Catacombs (32 page)

Belov cursed him and made his own, reluctant decision. His chances of getting Landreth away from there now were nil, even if the blackout continued. The police or soldiers would soon be on hand, shooting or arresting anyone who looked the least suspicious, sealing off the grounds. He couldn't afford to be picked up. Time to call it a night. He was confident that the Catacombs were close, very close. He had only to exercise patience and care. Tomorrow, or the next day, he would have the information he needed and be on his way.

WARSHIELD RANCH

Silverpeak, Colorado

May 17

T
he instructors brought in to teach Raun Hardie and Lem Meztizo the Third the rudiments of parachute jumping had set up a practice area in the largest of the two barns on Jade's ranch, and for two days, when she wasn't hiking and doing calisthenics and wind sprints to build her endurance, Raun learned how to survive leaping out of an airplane from a mile or so in the air.

She was determined that she was not going to make an actual jump. No power on earth– But at the same time it was imperative to give the impression that she was cooperating, and the techniques which the experts taught were not difficult to learn. Rolling backward and forward on a tumbling mat, keeping feet and knees together and her chin tucked in. Launching herself from a small trampoline and rolling forward over one shoulder. Jumping from a six, then a ten-foot-high platform. Learning, after coming up with a chipped tooth and a bloody lip the first time because she was too loose and casual, how the shock of impact is taken up by the strength of the legs and then distributed along one side of the body by rolling through thigh and hip to the shoulder.

Raun was fitted for a red-and-yellow jump suit, boots, and helmet. She learned the theory of canopy control by hanging from an actual harness and pulling on the lift webs. She practiced jumping from the platform with a second chute, which, they solemnly told her, was useful in case the first one opened improperly. Admittedly a rare occurrence, but . . . A Roman candle, it was called. From any distance above a thousand feet the body would meet the earth at a speed of one hundred sixty miles an hour.

Uh-huh, Raun said. Her mind was far away. It was a meaningless consequence for thumbing your nose at Fate. She'd already reached her absolute limit, ten feet above the tanbark in the barn.
Wild horses wouldn't drag–
They taught her how to get rid of that first tangled chute in case she needed to open the second. At the end of fifteen hours of instruction and practice she felt quite competent. But it was all for nothing. She was just biding her time.

On the evening of the sixteenth she went for a hike and jog before dinner and was surprised to find that she had been looking forward to this time; Lem Meztizo, claiming that he was feeling the results of months of physical neglect, went with her.

Their course took them down by the Picket Wire, where the three trout fishermen were wading upstream and about thirty yards apart, serenely looking for that last catch of the day. One of them, the portly Bill Sawyer, turned and noticed them and waved. He and Raun had never spoken, but in a sense they were friends: It was one curious effect which the beauty and isolation of the ranch had on people. Raun waved back. From Red Cloud Mesa came the wind-borne tang of cook fires, voices of children playing. The sky was streaked with yellow cloud. They came to a tree with horizontal low branches ideal for chinning.

Raun managed three and a half. Lem astonished her by pumping his heavy body up and down fifteen times before dropping lightly to his feet and sucking wind.

She almost wished Jade were with them. A stray thought, from nowhere, but it nearly knocked her over. Of all people. Raun smiled involuntarily, the smile twisting into a grimace. When he was around she always felt a prickle of animosity. He was too quiet for her, a spooky kind of quiet, she liked people who talked, who let you know what they were all about. He could be a boor. His mystical bent dismayed her. Jade had power over her, and although in the end it was she who would win, Raun felt, in the meantime, uncomfortable and resentful. He used his loneliness like a shield–well, she'd been guilty of that a time or two in her life, strike the objection. But why did he keep his dead wife's room untouched, except for a change of greenhouse flowers daily, as if it were a shrine?

