Submerged

by Alton Gansky

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m trying to find a clue to what may have afflicted my father.”

  “You’re pulling out the stops to help. Like father, like son.”

  “Trust God and do what you can,” Perry said.

  “That’s been our motto for a great many years. I don’t see any reason to change it now.”

  “So you’re saying it’s time to get busy.”

  “That’s what I’m saying. You’re the only man alive who loves your father more than me, but I’d rather be out here grasping at straws than sitting around doing nothing. You made the right call in pulling this trip together.”

  “I pray it won’t happen,” Gleason said, “but even if your father dies, finding out what may have triggered this could bring closure to your mom and to the rest of us who call him friend.”

  Perry was thankful for friends with frank opinions. Their words cheered him some, but the acid of fear still burned at his heart and soul.

  “Gleason has some information,” Jack said.

  “Let’s hear it, Gleason.” Perry heard a briefcase open.

  Gleason reached up and turned on the overhead light. “First, the personnel in the photos.” He handed a file folder to Perry. Inside were documents that looked like resumes.

  “On top is Monte Grant. Civil engineer. Did well for himself. He had a successful company with offices in several states. He specialized in concrete structures, tilt ups, bridges, dams, and the like. Well-credentialed. Based on what you said about the message left on your father’s answering machine, I did some checking. He was retired and living in Kingman, Arizona. He died two days ago while mowing his lawn. He was up there in years, so his death wouldn’t raise any flags. I made some calls but didn’t get very far. So I went out on a limb and called his home. He was listed, and finding him was easy. I spoke to his sister. She mentioned that he had been in good health—no heart conditions that she knew of—but the oddest thing was his eyes.”

  “Cataracts?” Perry asked.

  “Exactly. And his sister, Luisa Grant-Winston, said that he had never had cataracts and certainly didn’t have them when he went out to mow the lawn. Look at the next page.”

  Perry did. He saw the name of Cynthia Wagner. “Bioengineer?”

  “That’s the BE on the list you took from the safe in your father’s home. Bioengineering is a growing discipline. It’s big-time stuff now, but in the seventies, it was just getting its sea legs.”

  Perry thought of the poor woman who died while he listened on the phone.

  Gleason continued. “She died early today. Of course you know that; you were talking to her at the time. My point is that I had a little more trouble getting information on her death. First I found her address, then assuming an ambulance would take her to the nearest hospital, I began making calls. I discovered where she had been admitted, but no one would talk to me since I wasn’t family or a police investigator. I called the local medical examiner’s office and got stonewalled there as well, so I . . .” He trailed off.

  “What?” Perry prompted.

  “I called your father’s doctor and asked him to make the calls. He was surprised to learn that Monte Grant had the same problem with his eyes. I told him that Cynthia Wagner might also, and if so, that might help him in his diagnosis. He made the calls and must have thrown his credentials around. It’s too soon for an autopsy, but he got an ME to take a look at the body. The eyes were covered with cataracts.”

  “That explains his desire to contact the CDC.”

  “Victor Zeisler was an electrical engineer. He worked for Boeing, planning their construction bays, test facilities, and the like. He did a short stint with NASA, then took an early retirement. Here’s the kicker: He lives in Carson City, Nevada.”

  “Is that on our way?”

  “It can be,” Jack said.

  “There’s a problem,” Gleason admitted. “I called and tried to set up a meeting. Real nice guy until I mentioned Tonopah. Then he slammed the phone down.”

  “And you being such a sensitive soul,” Jack said.

  “At least he’s alive. For now anyway.” Perry looked out the window and thought about what he had heard. “Let’s do it, guys. Let’s see if Victor Zeisler is as good at slamming doors as he is phones.”

  “Will do,” Jack said.

  “There’s something else,” Gleason said. “Your father gave you a few other terms.”

  “Lloyd. Lake. Dam. Nevada.”

