Forty-nine

BURKE ROLLED THE trip counter in the dash to zero, and took it slow.

He had to. The road was so washboarded that twenty-five miles an hour amounted to reckless driving. He could taste the grit in his mouth, and he was thirsty. But there was nothing he could do about it. He’d forgotten to bring any water – not good planning if you think Armageddon is just around the corner. Or, more accurately, up ahead and to the left.

Somewhere around the thirtieth mile on the trip counter, he began to yawn. It was the beer, he told himself, a self-indulgent mistake. He turned on the radio. All he could get was a country-and-western station out of Boise. He turned it up, but it didn’t help. A couple of times, he almost nodded off, but was jolted awake by a pothole. He rolled down the windows.

The effect was instantaneous. The freezing desert air hit him in the face like a bucket of ice water. Falling asleep was no longer a danger. What with the noise, the dust, and the cold, he was uncomfortable enough to stay awake without having to work at it. And the stars were amazing. Distinct and glittering, with the Milky Way draped across the night like a bridal veil.

He rolled up the windows, thinking he’d rather die in a crash than freeze to death. At least, it would be quicker.

Three hours later, he was hunched over the steering wheel, using his windshield wipers against the dust and bug spatter. He was looking for the blue trailer with the pink flamingos, and he was worried. Wilson’s ranch was so isolated that surprise was out of the question. He’d see the headlights from a long way off, and even if Burke were to kill the lights (without somehow killing himself), the noise was inescapable. The car sounded like an avalanche of rebar tumbling down a mountainside.

If he saw the ranch soon enough, he could leave the car and walk in. But “soon enough” was a big question mark in the wide-open spaces he was driving through. And if Mandy was right about this solstice thing, Wilson wouldn’t be asleep at all. He’d be getting ready to dance.

He’d fire the transmitter at first light, Burke thought. And that would be the end of it.

Though, who knew what Wilson was planning to do. If he wanted, he could probably vaporize half the country, à la Tunguska. Just clear-cut the place, from sea to shining sea. But he won’t do that, Burke told himself. Wilson was about the Ghost Dance, and the Ghost Dance was all about the land. Loving the land. So it wouldn’t be Tunguska on a grander scale. It would probably be a reprise of Culpeper, but bigger. If Wilson could permanently disable the electrical and electronic infrastructure of the country, it would be a disaster of geological dimensions. Nearly every economy in the world would crash, and millions would die. People everywhere were dependent on modern technology for everything from food and water to transportation, medicine, and lighting. It would be the end, if not of the world then of the last five hundred years of progress. It would be 1491, all over again.

The idea was so outrageous that Burke didn’t want to take it seriously. It kept spinning away, like the radio signal out of Reno. The body count in San Francisco had “stabilized” at 342. Police were looking for …

A new signal overrode the old. Repent.

Ten minutes later, a clusterfuck of pink flamingos materialized in the headlights in front of a darkened blue trailer, about fifty feet from the road. As Burke drove past, he saw that someone had sprayed the trailer with the words, “Bad Dog!” written large.

Two miles farther along, Burke turned left as he’d been told to do, and immediately, the road got worse. The washboards were now so tall and deep and insistent that it seemed to Burke that the car’s undercarriage wouldn’t be able to take it. Then the road rose up, and the car began to climb the side of a mountain – a feature the bartender had sketched as an inverted V.

His ears popped as he maneuvered through a series of hairpin turns, his headlights strafing the mountainside on his right, then shining off into the abyss on his left. Suddenly, a jackrabbit sprang into the car’s path and, reflexively, Burke slammed on the brakes.

Big mistake.

The car began to surf, riding the washboards, even as its rear wheels fishtailed out of control, spraying gravel. The sedan was moving on its own now, sliding over the road as if it were made of ice. Its relationship to the steering wheel and brakes was suddenly theoretical. In the end, the only thing that stopped the slide was the mountainside itself. The car slammed into a runoff beside the road. The chassis shrieked. There was a thud, a crunch, and the sideview mirror was airborne. Then the car came to a sudden and complete stop, one headlight shining toward the stars, the other in smithereens at the base of a wall of red rock.

