Hunter’s knuckles showed white as he gripped the steering wheel of the Chevrolet, then he slowly relaxed.
‘I don’t like the way you said it,’ he muttered, his voice low and harsh, ‘but you’re absolutely right, Dick. We don’t have any options. Somehow, we’ve got to fly in.’
‘Not gonna be easy,’ Reilly said.
Hunter eased his foot off the accelerator pedal and let the Chevrolet coast in towards the side of the road, then turned into the parking lot of a small shopping mall that showed no sign of life whatsoever. He pulled the vehicle to a halt on the side of the parking area furthest from the road, and switched off the engine. Reilly just looked at him.
‘You got an idea?’ Reilly asked.
‘Maybe,’ Hunter said. ‘First, let me take another look at your chest.’
Reilly levered himself slowly and painfully out of the passenger seat and leant against the side of the Chevrolet while Hunter undid the towel and lifted the makeshift pad off Reilly’s chest. Fresh bleeding was evident along almost the whole length of the furrow carved by Morgan’s bullet.
‘Hold on,’ Hunter said, leant into the Chevrolet and opened the glove box. He’d checked the Lincoln for a medical kit, but hadn’t thought to look in the other car.
‘Bingo,’ he said, and pulled out a small oblong white metal box with a red cross on the lid. He popped the lid off and pulled out two three-yard bandages, a selection of felt pads and medical tape. Reilly held the pads in place as Hunter strapped the bandages tightly around him. The result wasn’t perfect, but was a whole lot better than the towel he’d applied previously.
‘Better?’ Hunter asked, as he used a safety pin and tape to secure the end of the second bandage.
‘Yup,’ Reilly replied. ‘Having it tighter helps a lot.’ He glanced down at his chest and two small patches of reddening on the white bandages. ‘Bleedin’ seems to have slowed down some.’
As Reilly waited beside the car, Hunter opened the rear door and rummaged around in the sheriff’s overnight bag until he found a red and dark grey check shirt in heavy cotton.
‘Here,’ he said, ‘put this on. If you bleed onto it, it shouldn’t be too obvious.’
‘OK,’ Reilly said, as Hunter helped him do up the last buttons, ‘now I’m not gonna bleed to death, what’s your idea? I’d like to know,’ he added, with a flash of his old humor, ‘just so’s I can arrange to have the details carved on my headstone when it all goes tits-up.’
‘We’ll hop a Janet flight,’ Hunter said calmly.
‘I knew it,’ Reilly said dismissively. ‘Say it quickly and it sounds real easy. Just one small question. How? And suppose the last one’s already left? In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s not exactly the middle of the workin’ day round here.’
‘Simple. We’ll get them to lay on a special aircraft for us.’
Reilly just looked at him. ‘You bang your head or somethin’ back in that diner parkin’ lot?’ he asked. ‘’Cause you ain’t makin’ a heap of sense right now.’
Hunter turned suddenly at a sound, like a muffled thump, from behind them. ‘Hear that?’ he asked.
‘Yup,’ Reilly said. ‘The guy in the trunk musta woken up.’
‘Exactly,’ Hunter said, ‘and he’s our ticket onto a Janet flight, or he will be by the time I’ve finished with him.’
‘Still nothing?’ Templeton asked, and Grant shook his head as he replaced the two-way radio in its carrier on the dashboard.
The two men were driving around the southern outskirts of Las Vegas. Templeton had put out an APB for the Chevrolet as soon as he’d finished talking to Ketch, but so far no police officer had called it in.
‘Nothing,’ Grant said. ‘Guess his radio’s still turned off.’
‘I don’t believe Reilly and Hunter could have got the drop on Harris and Morgan,’ Templeton said. ‘I worked with Harris in ’nam. He knows what he’s doing. My guess is, either they took out the two perps, or they’re in hot pursuit. They turned the radio off before they confronted the two bad guys, and they’ve just forgotten to switch it back on again.’
‘Yeah, right,’ Grant said, but he didn’t sound convinced.
But as if in confirmation of Templeton’s hypothetical scenario, the squawk of the two-way radio cut brusquely through Grant’s last sentence.
Ketch was exhausted. He sat at his desk with his head slumped in his hands, and looked longingly across the office at his camp bed. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept properly, the last time he’d not been woken up by a ringing telephone or a buzzing intercom unit. He just had to rest for a while.
As he got up to walk over to the bed, he noticed an amber light glowing on the light grey console fitted on the extreme left hand side of his desk. The legend under it read ‘Permission to commence processing requested.’
‘No,’ Ketch muttered to himself, ‘they can fucking well wait.’ He reached out and snapped down the switch which bore the tag ‘Permission to process denied.’
