'What in the hell are you shooting at?' the state trooper asked, the gunshots still ringing in his ears.
'Goddammit, something's killing my cows!'
'Thomas, it's too dark to see out there! What in the hell is it you're shooting at?' Wasser asked, squinting into the darkness.
Jerry heard a cow lowing. Then the sound was cut off suddenly with a scream. He drew his nine millimeter out of its holster and flipped the safety off with his thumb. 'Goddammit, cows aren't supposed to scream like that! What in the hell is out there with your cattle?'
'I don't know, but it's goddamned big!'
'Thomas, calm down and tell me what's going on here,' Wasser said angrily.
'What is it, a mountain lion?' Dills asked, peering into the darkness nervously, pistol aiming first right, then left.
'We can't sit here and talk, man, my cattle are being killed,' Thomas said as under control as he could manage, gritting his teeth.
That said, he turned and started walking slowly away from the road. He ejected a spent shell casing and raised the gun to waist level. The two state troopers followed. Wasser clicked the safety to the off position on his sidearm, and Jerry flipped on the large flashlight. He shone the beam in a wide arc as they proceeded away from the light cast by the cruiser's headlights. The red and blue flashers of the cruiser's overheads cast an eerie strobe effect onto the desert scrub. Wasser stumbled and almost fell when his foot came into contact with something big, and the sound it made told him it was wet. Dills heard the squishing sound and first put the powerful beam on Wasser, then on what he had tripped on.
'Good God almighty,' Dills said with a sharp intake of air. His partner jumped back when he saw what he had stepped on in the dark. The cow's eyes were open and their whites were predominating in terror of what had killed it. The head looked as if it had been sliced cleanly through. The tongue had lolled out of the mouth and rested on the sand.
As Jerry Dills took this in, he felt the hair standing up on the back of his neck. There had to be more carnage waiting for the beam of his flashlight to illuminate. As he shone the light around, he heard the sharp intake of air by Thomas Tahchako. The bright light picked out the remains of the old Indian's herd. They were scattered here and there in different states of mutilation; for the most part, the bodies were gone.
'What in God's name could have done this?' Jerry asked, squeezing the handle of his nine millimeter tighter.
'Son of bitch, forty head of cattle, my whole western pasture,' Thomas mumbled as his rifle slowly dropped from his hands. 'Goddamn cattle mutilations! The government's behind this!'
The two troopers watched as the man broke down and started mumbling. Then they looked out into the desert and wondered what was out there. Their eyes met for a moment, sharing the same thought. They didn't believe for one minute the government was out killing this Apache's cattle. Whatever it was, they didn't think they wanted to meet up with it in the dark.
Suddenly the ground erupted skyward and a wave of dirt, sand, and uprooted brush screamed toward the three men. The wave smashed into their feet and tossed the men easily into the air. Tahchako, Wasser, and Dills came down hard and immediately tried to gain their feet. All three were shaking badly as they scanned the darkness, but all that could be seen was the wave dissipating in the distance as their invisible intruder crossed the dirt road and shook the lit cruiser violently before disappearing.
Around them, the desert grew still once again.
With the tire changed and the state troopers gone twenty minutes now, Harold Tracy anxiously climbed the steps into the huge Winnebago. He washed his hands in the sink and dried them on a towel. He walked to the driver's compartment and climbed around the center console. His wife was still reading the road map and shaking her head.
'All set?' she asked without looking up.
Harold looked over at Grace and gave her the bird quickly, while her face was still buried in the accursed map.
'That's not nice, Harold. That's why bad things happen to you.' Her face was still hidden in the map.
'That cop told me we have to go the other way on State Eighty-eight to get even remotely close to the interstate.' Digging it in the best he could. 'You picked wrong again, Grace.'
Finally she lowered the large map and carefully folded it. The smile she wore didn't reach her eyes.
'Who was it that wanted to come on this desert outing in the first place, Harold, me? No, it wasn't, it was you, the great adventurer who scoffed so heartily at going to my sister's in Colorado. So if you insist on pointing fingers, point them at yourself.'
'Believe me, if I could get this thing to fly, Grace, I would get you there right now and
She was about to tear into him when they were both suddenly thrown from their seats and into the RV's roof. Grace hit so hard she dented the aluminum in the overhead. Then the camper came down, bounced once on its ten wheels, and tilted to the right and slowly rolled onto its side. For a moment, Harold thought they
'Get off me!' she yelled into his ear.
But Harold wasn't listening. He was looking out of the windshield with his mouth hanging open. Grace followed his gaze, and the scream caught in her throat as she came eye to eye with something she couldn't have dreamed in her wildest nightmare.
The beast blinked at the two people inside who were frozen in terror. The green and yellow eyes reflected their image back at them.
As Harold fought the urge to scream, the animal roared at the windshield, bringing up the armored plates around its neck. The window immediately fogged and then cracked into a million tiny wavy lines. But the image of the animal could, unfortunately, still be seen as clear as day. They were face-to-face with the largest set of incisors they had ever seen. The mouth was wide, and every time it opened its bonelike mandibles the rows upon rows of teeth shone clearly in its mouth. The beast roared again; the glass, unable to take any more acoustic hammering, fell from the frame. The man and woman screamed and screamed, until they noticed the sudden silence inside the camper. When they opened their eyes, the animal was gone.
Harold looked down at Grace. She was still staring out the window, and the shakes had taken over, making her entire body quake. The curlers she had placed in her hair earlier after they had stopped at that small bar and grill had for the most part fallen out. Some hung on for dear life, half on and half off.
'Harold,' Grace said quietly, 'I think I peed myself.'
Harold thought it better not to comment for the moment and just sat there and thanked God they were still alive. And also that Grace hadn't again brought up that they should have gone to her sister's in Denver.
TWENTY-ONE
The Comp Center director, Pete Golding, and his tired team of techs hadn't found anything as of midnight and looked as if they were on a wild-goose chase in Arizona just as they had been in New Mexico. Boris and Natasha had burned most of its fuel and could not be retasked another time to a different orbit or track without running out. And that meant they would more than likely lose the bird because it was in such a low orbit now, it would soon come tumbling back into the atmosphere. Another move by the old and reliable satellite would be its last. It would take a shuttle launch to accomplish a refueling, and they all knew that couldn't be ordered like room service. Hours before, the president had been persuaded to give the NSA back its KH-11, Black Bird. The director of that agency was one of the few who knew about the Event Group and its front, the National Archives, and he was sympathetic and cooperative to a point, but with global terrorism still on the rise, their argument for having their bird back was
