get blown up, too.” He looked thoughtful. “You know, that would make a great story.”

42

Raleigh heard the faint rumble of thunder, but apart from some water trickling down a wall, the area beneath the abandoned airbase remained secure. In the cold glare of the overhead lights, he watched his men finish unpacking the last of the wooden crates.

“Sergeant Lockhart, reassemble the team.”

“Yes, sir.”

Within seconds, they again stood before him in a line.

“Gentlemen, through the door behind you, you’ll find latrines and your sleeping quarters, although you won’t spend much time in the latter. There’s a kitchen, but it isn’t stocked. For now, you’ll need to make do with the field rations you unpacked. When the next Black Hawk arrives at the observatory, it’ll bring steaks.

“Part of the reason you were chosen for this assignment is that you’re experts in electronics. Behind the door to your right, you’ll find a monitoring station. It was state-of-the-art three years ago. The equipment we brought will bring it up to speed. But before you install it, I want you to take the closed-circuit cameras you unpacked and mount them on overhead corners in every room and corridor. I want every inch of this facility-including the latrines-to be visible on surveillance screens and every second of what happens down here to be recorded. If we’re going to make history, it needs to be documented.

“Each of you will wear your sidearm at all times. You’ll also make sure that one of the M4s you unpacked is close to you wherever you go. In addition, you’ll wear shooter’s earplugs.”

Raleigh noted the puzzled look Lockhart gave him.

“Sergeant, do you have a question?”

“Sir, are you expecting us to come under attack?”

“Just taking precautions, given the instability we’ve seen outside. As far as the earplugs are concerned, there are certain audio characteristics to this project that can have… let’s call them damaging effects.”

A door opened behind Raleigh. He turned to see one of the team members bringing in the dog trainer and the German shepherd. They’d come down via a stairwell-its electronically controlled hatch was concealed among the hangar’s piles of wreckage. All three were soaked.

“Any problems up there?” Raleigh asked.

“No, sir,” the dog trainer responded. “Nobody came near this area. The crowd was too distracted by what was happening at the viewing area down the road. Things got crazy there. Then the storm started, and everybody left.”

“Through that door, you’ll find dry clothes.”

“Thank you, sir.”

As the trainer and the German shepherd left the area, Raleigh motioned for Lockhart to come over.

Raleigh kept his voice low. “If the dog acts strangely in any way, no matter how slight…”

“Yes, sir?”

“Shoot it.”

43

The Saturn’s windshield wipers flapped heavily in the strengthening downpour that pounded the roof and obscured the headlights. Shivering, Tori almost missed the motel’s entrance. She turned, drove through rain-churned puddles, and stopped at unit 11. After she and Page ran to the door, Page unlocked it and held it open for her with- out entering.

“Go ahead, take a bath,” he said. “Put on some warm clothes. I’ll drive back to the Rib Palace and get some hot coffee for us.”

“But you’re as cold as I am. Why should I go first? That isn’t fair.”

“The last thing you need is to get sick before your surgery. How about hot soup? You want some?”

Tori barely hesitated. “Yes. That would be great.”

Page hurried back through the drenching rain and got into the car, turning up the heater.

Fifteen minutes later, he returned, setting Styrofoam containers of coffee and soup on the unit’s small table. The bathroom door was closed. Hearing the splash of water in the tub, he quickly took off his dripping clothes. The room didn’t have a closet, but it did have hangers on a rod. He hung his clothes there and dried himself with a blanket he found on a shelf. Even with the blanket draped around him, he couldn’t stop shaking.

He hadn’t packed a lot of clothes and was forced to put on the jeans and shirt he’d worn the night before. They still had the odor of smoke, but at least they were dry.

When Tori came out of the bathroom, she found him huddled under the covers of his bed, trying to keep his fingers steady while he used both hands to grip his container of coffee.

She wore her usual T-shirt and boxer shorts. Her towel-dried hair was combed back. “Your turn.”

“Somehow the idea of getting wet again doesn’t appeal to me. I think I’ll wait until I’m a little warmer.”

“I still feel shaky. What kind of soup did you get?”

“In a place like the Rib Palace, they had only one choice-they call it Fiery Beef.”

“Sounds like exactly what I need.”

She pulled a blanket off her bed, wrapped it around her, and sat at the table, opening the container of soup. Watching her, Page sipped his coffee and felt the hot liquid against his bruised lip. She didn’t say anything all the while she ate, spooning the soup quickly. Then she opened the coffee, and while she drank it, she remained silent. Finally she turned to him, her features strained with confusion. “If it hadn’t been for the storm, I’d have walked forever to try to reach the lights.”

“No,” Page said. “If it hadn’t been for me.”

“I couldn’t resist. They seemed to be calling me.”

He considered what she’d said, then gave her an extremely direct look.

“Let’s pack and get out of here. Not tomorrow. Right now. We can be at your mother’s house by morning. Are you ready to do that?”

Tori lowered her head and didn’t reply, in effect giving him an answer. He remembered what had happened in the field. After what she had said and done to him, he wasn’t about to try to force her to leave. He wasn’t even certain he could force her to leave. So he came to a decision.

“In that case, I need to be a cop a while longer. This has gone way past the point where I can just let things keep controlling us. I’m going to find out what’s going on.”

44

Page jerked awake, struck anew by the stark reality of what Tori had told him about her cancer and by what had happened the night before.

So much to adjust to.

Sunlight crept past the cheap drapes, but he didn’t feel at all rested, even though a glance at the bedside clock showed him that the time was 1:14 and that he’d slept another twelve hours.

This time Tori remained in her bed.

Groggy, he went into the bathroom, softly closed the door, and shaved, running the water as little as possible, trying not to make noise.

When he came out, Tori was putting on a pair of slacks.

“Sorry if I woke you,” he said.

“It wasn’t a good sleep.”

“The same with me.” He touched the shirt and jeans that he’d put on a hangar. “Still wet.” He glanced down at the clothes he’d slept in. Wrinkled, they continued to retain the odor of the fire two nights earlier.

“Looks like we need to do some shopping,” Tori concluded.

When they stepped from the room and faced the harsh sunlight, Page was troubled by the number of vehicles streaming past the motel-many more than on the previous day. It took even longer for Tori to find a break in the traffic and steer the Saturn onto the road.

In town, the streets were filled with cars. All the parking spaces were occupied. Tori let Page out in front of a store called the Out – fitter, where there were so many tourists that he had to wait fifteen minutes to pay for new clothes. It took another fifteen minutes to get into a dressing room. He put on a pair of pants, a T-shirt, and a shirt to wear over it-something that would conceal his handgun. When he came out with his old clothes in a shopping bag, he heard a customer talking to a female clerk.

“Do people really see lights around here?”

“Yes,” the clerk answered. “But it’s been years since I went looking for them.”

“Aren’t you curious what they are?” the customer asked.

“When I was a kid. But I got used to them.”

As Page walked toward the front of the store, he heard another customer telling a different clerk, “My wife has diabetes. We heard this place makes miracles happen, like at Lourdes. If she sees the lights, she’ll be cured.”

Page went out to the sidewalk, where Tori was waiting with two sandwiches and two bottles of water from a restaurant next door.

Cured? he thought. Wouldn’t that be nice?

They ate while they walked three blocks to the hospital. There Tori again paused nervously on the hot steps outside the entrance.

“Another day closer to the start of the rest of your life,” Page tried to reassure her.

She took a breath and forced herself to go in.

Upstairs, in the brightly lit hallway, the sharp odor of disinfectant seemed stronger as they walked toward Costigan’s room.

The chief ’s familiar raspy voice came from it, telling someone, “God help us if the next riot spreads to town. How many people were injured?”

“Twenty-three,” a different voice answered. “Twelve got gashed pretty bad on the barbed-wire fence.”

“And the others?”

“Six were almost trampled to death. The rest were hurt in fights.”

Page was uncomfortable eavesdropping. He motioned for Tori to follow him as he stepped into the doorway.

Their footsteps made a man turn in their direction. He was in his fifties, stocky, with a sunburned complexion. His sport coat had a Western cut and a zigzag design over the left and right breast. He wore a large belt buckle and held a cowboy hat.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Page said. “We just wanted to see how Chief Costigan was doing.”

“A lot better, thanks.” Propped up in bed, Costigan looked less gray. His mustache now had some contrast with his skin, and the heart and blood-pressure monitors were gone. The IV tube had been removed from his arm, although the thick bandage remained around his skull. “They say they’ll let me go home tomorrow as long as I remember not to bang my head against anything. This is Hank Wagner. He runs the drugstore in town. More to the point, he’s also our mayor, which, at the moment, he wishes he wasn’t.”

Page shook hands with Wagner.

“Dan Page. This is my wife, Tori.”

“The chief told me about you. You’re the couple who saved those people on the bus Thursday night. You’re the woman who…” Seeing her discomfort, the mayor said, “Well, we’re grateful for what you did. Without your help, the situation could have been even worse.”

He looked at his watch. “You’ll have to excuse me. I need to get to an emergency town council meeting.”

They watched him leave and then redirected their attention toward Costigan.

“Do you really feel better?” Tori asked.

“The headache’s not as bad. And I don’t have damned needles sticking into me. The doctor finally took me off a diet of broth and Jell-O.” Costigan pointed toward Page’s bruised mouth. “Looks like you’re one of the people who got hurt last night.”

“Things were a little crazy. Can I ask you a question?”

“You can ask.” Costigan’s voice hung in the air, suggesting, But I might not answer.

“The man who killed your father…”

For a moment, Costigan’s pained eyes focused on the past. “What about him?”

“You said he’d come to Rostov only a couple of months earlier.”

“He’d lost his job in Fort Worth when the factory he worked for moved to Mexico. He couldn’t find anything else. One of his relatives lived here and managed to get him a job at the stock pens.”

“You also said he was a drinker, that he got in arguments in bars. His wife buttoned her collars and wore long sleeves even on hot days-to hide her bruises.”

“That’s right.”

“In your place, given what happened to your father, I’d have looked into every aspect of the case. I’d have gone to Fort Worth and talked to people who knew the husband when the family lived there. Did you find out if his behavior changed after he came to Rostov?”

Costigan considered him for a moment. “Yeah, you’re a good police officer.”

“Well, you know as well as I do, it’s all about asking the right questions.”

Costigan nodded. “I did some digging. The husband’s behavior definitely got worse after he came here. He’d always had a short tem- per, especially when he drank, but here it became more extreme.

People who knew him in Fort Worth figured he got bitter about being forced to leave the big city and live in the middle of nowhere.”

“Did you buy that theory?”

“I had a different one.”

“And that’s the real reason you wanted me to keep my gun in my suitcase when I went to the observation area to find out what Tori was doing there, isn’t that correct?”

“Correct.”

“What am I missing?” Tori asked.

Costigan looked at her. “People either like it here right away, or else they hate it. You saw that on Thursday night. Some got out of their cars and were open to seeing the lights, while others couldn’t wait to get back on the road. A few were actually angry because they couldn’t see what others claimed to see. It’s like the way magnets can repel each other as much as attract.”

“Did the man who shot your father ever go out there to look at the lights?” Page asked.

“He tried several times. He finally decided that the people who told him about the lights were trying to make a fool of him.”

“And you were worried that if I didn’t see the lights, I’d get angry- as angry as the man who shot your father.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You wouldn’t have understood what I was talking about. How could I possibly have explained it? I told you on the phone-you needed to see for yourself.”

“Or not see,” Page added.

Costigan made a gesture of futility. “There’s no way to predict who’ll see the lights and who won’t, or how they’ll react. Even those who don’t see the lights…” The chief rubbed his bandaged forehead. “Do you suppose it’s possible to feel the lights without actually seeing them?”

“Yesterday you told us they were only a mirage caused by a temperature inversion,” Tori reminded him.

“That I did.”

“But now you seem to think they’re a lot more.”

“A temperature inversion. Sure. That’s the rational explanation. But one thing I’ve learned in more than twenty years as a police officer is that human beings aren’t rational.”

45

Harriett Ward’s antiques store was crammed with browsers. After the glare of the afternoon sun, Page found the interior shadows soothing. He noted that a man had taken down one of the antique rifles Page had seen on the wall the evening before. The man worked the vintage firearm’s lever and aimed the gun toward the ceiling.

“Just like the rifle James Stewart used in that Western,” he told his female companion. “Winchester ’73. Hard to imagine this was made just after the Civil War. What are they charging for it? Twenty-eight hundred dollars? My God, that’s a steal!”

“But I don’t think we can afford it,” the woman said. “Gas and food cost so much. Next week Bobby’s nursery school bill is due, and-”

“Hey, you don’t see bargains like this every day. We’ll put it on one of our credit cards.”

Page looked toward the opposite side of the store and saw an older woman with short white hair and a leather vest: Harriett Ward. As he and Tori went over, she was talking to a couple about a wooden cabinet that had large iron handles on the doors.

“I found it in a village in Mexico. It’s made of mesquite, which is about as hard as wood can get and not be like these metal handles.”

She noticed Page and Tori and nodded. Five minutes later, she made her way over to them.

“I’ve never had so many people in the store at one time,” she said.

“Well, at least there’s an upside to what’s been happening,” Tori said.

“Everybody wants a twenty percent discount and free shipping. Someone tried to buy the antique light fixtures and got upset when I said I needed them. Someone else got upset when I told her I didn’t have a public restroom. She made a fuss when I wouldn’t let her into my apartment so she could use my private bathroom. I’m glad for the business, but I’d forgotten how difficult people can be.”

