River Runs Red (The Border Trilogy) (36 page)

But Molly McCall was beyond thoughts of rehab. Substance abuse had nothing to do with her behavior.

It was all about power now. Power and destruction and violence, the holy trinity of her new, improved world view.

Kethili-cha.

THIRTY-NINE

“I’ve done some digging, like you asked,” Robb Ivey said. Truly had taken the call in his Las Cruces hotel room, sitting on the bed with his feet up. “I’m still not sure why, after what happened to Millicent.”

“Maybe because you understand that wasn’t my fault, and you know I’m trying to make it right, and you’d be helping me,” Truly said. He’d already had a version of this conversation with Robb, as well as with everyone else in his group.

“I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. The other, of course, is to wonder if I’m putting my head on the chopping block just by talking to you.”

“Nobody’s been hurt for talking to me, Robb. I hadn’t talked to Ingersoll in months. Something’s happening, and it’s bigger than who talks or doesn’t talk to me.”

A heavy sigh. “I know. It’s just all got me nervous.”

“You’re not the only one.” Truly wanted him to get to the point—handholding was the part of the job he enjoyed the least, and he wasn’t even on the job anymore, officially speaking. He had asked Robb to research Victorio Peak, because with his large collection of occult literature he might be able to find out things that wouldn’t turn up in a Google search. “Were you able to learn anything?”

“That’s a strange part of the world,” Robb said. “I haven’t come up with a lot, but I found enough to suggest that there’s more going on there than meets the eye. More than the government probably wants to admit.”

“We do keep a lot of secrets.”

“I keep forgetting you’re part of the government.”

“Maybe not for much longer. What’d you learn?”

“For starters, there are a bunch of caves out there. Early races in the area, the ancestral Puebloans and Apache among them, used them long before the Europeans came along. The peak is named for an Apache war chief. They considered the mountain a special place of power, not one of their holiest sites, but an important one. After the Spaniards came, they used the caves as well. Eventually, long after the United States took the land from Mexico, it was explored again, in the 1930s and ’40s. This time, explorers found a room containing twenty-seven skeletons, lined up in a row, like dancers or warriors. Exploring further—I’m not sure I’d have been willing to, after that—they found old Spanish silver and gold coins, weapons, armor, and so on. And beyond that, they found a huge room full of crudely formed gold bars. Left over from the Spanish occupation, they believed, and some of them may have dated back earlier than that.”

“What, they think the Apache shaped gold into bars?”

“Who knows? There might have been trade between Apaches and Mayans, or Puebloans and Mayans. Or maybe Apaches just stole it from Spaniards. Either way, gold could have wound up in the hands of Apaches who hid it there. The claim was that there was a
lot
of it. I’m talking tons and tons, not just a few bars here and there.”

“What happened to it?”

“That’s the curious thing. The discoverers kept it in the family, for the most part. They used it like a bank, drawing enough out to live comfortably, knowing that there was plenty more. But in the late thirties, trying to open up a passageway with dynamite, they accidentally brought a chunk of mountain down on top of the main entrance to the treasure room. Now the interior was full of gold and they couldn’t get to it. They kept pulling out little bits and pieces that had been stashed in other rooms, but that big haul was out of reach, no matter what they tried.

“Then the army moved in. During the Second World War, they took over the whole area as a bombing range, and the original family was denied access. Some military people exploring the mountain found treasure in another, previously unexplored room, guarded by a Spanish cross on the wall. One of them took a bar to military authorities in nearby Fort Bliss, figuring that since the mountain was on army-controlled land it would require an official government expedition to bring out any substantial amounts.”

“What happened to him?” Truly asked.

“Within a few days, he was transferred to the Pentagon. Or at least that’s the story his friends were told, although they never heard from him again. There are rumors that other bars surfaced now and then, but anyone who asked too many questions—or worse, tried to get in and see for themselves—developed sudden health issues.”

“Health issues?”

“Like, murder threats. Maybe actual murders.”

“You’re kidding.”

“One man, an airline pilot, claimed that CIA agents threatened him and his family.”

“Well,” Truly said, “that part I can believe.”

“Here’s the kicker. According to various reports, in the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson and former Texas governor John Connally spent ten days at the peak, after which modern excavation equipment was brought in. Theoretically, many tons of gold bars were removed from the mountain and shipped aboard military aircraft to Johnson’s ranch in Texas, then to Zurich, where it was sold to a Middle Eastern buyer.”

“That’s pretty far-fetched, Robb.” He had seen some of the same information online, but only at sites of questionable authenticity.

“I’m not saying I vouch for it, only that it’s out there. There’s a lot of detail in some of the more esoteric journals—the kind that lean toward huge conspiracy theories, especially. For your purposes, I think the important thing to know is that the Native Americans considered the mountain a place of immense spiritual power, and that even today, for whatever reason, it’s one of the most heavily guarded spots on the White Sands Missile Range. The public can visit a missile museum on the post, and certain people, like members of the press, can get tours of some of the other areas. Nobody gets to go to Victorio Peak, though, without high-level clearance.”

Which presumably Captain Vance Brewer had, since Owen LaTour said he spent a lot of his time at the peak. “Is that it?”

“So far,” Robb said. “If I turn up anything else, I’ll let you know.”

“Thanks, Robb. I appreciate the insight.”

“Just take care of our people, Truly.”

“I’m trying, man. Honestly.”

“I know. Incidentally, I’ve been in touch with Simon Winslade and Johnny Crow. Simon tried a ritual summoning, to see if he could shed any light on what’s going on, but he said it turned into a disaster that nearly killed him. And Johnny’s in Las Vegas—not all that far from you, right? He says things are well and truly—no pun intended—fucked up there, occult-wise. Do me a favor, Truly. If it looks like things are going haywire, give me a head’s-up, okay? Let me get out of Dodge.”

