David Golemon - Event

Billy took the handshake and smiled as wide as the Cheshire cat. They both righted the ATV and Gus got Buck moving. But his eyes were drawn to the mountains again. They mutely returned his stare, almost daring him to come.

"Did you hear that sonic boom earlier?"

"Yeah, I thought I heard something," Gus replied, not letting on that the something he spoke of had knocked him and Buck off their feet.

"It sure must have been a big jet that did that one, huh?"

"You scout up ahead and look for Injun sign, boy. If you're going to hang with Gus, you gotta earn your keep and quit askin' questions," he said with a wink.

"Yes, sir!" Billy answered, giving a not-too-bad hand salute. Then he placed the helmet firmly on his head, snapped the strap on, and turned the key for the bike's ignition. He gunned the engine on the Honda and it shot forward, startling Buck and making him jump back a step.

Gus watched the boy go as he was silhouetted against the mountains with the sun gleaming off the chrome of his scooter. The old man shook with a sudden chill. He thought he would camp in the foothills tonight and head up in the morning. As the day had worn on, he had decided he wanted little or nothing to do with the mountain this night. As he looked at the range, he started to understand the ghost stories that were told about the place. And maybe the Lost Dutchman Mine was lost for good reason, maybe men weren't supposed to go there.

It was two hours later that the trio had stopped and Gus had passed around his old canteen. Gus used his hat to pour Buck a drink as Billy stroked the area between the mule's eyes and Buck nudged closer to the boy.

"You better stop your flirtin' with that mule and get your skinny butt home." Gus looked around the desert and up the white-tinged mountain above. "Don't want you to get caught out here tonight."

"How many people have been lost up there looking for that mine?" Billy asked, finishing with Buck and walking over to the small camp.

"Not as many as the Indians and tourism people in these parts would like folks to think, that's for sure," Gus said as he glanced around at the still .desert.

"How many?" the boy persisted.

Gus finished laying his tarp down for his bedroll, then rubbed the whiskers on his chin and cheek. "Well, must be near to three hundred or so." The old man watched the boy's expression change from mere curiosity to apprehension. Inwardly, he smiled at his exaggeration. "Now you better get back on that scooter and skedaddle."

Billy Dawes took in the desert around him. The shadows were getting longer, and he did have to help his mom. "Yeah, I guess I better."

"And, boy?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Don't think I didn't notice that dust you knocked off your clothes back there," Gus said with one eye closed against the late-afternoon sun.

"What dust?" Billy said, knowing full well what Gus was talking about.

"Before you come lookin' for me, you were out ridin' that thing at Soda Flats, weren't ya?"

Gus had warned Billy about Soda Flats a million times. It was an ancient dry lake bed at the eastern end of the valley. The alkali deposit stretched for about two or three miles square and was as flat as a frying pan, which was perfect for riding at full speed on an ATV.

"I only skirted it, Gus, honest, I didn't cross it."

"Boy, that alkali will kill you eight ways from Sunday. It'll eat the skin right off'n you if you fall into it. Now, if you choose to ignore me, you can't come along with me no more, you got that?"

"I got it, Gus, I promise, no more."

"Alright, now I have your word, no more Soda Flats?"

Billy held up his right hand. "Promise," he said in all seriousness.

The old man watched the boy walk over to the mule and whisper something to him. Buck twitched his ears in agreement. Then Billy placed the red helmet on his head and started up the ATV; he revved the motor twice, then left for home.

Finished with his bedroll, the old prospector looked into his leather poke and pulled out a large bottle of bourbon, shaking his head at the way he was feeling and about the boy and his daredevil-may-care attitude about those damned alkali flats. He unscrewed the cap and took a long pull from the bottle, then looked at Buck, who was looking at him.

"What?"

The mule showed his teeth, then rotated his large ears.

"It's m9edicine tonight, old boy. I think I wanna sleep the night through." He looked at the mountain, then took another swig. "Too goddamn old to be afraid of the dark."