A woman approached them. She had big blond hair and wore an ornate costume that made her look like a country singer.

“Janice, thanks for coming in to help,” Harriett said.

“No problem.” The woman laughed and spread her sequined green skirt. “I figured I’d wear something the out-of-state customers will re- member. They’ll go home and say we all dress like we’re in one of those old Westerns where everybody sang when they weren’t shooting bad guys.”

“Do you think you and Viv can handle the store for a while?”

“Of course. We know what to do.”

“Just don’t sell the light fixtures.”

Laughing at what she thought was a joke, Janice went to greet a customer.

Harriett led Page and Tori through the door in back, entered her sparsely furnished living room, locked the door, closed her eyes, and inhaled deeply. When she finally opened her eyes, she said, “You’re here to talk about what happened last night?”

“If you’re too busy, we can come back later,” Tori said.

“No. Come with me-I want to show you something.”

46

Harriett’s pickup truck headed along the now familiar route.

“You’re taking us back to the viewing area?” Page asked. He sat against the passenger door, with Tori next to him.

“Past it,” Harriett answered.

Ahead, more cars were parked along both shoulders of the road. Flatbed trucks had concrete barriers on them. A crane was lifting the barriers and placing them in a line along the entrance to the viewing area, forming a high wall. Two men in suits supervised the work. Their hard hats contrasted with the cowboy hats of Medrano and an- other Highway Patrol officer.

“Looks like they’re shutting the place off,” Harriett said. “If they’re smart, they’ll take down the shelter altogether, along with the historical marker, and load the portable toilets onto those trucks. I never approved of what the county did here. The lights shouldn’t be a tourist stop. I don’t care about the business outsiders bring to town. Keep the lights a secret. Let people discover them if they’re meant to.”

“If they’re meant to?” Tori asked.

“Do you think these people deserve to see the lights? Most can’t. The others aren’t capable of appreciating what they’re lucky enough to see.” There was a tone in her voice that Page hadn’t heard before.

People filled the road, complaining about the tall barricade. Harriett was forced to stop the truck.

“Quit blocking traffic!” Page heard Medrano yell.

Reluctantly the crowd parted.

Harriett drove on, passing the parked cars. Beyond barbed-wire fences, scrub grass stretched in both directions. Five miles later, she steered toward a gate on the left. Page got out, opened the gate, waited for the truck to drive through, then resecured the gate.

They drove along a dirt road. The heat of the day had dried the puddles from the previous night’s storm. Dust rose in small clouds to mark their passing. The rugged grassland extended toward the distant mountains, the vast area so flat and treeless that only the grazing cattle provided variation in the landscape.

Wait, Page thought, peering into the distance. Something’s out there.

He saw a speck at the end of the road. Leaning forward, he tried to identify what it was. As the truck drove nearer, the speck became larger.

“It’s a building,” Tori said, curious.

“Why do I feel like I’ve been here before?” Page frowned, recalling his sense of déjà vu when he’d flown over the cattle and the windmill on his approach to Rostov. He’d also felt it when he’d first driven along the town’s main street.

The building became more identifiable-and more puzzling. It was an impressive three-story ranch house. A covered porch stretched along its wide front. Several chimneys projected from its roofline. A square tower rose on the right corner, ending in a cupola that made the house look like a castle. But as majestic as the place appeared, it had a brooding, gothic quality.

“I’ve seen this house before,” Tori told Page. Abruptly she made the connection. “Birthright.”

“Of course!” Page said. “That’s why everything looked familiar when I flew here. This is the house Captain Medrano was talking about, the one Mullen took the tour to see.”

Page remembered when a restored version of Birthright had been shown in theaters to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. He and Tori had heard so much about the classic film-which had seldom appeared on television-that they’d made a point of seeing it.

“We love that movie,” Tori said.

“Yeah, it really makes an impression,” Harriett replied, the house becoming more distinct as she drove toward it. “People here in Texas sure admired it. They couldn’t stand the novel, which they thought looked down on them, but they felt that the movie showed their strength and determination, not to mention the vastness of the countryside. No fake-looking computer effects in those days. When you saw a hundred thousand head of cattle, every one of them was real. The miles and miles of ranchland. The endless sky. I don’t think a movie has ever looked so big. As big as the state. And the actors matched the bigness of the movie. James Deacon, Veronica Pageant, Buck Rivers. Legends.”

Page stared toward the looming house. Its dark, weathered wood reinforced the feeling of gloom that the structure exuded. Soon the truck was close enough for him to see that some of the boards had fallen, that there were gaps in the wall, that the porch was in danger of collapsing.

“Doesn’t anybody maintain it?” Tori asked in surprise.

“The movie people left it here, and the family that owns the ranch took care of it for a while, but then they got distracted,” Harriett answered. “And anyway, who would they have maintained it for? It’s not as if they wanted tourists tromping over their land and leaving the gates open so their cattle would wander down the road and maybe get hit by a car. By the time the parents died, the children had pretty much forgotten about it. When they finally remembered, it was too late. Now the place is in such bad shape that it can’t be repaired with- out basically being rebuilt.”

She stopped the truck at decaying steps that led up to collapsed boards on the porch. The ornate front door looked as if it was about to topple from its rusted hinges.

Page got out of the truck, his sneakers crunching on pebbly dirt. He helped Tori down and watched Harriett come around to join them. She put on her cowboy hat. The sun was intense enough that Page wished he’d thought to bring a baseball cap. Tori continued to wear hers, concealing most of her red hair.

“In the movie, a lawn was here,” Page said.

“And a curved driveway bordered by flower beds,” Tori added. “A cattle stampede tears it all up. Veronica Pageant and Buck Rivers put it all back together. Then they do it again when there’s a tornado. Then there’s a terrible drought, but somehow they keep building their empire.”

“Texas determination,” Harriett said.

“And James Deacon’s the white trash they humiliate, until he strikes oil and uses his money and power to get even with them. At one point, he drives his battered old truck across the lawn. He’s covered with oil from his first well. He jumps out and punches Rivers.” Page looked around. “But I don’t see any oil wells.”

“Forty miles from here,” Harriett said. “That’s where you’ll find them. One reason the movie was made here is that this isn’t oil country and there weren’t any wells to interfere with the illusion that this is what Texas looked like a hundred years ago, before the oil boom.” She paused. “I said there weren’t computer effects, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t any movie magic. Walk around the house, and you’ll see what I mean.”

Curious, Page and Tori did what Harriett suggested. Stepping around the corner, Page gaped. All he faced was more grassland.

“There isn’t any house,” Tori said in astonishment.

“The only part they built was the front.” Page couldn’t get over his surprise. “In the movie, you feel like you can walk right into the place.”

“Seeing’s believing,” Harriett told them. “But what you see isn’t al- ways what’s real.”

Like the cuttlefish, Page thought. “You’re making a point about the lights?”

“Eye of the beholder,” Harriett answered. “Sometimes we see what we want to see, sometimes what we ought to see, and sometimes what we shouldn’t see.”

“I don’t understand.”

“A lot of people in town were extras in the crowd scenes in Birthright, back when they were kids. Ask around, and you’ll hear all kinds of stories about what it was like to have movie stars walking the streets of Rostov.”

“What does that have to do with the lights?” Tori asked.

“For about three months, the stars lived right here in town. Rostov was even smaller back then, and everything the actors did was pretty much public knowledge, not that any of it was terribly shocking. There was so little to do that the film crew-including the actors- played baseball every Sunday afternoon against a team the townsfolk put together. People invited the actors to barbecues. Every evening, the director put up an outdoor screen and showed everyone the foot- age he’d shot a couple of days before. Did you know that all three of the stars were only twenty-three years old?”

“Twenty-three?” Tori echoed. “But they look like they’re in their forties and fifties for half the film.”

“The director had two choices: hire forty-year-old actors and use makeup so they’d look young in the early parts of the movie, or else hire young actors and use makeup to age them. The fame of Deacon, Pageant, and Rivers made him decide to appeal to a younger audience. The acting and the makeup were so brilliant, they convinced you that what you saw on the screen was real.”

“More illusion,” Page said. “Okay, I get it.”

“That’s not the point I wanted to make, though,” Harriett continued. “Deacon starred in only three movies. First, he played the younger brother in a family that runs a fishing boat in northern California.”

“The Prodigal Son,” Tori said.

Harriett nodded. “Then he made the street-gang movie, Revolt on Thirty-second Street. And finally Birthright. He filmed all three back- to-back, but he died in a car crash before any of them were released. He never had a chance to find out how big a star he was.”

“I knew he died young, but I had no idea it was before his movies came out,” Page said.

“The waste,” Tori said. Something in her voice made Page wonder if she was thinking about her own disease. “All the other great movies he might have made.”

“At the time, his fans were convinced that he hadn’t really died in the car crash,” Harriett went on. “They believed he was disfigured, that he hid from the public so he wouldn’t shock people and ruin his legacy.”

She paused, bracing herself for what she wanted to say.

“Deacon was a troubled farm boy from Oklahoma. His mother ran away with the hired hand. His father was as stern and joyless as the father in The Prodigal Son. As a teenager, he rebelled to the point that he was accused of stealing a car and almost went to reform school. A teacher got him interested in acting in high school plays. He loved it so much that he found several part-time jobs, saved a hundred dollars, and hitchhiked to New York City, where he convinced Lee Strasberg to let him audition and was allowed to take classes at the Actors Studio.

“What people tend to forget is that at the beginning of Deacon’s career, he played bit parts in a couple of movies, but he never made an impression. He had secondary roles in a lot of live television plays, and no one paid attention to those, either-deservedly. Even though he studied with Strasberg, he was terrible. Awkward, dull, lifeless. If he hadn’t been so good-looking, he probably would never have been hired.

“Finally he became so discouraged that he gave up and drove his motorcycle across the country. That was in the summer of ’56. By the fall, he was back in New York, where he managed to persuade a casting director to give him a small part in a Broadway play. Suddenly he was acting so brilliantly that a Hollywood talent scout gave him a screen test for a small part in The Prodigal Son. The test was so spectacular that the director asked for a second one and then gave Deacon the starring role. According to the DVD of the movie, that’s one of the great success stories in Hollywood history. What do you sup- pose made the difference?”

Page shrugged. “I guess the motorcycle trip gave him a chance to get focused.”

“Or maybe he had help,” Harriett said.

“Help?”

“That summer, Deacon was on his way from El Paso to Big Bend National Park. That’s southeast of here. He happened to drive into Rostov.”

Tori stepped forward. “He saw the lights?”

“He spent most of August and all of September here. Every night, he drove out to the observation area, which wasn’t even a parking lot back then. And every night, he stayed until dawn. Then he drove back into town and slept in a tent he’d put up in the park. Late afternoons, he went around town and made friends. He was so good-looking, I don’t imagine that was difficult. Then one day he was gone, returning to New York and his big break.”

Page frowned. “You’re saying the lights had something to do with it?”

“They were the only thing that was different in his life,” Harriett replied. “I can imagine him staring at the lights for all those weeks. Night after night. Spellbound. In Deacon’s earlier roles, his eyes are dull. In his last three films, they glow. When he was hired to be one of the stars in Birthright, he told the film’s director about Rostov and how the area around here would be perfect for location shooting. He was so persuasive that the director came out to take a look and instantly decided to build the ranch house-right here.” She gestured at the ruined structure. “Seems awfully coincidental that we’re ten miles from the section of road where Deacon first saw the lights.”

“Did the director see the lights, too?” Page asked.

“No. Local people who worked on the movie remember that Deacon went there every night and dragged Pageant, Rivers, and the director with him several times. They had no idea what he was talking about. The crew members didn’t get it, either, and finally Deacon was the only one who went out there.”

Harriett drew a breath.

“He didn’t need makeup to look older,” she finally said.

Despite the heat, Page felt a cold ripple on his skin. “What do you mean?”

“The director shot the movie in sequence. As Deacon was supposed to look older, he actually did look older. The rumor on the set was that he was drinking and taking drugs every night instead of watching the lights, as he claimed. He began to look so wasted that the director begged him to stop abusing himself. There was talk of shutting down the picture and sending Deacon to a hospital to dry out. But every evening, when the town gathered to watch scenes from a few days earlier, Deacon looked so perfectly in character, so real in the part, that the director kept filming. The makeup people needed to use all their talents to get Pageant and Rivers to look as believably older as Deacon did.”

Standing in the shadow of the ranch house’s ruin, Tori asked, “What made that happen?”

“All I can tell you is that when Deacon finished his last scene and drove away on his motorcycle, people say he looked sixty years old,” Harriett answered. “Five days later, he was killed driving his sports car to a race in northern California near where he’d filmed The Prodigal Son. He was going a hundred miles an hour when a pickup truck pulled onto the road. A witness saw sunlight glinting off the truck’s windshield. The theory was that the glint blinded Deacon and kept him from being able to steer around the truck.”

Page stared at the splintered boards lying on the ground. “Why hasn’t any of this been talked about?”

“Deacon’s death really traumatized everyone associated with the movie. They didn’t claim to understand him, but they respected his brilliance, and they didn’t want to tarnish his legacy by claiming that he was wasted on booze and drugs. They certainly weren’t going to make him sound like a nutcase by mentioning the lights, which no- body believed in anyhow.”

Harriett lapsed into silence. In the hot sun, the only sounds were cattle lowing in the distance and a breeze scraping blades of scrub grass.

“So the lights inspired Deacon, and then he became so obsessed by them that he was destroyed?” Tori asked.

