Johnny Simmons could see. He didn’t know how long ago it had started, but it had begun with the slightest tinge of gray infiltrating the blackness surrounding him. Then the difference between light and dark grew, and he was able to make out some forms moving around on the periphery of his vision. He couldn’t move his head, nor could he move his eyes.
But as time went by, he wished the slight improvement that had occurred had not. Because there was something wrong about the forms he caught glimpses of. They were human shaped, but they weren’t human and that is what scared him. The silhouetted forms were all wrong — heads too large; arms too long; torsos too short. Once he thought he saw the outline of a hand, but there were six fingers instead of five and the fingers were much too long.
Johnny was concentrating so hard on his eyes that it was a while before he noticed other changes in his environment. There was a scent in the air. A very unpleasant scent.
And he could hear sound, albeit as if from a long distance away. It was a clicking sound, but not mechanical. More like insect clicking.
The copper taste flooded Johnny’s mouth and his world went black again. But this time he could hear his own screams, sounding as if it were some other person a long way away. But the pain was close.
CHAPTER 25
The road curved around a small lake to the left and passed between tree-covered hills. Turcotte checked the map.
They were close to Dulce. According to Rand McNally the town was just south of the border with Colorado, nestled between the Carson National Forest and the Rio Grande National Forest. The terrain was rocky and mountainous, with occasional clusters of pine trees adorning the hillsides.
It was the sort of relatively unpopulated area the government liked to build secret facilities in.
They hit a straight section of road and a long-distance view opened up directly ahead. Von Seeckt leaned forward between the seats. “There. That mountain to the left. I remember that. The facility is behind it.”
A long ridge extended from left to right about ten miles ahead, culminating in a peak slightly separated from the main body of the ridge.
“Where should I go?” Kelly asked.
“Stay on this road,” Turcotte said. “I’ll tell you where to stop.”
As they got closer, the town of Dulce appeared at the base of the ridgeline, a scattering of buildings along the valley floor running up to the base of the large mountain.
Route 64 passed along the south side of the community, and Kelly carefully kept to the speed limit as they drove through. As the town slipped behind them, Turcotte told her to pull off on a dirt road and stop.
“You say the facility is behind that mountain?” he asked Von Seeckt.
“Yes. It was night when I came here and over fifty years ago, though. There wasn’t much here in those days. I don’t remember all these buildings.” Turcotte looked to the north. “All right. We have about two hours of daylight left. Let’s check out what we can see from the van.” He pointed back toward town and Kelly turned them around.
They cruised in past the sign marking the city limits and took a right, going past the local elementary school. The road slowly sloped up. Within a quarter mile they were at the base of the ridge. Turcotte kept Kelly taking turns that directed them to the right. It was the only way he could see around the mountain. Left would only run along the south side of the ridgeline.
An arrowhead with a 2 inside it marked a road leading to the northeast. The other roads all appeared to be local residential streets. Kelly turned onto the arrowhead road and they began climbing the shoulder of the mountain. A sign indicated they were now on the Jicarilla Apache Indian Reservation. A white Ford Bronco rolled past with two men seated inside and Turcotte twisted his head and watched it go by.
“Government plates,” he noted.
“Yeah,” Kelly said.
“Probably from the facility.”
“I don’t want to burst your bubble,” Kelly said, “but you see a lot of U.S. government plates out here. We’re on Federal land, actually Indian land, but the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which helps run the reservations, is federal.”
“But it could be from the base,” Turcotte said.
“Ah, optimism,” Kelly said, mimicking his Canuck accent. “I like that.”
“There.” Turcotte pointed to the right shoulder. “Stop there.”
The road split. To the right it went down into a valley. To the left a wide, well-maintained gravel road curved along the back of the ridgeline and disappeared.
“It’s around there,” Turcotte announced firmly.
“Why not to the right?” she asked.
“Von Seeckt said it was behind the mountain. To the right is not behind the mountain.” He looked to the back. “Correct?”
Von Seeckt concurred. “I believe to the left.”
Turcotte continued. “Also, since we left Phoenix that’s the best maintained and widest gravel road I’ve seen.” He smiled. “But mostly, the thing that convinces me that the facility is down that road — besides Von Seeckt’s opinion, of course — are those little lines of what appears to be smoke hanging above the road.” He pointed to the gravel road.
“See them? There and there?”
“Yes. What are they?”
“That’s dust caught in a laser beam. A car goes down that road, the beam gets broken and a signal is sent. There’s two of them, so they can tell if a vehicle is coming or going depending on the order the beams get broken. I don’t think the Bureau of Indian Affairs guards the reservations that tightly, do you?”
“What now?” Kelly asked, glancing over her shoulder at the other two men in the rear.
“I don’t think this place will be as well guarded as Area 51,” Turcotte said. “All the work here must be done inside, so it obviously doesn’t attract as much attention as the other facility. So that’s to our advantage.
“The other thing to remember is a basic fact about most guarded facilities. The goal of a lot of the security is not, as you would think, to prevent someone from actually breaking in. The goal is deterrence: to keep someone from considering breaking in.”
“I don’t understand,” Nabinger said from the rear.
“Think of the security cameras in banks,” Turcotte explained. “They work through deterrence. They keep most people from robbing the bank because those people know their picture will get taken and the police will eventually catch them. The same with most security. For example, if I wanted to kill the President, I could most definitely kill him. The problem lies with killing him and getting away afterward.”
“So, you’re saying we can get in to this facility but we can’t get out?” Kelly asked.
“Oh, I think we should be able to get out. It’s just that they’ll know we did it.”
Kelly shrugged. “Hell, that ain’t a problem. They’re already after us. We get Johnny, we go public. That’s the only way we’ll make it.”
“Right,” Turcotte said.
“So, back to my original question,” Kelly said. “What now?”
“Back to town,” Turcotte said. “We need a ticket to get us in. Once inside I’ll get us to Johnny.”
“And the high rune tablets,” Nabinger added. “Von Seeckt told me that Dulce is where they keep all the ones the government has.”
“And the high rune tablets,” Turcotte amended. “Whatever you can find.”
“Anyplace in particular in town?” Kelly asked as she turned them around and headed to the south.
“Know how cops always hang out at the local doughnut shop?” Turcotte said. “Yes.”
“We need to find where the workers from the base get their doughnuts.”