Last night he'd spent three hours–and six minutes, to be exact–in there. She could understand what a shock it must have been to lose Nell, to stand helplessly by knowing where she was but unable to reach her as she slowly asphyxiated. When you expected the one you loved to die, knowing for months there was no hope, it was tough enough, but somehow easier to endure. With Andrew . . . But she couldn't think about Andrew Harkness, not now. She had to deal with Matthew Jade. Getting him to open up a little, talk about something personal and human and not about his obsession with the Catacombs, might be a help.

They jogged the last two hundred yards up to the house, accompanied by a couple of the wild-looking collies who lived on the ranch. Raun was puffing hard but determined to make it. Looking over at Lem, she saw that his face had turned the shade of a ripe tomato. But he was keeping pace, his belly moving ponderously with each short stride: He ran like a man trying to avoid breaking eggs.

Lem sneaked a look at Raun and his mouth turned up in a grin. Raun began to laugh and then, totally winded, she tripped on a clump of grass and sprawled. The dogs jumped over and circled around her, and one stuck his long nose into her ear. Raun lay back, nuzzling the collie, looking at the dots of stars that swam in the darkening sky. She felt an emotion she'd been without for so long it seemed foreign to her nature: a flash of happiness and contentment.

Her euphoria, in a milder form, lasted until 5:06 A.M. the next morning, when she was awakened by the sound of a helicopter landing at the ranch only about thirty yards from her bedroom window.

Raun turned her head on the pillow and there was Matthew Jade, in profile, his face turned toward the silver-gray windows in the dark room. The running lights of the helicopter flashed on the window glass. Raun thought she had locked her door the night before, but apparently that didn't mean anything to him.

"MORNING," he said, as if he knew without having to look that she was awake.

"What are you–" Jade cupped a hand to his ear and leaned toward her.

"I SAID, WHAT ARE YOU–"

"TODAY'S THE–" The helicopter pilot cut his engine then, and Jade lowered his voice. "Today's the day."

She sat straight up in bed, tingling from shock.

"It is not. You said Saturday!"

"I lied. You're as ready now as you'll be then, and it's better if you don't have time to think about it too much. Trust me on that, Raun."

"I'm not leaving this room!"

Jade didn't argue. He walked over, stripped the comforter and blanket from her, and left her shivering on the mattress in her snug yellow flannel pajamas.

Too snug. She put her knees down and her hands in her lap.

"You can put your jump suit on, or I'll carry you out of here in your pj's."

"You s-son of a b-bitch!"

"My mother," Jade said, "would grieve to hear you say that. Either you go up in the wild blue yonder today, or I'll bury you back at Talon Mountain."

"No you won't," Raun said, glaring at him.

"Be ready in ten minutes. We have to go all the way to Denver to catch our flight."

He had the courtesy to leave her alone then; Raun frantically studied her options. Today or tomorrow she had planned to twist an ankle or knee just badly enough so that she'd have to stay off it for a few days. Other than deliberately scalding herself in the shower or cutting her wrist with a safety razor, which made her feel even more squeamish than the prospect of leaping from a giant transport plane, there seemed to be no way to avoid climbing aboard the helicopter Jade had ordered for this ungodly hour.

In the end she got off the bed, used the john, brushed her teeth, and zipped up her jump suit over thermal underwear. She packed some clothes and carried her boots outside into the dawn.

The helicopter was a late-model twin-engine Huey with room for sixteen passengers. The parachute instructors were loading the copter. Ken was on hand with fresh doughnuts and coffee.

"I put champagne on ice for tonight," Ken said, grinning at Raun.

"Lovely," she said, and smiled bravely for him.

"You be just fine. Mist' Jade take good care of you. That man is a prince."

Then she was inside the helicopter strapping herself into a bucket seat opposite Lem Meztizo, whose face in the morning light was like wet cardboard. This wasn't so much fun for him either, Raun thought. He offered her a stick of chewing gum in a shaking hand. "Must have been some bad ice at the Purple Pussy last night," he said.

"We should take a strike vote. Right now."

