Robert Tanenbaum - Malice

Lucy glanced down the road toward the gravel pit and shuddered. She looked back to her mother, just as Marlene got off the radio and gave a thumbs-up. "Okay, everybody," she shouted. "Plan A worked. Let's go!"

Everybody piled back into the cars and the convoy turned right down the road. After about three-quarters of a mile, they reached the entrance and stopped. The gravel pit was huge-more than a hundred acres according to the maps-and now that they were there, it looked bigger than that. Although the snow had melted from the sunny, southern exposures of the barren landscape, there were still large patches on the north sides of hills and in depressions.

"Which way?" asked Swanburg, who was riding in the first car with Marlene, Lucy, and Ned.

"Straight ahead about a mile," Lucy said.

The others turned to look at her. "Just a hunch," she said, and turned to look out the window.

Swanburg shrugged and looked at the small Global Positioning System display on the laptop computer next to him. "Looks like as good a place as any to set up shop."

A mile farther, the convoy stopped again. The Baker Street Irregulars got out of their respective vehicles and gathered around the pickup truck, where they began unloading their equipment from the back. All except for Warren, who opened the kennels, leashed his three dogs, and took them for a walk.

As they worked, Marlene walked back to the minivan, whose occupants were climbing out and stretching. She spoke to their leader. "Are you okay?"

Jose Katarain, aka Eugenio Santacristina, reached up and held Marlene by her shoulders. "I am the most okay I have been since my daughter disappeared," he said. "Today, we find Maria and take her home to her mother. Thank you, my friend."

"We're not there yet," Marlene cautioned. "This science isn't exact, but I feel in my heart that you're right. So let's get started. You know what you're supposed to do?"

Katarain snapped to attention. "Yes, my captain. We six are to set up and patrol a perimeter within line of sight of your people." He turned to the others near the van and snapped off an order they immediately obeyed. One man climbed back inside the van and began handing out rifles to the others, who expertly checked the weapons out and then slammed home the bullet clips like they'd been doing it all their lives.

Marlene nodded with approval. When she first made the suggestion to use Katarain and any Basque men who may have had some paramilitary training, Ireland balked about using civilians. "They're as likely to hurt themselves as the enemy."

Ireland had agreed after talking to Katarain, but he clearly was uncomfortable. "You were right," he told her later, sarcasm dripping from his tongue. "He's had military experience, and so have a few of his friends. I don't have to tell you what kind of experience, though it may come in handy in an exercise like this. But like I told you, it puts me in an awkward position. I'm sworn to uphold the law in Payette County and that man is a wanted terrorist."

"Relax, he's our terrorist now," Marlene said. "And by today's standards of evildoers, he's an Eagle Scout. Anyway, once we find his daughter, he goes back to being a loyal taxpayer. Then the ball's in your court."

Ireland had given her one of his "Give it a rest" looks, then said, "It's the only reason he's not in the Payette County jail right now."

Katarain divided his men into three two-man teams and sent the first two to patrol areas on the far side of the gravel pit. "Myself and Esteban will patrol down toward the entrance to the gravel pit in case there are patrols or anyone escapes from the compound," he said, pointing to the younger man who'd been in the van handing out the weapons. Then with a wave he set off.

Marlene walked back to the last truck in the line, where a small, dirty man in a battered miner's helmet leaned against the driver's-side door, smoking a cigarette. He looked up sideways when she walked up and grinned, exposing a set of crooked, tobacco-stained teeth.

The man's face and head were so covered with long, wiry pewter-gray hair that all she could see was a small dirty space around his yellow eyes and the tip of a pointy nose. So much gray hair also poked out of every opening in the pink, faded long underwear he wore beneath his overalls that she was sure his entire body was as furry as his head.

"So what's next, missy?" he said with a voice that had definitely been ravaged by too many filterless cigarettes.

Marlene looked back at the Baker Street Irregulars. "We wait for them to work their magic and then we dig," she said, nodding at the trailer. "Tell me about your machine."

During their meeting in Colorado, as James Reedy had pointed out, even in late March the ground would still be frozen in that part of Idaho. "Hard as iron; you could swing a pick all day and not get anywhere," he said. "We're going to need an air track drill and someone who knows how to operate one."

He was confident that both could be found, because there were still active hard-rock mines in the area. "Gold and silver, mostly," he said. "I'll call around and see if I can find a miner with the right machine."

Who he found was R. P. Brown, a five-foot-eight, 140-pound gold miner who boasted about not having had a hot bath since the previous December, when he'd treated himself to one for Christmas.

"The man smokes, cusses, drinks, and fights like a fiend-which is why we're pretty familiar with him at county lockup," Ireland said when asked what he knew about the man. "But I'm told he's also the best hard-rock miner in these parts, and while you wouldn't know it to look at him, some say he's been pretty successful at finding gold in them thar hills."

Brown had turned out to be every bit as disagreeable as promised. In fact, about the only person on the team he seemed to get along with was Jojola. They seemed to have an understanding and had even been seen laughing together over some private joke. When Marlene later asked what was so funny, Jojola waved a hand in the air. "Oh, nothing really, the old codger's just got a lot of the trickster in him. As you know, the coyote is my totem, and I suspect his, too, so we get along fine."

No one else wanted to be around "the old codger," but his mine was only five miles from the Unified Church property and he had an air track drill. Not that it was free, mind you.

Marlene had first met him two days earlier. After listening to her describe the search for Maria Santacristina, he'd agreed to loan the machine and run it "for five hundred dollars, half now, half when I'm done digging. And you pay my gas to get there and my diesel to run the machine. And it's five hundred more if anybody starts shootin' at me."

Now he was looking at Marlene through his glittering yellow eyes as if there was something suspicious about her question regarding how his air track worked. But when he realized that she was just curious, he actually looked pleased that she asked.

"Well, missy, that there bitch is a Gardner Denver Model 3100," he said proudly. "It's really just a big fuckin' hammer on tracks. The business end of that baby is driven by an air compressor and will pulverize its way through the toughest rock, and go through this frozen ground like shit through a goose."

Marlene was trying to figure out how shit went through a goose when Brown decided he'd said enough. "Now, if you'll leave me be, I'll get Sally down from her carriage. The others look like they're getting started."

Brown was right about the others. Marlene arrived back at the truck just in time to watch Jesse Adare start the gas-powered motor of the large model airplane he'd snapped together in a matter of minutes. Sounding like a swarm of angry bees, the plane darted down the road and then lifted into the air.

"Turning on the camera," he called over to Jack Swanburg, who was monitoring the laptop computer he'd set up on a portable table.