would be out of the way and hung the padlock by its hook on one of the chicken wire loops. The yellow-and-black streamers had a forlorn look, like tattered ribbons left over in the aftermath of a party that had already been held and forgotten.
Neal pocketed the key ring and swung the gate open and out, clearing the way. It made a nerve-rattling groan evocative of the opening of a door to a haunted house in a horror movie.
He trudged back toward the truck and got behind the wheel. Jack went to the passenger side, pausing to look back the way they came. A dirt road switch-backed down a long, gentle slope, meeting at its base, at right angles, the blacktop road. No streetlamps on that road; no lamps anywhere, and no streets, either, except for that paved road.
The dirt road was lighter in color than its surroundings and stood out in the moonlight. The paved road was all hard and shiny, looking like a strip of black water in a long, thin canal. All else on the lower slope and beyond was boulders and rock formations, shot through with stands of scraggly pine and clumps of brush.
A big waxing moon hung halfway between the zenith and the midpoint of the western sky. It would have been hidden behind the mountains in most places along the eastern slope, but not here, not in Red Notch. The notch was just that, a gap between the mountains, though its upper levels were too steep and hazardous for it to serve as a pass for anything less nimble than a mountain goat.
The lowlands were less forbidding down near the base, where the compound was located. The dark hills bracketing it were mostly granite and basalt, but the notch was a different strata, an outcropping of softer, reddish- brown sandstone.
Here wind, water, and, above all, time, had done their work, eroding the sandstone into a jumble of fantastic shapes, forming needles, spires, arches, pinnacles, domes, and buttresses. It resembled a vest-pocket edition of the similar but infi nitely more stupendous Garden of the Gods near Colorado Springs.
Beautiful in its way, but alien. Lonesome. Jack hopped into the cab, where Neal was using the handheld microphone of the vehicle’s scanner/communicator to report in to a temporary command post that CTU/DENV had established in nearby Pike’s Ford to be closer to Sky Mount for the duration of the three- day conclave. The post’s call sign was designated Central. He reported that his mobile unit was at Red Notch and about to enter the site. The dispatcher at Pike’s Ford acknowledged the message.
Neal signed off, then drove the pickup through the gate and into t he compound. It was set on a fl at-topped rise, an oval whose long axis ran north-south. It was open on the east and rimmed on the other three sides by a gnarly, jagged border of weirdly angular rock formations that resembled a mouth of broken teeth. Barbed-wire fencing enclosed the entire area.
A handful of wooden frame and concrete block buildings, crude but functional, utilitarian, were grouped in an arc along the western edge of the oval. Their peaked roofs were steeply slanted, to resist heavy winter snows. A two-story structure with a veranda and second-floor balcony stood at the center. Long, shedlike buildings alternated with single- room cabins on either side of it, with a few shacks and blockhouses straggling off along the periphery.
The grounds consisted of mostly sandy soil speckled with patches of thin, dry, colorless grass. A maze of tire tracks and footprints crisscrossed the terrain. Neal drove diagonally toward a cubed blockhouse at the north end of the oval. He said, “The lab boys have already done their thing, going over the grounds, photographing tire tracks, taking moulage impressions and all the rest, so there’s no worry about spoiling evidence. It’s all been documented.”
Jack said, “What evidence have they got?”
Neal said, “Too much — but of what? That’s the question. Maybe you’ll be able to supply the answer.” The tone of his voice suggested that he believed the contrary. He went on, “All that’s known is that sometime last night over two dozen human beings vanished from Red Notch, departing for points unknown. Since then, no one’s seen hide nor hair of them.”
“Or of the two ATF agents monitoring them.”
“Or their patrol vehicle, either.”
“They didn’t get off any emergency calls or distress signals?”
“Nope. They radioed in at two a.m. according to schedule, reporting that everything was all quiet. That’s the last time anything was heard from them. So whatever happened, happened after then.”
After a pause, Neal added, “I knew both men, Dean and O’Hara. They were both pros, not the type to be caught napping.”
Jack picked up on Neal’s use of the past tense in referring to the missing pair. “Think they’re dead?”
Neal shrugged massive shoulders. “If they could report in, they would. I can’t see the Zealots taking them without a fight. To be honest, though, I can’t see the Zealots taking them at all. They’re a bunch of wimps, mostly. Armchair revolutionaries. The only thing violent about them is their rhetoric. Or at least that was the case till last night.”
Jack said, “They have guns.”
“Everybody in this part of the country has guns, it’s part of the lifestyle. There were some weapons stockpiled at the compound, true. That’s why the ATF was monitoring them. Ever since Waco, they like to keep an eye on cults with guns. But the weapons were ordinary shotguns, rifles, and handguns, legally bought and registered where registration was required. Prewitt’s a stickler for that kind of detail; he wasn’t going to leave himself open to an illegal fi rearms rap.”
“What do you think happened last night?”
“Damned if I know. But something happened— something violent. There’s some bullet holes and bloodstains around.”
Jack said, “The background I got on Prewitt was that he and his group were nonviolent.”
Neal said, “So it seemed. He took pains to put up a legitimate front. He took a fall on a tax evasion rap about ten years back and served eighteen months in a Federal pen. Since then he’s been careful to be seen obeying the letter of the law.”
“Until now.”
“Cults like the Zealots are always basically unstable. That’s because they’re personality cults and the dominant personality is usually cracked.”
“Was Prewitt cracked? He seemed more tightly wrapped than most cult leaders, at least publicly.”
“Maybe he was wrapped so tightly that he just plain burst. Or maybe having two hundred of the richest folks in America gathered less than thirty miles away finally pushed him over the edge.”
Jack said, “It never has before. The compound’s been here during the last four or five annual Round Table meetings without incident.”
Neal barked a laugh. “Hell, the reason Prewitt set up here was just so he could irritate the Sky Mount crowd. If he could have moved any closer to them than this, he would have, but the Round Table Trust has all the land locked up for miles around.
“Anyway, there’s a first time for everything. Especially with the economy in the toilet the way it is now. Maybe Prewitt saw that as a sign his time has come.”
Neal halted the pickup outside a concrete blockhouse with a steep-sided roof. He got out, taking a flashlight with him. Jack followed. The concrete cube had a solid, brown- painted metal door and narrow, horizontal slitted windows set high in the walls.
The door was locked. Neal said, “Can you hold this flash for a second?”
Jack said, “Sure,” taking the flashlight and pointing the beam at the doorknob.
Neal held the key ring in the light, flipping through it before finding a likely looking candidate. He tried it on the keyhole in the doorknob but it wouldn’t fi t. After a couple more tries, he found a key that did, unlocked the door, and opened it.
A heavy gasoline smell came wafting out. Jack and Neal stepped away from the open doorway, letting the reeking fumes dissipate. The dark interior was dominated by heavy, hulking forms. Jack shone the flashlight beam inside, revealing a generator in the foreground whose base was bolted to the cement floor. Gasoline drums were stacked against a rear wall.
Neal said, “Gas-powered generator. We had to leave it locked up so nobody came back later to, er, liberate the fuel. Gas prices being what they are nowadays, even some of our local lawmen might be led into temptation.”