Jade heard her and turned his head, made a thumbs up gesture as he went forward to join the pilot. They took off, circling slowly above the ranch yard before heading northeast. The interior of the copter filled with blinding sun. Lem put his head down and chewed, his jaw bulging, his face slick with sweat. Raun closed her eyes, heart thumping.

D
own among the aspen and flowering cherry on the Picket Wire River, Bill Sawyer put his binoculars in their case and went back inside his camper to pour pancake batter on the hot griddle. Steve Roper and Ted Clemons joined him. Their clothes smelled of fish. Probably his did too.

"Where do you think they're going?" Roper said to Sawyer.

"Not far. They don't have any gear. Just parachutes. Probably scheduled for some practice jumps on one of the airbases hereabout."

"Should be getting some word back today on the girl," Clemons said.

"Let's hope," Roper said. "But maybe we shouldn't wait too long."

"I've got the same feeling," Clemons admitted. "Could be we ought to let her speak for herself."

Sawyer glanced at Roper but didn't ask what he had in mind. He was not cut from the same cloth as the Cobra Dance men, and was glad of it. When they finished with Raun Hardie she would be nearly unrecognizable as a human being. A few hanks of hair, misshapen flesh over the many broken bones. But before she died they would know everything about her life that was worth knowing.

"Dark or light?" Sawyer said, referring to his pancakes.

"1 like mine with blueberries," Clemons told him. "Got any frozen blueberries?"

"Poke around in the freezer there, you'll probably find some."

O
n Red Cloud Mesa the Vassals of the Immaculate Light, sixteen adults and seven children, had been up and around at their campsite since the first colorless light of dawn. They began their day with a prayer circle: kneeling, heads bowed, hands joined. They wore sackcloth dyed a burgundy color that unfortunately looked like dried blood, and sandals which they cobbled themselves. The men had their heads shaved, except for a hedgelike V of hair on the right side of the scalp. Following sunrise prayers there was breakfast, meager fare boiled in pots or baked in ashes Indian style. To the casual observer they were leaderless, yet well disciplined and never idle. Obviously they supported themselves through crafts: They made baskets and leather goods. The children had school for four hours a day; each adult had something to contribute to their education. The Vassals owned books, junker cars, simple tools, and odd-sounding musical instruments. Bathing was part of an arcane ritual practiced only on solemn and sacred occasions. They welcomed visitors, and bored them to death.

The trained observer might have wondered why all of the children were at least ten years of age, why there were no babies at their mothers' teats. In fact, none of the women were pregnant. All of them seemed a little too healthy for the nomadic life they lived. But, since the Vassals' arrival at the Warshield ranch five days ago, no one had cared enough to pass much time with them, or ask detailed questions. They looked and sounded harmless. They wished to be alone. They had their wish.

A
t Lowry Air Force Base Jade and the others transferred from the helicopter to a venerable bucket of bolts, a C-130 Hercules built in the fifties. The four-engine plane was painted in camouflage colors. To Raun it was like being in the belly of a whale with steel ribs and a ringbolt-studded floor. She had to keep her teeth locked so they wouldn't chatter. Lem was chewing aspirin and still looked sick.

The C-130 took off, and as soon as they were airborne the instructors kept the novices so busy they had little time to think. They put on their chute packs. The operation of the static line was explained to them. Raun clipped and unclipped her parachute static line to the release cable overhead with stiff gloved hands. There was a warning about the impact of the slipstream that went in one ear and out the other. The parachute straps chafed the insides of her thighs. In the back of her mind a child was screaming. Five years old. She had climbed a tree in the yard of their home in Kenya after a beloved ocelot kit, and couldn't climb down again. Looking at the ground, she felt her heart fall out of her body, dizziness spiral upward to her throbbing head.

I won't I can't I won't.

Jade
 
spread some oversized color photos on the floor, which was covered with a nonskid material the texture of sandpaper, and had them kneel opposite him. The four engines made too much noise to permit normal conversation. He spoke to them through their headsets.