“Lately you do it after every shift. When you finally get home, we eat something I made in the crockpot. Otherwise the food would burn or get cold because I never know when you’ll actually come through the door. Instead of talking, we eat in front of the television. While you keep watching television, I go to bed and read.”
“But that’s what you like to do,” he protested. “You enjoy reading.”
“I’m not trying to place blame,” Tori said. “Each of us is who we are. On the days you’re not working, you go to the airport. As you told me once, nonpilots think flying a plane is all about feeling free and enjoying the scenery. But you like to fly because there’s so much involved in handling a plane, you can’t think about anything else. You can’t let the emotions of your job distract you while you’re control- ling the aircraft. That’s your defense against the world.
“When I learned about my cancer, I imagined the clamped-down look you’d get when I told you-the look you always get when you have emotions you don’t want to deal with. I decided I couldn’t go on that way. If I had a disease that might kill me, I didn’t want to feel alone any longer. Going to the airport is your escape. Tuesday morning, after my doctor called, I decided to escape in a different way.”
The car became silent.
Needing to distract himself, Page looked toward the sky, where clouds drifted in from the east. He glanced to the right. Beyond a barbed-wire fence, he saw the collapsed, rusted hangars from the military airstrip that had been shut down at the end of World War II. Vehicles were parked along the fence. Ahead, the procession continued, but some of the cars turned into the opposite lane and parked along the other side of the road. A glance toward the side mirror revealed cars stretched out behind the Saturn, some of which were pulling off and parking wherever they found gaps.
Tori broke the silence. “That’s why I grabbed at the memory of the lights. When I sat in that coffee shop outside El Paso and noticed Rostov on the map, the excitement of seeing those lights came back to me. Before I knew it, I couldn’t wait to get here and see them again. It’s been a long time since I felt that kind of emotion.”
“I feel as if I’m being compared to the way your father behaved that night.”
“Not at all. You’re a kind, decent man. My father was impatient and harsh. You’re nothing like that. But I need someone who feels positive.”
Page thought of the five children and the female driver who’d died in the head-on collision. He thought of the driver of the gasoline tanker who’d burned to death. He thought of his friend who’d been shot to death by the man who’d crashed into the gasoline tanker.
He couldn’t free his memory of all the people who’d been shot the previous night.
And now Tori had cancer.
“Feel positive?” He shook his head. “I’m not sure I know how to do that. But I saw the lights, too. That’s got to count for something.”
Tori didn’t respond.
“We’ll watch them together,” Page said, hoping. “I’ll learn from you.”
He heard the distant rumble of helicopters. Ahead, three of them hovered a safe distance apart. The choppers all had large letters on the undersides identifying the television stations to which they belonged. Their nose cameras were aimed at the line of vehicles.
Near the observation platform, a crowd faced barricades and the police officers who guarded them. Someone sold food from a van marked BEST TACOS IN TEXAS. Reporters stood in front of cameras next to news trucks with broadcast dishes on top. Page recognized the reporter he’d seen on the television at the motel office, the one with the rumpled suit.
“Tori, don’t stop,” he warned. “The TV people know a woman shot the killer. Sooner or later, they’ll find out it was you. They’ll never let you alone.”
But she didn’t seem to hear. All she did was stare toward the field where she’d seen the lights.
“They’re ruining it,” she said.
27
As the sun began its descent, the Black Hawk helicopter sped through the sky at 160 miles per hour. Ignoring the muffled vibration of the engines, Col. Warren Raleigh glanced to the left toward where the Davis Mountains stretched along the horizon. A moment later, he peered ahead toward clouds drifting in from the direction of the Gulf of Mexico.
Below, cattle grazed on sparse grassland that seemed to go on forever.
“Big country.” The pilot’s voice came through Raleigh’s headset.
“Some ranchers down there own a half-million acres,” Raleigh said into his microphone. “Lots of privacy.”
At 6 that morning, Raleigh and his team had flown from Glen Burnie Airport near the NSA’s headquarters in Fort Meade, Mary- land. Their aircraft had been a Falcon 2000 owned by INSCOM but registered to a fictitious civilian corporation. It flew them two-thirds of the way across the continent to the Army airbase at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. There they’d picked up equipment that Raleigh had ordered to be ready for them. They’d also added two members to their team. One was human-an Army dog handler. The other was a German shepherd.
The helicopter they’d transferred to was unarmed. In its cargo- transport configuration, without the dramatic-looking missile launchers and Gatling guns, it wouldn’t attract any more attention than most other helicopters, Raleigh thought, especially in an area where the majority of eyes that would see it belonged to cattle and coyotes.
He glanced at his watch. “We should be there just about now.”
“Exactly on schedule, sir.” The pilot gestured ahead toward a gleam of white.
The ten radio dishes grew rapidly larger. It had been three years since Raleigh had visited this facility. He’d personally supervised the installation of the new equipment and arranged for one of the dishes to be aimed toward an area near Rostov. Now he was impatient to return.
Through his headset, he heard Sergeant Lockhart telling the men, “One minute to touchdown.”
Raleigh watched the dishes get closer. Each was so huge that it dwarfed the combat helicopter. As an array, though, they were beyond huge. The only word that occurred to Raleigh was “monumental.” Not easily impressed, he found their intense whiteness to be awesome.
When the helicopter descended past the three concentric rows of fences, its whirling blades created a dust storm. He felt the skids touchdown and the helicopter’s weight settle. Then the speed of the blades diminished, their sound becoming a whistle, and Lockhart opened the rear hatch, motioning the men to grab their packs and hurry out.
Raleigh returned the pilot’s salute and jumped to the ground, joining his team a safe distance from the swirling dust. As the chopper lifted off and headed back toward Fort Bliss, a second Black Hawk appeared on the horizon.
The eight men were in their midtwenties. Their hair was short but not to the extent that they seemed obviously military. Each wore sturdy shoes, slightly oversized jeans, a T-shirt, and a loose outdoor shirt that hung over his belt, concealing a Beretta 9-millimeter pistol. That handgun wasn’t a match for Raleigh’s beloved M4, but until somebody figured out a practical way to conceal a carbine, the pistol would have to do. Besides, there were several M4s in the crates of equipment he’d ordered.
Apart from the magnificent observatory dishes, the only above- ground structure was a concrete-block shed from which two guards wearing khaki uniforms emerged into the sunlight. They held their carbines in a deceptively casual way, but Raleigh noted that they could make the weapons operational in an instant.
One of the guards had strained features, as if he were in pain.
“‘I hear a voice you cannot hear,’” the man said.
Under other circumstances, his seemingly deranged statement would have made Raleigh frown, but instead he immediately replied, “‘Which says I must not stay.’”