by John Saul
Vaguely, he was aware of another sound, a keening wail that echoed though the pipe like the cry of a tortured animal.
But it wasn’t an animal.
It was himself.
And as he understood that the scream was his own, a tiny fragment of his mind escaped the terror and took hold of him.
He began moving again, but no longer with the mindless churning the panic had dictated.
Now he was seized with a single overwhelming imperative.
He would keep his mind intact, and escape from the pipe.
He slithered faster, pushing himself along, his eyes still shut against the terrifying blackness.
He could hear something ahead of him now. He must be near the end of the pipe, but he dared not stop, dared not even open his eyes to search for a faint glimmer of light.
He had to get out. Had to escape. Had to keep going.
And then, suddenly, the pipe fell away beneath him.
His eyes flew open and he reached out wildly, searching for a handhold to stop his fall.
It was too late.
His own momentum carried his body out of the pipe, and then he was in the main shaft itself. There was light around him, shining down from above, and he could hear voices calling out to him.
Instinctively he twisted himself around as he fell, so that when he hit the turbine, it was his feet that made contact first.
He thought he heard a distinct snapping sound from somewhere, and then a blinding pain gripped his right leg.
He came to a stop.
“Don’t move, Frank,” he heard a voice saying.
He couldn’t identify where the voice was coming from, couldn’t see its source.
But it didn’t matter, really. He knew he couldn’t move, even if he tried. Blackness closed in around him again, but this time it didn’t bring the stark terror of panic with it. This time, it brought only relief from the pain in his leg.
He had no idea how long he’d been unconscious, but when he opened his eyes, he was stretched out on the floor of one of the passages. He tried to sit up, but the pain in his leg stopped him even more effectively than Bill Watkins’s restraining hands.
“Take it easy, Frank,” Watkins told him. “You’re okay, and we’ve got an ambulance on its way. Shouldn’t be more than a few more minutes.”
Frank winced against the pain, then forced himself to relax. “What happened?” he breathed.
“You panicked. Came shooting out of the feeder pipe like all the demons of Hell were chasing you. Except when you came out, there wasn’t anything to grab onto.”
Frank groaned softly. “How far’d I fall?”
Watkins smiled. “Not that far. Fifteen feet maybe.” Then his expression sobered. “You were lucky. If you’d hit headfirst, you’d have broken your neck instead of your leg.”
There were sounds of footsteps echoing hollowly in the passage, and two men in white uniforms appeared, followed by Greg Moreland. While the medics began unfolding a portable stretcher, Greg himself knelt beside Frank and took a syringe out of a small medical kit.
“What’s that?” Frank asked, eyeing the needle suspiciously.
“Morphine,” Greg told him.
Frank shook his head. “Forget it,” he said. “It doesn’t hurt that much.”
“Don’t be a hero,” Greg replied, slipping the needle into a vein in Frank’s forearm and pressing the plunger. “It might not hurt now, but when we start carrying you up topside, it’s going to hurt like hell.”
Frank started to protest once more, but as the drug quickly began to take hold, a feeling of euphoria came over him.
What the hell, he thought. Might as well enjoy it.
As the medics eased him onto the stretcher, he felt his mind begin to drift. Then they picked the stretcher up, and Frank closed his eyes until, a few minutes later, he felt the warmth of the sun on his face.
He blinked in the sunshine.
Overhead, the sky was clear, and an even deeper blue than he remembered having ever seen before And then, soaring above the canyon, he saw an eagle.
His vision seemed to telescope, and suddenly he thought the eagle’s head had changed, and it wasn’t a bird at all that was staring down at him from the sky.
For a moment he thought it was his father-in-law, Brown Eagle.
Bullshit, he told himself. It’s just the morphine. I’m stoned out of my mind, that’s all.
He blinked, and looked up into the sky again The bird was gone.
