Bet Wheatley's sorry now," said Wilier. "He has to carry water for himself and his dogs."
Hernandez chuckled. "So what do you think? Got any theories?"
"At first I figured it was drugs. But now I think it's something bigger. There's something going on out here, and both Broadbent and the monk are in on it."
Wilier inhaled again, snapped the butt, and watched it bounce along the naked rock.
"Like what?"
"I dunno. They're looking for something. Think about it. Broadbent claims he spends a lot of time riding around here, for 'pleasure.' Well look out there at that son of a bitch.
Would you ride around here for pleasure?"
"No way."
"Then he just happens to come across this prospector, right after he's shot. It's sunset, eight miles from the road, middle of nowhere . . . Coincidence? Give me a break."
"You think he shot him himself?"
"No. But he's involved. He's holding out on us. Anyway, two days after the shooting, he goes up to visit this monk, Wyman Ford. I've checked up on this guy and it seems he too goes hiking all over the desert, stays out for days at a time."
"Yeah, and what are they looking for?"
"Exactly. And here's something you don't know, Hernandez. I asked Sylvia to see if there was anything in the system about that monk. Guess what? He was CIA."
"You're shitting me."
"I don't know the whole story, but it seems he quit suddenly, showed up at the monastery, they took him in. Three and a half years ago."
"What'd he do for the CIA?"
"Can't find out, you know how it is with the CIA. His wife was in it too and she was killed in the line of duty. He's a hero." Wilier took one more drag, tasted the bitter filter, threw the butt down. It gave him a curious feeling of satisfaction to litter this pristine landscape, this place that had been shouting, "You 're nobody, you 're nothing, "into his ear all day long. Suddenly he sat up. He had spied a black dot moving on a low ridge in the middle distance, framed against some high bluffs. He brought his binoculars to his eyes, stared.
"Well, well. Speak of the devil."
"Broadbent?"
"No. That so-called monk. And he's got a pair of binoculars dangling from his neck. It's just what I said: he's looking for something. Hell yeah-and I'd give my left testicle to know what it is."
2
WEED MADDOX CAME out onto the porch of his rented cabin, hitched a thumb in a belt loop, and inhaled the scent of pine needles warmed by the morning sun. He raised the mug of coffee to his lips and took a noisy sip. He'd slept late; it was almost ten
o'clock. Beyond the tops of the ponderosa pines he could see the distant peaks of the Canjilon Mountains gilded with silver light. He strolled across the porch, his cowboy boots thunking hollowly on the wood, and stopped beneath a fancy sign that read saloon.
He gave it a little push with his finger, sending it squeaking back and forth on rusty hinges.
He looked down main street. There wasn't much left of the old CCC Camp; most of the buildings had collapsed into pancaked slabs of rotting wood, overgrown with bushes and small trees. He drained his coffee, set the mug on the rail, strolled down the wooden steps and onto the old main street of town. Maddox had to admit, he was really a country boy at heart. He liked being alone, away from roads, traffic, buildings, and crowds.
When it was over, he might even buy a place like this. From here, he could continue to run Hard Time, living a life of peace and quiet for a change, with a couple of ladies for company and nothing else.
He began walking down the dusty old main street, hands shoved in his pockets, whistling tunelessly. At the far end of town the road petered out into a weedy trail going up the ravine. He continued on, swishing his boots through the tall grass. He picked up a stick, beheading tall weeds as he went.
Two minutes brought him to a sign planted in the trail that read: DANGER: UNMARKED MINE SHAFTS
NO TRESPASSING
OWNER NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ACCIDENTS
It was quiet in the forest, the wind sighing ever so lightly through the trees. Maddox slipped past the sign. The trail mounted slightly, following the dry bed of a wash. Ten minutes of walking brought him to an old clearing. An open hillside rose on the right, with a trail angling up. He mounted the trail, which ran parallel but below the summit for a quarter of a mile before coming to a decrepit shaft house enclosing the entrance to an old mining tunnel. The shaft-house door sported a fresh padlock and chain, along with another no trespassing sign, both of which Maddox had affixed the day before.
He slipped a key out of his pocket, unlocked the padlock, and stepped into the cool, fragrant interior. A pair of old railroad tracks led into a dark hole in the rock, covered by a heavy iron grate, also padlocked. He unlocked the grate and swung it open on freshly oiled hinges, inhaling the scent of damp stone and mold, then flashed his light around.
As he proceeded he was careful to step over rows of old railroad ties and puddles of water. The tunnel had been cut into the living rock, and here and there where the rock
was rotten and fractured the ceiling had been shored and cribbed with massive beams.
After a hundred feet the tunnel veered to the left. Maddox turned the corner and his light illuminated a fork in the tunnel. He took the left branch. It soon came to a dead end, across which Maddox had built a wall of timbers bolted into the mine cribbing to create a small prison cell. He walked up to the timber wall and gave it a proud smack. Solid as a rock. He had begun at noon the day before and had worked straight to midnight, twelve hours of nonstop, backbreaking labor.
He slipped through the unfinished opening into a small room built into the dead end of the tunnel. He plucked a kerosene lantern off a hook, raised the glass chimney, lit it, and hung it on a nail. The friendly, yellow glow illuminated the room, perhaps eight by ten feet. It wasn't such a bad place, thought Maddox. He'd laid a mattress in one corner, covered with a fresh sheet, ready to go. Next to it stood an old wooden cable spool serving as a table, a couple of old chairs dug out of a ruined house, a horse bucket for drinking water, another bucket for a toilet. Opposite him, affixed into the stone of the far wall, he had sunk four half-inch-steel eye bolts, each with a case-hardened chain and manacles-two for the hands, two for the feet.
Maddox paused for a moment to admire his handiwork, and he marveled once again at his luck in finding a setup like this. Not only was the tunnel perfect for his purposes, but he had managed to find most of his timber on-site, old beams and boards stacked up in the back of the mine where they had survived the ravages of time.
He broke off this pleasant reverie and glanced at his rough mechanical drawing, which lay on the barrel, curled up by moisture. He flattened it, weighing it down with bolts, and looked it over. A few more beams and he'd be done. Instead of a door, which would be vulnerable, he would bolt three beams over the opening-a simpler, stronger, and more secure solution. He would only need to go in and out at most a few times.
The cave was humid and warm. Maddox stripped off his shirt and tossed it down on the mattress. He gave his well-muscled torso a flexing, ran through a series of stretching exercises, then picked up the heavy-duty Makita cordless and slapped in a fresh battery.
He went to the old pile of beams, probed a few with a screwdriver until he had found a good one, measured it off, marked a spot with a pencil, and began drilling. The whine of the Makita echoed in the cave and the smell of old, damp wood reached his nostrils as brown ribbons of oak curled out of the drill hole. Once through, he grasped the beam and hefted it upright, muscling it into position. After tacking it into place with a nail, he drilled a matching hole in the fixed beam behind it, slid through it an eighteen-inch bolt, twirled on a hex nut, and cranked it down so hard with a socket wrench that it bit a good quarter inch into the wood.
Nobody, no matter how desperate, was going to get that nut off. In an hour Maddox had finished all, leaving only the door opening. The three beams that would bar the opening lay stacked next to it, predrilled and