He stopped and backed up, pulling over to the shoulder of the road, by the aircraft. He shut off the engine and waited for his ticket.
Zack thought of his ex-wife, and of the unsafe manner in which the cops had landed, almost causing him to crash. He might have been injured or killed, preventing him from reaching her. He intended to say something about that.
Looking through the rear window he saw a woman in the front passenger seat, leaning over and tending to the male pilot, who was rubbing his forehead, an apparent injury. Though the rain was letting up, winds were still gusting, shaking the STOL and slapping Zack’s van.
The occupants of the aircraft didn’t seem to be paying any attention to him. Their craft remained in the middle of the highway, so they might have been forced down by the weather, and were not after him at all. But he didn’t want to take a chance, and get in trouble.
Half a dozen cars and a small flatbed truck passed slowly, going carefully around the aircraft. But the big tractor trailer rig stopped behind it, not making any attempt to get by, though there might be enough room. Maybe the driver was playing it safe.
Zack climbed out of his van and walked back to the police craft, into the teeth of the wind, zipping his parka closed. No rain now, but it was really cold. He dipped his hands in his pockets, then thought better of it since it might look as if he was concealing a gun, and withdrew them. An icy, blasting wind hurt the areas of exposed skin on his hands and face. He went to the pilot’s side of the police aircraft and looked up at the side window. It was closed.
The pilot slid the window open. To Zack’s surprise it was his friend, Detective Nolan Hagel. He had a bandage on his forehead.
“Are you all right?” Zack asked.
“I think so. We had to put down here, made a rough landing.” He stared hard at Zack, said, “We were on our way to Sun Under. Your ex-wife is there, and we have reason to believe she could be in danger.”
Zack’s heart sank. He’d worried about exactly that, but had hoped it was not true. He asked his friend what he meant, and Hagel told of the killing of Meredith’s landlord and the notepad on which Riggio had written the threatening message.
Then Zack revealed his own concerns, and asked, “Are you going to take off?” He looked inside, but saw all the seats were occupied. “It doesn’t look like you have room for me.”
“No, it would put us over the load limit,” Hagel said. “I don’t think we can lift off in this weather anyway. It’s really rough up there, and I’m not the best pilot.”
“Do you want to go with me, then? I have plenty of room, though it wouldn’t be as fast as flying.” Wind whipped his parka.
“I think we should,” Hagel said. He looked at the woman. “Is that all right with you?”
“We have no other choice,” she said. “I also sent FBI agents in a car, but I’ve been unable to reach them. All communications are shut down by the storm.”
When the woman climbed out of the aircraft, Zack was surprised to see the orange glow around her lower body. She smiled to him and explained the prosthetic device, then identified herself as an FBI agent.
Zack wanted to know why the FBI was involved, but she turned and walked back to the truck, which was idling behind them. She spoke with the driver for several moments, then returned and said, “He’s going to push us out of the way.”
Nolan Hagel and two more passengers climbed out. One was a uniformed police officer, who Hagel said was guarding the elderly man who had been seated with him.
The trucker rolled his rig forward, and with the bumper he pushed the aircraft to a wide shoulder of the road, and then continued on down the highway.
Agent Jantz sat in the front with Zack, while the others climbed into the back of the van. He pulled back onto the highway.
I’m coming, Meredith, he thought. I’m coming...
CHAPTER 41
In heavy rain, three figures in raincoats hurried around parked construction equipment and entered a white and gold dome. Meredith was the last one in, behind Tatsy and Sam. A glass door closed behind them, and Meredith could no longer hear the storm.
The structure was large, with only a single doorway and no windows. Illuminated control panels were interspersed in alcoves around the interior of the structure. Control panel lights blinked: red, yellow and blue. Men and women in gold suits stood at the panels, working the controls.
Sam led the way into a corridor between offices on both sides. Just ahead, light came from the floor, and Meredith heard machinery sounds. They passed over a grating where the light was, and her stomach jumped. Through the grating she could see all the way to the floor of the cavern, hundreds of feet below. So far away the workers were tiny, and their construction equipment looked like toys.
