David Golemon - Event

But Harold wasn't listening. He was looking out of the windshield with his mouth hanging open. Grace followed his gaze, and the scream caught in her throat as she came eye to eye with something she couldn't have dreamed in her wildest nightmare.

The beast blinked at the two people inside who were frozen in terror. The green and yellow eyes reflected their image back at them.

As Harold fought the urge to scream, the animal roared at the windshield, bringing up the armored plates around its neck. The window immediately fogged and then cracked into a million tiny wavy lines. But the image of the animal could, unfortunately, still be seen as clear as day. They were face-to-face with the largest set of incisors they had ever seen. The mouth was wide, and every time it opened its bonelike mandibles the rows upon rows of teeth shone clearly in its mouth. The beast roared again; the glass, unable to take any more acoustic hammering, fell from the frame. The man and woman screamed and screamed, until they noticed the sudden silence inside the camper. When they opened their eyes, the animal was gone.

Harold looked down at Grace. She was still staring out the window, and the shakes had taken over, making her entire body quake. The curlers she had placed in her hair earlier after they had stopped at that small bar and grill had for the most part fallen out. Some hung on for dear life, half on and half off.

"Harold," Grace said quietly, "I think I peed myself."

Harold thought it better not to comment for the moment and just sat there and thanked God they were still alive. And also that Grace hadn't again brought up that they should have gone to her sister's in Denver.

The Comp Center director, Pete Golding, and his tired team of techs hadn't found anything as of midnight and looked as if they were on a wild-goose chase in Arizona just as they had been in New Mexico. Boris and Natasha had burned most of its fuel and could not be retasked another time to a different orbit or track without running out. And that meant they would more than likely lose the bird because it was in such a low orbit now, it would soon come tumbling back into the atmosphere. Another move by the old and reliable satellite would be its last. It would take a shuttle launch to accomplish a refueling, and they all knew that couldn't be ordered like room service. Hours before, the president had been persuaded to give the NSA back its KH-11, Black Bird. The director of that agency was one of the few who knew about the Event Group and its front, the National Archives, and he was sympathetic and cooperative to a point, but with global terrorism still on the rise, their argument for having their bird back was valid and important to the nation.

Finally Compton had to sit at his desk and place his head down. The strain was finally catching up with him and he was on the brink of exhaustion.

Pete Golding, the head of the Comp Center and one of Niles's closest friends, saw him and shook his head. He would let his boss get as much sleep as possible because he knew from watching him he was close to collapse.

On the many screens lining the curving wall and on the main viewing screen high above them, the expanse of desert kept rolling by as seen and sent along by Boris and Natasha, and still it showed nothing but vast emptiness.

Niles Compton was snoring lightly at his desk, his first sleep in forty-eight hours. His feet were propped up on the desk blotter, and this time the overworked director was making real progress with the much needed rest his body craved. The shifts had changed twice since they had retasked Boris and Natasha, and the results had been nothing but clear desert throughout most of Arizona. They were now taking wide-angle views of the small range of mountains everyone in the West had heard of, the Superstitions.

Pete Golding yawned and then pulled up a U.S. Geological Survey map of Arizona and used his mouse to place it in the right corner of the live feed from Boris and Natasha so he could study it and the terrain on the monitor.

"Damn closest town isn't a town at all. Chato's Crawl?" He shook his head. Chato had been a big man with the Apache a hundred odd years ago, a close friend of Geronimo's, if he remembered right, but what was this Crawl crap that tagged the name?

"Bingo!" a voice from the floor shouted out.

Golding looked first at the display and then quickly down at the row of operators who were gathering around one computer console. He hadn't noticed anything on the green-tinted, twenty-foot-wide screen at the front of the room that was showing the real-time feed from the KH-11.

"All right, Dave, what have you got?" he asked the operator.

The loud exclamation had startled Niles Compton from his slumber. He jerked awake with that odd feeling of falling one has when suddenly woken. He jumped to his feet and, wiping the sleep from his eyes, ran the three steps down to the main floor of the center.

"What have you got, Pete?" he asked, stretching his eyes wider as if this could make them less heavy. He slid his glasses on and looked.

"Nothing on the infrared, but look at the magnetometer from Boris, it's off the scale. Either we ran into an aboveground ore site or we have what we're looking for," Golding said as he stepped back so Niles could get a better look at the display.

The digital readout for indigenous metal was pegged out at over 442,000 parts per square mile. The metal detectors on board the KH-11 satellite were using a lot of power to focus on such a tight area of the earth, but the results, though now a little weak, were very positive. Compton looked at the big projection screen on the front wall. He could see the huge rocks and boulders this mountain range was made of. But the metal the detectors were picking up was nowhere to be seen, indicating it might be indigenous metal just below the surface.

"You know, Niles, I was just looking at the U.S. Survey map, and do you know where this signal is coming from?" Pete asked, but didn't wait for an answer as he had a horrible feeling that his boss was about to do something dumb. "That's the Superstition Mountain Range, you know, the historical myth of the Lost Dutchman Mine, it could just be either a gold or silver deposit we're picking up."

"Okay, I hate to order this, but let's take a chance and go to maximum magnification. Let's get us in close and maybe we can pick something up visually." Niles looked at the screen. "And I want it tight on that small valley right there, because Boris and Natasha is having a hard time seeing beyond the surrounding rock walls."

The other technicians looked at Golding, clearly expecting him to say something.

"Niles, a word please." Pete took him by the elbow and walked a few paces away.

Pete glared at the worried faces until they returned to their stations and the work they were doing. He removed his glasses and started to clean them with the white shirttail that had worked out of his black pants.

"Niles, we've used a lot of power on this. Boris and Natasha is damn near out of fuel and the batteries are down to darn near nothing. The solar cells can't keep up with the demands we're putting on them, and we have nothing going into the batteries." Golding looked at his boss and friend, then again at the main display as he put his glasses back on.

Compton removed his own glasses and used the earpiece to poke at his Comp Center director's chest. "Number one, Pete, we have to take this chance and use what's left in her batteries to bring the lenses to a nominal position. We need detail on that section. The metal could be in that valley or so small we can't see it. Number two, I don't give a flying fuck about the fuel state." He jabbed at Pete again, harder this time. "And number three, if you don't do as I say and we don't find that saucer"--he paused a moment to lower his voice--"we could be issuing a death sentence to everyone on this fucking planet. And four"--he gritted his teeth--"if we have to, we get into cars and planes and helicopters and go out there and find it ourselves if and when we lose REC-SAT." He put his glasses back on and stormed back onto the main floor.