Burke took a deep breath, and looked out the window, where the jackrabbit was contemplating with satisfaction his destruction of a once serviceable Nissan Sentra. Burke didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but was leaning toward the latter. At least I wasn’t going downhill, he told himself. If he had been, the skid would have taken him over the edge.

He tried the ignition.

Again and again. But there was no way it was going to start, and even if it did, Burke doubted he’d be able to get the car out of the ditch. Not without a tow truck. And even then, it wouldn’t be drivable.

He leaned in through the driver’s window, and squinted at the trip counter: 51.2. That meant he had about nine miles to go before he got to the ranch. About.

Not that he had any choice. Reaching into the car, he grabbed his new “cell phone,” and started walking.

It was harder than he’d expected, because he couldn’t really see. The road itself was easy enough to distinguish because it was paler than the abyss to his left and the rocks to his right. But whenever he tried to pick up the pace, he stumbled over rocks or stepped into a pothole. Twice, he went sprawling, and turned his ankle badly enough that it hurt like hell. He was thirsty, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. A cloud of gnats hung in the air around him. They didn’t bite, but they got in his eyes, forcing him to stop and knuckle one out every few minutes.

After an hour of this, he began to cramp up.

It seemed like forever since he’d left the saloon in Juniper, but when he looked at his watch, he saw that he’d been gone only about five hours. During that time, he’d thought a lot about what he was doing, and why. His obsession with finding Wilson, he decided, wasn’t really about saving Tommy Aherne’s business. That was just an excuse, and even Tommy didn’t believe it. Eventually, the courts would resolve the matter, and that would be the end of it. No, Burke’s interest in Wilson was deeper, and darker than that. It was … what? The good guy’s version of “suicide by cop.” Burke’s pursuit of Wilson was suicide by terrorist, and it amounted to the same thing.

He hadn’t wanted to live anymore. Not without Kate. Or so he’d thought. But somewhere along the line, this had begun to change. Slowly, and then all at once. He didn’t know when it had happened. There wasn’t a moment when everything changed. These stars …

So all of a sudden, he needed a plan about what to do when he got to the ranch. Because getting himself killed had suddenly lost its attraction. Trudging over the uneven ground, he thought about it long and hard; and slowly, a plan began to form. And it was pure genius: first, he’d get inside. And then he’d knock Wilson out.

It was five fifteen a.m. when he reached the entrance to the ranch, which announced itself with a sign on a lodgepole over the driveway. The sign read “B-Lazy-B.” Cute, Burke thought.

About half a mile up the drive, a smattering of landscape lights glowed in the darkness. Over to the east, or what he guessed was the east, the sky was beginning to fade from black. One by one, the stars were winking out.

Burke crunched up the drive, alarmed by the noise his footsteps made. It wasn’t really bright enough to see very well, but the house was something, a sprawling stone-and-timber affair set in a little mountain meadow. A rustic mansion that reminded Burke of something you’d see at an upscale ski resort. Jackson Hole, maybe, or Telluride.

Flagstone steps curved through a grove of pine trees to the front door. Burke avoided them, and went around to the back, where another door opened onto the kitchen. He felt like a burglar, and worried that the snare drum in his chest would give him away. He tried the door, and it opened easily. They’re in bed, he decided. Which didn’t make sense, unless Burke was wrong about the solstice, or unless Wilson had changed his mind.

He stood in the kitchen with the phony cell phone in his hand, and waited for his eyes to adjust to the absence of stars. In the silence, he imagined the faint sound of music, as if there were a radio, way off in the woods. Then he moved quietly through the house, room by room, praying that Wilson didn’t have a dog. Would a stun gun even work on a dog? Was fur a conductor?

Wilson’s bedroom – number five, by Burke’s count – was at the far end of the house. The bed was unmade, and a flowered bridal tiara rested, wilting, on a vanity crowded with little bottles of perfume. Beside the tiara was a photograph in a silver frame. Burke studied it in the moonlight.

