“How can that be?”
“When we took over the range in 1942, all domestic grazing stopped. The land’s returned to its original state. So essentially, you’re looking back in time—at New Mexico before the cattle arrived. If you go to the WSMR fence line, you’ll see the contrast. On one side is grass as tall as your waist. On the far side, it’s mostly cactus, tumbleweeds, and creosote. Two centuries of
grazing have been rough on the land.”
Corrie shook her head. “It looks like Africa.”
“It is like Africa,” said the general. “You won’t find better-preserved grassland in all of the West. If you keep an eye out, you might even see some oryx.”
“Oryx?”
“A big antelope with long, straight horns. They escaped from a game ranch in the thirties and thrive here, because they don’t need to drink water.”
Corrie felt her intimidation evaporating before the general’s open, chatty demeanor—and the fact that he was driving himself. “Excuse my ignorance—but what, exactly, goes on out here?”
“That’s a deceptively simple-sounding question. Where do I start? This is where we developed many of our short- and medium-range missiles, starting with V-2 missiles appropriated from the Germans right after World War Two, the Viking rockets, the Nike and Patriot air defense systems. These days, of course, there’s a lot of drone testing in partnership with Holloman AFB, which is adjacent. We’re also home to the White Sands Space Harbor, with two giant runways once used for the Space Shuttle, as well as an emergency orbiter landing site. Among other things, we train astronauts.” He paused. “And then, of course, there are the missile dogs.”
“Missile dogs?” Watts asked.
The general smiled. “Missiles don’t always behave like they should, especially during testing. Sometimes they explode in midair or fall apart, and the pieces that come down will be lost to radar. It can be hell to find them—not to mention that impact speed sometimes buries the parts in the sand. So we spray the critical parts with shark-liver oil. In the case of a loss, we helicopter the dogs and their handlers to the debris area—and they’ll have it swept clean before you know it.”
“That’s amazing,” Corrie said. Shark-liver oil. Who’d have guessed? The general was a veritable font of information, and it was clear he loved talking about the range under his command. She also knew that there had been friction, at times, between the FBI and the military. She sensed the general was trying to put her at ease, keep the tone light.
The mountains now loomed above them, purple in the fall light, and the road took a turn into a long canyon.
“We’re passing through the San Andres now,” said the general. “On the other side is the Jornada del Muerto desert, where they tested the bomb. The foothills of the mountains are beautiful, but that’s one hellacious desert beyond.”
The road climbed a bit, and they came to a pass with forever views before descending into a broad series of grassy foothills. They turned north.
“Here, to the right, is the Hembrillo Basin,” the general went on, waving his hand at a range of nearby hills. “That was the site of the largest cavalry battle in the Apache wars, fought against the great chief Victorio in 1880. On our side of the fight were the famed Buffalo Soldiers—Black troopers of the Ninth Cavalry. This whole area used to be the heart of Apache country, but that battle forced Victorio out of his stronghold and down into Mexico, where he was killed.”
“You certainly know the local history,” Nora said.
“Some commanding officer I’d be if I didn’t. But it’s true—history, Western history at least, is a hobby of mine. And, let’s face it, this is a research site and proving ground, not a forward emplacement. In between the occasional crises I do find some leisure time for reading now and then.” As he spoke, his eyes kept drifting toward the battle site he’d just described. Then he shook his head. “History has taught me some hard truths. Those Apaches were just fighting to keep their homeland—no different from what our forefathers did in the Revolution. We were in the wrong with regard to the Apaches, and it’s a great shame to our—ah, take a look over there—a herd of oryx!”
Corrie glanced eastward over the grasslands. A herd of antelope stood at attention, watching them, their horns piercing the sky.
“It really is like Africa,” she murmured.
“Just as I said. And here’s our turn.”
He swung left onto an uncertain dirt track and slowed considerably. The unimproved road wound among some low hills before emerging into a small grassy basin. A ranch house stood in its center, surrounded by an eroded adobe wall, with a roofless stone barn and some venerable-looking corrals situated nearby.
