Off the Grid (21 page)

She didn’t want to be famous, and she didn’t want to get into trouble. She judged the nature of the work by the volunteers who were there to do it and it left a sour taste in her mouth.

Although she didn’t doubt Ibby’s sincerity for a moment, in her mind’s eye she kept seeing the disapproving squint of her dad’s face, and the voice of her mother asking her
what was she thinking
.

Sheridan didn’t like the idea of the government collecting metadata from innocent people. It was wrong, she thought. But she also knew that she’d never sent a text or email or said anything over her cell phone that could be construed as dangerous. Boring, yes. But not dangerous to anyone.

She wasn’t surprised that Seth had positioned himself next to her
while Ibby talked. He eagerly turned his head to her when she leaned toward him.

“What does it mean to be ‘Lindsey’d’?” she asked in a whisper.

He looked around again and lowered his lips to her ear.

“Lindsey was a pain in the ass,” he said. “She got here and made all kinds of demands about the living conditions, and basically announced that if she wasn’t allowed to leave here, she’d blow the whistle on the whole project. She bitched and moaned about everything and she was a goddamned prima donna, and she should never have been preapproved to come here. She got on everyone’s nerves real fast.”

Sheridan nodded for him to go on.

“There’s this security guy named Saeed,” Seth said. “He said he’d take her back to her car so we could get back to work. We all stood up and applauded when he drove her away and we never saw her again. That’s the worst thing that can happen here, that you get Lindsey’d.”

“So did she keep quiet?” Sheridan asked.

Seth shrugged.

“What happened to her?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” he said. “All I know is that when we got back to the Mustang Café two days later, her car was still there.”

Sheridan felt a cold chill tremble down her spine.

“So don’t get Lindsey’d,” Seth said.

UTAH DATA CENTER

This is the place!

—B
RIGHAM
Y
OUNG
,
1847

“Is that a spring?” Jan Stalkup asked with a squint. She pointed to a distant smudge of blue-green beneath a rock formation to the southeast.

Joe raised his binoculars to his eyes and focused. Although he couldn’t see standing water or an outlet stream, the ground was churned up and dark. Mud.

“Yup,” he said. “Good eye.”

He’d obviously missed the spring that morning when he came through, but he’d been farther west and the angle would have been back and over his shoulder.

It was good timing, he thought, since they’d run out of water the hour before. He realized how desperate they were when he’d barked at Daisy for spilling too much. He still felt guilty for it.

“Just when we really, really need to find water, we find water,” Jan said, ebullient. She reached out and grasped his arm. “Maybe I need to spend more time with believers.”

•   •   •

J
OE FILLED BOTH PLASTIC JUGS
after filtering the water through his old camping pump filter. The spring wasn’t so much a spring as a seep. Tepid water filled a foot-wide depression and swirled like coffee and cream in smaller holes. He couldn’t remember the last time he changed out the filter unit and he hoped it was still functioning, even though he’d decided to drink the water either way. There was no choice.

The water was murky and warm and it tasked like alkali, but they didn’t complain. Jan drank her fill, followed by Joe and Daisy. Then Joe sank to his muddy knees again to replenish the jug.

While he pumped, he surveyed the ground around the spring. It told a story.

When he stood and capped the second full jug, he said, “He’s here, all right.”

Jan looked at him, puzzled.

“My friend Nate. Plus another falconer and a third unknown guy.”

“You can see all this how?” she asked.

“Looking around.”

“Looking around where?” she asked, puzzled.

He gestured toward the ground itself, which had been churned up by visiting wild horses, desert elk, and other wildlife. He identified the tracks of bobcat, fox, and a variety of birds.

“And look here,” he said, pointing out the boot prints in and outside of the muddy area and the tire tracks beyond them.

“Three men,” he said. “Two came from the south on foot, one arrived in a vehicle.”

Then he pointed out a large splash of what looked like white paint on the side of a deep hoofprint.

“That’s falcon excrement,” he said.

He walked out of the bog and pointed to a smaller splash among the two sets of boot prints. “And here is another one. So we’ve got a large bird and a smaller bird.”

“Where did they go?” Jan asked.

“Probably the same place we’re going,” he said.

•   •   •

“S
O Y
OU
’
RE MARRIED
,” she said.

They were walking side by side to the south. He almost welcomed the question, because it distracted him from the opening bars of “A Horse with No Name,” which had again entered his head.

“Yup. A lot of years.”

“But is it a happy marriage?”

“Yes, it is.”

“I’m often attracted to happily married men,” she said. “There aren’t many of them. Maybe it’s the fact that they’re so rare. Maybe it’s the challenge . . .”