The three of them reached the top of a spiral staircase that descended into the airspace of the immense cavern. Sam went down the narrow stairway, holding onto the railings. The women followed. Meredith heard the steady drone of machinery, coming from the floor of the cavern far below. She saw that the stairway was offset slightly from the center of the ceiling, and that there were three other similar stairways. She also saw an open hatch at the very apex of the ceiling, at the center, with a couple of workers visible up there.
“This is a good opportunity to show you the heart of Sun Under,” Sam shouted back to the women.
The stairs, which were corrugated metalloy, spiraled down to the left. As Meredith reached the first landing she saw that they were perhaps thirty feet beneath the ceiling of the underground cavern, and hundreds of feet above the floor of the cavern.
She noticed Tatsy Cosmo lagging behind. The seismic engineer’s face looked ashen. Her eyes were large, filled with fear.
“Are you all right?” Meredith asked, falling back with her. Ahead, Sam was hurrying down the stairs, his heavy boots clattering on the metalloy.
“Fine.” But Tatsy’s tone was hostile, as if the question made her angry.
Thinking she must have a fear of heights, Meredith smiled in a calm way, trying to reassure her.
“Go ahead of me, dammit,” Tatsy snapped.
Meredith did so, and upon reaching the lowest landing she saw Sam step out onto a scaffold. He waved back to Meredith, shouted, “Don’t worry, it’s perfectly safe!”
She noticed, however, that the scaffold moved when he was on it. Suspended by overhead cables, it had side-stabilizer lines and safety rails, but was not nearly as secure as the permanent stairway or various walkways she had seen, or the landing on which she stood. Meredith saw that the scaffold formed a walkway that led to a large glassplex bubble suspended by a cable from the cavern ceiling. The bubble was quite a distance from where she stood, so far that she didn’t want to think about going out there on that scaffold to get to it. But that was where Sam wanted all three of them to go.
“Our artificial sun,” Sam said, proudly, looking at the bubble. “We call this technological marvel Sunny... S-U-N-N-Y.”
Tatsy caught up with Meredith on the landing, but appeared unsteady on her feet, and held onto the sturdy railing. Her eyes were glassy, and though she tried to conceal her terror it was readily apparent.
The artificial sun had an access port on the nearest side, at the other end of the scaffold. Through the clear, round surface of the bubble Meredith saw an array of silver and gold reflectors, and two workers in white coveralls inside, at a control panel. Sam called them “tecks,” and as they punched in commands, the reflectors receded and enlarged, moving one way and another.
“It’s not transmitting sunlight yet,” Sam said. “If it were, we couldn’t be here. It would blind us.”
He went on to explain that Sunny was at its operational apex now and could be adjusted up and down on the support cable by remote control, varying the distance from the cavern floor. With this flexibility, he said, as well as remote, computerized controls regulating the amount of sunlight it transmitted, the device would provide varying, customized degrees of light and warmth for t
he interior of the resort. Sunny would also be capable of providing safe suntans for the guests.
“This long scaffold is only a temporary access,” Sam said. “We had a little accident with the first one. Sunny is new technology, so glitches are to be expected, things that need to be worked out. The permanent entry ramp is almost complete, and is scheduled for installation next week. When lowered into place it will extend out over the cavern floor, replacing the scaffold. If necessary, the ramp will retract back into a mechanism at the bottom of the stairway we just came down, so that it is out of the way when Sunny is functioning. That way the sun will have full maneuverability.”
“A little accident with the first one?” Tatsy said, holding tight to the railing of the landing, and not moving forward. She kept glancing down, not a good idea for a person with her fears, Meredith thought.
“Last month we had a nearly operational ramp here, but something went wrong and it broke loose,” Sam said. “Fortunately no one was on it at the time, but it fell to the cavern floor and was totaled, turning it into junk. Damn near took out a tunnel-boring machine when it slammed into the ground.”
