Event: A Novel Page 3

  Ryan’s mind was spinning as his chute deployed and his ejection seat separated. He was fiercely concentrating on his own survival. He tried to turn and finally caught sight of the Phoenix’s contrail through the sky and watched as he saw the long-range missile strike the second saucer, sending pieces flying off its aft quarter. The saucer lost altitude but quickly recovered, and it and the first saucer disappeared into the clouds on a northeasterly heading.

  Now as Ryan looked about, he knew Derry was gone. Distant splashes in the water showed him where his commander’s remains were striking the sea. The sky was now clear except for the two chutes that settled lazily for the sea. Ryan watched as Chavez’s chute swung back and forth in big hitching motions. Ryan looked closer and saw Chavez’s arms hanging loosely at his sides. The lieutenant closed his eyes a moment, knowing in his heart what the uncontrolled chute meant.

  TWO

  One hundred miles east of Apache Junction, Arizona

  0750 Hours

  Augustus Simpson Tilly had been on this desert since the end of the Korean War. Buck, his mule, had been with him for a third of that time, and they had both become something of a legend in these parts, along with the mountains he prospected. The locals referred to him as Crazy Gus or Old Nut Case, depending on their age. The old man knew they called him those things and didn’t really care. He heard the whispers and the not-too-quiet laughter that followed him in the Broken Cactus Bar and Grill in Chato’s Crawl, just down the road from Apache Junction. Julie Dawes, the owner of the bar, would shush them, then buy Gus a beer and tell him they didn’t know any better. But Gus knew deep down they did. He knew how he looked to others: old, grizzled, dirty, and every year of his life chiseled onto a face that had seen the worst in others.

  Gus had lived through the Chosin Reservoir in Korea, a long and forgotten valley that most history books try to skip over. It was one of those moments that would haunt the army and Marines forever. Gus had had to live through strapping the bodies of his best friends to the sides of tanks just to get them out of that frozen valley of death. He watched as men, his men, perished in the cold and snow. It had been a bloody, grim time, and after seeing what mankind was capable of doing to one another, he chose the company of Buck. And the reason way he now lived in the desert wasn’t just for chasing the legend of a lost gold mine and all its riches. He was there just to be warm. He lamented the scorching heat to those that would listen, but inside it warmed him in places that he thought the sun could never reach again because of those freezing, desperate days in Korea. The desert had become his closest friend for the last fifty years, his shelter from a world he had found was better off without him.

  He and Buck had been walking since sunup to get to the base of the mountains before midday. He wanted to start digging at a new site he had discovered the week before. He had told Buck the site showed some promise.

  Without warning, the wind suddenly sprang up with a vengeance from the south. Sand pummeled the old man and his mule like a solid wall of speeding needles. The mule bucked and kicked; the braying of the animal was lost in the sudden fury of the wind and blowing sand. Gus quickly pulled his red bandanna up over his mouth and nose, then pulled at the leather reins, trying to steady the animal while holding his time-battered, brown fedora on his head with the other.

  “Whoa there, Buck, settle down, it’s only a little blow,” he shouted, but the wind kidnapped his voice.

  The mule’s instincts were telling it this was anything but a natural windstorm, and deep down the old man knew it too. The temperature had dropped at least ten degrees and there hadn’t been so much as a whisper of breeze just a moment before. Gus Tilly had lived by these mountains all of his adult life and this had never happened before, not like this. And besides, he knew Buck wasn’t afraid of much, but this bizarre weather change was scaring the senses out of his friend.

  The pots, pans, and other necessities of the old prospector rattled as Buck tried to shed himself of the weight of the loaded pack. As Gus desperately tried to calm him, a great roar filled the ears of both man and animal. The old man lowered himself to the ground as the very air above him ripped apart and something passed by with an ear-shattering roar. He was covered by condensed vapor brought down from the white clouds above, and then another roar, not unlike the first, tore the sky. As suddenly as it had begun, the wind died and the sand settled. The old man looked at the sky and then at the mule as Buck stepped uneasily as he looked around at the now quiet desert, sniffing the air. His ears flicked.

