THE ORANGE MOON AFFAIR (16 page)

“How did you find this place?” Julie asked stroking the head of an old Australian sheepdog that wandered up, hoping for a scrap or two. “Hey fella, nothing here for you I'm afraid.” The dog licked her hand and gazed at her adoringly.

“When I was travelling after I left school, I wanted to see Death Valley, ended up here and liked it. So far away from my own cloistered life.”

“You can say that again.”

After breakfast I called the pilot of the G550 on one of my burn phones, and asked him to reposition the aircraft to Henderson Executive Airport near Las Vegas. Then Julie and I drove to the trailhead of Darwin Falls. It is perhaps the unlikeliest place in Death Valley, a year round waterfall at the head of a narrow gorge about three and a half miles in from the main road. The hike was flat most of the way, but required a little scrambling over rocks. As we went deeper into the gorge, we escaped the direct heat from the sun and finally reached the small twenty-foot tall waterfall. Surrounded by ferns and other flora, it just shouldn't be in a desert at all.

“My God, who would have thought,” Julie marvelled, sitting on a rock in the cool of the gorge.

“Runs year round from a spring which feeds the Motel.”

“I'm glad we came. It's a tiny jewel in a moonscape.”

“Death Valley's full of weird things.”

“And it's taken an Englishman who is half American to show me parts of my country I've never seen.”

“We get around. It's in the blood.”

For several hours we sat, talked and wandered back to the car, a gentle break before the reality of our purpose brought back the tension and uncertainty of the future. But not before I showed her some of the other attractions of Death Valley and we lunched in Furnace Creek, drove through Artist's Drive and then to Dante's View just as typical tourists would do, cementing our identities as Mr and Mrs Blacket.

We arrived back late in the afternoon, tired, dusty and hot despite the car's air-conditioning, ready for an early dinner and bed.

The Australian sheepdog joined us for dinner on the porch and received some of Julie's fresh Angus beef burger for his amber eyed imploring, eating with relish. After dinner we lay on the grass with the dog, which had taken a fancy to Julie, and watched shooting stars light up the clear night sky.

“It's so quiet and yet so loud with the cicadas. There's such a sense of infinity here.” Julie whispered as if afraid to wake the sleeping gods and spoil the magic of the night.

All too soon the night
of gentle lovemaking was over and we were back on the road, following the GPS to the co-ordinates Professor Oldfield had supplied for Coltrane Engineering, ten miles North East of Mojave Airport. It seemed an odd out-of-the-way place to establish a company supposedly dealing in the manufacture of oil and gas pumps, but nothing about my life at this moment was normal, everything absurdly surreal. Such a short time ago, Julie and I were naïve boat bums, sunning ourselves in the Mediterranean without a care in the world, now we were hiding from would-be killers and searching for answers to the murder of my father.

Mojave is a small dusty town hiding a spaceport where wealthy civilian potential astronauts lined up to take a Virgin Galactic flight into space. The desert is a perfect flat empty space for experimental aircraft; the test pilot flight school at Edwards Air Force Base and returning space shuttle flights. I followed the road out of town past the spaceport, following the GPS navigator, then turn left onto a small potholed road five miles out of town that petered out into a dusty track.

“Stranger and stranger,” Julie muttered. “Who the hell would build an engineering plant that has no access for big trucks?”

“We're coming in the back way,” I grinned. “I figured De Costas might have a reception committee lined up if we came in the front door.”

“Good thinking.”

A good two miles from Coltrane Engineering, I pulled the car into a shallow arroyo, hidden from view to anyone but the most earnest hunters. I collected a couple of handguns, two sleeping bags, two small cans of compressed liquid nitrogen, heavy duty rubberised industrial gloves and a pair of high powered binoculars from the back of the car, while Julie packed sandwiches, energy bars, glucose tablets and water into two back packs. Once we had everything we needed, I wired an explosive charge to a cell phone and tucked it under the fuel tank.

“What's that for?”

“A nasty surprise for De Costas' men, just in case they find the car.”

“If that happens, how the hell do we get out of here? Walk?”

“There's always a way.”