“I presume that insurance on the mechanical ramp was with the subcontractor who installed it?” Meredith asked. She had not seen a claim on it.
“That’s right, under his installation floater policy. If the ramp were damaged after installation, the claim would have gone under the builder’s risk policy you arranged for the general contractor, if I understand my insurance jargon right.”
“You understand it perfectly,” she said.
“Let’s go check Sunny out,” Sam suggested, walking out on the improvised entry ramp, while holding onto flexible safety rails on each side. The ramp rocked, but he did not seem concerned.
Meredith had to admit she didn’t feel good about following him out there, but she did so anyway, very cautiously. There had already been a near disaster here.
Looking back at his hesitant companions, Sam assured them, “It’s perfectly safe!”
Meredith followed him onto the makeshift walkway, but the farther out she went, the more queasy her stomach felt. She saw Sam glaring past her at Tatsy, who had not yet stepped onto the scaffold.
“If you want to inspect this facility, this is what it’s all about,” he shouted to her. “I don’t build ordinary garden-variety stuff.”
“At this moment I wish you did,” came the response, with a nervous laugh. Walking hesitantly, taking short steps and holding on tightly, Tatsy stepped onto the scaffold and moved forward carefully, until she was close behind Meredith.
As they proceeded, Meredith felt like an explorer crossing a suspension bridge, high over a chasm. Not looking down and holding tight to the cable safety railings on each side, she took small steps herself, staring all the while at Sam, whose back was to her. He was almost across to the other side.
She heard the labored breathing of Tatsy behind her, who apparently was staying close out of fear, not wanting to be out in the middle alone. She felt Tatsy’s hand on her shoulder, gripping with surprising strength, so that it hurt.
Meredith felt the improvised ramp sway a little too much, but it steadied.
Ahead of them, Sam reached a narrow walkway that encircled the upper portion of the artificial sun. He opened a gate in the safety railing and stepped off the scaffold, then watched the approach of his companions.
Meredith focused on Tatsy, saw that she did not look well at all. Her eyes rolled as if she were about to throw up, and her grip slipped away from Meredith’s shoulder, onto the railing.
But when Meredith and Tatsy were almost all the way across, a side stabilizer line snapped with a loud report and the scaffold swayed hard. Sam shouted and reached for Meredith’s hand, but the platform swung too far to his right. Falling to her knees, Meredith grabbed hold of a safety cable with both hands. The strap of her purse was over one shoulder. She saw Tatsy behind her, with her feet off the edge and her legs wrapped around a stanchion. Meredith wrapped her own legs around a stanchion, thinking only secondarily of modesty, since she and Tatsy were wearing dresses.
The walkway swung back.
“Reach for me!” Sam shouted to Meredith, as she swung closer. But she was being whipped hard by the motion of the scaffold, and it was all she could do to hold on. She focused on the permanent railing by him, something she might leap for and grab on the return swing. There would be no margin for error.
On the next pass, Sam tried to reach her again, and nearly slipped off before one of the tecks came to his aid and saved him. Just as Meredith was deciding that she would leap for the sun on the next swing, Tatsy screamed behind her. Glancing back, she saw the woman’s legs slip from the stanchion they had been wrapped around, so that she was holding on with only her hands. Her eyes were crazy with fear.
With one hand, Meredith reached back, took a firm grip on Tatsy’s hand and pulled. Meredith felt resistance from her, and strength that might be greater than her own. She worried that Tatsy, like a panicked drowning victim, might pull both of them down to their deaths.
~~~
As a ruse, Tatsy had unwrapped her legs from the stanchion, and screamed out in fear. When Meredith reached back for her, as hoped, Tatsy had grabbed the offered hand, intending to use her superior strength to hurl her rival to her death. But there were complications, and now she had to make a decision, with not a moment to spare.
“Don’t do it, Tatsy!” a male voice whispered in her brain.
Riggio!
This angered and confused her, since she’d hoped he was gone, and would never bother her again. Internally, she commanded him to shut up, and heard the volume of his voice diminish, but not disappear.
