CHAPTER 28
CHARLIE SAT IN the Cherokee, watching Bradone fight the wind for her floppy safari hat as she leaned against a wooden telephone pole and talked into a pay phone in a black box attached to it. Probably one of the more ridiculous sights in a given lifetime. Indiana Jones’s mother meets V. I. Warshawski.
Bradone didn’t trust the cellular to work out here and worried that the mysterious technology at Groom Lake would find a conversation on the airwaves easier to pick up than one on wires anyway.
The wind grew chilly as the afternoon wore on and Charlie punched the windows up. A turpentine smell permeated the enclosed space.
Besides the Cherokee, two pickups and a motorcycle parked in front of the Little A’Le’Inn Motel/Restaurant/Bar/RV Hookups. The sign on the side of the shedlike building, and another out at the roadside, pictured an oval bald head with those giant black almond-shaped eyes, sloped upward at the outer edges, so popular in extraterrestrials these days. It assured Charlie EARTHLINGS WELCOME.
A grand, if scruffy, tourist trap with tongue in cheek, out in the middle of nothing. The Little A’Le’Inn, a gas station, the T-shirt trailer, and the Research Center comprised Rachel’s commercial district—all located along the frontage road and separated by weed acres. What else did the people around here have to do? It looked like welfare-check city.
Well, this earthling has to pee.
Inside the A’Le’Inn, an older couple with drinks in hand played at the one tiny bank of slots. Four guys in baseball caps, plaid shirts, tight jeans, and cowboy boots leaned on pool cues to watch her. Along one side of the room stretched a saloon bar with bottled libations on the wall behind it and diner stools in front of it. Eight or ten dinette sets, mostly fifties chrome and tape-patched red plastic, helped the pool table fill up the room.
Charlie was about to ask directions when one of the guys pointed a cue at a door opposite the bar. A vertical poster covered it:
WARNING, THIS IS A RESTRICTED AREA. DO NOT ENTER. IT IS UNLAWFUL TO MAKE ANY FILM, PHOTOGRAPH, MAP. SKETCH, PICTURE, DRAWING OF THIS INSTALLATION. TRESPASSERS ARE SUBJECT TO IMMEDIATE ARREST AND CONFISCATION OF ALL PERSONAL ITEMS. USE OF DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED. 18, U.S. CODE 795/797 AND EXECUTIVE ORDER 10104.
Having taken time to read the door, Charlie nearly didn’t make it on time into a one-commode bathroom with a window that opened to a world of jumbled house trailers. They had to be the motel part of this joint. The only warning inside the room was to please not flush sanitary pads et cetera because of the primitive plumbing and Rachel’s earthbound sewage system.
When Charlie stepped out, Bradone, obviously still enjoying an adventure, raised a Coors to her from one of the chrome dinette sets. Two more men sat at the diner bar. A florid guy stood behind it and watched Bradone.
“I’ve ordered us alien burgers and fries for dinner. We can save the dinner subs for breakfast.”
“Bradone—”
“And I’ve ordered you a glass of red.”
“Bradone—”
“I didn’t ask. Probably dago, but we’ll need—”
“We just had lunch and I am not—”
“Here’s your dago.” A cheerful woman in comforting stone-washed jeans and Reeboks set a glass in front of Charlie. “Actually, it’s a not-too-bad merlot.”
“You have merlot?”
“See, this seriously finicky extraterrestrial left it behind. I don’t figure he’s coming back. Probably got shot out of the sky by the government or Steven Spielberg.” She set another Coors in front of Bradone and winked at Charlie. “Be back with your aliens minus the secretions in a sec.”
“Secretions—”
“Cheese.” Bradone drained the first Coors and reached for the next. “I didn’t think we needed the extra fat.”
The alien burgers differed from earthly burgers in that they came in oblong sesame-seed buns instead of round. Charlie ate half the burger and a fourth of the fries but, unfortunately, drank all of the wine.
Bradone insisted on a doggy box for the rest of their dinner and retrieved two large thermoses from the Jeep to have filled with hot coffee.