Reilly sat comfortably, or as comfortably as his torn chest would allow, in the centre of the rear seat of the Chevrolet, an automatic pistol pressed lightly against Harris’s left temple. Harris was sitting on the extreme right hand side of the seat, his hands still firmly lashed behind his back, the door beside him wide open.
Hunter had taken pains to explain to Harris this meant that, if Reilly had to pull the trigger, most of Harris’s blood and brains would be ejected outside the car, which would save them having to take too much time cleaning the back seat.
Leaning over from the front seat, Hunter held the two-way radio in his left hand close to Harris’s face. In his right hand, the Glock was trained steadily on the centre of the bound man’s chest.
‘Talk to them,’ Hunter instructed.
‘No way. Go fuck yourself,’ Harris replied, his words slurred and indistinct.
Hunter said nothing, just looked at him. Then he put the Glock down on the seat beside him and reached into his jacket pocket. His hand came back into Harris’s view holding Dick Reilly’s switchblade, which he snapped open.
‘Talk to them,’ Hunter said again.
Harris shook his head, but didn’t take his eyes off the knife. Hunter leaned towards him and placed the point of the blade directly under Harris’s left collarbone. He changed his grip so that the heel of his hand was directly behind the end of the switchblade’s bone handle. Then he looked at Harris again.
‘Talk to them,’ he said.
Harris shook his head, then cried out in pain as Hunter began to exert pressure on the knife. The end of the blade slid perhaps half an inch into the tender flesh below the bone. Blood flowed, reddening Harris’s shirt, and he writhed in agony. Hunter twisted the knife within the wound, then pulled it out.
‘Talk to them.’
Harris looked at him, and shook his head again.
Hunter leaned over the back of the seat and repeated the treatment, this time under Harris’s right collarbone.
‘Look,’ Hunter said, when Harris had stopped yelling, ‘I can do this all day, picking a fresh spot each time, but you’re making a lot of noise and we’re running out of patience. So, I’m going to ask you just once more. Then it’ll probably be too late to convince your friends that you’re OK, and we’ll just kill you anyway, but good and slow. Maybe a gut shot, or perhaps I’ll just rip your stomach open with this knife and let you bleed to death. This really is your last chance. Talk to them.’
Harris stared at him for a long moment, then, as Hunter extended the switchblade again, he nodded.
‘Good,’ Hunter said. ‘Remember to say what we want you to say, and you’ll live a little while longer.’
Hunter pushed the microphone of the radio a little closer to Harris’s face and thumbed the transmit button.
‘Templeton,’ Harris said.
‘Yeah, I’m here. That you, Harris? We were getting worried. What the hell happened?’
Reilly pressed the muzzle of Morgan’s Smith and Wesson harder against Harris’s head, and Hunter nodded encouragement from the front seat.
‘Tell him,’ Hunter said softly, ‘and remember you’ll be making a slow and painful journey to meet your maker if you say anything either of us doesn’t like.’
Hunter depressed the press-to-talk button on the two-way radio and Harris leant forward and began to speak.
‘We switched the radio off before we turned into the diner parking lot. Morgan forgot to switch it on again – he had other things on his mind.’
‘Like what?’
‘I’m coming to that. Where are you?’
‘Cruising around in the south of Las Vegas,’ Templeton replied. ‘By the way, we put an APB out for your car when we couldn’t contact you.’
‘Tell them to cancel it,’ Hunter muttered, then pressed the transmit switch again.
‘Cancel it,’ Harris snapped. ‘I don’t have the time or the inclination to start arguing with some hick cops right now.’
‘No problem. Grant will call in and terminate it.’
‘Now tell them the tale,’ Hunter said, and leant back towards Harris, pointing the switchblade at his bleeding left shoulder. The injured man cringed as far back in the seat as he could, but nodded again.
‘You found the Lincoln?’ Harris asked, into the radio microphone.
‘Yes.’
‘OK. We pulled into the lot at the diner, saw the Lincoln and ventilated it, just in case, but the two perps had gone. We checked out the lot, and found a young guy pretty badly beaten up and dumped in the bushes.’
The radio squawked in Hunter’s hand. ‘Who was he?’
‘Just some guy. Never even asked his name. We got him into the car and took him to Vegas General Hospital. On the way there Morgan talked to him. Seems he’d just pulled into the parking lot with his girl friend for a little horizontal jogging when the two perps arrived. They beat the crap out of him, and took his car and the girl.’
‘Oh, shit,’ Templeton said. ‘So now we’ve got a hostage situation as well.’
‘Doubt it,’ Harris said. ‘I don’t think these two are into that. I think they’ll dump her pretty soon, somewhere out in the wilds. But this guy overheard the two perps talking after they’d beaten him, and thanks to him we do know what they’re going to try to do.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘They’re going to try to get into Groom Lake.’