“The Gower Ranch,” the general said.
They pulled up near the house, and Corrie stepped out. It was cooler here, the altitude higher, with a half crescent of hills on one side and the great upthrust of the San Andres Mountains on the other, together forming protection from wind and weather. A small creek burbled out of the side of the hill above the ranch, then flowed on through the basin and headed out between the hills toward the distant Rio Grande.
Watts joined them, with Morwood, Nora, and Woodbridge.
“I’ll be damned,” said Watts, taking off his hat and looking around. “What a pretty spot this is!”
“They certainly didn’t lack for much,” said the general. “They even had their own hot spring.” And he pointed toward a group of cottonwood trees on a nearby hillside.
“I can see why Gower was upset about being evicted,” said Nora.
“I’ll say.” Watts shook his head. “This is a little piece of heaven.”
They followed the general through a broken gate into the yard and up the portal to the front door. He removed a key and unlocked it, and they filed in, Lieutenant Woodbridge bringing up the rear.
The place was cool inside and smelled of dust and old fabric. The curtains had once been drawn, but the sun had left them hanging in tatters, its beams streaming through the gaps. It was a place somehow dignified in its simplicity. They walked through the foyer into a tiny living room with a rat-chewed sofa, two wooden chairs, and a broken table. The kitchen had an old woodstove in white enamel with chrome edging, along with another table and chair. The only decorations were a few magazine covers and newspaper pictures, framed and hung on the walls.
“It’s like a time capsule,” said Nora, looking around.
“Look at that,” said Watts, pointing to a high shelf in the living room. A moth-eaten cowboy hat lay upside down next to an old Parcheesi board. On a lower shelf were stacked half a dozen Life magazines and a National Geographic—one of the ancient ones with no picture on the cover.
“Where’s the test site, by the way?” Nora asked.
“The Trinity shot took place about eight miles north of here,” McGurk said. “As I mentioned earlier, Dr. Oppenheimer slept here the night before. Perhaps on that very cot in the back bedroom.”
“So where’s the historic plaque?” asked Watts, and everyone laughed gamely.
There was a long silence as they contemplated the old interior, dust motes floating through the bars of light. Corrie looked around, wondering if there were any clues here to Gower and what he had been doing on that fateful day. But the house told no story beyond one of hardscrabble existence and eventual abandonment. She finally mused out loud: “Look at this place. What was a guy like Gower, who obviously didn’t have two nickels to rub together, doing with a fabulously valuable cross?”
“He probably found the Victorio Peak treasure,” volunteered Watts.
The general and the others chuckled.
“Hold on,” said Corrie, startled. “What treasure?”
“It’s an old legend,” volunteered Lieutenant Woodbridge. “One of many, many old legends. Some claim a billion dollars in gold is buried on Victorio Peak. Others, twice as much. We passed it on the way here.”
Corrie looked around. “Why didn’t I hear of this before?”
/> Watts shook his head. “I was joking. It was a story made up in the 1930s by a man named Doc Noss, who claimed to have found a vast hoard of gold inside the peak. He spent the rest of his life raising money and blasting and digging, never recovering a red cent.”
The general nodded in agreement. “Noss was an old-school swindler. It was just one of his schemes for grifting money out of people, getting them to contribute to his so-called treasure hunts. Although I have to admit, that was one of his better ones. He was eventually murdered by someone he’d victimized—shot to death right on the hillside, in fact.”
“But how do you know there’s no gold?” Corrie asked.
Morwood now spoke. “Agent Swanson, New Mexico is full of legends of buried treasure. Virtually all of which are false.”
“So what is the legend?” Corrie felt a little aggrieved that no one had bothered to mention this so-called treasure to her.
“During the Pueblo Revolt,” Watts said, “the Spanish padres supposedly gathered up all the wealth from their churches and were transporting it to Mexico when they were waylaid by Apaches. They left the trail and hid the treasure in an old mine somewhere in this area, then blocked the entrance. In 1930 this con artist, Doc Noss, claimed to have found the treasure inside a shaft in Victorio Peak, but he accidentally caved it in while blasting a bigger passage.”
