Submerged (11 page)

Carl locked the door and jiggled the handle
just to be sure. He was going to be gone the rest of the night and
most of the next. Maybe longer, for all he knew. On the driveway of
his small stucco home waited his black Toyota pickup. It rode
higher than factory issue and sported wide off-road tires. More
than once he had to remind himself that he wasn’t compensating for
his short stature. If he were, he would have bought and jacked up a
much bigger truck. The alterations he made to this vehicle, he told
himself and anyone else who showed an interest, were made for
practical reasons. An avid hiker, he needed a vehicle that could
take him over some of the rougher territory and deeper into the
nearby mountains.

He checked the bed of the truck. It carried
just his well-worn hiker’s backpack. He had stuffed it more than
normal, but he was carrying a full load of gear. Since he didn’t
know how long he might be gone, he wanted to be prepared. He
slipped into the cab and settled into the seat. He pulled the seat
belt across his chest and buckled it, repositioning his off-duty
holster and 9 mm pistol to make room for the buckle. He started the
truck and pulled from the driveway. He gave one more thought to the
lie he had told several minutes earlier when he called the watch
commander for the graveyard shift and told him he was too sick to
come in for duty. The watch commander promised to pass the word
on.

With only the moon to see his actions, Carl
drove into the predawn darkness, his mind now on the road that
would take him to the lake.

Chapter10

1974

The Suburban bounced
down
a rough path. Henry Sachs sat in the front passenger
seat. Monte Grant and Victor Zeisler sat in the far backseat, and
Cynthia Wagner sat in the middle row of the three rows of bench
seats.

“Hey, I think you missed a hole,” Zeisler
called from the back. “You might want to go back and try
again.”

Henry tried to hide his smile. He was
starting to like Zeisler. Henry glanced at Bill Nash to see his
response. They had been in the large vehicle for over an hour, and
nerves were beginning to fray.

Nash’s expression hadn’t changed since Henry
first met him at the tiny airport. The constipated look lingered.
“I can promise you more bumps ahead, Mr. Zeisler. We’re still on
the road. That will end soon.”

“Swell,” Zeisler said.

“You call this a road?” Grant asked. “I’m a
civil engineer, and I know roads. Whatever we’re on doesn’t
qualify.”

“It could be worse,” Henry said. “At least
we’re in a civilian vehicle designed for comfort. I imagine the
military version would jar a kidney loose.”

“Knowing that things could be worse doesn’t
make the present any better,” Grant complained. “A man who’s just
lost a leg in an accident doesn’t need to hear, ‘Hey, it could be
worse. You could have lost both legs.’ ”

“Touché.” Henry turned his attention forward.
They were not the sole Suburban on the road. Ed Sanders was in the
same style vehicle. The only difference Henry could determine was
the color. Their vehicle was white; Sanders’s brown.

“Who is with Sanders?” Henry asked Nash. The
other car had met them just outside of town and taken the lead.
Henry could see Sanders and three others in the car. Like Nash,
their hair was shorter than what most men wore. Again he had to
assume a military connection, although none wore uniforms.

“They’re part of the team,” Nash said.
“You’ll be introduced at the site.”

“Guards,” Zeisler said. “The question is: Are
they guarding us or something else?”

“Or both?” Cynthia added.

Henry nodded. He had expected this. He had
done enough consulting on secret military projects to know that the
military could reach new levels of paranoia. He also knew enough
that he couldn’t blame them for their caution.

“Are others waiting for us at the site?”
Henry asked.

“There are others,” Nash admitted. “I doubt
you’ll see them.”

“What’s that mean?” Grant asked.

Nash didn’t reply.

“It means that there will be eyes watching us
from the shadows,” Henry said.

Nash’s response was simple. “They’re there to
keep out trespassers.”

“Trespassers?” Cynthia asked. “We’re going to
military property?”

“It’s under government control.” Nash offered
nothing else.

An odd feeling ran through Henry. He couldn’t
decide if he was uneasy or elated to be part of the project. Not
that it mattered. He was too far in to walk away now.

