Shaman Winter (12 page)

Raven was part of it. He was funded and protected by the Avengers. What they didn't know is that he didn't give a damn about creating a new government; he was using them to accomplish his own goals.

“It doesn't look good,” Paiz said. “They have a worldwide network. It's not just us targeted.”

“But you start at the center,” Sonny whispered.

This was one of the remaining spiritual centers in the country. The Pueblo Indians knew that. Here where the covenant with the ancestral kachinas had been made lay a great power for the good of mankind.

“Raven also wants you. You know that.”

Sonny nodded. Paiz had been putting it all together since his agents started chasing Raven. In La Nueva México, Raven had found the spiritual center he needed to destroy. They didn't need New York, Chicago, or San Francisco. They wanted to destroy the spiritual heart. They wanted to blast the dream apart. Go right to the heart of thousands of years of ceremonies that sustained life.

“You feel okay?” Paiz asked, reaching out to touch Sonny. He had seen the sheen of sweat on Sonny's forehead.

“Yeah,” Sonny replied. “Just a little tired.”

“We could turn back,” Lorenza said.

“No. I'm all right.”

Don Eliseo had told him this era of time was coming to an end, and a struggle would take place between Sonny and Raven. Between those who dreamed the dream of peace and those who put their trust in the violence of chaos.

He looked out the van's front window. They were nearing the building.

“Does TA-Two have an alarm system?” he asked, looking up at the cliffs that rose on either side of the tech laboratory. Someone with training could rappel down the side of the cliff and land practically on the lab's roof.

“They have sensors at the LAMPF gate.”

“LAMPF?”

“Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility.”

“But none here?”

“No,” Paiz answered, suddenly tuning in to Sonny's uneasiness.

Lorenza pulled the van next to Doyle and Eric's Jeep. Sonny let himself out with the lift. Overhead, threatening clouds hung above the Jemez peaks. The wind moaning through the pine trees on the cliffsides blew harsh and cold. High on the cliff Sonny heard the cry of a raven. Then all was quiet.

He's here, Sonny thought, the sonofabitch is here. But where? There were only two other cars in the lot, both marked “Security.”

“It's quiet,” he said.

“Too quiet,” Paiz replied. He had picked up Sonny's anxiety. Automatically his hand went for his pistol.

“What's the matter?” Doyle asked.

Paiz shrugged. “Just go slow.”

“This way,” Eric called, and they followed him and Doyle to the front door. When Eric pushed the door open, Sonny heard him gasp. Paiz whispered a curse. On the floor, in a pool of blood, lay the lifeless body of a lab security guard.

Paiz went in, felt for the man's pulse, drawing his revolver at the same time.

“He's just been killed.”

Eric had instantly reached for his cellular phone. He pushed a code number and spoke. “Eric here! Red alert!” he shouted. “We have a security man down at TA-Two! Repeat, we have a guard down. We need backup!”

Almost at the same instant a siren went off. The labs would instantly be shut down, and somewhere in the security station, Sonny knew the lab rapid-response team was scrambling. They'd be at TA-Two in three minutes. At Kirtland Air Force Base in Alburquerque, a SWAT team would be scurrying toward waiting helicopters to fly to Los Alamos.

“He never had a chance,” Paiz said, motioning them back, pressing himself against the wall. Whoever had killed the guard could still be in the building.

“How many guards covering this place?” he asked.

“Three,” Eric replied.

“Stay put, I'll check it out,” Paiz said, and entered the dark hallway. Sonny followed. They were both thinking the same thing: all the guards were dead. Else they would have sounded the alarm.

The next man lay dead where the hallway made a turn toward the old reactor room. Faceup, his eyes staring blankly at the ceiling, he lay in a pool of blood. The wound was a slash across his chest, a machete blow so vicious and deep it opened the sternum, cut through the heart and into the guts. Someone with incredible strength had caught the guard unaware and killed him with one blow.

Sonny looked at Paiz. Sweat beaded on the agent's forehead.

“What the hell?” he gasped, meaning, What kind of an animal kills like this?

“Holy Mother of God,” Sonny whispered. Whoever had killed the guard was only minutes ahead of them.