“‘Claimed’ being the operative word,” said the general. “Does anyone here know how much two billion in gold weighs?”
“Sixty tons,” said Woodbridge.
General McGurk chuckled. “The lieutenant has heard me rant on this topic before.” He threw her an amused glance. “No more answers from you.”
Woodbridge stiffened. “Sir.”
The general looked back at the others. “She’s right, though. Sixty tons. If you put that on mules, a hundred pounds to each mule, you’d need a train of over twelve hundred mules! Even if there were that many mules in all of New Mexico in 1680, there’s no evidence the Spanish ever mined anywhere near that amount of gold in the entire Southwest. On top of that, there’s no abandoned gold mine or shaft in Victorio Peak. Despite the geology being such that no gold could be found there, so many people have searched over the years that if the legend had a shred of truth, something would have been found!”
He looked around at the now-quiet group. “Sorry if I sound vehement. The legend fascinated me, too, when I first got here—it fascinates everyone. But I soon learned that the Victorio Peak ‘treasure’ has been a thorn in the side of WSMR from the beginning. Noss and his treasure hunters spent a decade blasting away on the peak with nothing to show for it. Ever since 1942, when the land was closed, we’ve had treasure hunters agitating to get in there and dig. Four or five times, the army tried to put the thing to rest by allowing treasure hunting companies to search the peak and its surroundings. They blasted and dug and probed with the latest instrumentation—and found nothing. They’ve literally ripped that poor hill apart. You should see what it looks like from the air.”
Corrie glanced at Nora. “You know anything about this treasure?”
Nora smiled. “Everyone in New Mexico’s heard the story, Corrie.”
“Oh,” said Corrie, disappointed. “Well, that’s too bad, because it might have explained the gold cross rather neatly.”
“Let’s keep the investigation in the real world, shall we?” Morwood said rather sharply, and Corrie felt herself coloring.
They headed back outside, into the afternoon sun.
“Lieutenant Woodbridge and I are going to close up,” said McGurk. “You all go on ahead.”
Corrie, Morwood, Nora, and Watts walked back toward the waiting jeeps.
“Agent Swanson’s looking dissatisfied,” Morwood said as they left the cabin behind. “I’m beginning to recognize the expression.”
“It’s just an old ranch house,” Watts said. “I’m glad I saw it, but I didn’t expect to find any surprises after three-quarters of a century.”
“I’m glad I saw it, too,” Nora said. “It’s a piece of history. And the general went out of his way to be both tour guide and historian. Considering he has better things to do, I found him very hospitable.”
“Maybe too hospitable,” Corrie said.
“Aha, that explains the dissatisfied look,” Morwood said. “I’ve never met a junior agent more skeptical than Corrie. It’s a good attribute—up to a point.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Corrie, trying, despite her irritation, to maintain the jocular tone of the conversation.
And with that they climbed into one of the jeeps and the driver took off, leaving the piece of heaven behind.
*
General McGurk walked back into the house, Lieutenant Woodbridge following. He halted at the window, arms folded, staring through the ragged curtains to the blue mountains beyond. A minute passed as he took in the picturesque vista. And then he turned and said, in a low voice: “We’ve got to take care of this problem. And I mean take care of it right now.”
26
THIS TIME, CORRIE jogged, rather than walked, down the crowded third-floor corridor of Presbyterian Hospital, ignoring all obstacles in her way. She slowed as she neared the end, where Rivers’s room was. Somehow, Morwood had managed to beat her there, and she could see him standing in the hallway among a knot of people comprising a doctor, a nurse, and two BLM rangers—including the one she’d seen on her first visit, packing a newspaper and cup of coffee. The door to Rivers’s room was ajar.
“What happened?” she asked as she came up to them, gasping for breath—realizing a split second later she’d interrupted an intense conversation.
One by one, they looked her way.
“Our prisoner’s dead,” Morwood told her.
