The Humvee was indeed air conditioned, which was a truly marvelous thing. Would that someone had invented it earlier, Khufu would have never left the palace if it had central air. I certainly wouldn’t have.
I sat in the back and kept the Uzi pointed at the driver’s seat while my tall friend drove us to wherever the hell it was we were going.
“I don’t see the point in this,” he said calmly as he steered. He had decided I wasn’t planning to shoot him, which was approximately true for the moment. “You’re going to end up in the same place either way.”
“True,” I agreed, “but I always like to be the one holding the gun. I’m quirky like that. So what are you, a merc?”
“Private security detail,” he said. “We guard the whole compound.”
“You don’t strike me as a security guard.”
“It’s a pretty high-end company,” he said. “We do a lot of overseas work. Middle East, mainly.”
“Hence the hardware.”
“Yeah. First job I’ve been on where everybody spoke English.”
“Tell me about the compound.”
He smiled and rubbed the back of his neck. The gesture said,
“Uh-huh. And what goes on there?”
“I dunno.”
“Excuse me?” I poked his lower back through the seat. This did almost no good at all, as it appeared the back of his chair had some metal in it. I would have to remember that in the event I needed to actually shoot him.
“Seriously,” he said. “I’m pretty new to this assignment.”
“All right, what do you
He hesitated briefly, deciding whether there was any point in being unhelpful. “I think it’s a laboratory. But everyone involved is very Manhattan Project about it. I honestly couldn’t tell you what they’re working on.”
He shot a look back at me. “Do you know?” I wondered if this was what all the security team members did with their free time—sit around and guess what they were guarding.
“Would I be asking if I did?”
“I figured… I don’t know what your deal is with all of this, man. All we were told was to pick up a hostile. But I didn’t see anybody holding a gun to you when you walked up.”
“Do I seem hostile now?”
“Hey, I guess you have your reasons.”
We’d been driving along the salt flats for a good twenty minutes. Up ahead I could see the beginnings of an actual hill.
“Seen anybody else lately?” I asked. “New people brought into the place in the past day or two?”
“Yeah. Early this morning. They brought in some woman by helicopter.”
“Cute?”
“Didn’t see her myself. Guy who told me about it seemed to think so, but you spend enough time out here and that could mean anything. Male-female ratio’s about forty to one. Couple a cooks, that’s it. And they’re old.”
We drove around the hill. Up ahead, surrounded by a tall fence, was our destination.
Considering the whole place was in the middle of a mess of nothing, the fence seemed superfluous, unless it was designed more to keep people in, than keep people out. To that extent, it did have a sort of prison-like feel to it. I could only see a couple of buildings past the entrance and a small guard booth at the gate. The buildings looked like old Quonset huts that had arrived straight from a black-and-white war movie.
“Just how old is this base?” I asked.
“Real old.”
“And you all stay here 24-7?”
“There’s a barracks building up and to the right. It sleeps a lot more than what we have, but that’s where we’ve been staying. The mess is there, too.”
“What about the other buildings?”
“On the perimeter, not much else is in use. And we mostly stick to the perimeter.”
“There’s no security in the middle?”
“I didn’t say that. We just don’t cover that territory.”
The guard at the gate opened the tollbooth arm for us and waved us through. We were most definitely expected. He didn’t seem to notice we were short a passenger.
From the gate, the driver took a left on a fairly well-defined road that skirted along the outside of the compound. To our right it was nothing but one drab, one-story gray building after another. This was definitely a place designed by someone from the Army Corps of Engineers.
“So, these are what, more barracks?”
“Some. We just passed the officers’ club. Not in use.”
“And you’ve been here how long?”
“Personally? Only four months. Guess the contract is older.”
“How old?”
“Three years or so.”
That was curious. The way I had it figured, Grindel had only been actively looking for me for about six months. Whatever this project was, he didn’t need me for the first thirty months of it.
The driver slowed and took a right, and then we were negotiating our way between two of the similar huts. Ahead, I saw a lone individual standing and waiting for us. He was wearing a three-piece suit and sunglasses and did not strike me as all that physically imposing in general. But he did look like he was born to wear the suit. It had to be Robert Grindel.
“Here we are,” the man behind the wheel announced, coming to a stop a few feet from Grindel and turning off the engine. “Now what?”
“Now I pick up the lady you described and get the hell out of here,” I said, adding, “you’ve been very forthcoming. I appreciate that.”
“No problem. It’s not the first time I’ve been in a hostage situation. I find it’s best to just answer the questions.”
“Good advice. Now I’d like to get out of this car without having to shoot you, seeing as you’ve been so nice about everything so far. We’re going to get out of our respective doors on the count of three, and if you do anything stupid I’m going to cut you in half. Got that?”
He nodded.
“Leave the keys in the ignition. We go on three.”
I counted to three and the two of us slid smoothly out of the Humvee with nary a bump. Clearly, he really had done this before. I shut my door and pressed the Uzi into his side, holding it in my left hand.
“Adam!” the man in the suit said. “Glad you could make it. I’m Robert Grindel.”
“I gathered.” After three steps toward him, I pushed the driver to the ground and drew the handgun from where it was stuffed in my belt. I pointed it at Grindel. The Uzi I kept trained on the driver, who wisely stayed down on his knees.
Grindel’s expression clouded, but he stood his ground. “There’s no need for that,” he said, in a tsk-tsk sort of voice one reserves for children.
“Sure there is,” I said. “What did you think, we’d have a nice chat? I’m here for the girl and then I’m leaving.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” he said, smiling. There was something particular about him that bothered me, and it was around then that I realized exactly what it was.
“We’ve met before,” I said.
“Very good,” he said. “I looked more classically nerdish back then. And you were a drunk who spent the
