Diablo Mesa(70)

“It is, and your dog’s—both ways, coming and going. Now, would you say you were heading north or south of here?”

“North.”

“Great. If you could walk behind me at, say, twenty paces? And follow my footprints, not your old ones. We want to keep those clear.”

“Got it.”

Watts set off at a brisk walk along the base of the cliffs. In fifteen minutes, he turned and began climbing a ridgeline, still following Skip’s tracks.

“Is this the ridge where you saw the lights?” he asked.

“I think so.”

They climbed higher as the ridgeline got steeper and narrower. The sun just peeked over the horizon.

“You came up here in the dark?” Watts asked. “Lucky you didn’t fall…Oh. You did.”

Skip stared. It didn’t take a tracker to see all the scuff and claw marks in the loose sand where he’d taken a tumble.

“What happened was,” said Skip, “I saw the lights as I climbed the ridgeline. I took a rest there. And then, on my way down, I fell.”

“Okay.” Watts looked around for a while and then climbed a little higher. “I can see here where you sat down to rest. Now if you could sit down and show me where in the landscape you saw the lights?”

“It was dark.” Skip stared out at the white lake bed, which ended in the green hills of Horse Heaven, and beyond that the buttes of Los Gigantes. He squinted, trying to remember where in the ocean of night he had seen those lights moving.

“Concentrate, and try to think: How far below the night horizon were the lights? And in which direction?”

Skip visualized it, placing a mental overlay on the landscape. “Right about…there. Beyond the last butte in the valley, in a flat area among the foothills.”

Watts sighted down his arm. “Okay, I see it.” He unrolled the lidar survey and examined it closely. “Very interesting. That’s approximately the area where these fresh tracks are.”

He looked at Skip and clapped him on the back. “Good work. Let’s go.”

They hiked back to the Explorer and Watts set off across the lake bed. Using the lidar survey as a map, he worked his way around the grassy hills and into Los Gigantes valley. He parked at the base of the foothills and they got out. Once again, Watts walked around in a wide circle, examining the ground.

“Aha!” he said. “Footprints. About three days old.”

“I can’t see anything,” said Skip.

“Do you recall what sort of footwear Bitan was wearing?”

“These big old desert combat boots. They looked kind of silly.”

“Perfect. This is him. Let’s go.”

Watts took off on foot again. He moved so fast that Skip struggled to keep up, catching him only when he stopped from time to time to consult the survey. The track they followed wound through the foothills of the mountains until it came to a dry wash. Here Watts paused, staring at the ground, his brow furrowed. First he walked in one direction, then another, and then a third.

“What do you see?” Skip asked.

“This was the rendezvous spot. There are tire tracks here, but they’ve been brushed out. It looks like a mat of chains was dragged behind a vehicle to cover their tracks. But it hasn’t rained since then and everything is still clear enough. Mostly. You can’t quite erase tracks in sand without the help of rain, wind, and time.”

He wandered around some more, finally heading off toward an area of rocks. He began poking around, then gave a shout.

Skip came over.

“Down there. Take a look.”

In between two stones, Skip could see the edge of what looked like a card, partially buried in the sand.

“Don’t touch,” said Watts. He photographed it with his cell phone, then removed a Ziploc bag. He pulled on a nitrile glove and picked up the card, slipping it into the bag and sealing it. He examined the find for a moment, then held it up for Skip to see.

“That’s Bitan’s employee ID card,” Skip said. “We’re all supposed to wear one. But what’s that stuff smeared on it?”

“Blood. Almost certainly Bitan’s.” Watts slipped the bag into a pocket of his day pack. “It’s becoming clear to me what happened here. Two vehicles—UTVs—cut Bitan off in this wash, one in front, the other behind. Bitan tried to run, but at least four men got out and chased him down. There was a struggle. Bitan must have been injured and bled. The bloody sand has been removed. At some point, it appears Bitan winged his ID card off into the darkness as a bread crumb of sorts. No other explanation: if his attackers saw him do it, they’d have searched until they found it.”

“You can read all that from just this dirt?”

Watts shrugged.

“So he was kidnapped.”

“Yes. And possibly killed, or badly injured, considering the bloody card and the fact he hasn’t shown up in any hospital.”

“These tracks they tried to cover. Where do they go?”

“North. Toward the Pershing Proving Range.”

“How far away is that?”

“I’m not sure. Let’s climb to the top of that hill. We’re off the edge of the lidar survey here.”

Watts headed up the back side of a rocky hill that rose above the wash, his wiry frame moving like a goat, Skip following. They were soon at the top, with a view looking north. Watts pulled out a pair of binoculars and glassed the landscape ahead, which consisted of gentle, rolling foothills and valleys leading up to a range of mountains.