Otto Kruger looked up at the sound of the ambulance siren and smiled with satisfaction. He’d already heard what had happened to Frank It had worked—Frank was going to be out of his hair for a while. His musings were interrupted by a muffled roar, and he turned to gaze southward. Flying low, just clearing the top of the mesa, a huge helicopter was approaching. Hanging below it, suspended by steel cables, was a large object shaped like an enormous dish.
“Here she comes!” Otto yelled to the crew he’d been overseeing for the last two days.
The five men looked up, shielding their eyes from the sun, then scuttled off the concrete pad whose wooden forms they’d only torn away an hour ago. The chopper came closer, then hovered overhead, the huge antenna, complete with its rotating base, suspended only three feet above its pad. As Otto shouted orders, three of the men moved forward to guide the antenna onto the centering pins that rose up from the freshly hardened concrete. Two minutes later the antenna settled down and the men quickly freed the steel cables. Otto waved to the pilot, and the ’copter rose once more into the air, swung around, and headed back south.
“Okay,” Otto called to the crew as the pounding of the chopper’s huge blades began to dwindle, “let’s get her bolted down, and then start hooking her up. Kendall wants it in full operation by five o’clock this afternoon.”
One of the men threw Kruger a dark look. “Who the hell do you think we are?” he muttered, already beginning the job of sorting out the leads that emerged from a piece of PVC pipe that had been laid into the concrete. A shadow passed over him, and he looked up to see Otto Kruger scowling at him.
“You being paid to talk or work?” Kruger demanded.
The man rose to his feet, towering three full inches above Kruger. When he spoke, his voice held a dangerous edge. “Look, smart boy,” he said. “It takes exactly two and a half days to put one of these things in, start to finish. Five guys, two and a half days. This is the sixth one this crew has put in. Everything’s on schedule. The pad, the chopper, the pipe down into the canyon. Only thing that’s going to hold us up now is you. So why don’t you just shut up and let us do our job, huh? Then we’ll be out of this dump and you can go back to being King Shit. Okay?”
Kruger glared angrily at the man, but then subsided. Kendall had told him this crew knew what they were doing; in fact, Kendall had told him merely to give them whatever they needed. “Just make sure you get it done,” Kruger growled. “If it isn’t, it’s your asses, not mine.”
“Sure,” the big man replied, deliberately spitting into the dirt at Kruger’s feet. “I’ll remember that.” Turning his back on Kruger, he went to work. By five-thirty Borrego Oil Company, the newest acquisition of UniChem, would be fully integrated into the company’s worldwide communications network.
As if, the man reflected, anybody really cared.
Borrego Oil Company, like its town, was a failing backwater.
In fact, he couldn’t imagine why UniChem even wanted it.
What the hell could they possibly do with it?
Judith Sheffield was just about to leave her classroom to go have a cup of coffee in the teachers’ lounge when her door slammed open and Jed, his face pale, rushed in.
Rising to her feet, her heart pounding with a premonition of what was coming, she took a step toward him. “What is it, Jed?” she asked. “What’s happened?”
Jed leaned against the wall for a moment, catching his breath from the dash up the stairs to Judith’s room on the second floor.
“It’s Dad,” he gasped. “They just called Beckwith from the hospital. He’s had an accident.”
Judith’s eyes widened in shock. “Frank?” she asked. “But what—” She cut off her own words. Obviously, whatever had happened, Jed didn’t yet know the details himself. “Come on,” she said, grasping his arm again, but this time steering him toward the side door and the parking lot. “I’ll drive you to the hospital myself.”
Chapter 16
Judith pulled the Honda into the parking lot next to the small hospital. A low, single-story building constructed of the ubiquitous cinder blocks, it had an emergency room at the front, with two small wings extending back to partially enclose a tiny courtyard. It appeared that the hospital had been painted green at some time in the past, but most of the paint had weathered away, and now the clinic had a strange speckled look to it, almost as if the building itself had contracted some rare disease. By the time she’d brought the car to a stop in a slot between two battered pickup trucks, Jed already had the passenger door open.
They found the waiting room deserted, but a moment later Gloria Hernandez, looking harried, emerged from the double doors that led to the emergency room. When she recognized Jed, she hurried toward him. At the look on the nurse’s face, Jed froze.