It was a picture of Wilson in a tuxedo, with his arm around a blonde in a wedding dress. They were standing together in a gazebo, surrounded by flower arrangements, and Burke saw that she was wearing the tiara he’d found. Outsized gold and silver bows decorated the posts on either side, and a wall of candles burned in front of a stained-glass window. Burke couldn’t tell if they were inside, posing on a kind of movie set, or if they were outdoors. But the affection they felt for each other was unmistakable. They were radiant. Beaming.

And somewhere else.

Burke sagged against the window frame. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He’d come all this way, and there was no one home.

He let himself out, and began to walk back the way he’d come. It was over now. Except … there was that music again, and the sound of laughter. It was a woman’s laugh, he thought, but … where was it coming from? He turned in his tracks, this way and that, but it was gone now, muted by a breeze through the pines.

Then he saw it – a smudge of light in the treetops. A tall structure with crisscrossed timbers. It looked to be about half a mile away. It was a tower with a room at the top. Like Wardenclyffe.

On the horizon, the mountains were silhouetted against a pink seam that was just beginning to form. Burke turned toward the tower, and continued walking, certain that Wilson was there with his weapon and his woman.

As a bird began to sing, he picked up his pace, thinking, Not good, not good. He hurried on, but he was so tired that his progress was slow. Every once in a while he had to stop, hands on hips, his breath coming in ragged heaves. He was at a high altitude and he wasn’t used to it.

And then he was there, at the base of the tower. He waited a minute until his breath came easier, listening to the muffled voices and music above his head.

Then he took to the winding staircase, and began to climb. He was doing his best to be quiet, but the steps were metal and he might as well have been banging a drum.

“Jack?!” It was a woman’s voice, and there was alarm in it.

Burke paused, and activated the stun gun. Then he resumed climbing, faster now, heading for the little cabin atop the superstructure. Access was through a hole in the floor above his head, a kind of trapdoor that was open. In the darkness on the stairs, it seemed to Burke that he was climbing toward the sun.

The music was gone now.

Two more flights of steps. He paused again to catch his breath, and stared at the door in the floor. The only way to enter the cab at the top was headfirst. If Wilson had a baseball bat, he could swing for the fences, and that would be the end of it.

Burke weighed his options. He could go up. Or he could go down. He went up, taking the stairs two at a time, arriving finally at the top – out of breath, and with a submachine gun staring him in the face.

The woman in the photograph was at Wilson’s side, her mouth open, eyes wide with alarm. Behind Wilson, Burke could see what he guessed was the weapon. It looked like a telescope, mounted on a turret. It was aimed at the heavens, through what appeared to be an open skylight. A retractable roof, of sorts.

“Who the fuck are you?” Wilson asked. “Get in here.” He gestured with the gun.

Burke came through the trapdoor, moving slowly. Irina backed away.

He was halfway through when Wilson said, “Hold it.”

Burke froze.

“What’s that?” Wilson asked, and stepped on his hand.

“Cell phone,” Burke said.

Wilson reached down and took it away. Tossed it onto a chair in the corner. Beckoned Burke to come all the way into the cab. “Who were you calling?”

Burke thought fast. “Police. They’re on their way.”

Wilson nodded. “They’ll never get here,” he said. Suddenly, he frowned. “You’re the guy from Ireland.” He laughed, incredulously. “What are you doing here?”

Burke opened his mouth, but gave up. What was the point?

Wilson just shook his head. “Irina,” he said, “please sit down. Enjoy your wine.” He gestured to a pair of Adirondack chairs that flanked a small table. On the table were a candelabra, two champagne flutes, and a bucket of ice. A telephone sat on the floor.

The woman was in a panic, Burke saw. Her eyes flew between the two men. “Is all right?” she asked, her voice trembling.

“Yeah,” Wilson said with a laugh. “It’s fine. This is Mr. Aherne –”

“Burke. Actually, it’s –”

“Mr. Burke,” Wilson said with an apologetic nod. He turned toward Irina. “Mr. Burke’s a long way from home.”

“Like me,” she said, with a nervous smile.