It was as she feared. Word that Rivers—the creep who’d shot Watts—had gone into cardiac arrest had been what had sent her racing to the hospital.
She turned to the doctor. “Any idea why? Obviously it wasn’t his leg wound.”
The doctor, face gaunt and tired beneath a day’s stubble, blinked slowly. “There were complications, which is why he was still in the hospital. But it appears to be sudden cardiac death.”
Corrie looked from one face to the next, hoping someone would be able to provide a more satisfactory answer. “Sudden cardiac death? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Well,” said the doctor in a tired voice, “SCD is the single largest cause of natural death in America.”
“But what were these complications? Did they cause it?”
“Infection. And it’s possible. But SCD can also come out of nowhere,” the doctor replied. “He wasn’t on an EKG monitor, so we can’t be sure if death was caused by ventricular fibrillation or some other latent arrhythmia. His cholesterol was unusually high, perhaps due to an inheritable condition, so cardiomyopathy is also a possibility. What we can say for sure is that death was caused by loss of heart function.”
“Corrie,” Morwood said, breaking in, “we’ve ordered an autopsy, so all these questions will be answered.”
Corrie turned to the rangers in their BLM uniforms. “Were you on duty when this happened?”
“I was,” said one of the rangers—the one she hadn’t met before. He didn’t look pleased to make the admission. The name Akime was embroidered onto his name tag.
“When was this?”
“About five in the morning. The nurse went into the room to check on some unusual readings from the monitoring station—a minute later, she came running out.” He swiveled his eyes toward the nurse standing beside the doctor.
“Cardiac arrest,” the nurse said. “The patient was unresponsive.”
“Naturally, measures were taken,” the doctor added. “Cardiopulmonary resuscitation, electrical stimulation. But I’d guess the cardiac arrest triggered an MI, as well—which sealed the deal.”
“MI?” asked Corrie.
“Heart attack. And once blood flow to the brain ceases, well … ” The doctor shook his head.
There was a brief silence. “He was in a hospital,” Corrie repeated. She turned back to the ranger. “You were supposed to watch him.”
The man shifted his weight from one foot to the other, then glanced again toward the duty nurse as a drowning man might toward a life preserver.
“This isn’t a cardiac ICU,” the nurse said to Corrie. “It’s not even a step-down unit. The patient was recovering from a bullet wound to the leg, in a maintenance ward chosen specifically because it had a secure room. It was a low-grade infection.”
“Convenient,” Corrie said.
She felt Morwood’s hand on her shoulder. “Agent Swanson? Let’s take a walk.”
As he began to turn her away from the group, she resisted a moment, looking at the guard. “May I see the visitor log?”
The guard retrieved it from where it was resting against a chair leg. Taking it, Corrie allowed Morwood to lead her down the hall. She glanced into Rivers’s hospital room as they went by. The single bed within was rumpled, empty.
They ducked into a stairwell alcove, an oasis of relative quiet in the busy hallway. “You realize what you did wrong back there?” Morwood asked in a tone of mild reproach.
Corrie took a deep breath. “What, sir?” She could guess well enough, but it seemed prudent to let him say it.
“You lost your cool. You were impatient. You called into question the expertise of the doctor and the competence of the BLM rangers. This is not how we gain cooperation and support. Remember, you aren’t a lone wolf out here. As long as you carry that shield, you represent the FBI. Even though the cause of death seems pretty obvious, we’re going to conduct an autopsy.” He paused. “I know you’re annoyed you didn’t get anything out of the man—I’m a little annoyed with you about that, too. And now, you’re upset because you won’t have another chance. But you’re not going to get anywhere by taking it out on others.”
Corrie looked at the floor and took a deep breath. “You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry.” Was she really annoyed at herself ? Maybe—but she could analyze that later. “I know the doctor and the nurse did all they could. But those rangers? I wasn’t impressed with them at all when I visited before. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were snoozing when—”
The Scorpion's Tail (Nora Kelly Book 2) Page 14
