thirty-five

“Is it me or is this place creepy?” said Ruth. They were standing outside the helicopter and studying their surroundings. The air smelled thick with smoke, burned rubber, and metal, and down here it was like looking through a thin veil that shifted violently with every final turn of the rotors.

It was clearly an airfield—or had been—but apart from the obvious runway and the two buildings in the distance, it looked long-abandoned, strewn with weeds and coarse grassy clumps sprouting out of the concrete like bristles on an old man’s chin. The only thing to Ruth’s mind that was missing was a ball of tumbleweed rolling across the landscape and some Morricone music in the background.

“It certainly has an atmosphere.” Vaslik was looking down at the ground alongside the helicopter. Dave had landed on a patch of stubby grass, but a couple of feet away the ground was dusty where a bowl of wind-blown soil had built up over time. “But we’re not the first to come here.”

The other two followed the direction of his glance to where a set of twin tyre tracks had cut the corner.

Vaslik knelt and ran a finger across the tread marks. “These look pretty fresh. A commercial vehicle or a pickup.”

“Could be campers or hunters,” suggested Dave. “Or kids fooling around.”

“What, out here?”

“Sure, why not? Clay did. But I’m thinking older kids—the kind who play with matches.”

“Humour me, Cochise,” Ruth said to Vaslik. “How can you tell these are fresh?”

He grinned. “God, you city folk just crack me up.” He cast around and pointed to where another tyre print farther over was full of wind-blown dust. “These are several days old. This one hasn’t been dusted in yet.” He glanced up and nodded towards the two buildings in the distance. “Shall we go look?”

Ruth shielded her eyes and studied the two structures. The hangar was nothing but a blackened skeleton of concrete, with the roof structure partly in place but hanging down on one side like a giant bird with a broken wing. Puffs of dark smoke drifted up in one corner, but most of the fire looked to have burned itself out. Even in this defeated and ruined condition, it wore the sad demeanour of a place long forgotten and left to decay. Like ancient barns and cowsheds back home in England, it was now just a footprint in history.

She looked up as a flutter of movement caught her eye. A flock of birds swooped by, twisting and turning in formation against the pale sky, changing places in bursts of bewildering speed, yet always tight together as if joined by hidden wires.

“Starlings,” she said aloud, caught for a moment by their air of total liberation. “The hooligans of the bird world.”

Vaslik looked at her. “I never figured on you as a bird watcher. Do you have any other nasty habits you haven’t mentioned?”

“No. We get them in England. My dad’s always complaining about the mess they make of his car.” She reflected on how odd it seemed, seeing the birds here in numbers, dancing to their own tune as if everything was quite normal and not threatening to go to hell at any moment. And about as different to the other flying objects they were searching for as it was possible to get. “What did Brasher mean,” she asked, “when he said not to go in cold?”

Dave hesitated, his face set. “Let me show you.” He went to the helicopter and reached into the back. He took out a small, flat alloy briefcase and flipped the catches.

Inside were twin Sig Sauer 229 semi-automatic pistols. He handed one to Ruth and added a spare magazine, then did the same to Vaslik. Ruth checked the mechanism and load, set the safety, and put the pistol and spare mag in her coat pocket. It felt intrusive and cumbersome, and she hoped she wouldn’t have cause to use it. But better safe than dead.

Vaslik did the same with his while Dave handed Ruth an envelope. It contained some folded papers and a permit for a weapon, already showing her photo and thumbprint.

“What’s this?”

“It’s for show in case we get stopped. Andy doesn’t need one—his licence to carry is still valid. If anything happens leave all the talking to me. The papers are indemnity forms in case you shoot anyone—especially me—and a nondisclosure agreement for any and all branches of law enforcement we might connect with.” He smiled. “The government likes to think you won’t go off and make a million by spilling the beans about federal or state agencies and their methods of operation.”

“So now I’m working for the US government? How is that legal?”

“It’s open to interpretation, I admit. But if we run into some bad guys I’d rather have you alive to argue the point afterwards than to have to ship you back in a box because we didn’t take the precaution of giving you a way to defend yourself.”

“Fair point. And the photo and thumbprint? How did you get them?”

“Tom Brasher said he fixed it once he figured which way things were going. Some guy named Aston sent them over from your London office. He figured you might need them. He said there was a possibility you two were being followed and it might be connected with this business. It’s better than nothing and only to be used in extremis.”

She signed the permit and papers and put them away in her coat pocket. “Let’s hope we don’t need them.”

“Amen to that. But anything’s possible. If Chadwick was lifted and is being held against his will to do this thing, I doubt the people holding him will let him go without a fight. I’d rather be ready for that.” Dave flicked open his windcheater and they saw the butt of a semi-automatic against his side.

“This isn’t your fight,” Vaslik pointed out. “And we might be chasing shadows.”

“Go suck on it,” Dave retorted good-naturedly. “If Tom thinks this is for real, then it’s for real, and I haven’t had fun like this is ages. Now, are we doing this or standing around wasting time?”

Ruth and Vaslik set out along the access road, keeping several feet of space between them, while Dave hung back and off to one side, ready to support them. The likelihood of there being a threat was slim to zero, but none of them were ready to take that chance.

The hangar was set back about a hundred yards from the runway, and still bore the remains of an ancient sign that must have once carried a name. Other than the faint outline of letters that might have spelled field, the wood had been scorched by the fire and was unreadable. The remains of the main doors stood open on their tracks, and as they approached they could see right through the building to a small rear door in a cinder-block wall surround standing open in one corner. A line of windows showed down one side of the hangar, the glass cracked and clouded with soot.