“Now you ladies be good girls and drive straight back to Vegas, hear?” the proprietor cautioned with a wink when he took their money.
“Just don’t do it too fast,” his wife added.
The boys around the pool table leered.
Knowing it was the wine talking, Charlie pointed out two things that should have been of interest as they drove out of town. The first was that she had no intention of sleeping, let alone breakfasting, near some forbidden military installation and, second, the proprietress of the A’Le’Inn had warned Charlie, when Bradone visited the restricted potty, about the real danger in this “neck of the woods.”
“What we really need to worry about is cattle mutilation.”
“Oh well, that’s a relief.” Bradone made a shooing motion with one hand. “Tell you what, you worry about it for me. I’ve got a lot on my mind right now.”
Then why did you drink three bottles of Coors? “No, listen to me, the cattle mutilate us. That’s why she didn’t want us to drive too fast.”
“Right, they crawl in the Jeep and cut us up with their horns. No more wine for you, my dear.”
“No, they wander onto the road in front of us and we and the Jeep get mutilated. I suppose they do to, but we wouldn’t know by then. Just slow down, will you?”
The intrepid adventuress was already slowing down, not because of road cattle, but to turn the Cherokee onto a side road where a large white graffiti-riddled mailbox stood out like a lone sentinel. A wooden sign tacked to its base read STEVE MEDLIN HCR80.
“Is that—”
“The black mailbox.” Bradone let the low melodious laugh loose. It was a lot like her voice. “Charlie, cheer up. This is going to be so much fun. Aren’t you even a bit curious about Groom Lake?”
“No.” Actually, she was a bit, but knew there was no way Bradone McKinley was going to get them into the base or would know what to do next if she did.
Charlie argued all the way to the warning signs. Her astrologer had gone over the edge. They’d left a plume of dust along the washboard gravel, marking a trail that had to be traceable by satellite.
It was nearly dark when they pulled up behind three other vehicles, one a pickup camper. Charlie planned to ask someone in them for a ride back to Vegas. But they were all empty. Her panicky feelings began to interfere with her breathing. She knew Ardith Miller was dead and she knew she didn’t want to be even this close to that orange light again.
“Were we supposed to meet somebody here?”
“Let’s get out and stretch a little. Be noticed.”
“By who?”
“Whom.” Bradone pointed to tripods on rock inclines on each side of the road. Spikes on top of them sported what appeared to be white-painted coffee cans on their sides and small antennas pointing northwest. “They look fake, don’t they? Might well be.”
Signs similar to the one on the Little A’Le’Inn’s potty door peppered the low hills, as well. USE OF DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED seeming to stand out in the decreasing light down here. Up there, the sky began to glitter.
Bradone crawled up a forbidden incline and sat next to an orangish post. “Don’t worry, Charlie, I’m not trespassing until I step around this stake. Enjoy the night sky.”
“So, what are we waiting for? I demand we get back to Vegas tonight. I’m not kidding.”
“This is what we’re waiting for.”
“This” was the thrashing blades of a helicopter.
Which weren’t nearly as noisy as the squealing, swearing, laughing figures who came charging over the incline and past Bradone, shoving Charlie aside. Two women and five men and everyone of them sporting video cameras on straps around their necks.
“Out of here,” a guy roared in her ear, and before Charlie could control her surprise, the helicopter blades above threw grit in her contact lenses. Three vehicles almo
st ran her down in their haste to turn around and head “out of here.” The nutty astrologer pushed her back into the white Cherokee.
“Show time,” Bradone yelled, and gunned the Jeep to follow the other trespassers.
Charlie, busy trying to find eyedrops in her purse, didn’t realize they were not staying on the gravel road that eventually met the paved highway like the vehicles ahead of them until the Cherokee bucked like a tortured rodeo bull and she and her purse and her eyedrops landed on the floor under the dash.
She yelled, pleaded, and swore before Bradone hit the brakes and the bucking stopped. “Get back in your seat,” she said patiently, “and this time, put on your seat belt.”