Buck snorted, seemingly agreeing with him.

"Snort all you want, buddy, but I feel like a kid that knows for a fact that the bogeyman is out there somewhere."

As he pulled on the bottle again, he looked at the mountains above him. For now, those mountains held a close-kept and dark secret that was about to be shared with the world. The bogeyman was starting to wake up.

Jack found Everett waiting for him on level seven. "Glad Alice sent you. No one told me where the main conference room is."

"The map is in your welcome packet, which you haven't received yet," Everett said as he gestured for Collins to go ahead.

"Now it sounds like the military," Collins said. They laughed as they walked down the carpeted and circular hall.

As the two officers made their way up three floors to the conference room, another man rode a second elevator up to the thirty-third sublevel, to the Group's small club known affectionately as The Ark. He had just left early from his shift on the fortieth level, the level that housed the main computer networking systems. The man was tall and heavy, his red hair uncombed, and his white shirt prominently displaying an ink stain on the left breast pocket. He had left the computer center just minutes after the call went out to the Event Evaluation Team for them to meet in the main conference room, taking advantage of the rush of people leaving their departments.

Robert Reese had been chosen for his ability to write programs and network them to various illegal links with other systems throughout the world, but most important he was there for his knowledge of the one-of-a-kind Cray computer known as Europa XP-7.

Reese was performing a routine test on the Event Group's own KH-11 photo recon bird and was tying the systems into each other when he happened upon an incoming data stream that he hadn't been cleared to see. It was supposed to be Eyes Only for Dr. Compton and Computer Center director, Pete Golding. He quickly made a copy of the data as the stream was encoded and had just minutes to decipher the information and debug it. Only after viewing the coded data did he know he possessed the most amazing piece of information he had ever seen.

Reese had been recruited for the Event Group and hired away from a cushy job and a good career in Seattle working as a systems manager for Microsoft. But for Reese it had been the job offer after the Group's that interested him the most, and had come rather clandestinely, even more so than the Group's. But the job would only take effect after he had been hired into the Event Center. The offer came from people that paid well and asked little, with his only commitment to this new company being to forward items and information when requested, or if he happened to come across anything that he found interesting.

Thus far it had worked out beautifully. He dealt with some lowlifes in Vegas once in a while and was paid well for the secrets of the past he delivered to them. But he was ordered to watch for one specific item on the corporation's wish list, and that little item had come today through the recon bird.

The elevator doors opened and he stepped into the foyer across from The Ark and made his way inside the darkened club. Few people were there, mostly couples having a beer or mixed drink after duty. A rock-and-roll tune played from the jukebox, a song he didn't recognize because he never had time for anything as mundane as music. He walked over to a bank of three pay phones sitting side by side against the far wall near the restroom. He knew that inept security division that macho navy asshole was currently running monitored the phones at the Group, but he could take care of that easily enough. Reese didn't look around as he stepped up to the center phone. He knew what attracted attention and what didn't. The computer specialist slid his credit card into the slot and pulled down. The card was a special one that Reese himself had designed. It really was a Sprint credit line, but he was most proud of a few extra goodies built into it. As he slid the card in and swiped, the magnetic strip on the back of the card imprinted directly through to the Sprint Telecommunications computer, then on into a leased AT&T telephone line. The microcomputer chip in the card started a chain reaction that would continue to scramble the charge numbers at random. It was totally untraceable, and some guy or gal perhaps in Wisconsin would receive the charge for the call. If anyone checked, the call number would actually come up as two thousand different numbers, therefore no one would ever know who had been called. Not only that, the call would have a telephone prefix three thousand miles away from where the call had actually gone. Smiling, Reese then punched in the numbers and waited for the phone to ring in Las Vegas. While he waited, he gestured for the bartender and made a drinking gesture and mouthed the word Budweiser. The man nodded and went to get his beer. The phone began to ring on the other end of the unmonitored phone.