“What is it?” he asked, his voice shaking. “What’s wrong? Dad isn’t …” His voice trailed off as he found himself unable even to finish his question.
Gloria shook her head quickly. “He’s in the back,” she said. “Dr. Moreland doesn’t think it’s too bad.” Then, turning to Judith, she forced herself to smile. “I’m sorry,” she said. “When I called the school, I didn’t mean for them to make you drive Jed over here.”
“It’s all right, Gloria,” Judith replied. “I—Well, I’ve been seeing Frank a bit lately. What happened?”
Gloria shook her head helplessly. “I’m not sure. They said he fell—”
She was interrupted by Greg Moreland, who strode into the room, wiping his hands on a white towel which he handed to Gloria. His brows arched slightly as he recognized Judith, and he offered her a quick nod before turning his attention to Jed, who was watching him anxiously.
“Your father’s a very lucky man,” he said. “It’s a clean fracture of the right tibia and fibula, and he may have a slight concussion from hitting his head against the turbine, but given the circumstances, it could have been a lot worse.”
Judith’s eyes closed for a moment as she heard the words, and she felt some of the tension drain out of her body. “Thank God,” she breathed She stepped forward then, and unconsciously laid a hand on Jed’s shoulder. “May we see him?”
Greg spread his hands expansively. “No reason for you not to,” he said. “He’s a bit groggy, and might not make much sense, but I’ll bet he’ll be glad to see you. They’ve just put him in a room … one-oh-six, I think.”
As Jed moved toward the doors that led to the wing containing the rooms, Judith hung back. “What happened?” she asked when she and Greg were alone.
Greg shrugged. “A freak accident, from what I understand,” he told her. “He was working at the dam, and apparently he panicked.”
Judith nodded. “He was in the pipes, wasn’t he?” she asked, her voice trembling from anger now, rather than from shock.
Greg cocked his head. “I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”
“He’s claustrophobic,” Judith told him. “He was afraid of going to work this morning. He was sure they were going to send him into the intake pipes, and he was sure that if they did, he was going to panic. Dear God,” she went on, “this isn’t the dark ages. There are all kinds of jobs up there. They didn’t have to put Frank into a position like that!”
“Stop it!” Greg snapped, his voice commanding her to silence. “You’re out of control, Judith,” he said, then softened. “I didn’t do anything. If you want to get mad at someone, get mad at Kendall or Kruger. They’re the ones who sent him up there.”
He was right. Judith took a deep breath as she struggled to regain control of herself. “I’m sorry,” she finally said. “You’re right, of course. I just—” She stopped. She’d been about to tell him that what had just happened to Frank wasn’t the only thing on her mind, but then she’d remembered that it was Greg himself who had ordered the shots the other day. “I—Well, I guess I’d better go in and see him,” she finished, glancing at her watch. “Damn … do me a favor, will you? Have someone call the school so they can cover my next class?”
Without waiting for a reply, Judith hurried toward the doors of the emergency room, unaware of Greg’s eyes, still fixed on her, watching her speculatively as she left.
She’d been about to say something else—he’d seen it in her eyes. And then she had changed her mind.
Why?
What was it she had suddenly decided not to tell him?
Judith reached out and gently stroked Frank’s brow with the damp washcloth Jed had brought from the tiny bathroom that connected Frank’s room to the one next door. For a moment he made no sign that he even felt the wet coolness on his face, but then he stirred in the bed and his eyes opened. He gazed at her blankly, and then his vision cleared. His eyes darted around the room as if searching for something, and finally came back to her. He reached up and gently squeezed her hand.
“Judith?” he breathed, his voice raspy, his throat feeling unnaturally dry.
She picked up the glass of water on the stand next to his bed and held it to his lips, gently raising his head to make it easier for him. “Drink a little water,” she urged.
He drank thirstily, then let his head fall back to the pillow.