“It depends on what you mean by destroyed. That final performance bordered on greatness,” Harriett answered.

“But the bottom line is, he died,” Tori emphasized.

“It could be that’s what Deacon wanted. Maybe he’d lived so in- tensely during the previous year that he couldn’t bear it any longer.”

“You’re suggesting…?”

“The glint on the windshield of the truck he hit. Maybe he was so burned out that he decided to drive into the light.”

The breeze faded, everything becoming still.

“Yesterday you told us how blessed the people in town feel because they’ve seen the lights,” Page said.

“That was my experience.”

“But not everybody’s experience,” Page added. “Is it possible to have too much of a good thing? In town, I heard a store clerk say that when she was young, she used to go out to see the lights, but now she never does. Yesterday you said you stopped going out to see them, also.”

Harriett looked pointedly at Tori. “When Chief Costigan phoned yesterday to say you were coming to see me, he explained how fixated you are on the lights. I brought you here to try to make you under- stand that, yes, it’s possible to have too much of a good thing.”

47

The crackle of static woke him.

As did his headache.

And the odor.

Halloway lifted the side of his face from a table. His cheek was numb from having been pressed so long against the wood. The ear- phones remained on his head. He felt groggy, as if he’d drunk every one of the numerous glasses of vodka and orange juice that the alluring music had made him imagine.

The scent of cinnamon remained in his nostrils. He sensed the lingering warmth of the voluptuous woman with whom he had slow danced in his fantasy.

And danced, and danced…

Until he’d passed out.

Halloway was slumped across a desk. When he straightened, he felt wetness in the front of his pants. He raised his head toward the painfully bright overhead lights and took off the staticky earphones. Exposed to air after so long a time, his ears tingled. He’d hoped that- without the aggravating crackle-his headache would lessen, but in fact the pain burrowed deeper into his skull because the crackle no longer kept him from hearing the hum that radiated from every surface of the underground facility.

If I can only find what’s causing it.

But Halloway ‘s headache wasn’t the only thing that had intensified. The odor now almost made him gag.

He peered down at the bodies. So many bodies. The scientists. The other guards. Their blood covered the floor, the stench reminding him of a butcher’s shop through which he and his Ranger unit had searched for insurgents in Iraq. The electricity to that part of Fallujah had failed, and the meat had been spoiling in the extreme heat.

Here in the observatory, the blood wasn’t the worst of it. Foul- smelling body fluids had leaked from several of the corpses. The faces of some had begun to distend.

That shouldn’t be happening so soon, Halloway thought. He glanced at his watch and saw that the hands showed seven minutes to 4. His outburst had occurred around 9:30. His muddled thoughts somehow did the math. Less than seven hours.

At once a suspicion made him stand. Uneasy, he stepped over the bodies, doing his best to avoid the blood. He entered the corridor and found another dead guard, this one with features so mutilated by bullets that his face wasn’t recognizable.

Halloway turned right and walked along the corridor, the loud echo of his bootsteps failing to shut out the hum. He entered the surveillance room, his mouth dropping open when he saw the images on the monitors. None had the green tint of a night-vision camera. The radio dishes, the three rows of fences, the miles and miles of scrub grass, the distant mountains-all were bathed in the hot glare of sunshine.

Not seven hours, he thought in shock. Nineteen.

Dear God, I’ve never slept that long in my life.

The phone rang. It was one of only four in the facility, all of which were scrambler-equipped. He stared at it and, on the second ring, picked it up.

“Station Zulu,” he said.

“This is Alpha Control,” a man’s voice said impatiently. “Identify yourself.”

“Earl Halloway. I’m one of the guards.”

“Halloway,” the voice responded. “Former Ranger sergeant. Saw combat in Iraq.”

Halloway recognized the steely, authoritative tone. It belonged to the man who led the team that had arrived via chopper yesterday afternoon. Colonel Raleigh. “Yes, sir.”

“Well,former Sergeant Halloway-” Raleigh’s voice exuded venom. “-I’ve been trying to contact your station for the past six hours. Why in Christ’s name isn’t anybody answering the phone?”

The heat of adrenaline cleared Halloway’s groggy thoughts. “Sir, there was a thunderstorm last night.” He had a vague memory of hearing the periodic rumbles as he drank vodka and orange juice, smelled cinnamon, and danced.

“I know all about the damned storm. I’m only twenty miles away from you. We were caught in it, too.”

“Well, sir, we got struck by lightning.” He was thinking faster now. “It interfered with our communications capabilities.”

“You’re telling me that some of the best scientists working for the government don’t have the combined skills needed to repair the dam- age from an electrical storm? That facility is grounded all the way to hell. I find it hard to believe that a lightning strike would have any effect whatsoever.”

“Sir, with all due respect, I’m not a communications specialist. I’m just repeating what the technicians told me. They took until now to repair the damage.”

“And meanwhile, no data was received or transmitted to Fort Meade?” The colonel’s voice sounded even more infuriated.

“I’m told that’s correct, sir.”

“Damn it, when this is over, I’m going to find out who didn’t do his job. Right now, I want you to transfer this call to the control room.”

Halloway felt a moment’s panic. “Sir, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

“Can’t? What are you talking about?”

“The phone I’m using, the one in the surveillance room, is the only one that’s been put back into service.”

The line became silent. Halloway imagined that he could feel the colonel’s growing fury. He was glad to have a safe distance between them.

“Former Sergeant Halloway, I want you to go to the control room and bring Gordon to the phone.”

“Sir? Are you there, sir? I can’t hear you.”

“What do you mean you can’t hear me?”

“Sir?”

“Damn it, I can hear you perfectly fine,” Raleigh replied, his voice getting louder.

“Sir? If you’re still on the line, you’re not coming through. The sys- tem must be failing again.”

“Bring Gordon to the phone, Sergeant!”

“Sir? Sir?”

Halloway set the phone back on its cradle, breaking the connection.

He looked down at the floor and concentrated. Then he returned to the corridor and made his way back to the control room. Although he was combat-hardened from two tours of duty in the most violent parts of Iraq, the stench made him gag.

Gotta clean this place up, he thought. Can’t appreciate the music if I’m sick to my stomach.

A further thought added to his resolve.

And I can’t defend this place if I’m sick, either.

When he checked his watch, he saw with a chill that the time was now almost 5 o’clock. Somehow fifty minutes had sped by. It was as if he’d blacked out again. Time wasn’t acting the way it should.

Move, he told himself.

Halloway stooped toward Gordon’s corpse, grabbed its two stiff hands, and dragged the body across the floor. Out in the corridor, he kept moving backward past the surveillance room, toward the stairs. He tried tugging Gordon up them, but the dead man’s belt caught on the edge of a metal step. A few steps later, it was Gordon’s shoes that got snagged.

This is taking too long.

He pulled Gordon’s stiff arms upward until the corpse seemed to be standing a few steps below him. He put an arm around Gordon’s back, then reached behind his knees-which didn’t bend-and lifted him.

The weight made Halloway wince.

How the hell is it possible, he wondered, that a hundred and eighty pounds of dead weight is heavier than a hundred and eighty pounds of live weight? It ought to be the other way around, ’cause something’s missing.

Breathing hard, he carried the body up the stairs. His echoing footfalls were loud from the weight he carried.

At the top, he wavered, almost toppling back. After managing to catch his balance, he leaned Gordon against the metal railing and opened the first security door.

I tried to be friends with you, Gordon, but you wouldn’t let me. All you needed to do was be a buddy and share the music, but no-you wanted it all to yourself. See what happens when you act like a prick?

He pulled Gordon toward the second security door. The movement resembled dancing. Pressing the corpse against the wall, he opened the second door and blinked at the harsh sunlight.

The breeze was sweet after the stench of so much death.

Behind the radio dishes, there’s a stretch of ground nobody ever sees, Halloway thought.

He lowered Gordon and started to drag him in that direction. But then he cursed himself for being stupid.

Use the damned truck.

The flatbed truck was always parked next to the dish that was tilted horizontally. The ignition key was always in the truck. Protected by three fences-one of which was constructed of razor wire, another of which was electrified-the truck was hardly in danger of being stolen.

He ran through the fierce sunlight toward the truck and felt his breathing become more difficult.

The array of observatory dishes loomed over him, the metal beams that supported them resembling legs. Brilliantly white, each dish was fifty feet tall. They stretched in a line a half mile long, and as Halloway hurried past them, they made him feel dwarfed.

Insignificant.

Threatened…

Sweat soaked his shirt by the time he reached the truck. He scram- bled up into the cab, and sure enough, the ignition key was there. He turned it, but the engine chugged with effort.

The battery’s almost dead!

He released the key and twisted it again. The engine labored more slowly.

Come on! Come on!

Abruptly the engine roared to life. With a muttered cry of victory, he put it in gear and steered the truck in a half circle. Leaving a cloud of exhaust smoke, he lumbered toward the concrete-block shed. He jumped out, lifted Gordon, and felt his heart pound from the effort of dumping the corpse onto the back of the truck.

Now I’ve got a system. The others shouldn’t be this hard. Need to rush. Need to finish before the music starts.

A further consideration made him frown.

Or before the colonel decides to make a surprise inspection.

Halloway checked his watch again and gaped. The time was now almost twenty to 6. Forty minutes had sped by when he’d have sworn that only twenty minutes had passed. He pressed the numbers on the security pad, opened the heavy metal door, and reached for the interior door.

Need to collect the M4s and all the ammunition I can find. Need to get grenades for the launchers. This place is designed to withstand a major assault. If the colonel shows up and tries to break in, he’ll wish to God he’d let me alone.

All I want is to listen to the music.

As he charged down the metal stairs, again gagging from the stench, he realized that he’d need to bury the bodies instead of just dumping them. Otherwise the vultures might swarm toward the corpses and draw attention. He needed to be extra certain that the colonel wouldn’t have any suspicion of what had happened here.

The backhoe, Earl remembered. They left it when they dug a trench to add new fencing. I’ll use it to dig the hole. Perfect. Everything’s going to work out.

48

“Sir? If you’re still on the line, you’re not coming through. The sys- tem must be failing again.”

“Bring Gordon to the phone, Sergeant!”

“Sir? Sir?”

The line went dead.

Scowling, Raleigh set down the telephone. During the call, Halloway’s voice had been so muffled that Raleigh had taken the risk of removing the shooter’s earplug from his right ear, then pressing the phone harder against it.

Now he reinserted the plug.

In the monitoring station beneath the abandoned airbase, he watched his team take their positions in front of the new equipment they’d installed. Banks of electronic instruments blinked and glowed- old components connected to new. On some of the computer screens, he saw the chaotic visual equivalent of the static to which some of the audio receivers were tuned.

Cameras hidden among the collapsed hangars aboveground relayed magnified images of the activity in the surrounding area. Where the observation platform stood, he saw a crane setting the final concrete barrier in place as a frustrated crowd increased in size and Highway Patrol officers watched for trouble.

Reminds me of parts of Iraq, where only the walls kept the Sunnis and the Shiites from killing each other, Raleigh thought.

On another television monitor, he saw the dog trainer and the German shepherd patrolling the fence nearest the viewing area lest any of the crowd try to get around the barricade by climbing onto the airbase property and attempting to see the lights from there. A few civilians did pass nearby, but the dog looked so fierce that no one seemed inclined to take that course of action.

Raleigh was reminded of the orders he’d given to Lockhart the previous night when the German shepherd and the trainer had come in from the thunderstorm. If the dog acts strangely in any way, no matter how slight… shoot it.

The thunderstorm.

Does Halloway honestly expect me to believe that an electrical storm could have knocked out communications at the observatory? This is the fucking NSA, not the phone company.

“Sir? Are you there, sir? I can’t hear you. The system must be failing again.”

Bullshit, Raleigh thought in disgust.

Apprehension grew in him. Maybe it’s starting there instead of here.

“Sergeant,” he said crisply.

“Yes, sir.” Lockhart’s voice was muffled by Raleigh’s earplugs.

“Come with me.”

They left the team in front of the monitoring equipment and stepped through a door into the subterranean chamber where the two Suburbans were parked. Although the time was late afternoon, the harsh overhead lights made the facility feel as if it were perpetually 3 A.M.

Raleigh glanced at the cameras that had been installed on an up- per wall of each side of the chamber. Similar cameras were positioned in the monitoring room and everywhere else in the facility. Everything that happened here was now being recorded.

This time there won’t be any unanswered questions, Raleigh thought. Lord knows there were plenty the last time.

“Sergeant, put an M4 in a rucksack, along with plenty of ammunition.”

“You’re expecting trouble, sir?”

“As I recall, you enjoy motorcycles.”

“I do, sir. I used to race them when I was a kid.”

“When you arrived, perhaps you noticed the Harley-Davidson in the far corner.”

“I did, sir.”

“It’s kept here for emergency transportation. In perfect working order, on a storage rack so its tires don’t rest on the concrete and disintegrate. You’ll need to make sure they’re properly inflated and check the battery. There’s a fuel can behind it. The crowd up there will notice if you drive one of the Suburbans out of here. But if you walk the Harley to the gate and don’t start it until you’re on the road, there’s a good chance you can leave without attracting attention.”

“Where do you want me to go, sir?”

Raleigh told him.

Lockhart frowned.

“It’s probably nothing,” Raleigh said. “But drive over to the observatory and find out for sure. Here’s the key to the gate. Use this two- way radio. When you get to the observatory, tell me everything you’re doing. Step by step.”

“Absolutely, sir.”