“I’ll do that, Robb. Thanks again.”

He hung up the phone and sat there on the bed. Clearly, the army was hiding something at Victorio Peak. Was it gold? Or was it something more rare and precious, something to do with the power the region’s indigenous population had sensed there?

Given Brewer’s involvement in the Ingersoll matter—
presumed
involvement, Truly amended, based on the fact that he had probably murdered Millicent Wong when she came to look into it—he suspected it was more about the power than the gold. Either way, he wanted to find out.

* * *

Specialist Owen LaTour was scared, which was just the reaction Vance Brewer had been hoping for. The young soldier had spotted him at the gym on Picatinny Avenue, where he’d been sweating through a basketball game with a handful of soldiers younger and taller than himself. To his credit, Owen had waited around until the game was finished, with Brewer’s team victorious, and then had approached the captain privately, drawing him toward empty bleachers. In hushed tones and tremulous voice, he had described his meeting with the CIA agent.

“He knew your name, sir,” Owen said. “And he had your picture. I thought he knew you. Besides, he was with the CIA, and they’re on our side.”

“There are a lot of sides,” Brewer said. “And a lot of players on each one, or crossing over between them. You know the DoD has its own intelligence service, right?”

“Yes, sir,” Owen said. He swallowed anxiously, and wouldn’t meet Brewer’s gaze anymore.

“Do you know why? Because the others are run by civilians. That means we can’t trust them. They have their own agenda, and it isn’t necessarily ours.”

“But they’re not the enemy,” Owen protested.

“They’re not always our friends,” Brewer said. “They don’t always see things the way we do. They may not be the enemy, but that doesn’t make them our pals.”

“I didn’t mean to do anything to compromise you, Captain.”

He wasn’t sure he had been compromised at all, since Owen LaTour couldn’t have known much about him. “Precisely what did you tell him?”

“I was pretty buzzed, sir,” Owen said. “I think all I said was that I’d seen you in the area of Victorio Peak. That’s really all I can remember.”

“When did you see me there?”

“I don’t know. I drive people over there once in a while. I just saw you sometime, and remembered you because…I don’t know. You’re just a memorable guy.”

Brewer couldn’t argue. He had tried to blend into the crowd, but in the end he couldn’t do much about it. He was who he was, and if people noticed his broad shoulders and wide nose and jutting jaw, he couldn’t control that.

Just now he chose to emphasize his gray-blue eyes. He grabbed the younger soldier’s chin and turned his head up. Owen met his gaze fearfully, which was exactly the response Brewer intended. “Listen to me,” he said, lowering his voice to a menacing whisper. “If you see that bastard again, you keep your mouth shut, and let me know immediately. And you never, ever, talk about me or anything else you see here on the base to anyone from the outside. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s all, then. Dismissed.”

Owen snapped to attention, saluted, and hurried away. Brewer gave serious thought to trailing the soldier and killing him. He decided not to, because he doubted the man had given away any genuinely useful information, or had it to give if he had wanted to. Killing him would make Brewer feel better temporarily, but in the long run it might create more problems than it solved.

He rushed to the locker room, showered quickly, then dressed and hurried to a Jeep. Driving through the populated sections of the base, he controlled the impulse to floor the accelerator. As soon as he had left the collection of dun-colored buildings behind, out in the back country, he pushed the Jeep for every ounce of speed it had to give.

He parked in the small lot outside Victorio Peak’s operations center, in the shade of a tall mesquite. A handful of other vehicles had parked nearby. Most people on the base never knew there was anything here at all, and those assigned to staff the center were closemouthed about it. Brewer went inside, nodded brusquely to the M.P. on door duty, and strode down the long hallway that led deep into the mountain’s interior. Here he found more doors, including one that required a retinal scan to pass through.

This door gave him access to a tunnel carved thousands of years ago from the rock of the mountain itself, and improved upon by the U.S. Army over the past several decades. Brewer took the tunnel to another, smaller tunnel, one that—except for the electrical conduits tacked to the walls—felt hardly different, he imagined, from those the Indians must have used before Columbus brought disease and promise and civilization to the savages. His footsteps sounded dully on the rock floor, as if they were swallowed up by the walls instead of echoing. Halfway down this tunnel was a steel door.

He inserted his key into the lock and gave a twist. The lock released, and he tugged on the handle. Inside the little room, the old man sat at his table, drawing pictures. The floor around him was littered with ones he had finished and shoved out of his way. His pencil was a gnarled stump. The stench of him—well, Brewer was used to that. It would have made young Mr. LaTour run puking into the hall, he was sure.

Brewer picked up a couple of the latest pictures.
Still drawing masks?
he wondered. But when he looked at them, a chill raced through his body. He had seen the old guy draw a lot of things, some of them more than passingly strange. But they had always made some sort of sense, always reflected something that existed in the world, whether it was masks or locations, people or animals or objects.

These did not fall into that category at all. These were beings, creatures, but not human ones—or worse, partially human, but not entirely so. They weren’t any animals that he could recognize. Their facial features were humanlike, but not
right
—the proportions were out of whack, mouths and eyes far too large, ears and noses minimized almost out of existence, and in the mouths, so many teeth…

The bodies were even worse. They changed from picture to picture, but they were all monstrous, freakish. One had a bare belly with an extra face showing, as if pressed up against its skin from the inside. One had at least a dozen arms, all ending in thin fingers as long as the arms themselves, so that the character almost looked like she was wearing fringe. Another sat spread-eagled, clearly naked, but where its genitalia should have been there was a fly’s head, its many-faceted eyes rendered in incredible detail for a blind artist. Yet another was only a head, the shading of its neck turning it into liquid that flowed away from it, forming a river.