  “Damnedest thing I ever saw, Buck boy. What d’ you say?” he asked, pulling the dust-caked bandanna down from his face.

  The mule just looked at his owner and then showed his teeth, all eight of them. But before he could comment further, a loud explosion roared across the desert, and at that moment the old-timer was suddenly thrown off his feet and onto his back, landing on small rocks and scrub, knocking the breath from his old body. He rolled over and placed his hands over his head. The rumble that followed took what little air remained in his lungs. Buck tried to spread his strong legs for better support, then suddenly lost his balance and collapsed. Going down first to its knees, the animal then rolled over, smashing the carefully loaded pack. The ground shook, rolled, and then settled, and finally all was still again.

  The old man gasped for air and tried willing himself to breathe. He rolled over onto his aching back and peered up and saw the low foothills and then the mountains. They were the same as they had been the last half century of his life. Quiet and still. But he felt a strangeness within him that hadn’t been there a few moments before. He swallowed and propped himself on his elbows, then rolled back over and gained his feet. He had never given the mountains a second thought, but now he was afraid to look at them too closely. As the old man looked on, several jackrabbits sprang from their holes and sprinted out into the desert, away from the mountains. A coyote then bounded across his vision, heading the same way as the rabbits, although it was not in pursuit. The coyote looked back at the rocky-faced mountains, then swung its head forward and sped along even faster, tongue lolling from its mouth.

  The mule’s reins were still clutched in Gus’s strong hand, and he numbly watched as Buck first rolled to the right and then went to his knees, then to his feet, as items fell from the pack. The mule looked at the old man accusingly as if he were responsible for this embarrassing episode.

  Gus shook his head to clear it. “Son of a bitch, things are gettin’ a mite strange out here, and don’t go lookin’ at me, I didn’t knock you off your feet.”

  But Buck wasn’t listening; he pulled the reins free of the old man’s grip, and like the rabbits and the coyote, he ran from the mountains as fast as his heavy load would allow. Gus could only watch in astonishment as the mule sped into the desert. He slowly turned and looked at the now quiet and, for a reason he didn’t understand, menacing Superstition Mountains.

  It had taken Gus over an hour to find Buck. He had followed the trail of pots, pans, and shovels until he came across his companion chewing some sagebrush down by an old washout. The mule casually munched away as if the blow that had happened upon them earlier was nothing but a distant memory. The tarp was hanging loose at the mule’s side, and the old man’s few possessions that hadn’t fallen out during Buck’s furious romp were dangling from the damaged pack. The old man cussed the mule as he tried to put everything back in and repack. The huge animal was outright ignoring Gus.

  “Go ahead and act like it wasn’t you running like a scared jackrabbit,” he grumbled. He walked around and looked the mule in the eyes. “You could have broken your leg running across this hardpan like that!” Gus scratched his four-day-old growth of beard and softened his voice. “Well, that wind had me spooked a little myself, old boy, don’t feel too bad.” He stroked the animal’s nose. Buck twitched his right eye and flicked his ears, but kept chewing.

  “Okay, ignore me then, you old bastard. See if I talk to you any more today. Now let’s get
back up there and get to work.” He grabbed the reins and started to tug. The mule, after some initial resistance, started forward, still chewing.

  The old man adjusted the fedora he wore high on his head and wiped a line of sweat from the side of his face.

  “But, Lord, it sure is gonna be a scorcher,” he mumbled, looking at the sun. “Let’s get movin’, boy, gold’s awaitin’,” he said without much enthusiasm as he once again started his now reluctant trek to the mountain.