They stopped thirty yards back, listening and tuning into the atmosphere. Other than the distant sound of a bird singing, the only other noises were the faint hum of a breeze through the open roof and a clack-clack of a loose strip of wood hanging down by the main doors.

Ruth wondered if they were being watched from beyond the airfield boundary but quickly dismissed it. She didn’t feel that itch that came from imminent danger. If ever a place seemed dead, this was it, especially now that fire had come to seal its fate for good.

“I’ll take the back,” she said, and fingered the Sig in her coat pocket. “You want to do the front?”

Vaslik nodded. “I’ll give you time to get there. Watch the windows down the side.” He turned and signalled their intentions to Dave with hand movements, and got a nod in return.

Ruth set off down the side of the building, walking steadily and relying on her peripheral vision to spot any movements. As she entered a patch of shadow cast by a section of cinder-block wall that was still standing, she suppressed a shiver. It was just an old building, she knew that; but places like this carried their own aura, gathered by all the years of their existence and the people who had passed through and left a trace of their time here. She didn’t feel in any danger, exactly, but the sheer size of the place now she was walking in its shadow, as damaged as it was, seemed to tower menacingly over her, dwarfing everything around it.

She reached the first of the side windows and peered through a hole in one of the panes. She saw a room about fifty feet by twenty that might once have been an office or work area. The frame of a metal chair and trestle table stood in the centre, with a blackened, smouldering pile of what looked like sheets of board farther along. But no people. Then she was past it and heading for the rear of the building, skirting clumps of grass littered with abandoned sheet metal, concrete, tubing, wiring, and other unnameable detritus, along with pieces of the roof and wall fabric that had fallen in the fire.

The access door was still in one piece, held open by a wedge-shaped lump of metal Ruth recognised as a wheel block. It was rusted and pitted with age and had probably been there since the last plane took off and vanished over the horizon. She peered round the edge of the door and saw Vaslik standing at the front of the building. He looked tiny in comparison to the size of the opening. He gave her the go-ahead and she stepped through the door, heading for the office.

The flutter of birds darting about overhead made her stop and look up. It reminded her of some of the counterterrorism training facilities she had been through in the Ministry of Defence Police. Abandoned warehouses and factories, most of them, used to simulate and perfect siege techniques. This wore the same air of desolation and decay, only with the added confusion of nature’s own decorations. Melted snakes of electrical wiring and lengths of chain that had once held strip lighting were hanging from the roof struts like jungle lianas, while an abundance of weeds and grasses below, now crinkled and discoloured with the heat of the fire, had once been growing up to meet them. What little remained of the solid lower walls bore a network of cracks and fissures, with daylight showing through where the mortar had burned out and the cinder blocks had split open.

A thin mist hung above the floor where underlying pockets of moisture had been overheated by the flames, and the soot layer was spotted with the tiny craters where the incoming breeze was turning it back to droplets. Over on the far side of the hangar was a layer of wooden boards, and above it a rusted chain and pulley device. An inspection pit, she guessed. Her nose twitched at a different smell and she saw a small furry animal carcass lying in among the weeds, bloodied and ripped open but showing no signs of fire damage. The predator must have been disturbed by their arrival and slunk away into the surrounding brush to await their departure. The carcass was now being feasted on by an army of flies that moaned and moved as they sensed her presence.

She swallowed hard and kept moving. A carpet of grit underfoot crackled as she walked, echoing off the walls like tiny firecrackers. She stopped and pulled out the Sig, checking the open space above the office area. If anybody was waiting, that’s where they would be.

A whistle from Vaslik. He was halfway down the hangar, standing on an oil drum. He was checking out the same area, his gun held in both hands. He shook his head to give the all-clear and jumped down.

Ruth stepped up to the office door and nudged it open with her foot. It swung back with a groan then stopped. She peered through the gap at the hinges; no bad person waiting to ambush her. Just a thin veil of smoke, trapped in the confined space.

She moved inside.

The room had been burned back to concrete and metal by the fire, with its ceiling gaping open and still smoking. A few of the windows had survived, along with some of the original braided electric wires, hanging from the wall where plug sockets had once been fitted. The room was empty of furniture save for the framework of the chair and trestle table, and beyond it she could now see what were not sheets of board but flattened cardboard boxes. Close by the window was a dark bundle of blankets and wires, oddly untouched by the fire. Stepping forward, she checked the table, which had a heavy-duty iron frame and the remains of a battered and oil-stained Formica top. She touched the surface gingerly with her finger, expecting to pick up years of wind-blown grit beneath the soot, but coming away with just the faintest trace of blackness.

She felt her breathing quicken. This was the place, she just knew it. A dust-free table, burned cardboard boxes—and the blankets that must have been used as black-outs. Whoever these men were, they had set fire to the hangar, but the damage hadn’t been anywhere near complete.

She heard Vaslik enter the room behind her. Stepping past to the pile of burned cardboard, she nudged the sheets aside and saw the familiar label where the flames hadn’t reached. FedEx Express. She took out her cell phone and took photos of the shipping numbers; it was probably unnecessary, but it would give Brasher more evidence that what they were following was real and not some figment of their imaginations.

“The table’s been used recently,” she said, “and those blankets didn’t grow here out of nothing. They look like military surplus.”

He nodded and turned away. “You’re right. There’s a mess of footprints out on the main floor, too.” He sniffed the air. “Can you smell something?”

“It’s a dead animal. A rabbit, I think.” She was about to suggest going to look at the other building when her phone buzzed.

It was Dave Proust. “Folks, I’m inside the old workshop. You really need to come see this.”