“No,” Wilson said. “Not like you. You are home. This is your home, sweetheart.”

She blushed. “But why he is –?”

Wilson cut her off with a gesture. “I’m afraid we don’t have a third glass,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting guests. It’s kind of an old-fashioned celebration. Stay up till dawn. Greet the solstice. That kind of thing.”

Burke glanced around. He took in the candelabra, the only source of illumination in the cabin. It occurred to him that Wilson might have fired the transmitter already. It was almost light outside, and out here, how would you know if the world had ended? The landscape lights had been on, but … were they still on? “Did you pull the trigger?”

“Not yet,” Wilson told him.

“Trigger?” This from Irina.

He’s going to kill me, Burke thought. But not in front of his bride.

“Is that it?” Burke asked, gesturing at the transmitter.

Wilson nodded. “You seem to know a lot. How’d you find us?”

“Ukrainebrides,” Burke replied.

Irina brightened. “You know Madame Puletskaya?”

“Yeah,” Burke said. “We’re old friends.”

Wilson glanced outside. “I think it’s time,” he said. “Why don’t you sit over there?” He gestured toward the chair where he’d thrown the “cell phone.”

Burke went over to it, and sat down.

“Do me a favor,” Wilson said.

“What’s that?”

“Just stay off the phone.” With a look of warning to Burke, he laid his gun down on a table next to the transmitter, and began to attach a cable to a laptop on the floor.

Burke watched Wilson go about his business, and thought about the people he’d seen on television, their faces deranged by loss. Loss was something Burke understood, just as he understood what the people in the courthouse must have felt when the temperature began to soar inside their skin. Burke knew what it was like to be badly burned. It was a terrible way to die. A bullet would be better.

And he was going to get one, anyway. Sooner or later.

So he stopped thinking, and came out of the chair so fast that Wilson couldn’t grab his gun quickly enough. Irina screamed, and a glass crashed to the floor as Burke plowed into the bigger man, driving him into the wall. The two men fell to the floor, wrestling. Burke had one arm around Wilson’s neck, and was punching him with the hand that held the cell phone. But he was no match for the Indian. The guy was just too strong.

Though Wilson was on the bottom, he got a hand on Burke’s neck and began to squeeze. Burke felt the air fly from his lungs, even as his thumb found the activator on the cell phone. He slammed the phone into Wilson’s neck and, in an instant, there was a staticky crackle, and Wilson began to go limp. Jesus Christ, Burke thought, it’s working! It’s actually –

Lights out.

When he came to, about five minutes later, he was sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs, bleeding from his good ear, which Irina had clobbered with the candelabra.

Wilson stood next to the transmitter. Irina was pointing the submachine gun at Burke, crying softly to herself. “Why is crazy man coming here?” she asked. “What does he want? Jack!”

Wilson shook his head, typing on the laptop. “He wants things to stay the way they are.”

“We call police, okay?” she asked.

“Well …”

“But he attacks you!”

“It doesn’t matter,” Wilson told her. Then he turned to Burke. “That was cute,” he said. “A real surprise.”

“Thanks,” Burke replied. He brought his hand away from his ear and stared at the blood on it.

Wilson returned his attention to the computer.

Then they heard it – a thwop thwop sound, outside the tower. They turned and looked, and saw it right away: a helicopter hovering about a hundred yards from the ranch house.

Burke couldn’t believe it. It could only be Kovalenko. Or someone sent by Kovalenko. He’d given the guy enough to figure it out. Once Culpeper and the courthouse got their attention, it wouldn’t have been all that hard for the Bureau to find Wilson and the B-Lazy-B. They certainly had the resources. So the cavalry had arrived.

Too late.

“They friends of yours?” Wilson asked.

Burke shook his head. He would have laughed, but there was too much at stake and, besides, he hurt too much.

“I don’t think the helicopter’s going to be a problem,” Wilson said, typing furiously. “In about a minute, it’s going down. Everything is.” He looked out the window. “Why are they at the house?”

“Because the guy who’s running the operation is an idiot, that’s why,” Burke explained.

Wilson nodded. “I’m not surprised.”