Dawn was an hour away, and Carl knew he had
to move with care. He had driven down the same dirt road that he
and Janet had the day before but had pulled off a few miles before
the barricade. Instead of sticking to the road, he directed the
Toyota through the brush and as deep into the trees as possible.
Pine trees provided a canopy of branches. From here he would travel
on foot.

His boots crushed down on dried, fallen pine
needles, loose stones, and ground cover. The pack was seated on his
back. On his head he wore a pair of night-vision goggles. As a
deputy sheriff, he was called on to help find lost hikers—tourists
lost on the desert floor and in the sinuous valleys between the
mountains. The goggles had come in handy on several occasions. His
were an inexpensive pair, setting him back just three hundred
dollars. The high-end equipment ran ten times that. He was pretty
sure that the bozos who ran him and Janet off would not be using
the bargain-basement brands.

Moonlight trickled through the canopy. With
light from a quarter moon, the night-vision binocs gave him a
three-hundred-foot range. The three-quarter moon gave him even
greater distance. It also made it easier for others to see him. For
a moment, he questioned his sanity. The men he had encountered were
professionals and didn’t give a flip that he carried a badge. They
had made that clear. They had roughed him up and then embarrassed
him by restraining him with his own handcuffs. It was the last
thought that pushed him forward. No one embarrassed Carl
Subick.

No one.

Perry had tried to sleep, but his mind had
thoughts to churn, fears to address, anxieties to face, nightmarish
scenarios to create. It was an odd thing, Perry thought, for a man
to have to do battle with his own thoughts . . . as if another
entity were running his brain.

Sleep was too slippery for Perry, but not for
Jack and Gleason. Gleason was still in the backseat, his head
leaned against the side window. Jack was in the front passenger
seat, the back reclined. He was snoring.

They had made good time, and the dark freeway
ahead of them was almost free of traffic. The speedometer read 70.
Fifteen hours. That’s how long they had estimated it would take for
them to drive to Carson City. After talking to—or attempting to
talk to—Victor Zeisler, they would have another six-hour drive to
Tonopah. From there to Lake Lloyd was

a guess.

The storm that had ushered them out of
Seattle and followed them through much of Washington was gone.
Overhead, stars and the moon did what they did every night. Stars
could make a man feel a sense of awe. They could also make him feel
small and insignificant. Perry was swimming in the latter. Every
mile that ticked by on the odometer reminded him that he was moving
away
from his father. Jack and Gleason had
done their best to remind him that he wasn’t fleeing the painful
present but perusing a distant hope. Was it a fool’s errand? It was
a senseless question, a
lame
question,
Jack might say. Fool’s errand or not, he was on it.

To his left, a red line appeared on the
horizon, a slit of light that looked like an open wound. The sun
was rising. Soon dawn would come, and the sun would shine down on
three desperate men.

He had been sitting motionless and scanning
the terrain in front of him. An orange glow was growing in the
east. Soon the sun would be up, and the danger of discovery would
be heightened. Carl had chosen this spot with great care. After an
hour’s hike, he had settled next to a large pine. Other thick trees
were to his east. The sun would take longer to bathe this area in
its glow. Being in the valley that sheltered the lake, mountain
peaks surrounded him. The sun would have to climb above those, and
when it did, he would still be in the shadow of the trees.

He waited in silence, his ears straining to
pick up the sound of a vehicle or boots pounding the ground. He
heard birds and the breeze in the trees but nothing more.

Carl wondered how the men in black BDUs had
known he and Janet were there. They had made no secret of their
arrival. They were there in their official capacities as deputy
sheriffs, and they were looking for a lost man. If anything, they
wanted to be obvious. If Matthew Barrett was stranded and waiting
for someone to find him, then their obvious presence would save a
lot of time. This time, Carl was not being obvious.

Still, Carl worried about proximity
sensors—devices used to detect motion. Perhaps infrared or
microwave devices had been placed throughout the area. Maybe
something even more high tech. Who knew what the military used
these days?