  “The obvious conclusion is to assume your dad meant Lake Lloyd, Nevada, so I checked some maps. No such place, but you know me, that struck me as a challenge. I ordered some satellite photos from a commercial site. It’s a popular area. Area Fifty-one is out there, and Nellis Air Force Base. UFO enthusiasts consider the place Disneyland. Anyway, these commercial sites provide satellite photos you can download off the net for a price. I focused on the whole state of Nevada and found many reservoirs. Then I compared them to print maps. All the reservoirs were named except one, and it’s in the region mentioned by your father.”

  Jack chuckled. “Ain’t he special. I feel so proud of our little Gleason. Wait until you hear this part. You’re gonna want to give him a gold star.”

  “You drive the car and leave the talking to me,” Gleason said.

  “I’m just trying to shower you with some well-deserved praise.”

  “Go on,” Perry said.

  “The print maps don’t show the unnamed reservoir. It appears on the satellite photos but not on the print maps. So

  I did something else. I could see the dam in the photos, and dams have to be inspected. So I rattled a few cages at the Nevada Department of Water Resources. They denied that such a dam existed. So I kept plugging away. I found a map from the early eighties that showed the reservoir and dam. It listed the reservoir as Lake Lloyd. The map was privately funded.”

  “Someone doesn’t want the world to know that the lake exists?” Perry conjectured.

  “That’s my take. Just so you know, we may be going where we’re not wanted.”

  “We’ve been there before,” Perry said. “So Dad was somehow involved in the Lake Lloyd Dam project. Did you search for other records of dam construction?”

  “I did, but I didn’t find much. It’s well hidden.”

  “Maybe it’s time we shed some light in the darkness,” Perry said.

  “I brought equipment, but not knowing what we’re going to face, I had to resort to guessing.”

  “We’ll make do.” It felt good to be doing something. Perry watched the windshield wipers struggle against the rain. He wasn’t sure what lay ahead, but he was determined to find out. A slim hope was better than no hope. He might have regrets later for not staying while his father died, but if he had stayed, he would feel guilty for not having tried.

  “You guys get some sleep,” Jack said. “We’re going to be driving all night, and I need my beauty rest. I’ve got another few hours left in me, but I’m going to want to pass off driving duties. I’ll let you two fight for who gets the privilege.”

  “No fighting necessary. I’ll take the next shift.” Perry folded his arms, leaned his head back, and waited for sleep.

  A three-quarter alabaster moon hovered in the dome of night as Carl Subick left his home. It was just two hours past midnight, and the desert air carried a thin sweetness on its warm breeze. Those stars that refused to be pushed from sight by the moon blinked from their perch in space. For Carl, this was when the desert was at its best. The daytime blanket of heat had dissolved, and the sky was bejeweled with the Milky Way, which shone down unhindered by city lights.

  Carl locked the door and jiggled the handle just to be sure. He was going to be gone the rest of the night and most of the next. Maybe longer, for all he knew. On the driveway of his small stucco home waited his black Toyota pickup. It rode higher than factory issue and sported wide off-road tires. More than once he had to remind himself that he wasn’t compensating for his short stat
ure. If he were, he would have bought and jacked up a much bigger truck. The alterations he made to this vehicle, he told himself and anyone else who showed an interest, were made for practical reasons. An avid hiker, he needed a vehicle that could take him over some of the rougher territory and deeper into the nearby mountains.

  He checked the bed of the truck. It carried just his well-worn hiker’s backpack. He had stuffed it more than normal, but he was carrying a full load of gear. Since he didn’t know how long he might be gone, he wanted to be prepared. He slipped into the cab and settled into the seat. He pulled the seat belt across his chest and buckled it, repositioning his off-duty holster and 9 mm pistol to make room for the buckle. He started the truck and pulled from the driveway. He gave one more thought to the lie he had told several minutes earlier when he called the watch commander for the graveyard shift and told him he was too sick to come in for duty. The watch commander promised to pass the word on.

  With only the moon to see his actions, Carl drove into the predawn darkness, his mind now on the road that would take him to the lake.