We hiked along the arroyo for half an hour following the directions on a handheld GPS, until we were confronted by a ten-foot high electrified wire fence, that looked very new.

“Whatever's going on here is recent, that's for sure,” Julie remarked. “And they don't want visitors.”

“But as yet no remote CCTV cameras. Looks like they are ready to install them but haven't got around to it yet.” There was a scuffling noise to our right and a gopher shot from a hole, ran to the fence, struggled through and dove into another hole on the other side. “And no electricity to the fence yet either.”

“That'll make life easier.”

To our right the edge of the arroyo rose sharply to a ridge about fifty feet high. The only access via a narrow cleft that wound through the rock and disappeared around a sharp corner. Julie followed as I explored the opening, reaching a dead end about one hundred metres in, but with a simple climb up to the back of the ridge that edged the arroyo. From there we had a good view across the open land to the Coltrane Engineering buildings a good eight hundred metres from where we lay. Between the buildings and us two graders flattened the ground, pushing the dirt to one side but apart from that there seemed little movement in and around the buildings. An MD-902 Explorer helicopter sat on a helipad at the East side of the property, with three SUVs parked nearby beside a low structure, which I took to be the offices attached to the main square, windowless, concrete construction facility. Whatever was happening here had a direct connection to De Costas and Rathborne Micro-Electronics in Belfast. The door to the office block opened and the woman we had seen at De Costas office walked across to the helicopter, followed by a man. Through the binoculars I could see them very clearly. The pilot was obviously already on board, because I heard the engines start just as the passengers boarded, and within a minute the aircraft was airborne and headed away from us toward Mojave.

“I told you she was loaded,” Julie murmured.

“She looks familiar, but I can't place her.”

“She was in De Costas office.”

“No, before then. I've seen her, but I just can't remember where. If I could just get the context I'd know.”

“It's going to bug you isn't it?”

“Yes it is. I hate loose ends.”

“Well let's get in there and find out what's going on.”

“We will, but not until tomorrow.”

“What,” Julie exclaimed. “Where the hell are we going to sleep?”

“Right here. Until about two thirty in the morning.”

“Wonderful.”

“Well I'll have a sandwich and imagine it's that delicious crab we had in Newport.”

Covert observation posts are perhaps one of the most boring and yet stressful tasks anyone can undertake, even if it's only for a half a day and half a night. There is absolutely nothing to do, except keep still, watch and stay out-of-sight. The cover and shadows provided by the large boulders scattered across the rocky ridgeline above the arroyo provided us a measure of shelter from the intense heat and hid us from view. Comfortable it was not, but Julie managed to find a sandy soft spot tucked up beneath an overhang where the desert sand had blown in and was able to scrape herself a 'bed' that was at least softer than solid rock. And, as was her uncanny ability, fell fast asleep while the sun dipped toward the horizon, the only sound now that the graders had stopped, was the helicopter returning from wherever it flew. The pilot shut down, walked toward the office and five minutes later several men and two women exited, climbed into the SUVs and drove away, presumably to their homes in Mojave.

As darkness fell, the quiet of the evening was broken only by the sounds of nocturnal creatures venturing out from their burrows to hunt and feast in the cool desert night, until the sun forced them back underground to sleep away the heat of the day.

At two o'clock in the morning
, as the half moon descended toward the horizon several hours before the pale light of dawn would begin to filter across the desert-scape, I started packing up our little camp site. Julie lay sleeping, wrapped up against the cold, mouth slightly open and eyelids twitching in REM sleep, stirring as I gently shook her shoulder.

“Time to go,” I whispered. She nodded eyes still closed, and promptly turned and fell asleep again. This time I pinched her ear lobe. Her eyes snapped open, unfocused for a moment, hand reaching up to rub her ear.

“What was that?” she said groggily.

“Me. Time to go.”

As I finished clearing up, Julie struggled out of her sleeping bag, rolled it up and took the bottle of energy drink from me, sipping slowly in the cool night air.

“Did you sleep?” she asked, taking a chocolate covered muesli bar from her backpack.

“No.”

“You should have woken me earlier.”

“I wasn't sleepy.”

