24 Declassified: 10 - Head Shot

by David S. Jacobs

  The tarp was heavy and didn’t want to move. He tugged the fold over the edge of the roof. Now he could rest his arms on the roof and pull the canvas down toward him. He had the advantage of gravity and his weight working for him. He heaved and pulled.

  The tarp yielded, folding toward him. There was the sound of rocks falling down the other side of the shed. Jack kept pouring it on. More rocks fell until there weren’t enough of them to hold the tarp in place.

  The tarp fell through the hole in the roof, except where it was nailed down on Jack’s side. It didn’t fall far. Something underneath was holding it up.

  Jack stuck his head over the edge and looked down. The tarp was draped over a whalelike shape that filled the collapsed shed, nearly reaching what was left of the roof beams. He reached inside the hole, heaving the tarp toward him with both hands, slowly uncovering what lay beneath.

  He said, “Huh!” He was too out of breath to say anything else. He sounded part surprised, part triumphant.

  Frith stood with his head tilted back, looking up, but he couldn’t see what Jack saw. He called, “What is it?”

  Jack said, “The blue bus.”

  THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 12 P.M. AND 1 P.M. MOUNTAIN DAYLIGHT TIME

  Silvertop, Colorado

  There was no stopping Jack, he had to see the thing through. Now that he knew what lay within the collapsed shed, he had a better idea of how to proceed and the tolerances of the structure he was scrambling around on. He was avid for clues but not at the cost of breaking his neck.

  The bus was fitted into the shell of the shed so that its front was at the east end. Jack toed the edge of the roof and jumped down through the gap to the top of the bus. It was a short drop, only a few feet; the shed was low and the bus was tall. He came down toward the rear of the vehicle, the impact of his landing making a hollow booming sound. He landed on his feet, knees bent to absorb the shock.

  The shed had been knocked down around the bus. Debris hemmed it in on all sides. He kicked the rest of the tarp off the roof; it hung down like a curtain from where it was nailed to the roof. Sunlight streamed in through the hole in the top of the shed.

  The roof of the bus was slightly curved but provided solid footing. He knelt facing the right side, thinking to hang over the edge so he could look through the windows. But there was nothing to hang on to and he didn’t want to risk sliding off the edge headfirst.

  He walked across the roof to the front of the bus. Rubble was piled up to the top of the hood but no higher. The right front door was blocked by too much debris to allow him to open it. He stepped down on to the hood and hunkered down there, facing the windshield. It was opaque with a coating of dust. He rubbed his sleeve against it to clean it and peered through the pane.

  The interior was dark, thick with shadows. Jack put his face up close to the glass, holding a hand against the side of his face to screen out the glare.

  The bus was empty.

  That surprised him. He couldn’t see much through the gloom, but as far as he could tell the bus contained no bodies. As far as he could tell.

  He had to know for sure. He sat down on the hood. He was able to reach down and pick up a rock from the top of the pile of debris crowding the vehicle. He picked up a big one and brought it down hard on the center of the windshield. The glass puckered where the leading edge of the rock hit it, a spiderweb of cracks radiating out from the point of impact.

  He struck again, harder. The spiderweb expanded, the pane becoming translucent as if frosted in the center. He bashed it a few more times, turning his head away from it to protect his eyes in case of flying glass shards.

  The windshield was made of safety glass. It held until it reached its breaking point and then it came apart all at once, disintegrating into a mass of crystal cubes that looked like several shovelfuls of miniature ice cubes. They went crashing into the bus, clearing out the windshield frame.

  A wave of heat and stink came pouring out through the opening. The bus had been shut up tight, all windows closed, causing massive heat to build up inside. The stink was the smell of decay. Jack caught a whiff of it. He felt his gorge rise and he had to fight to keep from gagging.

  The gloom inside the bus was not static but dynamic, flowing, pulsing—buzzing. Its source was a horde of flies, much of which came pouring out of the hole. Jack climbed on top of the bus’s roof and walked to the rear of it, filling his lungs with fresh air.