“Hi, Dad,” Jed said, stepping forward and reaching out to lay his hand tentatively on his father’s shoulder. Frank looked up at his son, smiled and covered Jed’s hand with his own. Then, as if embarrassed by the affectionate gesture, he dropped his hand to his side.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“Almost eleven,” Judith replied.
“Jesus,” Frank groaned. “It just seemed like a couple of minutes.” Then, as his mind cleared further, he shuddered at the memory of what had happened to him.
Once again he glanced suspiciously around the room. “Who’s here?” he asked, his voice dropping so it was barely above a whisper.
Judith frowned uncertainly. “Just Jed and me,” she said.
“Nobody from work?” Frank asked.
Above him, he saw Judith and Jed exchanging a worried glance. He struggled to sit up straighter, wincing against the stab of pain that shot through his right leg.
“Don’t,” Judith protested, but Frank ignored her.
Gritting his teeth against the pain, he shoved himself up and back until he rested propped up against the pillows. Then he took Judith’s hand again. “What did they say?” he asked. “Did they tell you what happened?”
Judith bit her lip as she nodded. “Greg said you were in a pipe, and panicked,” she said. “It was an accident.”
Frank was silent for a few seconds, but then his jaw set and his eyes met Judith’s. “It was no accident,” he said, his voice taking on a belligerent tone, as if he expected to be contradicted. Before either Jed or Judith could speak, he turned to his son and said, “Do you hear me, Jed? They tried to kill me today.”
“Aw, come on, Dad,” Jed began again, but Frank turned away and fixed his gaze on Judith.
“It was no accident,” he repeated. “There was something they didn’t tell me. That pipe doesn’t go straight across to the shaft. It slopes a little, and then at the end it starts slanting real bad. But there’s nothing to hold onto. Even if I hadn’t panicked, I’d have fallen. And that’s just what they were counting on.”
Judith stared at him. “Frank, I can’t believe that. It’s … well, it’s just crazy—”
Frank shook his head. “It’s not crazy,” he said, his voice taking on a note of obstinacy that told both Judith and Jed it would be useless to argue with him. “They’re pi
ssed at all the yelling I’ve been doing, and they want to get rid of me. And they almost got away with it.” He was silent for a moment, then his eyes clouded before he spoke once more. “And they won’t stop,” he said. “They’ll do something else. They’re going to kill me, just like they did Max Moreland.”
Gina Alvarez glanced over at Jed and wondered once more if her idea of going for a horseback ride that afternoon was a good one. It had seemed like a terrific idea at the time, when she’d found Jed waiting for her after school, his face pale, and his eyes worried. But he’d barely even spoken to her, apparently off somewhere in a world of his own.
“What do you think?” she’d asked as they came to a fork in the trail, the one to the left leading up to the rim of the canyon, the other following the river into the canyon itself. When Jed made no response, she’d made the decision herself, opting to wind along through the cottonwoods, enjoying their shelter from the afternoon heat.
Finally, when the horses stopped to take a drink from the stream, she decided she’d had enough.
“Look,” she said. “Either tell me what’s bugging you or tell me you’re mad at me or tell me to go home. If you aren’t having a good time, I’m sorry. Maybe this was just a dumb idea in the first place. Okay?”
At last Jed seemed to come out of his reverie. “I’m not mad at you, Gina,” he said. Then, after a short silence, he added in a whisper, “If I tell you something, will you promise not to tell anyone else?”
Gina’s brows creased into a rare frown, and she nodded.
Jed still hesitated, then made up his mind. “Dad thinks the company tried to kill him today,” he said.
Gina stared at him, trying to decide if he was pulling her leg, but the look in his eyes told her he wasn’t. “Come on,” she said. “Why would they want to do that?”
Jed repeated what his father had told him earlier, and Gina listened to it all in silence. When he was done, she shook her head.
“That’s nuts,” she said. Jed’s eyes instantly clouded, and Gina quickly apologized. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean your father’s nuts. But it just seems like kind of a crazy idea, that’s all. I mean, your dad was probably still in shock, or something, and besides, why would the company want to hurt him?”
