Then, suddenly, I smelled smoke.
But after a moment’s reflection, I knew nothing was wrong with the plane. The aroma came from the burning of Cuban tobacco. Sol had lit a cigar.
“Hey, Del, we must be getting close to the base,” Sol shouted in the pilot’s ear, leaning forward, cigar in hand. “Can’t you get a little lower? Need to get a good look.”
“You’re the boss!” Del replied, and looked at me. “Don’t ya just love it?” He nudged the yoke forward. Down we went, another ninety-nine feet. We couldn’t go lower than that. We’d only been about 100 feet above the ground when Sol made the suggestion.
“Yeah, it’s terrific,” I said, as we swerved to miss a jackrabbit.
The Cessna screamed inches above a dry lake bed, moving like a full-blown Indy car going 160 mph. Yet, out here there was no racetrack, and directly in front of us was an ugly ridge of large rocks. The plane nosed up; we climbed, and shot through a narrow saddle-gap between two huge rocky mounds. When we emerged, the ground fell away and the wind-blown desert exploded with life before our eyes. The ex-military base appeared, spread out right below us, filling the front windscreen. A high chain-link fence enclosed several rows of wooden single-story rectangular structures. Guard towers stood at the boundaries of the expanse. With the fence and the towers, the place looked like a prison camp. I wondered if the guards were put there to keep people out, or perhaps, once inside, to keep them there.
Beyond the base, outside the fenced-off area, about a mile north of the complex, I saw a ten-thousand-foot runway, scraped flat on the dry alkaline surface of an ancient lake bed. A gravel road ran toward the buildings, a road that came from Barstow about sixty miles behind us. After looping around the outpost buildings, it came to a Y. One direction headed to Highway 395 and Calico, an old ghost town turned into a tourist trap by the Knott’s Berry Farm people, but the other branch of the road continued on and disappeared into the desolate, rock-strewn mountains a few miles to the west. I wondered where the road ended. There were no towns or settlements beyond those mountains that I knew of.
I leaned closer to Del. “Where’s that road lead to, Del? The one going over the mountain out there?” I shouted above the roar of the engine, pointing at the right fork of the Y.
Without taking his attention away from the plane, keeping his eyes fixed forward, Del answered. “Borax mines, and there’s an old ore processing plant out there on the other side of the mountain, as well. Remember the TV show, Death Valley Days?”
“Yeah, sure, Governor Reagan was the host, I think.”
“The show was based loosely on the mines. The way things were back in the 1800s when they flourished. Then a while back the borax ore petered out. But it’s rumored that they’re working the mines again, and they say the refinery is up and running too. I’ve never been out there. No reason to go,” Del said as he glanced at one of the flight gauges. He tapped it with a finger and the needle jumped. “There, that’s better.”
We flew above the gravel road at low altitude. Off to our right, half a mile away from the buildings, I saw a large paved yard where numerous pieces of heavy equipment stood. Dump trucks, earthmovers, and enormous Caterpillar tractors were lined up and ready to go, looking as if they could charge out and devour mountains, spitting out boulders like olive pits. Probably had something to do with the old mines.
Del hit the rudder pedal, jerked the wheel to the left, and we pivoted on the wing, the plane tilting at a sixty-degree angle. Almost instantly the Cessna leveled out, and when it did, we were aimed dead center at the cluster of bunkhouse-type buildings. We roared over the compound at rooftop level, the engine howling.
By the time we circled around for a second pass, men had poured out of the structures into the yard. There had to be fifteen or twenty of them, darting around in a wild frenzy, shaking rifles in the air. Even from inside the plane, I could see that the guns had the distinctive shape of AK-47s, heavy-duty assault weapons. I was close enough to notice that the mob wasn’t made up of teenage boys. These were all full-grown men wearing what appeared to be khaki paramilitary uniforms. I didn’t think they were forest rangers; no trees around here.
The first thing that popped into my mind was that we were buzzing a secret government facility, something like Delta Force, but the men down there were too old and raggedy for that; besides, Sol said the government had sold the base. I wondered what was going on. Could it be a right-wing fringe group that took over the facility? If teenagers were there, none were in sight.
I tried to keep my eyes pinned on the yard, but Del turned the plane and all I saw was blue sky. When the plane flattened out again, I could see that the men on the ground had formed up into military style columns. The first line dropped to their knees, rifles angled ominously toward the sky.
I heard Sol shout from the back seat, “Hey, let’s vamoose! It looks like they’re getting ready to take potshots at us.”
Del jammed the throttle to the wall; the engine changed pitch, and the small plane immediately nosed up into a steep climb. As the base slowly pulled away below us, I turned and glanced over my shoulder. More uniformed men charged out of the barracks, but the military columns were breaking up. They’d fired no shots, and now the men were milling about the grounds. From my birds-eye view, I could tell the base was not a Christian teen drug center, and I was now sure that the khaki-clad goons were just a bunch of sorry-assed, right-wing bozos. It appeared that we might have stumbled upon a clandestine paramilitary group. We would turn the information over to the FBI, of course. But discovering Rattlesnake Lake’s secret use wouldn’t bring Robbie back, and without Robbie, I’d still be the number one suspect in Hazel Farris’ murder.
Sol had to be reading my thoughts. He tapped me on the shoulder and I turned. “Jimmy, I know you wanted to get onto the base and check from the inside out, look around for Robbie and all of that. But now, I know it’s just too dangerous.”
“It may be the only way to tell if he’s there, or had been there. I’d like to see if those weekend fascists drive around in black Ford vans.”
“Look, we’ve seen enough to know the base isn’t a Christian drug center. All those goons running around with guns. But, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do.”
“What?”
“Just to be sure. I’m going to alert my friends in the FBI that when they raid the place, to be on the lookout for Robbie.”
On the quiet flight back to Fullerton, I worried that I’d never find Robbie, worried about the murder investigation, and wondered what would happen if I never did find him. I also couldn’t help but wonder about the teenage girl who called herself Jane.
CHAPTER 21
The following morning, a Friday, I walked into the office a little after eight feeling refreshed. I’d thought about my problems before I hit the sack, and had slept well in spite of the trouble swirling around me. I knew that Webster had turned his Section 32 file over to Hammer and his team of homicide detectives, the cops investigating Hazel Farris’ murder. And I figured Webster would wait for me to be eliminated as a suspect in the murder investigation before he’d file against me on the section 32 charge.
So I knew I had a little more time to find Robbie. But this morning on my way to the office, I’d seen two hard-nosed guys in a plain-Jane Chevy four-door, trailing me, lurking behind about three car lengths. It had to be a couple of Hammer’s detectives. A waste of taxpayer dollars, but I wasn’t worried about it. Call me crazy, but I felt that being Hammer’s number one suspect wasn’t so tough. I was a lawyer and I knew that without the gun Hammer had scant evidence to tie me to the murder. Besides, once I found Robbie and brought him in, most of my problems would go away.