Color of Blood(93)

“Well, it’s bloody hot out there, Dennis,” she said.

They retraced their path back to the dirt track and stopped. The sun was now on the other side of its arc, and Dennis guessed they had about five hours of sunlight left. He had a little more than half a tank of gas.

“Dennis, now that we might have found your mystery mine, I assume we can go? Aren’t you satisfied?”

“Not yet,” he said. “Let’s drive down a little farther to see if we can find an entrance.”

Judy sighed.

“I know,” he said. “Just a little longer.”

They drove for almost twenty minutes without finding an entrance: just a never-ending barbed-wire fence with dust-covered white warning signs.

The longer they drove down the track, the more alarmed Judy became. She could not understand what internal mechanism or passion drove this man, and while she was perfectly happy to overlook his obsession, her training and well-honed sense of menace told her Dennis was crossing over from a kind of demilitarized zone into a war zone. They were getting farther from Newton as the sun moved behind them toward the western horizon.

“How’s the petrol?” she said.

“Half a tank,” he said. “And we have a five-gallon backup that you made us purchase.”

She took a deep breath, busy formulating how she was going to demand that Dennis turn around, when she saw it.





Chapter 32


The entrance on the left side of the road was a primitive affair: a long, hinged gate anchored on both sides by creosote-saturated wood poles. Extending across the forty-foot entrance was a metal-tube gate with cross-buck supports. A large metallic sign in the middle of the gate stated: Private Property—Do Not Enter.

Dennis took Judy’s binoculars and rolled down his window, peering at the track leading into the property. He could see nothing but desert.

“Can we leave now?” Judy said. “I really don’t like this place.”

“Sure,” Dennis said. “We can’t do anything except drive through the entrance.”

“We’re not doing that,” Judy said.

Dennis laughed. “Of course not: at least not now.”

He turned around in front of the entrance and gave it a final look. She glanced back into the fenced-off area and noticed a small dust cloud, perhaps a quarter mile inside the fence line.

“Dennis,” she said, grabbing his wrist and pointing at the dust trail.

“Interesting; we have visitors.”

“Start driving,” she said. “If they want to talk to us, they’ll have to chase us down.”

“I’d just as well not have a conversation with these folks right now, though I admit to being curious.”

“Dennis!” Judy said, her voice rising. “Please start driving.”

And he did, picking up speed so that he was doing forty-five miles per hour down the track, occasionally fishtailing through sandy gullies. Looking in his rearview mirror, he could see nothing but the huge, billowy, orange-red dust trail in his wake. After fifteen minutes of driving, he relaxed his grip on the steering wheel.

Reaching over, he patted Judy on her knee.

“It’s OK,” he said. “We’ll be back in Newton before the sun sets, and we’ll have a cold drink in the pub.”

The hulking white Chevrolet Suburban emerged from the dust cloud behind them as if it had been shot from a canon. Its tinted windows made it impossible for Dennis to see who was inside.

Judy screamed sharply as the first Suburban roared by on the left. A second identical Suburban slid in behind them. Dennis was disoriented when the first vehicle pulled in front, immersing them in a dense fog of dust. He saw brake lights and found himself slowing to a crawl as the vehicle in front slowed.

They were wedged between two enormous white Suburbans in the middle of one of the most isolated areas of the world. They sat in their LandCruiser as the dust dissipated. None of the vehicles moved, and no one exited.

“What are they doing?” Judy whispered, as if they could hear her.

“I suspect they’re talking to each other by radio, trying to figure out how to handle us.”

“Well, we’re not going to bloody sit here all day; let’s just drive around them,” she said.

“They’d just run us down again,” he said. “There’s nowhere to hide or run to. So I’m guessing this is what Garder stumbled upon.”

“Look,” Judy said, pointing to her side mirror.

A man stepped out of the vehicle behind them and walked to Dennis’s side of the car. He was wearing khaki-colored shorts, boots, and a plain khaki short-sleeve shirt. He sported a red logo-less baseball cap and a pair of dark aviator sunglasses. His physique seemed unnaturally well defined, as if he spent every waking moment in a gym with weights. He had a full, reddish-brown beard.

Dennis wound down his window as the man approached.

“Hi,” the man said. “Can we help you with anything? You seem lost.”

His accent was Midwestern United States.

“Yes,” Judy blurted out, leaning into Dennis’s chest. “We thought there was a natural cave out here. At least it seemed that way on our maps.”

“No, ma’am,” he said, carefully scanning the inside of their Cruiser. “No natural caves out here.”