If they had detected him, they were taking
their sweet time approaching. Maybe he had made it in clean after
all. Maybe.

Carl lowered the night-vision goggles again
and scanned the lake’s edge that licked the shore just thirty feet
away. He moved his head with directed purpose, first moving along
the shoreline as far as his position would allow. He was looking
for the body of Matthew Barrett. He had some reason to believe the
man had drowned. Especially since on the first visit, he and Janet
had found Barrett’s old truck and then the oars floating along the
waterline but no boat.

Carl was on the opposite side of the lake
now. He raised his hand and dialed the binoculars to a higher
magnification, then searched across the dark lake for the abandoned
truck. The electronic binoculars amplified the available light,
rendering the image a yellow green.

The truck was gone.

No body that he could see. No truck. Perhaps
Barrett was sitting in some military jail cell. The last thought
bothered him. The men he had confronted drove a military-style
Humvee, wore military-style BDUs, and carried weapons Carl knew the
military used. One had identified himself as “Colonel Lloyd,” but
Carl wasn’t buying that. He had lived in the area since he was a
child, and he knew longtime residents called this place Lake Lloyd.
The colonel was having a laugh at Carl’s expense, something else
that Carl couldn’t stomach.

He had doubts about Colonel Lloyd being a
colonel at all. He had a military bearing all right, and men under
his leadership, but he wore no insignias. Why would a military man
in the U.S. conceal his identity and that of his men?

There had to be a reason, and Carl was
determined to find out what it was. He wasn’t going to do that
hiding in the shadows.

Dr. Yuko Nishizaki sat in an uncomfortable
fiberglass chair and studied the notes on his desk. Before him were
charts and reports. Each one bore the name of Henry Sachs. Some of
the reports were duplicates. After receiving the results of the
blood work, he had sent them back with a note that included terms
not taught in medical school. The second report came back the same
and was followed up by a phone call from the chief of the lab who
had learned the same terms.

Also before him rested a fax from the coroner
who had rushed the autopsy of an elderly woman named Cynthia Wagner
and one from the medical examiner who examined Monte Grant. He read
them again and again, and they made no sense—none at all.

He rubbed his eyes and checked his watch. He
had been up all night, but sleep was impossible. He knew himself
well enough to know that going to bed was a useless gesture. He
would churn the facts over and over in his brain until he had
answers. Besides, he had called for a meeting of all the department
heads. He needed more wisdom and experience than one man could
possess. Every expert the hospital had would be there, and he had
to have facts for them to chew on. Of course, they wouldn’t believe
him, but he would present the facts and drag any doctor who doubted
him by the lapels into Henry Sachs’s room and challenge him to make
a better diagnosis.

His real concern wasn’t what to tell the
other doctors or the CDC. What he wanted to know was what he should
tell Mrs. Sachs. The truth was unbelievable to him; it would be
incomprehensible to her. Even now, he knew she was by his bed,
hoping and praying for a man who was already dead.

Chapter11

“Time to open the
peepers, pal.”

Perry blinked several times and tried to
focus his mind. There was a roaring and the sound of Jack’s voice.
He licked his lips and sat up. His back was tight and his side
hurt. The backseat of the Humvee had not been designed for
sleeping.

Gleason was behind the wheel; Jack was
studying a map. He spoke again. “We should be there any time,
assuming Gleason can find the gas pedal.”

“I’m doing the speed limit. You keep looking
at the map and leave the driving to me.”

“I’m growing old here,” Jack said. “By the
time you get us to Zeisler’s house, I’ll be retired.”

“That’s enough, kids,” Perry said. “If I hear
any more bickering, there will be no ice cream tonight.”

“Sounds like he’s awake,” Jack answered. “By
the way, you snore.”

“How long have I been out?”

“About four hours,” Jack replied. “That’s
when Gleason took over at the helm. Good news is, we’ve covered
three hours of distance in the time my grandmother could have done
five.”