Before Charlie could regain her seat and composure, she found herself deserted. The dash and headlights were out. Only a small button stayed lighted on the dash. Suddenly, it went out too. No helicopter hovered above. They were obviously off the road and the keys were not in the ignition.
When Detective McKinley jumped back into the driver’s seat, she deposited heavy-duty wire cutters on Charlie’s lap. Off they started with neither lights nor logic. Charlie hefted the wire cutters experimentally.
“Don’t even think about it,” the older woman warned, but with a grin. “Just be a good sport a little longer.”
They stopped again when that small light blinked on the dash again. Bradone took the wire cutters with her and came back soon after the small light died. They started off across country for a short but jouncing distance and parked up against a rock outcropping.
“Okay, Charlie, we’ve got to cover this thing.” She pulled a dark tarp out of the back of the Jeep and they spread it over the vehicle and themselves, Charlie still complaining but too afraid of what she didn’t know about all this to refuse to hide. The tarp smelled like turpentine.
“What, you think we look like a rock here? You think they don’t know exactly where we are? They’ve been tracking our dust for miles.”
Bradone peered out of a crack in the tarp edges and a faint light shown on a face that appeared surprisingly older. The sound of the helicopter drew closer. “Then why are they circling over there, Charlie, and not here?”
Charlie looked out, to see the helicopter hover over tossing Joshua trees, raise spectral dirt clouds in the searchlight that shone down from it. It wasn’t nearly as close as it sounded.
Bradone shoved a water bottle in Charlie’s face. “Drink as much as you can now. We can only carry so much once we leave the Cherokee behind.”
“I am not leaving the Cherokee behind.” But Charlie took a swig or two or five, mostly because fear and wine had dried out her mouth. “I’m going to give myself up before we get inside the restricted area and come face-to-face with that authorized deadly force. And I strongly suggest you do too.”
“Charlie, I think there’s something you should know first.”
“I’m not listening to you anymore. You’re crazy.”
Charlie threw back a corner of the tarp, but before she could rush out and flag down the authorities, Bradone said, “We’re already inside the restricted area.”
CHAPTER 29
THE MINUTE THE helicopter disappeared, they took off in the Cherokee again. “We won’t be going far this time. Hang on.”
“Did you ask the stars about this?” Charlie could not believe they were out from under the tarp, moving across country, with no headlights. Behind enemy lines. The enemy was armed and they weren’t. “They’ll follow our tracks.”
“Charlie, will you stop whining? The helicopter stirs up so much dirt, it destroys the tracks.”
“What if the white Cherokees come after us?”
“There aren’t any motion detectors on this side of the boundary. At least there didn’t used to be. They can’t mine the whole damn place with them. This restricted area is humongous.”
“You mean there were motion detectors on the outside of the boundary?”
“That’s why the wire cutters. That’s what the helicopter was investigating. It must have triggered a signal to somebody that they’d been disabled. Least we know they work. I always wondered if they were just there to intimidate curious tourists.”
“I thought Evan was bad about getting me into trouble.”
“I have to tell you about the last time I was here.” The outrageous woman laughed again.
“Stop that. They can hear your laugh clear back to the Pentagon.”
“The last time I was here, we almost stumbled over a bunch of ground troops slithering around on their bellies, loaded down with fantastic equipment. Oh Charlie, it was so funny—wait a minute, I think this is it.”
“What? The edge of a cliff? How can you see anything?”
“I almost can’t.” She stopped and studied a sketch with a penlight. Looked up at the sky and back at the terrain around them. “Pretty sure this is it. Be back in a minute.”
“Don’t leave me here alone.” Charlie’d gone from half-considering knocking the woman out with the wire cutters in order to get control of the Jeep to wanting to cling to her for safety.
But Bradone returned as suddenly as she’d disappeared to drive the Jeep Cherokee into the deeper darkness of a cave.
“What if they have land mines around here?”
“Then we’re in big trouble.” Bradone turned on the dome light to parcel out food and water between two backpacks—even the cold, greasy leftovers from the Little A’Le’Inn. “We can snack on these tonight. It’ll be like a slumber party.”
