Sandoval reached for his wallet. Skeets’s eyes brightened for an instant, only to dim again when Sandoval took out a card and handed it to him. Sandoval said, “If you should think of anything else in connection with the sighting, you can reach me at that number any time of the day or night.”
Skeets dropped the card into the left breast pocket of his T-shirt. He assumed a conspiratorial manner and said, “Hey, who’s missing anyhow? You can trust me to keep my mouth shut.”
Sandoval said, “We’re not authorized to release that information at this time.”
Skeets nodded, not surprised. “You done? I can go?”
“Yes, sir. Thank you for your cooperation.”
“Reckon I’ll go inside. Mabel can’t begrudge me a cup of coffee, after getting me out of bed on my time off to come down here. She will, though.”
Skeets started toward the diner, halting after a few paces. He turned and looked at Jack, said, “You won’t say nothing to Fisk about me calling him a mean SOB? I’d hate to get on his bad side. Not that he’s got a good one.
“Er, forget that I said that, too,” he added.
Jack said, “You can rely on our discretion, Mr. Skeets. Just like I’m sure we can rely on you not to discuss this conversation with anyone else.”
Skeets said, “I’m a closed book. I won’t crack to nobody about nothing.”
“Fine.”
Skeets took a few more steps, paused, looked over his shoulder. “If there is any reward…”
“We know where to find you.”
“I won’t have to split it with Mabel and Pedro, will I? After all, I done the seeing, not them.”
Sandoval said, “We’ll be in touch.”
Skeets crossed to the diner, entered it, the front screen door banging shut behind him. Jack said, “There goes a public-spirited citizen.”
Sandoval said, “You forgot something, Jack.”
“What?”
Sandoval indicated the sign on the roof. “You didn’t ask about their famous Texas wieners.”
“Yeah, I missed that one.”
“I didn’t. I had one while I was waiting for you and Anne.”
“How was it?”
Sandoval held his stomach with both hands, looking slightly bilious. “Don’t ask.”
Anne Armstrong said, “Never mind about that. What do you make of Skeets’s story?”
Jack said, “He knew about the blue bus without being told. The Zealots’ disappearance has been withheld from the media so he didn’t pick it up there.”
Sandoval said, “I doubt friend Skeets knows the difference between the Zealots and a basketball team.”
Jack said, “The time of the sighting works, too.”
Sandoval said, “It’s also significant that he didn’t come to us. If he were a walk-in I’d be suspicious that he was a plant because the public doesn’t know CTU is looking for the Zealots. No, he told Pedro the dishwasher, who told Mabel, who told me when I came in two hours ago. I was canvassing the area, asking around if anybody’d seen anything unusual early on Thursday morning. She volunteered the information, and when I expressed interest she phoned Skeets and told him to come on down.”
He added, “Skeets was right about that, too. When Mabel tells you to do something, you get told.”
Jack looked westward, where a ribbon of road stretched across the flat before disappearing in a gap between Mount Nagaii and Mount Zebulon. “Where does that pass lead?”
Sandoval said, “Straight through to the western slopes of the mountains.”
Anne Armstrong, thoughtful, said, “Shadow Valley is in the pass.”
Sandoval said, “That’s right!”
Jack looked from one to the other. They both looked intrigued. He said, “What’s Shadow Valley?”
Armstrong said, “A canyon complete with its own ghost town, Silvertop. There used to be a big silver mine there before the lode played out. It’s been abandoned for years — decades.”
Jack said, “You can hide a lot of things in an old mine.”
9. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 11 A.M. AND 12 P.M. MOUNTAIN DAYLIGHT TIME
Shadow Valley is a canyon that cuts deep into the foothills of the southern slopes of Mount Zebulon. The canyon’s main trunk runs north-south, with numerous side canyons branching off to the east and west.
A Toyota pickup truck and an Explorer SUV turned right off Dixon Cutoff, entering the canyon. The pickup held Anne Armstrong and Jack Bauer; the SUV held four well-armed members of a CTU/ DENV tactical squad.
Jack, Armstrong, and Sandoval had earlier gone from the Pup Tent to the CTU mobile command post at Pike’s Ford, located at the foot of Sky Mount. Various bits of business had to be taken care of at the CP.
Armstrong had changed clothes, shedding skirt and loafers for khaki pants and hiking shoes in preparation for probing the canyon ghost town. Jack had taken the opportunity to check his pistol, making sure that it worked properly. It had been out of his hands from the time he’d been busted in Random until it was returned to him at the Mountain Lake substation. It was basic tradecraft: he needed to make sure that it hadn’t been tampered with during the time it had been out of his possession. He didn’t think it had been but he wasn’t going to stake his life on an assumption by going back out in the field with a potentially defective weapon. He’d examined it before going to Sky Mount and everything had seemed to be in order, but he hadn’t been able to give it the acid test by firing off some rounds.
He did so at Pike’s Ford at a crude but effective firing range that had been set up well away from the group of mobile home trailers that comprised the temporary command post. One of the pluses of this mountain locale was that there was plenty of empty land and no neighbors to kick about guns being discharged in the vicinity. The weapon fired effectively and accurately with the original ammunition that had been in the magazines, which had also been confiscated by the MRT during his arrest. He also fired off some rounds from the Pike’s Ford ammo, with equally positive results. He would have liked to break down the weapon and clean it but there wasn’t time for it now. He armed himself with a half-dozen magazines of fresh ammo and a couple of handfuls of loose rounds that he put in the side pockets of his jacket.
He checked his cell phone for voice mail. A number of messages had been left for him by Ryan Chappelle, offering no new information but instead first requesting and then demanding updates and progress reports on the Sky Mount situation. Jack left them unanswered for the time being. He was covered; he was in the middle of an investigation and had no time to spare answering Chappelle’s queries. Chappelle could stew in his own juices for a while longer, while Jack prowled Shadow Valley to see what if anything could be found. Jack grinned to himself at the image of Chappelle on the boil waiting for a response back in L.A.
He spent the time more productively by grabbing a few sandwiches from a vending machine in an area of one of the trailers that served as a galley. He heated them in a microwave and wolfed them down with a couple of cups of coffee. They tasted like cardboard, and the coffee was no prize, either, but it felt good to have some food in his belly to restore his strength and energy.
CTU/DENV head Orlando Garcia was off-site but was represented here by his assistant SAC, Dirk Vanaheim. Vanaheim conveyed Garcia’s directive that the searchers would be outfitted in protective gear and escorted by a four- person tac squad. This precautionary measure was a result of the attack last night at Red Notch.
Ernie Sandoval had some inquiries he needed to follow up on so he remained behind at the CP. Jack, Armstrong, and the tac squad mounted up in their two vehicles and headed out. The Explorer was a regular battle wagon, with bulletproof glass, armor-plating, solid rubber tires, and a souped- up engine with big muscle to propel the machine at high speeds. The pickup truck was customized with some extras but wasn’t bulletproof. The Explorer took the lead, the pickup following. Armstrong drove, Jack riding in the cab’s passenger seat.
Twenty minutes’ motoring put the two-vehicle convoy at the mouth of Shadow Valley canyon. The canyon’s