Sonny shivered. The spirits of the dead men raced around him, crying in silent agony, shocked souls suddenly separated from their bodies. Instinctively he made the sign of the cross, an old habit from childhood days, so that the souls would not possess him.

The guard's blood had spurted on the floor from the initial blow, so the footprints of the assassin were red insignias leading down the hallway. Footsteps of the devil.

A cautious, slow-moving Paiz followed the bloody prints, holding his revolver at ready. Sonny followed in his chair, one wheel creaking in the otherwise silent hall.

What was it Oppenheimer had said that fateful day when the first atomic bomb was detonated at Trinity Site? On the northern end of la Jornada del Muerto desert, which Oñate had traveled through centuries before.

The quotation crossed Sonny's mind: “I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.” From the
Bhagavad-Gita
, a Sanskrit text Oppenheimer knew well.

July 16, 1945. Five twenty-nine
AM
and the desert had blossomed with a man-made sun. The first atomic bomb, called the Gadget by those who worked on it, had changed the course of history. Man had tampered with the elements, created new elements, completed the secrets of the atomic table while pursuing the nuclear structure of new elements, processed them, finally laid them at the core of a metallic container, then imploded them with detonators. The rest was history.

Then the Destroyer of Worlds was dropped on Hiroshima and thousands of people died, miles and miles of flattened rubble lay where life had once teemed. Children with burned flesh dropping from their bodies roamed the streets, crying a lament new to the world. It was the cry of those who saw their world ending in intense heat. Overhead, the mushroom cloud, the new archetype of the age of technology.

Nagasaki followed, where the horror beyond horrors was repeated. Man using the fire inherent in the elements had turned it against man, woman, and child.

Now Raven wanted to take the energy of the sun, the fire that was once a gift from the gods, and turn it against mankind. Raven, the demented Sun King, knew that to control nuclear power was to control the earth.

Paiz held up his arm and Sonny paused. Paiz entered the reactor room. There was no sound, so Sonny followed him. In the room sat the eight-megawatt reactor that had been used to make small amounts of PU-239 for research. In the room also lay the body of the third guard, slashed as the other two. All three had never had time to draw their revolvers or sound an alarm. After all, they were at ease, they had been told they were guarding a bowl. Whoever came upon them had struck quickly and with precision. They never knew what hit them.

Paiz moved around the large room, checking the shadows, but both he and Sonny knew they had arrived too late. The small table in one corner appeared unceremoniously empty. Moments ago the bowl containing the stolen plutonium sat there. Now it was gone.

“Oh, my God,” Sonny heard someone groan, and turned. Eric entered the room, followed by Doyle.

“He's gone,” Paiz said, holstering his revolver.

“How in the hell could this have happened?”

“Lorenza?” Sonny asked.

“I instructed her to wait outside—”

Sonny turned and guided his chair back down the long hallway. He pushed past the dead guard, through the door, into the blinding sunlight. No Lorenza. He called her name. The cold wind buffeted his words, but there was no answer.

The first security Jeep came racing down the road toward TA-Two, its siren blasting. The entire canyon seemed consumed with the wailing of sirens. Behind it other cars and Jeeps followed.

“Lorenza!” Sonny called again. Damn! He should have known better. He shouldn't have left her alone, not for an instant.

“Lo-reeeen-za!”

“Here,” she replied, coming around the side of the building as SWAT members surrounded them.

“He came down the cliffside,” she said, “dropped right into the building. The rope is still there.”

Eric came running out, waving the security guards into the building, shouting commands to the captain in charge.

“Do we have shutdown?”

“Yes, sir! All roads are blocked! No one goes in or out without my permission. Checkpoints are in place on all roads coming in. The state police have been alerted, the SWAT team from Kirtland is flying in. What happened here, sir?”

“Three men—” He stopped, drew close to the captain. “Three guards are dead—”

“Dead?”

“I want this building sealed, do you understand?”

“Yes, sir!”

“No state cops allowed in. No Kirtland boys. Seal the building. Anyone asks questions, and we say that we have the robbery of an ancient artifact we were guarding. A bowl. We believe the perpetrator is still on the grounds!” Eric exclaimed. “Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir!” The captain saluted and turned to give orders to his men. They spread out around the building while he barked orders into his mobile phone.

