“Yes,” Hicks said, his neck hair prickling again.
“I’ve got lawyers all over the state and in Washington trying to find out what’s going on. They might think they’re tangling with some small-town yo-yos, but they’re not. My husband was a county supervisor. My father was a state senator. And here I am, talking your ear off. Trevor Hicks.” She paused, examining him more closely. “Are you the science writer?”
“Yes, actually,” Hicks said, pleased at being recognized twice in as many days.
“What brings you out this way?”
“A hunch.”
“Mind if I ask what sort of hunch?” Clearly, Bernice Morgan, for all her warm voice and hospitable manner, was a tough-minded woman.
“I suppose it could connect with your daughter,” he said, deciding to go for broke. “I’m following a very thin trail of clues to Death Valley. Something important has happened there — important enough to draw your President to Furnace Creek Resort.”
“Maybe Esther isn’t hysterical,” Mrs. Morgan mused.
“I’m sorry?”
“My store clerk. She says some men talked about a MiG crashing in the desert.”
Hicks’s heart fell. Was that all it was, then? Some sort of unusual defection? No connection with the Great Victoria Desert?
“And Mike, he’s a young fellow who worked in our service station, he says some men came to the store in a Land Cruiser and talked to my daughter. They had something covered up in the back. Mike sneaked a look when they took it around the rear and he thought it was something green — dead-looking, he said. Then the government comes in here and sprays this awful stuff all over the inside of my meat locker, closes it off, and says we can’t use it…We lost five hundred dollars in meat. They carted it away, said it was spoiled. Said the locker was contaminated with salmonella.”
Hicks’s intuition made his skin crawl. “Where were you when this happened?”
“In Baker visiting my brother.”
Bernice Morgan gave not the slightest impression of frailty, despite her years. Nor did she appear leathery or “grizzled.” She was the last sort of person Hicks expected to find in a small American desert town. But for her manner of speech, she might have been the elderly wife of an English lord.
“How long has your daughter been missing?”
“A week and a half.”
“And you’re certain she was taken by federal authorities?”
“Air Force types, I’ve been told.”
Hicks frowned. “Have you heard of anything odd in the area — around Furnace Creek Inn, perhaps?”
“Only that it’s closed off temporarily. I called about that, and nobody knows anything. The phone service went out this afternoon.”
“Do you think that’s where your daughter is?”
“It’s a possibility, isn’t it?”
He pursed his lips.
“I don’t think they’re holding her so she can talk to the President about business. Do you?” She raised a skeptical eyebrow.
An old, battered primer-gray Ford truck pulled off the road and into the parking lot with a spray of dust and gravel. Two young men in straw cowboy hats jumped from the back, while a third boy and a heavy-paunched, bearded man with oversized wire-framed MacArthur sunglasses stepped down from the driver’s seat. They all came through the glass door. The bearded man nodded at Hicks, then faced Mrs. Morgan. “We’ve been out and back. Road’s still closed. George is out there, like Richard said, but he doesn’t know what’s going on.”
“George is one of our highway patrol boys,” Mrs. Morgan explained to Hicks.
“Ron, here, thinks his Lisa is still in Furnace Creek,” the bearded man continued. A doe-eyed, thin young man nodded wearily. “We’re going to take the plane and fly over. Find out what the hell’s going on.”
“They’ve probably got the airstrip out there closed,” Mrs. Morgan said. “I’m not sure that’s smart, Mitch.”
“Smart, hell. I never let no government folks push me around before. Kidnapping and shutting down public roads for no good reason — it’s time somebody did something.” Mitch stared pointedly at Trevor Hicks, surveying his suede jacket, slacks, and running shoes. “Mister, we haven’t met.”
Mrs. Morgan did the favor. “Mitch, this is Mr. Trevor Hicks. Mr. Hicks, Mitch Morris. He’s our maintenance man and drives the propane truck.”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Hicks,” Morris said in a formal tone. “You’re interested in this?”
“He’s a writer,” Bernice said. “Pretty well known, too.”
“I have an idea something is happening near Furnace Creek, something important enough to bring the President here.”
“President like from the White House?”
“The same.”
“He thinks Stella might be at Furnace Creek,” Mrs. Morgan said.
“All the more reason for us to fly over there and find out,” Morris said. “Frank Forrest has his Comanche ready to go. We have room for five. Mr. Hicks, are you interested in coming with us?”
Hicks realized he was becoming much too involved. Mrs. Morgan continued her protest about the risks, but Morris paid her only polite attention. His mind was made up.
There was no other way to see what was happening in Furnace Creek. He would be stopped on the highway as everybody else had been.
“There’s too many of us here, with a pilot, already,” Hicks said.
“Benny doesn’t fly,” Morris said. “He gets terrible airsick.”
Hicks took a shallow, spasmodic breath. “All right,” he said.
“It’s not far at all. A few minutes there and back.”
“I don’t like it. Don’t do this just for Stella,” Mrs. Morgan said. “I’m still trying other ways. Don’t get foolish and …”
“No heroics, no daring rescues,” Morris assured her. “Let’s go. Mr. Hicks…?”
“Yes,” Hicks said, following them out the glass door. Mrs. Morgan laid her hands on the counter top and watched them grimly as they climbed into the truck, Benny giving up his shotgun seat to Hicks and sitting in the back.
He had never done anything so stupid in his life. The Piper Comanche’s wheels pulled free of the runway and the twin-engine aircraft leaped into the air, leaving the weathered asphalt landing strip and corrugated metal hangar far behind and below.
Mitch Morris turned to regard Hicks and Ron Flagg in the back seat. Frank Forrest, in his mid-sixties and as burly as Morris, banked the plane sharply and brought them around to an easterly direction, then banked again before they had time to catch their breath. Morris hung on to Forrest’s seat with a huge, callused hand. “You all right?” he asked Hicks, with barely a glance at Ron.
“Fine,” Hicks said, swallowing an anonymous something in his gullet.
“You, Ron?”
“Ain’t flown much,” Flagg said, his skin pale and damp.
“Frank’s an expert. Flew Sabres during the war. Korean War. His daddy flew Buffaloes at Midway. That’s where he died, wasn’t it, Frank?”
“Goddamn planes were flying coffins,” Forrest said.
Hicks felt the Comanche shudder in an updraft from the low hills below. They were flying under five hundred feet. A cinder-covered hill near Shoshone passed below them with breathtaking closeness.
“I hope you don’t think we’re impetuous,” Morris said.
“Perish the idea,” Hicks returned, concentrating on his stomach.
“We owe a lot to Mrs. Morgan. We like Stella just fine, and Ron’s Lisa is a great girl. We want to make sure they’re okay, wherever they are. Not like they’ve been spirited off to the Nevada test site to be used as guinea pigs or something, y’know?”
Whether Morris was suggesting this or dismissing it as a possibility, Hicks couldn’t decide.
“So what do you think they’ve got in Furnace Creek?” Forrest asked. “Mike the garage boy says they’ve got a dead Russian pilot. That why you’re here — to scoop everybody on a dead Russian pilot?”