“A Black Hawk’s scheduled to arrive soon with more equipment. If there’s trouble, the men aboard the chopper can be called upon to help.”

“Good to know, sir.” Lockhart saluted and headed past the Suburbans toward the motorcycle.

As Raleigh watched him, he made a mental note to select someone else on the team to shoot the German shepherd if the dog acted strangely in even the slightest way.

His attention was drawn to the stain on the wall he’d noticed earlier, the faint red of which looked like long-ago faded rust but wasn’t.

49

The crowd again parted reluctantly to let Harriett’s truck through. Page noticed that Medrano was still there, watching the crane set the final concrete barrier in place. The wall was high enough that nothing could be seen beyond it.

“Harriett, could you stop here for a second?” Page asked.

He got out and walked over to Medrano, whose red Highway Patrol patches were vivid on the upper part of his tan shirtsleeves.

“Be careful. That television reporter might be around here,” Medrano warned. “We’ll finish questioning you and Tori as soon as things calm down. The first part of the week, you and your wife can be on your way.”

“Good, that’ll work. It’s important for my wife to be in San Antonio by Tuesday morning. Meanwhile, I was wondering if you could give me some information.”

Medrano peered at him curiously. “About what?”

“The man who shot all those people Thursday night. You mentioned that the Austin police had spoken with his brother. That’s how you found out that the shooter’s wife had died.” Page couldn’t help thinking of Tori’s disease and the unendurable grief he would feel if he lost her.

“That’s correct,” Medrano said.

“I wonder if you have a phone number for the brother, or maybe you could put me in touch with an Austin police officer who could help me do that.”

“You’re investigating on your own?” Page couldn’t tell whether or not Medrano was displeased.

“There’s something I’d like to ask him.”

“I hope you’re not telling anybody that you’re a police officer with authority here in Rostov.” Yes, Medrano was definitely displeased.

“I know the rules,” Page said. “But as long as I make it clear I’m just an interested citizen, I don’t see the harm.”

“Why on earth would he want to talk to you, the husband of the woman who shot his brother to death?”

“He doesn’t need to know that much. But even if he did, there’s nothing wrong with expressing my condolences.”

Medrano still looked skeptical. “What’s your question? Maybe the Austin police can ask it for you.”

“Or maybe you or Chief Costigan could do the asking.”

Medrano studied him and sighed. “Why do I get the feeling that’s what you had in mind all along?”

50

“Mr. Mullen, I’m Captain Medrano of the Texas Highway Patrol.”

The speakerphone sat on the table next to Costigan’s hospital bed.

“And I’m Roger Costigan, the police chief here in Rostov.” Despite his injury, his gravelly voice was strong enough to project to the phone. “That’s the town near the area where-”

“I know where Rostov is,” the male voice said wearily from the phone.

Page and Tori watched from the foot of the bed.

“Thanks for taking the time to talk to us,” Medrano continued. “I’m very sorry to disturb you.”

“Your medical examiner still hasn’t released Ed’s body,” the voice said irritably. “I don’t even know when I can schedule the funeral.”

“That’s not acceptable,” Medrano said. “I’ll take care of that.”

“What Ed did was so awful, I still can’t believe he did it. But no matter what, he was my brother. Mom and Dad aren’t alive anymore. It’s up to me to make sure he gets a proper burial. I bet the relatives of the people he shot would say he doesn’t deserve it, but he’s my brother.”

“I learned a long time ago not to judge people,” Costigan said.

Page knew the chief was lying. Most police officers expected the worst in people.

“What did you want to talk about?” the tired voice asked. “I told the Austin police everything I know.”

“There are just a few loose ends we need to tie up, and we’ll try to keep it brief. After your brother’s wife died…”

“Cancer. It was so damned unfair. Ann was always a saint, always helping people. She was one of the kindest, most generous people I’ve ever met. People always used to kid Ed and tell him he didn’t de- serve her. How come serial killers don’t get cancer? Why does it al- ways need to be someone who’s good and decent?”

At the mention of the word “cancer,” Page inwardly winced. He hadn’t been told before how Mullen’s wife had died. He glanced at Tori. The reference had made her pale.

“You said that before his wife died, your brother wasn’t religious,” Medrano continued.

“Never went near a church since my parents made us go with them when we were kids,” the voice replied.

“But after your brother saw the lights…”

“Which I still don’t believe in. If you want my opinion, people are either playing a joke or hallucinating. I didn’t see them, and believe me, I tried. But Ed…”

Page hurriedly wrote something on a slip of paper.

Medrano looked at it. “Maybe your brother’s grief is what made him think he saw the lights. Do you suppose that’s possible?”

“It makes as much sense as anything. Of course I had no idea Ed was going back so many times to that-what do they call it?- observation area. Once was enough for me. I should’ve made him go to a psychiatrist instead of taking him on that damned tour.”

“And that was when he started collecting the religious paintings and statues?” Costigan asked.

The voice sounded exasperated now. “Ed wouldn’t let me in his apartment. We always met at my house, or in a park or a restaurant or whatever. I had no idea he had all that stuff until after the police contacted me.”

“Did he ever talk about God?”

“All the time. I assumed it was because he missed Ann so much that he was determined to believe in heaven so he could convince himself Ann was in a better place and that he’d join her there one day. He stank.”

Costigan sat higher in the hospital bed. “Stank?”

“He wouldn’t bathe. He said the hot water felt so good that it made him feel guilty. The only foods he ate were things he hated-turnips, brussels sprouts, pigs’ knuckles. He slept on the floor. He set an alarm clock to wake him every two hours. He told me Ann had suffered so much that he didn’t have the right to enjoy anything. He said if he did anything that felt good, it would be like admitting he’d never loved her as much as he’d claimed. As far as he was concerned, the only way he could prove how much he loved her was by punishing himself. Lord, I can’t tell you how much I wish I’d made him go to a psychiatrist.”

Medrano looked at Page as if asking whether he wanted to know anything else.

Saddened by what he’d just heard, Page shook his head.

“Well, thank you for the help, Mr. Mullen,” Medrano said. “We’re sorry if we disturbed you. I’ll speak to the medical examiner about releasing your brother’s remains.”

“Anything to try to put this behind me. But I don’t understand how what I just told you is going to help. We know my brother shot all those people. It’s not as if there’s a big mystery about who did it.”

“The thing is, we’d also like to know why he did it.”

“There’s no mystery about that, either.”

“What do you mean?”

“Grief made him crazy.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Costigan said. “Thanks again for your help.” He shut off the speakerphone.

No one spoke for several moments. The only sounds came from outside the room-footsteps, hushed voices, a cart being pushed.

“So what did that tell you?” Medrano finally asked Page.

Tori turned to him, seeming to wonder the same thing.

“‘Don’t you see how evil they are?’” Page asked.

All three of them frowned in surprise, seeming to fear he’d become unbalanced.

“That’s the first thing Mullen shouted Thursday night.”

When they understood what he meant, they looked relieved.

“Then he yelled to the crowd, ‘Don’t you realize what they’re doing to you? Don’t you understand you’re all going to hell?’ When he shot at the lights, he screamed, ‘Go back to hell where you came from.’ Just be- fore he started shooting at the crowd, he shouted, ‘You’re all damned.’”

“The ravings of a man who’d recently become a religious fanatic,” Costigan said.

“But the lights weren’t the reason Mullen became a religious fanatic,” Page countered. “You heard what his brother said. Mullen suddenly needed to believe in God and heaven so he could convince himself that his wife was in a better place and that one day he’d join her there. But the lights are another matter. What they did to him made him furious.”

Tori looked as puzzled as Costigan and Medrano.

“They tempted him,” Page explained. “They were so alluring that for the first time since his wife died, he felt good. Better than good. They filled him with pleasure. That’s why he kept coming back- because the lights were like a drug. He fought what they did to him. He bought more religious statues and paintings. He tried to live like a monk and punish himself to prove that he loved his wife, that he was worthy to join her… but he couldn’t stop thinking about the lights. They were a pleasure he couldn’t stop craving. They made him furious because they showed him how weak he was. We’ll never know if he truly thought he could destroy the lights by shooting at them. Maybe he just needed a target for his rage.”

“And then he chose closer targets,” Medrano said, beginning to understand. “Targets he could hit.”

Page nodded. “Exactly. He decided that the lights were evil and that anybody who enjoyed them had to be evil, also.”

“Well, you’ve sure been getting your money’s worth from those psychology courses,” Costigan said.

Page felt his cheeks turn red with embarrassment. “I admit it’s only a theory.”

“One that can’t be proved.”

“Here’s another theory,” Page told them.

They waited. Tori looked at him as if she were seeing him for the first time.

“Assuming the lights are real…”

“A big assumption,” Medrano said. “I told you, I’ve never seen them, and it isn’t for lack of trying.”

“That’s not surprising.”

“How so?”

“If I’m right,” Page said, “the lights intensify the personalities of the people who try to see them. As a police officer, you’re a professional skeptic. That skepticism becomes emphasized out there. You’re too guarded to be able to see them.”

Page turned toward Costigan. “The man who killed your father was a drunk and a bully. You told me that after he came here, he got more extreme. One theory was that he felt humiliated by losing his job in Fort Worth and having to come to a small town where a relative man- aged to find work for him. His humiliation fueled his rage. But I don’t believe that. The more I’m in Rostov, the more I talk to people and overhear what they say, the more I think the lights mirror what’s going on inside us. They make whatever we are more extreme. Harriett Ward says James Deacon was obsessed with the lights when Birthright was filmed here. They reflected his need to be a great actor to the point that when he was supposed to age in the story, he actually did look older.”

“But as you say, that assumes the lights are real,” Medrano pointed out.

“If they’re not real, the idea still works. Under the right circum- stances, people who need to see the lights will believe they see them. They’ll project their personalities onto what they’re imagining. The result will be the same.”

“The man who killed my father never saw them,” Costigan said.

“And that made him furious,” Page replied. “When Tori and I were here earlier, you wondered if people could be affected by the lights even though they didn’t see them. Maybe it’s not the lights. Maybe it’s being out there in the dark, surrounded by nothing. People become more extreme versions of who they are.”

“I saw them,” Costigan said from his hospital bed.

They looked at him in surprise.

“The day of my father’s funeral. After I left the cemetery, I drove out to the observation area. I needed to be alone, and nobody was ever out there during the day. I sat in my father’s cruiser and thought about what had happened to him. I was on the Dallas police force back then. The Rostov town council had asked me to take over for my father and become the new police chief, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to be in law enforcement any longer because people are so disappointing and many of them don’t seem worth helping. Gradually I became aware that I’d sat there all afternoon, that the sun was going down.

“Cars began to stop. People got out, waiting for it to be dark enough to try to see the lights. I kept sitting there. Then the dark settled in, and a few of the people pointed toward the horizon. I glanced in that direction, and by God, there the lights were. I couldn’t believe it. Some nights, when I’d visited my father, I’d gone out there to try to see them, but I’d never had any luck, and now, suddenly, there they were. Dancing, drifting, glowing, merging. The colors were soothing.

“I sat there smiling, and I must have dozed off because the next thing I knew, the cruiser’s radio woke me. It was my father’s deputy. There was a fight in a bar, and he needed my help. He’d been leaving me alone because of the funeral. Now he apologized for needing backup. I looked toward the dark horizon where I’d seen the lights, but they’d disappeared. I told the deputy I was on my way. I don’t know what seeing the lights did to me, but that night, I decided to become Rostov’s police chief. I went out to the viewing area other times after that to see if I could find kids with lanterns trying to fool people-some way to explain the lights-but I never found practical jokers, and I never saw the lights again. I’m still not sure they were real. Maybe, as you say, I needed to see them.”

“Need,” Page said. “Some people need to help others. Some people need to hate. Some people need to fill their emptiness.”

Page managed not to look at Tori when he said that.

“Another theory,” Medrano said. “But how do you prove it?”

“Tonight I’ll do my best.”

“How?”

“I want to get closer to the lights.” Both Costigan and Medrano looked as if they didn’t like what he was saying. “Don’t worry-I won’t do anything that adds to your problems.”

“We,” Tori interrupted. “We’ll do our best. Whatever you plan to do, I’m going with you.”

51

As they stepped from the hospital, Medrano told Page, “I need to get back to the viewing area. I hope you meant what you promised about not adding to my problems.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t go anywhere near you or the crowd, and I won’t make trouble by trespassing on anybody’s land.”

“I’d love to know what you’ve got in mind.”

“You’ll get a full report tomorrow morning.”

Medrano gave him a penetrating look and went down the steps to- ward his black-and-white Highway Patrol car.

Page and Tori remained on the steps, heat drifting off the concrete.

“Guess what,” she said. “I’m beginning to understand you.”

Page turned toward her, conscious of how the scarlet of the lowering sun emphasized her red hair.

“It took ten years of marriage,” she said.

“I hope this isn’t going to be a bad thing you’re talking about.”

“No, it’s good. Yesterday you said that the way you distract yourself from the pain you see is by concentrating on small details.”

“It’s true.”

“The idea is that the big picture can be overwhelming, but small portions of it can be handled-they become manageable,” she said.

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Well, if that’s the case, I’m learning from you. Yesterday and today I focused on the little things. Then after a while, what I focused on wasn’t so little. It was you. You’re a really smart guy.”

Page tried to make a joke. “You didn’t already know that?”

“You’re using the lights to distract you from my cancer. You’re treating this like a criminal investigation.”

“Which it is,” he admitted. “Though there’s more to it than that. But it helps me get through the moment and prepare for Tuesday.”