“Why is there helicopter?” Irina asked.

“It’s the police,” Wilson told her. “They’re coming to arrest Mr. Burke.”

“Good,” she said.

Wilson turned back to the laptop. In the distance, a bullhorn began to call his name. He shook his head.

“We should tell them where we are,” Irina said.

“In a minute,” Wilson replied.

“I thought you guys were in love,” Burke suggested.

Wilson paused, and turned to look at him.

“We are,” Irina insisted, proudly.

“What’s that got to do with you?” Wilson asked.

“Nothing, I guess, but … you’re gonna kill her with that thing,” Burke told him. “Seems like a helluva way to end a honeymoon.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Wilson replied. “It’s not like a bomb.”

“I know,” Burke said. “But … she’s got a pacemaker.”

Wilson stared at him. Finally, he said, “What?”

“Irina. Has. A. Pacemaker.”

Wilson blinked a few times. Then he laughed. “Good try,” he said. “Full marks.”

But Irina started to cry. “And how you are knowing this?” she demanded. “This is my secret!” Her whimpers deepened into the soft sobs of a distraught child.

“ ’Rina?” Wilson went to her side, his voice so soft it was barely audible.

“I don’t want you to know,” she said, “I am damage goods. Is why I make love with you in dark. No way you see scar. Is ugly.” She wailed. “Now you’re not wanting me!”

A strange smile came to Wilson’s face. He gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. Then he went to her, and crouched by her side. “Show me,” he said, taking the submachine gun from her.

She complied, sobbing in the way little kids do, taking shuddery breaths. She fumbled at the buttons to her blouse, and finally pulled it aside, baring the scar. Wilson ran his finger along the ridgeline of skin, then pressed his lips to it.

Burke felt like a voyeur. He turned away.

“I love you,” Wilson told her, his voice thick with emotion.

“I –” Her voice fell apart. The sobs came heavier.

“Shhhhh,” Wilson said. “I love you. I’ll always love you.”

In the corner of the room, a telephone rang. It was the last thing Burke expected to hear and the sound startled him.

Wilson kissed the top of Irina’s head and tried to dry her tears with his fingertips. Her weeping subsided. The phone continued to ring.

Finally, Wilson got to his feet. Burke couldn’t read the expression on his face. “It’s an extension from the house,” he said as he moved toward the ringing phone. He picked up the receiver. Listened. With a smile, he put the palm of his hand over the phone and turned to Burke. “Somebody named Kovalenko wants me to come out of the house with my hands in the air. He says he knows I’m in there.”

Burke didn’t know what to tell him.

Wilson said into the phone: “Give me a minute.” Then he hung up, and slowly crossed the room to the transmitter. Laying his fingertips on the laptop’s keyboard, he took a deep breath. And hesitated.

For a moment, it seemed to Burke that Wilson was screwing up his courage to derail the world. But that wasn’t it at all.

Wilson was sailing in a secret storm between one dream and another, tossed this way and that by the uncertainties of his own heart. Love and revenge waited in the darkness, sirens singing from the reefs surrounding his imagined Paradise. He’d risked everything, and it had come to this: Which reef would he wreck himself upon? Love … or Revenge?

Finally, he exhaled. Jerking the plug from the laptop, he closed the computer and gave it to Burke. “Don’t let them get this. It wouldn’t be good.”

Burke nodded.

“Get Irina out of here,” Wilson said. “Away from here, and away from the house. There’s a footpath behind the tower. It goes to the hot springs. She can show you the way.”

“No,” Irina cried. “I stay with you.”

Both Burke and Wilson ignored her. “And what do I do, once I’m there?” Burke asked.

“Get rid of the laptop,” Wilson said. “There are caves, and the one that’s farthest west has a cenote, about thirty feet inside the entrance.”

“A cenote?”

“A well. It’s actually a mine shaft. They used to mine silver here. Anyway, the well is a couple of hundred feet deep. So be careful. Way down, it’s filled with water. If you drop a rock in, and count to six, slowly, you’ll hear the splash. So toss the laptop in, and forget about it.”