For a moment, Hunter couldn’t make out what the noise was. Then he realized it was the sound of Templeton’s laughter through the radio speaker. He raised the switchblade and gestured to Harris again.
‘Templeton,’ Harris said.
‘Yeah. Good one. Save us all a job if they try that.’ Templeton was still laughing.
Hunter waggled the switchblade at Harris in encouragement.
‘Listen to me,’ Harris hissed into the radio microphone. ‘So far these two guys have taken out two of my team back in Beaver Creek, abducted the Director of the FBI, and flown out of Washington D.C. with every cop, FBI, CIA and Secret Service agent in the place looking for them. What you don’t do is underestimate them. If they say they’re going to get into Groom Lake, I reckon they’ll find a way.’
Hunter smiled bleakly at Harris, and nodded approval.
‘OK,’ Templeton’s voice sounded tired, and entirely unconvinced. ‘So what do we do now?’
‘You and Grant fuel the car and drive up to Rachel. These two guys may be trying to get in by road and that’s the only access to Groom Lake. In any case, we’ll need wheels in the area. They’re driving a dark green Dodge sedan with Montana plates.’
Harris read out a registration number from the piece of paper that Reilly was holding up in front of his face. Reilly was certain they wouldn’t find the car, because it was parked in his garage back at Beaver Creek.
‘OK,’ Templeton said. ‘Got that. What are you and Morgan going to do?’
‘Fly out to Groom Lake,’ Harris said. ‘That’s where the two perps are trying to get to, so we’re going to arrive first and wait for them out there, just in case they do manage to get in.’
The mobile phone rang again in Ketch’s office. It rang six times before the sound penetrated his troubled sleep and dragged him into a sitting position on the camp bed in the corner. Then he stood up, reached the desk in two strides and picked up the phone.
‘Ketch,’ he said, smothering a yawn.
‘Harris.’
‘Harris? And where the fuck have you been?’ Ketch snapped, waking up rapidly.
‘Getting closer to Reilly and Hunter.’ That, Harris thought inconsequentially, was certainly true.
‘OK. What’s the situation?’
‘We just missed them in Vegas, and we believe they’re on they way out to Groom Lake.’
‘They’ll never make it,’ Ketch snapped.
‘I’m not so sure,’ Harris said. ‘They’ve done pretty well so far in getting to places where they shouldn’t be.’
‘Groom Lake is different. You know what the security’s like here.’
‘Yes, but do you want to take a chance?’
There was a brief silence as Ketch mulled this over. ‘No, I guess not. OK, what do you suggest?’
‘Morgan and I should fly out to Groom Lake immediately. That way we’ll be on the spot and we can take these guys out if they do manage to get past the boundary patrols. We’ll have Templeton and Grant on the ground outside the base, in radio contact.’
Ketch looked at the clock on the opposite wall of his office, then swung round and checked the flight schedule on the wall behind his desk.
‘Today’s last scheduled Janet flight leaves Vegas in about ten minutes. I’ll call McCarran and tell them to hold it until you and Morgan arrive.’
‘Right,’ Harris said, ‘we’ll get to McCarran as soon as we can.’
‘You did very well, Harris,’ Hunter said. He’d been holding the mobile phone midway between Harris’s ear and his own, and he’d heard both sides of the conversation. He switched the phone off and put it in the glove box of the Chevrolet.
‘And now I suppose you’re going to kill me anyway?’ Harris said. He knew his usefulness to these two was pretty much at an end, and he had no illusions about what they might do to him.
‘No,’ Hunter said, ‘or at least, not yet. You could still be useful to us. Have you ever visited Groom Lake?’
‘Only once.’ Harris nodded.
‘Tell us about it, and quickly,’ Hunter said.
‘What do you want to know?’
‘We want to get into the building which houses the guy who pulls your strings – the one who runs Roland Oliver. Have you been there?’
‘Yes,’ Harris said. ‘It’s called Rolver Systems, and it’s down at the southern end of the base, on the west side of the main runway. The building looks kind of like a small hangar.’
‘And what’s the name of the man we need to see?’
‘Ketch,’ Harris said. ‘Roger Ketch.’
‘Right. What about security out there? There’ll be armed guards, I guess.’
‘No,’ Harris replied, ‘the whole point about Groom Lake is that it’s in the middle of an area that unauthorized people simply can’t get into, so the actual base security presence is pretty light, except around some of the hangars.’
‘Hangars? What’s in the hangars?’
‘I don’t know,’ Harris said, realizing that as long as he kept talking, he’d stay alive. ‘And I mean I really don’t know, so there’s no point in trying to beat it out of me. Hundreds of people, maybe thousands, work at Groom Lake, but they’re all doing very specific jobs. The whole system is compartmentalized, and workers are not allowed to talk to people from different sections. If you work there and you need to know something, they’ll tell you. If you don’t, they won’t. I didn’t need to know what was in the hangars.’