“It’s taking your mind off what we both don’t want to think about. I’m using your investigation in the same way. As long as we’ve got this to do, I think I can be steady.” She considered him. “The way you ask questions. The way you assess people and make them do what you need. Yeah, you’re a really smart guy.”

“I have the feeling you’re using my own tactic. You’re trying to find out something.”

“What are we going to do tonight? How are we going to get closer to the lights?” At once Tori smiled-one of the few times he’d seen her do that recently. “I get it. You said we won’t be near the crowd and we won’t be trespassing.

“We’re going to use your plane.”

52

“What I need is another riot or a shooting to get this story back on track,” Brent said as Anita drove.

“Why not an outbreak of bubonic plague?” she offered with muted sarcasm.

“Look, I know everybody thinks I’m an asshole.” Brent studied the barren landscape as they passed. Cattle were spread out, eating the meager grass. “But you have to admit I got sensational overnight ratings for us. It’s all about the tone. The weird stuff about the lights needs to sound like it’s important-like it’s actually news. If CNN is going to keep paying us to run with this, everything needs to sound believable, even if it’s the weirdest shit I ever came across.”

“Then why are we driving out to the observatory? Last night you said something about extraterrestrials. I hope to God you were joking.”

“Yeah, it was a joke. Look, I’m winging this, okay? I’ll know what I need when I see it. Besides, I don’t understand why you’re complaining. Do you have anything better to do?”

“Aside from earning as much extra money as I can, nope. And I don’t know what gave you the idea I was complaining.”

Anita stopped the van at the side of the road. Dust swirled as Brent studied the sign.

U.S. GOVERNMENT OBSERVATORY

RESTRICTED AREA

TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED

“Friendly,” he said. “Let’s get some shots of me standing next to it.”

Stepping out into the intense sunlight, he walked through the blowing dust and positioned himself beside the sign. Determined to continue his rugged look, he didn’t bother trying to swat any of the dust from his suit. With his tie open and his collar unbuttoned, he raised the handheld microphone to his mouth. The mike had a transmitter that sent audio directly to Anita’s camera, but for the first time since coming to Rostov, he realized that he couldn’t think of anything to say.

She held the heavy camera on her shoulder, focusing on him. It had a so-called shotgun microphone attached to the top. Projecting like a barrel, the microphone could register nearby sounds, but not as clearly as the one Brent held.

After a long moment of silence, she looked out from behind the camera.

“Cat got your tongue?” she asked.

“Sarcasm isn’t welcome.”

“Your fans are waiting.”

“Hell with it, then. Let’s drive up to the observatory and see if any- thing looks interesting. I can come back later and do the intro at the end.”

“Drive up? I don’t think so.” Anita pointed toward a metal gate that stretched across the lane that led to the observatory. The gate was locked.

“I guess we head back to town.” She moved to load the camera back into the truck.

“Maybe not.” Brent walked to the opposite side of the gate.

“What are you doing?”

“Ever been on a farm?”

“I went to a zoo once.”

“My grandfather owned a hundred acres in Ohio. I used to go there for two weeks every summer. I remember the day when he drove his tractor out to a field but a gate got locked by accident, and he didn’t have the key to open it. I’d never heard anybody swear for that long a time.” He smiled at the memory while he examined the gate’s hinges and nodded. “Give me a hand, would you?”

She set down the camera and walked over. “Your grandfather found a way to get through?”

“Grab the gate on this end and help me lift.”

Anita shrugged and got a solid grip on one of the metal poles. They pushed upward. The hinges had metal circles that fitted over small metal posts. It took only a little effort to raise the circles from the posts and push the gate inward. Within minutes, they managed to make just enough room for the van to slip through.

“I guess the government hired somebody local to install the gate. But they forgot to tell the guy that the gate protected an observatory, not a pasture.”

“Maybe you didn’t read that part of the sign where it says trespassers will be prosecuted,” Anita said.

“We’ll just say we found the gate off its hinges and worried that another terrible thing had happened. We decided it was our duty to investigate.” He paused and looked at her. “But don’t let me force you to do anything you’re not comfortable with. Do you want to stop?”

“No way,” Anita told him. “Ever heard of a cholla?”

“What’s that?”

“A type of cactus. That was my nickname in high school.”

“Because?”

“If people messed with me, they felt like a thorn got stuck in them and festered.”

Brent considered her. Five feet two inches tall. Maybe a hundred and five pounds. But she hardly looked petite. A long time of holding the twenty-five-pound camera on her shoulder had made her sinewy. And there was something about the strength in her dark eyes.

“Hey, believe me, I’m not trying to mess with you,” he said. “If you don’t want to go in there, you don’t need to. You can wait here for me.”

Walking toward the van, Anita replied over her shoulder, “Of course I want to go in there.” Her ponytail swinging at the back of her baseball cap, she lifted the camera as if it weighed nothing and put it into the van. Then she got in and revved the engine.

Brent waited for her to drive through the opening. Then he moved the fence back so the hinges seemed intact. He got into the passenger seat, and she drove down the lane. Dust rose behind them.

“If there’s a guard, the dust’ll warn him we’re coming a long time before we get there,” Anita observed.

“No problem-I just want to get a shot of the place. Maybe I’ll see something that’ll help me connect it to the lights, but now that we’re out here, I can’t imagine what it would be. I hate to admit it, but this story might have played itself out.” He thought for a moment. “Un- less there’s another shooting tonight. We can always hope for that.”

He glanced at her left hand on the steering wheel. “You’re not wearing a wedding ring, so I’m guessing you’re not married. Do you have a boyfriend?”

“Hey, I hope you’re not hitting on me.”

Anita reached toward one of the many pockets on her khaki pants. A metal clip was attached to the outside of one of them. She pulled on it and revealed that the clip was attached to a black folding knife. She thumbed it open, revealing the blade.

“Remember what I said about my nickname.” She gestured with the knife.

“Honest to God, I’m just making conversation. I was trying to figure out how… what’s the word you used?… a cholla… sounds like you used to be a biker chick…”

“You got it.”

“… how a cholla became a cameraman.”

“Camerawoman. I had a boyfriend. He flipped his motorcycle, showing off. Got himself killed. Of course it didn’t help that he wasn’t wearing a helmet. A couple of days earlier, he’d dumped me for somebody else. That’s when I realized biker chicks don’t have a future. When I saw an ad for the community college, I went out there, asked what courses they had, and decided that learning how to handle a television camera might be cool.”

“And critics complain that television isn’t a positive influence. Is it as cool as you hoped?’

“Look at the wonderful people I get to work with.”

Brent laughed.

“For a little while longer, at any rate,” Anita added. “Until CNN hires you. That’s what you’re hoping, isn’t it? If that happens and they need a camerawoman, be sure to put in a good word for me.”

“Count on it.”

“Never give your word unless you mean it.”

“I’m telling the truth. If they hire me, I will in fact put in a good word for you. Now you can set down the knife.”

It was Anita’s turn to laugh. “Look at those observatory dishes.” She pointed toward the huge white shapes that seemed to grow from the horizon as she drove closer. “They remind me of the giant robots in a Terminator movie.”

“Not a bad line,” Brent said. “I’ll use it.”

“Be my guest, since we’re going to CNN together. Do you think they have good Mexican food in Atlanta? Chorizo? Lots of jalapeños in chicken enchiladas?”

“Somehow I doubt it.”

“In that case, maybe it’ll be just you going to Atlanta. Yeah, those dishes look like giant robots.”

As they drove closer, Brent was struck by how tall they were. They’ve got to be four or five stories high, he thought. They’re stretched along the equivalent of two or three city blocks. Hell, at least we’ll get some impressive images.

A minute later, he was close enough to be able to count them. Nine. Then he realized that he was wrong. There was a tenth dish, hidden behind the others. It was tilted sideways and seemed to be undergoing repairs.

A chain-link fence came into view, topped with barbed wire.

Not one fence, Brent thought. Three. And the two inside rows look like they’re made entirely from razor wire.

“They really don’t want visitors,” Anita observed.

“Well, I guess they’re afraid the cattle will wander close and bump against the dishes.”

The road led to a ten-foot-high gate, its links so thick that they looked capable of stopping a truck. Signs on the third fence warned:

DANGER

HIGH VOLTAGE

“I suppose the high voltage is designed to stop any cattle that climb the first and second fences,” Anita said.

“Yeah, there does seem to be a little-pardon the expression- overkill in the design of this place,” Brent agreed.

“Maybe kids from town used to vandalize the dishes-spray-painted them or something.”

“In which case, that high-voltage fence will teach those kids how seriously the government disapproves of graffiti.”

An open-backed truck was parked next to a concrete-block shed.

“Let’s get some shots of this place while we have the chance,” Brent decided.

“Wait’ll I turn the van around.”

“So we’ll be ready to make a getaway?”

“Don’t mock a cholla,” she warned.

As the dust settled, they got out and squinted in the bright sun to- ward the towering white dishes.

“This’ll look great.” Anita pulled the camera from the side door of the van and attached a fresh battery pack. “Stand by the gate. I’ll angle up toward the dishes, then pan down toward the ‘high voltage’ signs on the interior fences and finally over to you.”

“Sounds as if you should be a director, not a cameraman.”

“Camerawoman. Have you figured out what you’re going to say this time?”

“The dish that’s tilted sideways…”

“What about it?”

“It seems pointed in the general direction of Rostov.”

“So?”

“Maybe I’ll suggest that it’s aimed at the lights.”

“As if it’s receiving a signal from them? You think CNN’s going to buy that?” But she glanced at the dish as if intrigued by the idea.

“It’s the best I can come up with right now.”

“In that case, I’m not the only one who won’t be going to Atlanta.” But Anita hefted the camera to her shoulder.

“Trust me. As we keep going, I’ll think of something better. Just get some shots of the dish that’s tilted toward Rostov. I can always dub a voiceover later if I need to.”

Abruptly Brent heard a noise behind him. He lowered the micro- phone to his side, turned, and gazed through the three fences toward a door that opened in a concrete-block shed.

A man appeared. Emerging from the darkness inside, he came out backward, bending over, tugging something that Brent couldn’t see. His khaki uniform left no doubt that he was a guard.

The man glanced behind him to make sure of his footing and stopped when he noticed the van. Immediately he set down whatever he was dragging. The darkness beyond the door still concealed it.

He turned and straightened. His hair was extremely short. His features were stern. His chest was muscled, his shoulders broad.

He stepped forward and halted at the front of the truck. “I guess you can’t read.”

“Excuse me?” Brent asked. He kept the microphone down, concealed behind his right leg.

“The sign at the road. How’d you get through the locked gate?”

“It was off its hinges,” Brent replied. “With all the weird things happening, we got suspicious and decided to make sure nothing’s wrong.”

“Everything’s fine. I’ll arrange for the gate to be fixed. Why do you suppose it was off its hinges?”

“Kids maybe.”

“Kids. Of course.”

“My name’s Brent Loft. I’m a television reporter.” Brent used his left hand-the one that wasn’t concealing the microphone-to point toward the station’s letters on the side of the van.

“Yeah, I saw you on TV, talking about the shootings.”

“Thanks.”

The guard’s sour expression suggested that his comment hadn’t been a compliment. Even so, Brent pressed on. “As long as we’re here, this place looks so fascinating, is there someone I can talk to about doing a feature about it?”

He hoped Anita had the camera rolling. He didn’t know where this conversation was going, but he had a suspicion he’d be able to use footage from it. The guard was too far away for Brent’s microphone to pick up his voice, but Brent was speaking loudly enough that his own portion of the conversation would be recorded.

He expected the guard to say that the person to talk to was gone for the weekend-some sort of polite brush-off.

The guard’s curt “no” caught him by surprise.

“No?”

“Like the sign says, this is government property. If you want to get prosecuted, just hang around while I call the cops. But if you want to end this with no hard feelings, get in that van and drive back to the road. Now.”

Brent’s gaze focused on the open door behind the man. The object he’d been dragging lay in the shadows inside the shed. Part of it was round, resembling a soccer ball.

“Well, maybe I could interview you,” Brent offered. “How does it feel to work here? Is it exciting to be part of a project this big, or, like most jobs, does it get boring after a while?”

The guard squinted harshly.

Brent kept trying. “Does the observatory study only stars and comets and black holes, or is it also part of the SETI project?”

The guard’s squint became more pronounced.

“You know, SETI,” Brent said. “The Search for Extraterrestrial

Intelligence.”

Now the guard scowled. “I know what SETI means.”

“I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise.”

“The joke I heard is we ought to be searching for intelligent life on Earth.”

Brent focused again on the door that stood open behind the guard. The soccer ball in the shadows beyond it seemed to have hair.

Oh, shit.

Brent tried not to show a reaction.

“Do you live on-site?” Brent managed to keep talking and prayed that Anita did indeed have the camera rolling. “What’s that like, being out here away from everything?”

The guard’s hands were at his side. He bunched his fingers into fists. Opened them. Closed them. Opened them.

“Tell you what. I’ll give you exactly a minute to get out of here. If you don’t want to be prosecuted, just get in your truck and drive back to the road.”

Brent tried to be subtle when he switched his gaze toward the truck next to the guard. Several objects were piled in the back. They came up only slightly higher than the sides, making it difficult to tell what they were. But one of them looked a lot like it might be part of a shirt-still on someone’s arm.

“Fine,” he said, finding it hard to remain calm. “I’m sorry if we bothered you.” The sudden rapid pounding of his heart sickened him. “I just figured this place would make an interesting story. But I can see I was wrong.”