  PART ONE

  THE EVENT GROUP

  Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

  —GEORGE SANTAYANA

  Welcome back, my friends to the show that never ends, so glad you could attend, come inside, come inside…

  —EMERSON, LAKE, & PALMER

  THREE

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  July 7,0900 Hours

  Major Jack Collins walked into the Gold City Pawnshop at the appointed time. He placed his carryall on the floor and wiped the sweat from his forehead. The air-conditioned shop was a break from the relentless heat outside. With his last ten years in and out of deserts around the globe, heat was something the major was used to, but never really embraced.

  Collins stood six foot two inches tall and his close-cropped hair was dark. His features were chiseled from thousands of hours in suns not unlike the Nevada one. He removed the sunglasses from his eyes and let his vision adjust to the dimness of the old shop. He glanced around at several of the items on display, sad treasures people had parted with in order to stay in Vegas, or to get the hell out, depending upon their disposition. Collins himself gambled with items a little more precious than money, usually the lives of men, including his own.

  A man stood silent in the back room of the pawnshop. Six cameras arranged throughout the large shop area were motion-sensitive, capturing the new arrival in every detail, from the line of sweat that coursed down the man’s temple to the expensive sunglasses he held in his right hand, the nice sport jacket and light blue shirt he wore. The observer turned to a computer screen and cross-matched the image of the stranger with one that had been programmed earlier. A red chicken-wire laser charted the man’s body, cutting his head and body into reference points for the computer to match. At the same time another invisible laser read the small glass area that blended nicely with the antique thumb-depression plate on the door handle he had used to enter the shop. On another high-definition computer screen a large, detailed print appeared; this one read the minute swirls and valleys of his thumbprint. A print, perfect in every detail, flashed onto the screen, then the computer broke the print down to eighteen different points; lines indicating matches went from the computer-stored print to the one just taken from the door handle. Only seven points of match were used to convict people in a court of law, but this print matchup called for a minimum of ten. A name appeared in the lower right-hand corner of the screen, followed seconds later by an image of the man himself. In this picture he wore a green beret and sat unsmiling for the camera. The scroll beneath the picture read, Major Jack Samuel Collins, United States Army Special Operations. Last duty station Kuwait City, 5th Special Forces Group, TDA this date to Department 5656. The man behind the door snickered to himself as he read the screen. Temporary duty assignment my ass, the old man thought, not if the senator and Doc Compton have anything to say about it.

  Collins looked around again and tapped one of the glass-topped counters twice with the ring that was embossed with the United States Military Academy logo. “Who’s minding the store?”

  “You break that counter, friend, you’re buying it,” a voice stated flatly from the back of the store.

  The major looked into the gloom of the dingy, dusty pawnshop. Back among the hanging musical instruments and amplifiers, he saw a smallish man appear and lower his bifocals down upon his nose from where they had been resting, propped on his forehead. He had cruelly cut gray hair that showed his scalp.

  “What can I do for you, sonny?” the old Hispanic man asked.

  Collins left his bag sitting on the floor and walked to the back of the shop. He was aware of the items surrounding him on the walls and in the racks. As he passed by the boxes with old records and other boxes that held their technological replacements, the CD, he saw the old man’s eyebrows rise.

  “Maybe you can help me,” Collins said, a smile lifting the corners of his mouth slightly. “I’m looking to sell a watch and was wondering what I could get for it.”

  “Depends on the quality, son.”

  “Well, it’s an old railroad-retirement pocket watch, belonged to my father.”

  “Pocket watches are always nice, just can’t get rid of ’em.”

  That was the answer Collins had been aiming for. He reached into his back pocket, drew his ID out, and placed it on the glass counter for the clerk to see. The man with the gray hair and bifocals looked down at the military identification, then back into the piercing blue eyes of the stranger. The passwords had been exchanged and accepted.

  “Welcome to the Group, Major.”

  Collins looked the store over and grimaced. “I was told this would be different,” he said as he looked back at the man before him.