Trying to put that out of her mind, Tatsy ran through her options. She knew she could kill the Lamour bitch easily, but to accomplish it, Tatsy might perish, too. And even if Tatsy survived, there was another big issue.
If she disposed of Lamour now, she would also find it necessary to deal with the witnesses. Sam and the tecks would be easy kills with Tatsy’s strength and quickness, if she could make it to the artificial sun. A big if. And of utmost concern she saw the open hatch overhead, with wide-eyed faces peering down. Witnesses that she would not be able to reach. Witnesses who would not try to rescue her if they saw her go into a murderous frenzy.
Involuntarily, she felt her grip loosening, and she allowed Meredith to pull away.
~~~
As Tatsy released her grip, one of the tecks shouted, but Meredith couldn’t make out the words. Then both tecks knelt and tried unsuccessfully to reach her, since she was the closest. Sam did, too.
With a sickening sound, another side stabilizer snapped. Meredith grabbed Tatsy’s hand again, holding tight—and this time she jerked it toward the rail on Sunny’s ledge.
Tatsy gripped the rail with her other hand.
Meredith grabbed it too, just as the walkway fell and tumbled away.
Sam and the tecks pulled the women to safety.
Breathing hard, pulse pounding, Meredith knelt on the narrow walkway, holding on to the railing. She saw the scaffold crash to the cavern floor, making a distant crunching thud, and heard the far-off shouts of workmen.
“Jesus!” Sam said. “I don’t see how the hell this happened.” He looked over the edge. “Thank God you’re both OK, and it didn’t hit anyone when it fell!”
Still kneeling, Meredith looked at Tatsy, who sat on the walkway of the artificial sun, holding tightly to a baluster supporting the railing. Her eyes were closed and her lips moved soundlessly, as if she were talking to herself, or to some private demon.
What a strange woman, Meredith thought.
Suddenly Tatsy’s eyes opened. Hypnotic blue-green, and elusively familiar. The gazes of the women locked.
“You should have saved yourself and let me go,” Tatsy said. Her voice sounded odd, almost masculine. She closed her eyes again and scrunched up her face, as if in pain, or as if focusing on something.
; “I didn’t think about what I did,” Meredith responded. “I just did it.”
“Well, it was stupid of you.” The same oddly masculine voice, with the eyes still closed and the face contorted.
In an anxious tone, Sam spoke to the men, technical talk. Angry questions without answers about what had just occurred. He said something about possible sabotage, committed by a business rival.
Expecting gratitude from Tatsy, Meredith gazed at her and waited. The woman’s eyes were open now, but were eerily cold as they looked off into the distance, her expression stony.
Meredith looked away and said to Sam in a cheery tone, “Well, what are we waiting for, Chief? Let’s go inside your sun.” She rose to her feet, held onto the railing. She noticed, to her relief, that nothing moved on the narrow walkway that was now supporting five people; it seemed to be very sturdy.
Sam smiled to her, then said something to one of the tecks.
The tech spoke loud enough for her to hear. “After you’re finished here, sir, you and your guests can get out through that hatch.” He pointed up.
Meredith saw an oval hole in the ceiling of the cavern, perhaps sixty feet above her, with men peering down. They were lowering a plazchain ladder through the opening, apparently using a built-in mechanism for this, because she heard machinery sounds. The ladder only went down partway, however, then went up and back down, but stopped again. The mechanism didn’t sound right and something seemed to be wrong. Sam said nothing of this, however, so maybe it was all right.
“First things first,” he said. Having regained his composure, he led the way through a glass hatch into the artificial sun. The elaborate mechanical device was large enough for the three of them to stand inside, along with the tecks, who stood side by side at their control panel, continuing their tests or adjustments. To Meredith, it was like being inside a big glass Chinese puzzle box, with parts inside parts, inside more parts, all visible through glass panels, and all leading to a mirror system at the core.
The Unborn Page 25
