Sick

“See,that’swhat I’m talking about. You aren’t objective on this. Even if it is the same man, and he did kill your brother, you are too emotionally involved to be the one reporting it.”

“Of course I’m emotionally involved, but I’ve kept myself in check and you know it! That’s a damn fine report and we need to air it.”

“Oh, we do, do we? And when whoever’s anchoring comes back to you, that is, if they haven’t fired us already for airing something we haven’t warned them about, when he comes back and asks you questions about the report, you’re going to keep your cool? You won’t show any emotion? What if he questions the connection? What if he just hints that maybe there’s another explanation? You going to be able to hold it together then?”

She clenched her teeth together. “It’s the truth, and you know it.”

“No. Idon’tknow it. Not for sure.”

She gawked at him. “What? You saw the same thing I-”

“Hey, guys!” Bobby called from inside the van.

“-did. Youknowit’s the same guy. Youknowhe-”

“Guys, seriously! Get in here!” Bobby yelled.

Tamara glanced over at the van, then back at Joe. “We’re not done,” she told him, then headed over to see what the other member of their team wanted.

Bobby was sitting in the chair in front of the mobile editing station. On one screen was footage he’d been shooting around the base. He was supposed to be putting together a report about the conditions the media had to work under since being moved to the base. On the other screen was a live feed from the network of some amateur footage shot in what looked like a desert canyon. Tamara could see several people in biohazard suits, and, during a brief second when the camera tilted up just a bit, at least one helicopter outside the canyon.

The suited people were standing next to a couple of bodies.

“What is this?” she asked.

“More Internet video,” Bobby told her. “Network’s played this one a couple times already.”

As she watched it, Tamara couldn’t help but feel the sense of something familiar.

Whoever was doing the filming seemed to be above the action. As the bio-suited people began bagging up the two bodies, a voice said in a haunting whisper, “That’s my brother, and my girlfriend. Those…those men shot them. We weren’t doing anything, but they shot them.”

“My God,” Tamara said.

The image zoomed in, intending, it seemed, to identify the people in the suits. But the angle was making it difficult, and the suit masks weren’t helping. Still, the camera operator was able to hold on two of them just long enough to get an idea of what they looked like.

Tamara tensed. “You’re recording this, right?”

Bobby nodded. “Every second.”

She said nothing for a moment, willing herself to remain as calm as possible. “Bobby, can you bring up that video of the soldiers from the helicopters that landed here?”

He gave her an odd look but said, “Sure.”

He punched a few buttons, and the report he’d been working on earlier disappeared from its monitor, replaced by the requested shots.

“Scroll ahead to that part where you were trying to zoom in for me,” she said.

He sped up the footage.

“There,” she told him a few seconds later. “Back it up a little bit, then let it play.”

He did. On the screen they watched the soldiers talk together, then the picture zoomed in quickly, rushing past Gavin’s killer and focusing for a few moments on the interior of the helicopter. Just like she remembered, there was a clump of something yellow on the seat.

“Freeze there,” she said. Once the shot stopped moving, she looked at the other two. “Am I seeing things?”

Both men stared at the screen, then looked back at the network feed.

“Son of a bitch,” Bobby said under his breath.

The yellow clump looked very much like one of the bio-suits worn by the people in the desert canyon.

“Hold on,” Joe said, shaking his head. “I’m sure all crews have been outfitted with these kinds of suits. They probably all look alike.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” Tamara said. “But then that means you’re also conceding those people in the video are part of the military.”

Joe didn’t have a response to that.

“There’s something else,” she said.

Once the network finished playing the desert clip, Tamara had Bobby go back to where the kid whose friends had been shot zoomed in on the biohazard face masks. Bobby paused on the image she requested, then went back to the footage he’d shot of the men outside the helicopter there at Fort Irwin. Once more, she had him pause on an image.

She didn’t have to say anything.

The features and expression of the man on the left screen were exactly the same as the features and expression of the man on the right.

“I want to talk to whoever shot that footage,” she said.

Without looking away from the screen, Joe said, “Let me see what I can do.”

35

The door Chloe opened led into a dark section of the building that was obviously built into the side of the hill. Ash moved past her into the room, swinging the light around to get a quick take on the space. But he barely registered anything before the overhead lights came on.

He whirled around. Chloe was standing by the door, her hand next to a switch.

Power in this decrepit building?

It seemed odd, but then, as he looked around, he realized the room he was in wasn’t decrepit at all. It was clean, almost sterile-white walls, black-tiled floors, no dust, no mud. Even the air smelled pure. It was as if they’d been transported out of the abandoned building they’d been in, and into a brand new hospital a million miles away.

The room wasn’t particularly large. There were benches against two sides and a row of empty bins along the wall.

Chloe pulled open the only other door in the room and passed through. As Ash followed, she switched on a light in the new space. They were in a corridor, with a dozen doors leading off it in either direction.

“They’re gone. Definitely,” she said.

“If they were here at all.”

She looked at him. “Let’s check.”

She began opening doors. Behind each were shorter hallways with what appeared to be a nurse’s station near the front, and anywhere from three to five doors on either side. These spaces were as immaculate as the first room had been.

Starting at the far end, Chloe and Ash entered each hall and went door to door, checking inside. Each door opened onto an empty room. It wasn’t hard to imagine the rooms were designed to hold a bed, and that each of these small hallways was like a hospital ward.

“What do they use this for?” he asked.

Chloe said, “Whatever they want.”

That seemed to be all the answer she was willing to give. Ash noticed that with each new ward they entered, she seemed to draw more and more into herself.

So far, they had found nothing. As Ash approached the door for the next ward, Chloe said, “Not that one.”

“Why not?”