“Empty?” Quinn asked.
“Seems so,” Nate said.
“Any sign of sensors?”
“Hold on,” Nate said.
Nate pulled out the sniffer.
“I’m not picking up anything,” Nate said. “But the road’s just at the edge of this thing’s range.”
He set the sniffer down and removed a pair of small but high-powered binoculars out of his pack. Quinn watched as Nate moved his head from right to left, then returned to a spot just off center and stayed there for a moment.
“There’s something down there that might be a motion sensor,” Nate said. “Come take a look.”
Quinn climbed up beside him and pulled out his own binoculars.
“Where?” he asked.
“See that rock that’s leaning about twenty degrees to the left?”
“Yes.”
“All right,” Nate said. “Now go another ten feet to the right, and closer to the road, maybe three feet from the edge. Mounted on top of a small rock.”
Small was relative out here. The small rock Nate was talking about was the size of a recliner. There was a bump on it that seemed out of place. Quinn adjusted his zoom to get a better look. It was hard to tell, but there was no question that it was man-made. A square box with a little rounded dome on top. He retrieved his camera and shot off several images so they could take another look at it back at the motel, then match it up to a specific product.
“This is about as close to the road as we should get. If we go down there, they’ll know it right away.” Quinn looked back behind them. “We can parallel it from over here.”
“Okay.”
“Keep the sniffer on.”
“I guess this means we’re at the right place, at least,” Nate said.
“Doesn’t mean anything yet.”
They started out again, this time heading toward the Sierras, always keeping a mound of rocks between them and the Yellowhammer road. Every five minutes they would check the road again, and each time they spotted more of the sensors.
“That one looks brand new,” Nate said at one stop.
The sensor he was referring to was only a dozen yards away, at the base of the hill they were perched on top of.
Quinn held his hand out, and Nate gave him his binoculars. One look at the device confirmed Nate’s assessment.
“Probably we can rule out that they were left by somebody else,” Nate said.
Quinn wasn’t surprised. It was the assumption he’d been working under since they’d seen the first one. Still, it would have been nice to discover that the sensors had been no more than junk left by a previous occupant. But nothing was ever that easy.
“Come on,” Quinn said as he pushed back from the edge.
Distance was hard to tell out here. Their route was far from straight. Instead it wound through the boulder graveyard. But after another ten minutes, Quinn figured they were about three miles from the highway.
“The map shows an obstruction crossing the road,” Quinn said. “If I’m right, we’re less than a quarter mile from it. It’s got to be a fence. My bet is it goes around the entire perimeter of the facility. Keep an eye out. We don’t want to get too close.”
Nate was a good twenty feet ahead of him. He made no physical indication that he had been listening, but his voice came through Quinn’s earpiece loud and clear. “Copy.”
Two minutes further on Nate cut to the left for another road check.
“I’ve got movement,” Nate said. His voice was hushed but urgent. “A man.”
Quinn stopped at the bottom of the slope. “Did he see you?”
“No,” Nate said.
“What’s he doing?” Quinn asked.
“I only have a partial visual,” Nate whispered. “Waist and above. He’s walking down the road. East, in our direction. He’s armed. M16. And he’s wearing fatigues. Brown camouflage. Army… wait, he stopped.”
“He’s alone?”
“I don’t see anyone else,” Nate said. “He’s turning around and heading back the way he came. Looks like guard duty to me.” Nate said nothing for several moments, then, “Okay, he’s moving out of sight… and … gone.”
Quinn waited for Nate to crawl back down, then said, “I think we need to put a little more distance between us and the road. Just to be safe.”
“Safe sounds good.”
The sun slipped behind the ridge of the Sierras five minutes later engulfing Quinn and Nate in a dark shadow, and almost instantly dropping the temperature several degrees.
“Tighten up,” Quinn said into his mic. “It’s going to get dark quick. Let’s keep each other in sight.”
“Do you hear that?” Nate asked.
“You hear someone?”
“Not someone. It’s constant, low. I can almost feel it more than hear it.”
“Hold your position.”
Quinn jogged ahead until he was standing next to Nate.
“I don’t hear anything,” he said.
“My ears are younger than yours.”
“Go to hell.”
“Shhh. Just listen.”
Both fell silent again.
A half-minute passed, then there it was. Very low, almost blending into the background. Even as hard as it was to hear, Quinn could tell it was not something that belonged in the hushed hills.
By silent agreement, they moved toward the sound side-by-side. It seemed to be coming from just beyond the pile of rocks directly in front of them.
“Around, or over the top?” Nate whispered.
“To the top, but not over. Let’s see what we can see from there.”
The closer they got to the top, the easier it was to hear it. When he first heard it, Quinn had thought it was like the sound of a distant freeway. But now he realized it was more like a hum than a drone.
The valley was almost in complete shadow when they reached the top. And here, the sound was much louder, the hill no longer shielding the noise.
When Quinn brought night vision binoculars back to his eyes, he saw the fence right away. Rather, fences. There were two running parallel to each other, and disappearing off to the left and the right. The only break was at the point where they met the road. There a gate closed the gap. Next to it was a concrete building no more than fifteen feet square — enough room for some bunks, a table, a hot plate, and some storage.
Nate tapped Quinn once on the arm, then pointed a dozen feet right of the outpost. Quinn stared at the spot for several seconds before he made out what had caught Nate’s attention. There were three men standing in a loose group. Quinn assumed they were talking, but they were too far away to hear anything.
Nate tapped him again. But instead of pointing at anything, he made a waving motion with his fingers like he wanted to pull back, then he retraced their path down the hill. Quinn followed.
“Did you see it?” Nate asked, once they were off the hill.
“The men?” Quinn said. “Yeah, I saw them.”
“Not the men,” Nate said. “The fence.”
“I saw it. What about it?”