Eric turned to Sonny and Lorenza. “We have to keep it out of the press. For the meantime.”

“Raven's got the plutonium,” Sonny said.

Eric nodded. “God almighty, how could this happen? We've been on alert since we brought in the core, and he gets through our security. Shit!”

Sonny looked at Doyle, who together with Paiz was coming out of the building. Did he bring Raven in? Or did Raven the sorcerer fly in? Yes, the brujo could fly, he could turn himself into a raven, like the mountain ravens that flew among the tall ponderosa pines of the forest.

He shaded his eyes and looked at the sun. In a couple of hours the sun would set over the Jemez Mountains, and the threatening snowstorm would push in.

Eric looked at Doyle and Paiz in exasperation. “The sonofabitch came into the most secure area in the U.S., killed three of my guards, and—How in the hell do I explain this?”

“Dammit, man! How do I explain it?” Doyle cursed.

It didn't look good for anyone. The director of the FBI and the regional director were at the labs when a terrorist came in, killed three guards, and stole a plutonium pit. Doyle would have to explain it to the president.

“Whoever attacked them, this Raven character, must be invisible. The guards just didn't even push alarms. Each man was carrying a phone.”

“I don't give a holy banana what each man was carrying,” Doyle sputtered. “Your security was breached. I'm called in from Washington to view a plutonium pit that's come across our border, and I'm sitting in your office when this happens. I don't like it one bit!”

“I don't like it, either!” Eric shot back, defensively.

Does Doyle think he was set up? Sonny wondered as he watched the two, like hooked fish trying to break free of what was sure to cost one or both their jobs and reputations.

“We have to keep it under wraps!” Doyle said, turning to Sonny and Lorenza.

“Yes.” Eric nodded.

“You never saw this happen,” Doyle said to Sonny.

Sonny shrugged. Three men were dead, they had families, and he had given his word to keep mum. But that was before Raven had butchered the three guards.

“Draw some plans up, call it a security drill!” Doyle snapped at Eric. “Just don't let the fucking press in!”

“You have three dead men,” Sonny reminded him.

“Yeah, you let us deal with that,” he grumbled. “We've had other situations before—Look, I have a plane to catch,” he reminded Eric. He paused to look at Sonny, the shade of a smile playing in his lips. “I guess you don't get your grandmother's bowl after all. Tough.” He walked to the Jeep.

“Hey, before you go,” Sonny said to Eric, “we need to get outta here.”

“Sure, sure. No need keeping you here. Captain, escort Mr. Baca and his assistant to the gate.”

“Yes, sir,” the captain replied.

Eric was visibly shaken. He looked after Doyle, then turned to Sonny. “What do you think?”

“He's alone, and he's nearby,” Sonny replied. “He knows the mountains, so he'll head into the forest.” He looked up at the blue ridge of the Jemez. “You don't have much daylight left.”

Eric and Paiz followed Lorenza and Sonny to the van.

“You can't discuss this with anyone,” Eric reminded Sonny.

“We know,” Sonny said.

“We have a few days before this leaks out, then my hide will be pinned to a Department of Defense wall,” Eric said. He turned and walked to the Jeep where Doyle waited.

“Follow me,” the captain said to Sonny. He pointed to the Jeep they were to follow. “Don't make any false turns or you will be here for the duration. Understand?”

“Ten-four,” Sonny replied. The man was stern, nervous. Something had gone very wrong inside TA-Two, and the security team was ready to shoot on sight.

“Look, you've got my number,” Paiz said. “Anything comes up, call me. This guy is really crazy.”

“You're telling me,” Sonny replied, and guided his chair onto the lift and inside the van.

“You okay?” he asked Lorenza when she climbed on board.

“I'm okay. You?”

“Tired.”

He wanted to tell her he had felt the souls of the dead guards in the building, but he guessed she knew. She had known it was Raven all along; that's why she went around the building, sniffing around and finding the rope he had used to rappel down the side of the cliff. Even now they could sense his evil presence.