They pulled up in front of the gate to Eric’s house. Eric got out, clicked open the gate, then Leon said, “What’d you think of Nataly Hegel? Isn’t she a beauty?”
“Maybe so, but I think she likes you, or at least finds you interesting.”
“Yes, in a spooky sort of way.”
“Like a lab rat. She tried to psychoanalyze me.”
“Go for it,” said Leon, jerked the steering wheel sharply, backed up in a spray of dirt and was laughing when he drove away.
Eric wasn’t laughing. Another woman passing judgment on him, trying to change him, just like Jenny. How easily women bailed when they didn’t get their way. Taking the children with them, turning them against their father. It seemed he’d had a lifetime of it. He didn’t really like being alone; the feeling was stronger with each passing year, but for each woman he’d chanced a relationship with it was always the same. There was a shortcoming, some kind of defect in his character that had to be changed. And it was never the same thing twice.
The first sight of Nataly had taken his breath away; he’d barely missed being struck dumb by her presence, but in the end she was like all the others. She only wanted to change him. Did his bitterness really show that much?
I’m not looking for healing, lady. I’m here to do a job. To hell with you.
Eric unlocked the door, and entered his new house, and immediately knew that something wasn’t right.
Nothing seemed disturbed, and he heard no strange sounds, but a scent in the air hadn’t been there before. Something musky, like wet fur. It was strongest near the door, fading to nothing a few steps beyond, and replaced by something faint and sweet. Only a minute, and Eric didn’t notice it anymore, but the musky odor remained by the door. He was not imagining that one, at least. He went to every room in the house, checked the windows, the back door. All locked tight. In the basement, the tunnel entrance was locked tight. Nothing seemed out of order. He unlocked the door and opened it, his heart jumping with a surge of adrenalin.
The tunnel was empty. He knew it was silly, but his reflexes were jumpy, the hair bristling on the back of his neck. Instincts. His instincts were trained by experts and honed by years of dangerous experience, and they were telling him something.
It was nearly midnight. He had to sleep. He closed and locked the tunnel door again and got ready for bed. He feared his heightened senses would keep him awake, but they didn’t. He drifted off only minutes after the lights were out. He did not sense the sweet odor that gradually permeated his room, hear the creak of a board under footfall, or see the dark, moving shadows that came to stand by his bed for a moment before leaving without a sound.
He only slept four hours, but awoke in the morning quite alert, and amazingly refreshed.
CHAPTER SEVEN
UNDERGROUND
A black SUV with heavily tinted windows rolled up to his gate at exactly five in the morning, and Eric buzzed it in. The SUV pulled up to his garage and sat there, engine running, windows up. Eric tried the front passenger door, but it was locked. The rear door wasn’t. He opened it, and got in.
“Good morning, sir.” A driver in military fatigues looked at him in his rear view mirror as Eric closed the door. There was a thick, polymer barrier between them.
“A bit early for that,” quipped Eric.
The driver smiled. “You’re working with the military, sir. Up and on.”
Eric thumbed the gate shut as they went through it. They turned left, and headed away from town, accelerating rapidly.
“Seat belts, sir. You have an oh-six-hundred with Colonel Davis, and I’ll have to hammer it.”
“That far?” asked Eric, and snapped in lap and chest belts.
“A ways, sir. There’s a thermos of coffee on the seat left of you. Hope you drink it black.”
Eric uncapped the thermos, poured, and sipped. The liquid burned a path down into his empty stomach, the caffeine giving him a welcome jolt. The sky was beginning to glow outside, but was dim through the tinted windows, and they were suddenly veering left, bouncing once as they hit a graded, red-rock road. A mile in they came to a ranch, went around the main house and accelerated again as the road reappeared past an empty cattle pen. Eric’s mind was on autopilot, judging speeds and directions, calculating distances.
Four miles later they came to a water tank fenced in next to what looked like a garage. The fence gate and garage door were opening for them as they reached it, and closing as they entered the area. Lights came on as the garage door clanged shut. They stopped by a pedestal with what looked like a phone pad. The driver reached out and punched in some numbers, then closed his window again.
Two seconds, a loud thump, and the coffee in Eric’s stomach seemed to float for an instant. The entire vehicle was descending, and for several moments the only light came from the dashboard panel.
They came to a stop facing a bright light floating somewhere above them. The car pulled forward as Eric calculated, estimating they were now around ninety feet beneath the surface of the ground. They came out into a tunnel, two lines of ceiling lights coming together in the far distance left and right, a two-lane road of steel grating on red dirt. A military jeep buzzed by them, heading right. They turned, and followed it. The car was traveling around forty, and they drove for fifteen minutes, the jeep remaining ahead in view. No traffic passed them going the other way.
They stopped at a cutout in the tunnel, a parking area large enough for twenty cars, quick count. The tunnel itself went on straight ahead, and out of view. The jeep had parked there, and two soldiers with military police armbands were waiting for them.
“These men will take you to Colonel Davis,” said Eric’s driver. “Have a good day.”
One of the military policemen opened the door for Eric, and he got out. “Colonel Davis is expecting you, sir. Please come with us.”
The men walked on either side of him. The air was dry, smelled of oil and salt, and fine, red dust particles floated in the air. Behind two large vents in the ceiling, something hummed loudly.
An elevator door opened for them. The interior was polished brass. They descended for only a few seconds, perhaps another sixty feet, and suddenly stopped. The door opened, and they could have been in any office building in a large city. There were rows of offices along a green-carpeted hallway, both men and women in military fatigues hurrying to assignments. They stopped at a door like any of the others, this one marked ‘Commander’. Three knocks on the door brought an answer from inside.
“Come!”
“Mister Price is here, sir.”
“Send him in!”
A policeman opened the door, and Eric stepped inside.
A heavyset man, balding, sat behind a polished, mahogany desk. He was in army fatigues, and his sausage-like fingers moved over a computer keyboard briefly before entering something with a single keystroke. He gestured at a chair in front of his desk, pulled a thick file out of a drawer and pushed it across the desk as Eric sat down.
There were no preliminaries. “I’m Alex Davis. That’s Colonel Davis. You’ll report to me directly. What we have so far is in the file. You should read it in order. You’ll need historical perspective to see if the information we’re getting is consistent. I hear you’re very good at that.”
“You think the data you’re obtaining might be false, then? Is that why the delays have become long enough for the Pentagon to be concerned?” Eric opened the file, and riffled a few pages. The file was the thickness of a ream of paper. Graphs, equations, diagrams of a delta-shaped aircraft flashed past his eyes.