  He waited a few minutes for the worst of it to clear before returning to the front of the bus and squatting on the hood. The smell was still pretty rough. He’d have covered his mouth and nose with a handkerchief or piece of cloth if he’d had one but he didn’t, so he had to make do. He held his breath and stuck his head through the windshield frame.

  The stench came from masses of dried blood on the inside of the bus. The central aisle was smeared with it. So were the three steps leading down to the front door. The bus had seemed sealed tight but the flies had gotten inside. They always do, somehow.

  The safety glass had come apart in cubes that looked like rock salt. There were no jagged, razor-edged shards. Jack brushed aside the fragments on the hood. He crouched almost double, sticking a foot through the frame and stepping down to the driver’s seat. The driver’s area was free of blood.

  Jack eased himself through the frame into the bus. It was like stepping into a baker’s oven. Sweat sprang out from every pore. He breathed through his nose as shallowly as possible. A cloud of flies buzzed around him. He waved his hand in front of his face, batting them away, but they kept coming back.

  He took out a small flashlight from one of his pockets and switched it on to dispel some of the murky shadows. He made his way down the aisle toward the rear of the bus, the flashlight beam gliding over rows of seats, the floor and walls. Some seats were bloodstained but most were not. A few side windows were cracked but none had been broken. No bodies were in view. He ducked down to shine the light under the seats but there were no bodies there, either.

  He worked his way to the back of the bus. It lacked an emergency rear door. A mass of dried blood stained the floor and back panel. It was reddish-brown and several inches thick. The evidence seemed to indicate that there had been a number of bleeding bodies at the back of the bus, that they had been dragged to the front and out the door.

  Jack figured he had seen all there was to see for now. The forensics team could take it from here. He wanted out.

  He went to the front of the bus, using the driver’s seat as a stepping stone to climb through the windshield frame and out on to the hood. He hopped up on the vehicle’s roof and went to the rear. He boosted himself onto the top of the shed and jumped off. He landed on the ground with knees bent, rolling on his shoulder to absorb the impact.

  Anne Armstrong, Holtz, and Sanchez had joined Frith and they were all waiting for him. Bailey was still back at the vehicles keeping watch. Sanchez said to Jack, “You look pretty shook, man.”

  Jack took some deep breaths, filling his lungs with clean air. He could still taste the blood reek in his nostrils and at the back of his throat. Holtz had a canteen. Jack took a mouthful of warm water, swished it around in his mouth, and spat it out. He drank some more before returning the canteen.

  Anne Armstrong said, “What did you find?”

  Jack told them. Armstrong said, “What do you make of it?”

  Jack said, “I’m only guessing based on what I saw. The Zealots didn’t just pull a disappearing act on Thursday morning. There was a purge, too. One faction cleaning up on a dissident element, say. The victims were killed or wounded at Red Notch. Maybe some were killed and some only wounded. The entire compound cadre cleared out in the blue bus and some other vehicles. Our witness Skeets said there was a convoy of a couple cars and trucks along with the bus. The victims were in the bus.

  “Somewhere along the way but most likely here at Silvertop the bodies were disposed of. The bus was backed into this shed, which was a wreck alre
ady. The killers finished the job, probably by battering it down with one or more of their other vehicles. It wouldn’t take much to bring the walls down considering the age and state of disrepair of the shed. You could do it with a pickup truck or SUV. The west wall is broken in at just about the right height for a truck bumper and there are fresh scrapes and gouges on the boards.

  “What the collapsed shed didn’t hide was concealed under the tarp. It’s the same color as the surroundings and would blend right in with the scenery. Especially to any air searches doing a flyover.”

  Sanchez said, “I don’t get it. Why go to all that trouble?”

  Jack said, “The blue bus was a liability. Too big, too obvious, and too well- known. And one more reason: the surviving Zealots didn’t need it anymore. They were able to leave in the other vehicles that made up the convoy. Which tells you another thing—there couldn’t have been too many Zealots left out of the original two dozen or so.”

  Frith said, “That must’ve been some purge.”

  Jack nodded. “A real Night of the Long Knives.”