She was baiting him and he refused to acknowledge it. Finally, she chuckled.

“You don’t like this topic?”

“No.”

“Then let’s change the subject. You’ve got three daughters, Sheridan being the oldest.”

He nodded.

“Really,” she said, “you probably don’t even realize it, but I can count on one hand the number of people I know who were raised in a family where the mom and dad liked each other, stayed married, and raised semi-normal kids. It’s a rarity.

“You’re like a prehistoric throwback,” Jan said. “You should be on display in the Museum of Natural History.”

“Thank you.”

“I hardly saw my dad,” she said. “Of course, he was nice enough to me, considering he was right of Attila the Hun. He bought me nice things, but he was a lot more devoted to his new wife and his second family in Orange County than he ever was to ours. In fact, his wife was only five years older than I was when I met her. She insisted that I call her Athena, like we were sisters. She was nice enough, I guess.”

Joe had no response.

“I get my commitment to activism from my mother,” Jan said. “I grew up going to rallies with her. There was even a front-page photo in the
Los Angeles Times
of us being dragged out of an antiwar hearing by the cops. I was seven at the time and I had a pink ribbon in my hair. I was crying, but I looked
really cute
!”

The way she said it made Joe smile.

“The only thing my dad ever did for me, really, was establish a trust fund,” Jan said. “He wanted me to use it for college, which I did. He wanted me to use the rest for seed money to start a business like he did. Instead, I used it to help fund people like Ibby who could really use the money. If my dad knew what I did with his money, he’d have a heart attack. Which is sort of the point, you know.”

“I figured,” Joe said.

“I’m glad to know Sheridan was raised with a social conscience.”

Joe eyed her.

“You don’t approve of what she’s doing,” Jan said.

“She’s twenty-one. She was raised right, thanks to her mother. She’s old enough to make her own decisions.”

“That’s a surprisingly enlightened view,” Jan said with a hint of sarcasm.

“Even if they’re stupid decisions,” Joe finished. “Because look where she is now.”

“We can agree to disagree,” Jan said. “I admire her. I admire all of our volunteers. Most of them just want freedom and social justice. They want to take our country back.”

Joe shrugged. He said, “Right now, I just want to take my daughter back.”

“And I want to warn Ibby.”

They each settled into their own thoughts for a quarter of a mile before Joe asked, “How many men were in those pickups this morning?”

Her face darkened. “I think I counted eleven. They just kept coming into the café. I couldn’t believe it.”

“Where were they from?”

“Didn’t say, but not this country originally. That I would swear to. They were all of Middle Eastern origin.”

“Were you scared?”

She hesitated. “I hate to say that I was scared by their ethnicity—and certainly not by their religious beliefs,” she said. “It goes against everything I am. I hate it when people judge others by what they look like, or what color they are, or what god they believe in. I just hate that kind of intolerance.”

After a long pause, she said, “But all that aside, they looked menacing and they had guns. So yes, damn you, I was scared.”

“How did they get here?”

“They came in four pickup trucks.”

“I mean, where did they come from?”

“I think Mexico,” she said. “They looked like they’d been driving all night. From what I could understand, they had no problem crossing the border at all, and they drove straight here. I know this only because Cooter speaks—I mean, spoke—a little Arabic. Ibby taught him some words. Cooter was asking them questions while he made them all orders of
al kabsa.
”

“Were they in communication with anyone?” Joe asked.

“They all had cell phones,” she said. “A couple had the latest iPhone. But no, they were pretty pissed off when they realized there was no signal. It really put them in a bad mood.”

“Did any of them talk to you?”

“They just
glared
at me. It was disgusting.”

“What did Cooter do to get himself killed?” Joe asked.

“Nothing. Cooter was just being Cooter.” She shivered, then continued. “I can still see it like it’s happening right in front of my eyes. A couple of them who acted like the leaders were in the kitchen watching him cook. He was still trying to talk to them in Arabic, you know, just typical Cooter small talk. He wasn’t interrogating them or anything. But they kept getting closer and closer to him like they were really interested in his technique.

“Then, when he ladled the last order into a bowl and it was served, one of them in the kitchen just casually stepped behind him. I saw that he had a big knife. He grabbed Cooter’s head with one arm and cut his throat with the other hand. It was really quick, I
mean
really
quick. There wasn’t a moment of hesitation, either. Blood shot out everywhere, like a hose. Then the killer started sawing at Cooter’s neck, back and forth. The sound was horrible. I’ll never forget it.”

She said, “The others were so mesmerized they weren’t paying attention to me. They were just eating their food and watching like it was something on television. One of them stood up and filmed it on his cell phone. A couple of them said something in Arabic, like a chant or something.”