“Why can’t we stay here in the cave?”
“Because we can’t see anything in here, silly. And this isn’t really a cave. It’s a mine tunnel, long abandoned. Probably full of bears and lions farther in, so you better stay with me.”
Charlie followed her over hill and dale and across rocks and rubble, carrying rolled-up blankets and pillows tied across the top of the pack. Not because she thought there were bears and lions in the mine shaft, but because right now getting into terrible trouble with the air force and the armed response personnel didn’t seem as terrifying as being left alone out here at night with no idea how to get back out.
The crunch of their shoes, the brushing sound of scurrying night creatures when Charlie stopped whining and Bradone stopped to get direction from the stars. Was she looking at the position of the constellations to chart their course? Or searching for UFOs?
There are no such things as UFOs.
Without a trail, the going was risky. Sometimes a shadowed rock looked like a depression. And vice versa. Charlie followed as precisely in Bradone’s footsteps as possible in the surreal lighting, hoping for a warning of cliff drop-off or rattlesnake or alien presence. Or more likely armed response personnel guys with big rifles. It was just her imagination that the smell of oranges was in the air. That’s all it was.
Her guide and tormentor went on and on about her last visit here and the ground troops. Charlie was sure pursuers could hear the chatter, but the woman would not lower her voice.
“We could see them. They couldn’t see us. They wore goggles like you say were in Evan’s film, but we could see without flashlights because of the starlight, like we can now. They couldn’t see anything. They were crawling around and into each other with these imposing guns—more boy toys, swearing and sweating. And it was chilly.”
“Why were they crawling around on the ground? This is air force, isn’t it?”
“Oh, who knows? Some silly war game, but these goggles didn’t work as well as the ones on the robbers in the now-famous Hilton heist. The packs on their backs, Charlie, they were computers, and these guys could not only not see, their computers were taking forever to boot up and were so heavy the men under them could barely get to their feet.”
“You’re making this up.”
“No. They were testing this new technology and the computer was supposed to tell this sweating kid where the enemy was and everything. You should have heard them. It was also telling them the weather, which was inaccurate.”<
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“Boy-toy stuff like Pat the pilot smuggled out of Groom Lake for Evan. Bradone, we didn’t have to come out here to figure that out. We already had, and we’re both too old for slumber parties. Wait, that light on the dash that told you where the ground sensors were. Where did you get that?”
“Same place I got the Cherokee—from Merlin. That’s nothing extraordinary. But maybe that wand-phaser thing—think of it—small enough to hold in your hand, but it can freeze an entire crowd in their tracks without harming them. Can you imagine what a weapon that could be? All kinds of things are tested out here.”
“Merlin who? And that’s all the more reason why we shouldn’t be out here.”
Bradone turned unexpectedly. Charlie bumped into her, lost her balance, and she and the pack and the bedding came down on her tailbone. This place made the surface of the moon seem cushy. And it smelled like orange juice. No, it didn’t.
The astrologer stood above her with arms crossed and stars shooting every which way over her stupid hat. Her face in shadow. “Charlie, Richard says you don’t like to admit to your psychic powers, so—”
“I don’t have psychic powers. But you get labeled with that condition just once and every time your plain old garden-variety common sense comes up with a logical explanation for anything, it’s hailed as psychic phenomenon. Total pain in the keister.”
“But you know Ardith Miller is dead.” She reached a hand down to help Charlie up. The starlight was so bright, it made shadows.
“I don’t know know it—but she hasn’t missed work in fifty years—”
“She could be too ill to call in sick.”
“That wouldn’t account for the horrified look on Zelda the dealer’s face this morning.” Charlie dusted grit off the seat of her pants and whined, “What does that have to do with anything? So we’re out here because we have to see some lights in the dark, find out why I blacked out on the Mooney, have an adventure, and a lot of fun, and—”
“Get you out of Vegas, where I don’t think you are safe—”
Nobody Dies in a Casino Page 18