The guard was noticing things also. He stared past Brent toward Anita, presumably toward her camera. Then he appeared to realize that Brent was hiding a microphone next to his leg.

“We don’t want any trouble,” Brent said.

“Of course not. You’re right. This place is really fascinating. Why don’t you stay right where you are. I’ll go find the guy you need to talk to about permission to do a story.”

He motioned for them not to move, then turned and went into the small building, where he shifted the object he’d been dragging so it couldn’t be seen any longer. Then he disappeared into the darkness.

“Anita, let’s go,” Brent said urgently. He pivoted and saw that she held the camera at her side, a seemingly innocent position.

But the camera’s red light was conspicuous. Regardless of how frightened Brent felt, he was elated that she seemed to have recorded everything.

The van was pointed away from the observatory. Anita rushed to the vehicle’s side hatch and shoved the camera onto a seat.

“There are bodies in that truck,” she said starkly.

“Yes, and he was dragging another body from that shed. What the hell happened here?” Brent hurried toward the van’s passenger door. His lungs felt starved for air, as if he was running a hundred-yard dash.

Anita rushed toward the front of the van, desperate to reach the driver’s door as quickly as she could.

Blood spurted from her left arm.

She dropped.

Brent gaped, suddenly aware of shots-loud and rapid, as if from a string of huge firecrackers. Something zipped past him. Metal clanged repeatedly. He swung toward the observatory and saw that the guard was standing in the open door of the shed, firing an assault rifle. The three rows of fences acted like screens, the chain links and wire deflecting a lot of the bullets. Chunks rose from disintegrating metal. High-voltage sparks flew.

Feeling the heat of a bullet nicking his ear, Brent rushed to Anita and dragged her to the front of the van, out of the guard’s sight. A month earlier, he’d done a story about a gunfight between three bank robbers and a solitary policeman. The policeman had survived be- cause he’d taken cover behind the front of his cruiser, behind the engine, which-Brent was told-could stop just about any bullet.

“Anita.Anita.”

He was relieved to find that she was conscious, but immediately he registered just how wide her eyes were and how rapidly she was blinking in pain. Her dark skin was pale. When he’d dragged her, she’d left a trail of blood on the dirt. The jagged wound in her upper arm was wide, and deep enough to show bone.

She’ll bleed to death.

Brent almost threw up.

Straining to remember what he’d learned in a long-ago emergency first-aid class, Brent tugged off his necktie and twisted it around the top of Anita’s left arm, above the wound. One of the instructors had insisted, Improvise. Sweating, he knotted the tie, pulled a pen from his shirt pocket, and shoved it under the tie. He twisted the pen, tightening the cloth enough to restrict the flow of blood.

“This’ll make your arm partly numb.” He remembered a doctor telling him that. “It might help with the pain, too.”

“God, I hope so.” Anita bit her lip.

The shooting stopped. Amid a hot breeze, Brent smelled burned gunpowder. Struggling not to panic, he peered around the front of the van. At the open door to the shed, the guard dropped a magazine from the bottom of the rifle and inserted a new one. The man’s face was twisted into a grimace that suggested he was in pain. He finished reloading, looked in Brent’s direction, and fired toward the van’s rear tires. Again there were sparks and a spray of metallic fragments as the fences deflected many of the bullets, but enough got through to shred the tires. Brent heard them exploding.

The rear of the van sank.

We’re going to die, he thought.

No matter how quickly his chest heaved, he couldn’t seem to get enough air. He imagined the guard throwing their bodies into the back of the truck with the others. Frantic, he yanked his cell phone from his belt and hit the buttons, but when he held the phone to his left ear, he moaned. All he heard was dead air.

The expression made him taste bile. Dead air.

“I bet I can guess what you’re doing!” the guard yelled. “You’re trying to use your cell phone! Save yourself the trouble! It won’t work! There isn’t any civilian service this far out!”

“My boss knows we came here!” Brent shouted back. “He’ll send people to look for us!”

“When they see the sign, they’ll have brains enough not to trespass on government property! How long will your boss wait before he wonders where you are? Two hours? Three? If people do come here looking for you, by then-believe me-they won’t find you!”

Brent flinched as the guard fired another volley. More of the bullets got past the metal in the three fences and shattered the van’s rear windows.

“Don’t you wish you’d obeyed the sign?” the guard yelled. “I warned you, didn’t I? I said you’d be prosecuted! Hey, Mr. Big Deal Reporter, I’ve got a question for you!”

“Ask me anything!” Brent hoped to stall for time.

“Did you go to announcers’ school or something like that?”

What the hell…? Brent had no choice except to humor the guy. Anything was better than being shot at.

“Yes, I have a college degree in broadcasting!”

“That’s what I figured! You had to have learned it! No one could be born that full of shit!”

The guard shot more holes in the back of the van.

Brent heard liquid splashing onto the ground. His nostrils felt pinched by the odor of gasoline streaming from holes in the fuel tank.

At once he heard something else-the drone of a distant engine. Somebody’s coming. We’ll get help. He stared down the lane that led to the road, but he didn’t see an approaching dust cloud.

The drone became closer and louder, growing into a rumble.

In the air. He turned in the direction of the lowering sun and saw the dark silhouette of a helicopter speeding toward the observatory.

Thank God, he thought.

The guard must have seen it, too. “I’ll deal with you in a little while, Mr. Television Reporter!”

Mouth dry from fear, Brent eased his head around the side of the van and saw the guard vanish into the darkness of the doorway. The building was so small that Brent concluded there had to be stairs leading underground.

The last time the guard had gone back inside, he’d returned with an assault rifle. Brent hated to imagine what he would bring next.

Movement made him turn. Groaning, Anita managed to come to a sitting position and prop herself against the front of the van.

“I can’t drive with this arm.” She cradled it in pain. “The key’s in my right pants pocket.” Sweat trickled down her cheeks. “Let’s get out of here while he’s distracted.”

Brent fumbled inside her pocket and pulled out the key. He also took the knife she’d returned to that pocket. He had no idea what to do with it. Even so, he shoved it into his pants.

Anita struggled to get to her feet.

Brent moved to help, putting an arm around her, guiding her to the side of the van. His rapid breathing was hoarse as he shoved her up into the passenger seat. He shut the door, trying to minimize the noise, and raced around to the driver’s side. Fear made his legs unsteady when he climbed behind the steering wheel. His trembling fingers had trouble inserting the ignition key.

Come on! Finally it slipped in.

He twisted the key, feeling a surge of triumph when the engine roared to life. Abruptly his sense of triumph turned to panic. A glance in the rearview mirror showed the guard rushing from the doorway. The rifle the man held had something thick mounted under the barrel.

Brent stomped the accelerator and felt the flat rear tires try to gain traction. The wheel rims dug into the ground, spraying a dust cloud. He couldn’t see the guard.

Maybe the dust’ll keep him from aiming!

The van lurched forward sluggishly.

“Ease off on the gas. You’re spinning the wheels,” Anita found the strength to tell him.

Brent obeyed. The van responded, gaining more distance from the observatory. In the rearview mirror, he saw the dust settling and caught a glimpse of the guard raising the rifle to his shoulder. Above the sound of the van’s engine, he heard the helicopter roaring closer, coming in to land.

The van moved a little faster down the lane, its flat rear wheels fighting the dirt.

Frantic, Brent glanced at the rearview mirror again. The guard suddenly changed the direction in which he aimed. He turned west, toward the rumble of the approaching helicopter. In silhouette, the object attached to the rifle’s barrel seemed thicker.

Brent stared to his right, past Anita, toward the massive shape of the chopper, which was close enough that he could see the faint shape of the pilot’s face through the canopy. He switched his gaze to- ward the rearview mirror and saw the rifle buck as if it had been fired. Something flew from the object mounted under the barrel.

The front of the chopper exploded. As the shock wave rocked the van, the fireball of a second explosion-perhaps from fuel tanks-tore the aircraft apart. Wreckage flew in all directions. Chunks of rotors, sections of fuselage, fragments of engines crashed onto the dirt. Smoke billowed. Grass started burning. A flaming skeleton of the fuselage hit the ground and rolled, crushing a section of fence.

“Madre de Dios,” Anita said in shock.

The speedometer showed fifteen miles an hour, probably as fast as the van would go with shredded rear tires and wheel rims grinding into the dirt.

“We’re going to make it,” she managed to say.

Brent glanced toward the rearview mirror again and felt pressure in his chest, seeing the guard turn toward the van to realign his aim.

“Anita, brace yourself.”

Brent saw the rifle jerk upward. Something rushed from the launcher mounted under the rifle’s barrel.

Another shock wave rocked the van. In the rearview mirror, Brent saw an explosion tear up dirt.

“We’re far enough away!” Brent shouted. “Yes, we’re going to make it!”

The words caught in his throat when he saw flames erupt behind the van.

The bullet holes in the fuel tank, he realized. We’re leaving a trail of gasoline.

His bladder let loose when the flames began to chase the van.

“No!”

The rear of the van heaved as the flames reached the fuel that streamed from the holes in the tank. The impact wasn’t like the grenade explosions. It didn’t produce a loud roar. It didn’t tear the back of the van apart. It was violent nonetheless, filling the rearview mirror with an image of erupting smoke and flames.

Brent stomped the brakes. As the flames spread forward, he was relieved to see Anita muster the strength to open the passenger door and drop to the ground. He shoved the driver’s door open, jumped out, and hurried around to where she’d landed. She was on one knee, struggling to stand.

He grabbed her and lunged toward a furrow, collapsing, pushing her down.

The flames spread toward the middle of the van.

“Need the camera,” Brent said.

“Don’t take the chance. You’ll be hit.”

His heart pounded so violently that he was certain it would burst against his ribs. He surged upright, sprinted to the van’s side door, and shoved it open. Flames licked at him as he grabbed the camera.

Something snapped past him. A bullet.

Coughing from the smoke, he crouched and ran, holding the cam- era with both arms. Another bullet snapped past him. He reached the furrow and protected the camera by falling onto his back.

“You’re a fool.” Anita stared through wide eyes and looked paler.

“My mother always thought so.”

He pushed the record button and pointed the camera toward the burning van, panning from the fiery back of it until he reached the front seats, which burst into flames. Then he got a close shot of the shredded rear tire on his side of the van, the fire beginning to melt it. The smoke spread dramatically.

“You’ve been shot,” Anita said.

“Where?”

“Your right ear.”

Brent reached up and touched the wound, feeling the slippery blood and the gash on his earlobe.

“Blood’s streaming down your neck and onto your shoulder,” she murmured.

“Good. If I help you position the camera, do you think you can get a shot of it?”

“You really are crazy.”

“You expect me to just wait here and do nothing while he tries to kill us? The camera’s the only weapon I have. I’m going to record as much of what’s happening as I can. If we get out of this, this’ll be the story of a lifetime.” The word “lifetime” made him pause. Desperate to distract himself, he added, “I can win an Emmy for this.”

“We.”

“What?”

“We can win an Emmy.”

“Right.” Brent aimed the camera at her, emphasizing the blood that soaked her safari-type jacket. He got a close-up of the tourniquet he’d made for her arm.

The helicopter, he realized. Need to get video of the helicopter while it’s still burning.

He squirmed along the furrow until he guessed he was far enough that the guard wouldn’t look in that direction. Easing up, he saw the smoke and flames rising from the chopper’s wreckage. He aimed the camera’s lens and zoomed it toward the part of the fuselage that had crushed a section of the fences.

Yeah, he thought, I’ll get an Emmy for this.

He corrected himself. The two of us will get Emmies.

If we live.

53

Sergeant Lockhart drove the motorcycle past the TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED sign and stopped at the gate to the observatory. To the west, he heard a faraway helicopter. The lowering sun angled toward his eyes and made it difficult for him to distinguish the enlarging speck of the chopper. Presumably it was the Black Hawk that Colonel Raleigh had told him would be delivering more equipment.

So far no problem. Everything was on schedule.

Plus, Lockhart had gotten the chance to enjoy a motorcycle ride. The truth was, any opportunity to get away from the colonel was enjoyable. The guy had threatened to send him to a war zone, and Lockhart had begun to wonder if maybe that would be preferable to his current assignment. Just about any place would be better than that creepy facility under the abandoned airbase.

Shoot the dog? What the hell was that about?

The sergeant reached into a jeans pocket and pulled out the key the colonel had given him, preparing to free the lock on the gate. Then he noticed that the barrier felt unsteady. He glanced along it and saw that the opposite end wasn’t resting on its hinges.

Frowning, he pushed the gate open. As he guided the motorcycle toward the lane that led to the observatory, a noise made him pause, then crouch protectively. He’d heard the noise many times in Iraq.

The rumble of a distant explosion.

It came from the direction of the observatory.

Moments later, a second explosion followed. Lockhart searched the sky but no longer saw or heard the helicopter. What he saw in- stead was smoke rising.

A third explosion brought more smoke.

He reached back toward a canvas sack mounted on the rear of the motorcycle. The sack concealed his M4, along with two spare hundred- round magazines and a half-dozen boxes of ammunition-a troubling amount that the colonel had insisted on.

The sack also contained a scrambler-equipped two-way radio that Lockhart hastily withdrew.

54

Holding an earplug in one hand, Raleigh listened to the disturbing report that came through the two-way radio. His mouth was uncharacteristically dry.