“That's not true.”

I shrugged. She was right, but I was too edgy to sleep, watching hour after hour for any signs of movement from the Coltrane Buildings and seeing nothing. But that's what observation posts are all about.

We finished stowing everything away, slung the packs over our shoulders and headed for the wire fence. Taking the compressed liquid nitrogen can from my backpack and the gardening gloves, I set to work on the fence. After spraying a horizontal line along the chain links, about three inches up from the ground, I pulled hard on the fence and the links broke at the spray line. All I had to do to create a hole big enough to crawl through, was to spray another two vertical lines two feet high from either end of the broken fence, then bend the fence up. It was quiet and once through, I bent the fence back and used a couple of the broken links to 'tie' together the hole I'd made. From six feet away it would be difficult to spot by a casual observer.

Within ten minutes, Julie and I crossed the rough ground where the graders had been hard at work, and knelt against the concrete wall of the main factory building.

Apart from foraging night animals, there seemed to be no signs of life.

We waited for two minutes, just listening before we moved. Better to take time and be sure. I glanced up at the lightening sky and as I did so I caught sight of a small window open, high up on the wall near the roof.

"An open window but no way to get to it," I whispered. Just above the window was the edge of the flat roof. “There must be some way to get to the roof. If I could do that then it would be a relatively simple process to swing down to the window ledge and in.”

“Okay,” Julie replied doubtfully.

We carried on cautiously round the building.

Access onto the roof came in the form of one of the trucks that had been parked close up against the wall. The top of the cab was about seven feet below the overhanging edge of the roof. I hadn’t exerted myself so much since the Army, and despite the cool desert night, dripped with sweat. Once on the flat roof I lay still for a minute catching my breath, listening again for sounds of any movement.

“Stay there, I'll open the office block door as soon as I've cleared the building.” I whispered down to Julie, who walked around the corner of the building toward the office block. I moved over to where I estimated the window was, flipped myself over the edge of the roof and through the open window. There was a stack of crates against the wall. They were stacked in steps so it was easy to get down to ground level.

It seemed as if I was in the despatch area to judge from the markings on the crates. The address on each crate was to Venus Automotive, Dundonald Northern Ireland, which I knew did not exist. The only company in Dundonald to which De Costas had any affiliation, was Rathborne Micro-Electronics. All the crates were firmly sealed except for one at the end of the row. The lid came off easily and beneath a layer of packing material were rows of hollow rectangular aluminium beams about seven feet long by nine inches high and five inches wide. There was no time to examine these any closer, so I moved on and came to a door, that led to a small machine room. All the equipment was new and looked as if it had never been used. I carried on through the door at the end and found myself in what looked like the fabrication area for the aluminium beams. Empty crates were stacked against one wall, a jig for the fabrication of the beams and two other jigs for fabricating what looked like pressures pipes, valves and small odd-looking pressure vessels.

Access to the offices was through unlocked double glass swing doors, into an open plan office with partitioned cubicles. There were new carpets on the floor, new typewriters on the desks; indeed the furniture was brand new, clean and shiny. The door I was looking for was off to the right, an exit that led out to the helipad and parking lot where Julie should be waiting for me.

Just as I passed a venetian blind covered window, I saw the shadow of a man backlit by the moon. My heart stopped as I pictured Julie lying cold and broken outside the door.

“That's just your imagination. Slow down,”
I thought rapidly, steadying myself against the worst possible thought I could have. The shadow was moving toward the door just as I was, the door that opened outwards as every exit door should for fire safety reasons.

The cool military part of me waited until I estimated that the man was just up to the door, and then I twisted the handle and slammed my shoulder against it at the same time.

The door flew open and caught the surprised figure with the force of a two hundred pound sledgehammer. I heard his wrist break, then his nose and jaw as the solid steel fire door met soft tissue and bone. He was flung backwards and I heard, with satisfaction, the crunch as the back of his head hit the edge of the unyielding concrete of the helipad walkway. It was all over in a second or two, and I stood listening for the sound of a partner. There must be one, but the only sounds I could hear was the cicadas and the bubbling sound of the man's blood filling his lungs.