Burke nodded. In truth, he wasn’t even sure he could walk. His ribs hurt, and his head was pounding. But he wasn’t going to argue. If Wilson was going to make a last stand, Burke didn’t want to be there for the finale.

“Irina, sweetheart. I want you to go with Mr. Burke,” Wilson said.

“No, no Jack,” she crooned. “Nooooo. I stay with you. I want –”

Wilson smiled teasingly. “Already? Just a week ago, you promised to obey. C’mon,” he cajoled, “you promised. Remember?”

Burke had no idea what was going through Irina’s mind, but suddenly, she stopped weeping. She nodded her head solemnly, and kissed Wilson on the lips. A long kiss that Wilson ended, drawing away, holding her face in his hands.

“Go on,” Wilson told her.

Irina turned. She was weeping again but she began to climb down. Burke was right behind her.

Wilson watched them descend from the tower, and begin running. Burke was practically dragging Irina, though Wilson could see that he was in pain. Irina kept her eyes turned toward the tower all the while. And then the two figures were gone, lost amid the trees.

The phone rang, and Wilson picked it up. A voice shouted at him over the thwop thwop thwop of a helicopter’s rotors: “I’m losing patience!”

“You’ll be lucky if that’s all you lose,” Wilson told him.

“What?! Let me explain something to you,” the voice screamed. “You got one chance to walk out of that house alive. Either you come out, now – or I’m taking you out! Which way do you want it?”

Wilson nearly laughed. The uncertainties he’d felt a minute earlier were gone now, replaced with an unfamiliar clarity and calm. He was not going back to prison. He’d rather die. And would. Soon.

He could escape, of course – for a little while, anyway. He could lose himself in the trees, then make his way into the mountains. Like Geronimo. He could hide for a while, moving from place to place, scavenging food and shelter. But what was the point? Better to die like a man than live like a dog.

And it was, as they say, a good day to die – the right day to die. The solstice.

“Wilson!” The FBI agent’s voice crackled over the phone.

“I’m thinking …”

In fact, he’d made up his mind. But he had to get their attention before they turned their guns on the house and burned it to the ground. Irina would need the house. He could tell that she was going to love it here.

Grabbing the Ingram, he went to the window and smashed the glass. Without even bothering to aim, he fired a long burst in the direction of the helicopter – and then another. And another. The chopper swayed, jerked upwards, and turned toward the lookout tower.

Wilson laid the submachine gun on the floor. Straightening to his full height, he stripped to the waist, revealing the ghost shirt that was his flesh – the crudely etched crescent moon and dragonfly, the stars and birds, and the words in Paiute:

when the earth trembles, do not be afraid.

Through the broken window, he saw the helicopter bearing down on the tower. Slowly, he began to dance, singing a song without words.

Running through the trees, Burke and Irina stumbled over the rocky ground, heading toward the hot springs. They were almost there when a burst of submachine-gun fire shattered the morning air. The volley of shots was answered a moment later by the distant thwop of the helicopter, growing louder and more urgent.

My God, Burke thought. He’s drawing them to the tower. Irina was sobbing. Burke expected to hear a fusillade of gunfire, but what he heard instead was a zipper of noise, a sort of whoosh, followed by a blaze of light and a shock wave that threw the two of them to the ground.

Irina quaked in terror as a second explosion, and then a third, shook the trees around them. Looking up, they saw a pillar of black smoke churning into the sky. The tower was gone.

Irina screamed.

Burke grabbed her by the arm and pulled her toward the hot springs. “Wait for me,” he told her and, getting to his feet, ran toward the caves. It took him a minute to find the one Wilson had told him about.

It was dark and damp, and he moved gingerly into the blackness, feeling his way with his hand on the wall, sliding his feet across the floor. When his right foot found the edge of something, he gave the laptop a little toss. And listened.

There was no sound. And then, just as Wilson promised, he heard a splash.

Returning the way he’d come, he called out to Irina. But, of course, she wasn’t there. She was on her way back to the tower, Burke thought, or to what was left of it. Looking for love. Or what was left of it.

It was something they had in common.