“I can’t send reinforcements until dark,” he said into the radio. “The Suburbans are the only transportation we have. They’re so conspicuous, if I send men in the daytime, the crowd down the road is bound to see. We can’t compromise our security. Reconnoiter as close to the observatory as you can. Keep reporting back.”

Raleigh ended the transmission. When he reinserted his earplug, shut- ting out two-thirds of the sound in the room, he noted that some of the men in front of the monitoring equipment were glancing curiously in his direction. Even though it was after 6 in the evening, the cold overhead lights continued to make the time feel like 3 o’clock in the morning.

“Is everything adjusted?” His abrupt tone challenged one of the men, suggesting that there were more pressing things to do than eavesdrop on his radio communications.

“Just about, sir,” the man quickly answered. “We’re starting to amplify the signals.”

Raleigh stood behind the man. A computer screen showed random dots that provided a visual correspondence to the static coming from audio monitors on a table near other glowing electronic equipment. Shelves were filled with receivers, analyzers, and decoders. If all went as planned, soon the static would resolve itself into the alluring music he’d heard at Fort Meade, and then the computer screen before him would show the equivalent of gliding, floating, hypnotic lights.

“You’re not wearing your earplugs, soldier.”

“Sorry, sir. I’ve been so busy that I forgot.”

Raleigh moved to the center of the room and raised his voice.

“All of you, listen up!”

The eight men raised their heads from the electronics they were adjusting.

“Everybody wears earplugs.” Raleigh pointed toward his own. “I warned you that the audio component of this project can damage your hearing. I don’t want somebody’s mama crying to me because you didn’t listen to orders and went deaf. Put in the earplugs now!”

They hurriedly did so.

“If necessary, add the noise-reducing headphones we brought.”

When he was satisfied that everyone had obeyed, he walked to- ward a metal door that led to the facility’s innermost room. In truth, he wasn’t worried about his men going deaf. If this experiment went wrong, going deaf would be the least of their problems.

What he hoped was that the earplugs-and if necessary the noise- reducing earphones-would protect their hearing enough to keep them alive.

Once inside the central chamber, he watched a closed-circuit television monitor that showed a view of the abandoned airbase that sprawled above him. Beyond the collapsed, rusted aircraft hangars, he saw the German shepherd and its trainer patrolling the fence. The crowd had spread far enough from the viewing area that some people were talking to the dog’s trainer. The animal snapped at them. The people on the other side of the fence held up their hands in a we don’t want a problem gesture and backed away.

Raleigh wondered if the German shepherd was normally that aggressive.

We’ll soon find out. After dark, I’ll bring the dog back inside. We’ll see how it behaves. Its ears are more sensitive than ours. If there’s trouble, it’ll react before humans do-and before we need to shoot it.

He studied the room’s thick metal door, assuring himself that it could withstand a grenade blast. He verified that his M4 and several loaded one-hundred-round magazines were in a corner. He opened a filing cabinet and made sure that a trauma kit and emergency rations-including water-were inside in case he was forced to barricade himself in this room for a considerable length of time.

What else do I need to plan for? There’s always something.

He’d done his best to take everything into account. Nonetheless, he paused to consider the history of this place and search his memory for anything he might have missed. He knew by heart every event that had happened on this spot. He’d read all of the reports. They stretched back long before the military had established a presence here. One of the reports, however, had been passed down not from a historian or a tactician.

It had come from his great-grandmother.

55

January 22, 1916.

The horse became restless. It was normally so well-behaved that its rider-a twenty-nine-year-old schoolteacher named Dani Marie Brown-glanced warily around, assuming that coyotes were in the area.

She was riding on the dusty road that led from Rostov to Loden, a town fifteen miles away where she taught grade school on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays after teaching on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays in Rostov. Three days a week was the most that local cat- tlemen in each place would allow their children to be away from their ranching chores.

Dani sometimes was at school from dawn until dusk, preparing classes or grading tests when the children weren’t at their desks. It was a tiring schedule, but she’d been raised in Rostov, and she hadn’t liked being away from home while she’d earned her teacher’s certificate in noisy, crowded El Paso. Long, quiet hours in this familiar, re- assuring area were preferable to the chaos of the unknown, outside world.

During the winter, the early sunset made it necessary for Dani to bundle herself in a sheepskin coat and ride between the towns after dark. This didn’t trouble her. The stars and the moon-even if only a portion of the latter was showing-provided sufficient light for her to see the road. On cloudy nights, she held a lantern to show her the way.

An experienced horsewoman, she never worried about her ability to control the chestnut-colored quarter horse her parents had bought for her. But now, as the animal became more skittish, she tugged back the reins and pressed her heels down in the stirrups while she studied the shadowy landscape with greater intensity. In the heat of summer, coyotes weren’t the only threat the horse might have sensed-there would have been the risk that a rattlesnake had crawled onto the road to absorb the last of the day’s warmth, but that was out of the question tonight, when the temperature was cold enough to put a layer of ice on a pail of water.

Even so, Dani’s stomach fluttered.

Until recently she’d felt happily isolated in this quiet corner of Texas, but then her father had ordered a wireless radio from a catalog, and now, on this particular journey, Dani’s thoughts were disturbed by the escalation of the European war, which had reached new heights of atrocity and threatened to draw the United States into the fight between Germany and the Allies.

Just before beginning her ride toward Loden, she’d paid a brief visit to her parents and listened to a radio report about attacks involving chlorine and phosgene gases: the lung destroyers. There were rumors about something even more horrendous being developed: mustard gas, a blisterer that dissolved skin both inside and outside the body. The gas remained active long after it sank into the ground, with the consequence that soldiers kicking up dust as they walked through a field could cause the equivalent of another attack.

And those weren’t the only new horrors. Dani could only imagine the pain and terror produced by such recently invented weapons as tanks and flamethrowers. Thus, on this normally quiet ride, her thoughts were in greater turmoil than she would have expected.

Abruptly something on her right caught her attention. She frowned toward some sort of illumination on the southern horizon. Lights bobbed and weaved. Her immediate suspicion was that they came from torches carried by horseback riders. However, the only direction from which those riders could be coming was Mexico.

That thought filled her with dread because Mexico, too, had become a dangerous place. The recent revolution there had turned the country into warring factions to which Germany sent soldiers, weapons, and money, hoping the United States would be so distracted by the violence south of its border that it wouldn’t enter the war in Europe.

My God, Dani thought, could those be Germans?

The horse continued to resist her efforts to control it.

Calm down, she warned herself. The horse senses my fear. That’s what’s causing the problem.

No, those weren’t Germans invading from Mexico, she decided. Now that she paid closer attention, the lights didn’t look at all like riders with torches.

If they weren’t torches, though, what else could they be?

Only gradually did Dani wonder if these might be the lights she’d heard so much about when she was growing up. The stories had seemed fanciful, and she’d paid them no mind because although she knew many people in town who claimed to have seen them, she had not.

Now, on the distant horizon, the lights took the shape of luminous balls. Their colors were like segments of a rainbow. Sometimes they merged, red and blue becoming purple, or green and red becoming yellow. They drifted sideways or rose and fell as if in a current.

They got larger and brighter.

Dani became aware of a hum that gradually increased in pitch, and before she knew it, her ears were in pain.

Suddenly the horse reared up. She pressed down on its neck while tightening her legs against its flanks. Making panicked noises, the animal skittered sideways. Again it attempted to rear up, and suddenly- regardless of her expert efforts-it charged along the road.

The horse’s speed would normally have made it difficult for Dani to see obstacles on the shadowy road, but as she struggled to subdue it, she realized that the road had become unnaturally bright, with vibrant colors flashing toward it. Without warning, the lights were rushing over her, spinning around her, trapping her in a whirlpool.

At once the horse bucked so violently that she flew off the saddle. When she struck the road, pain shot through her ribs. Her vision blurred. Dizzy, she heard the horse neighing in alarm. The pounding of its hooves began again and receded into the distance.

Dani had no idea how long she lay unconscious. When she wakened, the lights were gone. Clouds had drifted in, partially concealing the stars and the moon. In the meager illumination, she squirmed to her feet. Despite the cold, the pain in her ribs made her sweat.

With a weak voice, she called for the horse, but the animal didn’t return. She called again, gave up, and struggled to find her bearings. Which way was Rostov? That was the closer town. If she made a mistake in direction, she’d walk toward Loden, and she doubted she had the strength to go that far.

She scanned the heavens in search of the North Star. The pain was so great that she feared she’d collapse.

The Big Dipper. Need to find the Big Dipper.

There. When she’d been a little girl, her father had made sure that she knew how to navigate by the stars in case she ever got lost in the dark. The two end stars on the Big Dipper pointed toward the Little Dipper, and the star at the end of the handle part of the Little Dipper was the North Star.

Now Dani could calculate which way was west, the direction that would take her to Rostov. She wavered along the increasingly dark road and stumbled. When she fell, pain jolted her into consciousness. She crawled and finally managed to stand again.

Time lost all meaning.

She felt another jolt of intense pain and realized she’d run into the side of a building. Only then did she understand that she’d reached town. Delirious, she took two wrong turns before she pounded on her father’s door.

When he opened it, she collapsed in his arms. The next morning, word of her ordeal spread through Rostov. Numerous friends came to satisfy their curiosity.

“Germans?” the veterinarian asked. The closest that Rostov had to a doctor, he recommended that Dani wear a corset to protect her ribs while they healed.

“No,” she said through the pain. “I don’t think so.” The corset put so much pressure on Dani’s throbbing chest that she had trouble breathing.

“But you told us you saw riders with torches,” Dani’s father said. “If not Germans, were they Mexicans?”

“No, I only thought-”

“It could have been a scouting expedition,” Rostov’s mayor decided. “Some of them got close enough to throw their torches at you. Carranza’s people are in league with the Germans. Everybody knows that. Maybe Carranza’s seeing how far he can sneak into Texas before anybody makes a fuss.”

“Or it might have been that bastard Villa,” the town’s blacksmith suggested. “He’s desperate for money and supplies.”

“There’s nothing between us and the border.” Dani’s mother looked horrified. “They could murder us in our sleep.”

“No, it wasn’t people on horseback,” Dani insisted tightly.

“What was it you said?” the mayor asked. “Whatever you saw seemed to be on the horizon, and suddenly it was spinning around you. Wasn’t that how you described it?”

“Yes.” Squeezed by the corset and her pain-swollen ribs, Dani could hardly speak.

“An airplane can do that. I saw one the last time I visited my sister in El Paso.”

“But I didn’t hear an engine.”

“You said you heard something.”

“A hum,” she replied. “I couldn’t place it.”

“While blinding lights spun around you.”

“Yes, but-”

The mayor stood and put on his coat. “I’ll contact Fort Bliss. The Army needs to be warned about this.”

“Warned?”

“I think the Germans are testing a new weapon.”

A day later, a speck emerged from the afternoon sun. The drone of an engine made people look toward the west, where the shape of an air- plane gradually became visible, its yellow vivid against the sky. It had two sets of wings, one above the other, and two open seats, one in front of the other. The sole occupant was seated in the back.

He circled the town and the people who’d gathered on the main street. Angling down, the plane seemed to float as it eased toward the dirt road. When it landed, it bounced slightly, then raised a dust cloud, coming to rest on a section of parched grass.

The people crowded toward the field, marveling as the pilot shut off the engine, pushed himself up from the back seat, and jumped to the ground. He wore boots, leather gloves, a leather jacket, a khaki uniform under it, and a matching scarf around his neck. A pistol was holstered to his wide canvas belt, and someone identified it as one of the new Colt.45 semiautomatics. When he took off his goggles, the area around his eyes was white compared to the dust that coated the rest of his face, including his mustache.

“I’m Capt. John Raleigh,” he said with a smooth voice that commanded attention. “You can get a little closer if you want.” With his boot, he drew a line on the ground. “To here. But don’t touch the plane.”

“How does it fly?” a man asked in amazement.

“The propeller pushes air past the wings. They’re shaped so a high- pressure area forms under them and a low-pressure area forms over them. The difference between the high and low pressure lifts the plane.”

Several people frowned as if he spoke gibberish. Others nodded, perhaps pretending they understood.

“What’s covering the wings?” another man asked.

“Strips of linen. They’re sealed with a waterproofing agent that’s like shellac.”

“Doesn’t sound very strong.”

“Strong enough. The plane brought me all the way from El Paso.” With that he looked around, then spoke again to the crowd. “Where’s your mayor? I came to talk with him.”

“That’s me, Captain. My name’s Ted McKinney.” The mayor stepped from the crowd and shook hands with him. “Thanks for coming so soon. My office is just down the street.”

“Thank you for contacting us,” Captain Raleigh responded. “I’d like to get started right away. The Army is very interested in your report.”

The crowd parted as he and the mayor walked away. Mayor McKinney was the president of Rostov’s only bank. He and Raleigh remained inside the adobe building for an hour. Many people gathered on the street, curious about what the two men discussed.

When Raleigh and the mayor came out, they crossed the street to the dry-goods store that Dani’s parents owned. The couple lived in an apartment behind it, where she was convalescing.

More people gathered on the street.

A half hour later, the mayor left the store. Preceded by the sound of a rattling motor, he returned shortly with his Ford Model T.

Captain Raleigh stepped from the store and held the door open for Dani, who clutched a coat around her and walked stiffly to the car. The captain helped her onto the passenger seat and climbed into the back. The townspeople watched with growing curiosity as Mayor McKinney drove the car out of town, following the road to Loden. The winter sun had descended low enough to touch the horizon, and the scarlet glow deepened the brown of Raleigh’s leather jacket. The captain leaned forward from the back seat so that Dani could hear him over the clatter of the Model T’s engine.