‘OK. What about the Rolver Systems’ building?’
‘It’s in a secure compound, which means it’s got solid access doors with electric locks and it’s surrounded by a high steel mesh fence which is electrified. To get in, you ring the bell. The guard will tell you to insert your ID card in the slot below the bell, and if the card checks out, the gate will open automatically to let you into the compound. You do the same thing at the building door.’
‘No cameras, retinal scans, voice checks or fingerprint comparisons?’
‘Nope. I told you: the whole area is protected, so there’s no need for high security actually at Groom Lake.’ Harris paused and looked at Hunter. ‘You mind if I ask you something?’
‘You can ask,’ Hunter said.
‘What’s driving you? Ever since Beaver Creek you and Sheriff Reilly have taken on most of American law enforcement, and you’re still doing it. You’re both either real lucky or real good at this kind of thing. And if you’re real good at it, what the hell were you doing counting paperclips in the FBI and why was Reilly working as a sheriff at some no-account town in the middle of Montana?’
‘It’s a bit of both, I suppose,’ Hunter said, ‘but there is one very good reason why we’re still running and we’re still fighting. Somebody we care about was snatched and fed into this programme being run out at Groom Lake.’
‘That’d be Kaufmann, right?’ Harris said, then stopped, realizing what he’d said.
Hunter nodded slowly. ‘I wondered if you’d pick up on that. Yes, Christy-Lee Kaufmann is exactly who I mean. And the fact that you know her name means it was probably you and Morgan who snatched her and organized her transport out here. Do you know what they do to these girls out at Groom Lake?’
Harris nodded. ‘Yup. It’s a medical research program.’
‘Nope,’ Hunter said. ‘It’s a kind of human abattoir. You snatched Christy-Lee Kaufmann and had her put in a box to be shipped out to Nevada and then killed and dismembered, for God only knows what reason, and the fact that we think she’s still alive right now is why we’re going to Groom Lake.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ Harris said, his face visibly pale in the dim glow of the Chevrolet’s interior light.
‘Maybe you did, and maybe you didn’t,’ Hunter said, ‘but where I come from, ignorance is no excuse.’
He climbed out of the front seat of the Chevrolet, reached into the back and pulled Harris to his feet. Hunter stood in front of him, and stared straight into his eyes.
‘I won’t say I’m sorry about this, because I’m not. You and your buddies killed the pathologist we summoned to Beaver Creek. You tried to kill Dick here in his home. You sent Christy-Lee to be slaughtered like some kind of animal, and you’ve been doing your best to kill me as well.’
Harris shook his head. ‘I was just doing the job I was paid to do,’ he said.
‘So were the Nazis who ran the concentration camps,’ Hunter said. ‘The only thing you’ve done right, as far as I can see, is that you’ve given us information about Groom Lake that might be useful. Even then, we don’t know if you were just making it up as you went along.’
‘Look, I’ve told you the truth. I’ve told you what I know. As for the rest, it was just business. It wasn’t anything personal,’ Harris said.
‘Neither is this,’ Hunter replied. He lifted the Glock to Harris’s forehead, but it was Reilly who pulled the trigger of Morgan’s Smith and Wesson. The bullet hit the left side of Harris’s head, and exited in a spray of blood and brain matter. Harris tumbled to the ground but was dead before he hit it.
‘Shoulda thought you’d know better than to use an FBI-issue pistol to waste someone, Mr. Hunter,’ Reilly said. ‘Don’t you know nothin’ ’bout forensics?’
Hunter looked down at Harris’s body, then grinned at Reilly as he holstered the Glock.
‘I was just waiting for you to finish the job, Dick,’ he said. ‘I figured that if Harris was standing there looking at me, you’d have a shot that even you couldn’t possibly miss.’
Reilly grunted, carefully unloaded the Smith and Wesson, wiped it for fingerprints, then wrapped it in a shirt taken from his overnight bag.
Hunter dragged Harris’s body to the edge of the parking lot and tumbled it down the shallow incline abutting the tarmac. Then the two men climbed back into the Chevrolet, drove out of the mall parking lot and headed uptown, back towards McCarran. Half a dozen blocks away from the mall, Hunter stopped the car near some grey, plastic garbage bins. He took the shirt with the Smith and Wesson wrapped inside it, checked to see that nobody was taking any interest in what he was doing, opened the lid of one of the bins and pushed it deep down into the garbage. Reilly’s bloodstained shirt went into another garbage bin two blocks further on.
Six minutes later, Hunter drew the Chevrolet to a halt beside the gate guard at the main entrance to McCarran Air Base.