  Chapter10

  1974

  The Suburban bounced down a rough path. Henry Sachs sat in the front passenger seat. Monte Grant and Victor Zeisler sat in the far backseat, and Cynthia Wagner sat in the middle row of the three rows of bench seats.

  “Hey, I think you missed a hole,” Zeisler called from the back. “You might want to go back and try again.”

  Henry tried to hide his smile. He was starting to like Zeisler. Henry glanced at Bill Nash to see his response. They had been in the large vehicle for over an hour, and nerves were beginning to fray.

  Nash’s expression hadn’t changed since Henry first met him at the tiny airport. The constipated look lingered. “I can promise you more bumps ahead, Mr. Zeisler. We’re still on the road. That will end soon.”

  “Swell,” Zeisler said.

  “You call this a road?” Grant asked. “I’m a civil engineer, and I know roads. Whatever we’re on doesn’t qualify.”

  “It could be worse,” Henry said. “At least we’re in a civilian vehicle designed for comfort. I imagine the military version would jar a kidney loose.”

  “Knowing that things could be worse doesn’t make the present any better,” Grant complained. “A man who’s just lost a leg in an accident doesn’t need to hear, ‘Hey, it could be worse. You could have lost both legs.’ ”

  “Touché.” Henry turned his attention forward. They were not the sole Suburban on the road. Ed Sanders was in the same style vehicle. The only difference Henry could determine was the color. Their vehicle was white; Sanders’s brown.

  “Who is with Sanders?” Henry asked Nash. The other car had met them just outside of town and taken the lead. Henry could see Sanders and three others in the car. Like Nash, their hair was shorter than what most men wore. Again he had to assume a military connection, although none wore uniforms.

  “They’re part of the team,” Nash said. “You’ll be introduced at the site.”

  “Guards,” Zeisler said. “The question is: Are they guarding us or something else?”

  “Or both?” Cynthia added.

  Henry nodded. He had expected this. He had done enough consulting on secret military projects to know that the military could reach new levels of paranoia. He also knew enough that he couldn’t blame them for their caution.

  “Are others waiting for us at the site?” Henry asked.

  “There are others,” Nash admitted. “I doubt you’ll see them.”

  “What’s that mean?” Grant asked.

  Nash didn’t reply.

  “It means that there will be eyes watching us from the shadows,” Henry said.

  Nash’s response was simple. “They’re there to keep out trespassers.”

  “Trespassers?” Cynthia asked. “We’re going to military property?”

  “It’s under government control.” Nash offered nothing else.

  An odd feeling ran through Henry. He couldn’t decide if he was uneasy or elated to be part of the project. Not that it mattered. He was too far in to walk away now.

  Dawn was an hour away, and Carl knew he had to move with care. He had driven down the same dirt road that he and Janet had the day before but had pulled off a few miles before the barricade. Instead of sticking to the road, he directed the Toyota through the brush and as deep into the trees as possible. Pine trees provided a canopy of branches. From here he would travel on foot.

  His boots crushed down on dried, fallen pine needles, loose stones, and ground cover. The pack was seated on his back. On his head he wore a pair of night-vision goggles. As a deputy sheriff, he was called on to help find lost hikers—tourists lost on the desert floor and in the sinuous valleys between the mountains. The goggles had come in handy on several occasions. His were an inexpensive pair, setting him back just three hundred dollars. The high-end equipment ran ten times that. He was pretty sure that the bozos who ran him and Janet off would not be using the bargain-basement brands.

  Moonlight trickled through the canopy. With light from a quarter moon, the night-vision binocs gave him a three-hundred-foot range. The three-quarter moon gave him even greater distance. It also made it easier for others to see him. For a moment, he questioned his sanity. The men he had encountered were professionals and didn’t give a flip that he carried a badge. They had made that clear. They had roughed him up and then embarrassed him by restraining him with his own handcuffs. It was the last thought that pushed him forward. No one embarrassed Carl Subick.