“Thank you for agreeing to do this, Miss Brown. Not many women would be brave enough to return to the scene of where they were attacked.”

“I’m not sure it’s a matter of bravery, Captain Raleigh,” Dani haltingly explained. “I think perhaps it’s anger.”

“Anger?” He looked curious, and she couldn’t help noticing that he was handsome. Standing or sitting, he held his back straight, and she thought he had the makings of a great horse rider.

Dismissing such thoughts, she continued, “Someone found my horse. The skeleton of it anyway, after the coyotes had finished with it. Whatever attacked me is responsible for that.”

“I’m sorry to hear about your horse.” He sounded as if he truly meant it. “Do you have a sense of where the incident occurred?”

“I set out after dark.” As the sunset weakened, Dani continued to be short of breath. Her words tightened with pain when the vehicle jolted over bumps. “There was light from the stars. Even so, it was hard to know exactly where I was along the road.”

“What time did you leave for Loden?”

“At 7:15.”

“That’s very precise.”

“My father has a wireless radio. I was with him when he listened to a report about the gas attacks in the European war. The news began at 7.” Dani forced herself to continue. “After ten minutes, I was so up- set that I said good-bye to my parents and went out to my horse. I was on the road by 7:15.”

“The way you sit so rigidly straight, you’re obviously hurting,” he said with concern. “Are you certain you can continue?”

“I’m prepared to do what’s required,” she answered firmly. “It’s just the corset.”

“Corset?” Raleigh sounded embarrassed.

“The veterinarian told me to wear a corset to bind my ribs and protect them.”

“You went to a veterinarian?” he asked in surprise.

“This is cattle country, Captain Raleigh. It’s easier to find a vet than a doctor.”

“As soon as you return home, please take the corset off at once. It can kill you.”

Dani winced as the mayor drove over another bump. “Kill me? What are you talking about?”

“The Army’s been studying how wounds are being treated in the war. It’s common for tape to be used on broken ribs. But British doctors are discovering that pneumonia is a frequent result. Apparently the tape causes shallow breathing that allows fluid to collect in the lungs. The next thing, the patient is sick from something far worse than broken ribs. After you remove the corset, breathe as deeply as you can. That’ll hurt, but it’s the only way to stop the fluid from collecting.”

The mayor turned on the Model T’s lights. “Speaking of the war, Captain, will the U.S. join the fight?”

“Yes, we will,” Raleigh answered. “It’s only a question of when. That’s why the Army sent me here. If the Germans are testing a new weapon, we need to know about it. Miss Brown, can you estimate how long you were on this road before you saw the lights?”

“Perhaps forty minutes.”

“At what gait were you riding?”

“A moderate trot. The light from the moon and the stars was sufficient to allow for that speed.”

“Which means that you traveled approximately five miles.”

The mayor looked at him with even more respect. “I gather you used to be a cavalryman.”

“The Eighth Regiment.”

“You were in the Philippines?”

“Apparently Miss Brown isn’t the only person keeping up with the news.” Raleigh scanned the horizon. “Yes, I was in the Philippines. When I heard that the Army was training pilots, I decided it was better to fly over a jungle than ride through it.” He paused and peered into the dusk. “Would you say we’ve traveled five miles yet?”

“That’s what the milometer says.”

“Then let’s stop and enjoy the view.”

McKinney eased back on the accelerator and pulled the handbrake. Even at an idle, the vibrations of the engine made the car rattle.

“Miss Brown, you said the lights came from the south?”

“That’s correct.”

“If you turn off the engine, Mr. McKinney, will you be able to restart it, or will we be stuck out here?”

“I maintain the car in excellent condition,” the mayor said. “It will start.”

“Then let’s enjoy some peace and quiet.”

The mayor shut off the engine. The car wheezed and fell silent.

“If I keep the headlights on, the battery’ll go dead,” McKinney told Raleigh.

“Of course. Please turn them off.”

At once darkness surrounded the vehicle. Silence gave the night power.

“Beautiful,” Raleigh said as his eyes adjusted to the gloom. “In El Paso, the streetlights keep me from seeing the sky. I seldom see the heavens so bright.”

McKinney pointed with a child’s enthusiasm. “Look, a shooting star.”

It streaked across the sky like silent fireworks.

“Miss Brown, could that be what you saw?” Raleigh asked. “Per- haps a cluster of shooting stars?”

“I’ve never heard of shooting stars coming across a field and spinning around someone,” she replied. “Nor have I ever experienced any that hummed.”

“I haven’t, either.” Raleigh fixed his gaze on the murky area to the south. Somewhere over there, coyotes yipped and howled.

They’re on the hunt, he thought.

Or perhaps they’re running from something.

“I need to tell you,” Dani said, “that I don’t think the lights were torches held by German riders.”

“Perhaps not Germans. Perhaps it was Carranza’s men.”

“No. I mean I don’t think there were any riders.”

“But if there weren’t any riders, what caused the lights?”

“I don’t know. People around here often see lights,” she said. “I my- self have never seen them, so I can’t tell you what they look like, and before the other night I hadn’t thought they even existed. Now I’m not certain what I think.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“Dani’s talking about the Rostov lights,” McKinney interrupted. “Indians and early settlers used to talk about them. I’ve never seen them, either, but my wife claims she has. That was after we lost a son to cholera. She believed the lights were the soul of our boy. If you ask me, my Emily was so depressed that she convinced herself she saw the lights.”

“Well, whatever’s going on, we’ll soon find out,” Raleigh replied confidently.

“You really believe that?”

“Absolutely,” he said. “I’m seeing the lights right now.”

“What?” McKinney glanced all around.

Raleigh focused all his attention toward the southern horizon, where glowing colors slowly began to appear. They rose and fell. They drifted and floated in a languorous, captivating rhythm. Red merged into blue. Yellow blended with green.

“Mr. McKinney, do you see them?” Raleigh rested his right hand on his pistol.

The mayor didn’t answer for a moment.

“God help me, yes.”

“Miss Brown, are they what you saw?”

“Yes,” she said softly. “Before they attacked me.”

“Well, they’re not riders carrying torches, that’s for certain. Does anyone smell flowers?”

“Flowers?”

“Orchids.”

“I wouldn’t know what orchids smell like,” McKinney said.

“In the Philippines, there were hundreds of types of orchids,” Raleigh explained. “Amazing colors. Just like what I’m seeing now. In the night in the jungle, as I tried to sleep in my tent, the scent was thick. Orchids pollinated by bees had a perfume of cinnamon. That’s what I’m smelling now.”

“I smell rotting meat,” Dani said.

McKinney raised a hand to his mouth. “So do I.”

Raleigh remembered that the orchids in the Philippines didn’t al- ways smell like cinnamon. If they were pollinated by flies, sometimes they had the odor of a dead animal that the flies had sat on.

Abruptly the stench hit him, almost making him gag.

Like corpses after a battle, he thought.

Dani coughed. The reflexive reaction to the odor filled her chest with pain, causing her to wince.

“Something out there is dead,” she said.

A new German weapon? Raleigh wondered.

“How far do you suppose they are?” McKinney’s voice was unsteady.

“Without a method to triangulate the distance, it’s impossible to know,” Raleigh answered. “In the dark, our eyes play tricks on us. The lights could be miles away, or less than a hundred yards. The latter would explain how they reached you so quickly, Miss Brown.”

The odor of death became stronger.

We’re not prepared, Raleigh thought. Mindful of his responsibility for Dani’s safety, he kept his voice level. “Let’s go back to town.” Two days later, a detachment of cavalry arrived, their dust cloud visible from a distance. At sunset, Raleigh rode with them to the part of the road from which he’d seen the lights.

Their plan was to use surveyor’s instruments to get two separate bearings on the lights, plotting map coordinates that would allow them to determine how far away and where the lights were.

But the moment the lights appeared, the horses went crazy. Whinnying loudly, they kicked and bit one another. A trooper on foot, clinging to the reins of his mount, was dragged along the ground. A hoof fractured his skull. The other panicked horses galloped into the gloom, leaving the soldiers to make their cautious way back to town on foot, all the while ready with their rifles. A week later, eight Army biplanes flew to Rostov from Fort Bliss. The intervening time had given Raleigh the chance to choose a location for an airstrip and start supervising its construction. The rationale for the airstrip was that it provided an out-of-the-way place at which to secretly train pilots for America’s entry into the war.

The actual purpose, however, was to establish a location from which the biplanes could conduct aerial surveillance beyond the Mexican border, looking for a weapon that the Germans might be testing. When he wasn’t on duty, Raleigh found himself spending more and more time with Dani Marie Brown.

Part of the training for student pilots involved flying at night. He used the night instruction as an opportunity to send his students to try to determine the origin of the lights, but he was forced to discontinue those missions. As the trainees flew toward the lights, they diverted and attacked one another-with apparent deliberation, two planes actually collided, killing the instructor and student in each.

Thereafter training occurred only during daylight.

Fears about an invasion from Mexico were validated on March 9, 1916, when gunmen led by Pancho Villa staged a night attack on the New Mexican town of Columbus. Within two days, Congress voted to pursue Villa. “Black Jack” Pershing led five thousand soldiers into Mexico, where they remained for most of the year. Although they engaged in numerous battles with Mexican troops, they never located Villa, but that didn’t matter. The mission was largely a training exercise, allowing American soldiers to absorb battle experience.

In April 1917, America entered the war.

Raleigh participated in the Mexican campaign, using his biplane to scout for enemy positions. Afterward he returned to Rostov and married Dani Marie, but within weeks of his marriage, he was on a ship bound for France.

The lights and the possibility of a new German weapon being tested along the Mexican border were forgotten by the Army. There were too many tangible weapons to worry about, particularly mustard gas. But on many nights, as Captain Raleigh tried not to think about the next day’s combat, he longed for his wife and the son she’d given birth to.

After the war ended in November 1918, he returned home in time for Christmas. Snow fell-unusual but not impossible in that area of Texas. He had survived thirty-nine dogfights with German aviators and thanked God that he was able to be with his wife and son. But even though he was finally safe, he had nightmares. Not about the war, though. Instead his disturbing dreams made him experience the floating, drifting sensation of the lights. Each evening he went out to stare at them. In March 1919, he purchased a biplane that had been used in the war, many of which had become available at cheap prices because the military no longer needed them.

A week after he took possession of the plane, he took off at dusk from the now overgrown airstrip where he’d trained pilots three years earlier. As the darkness thickened, he flew toward the lights. The sound of his engine receded into the gloom.

Neither he nor the plane was ever seen again.

56

In the dank complex beneath the abandoned airbase, Col. Warren Raleigh remembered seeing photographs of a dashing young man in a uniform, a strong-looking woman next to him, a biplane in the background. He remembered hearing about the Rostov lights and his great-grandfather’s mysterious disappearance.

Raleigh’s great-grandmother had raised her son alone, demonstrating the strength that had drawn her husband to her. Her only show of emotion came each night. While her parents took care of the baby, she went out to the area where her husband had disappeared. She watched the lights, waiting for him to return.

Night after night, winter and spring, she stared at them.

Inexplicably, her face became red and swollen. Blisters developed. One night, when strands of her hair began to fall out, she finally did something she would never have imagined doing-she took her son, moved from the once reassuring area where she’d grown up, and rented an apartment in noisy, disturbing El Paso. There she learned to be a seamstress, sewing at home while looking after her son.

El Paso led to Denver, Chicago, and finally Boston as she tried to get farther and farther from the lights. Despite the passage of years, she never remarried.

She died from skin cancer.

A voice interrupted Raleigh’s thoughts.

“Sir, Fort… is… call… you.”

He peered up from his desk. His earplugs muffled sounds. “Say again, Lieutenant?”

“Fort Meade wants you on the phone. Scrambler code 2.”

As Raleigh reached for the phone on his desk, the lieutenant continued, “And even though it isn’t night yet, we’re getting extremely powerful readings.”

Raleigh nodded. This time he didn’t take the risk of removing an earplug as he pressed a button on his phone and engaged the scrambler.

“Colonel Raleigh here.”

“This is Borden,” a woman’s voice said faintly. She was the director of the weapons research team at Raleigh’s headquarters near the fortress-like National Security Agency in Maryland. “We’re receiving unusually strong readings from the observatory.”

“Yes, one of my people here just told me we’re getting strong readings, also.”

Borden’s voice continued, “I reviewed the data parameters for previous versions of this study. As we know, the pattern’s cyclical. Some- times the signals are almost impossible to detect. Other times they’re pronounced. But until now, the highs and lows have been in the same range. These are the highest readings we’ve ever seen-and that includes what happened where you are, back in 1945. The reason I contacted you isn’t just to make a report. I’m asking you to reconsider your strategy.” She paused. “Colonel, are you certain you want to stay at your location?”

Raleigh found the question touching. One of his many secrets was that he and Borden met each month at a Baltimore hotel room, where they allowed themselves to pretend they had emotions unrelated to their careers. Her question wasn’t merely about protecting the pro- gram. It suggested that she was actually concerned about his safety.

“Colonel, can you hear me?” Borden’s voice asked.

“Yes,” he finally said, “I hear you. Thank you for your input, but I’ll be staying. All these years, this is where the program has been headed. Without a team on-site, we’ll never know the truth. I can’t leave.”

This wasn’t just where the program had been headed, though. It was where his life had been headed since he’d first heard about the lights when he was a boy.