“Maybe not so high as this,” Naresh said, “but definitely tall, and made of metal. It might also have wires out to the sides to keep it steady.”
“I think maybe you should join me tomorrow with the first search crew,” Sanjay said.
“Of course.”
“With both of us,” Kusum said.
Jeeval sat up. Ap.
“And Jeeval, too,” Kusum added.
25
The door to the office Chloe was searching flew open.
“Why didn’t you wake me?” Josie said angrily as she entered. “I could have been helping you!”
Chloe looked up from the files she’d been examining. “You needed the rest.”
“I can rest later. I need to find Brandon!”
“We need to find Brandon. And that’s exactly what we’re trying to do.”
“If you had woken me when you got up, maybe I would have found something by now.”
“Or you would have missed it because you’d have been too tired to realize what you were looking at.”
“You can’t know that.”
“And you can’t know you wouldn’t have, either,” Chloe said. “So are we going to argue, or are you ready to help now?”
Josie squeezed her lips together, frustrated. Then, barely parting them again, she said, “Help.”
“Good. How are you at computers?”
A shrug. “Good enough.”
“You know your way around file systems, that kind of thing?”
“Sure.”
Chloe pointed at the computer on the desk next to her. “See what you can find.”
While Josie got busy, Chloe returned her attention to the files.
Somewhere there had to be something that would tell them where Brandon had gone. Keeping detailed records was a military tradition, and if they were moving children around, they would have made doubly sure to account for everything in writing. Even in the face of the end of mankind, those along the chain of custody would be worried about being drawn into a potential PR fiasco if something happened to the kids and the people in charge hadn’t accounted for their actions.
So why hadn’t Chloe or the others found anything associated with Operation Piper?
She reached the bottom of the stack and tossed it all into the trash.
“Chloe?” Miller’s voice came over the walkie-talkie on the desk.
She picked it up. “Yeah?”
“You’re going to want to come over here.”
“You find something?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
Josie bolted out of her chair before Chloe even had a chance to stand.
“Hold on,” Chloe told the girl.
Josie stopped a few feet short of the door.
“Where are you?” Chloe said into the radio.
“I know where he is,” Josie said.
“Building 123,” Miller replied. “The little offshoot with the sloped roof. You’ll see it.”
“Come on,” Josie said, leaning toward the door. “I’ll show you.”
It took them three minutes to jog to Building 123.
Like most of the other buildings, it had large sliding doors that faced the runway and opened to a hangar. Where this one differed from the others, though, was along the southeast side of the building, where several other structures had been added, including a rectangular extension with a pitched roof.
They found Miller inside, looking at a map tacked to the wall. Both Harlan and Barry were with him.
“Where is he?” Josie asked as soon as she and Chloe entered.
Miller tapped the map. “Right here.”
Chloe and Josie hurried over. The point he touched was in the mountains above Colorado Springs.
“I was in Building 121 and found a note taped to a computer monitor.” Miller picked up a small piece of paper from the nearby desk and handed it to Chloe.
ALL O.P. INQUIRIES TO
WEINBERG x7223
“At first I thought it meant ‘op’ like operation, in which case it could mean anything,” he said. “But then I realized it’s o-period, p-period. The whole thing doesn’t mean ‘operation,’ just the first letter. It still could mean something else, but it’s a hell of a lot closer to Operation Piper than anything I’ve seen so far. I tried to track down this Weinberg guy, but no one with that name was in the directory, so I searched by the extension number. It belongs to a guy named Clarke. This is his office, but when I got here, there were several papers on the desk signed by this Weinberg guy. He must have taken over this room in the last few days.”
Chloe nodded at the map. “But how do you know that’s where Brandon is?”
He picked up two other pieces of paper and passed them to her. The top one was crinkled, like it had been balled up before being flattened again. On it was a list of names in alphabetical order. The second one down was Brandon Ash.
“Where was this?” Josie, who’d been looking over Chloe’s shoulder, asked.
Miller pointed a grocery-sized brown bag with groups of stripes running across it — five white, five red, five white — sitting on the desk. “Burn bag,” he said. “It was in a cabinet near the door awaiting pickup. That second sheet was in there, too.”
Chloe looked at the second page. It was a printout from Google — turn-by-turn directions to someplace called Camp Kiley.
“I can’t tie the two things to each other directly, but both pieces of paper were in the same bag, and, well, it kind of makes sense. If they were trying to protect the kids, they’d want to take them someplace they thought would be safe. Someplace controllable and in the middle of nowhere would be their best bet. This has got to be where they took him.” His face tensed. “Should have thought to check for burn bags last night.”
“None of us thought of it,” Chloe said. “And you found them now.” She looked at the directions again. “This says it’s forty-six miles away but takes over an hour.”
“Mountain roads,” Miller said. “Most of it two-lane.”
“What are we waiting for?” Josie asked. “Let’s go!”
Chloe was silent for a moment, thinking. “All right,” she said, glancing momentarily at Josie, then looking at the others. “Harlan, Barry, check in with Matt. If he needs you somewhere else, go. If not, just wait here. Miller, put us together a weapons package.” She hoped they wouldn’t need them, but it was better to be prepared. She turned back to Josie. “Let’s you and I find ourselves a ride.”
It wasn’t surprising that the only cars parked near the airfield were military vehicles, any civilian ones undoubtedly used by their owners to get home before or after they’d become ill. While the sedan they chose was adequate, it was far from comfortable, so when they drove through Colorado Springs, they exchanged it for a brand new Audi A3 right off the lot, and headed into the mountains.
No one spoke for the longest time. Finally Josie said, “He’ll be okay, right?”
“Of course,” Chloe said. “They were trying to help him, not hurt him.”
She glanced at Josie via the rearview mirror. The girl was chewing on her lower lip, her gaze unfocused.
“Hey,” Chloe said.
Josie looked up.
“He’ll be fine.”
Twenty minutes outside Colorado Springs, Josie’s satellite phone rang. The display indicated it was coming from the Ranch.
“Yes?” she said, answering it.
“It’s Matt. You have a problem.”
Harlan had just finished checking in with Matt when Barry said, “Do you hear that?”
Harlan cocked his head and listened. An engine. A jet engine.
They looked out the cockpit window but saw nothing, so they moved back to the plane’s exit. Before Barry could climb outside, Harlan said, “Be careful. If it’s the air force, it might be better if they don’t see us.”