  No one.

  Perry had tried to sleep, but his mind had thoughts to churn, fears to address, anxieties to face, nightmarish scenarios to create. It was an odd thing, Perry thought, for a man to have to do battle with his own thoughts . . . as if another entity were running his brain.

  Sleep was too slippery for Perry, but not for Jack and Gleason. Gleason was still in the backseat, his head leaned against the side window. Jack was in the front passenger seat, the back reclined. He was snoring.

  They had made good time, and the dark freeway ahead of them was almost free of traffic. The speedometer read 70. Fifteen hours. That’s how long they had estimated it would take for them to drive to Carson City. After talking to—or attempting to talk to—Victor Zeisler, they would have another six-hour drive to Tonopah. From there to Lake Lloyd was

  a guess.

  The storm that had ushered them out of Seattle and followed them through much of Washington was gone. Overhead, stars and the moon did what they did every night. Stars could make a man feel a sense of awe. They could also make him feel small and insignificant. Perry was swimming in the latter. Every mile that ticked by on the odometer reminded him that he was moving away from his father. Jack and Gleason had done their best to remind him that he wasn’t fleeing the painful present but perusing a distant hope. Was it a fool’s errand? It was a senseless question, a lame question, Jack might say. Fool’s errand or not, he was on it.

  To his left, a red line appeared on the horizon, a slit of light that looked like an open wound. The sun was rising. Soon dawn would come, and the sun would shine down on three desperate men.

  He had been sitting motionless and scanning the terrain in front of him. An orange glow was growing in the east. Soon the sun would be up, and the danger of discovery would be heightened. Carl had chosen this spot with great care. After an hour’s hike, he had settled next to a large pine. Other thick trees were to his east. The sun would take longer to bathe this area in its glow. Being in the valley that sheltered the lake, mountain peaks surrounded him. The sun would have to climb above those, and when it did, he would still be in the shadow of the trees.

  He waited in silence, his ears straining to pick up the sound of a vehicle or boots pounding the ground. He heard birds and the breeze in the trees but nothing more.

  Carl wondered how the men in black BDUs had known he and Janet were there. They had made no secret of their arrival. They were there in their official cap
acities as deputy sheriffs, and they were looking for a lost man. If anything, they wanted to be obvious. If Matthew Barrett was stranded and waiting for someone to find him, then their obvious presence would save a lot of time. This time, Carl was not being obvious.

  Still, Carl worried about proximity sensors—devices used to detect motion. Perhaps infrared or microwave devices had been placed throughout the area. Maybe something even more high tech. Who knew what the military used these days?

  If they had detected him, they were taking their sweet time approaching. Maybe he had made it in clean after all. Maybe.

  Carl lowered the night-vision goggles again and scanned the lake’s edge that licked the shore just thirty feet away. He moved his head with directed purpose, first moving along the shoreline as far as his position would allow. He was looking for the body of Matthew Barrett. He had some reason to believe the man had drowned. Especially since on the first visit, he and Janet had found Barrett’s old truck and then the oars floating along the waterline but no boat.

  Carl was on the opposite side of the lake now. He raised his hand and dialed the binoculars to a higher magnification, then searched across the dark lake for the abandoned truck. The electronic binoculars amplified the available light, rendering the image a yellow green.

  The truck was gone.

  No body that he could see. No truck. Perhaps Barrett was sitting in some military jail cell. The last thought bothered him. The men he had confronted drove a military-style Humvee, wore military-style BDUs, and carried weapons Carl knew the military used. One had identified himself as “Colonel Lloyd,” but Carl wasn’t buying that. He had lived in the area since he was a child, and he knew longtime residents called this place Lake Lloyd. The colonel was having a laugh at Carl’s expense, something else that Carl couldn’t stomach.

  He had doubts about Colonel Lloyd being a colonel at all. He had a military bearing all right, and men under his leadership, but he wore no insignias. Why would a military man in the U.S. conceal his identity and that of his men?