  Armstrong said, “It sounds plausible but one aspect puzzles me. After taking such pains to hide the bus, why not leave the bodies inside?”

  Jack said, “I picked up on that, too. It’s a key question. Why not leave the bodies inside? It suggests that discovery of the bus by the authorities is less important than the discovery of the bodies. For some reason, the bodies must not be found. Why not?

  “One answer comes to mind. Whose bodies are they? What if Prewitt himself was one of the ones purged? Suppose the cult leader and his loyalists were eliminated by an upstart faction. That development would electrify the rest of his crowd, namely the hundreds of rank-and-file members outside the inner circle. Many of whom are known to reside in this state to be close to their guru.

  “The usurpers could be the ones planning a strike against the Round Table. Prewitt and his loyalists opposed it so they had to go. But the plotters still require the assistance of Zealots outside the Red Notch cadre to carry out their plan. True believers who’d jump to obey the commands of their grand exalted leader Prewitt would balk if the orders came from someone else, some upstart who’s trying to take over the whole works.”

  Armstrong frowned, stroking her chin. “Prewitt’s death—murder—would have the members scrambling like an overturned anthill if it were known.”

  Jack went on, “Or it could work the other way. Maybe Prewitt’s in favor of a strike and liquidated all those who opposed him. That would split the cult, too, at a critical time when unity is required for a Sky Mount action.”

  He smacked a fist against his palm. “All of which makes it vital that those bodies be found—and quick!”

  Armstrong said, “Yes, but how?”

  Jack said, “I think I’ve got a lead. A clue. If I’m right we won’t have to look very far.” He indicated a gaping hole in the ground about a hundred feet east of the shed. “See that ventilator shaft?”

  The others turned to look at where he was pointing. He went on, “There’s something different about it from the other holes in the ground on top of the bluff. I noticed it when I was up on the roof of the shed. It stands out when you see it from above. What it is, is that the soil around the hole is a different color from the rest of the terrain. It’s darker. Like maybe somebody raked it up to cover their tracks.”

  Armstrong said, “It’s worth a look.”

  The group crossed toward the shaft. The sun was a bit past the zenith, and the team members cast blobs of shadow that slanted slightly east.

  The mouth of the shaft was an unnaturally regular circle of blackness gaping in the middle of the ground. It was not boarded over or fenced in. It was about thirty feet in diameter and was ringed by a brown band of soil. Beyond the ring the ground was light brown streaked with tans and grays.

  Sanchez said, “It is a different color.” Jack said, “There’s no tracks running through it, either.”

  Holtz said, “That doesn’t mean anything. Nobody’s going to ride a dirt bike or off-road vehicle too close to the edge.”

  Jack said, “Not many weeds or bushes, either. And no trash, bottles, beer cans, and the like.”

  The group fanned out in an arc bordering a section of the dark band. There was a clear line of demarcation between it and the surrounding lighter-colored soil. Jack dug his heel into the light-colored soil, gouging out a patch several inches deep. The soil that he uncovered was the same dark color as the ring bordering the shaft. He said, “How close can you get to the edge here anyway?”

  Anne Armstrong said, “I wouldn’t get too close.”

  Jack stepped into the ring of dark soil and moved toward the rim of the shaft. He moved slowly, carefully, halting about four feet away from the edge. He could see the edge of the rim opposite him on the other side of the shaft. The shaft was a hole bored straight down through the ground.

  He took off his baseball cap, folded it in two, and stuck it in his back pocket. He got down on his knees and lay flat on the ground, feeling the warmth of the earth beneath him. Frith and Sanchez crouched behind him, each holding one of Jack’s ankles— a safety precaution in case the ground at the rim should give way.

  Jack stuck his head over the edge and looked down. The shaft plunged more than a hundred feet straight down. The sun was almost directly overhead, allowing him to see most of the bottom of the hole, except where a fingernail sliver of shadow edged the western rim. A mound of loose dirt and rubble lay at the bottom of the pit. He couldn’t tell what color it was.

