Mount Dragon (42 page)
Authors: Douglas Preston
He glanced at his watch: 2:30
P.M
, eastern time.
A tiny chirrup came from a monitor beside the couch, and a huge screen winked into life. There was a flurry of data as the satellite downlink was decrypted; then a brief message appeared, in letters fifteen inches tall:
TELINT-2 data link established, lossy-bit encryption enabled. Proceed with transmission.
The message disappeared, and new words appeared on the screen:
Mr. Scopes: We are prepared to tender an offer of three billion dollars. The offer is non-negotiable.
Scopes pulled his keyboard over, and began typing. Compared to hostile corporations, the military were pansies.
My dear General Harrington: All offers are negotiable. I'm prepared to accept four billion for the product we've discussed. I'll give you twelve hours to make the necessary procurements.
Scopes smiled. He'd carry out the rest of the negotiations from a different place. A secret place in which he was now more comfortable than he was in the everyday world.
He resumed typing, and as he issued a series of commands the words on the giant screen began to dissolve into a strange and wondrous landscape. As he typed, Scopes recited, almost inaudibly, his favorite lines from
The Tempest
:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange
.
Charles Levine sat on the edge of the faded bedspread, staring at the telephone propped on the pillow in front of him. The phone was a deep burgundy color, with the words
PROPERTY OF HOLIDAY INN, BOSTON, MA
stamped in white across the back of the receiver. For hours he had spoken into the mouthpiece of that receiver, shouting, coaxing, begging. Now he had nothing more to say.
He rose slowly, stretched his aching legs, and moved to the sliding glass doors. A gentle breeze billowed the curtains. He stepped out to the balcony railing and breathed deeply of the night air. The lights of Jamaica Plain glittered in the warm darkness, like a mantle of diamonds thrown casually across the landscape. A car nosed by on the street below, its headlights illuminating the shabby working-class storefronts and deserted gas stations.
The telephone rang. In his shock at hearing an incoming callâafter so many excuses, so many curt rejectionsâLevine stood motionless a moment, looking over his shoulder at the telephone. Then he stepped inside and picked up the receiver.
“Hello?” he said in a voice hoarse from talking.
The unmistakable rumble of a modern echoed from the tiny speaker.
Quickly, Levine hung up, transferred the jack from the telephone to his computer, and powered up the laptop. The phone rang again, and there was a flurry of noise as the machines negotiated.
How-do, professor-man. The words rushed immediately onto the screen without the usual introductory logo. I assume it's still appropriate to call you professor, is it not?
How did you find me? Levine typed back.
Without much problem, came the reply.
I've been on the telephone for hours, talking to everyone I can think of, Levine typed. Colleagues, friends in the regulatory agencies, reporters, even former students. Nobody believes me.
I believe you.
The job was too thorough. Unless I can prove my innocence, my credibility will be gone forever.
Don't fret, professor. As long as you know me, you can be assured of a good credit rating, if nothing else.
There's only one person I haven't spoken to: Brent Scopes. He's my next stop.
Just a minute, my man! came Mime's response. Even if you could talk to him, I doubt he'd be interested in hearing from you right about now.
Not necessarily. I have to go now, Mime.
One moment, professor. I didn't contact you just to present my condolences. A few hours ago, your Western homeboy Carson tried to send you an emergency transmission. It was almost immediately interrupted, and I was only able to retrieve the initial section. I think you need to read this. Are you ready to receive?
Levine replied that he was.
Okay, came the response. Here it comes.
Levine checked his watch. It was ten minutes to three.
Carson and de Vaca rode through the velvety blackness of the Jornada del Muerto, a vast river of stars flowing above their heads. The ground sloped downward from the compound and they soon found themselves in the bottom of a dry wash, the horses sinking to their fetlocks in the soft sand. The light of the stars was just enough to illuminate the ground beneath their feet. Any moon, Carson knew, and they would have been dead.
They rode down the wash while he thought.
“They'll expect us to head south, toward Radium Springs and Las Cruces,” he said at last. “Those are the closest towns besides Engle, which belongs to GeneDyne anyway. Eighty miles, more or less. It takes time to track someone in this desert, especially across lava. So if I were Nye, I'd follow the track until I was sure it was heading south. Then I'd fan out the Hummers until the quarry was intercepted.”
“Makes sense,” came the voice of de Vaca in the gloom.
“So we'll oblige him. We'll head south, like we're going to Radium Springs. When we hit the MalpaÃs, we'll ride up onto the lava where tracking is difficult. Then we'll make a ninety-degree turn east, ride a few miles, and reverse direction. We'll head north instead.”
“But there's no town to the north for at least a hundred and forty miles.”