Joe stopped. He looked Jan over closely.

“How did you get away?”

“I walked toward the back of the place like I was going to get sick in the bathroom. I heard one of them laugh at me. Then I busted out through the back door and took Cooter’s van. I knew he always left his keys in the ashtray. I was out of there before they could catch me.”

“Why do you suppose they killed him?” Joe asked.

“I think they wanted to eliminate any witnesses,” she said. “They didn’t want Cooter telling anyone they’d shown up, is my guess. And they were going to do the same thing to me.”

“They didn’t chase you?” Joe asked.

“They did, but it took a while for them to get organized. I drove east on I-80, and I’m sure they saw me get on the highway. What they didn’t know at the time was that, as soon as I was out of sight from them over a hill, I drove across the median and the other lane into the desert. I’m guessing they drove down the interstate for a long time looking for me before they realized that.”

“I’m glad you made it,” Joe said.

“I am, too,” she said.

“What makes you think they’re going after this Ibby guy?”

Jan paused and shook her head in disbelief. “Why
else
would they be here?”

•   •   •

A
N HOUR LATER
, they arrived at Joe’s green Ford Game and Fish pickup. It looked exactly like how he’d left it, he thought, and why shouldn’t it? Although it seemed like he’d been hiking for days, it had only been hours.

Daisy was ecstatic, and she hopped up and down by the passenger door, waiting to be let in.

Joe dropped his pack and climbed in the driver’s side, Daisy beside him.

Before he turned the key, he said to Jan through the open window, “I know this is stupid, but . . .”

Nothing.

“I had to try,” he said, climbing out. Daisy remained inside, her head cocked expectantly.

“How much do you know about these EMP pulses you told me about?” Joe asked. “Do the effects wear off? Will this truck ever run again?”

She shook her head. “From what Ibby told me, they pretty much make electronics dead forever. But I’m no expert on this stuff. Remember, I’m just the facilitator and a fund-raiser for the cause.”

Joe grunted. He removed the battery from the grizzly bear collar and used it to replace the old battery in the satellite phone. Although the collar batteries no longer had enough juice left to power the transmitter, he hoped the phone required less voltage. His shoulders slumped when it didn’t work.

“Maybe you should just give up,” Jan said, sitting down in the shade of the pickup.

“Maybe I should,” Joe conceded, pulling the batteries from the phone and putting them back into the collar.

When he did, he saw the light on the collar’s GPS unit flicker and he heard two dull clicks. He realized he had put the batteries back into the unit in a different configuration than when he’d pulled them out. Somehow, the new setup had pulled some power. His heart swelled.

“Hear that?” he whispered to Jan. The collar clicked again. “It’s sending a signal.”

“How long will it last?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Who will see it?”

“I’m not sure anyone will.”

After a few beats, she said, “If someone notices the signal, won’t it just mean they’ll think they found the bear? Not us?”

Joe sighed. “Yup.”

He thought that the possibility of Jessica White, Marcia Mead, or Tyler Frink seeing the pings was remote at best. Why would they be sitting at their console days after they’d lost contact? Even if they were seeing it, he thought, they’d probably chalk it up to a technical anomaly.

Especially when the clicks stopped, which they just had.

“That’s all she wrote,” he said. “I got my hopes up there for a second.”

“Oh well,” she said, standing and forcing a smile meant to be encouraging. “We’re just in the same boat as we were before.”

He conceded that.

•   •   •

J
OE ROOTED THROUGH HIS CAB
, behind his seat, and through his gearbox for additional gear or food that might help them further. He valued a second chance at adding to their equipment, but he was hampered by the fact that whatever he gathered they had to carry on their backs. He slid a .22 revolver loaded with cracker shells into his pack, as well as a flare gun and two extra shells. He couldn’t conceive of their future usefulness, but he wanted to be well prepared, and now that they were back at his truck he got a second bite at the apple.

The cracker loads were used to fire small explosives over the backs of game animals—elk, usually—who were eating a rancher’s hay. The flare pistol was supposed to be used to signal search-and-rescue aircraft or to mark his location.

He gave Jan an old military daypack he’d found in the bottom of his gearbox that smelled of gasoline and elk blood. He’d discovered it in the woods a long time ago and had forgotten about it. Before he handed it down, he filled it with a coil of parachute cord, a firestarter, a box of 12-gauge shells, and a thick roll of duct tape.

“You always need duct tape,” he said.

“If you say so,” she grumped as she reached up and took the pack. “This thing stinks.”

He located a faded King Ropes ball cap and a pair of old polarized fishing sunglasses and handed them to her as well. She reluctantly put them on.