  He eased back from the edge and had Frith hand him the field glasses that the latter had been holding. Jack took another look, this time through the binoculars. He could see now that the bottom of the pit was a junction point with four tunnel mouths opening on it. The tunnels were set ninety degrees apart. The dirt mound covered most of the tunnels so that only their arched tops showed above it.

  The binoculars brought the dirt mound into clearer focus but he was still unable to draw any conclusions from it. It looked the same color as its surroundings. Maybe it was a trick of the light, maybe not.

  Something sticking out of the dirt mound might have been a tree branch or it could have been a half-buried body part, an arm or a leg. Maybe it, too, was a trick of the light, maybe not. He couldn’t tell from up here.

  Jack withdrew from the edge and once more felt the relief of having his feet planted on solid ground. He said, “I want to see what’s at the bottom of that pit.”

  ***

  The maps that Anne Armstrong had printed out earlier indicated the location of the tunnel leading to the shaft in question. Guesswork and a degree of uncertainty were involved because the original maps were old and not definitive. But the tunnel she and Jack selected seemed to fit the bill.

  Silvertop’s north, east, and south faces had had so many tunnels drilled into them that they looked like Swiss cheese. The entrances had all been sealed up a long time ago. It would be necessary to break into the desired tunnel, but the team had come well prepared for such contingencies.

  The tunnel mouth was located on the southern slope about a hundred and twenty-five feet below the summit and a hundred yards or so east of that face’s western edge where it met at right angles a ridge running north-south, a lower section of the same ridge that Jack and Frith had climbed earlier to survey the top of the bluff.

  The pickup truck and SUV were moved close to the southern edge of the hilltop overlooking the tunnel. Hard hats, flashlights, pry bars, crowbars, a pair of bolt cutters, and other tools were unloaded from the rear of the Explorer and distributed among the team members, except for Holtz. Holtz would remain behind to guard the vehicles and keep watch on the canyon as Bailey had done earlier.

  Frith and Holtz had the two M–16s, and Frith wanted someone armed with that weapon to stand sentry duty. The M–16 was better suited for long-distance shooting than the M–4s wielded by Bailey and Sanchez. The squad leader had not thought it necessary earlier
for the posted sentry to be so armed, but that had been before the blue bus had been found. That finding upped the potential threat level. Frith was going down to the tunnel so Holtz would stay up top.

  Armstrong radioed the news of the discovery to Central at Pike’s Ford. Central replied that it would be sending a forensics team out to the site. The lab crew had to come out from headquarters in Denver and would reach Silvertop in roughly two and a half hours. Armstrong informed Central that her team would now attempt to access the shaft through the tunnel. Central acknowledged and Armstrong signed off.

  Jack, Armstrong, Frith, Sanchez, and Bailey climbed down the slope to the tunnel. The face’s low grade made for an easy descent.

  The south face, like those of the east and north, was terraced. The tunnel accessing the shaft was aproned by a fifteen-foot- wide ledge. The entrance was a rounded arch ten feet high with a base of about the same width. It was boarded over. A metal sign nailed to the planks warned that trespassing was a Federal offense and that violators would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. It bore the seal of the U.S. Bureau of Mines.

  Jack and Bailey went to work on the barrier with crowbar and pry bar. The boards were old and flimsy and came apart with little trouble. There was a squeal of rusty nails giving way and the splintering of planks. A few minutes’ hard work was all it took to open up a man-sized gap in the wooden wall. One of the last boards to give way had the sign on it; it hit the dirt with a thud.

  Sanchez said, “Now you’ve done it. Wait till the Bureau of Mines hears of this.”

  Bailey said, “I’ll never tell. It’s top secret.”

  Frith said, “Let’s widen that hole for easier access and exits.” He and Sanchez took their turn with the tools and soon doubled the size of the gap.

  Jack, Armstrong, and Bailey were going inside, Frith and Sanchez would remain behind at the entrance. The three would- be tunnel probers donned hard hats and equipped themselves with flashlights. Jack hefted a pry bar. It was five feet long with a pointed tip and a wedge at the opposite end. He said, “Might come in handy for poking into that mound at the bottom of the shaft.”