“That's exactly why it's the only way we can go. They'd never look for us in that direction. But we won't have to ride as far as a town. Remember the Diamond Bar ranch I told you about? I know the new ranch manager. There's a line camp at the southern edge of the ranch we can head for. It's called Lava Camp. I'd say it's about a hundred and ten miles from here, twenty or thirty miles north of Lava Gate.”
“Can't the Hummers follow us onto the lava?”
“The lava's sharp, it would tear any ordinary tires to ribbons,” Carson said. “But the Hummers have something called a central tire inflation system that can raise or lower tire pressure. The tubes are specially made to allow miles of continued travel after a puncture. Even so, I doubt if they could stay on the lava for long. Once they're sure of our direction, they'll get off the lava, move ahead to the far side and try to cut us off.”
There was a silence. “It's worth a try,” de Vaca said at last.
Carson turned his horse southward and de Vaca followed. As they came over the rise on the far side of the wash, they could still see, in the distance to the north, the flickering yellow glow of the burning complex. Midway across the dark sands, the circles of light had grown measurably closer.
“I think we'd better make tracks,” Carson said. “Once we've thrown them we can rest the horses.”
They urged their horses into a hand gallop. In five minutes, the jagged outline of the lava flow loomed up before them. They dismounted and led their horses up into the flow.
“If I remember correctly, the lava veers around to the east,” Carson said. “We'd better follow it for a couple of miles before turning north.”
They walked their horses through the lava, moving slowly, allowing the animals time to pick a trail through the sharp rubble.
It's damn lucky
, Carson thought,
that horses have much better night vision than humans
. He couldn't even make out the shape of the lava beneath Roscoe's hooves; it was as black as the night itself. Only scattered yucca plants, patches of lichen and windblown sand, and clumps of grass growing from cracks gave him an idea of the surface. Difficult as it was, movement was easier here near the edge of the flow. Farther in, Carson could see great blocks of lava, sticking up into the night sky like basaltic sentries, blotting out the stars.
Glancing back again, Carson could see the lights of the Hummers rapidly approaching. Periodically the lights would pauseâpresumably when Nye got out to check the tracks. The lava would slow them, but it wouldn't stop them.
“What about water?” de Vaca spoke suddenly out of the immense darkness. “Is this going to be enough?”
“No,” Carson said. “We'll have to find some.”
“But where?”
Carson was silent.
Nye stood in the empty motor pool, alone, looking out into the darkness, his fiery shadow playing across the desert sands. The ruined hulk of Mount Dragon burned out of control behind him, but he ignored it.
A security officer came running up, gasping and out of breath, his face smeared with soot. “Sir, the water pressure in the hoses will be exhausted within five minutes. Should we switch to the emergency reserves?”
“Why not?” Nye replied absently, not bothering to look at the man.
He had failed massively; he knew that. Carson had slipped from between his fingers, but not before he'd destroyed the very facility Nye had been charged with protecting. Briefly, he thought of what he could say to Brent Scopes. Then he pushed the thought from his mind. This was a failure like none other in his career, even worse than that other, the one that he no longer allowed himself to think about. There was no possibility of redemption.
But there was the possibility of revenge. Carson was responsible, and Carson would pay. And the Spanish bitch, as well. They would not be allowed to escape.
He watched the lights of the Hummers recede into the desert, and his lip curled with contempt. Singer was a fool. It was impossible to track anything from inside a Hummer. One had to keep stopping, getting out, and scouting the trail; it would be even slower than going on foot. Besides, Carson knew the desert. He knew horses. He probably knew a few simple tracking tricks. There were lava flows in the Jornada so mazelike that it would take years to explore every island, every “hole in the wall.” There were sandy flats where a horse's track would be all but erased by the wind in just a few hours.
Nye knew all these things. He also knew that it was virtually impossible to completely erase a trail in this desert. There was always a trace left, even on rock or in sand. His ten years working an Arabian security detail in the
Rub' al-Khali
, the Empty Quarter, had taught him all any man could know about the desert.
Nye tossed his now-useless radio communicator into the sand and turned toward the stables. As he walked, he paid no heed to the desperate cries, the rushing sound of flame, the shriek of collapsing metal. Something new had occurred to him. If Carson had escaped, perhaps the man was more clever than he'd suspected. Perhaps he had been smart enough to steal or even disable his horse, Muerto, on the way out. The security director quickened his pace.
As he walked through the shattered barn door, he glanced automatically toward the locked tack box where he kept his rifle. It was still there, untouched.
Suddenly Nye froze. The nails that normally held his old McClellan saddlebags were empty. Yet the saddlebags had hung there yesterday. A red mist crept in front of his eyes. Carson had taken the bags and their two gallon canteens; a pitiful amount of water against the Jornada del Muerto, the Journey of Death. Carson was doomed by that fact alone.