  “Don’t laugh, Major, this store turns over a nice profit. You’ll see the results in the Group’s mess hall.” The old man came from around the counter and walked to where Collins had left his bag. “I’m Gunnery Sergeant Lyle Campos of the great United States Marine Corps and security for this entrance. Gate Two is what she is,” he said over his shoulder. “If you’ll follow me, we’ll get you started for the complex.”

  He picked up the major’s bag and walked back around the counter, nodding his head for the younger man to follow. They went through two batwing doors into the back area of the pawnshop. Inside were two other men. The shorter of the two stepped forward and took the heavy bag from Campos. The, other, more muscular and bald, walked up to Collins and looked him over. He placed the Beretta nine-millimeter automatic he held at his side into his pants at the small of his back.

  “Welcome to the high desert, sir. I’m Staff Sergeant Will Mendenhall, U.S. Army. This is Lance Corporal Frakes, he’s a jarhead marine.” He gestured to the man now holding Collins’s bag. “We’ll be escorting you through the tunnel to Group, sir.”

  Collins was more wary than impressed. The two men wore civilian clothes; the marine corporal had on shorts, and the black sergeant wore an overly stated red Hawaiian shirt and Levi’s. Jack just nodded his head and wondered to just what cluster-fuck job he had been assigned.

  “Gunny, would you please put the closed sign on the door until we get back?” Mendenhall asked. The old man bobbed his head once and left the office area without further comment.

  “You’ll have to excuse the gunnery sergeant, Major, he’s just a little miffed at recently being placed on the inactive field duty list. He wants to stay with the Group, but he’s only allowed gate security, and I suspect even that may change soon enough.”

  “How old is he?” Collins inquired.

  Mendenhall shook his head as he gestured for the major to follow. “No one’s commenting on Gunny’s age, sir, that’s for self-preservation. He may be old, but he’s a better man than most men half his age. If I asked him, I’m afraid he would break his foot off in my ass… uh, sir,” he said, turning away as he realized he was talking to his new boss. He rolled his eyes at his own conduct.

  The two men led Collins into a smaller room in back of the first. The worn-out wood paneling was cracked and peeling in places. A single, shabby desk occupied the space. A computer monitor sat atop it, looking entirely out of place on the ancient desk. A solitary man sat behind the computer and did not rise to greet the three men but gave an acknowledging nod in the major’s direction. Collins would later learn that the computer monitor served only as window dressing. The real reason to have a desk and fake computer at all was for the Ingram submachine gun clipped to the underside of the desk, and the man’s hidden hand had
a finger placed firmly on its cold steel trigger. The computer monitor was equipped with a pressure trigger on the floor that the guard could reach, and if pushed, it would send the back of the monitor exploding outward along with three hundred disabling tranquilizer darts. This was a small gift from the CEO of Pfizer Pharmaceutical.

  The three men stepped up to the far wall. A motion sensor activated a small panel that popped free of the chipped plaster. The sergeant punched in a six-digit code on the now exposed keypad, which allowed another doorway-sized panel to the right to slide up and into the wall. Inside was a small cubicle, the floor of which was covered in linoleum in the military’s favorite color, puke green (the same found in any government building in the country). The three men stepped in and the sergeant placed his hand onto a clear glass panel as a bright flash lit the small room momentarily, causing Collins to blink.

  “Voice print analysis, please state destination,” a computerized female voice asked from a hidden speaker.

  “Nellis shuttle,” the sergeant said.

  “Thank you, Sergeant Mendenhall,” the voice answered after three seconds had passed for the handprint and voice analyzer to finish.

  “The glass read my finger and palm prints and the computer analyzed the pitch and pronunciation of my voice, thus clearing us for Group entrance. It’s a security device of bio-mechanical engineering,” Mendenhall explained. “If one thing didn’t come back as kosher, the computer with the sexy female auditory system would have rendered us senseless with a two-thousand-volt shock.” He smiled as he said the last statement.

  “Nice, so when do we meet Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock?” Collins asked, not returning the smile. He waited a moment, then turned to the sergeant. “Listen, uh, Sergeant Mendenhall, is it?”