All traces of the dogs’ battle had vanished beneath fresh powder, but she could still make out the depression in the snow where she had fallen, could see the hilly contours of construction rubbish cloaked beneath white.
She sank her shovel into one of the mounds and flung aside a scoop of snow.
Jane finally caught up and trudged, panting, into the clearing. “Why are you digging in this spot?”
“I saw something here before. It might be nothing. It might be everything.”
“Well, that sure answers my question.”
Maura flung aside another scoop of snow. “I got only a glimpse of it. But if it’s what I think it is…” Maura’s shovel suddenly hit something solid. Something that gave off a muffled clang. “This could be it.” She dropped to her knees and began scooping away the snow with her gloved hands.
Little by little the object emerged, smooth and curved. She could not pry it loose because it was solidly frozen to the mound of debris beneath it. She kept scooping away snow, but half of the object remained buried out of sight and encased in ice. What she’d exposed was one end of a gray metal cylinder. It was encircled by two painted stripes, one green and one yellow. Stamped on that cylinder was the code D568.
“What is that thing?” asked Jane.
Maura didn’t answer. She just continued to scrape away snow and ice, exposing more and more of the cylinder. Jane knelt down to help her. New numbers appeared, stamped in green.
2011-42-114
155H
M12TAT
“You have any idea what these numbers mean?” Jane asked.
“I assume they’re serial numbers of some kind.”
“For what?”
A scrim of ice suddenly broke away, and Maura stared at the stenciled letters that she’d just revealed.
VX GAS
Jane frowned. “VX. Isn’t that some kind of nerve gas?”
“That’s exactly what it is,” Maura said softly, and she rocked back on her knees, stunned. She stared across the clearing at the excavator. The settlers were putting up new buildings on this site, she thought. They’d cleared the trees and were digging foundations for more homes. Preparing the valley for new families who’d be moving into Kingdom Come.
Did they know that a time bomb lay buried in this soil, the soil they were digging into and churning up?
“A pesticide didn’t kill these people,” said Maura.
“But you said it matched the clinical picture.”
“So does VX nerve gas. It kills in exactly the same way that organophosphates do. VX disrupts the same enzymes, causes the same symptoms, but it’s far more potent. It’s a chemical weapon designed to be dispersed through the air. If you release it in a low-lying area…” Maura looked at Jane. “It would turn this valley into a killing zone.”
The growl of a truck engine made them both jump to their feet. Our car is parked out in the open, thought Maura. Whoever has just arrived already knows we’re here.
“Are you carrying?” Maura asked. “Please tell me you’re armed.”
“I left it locked in the trunk.”
“You have to get it.”
“What the hell is going on?”
“This is what it’s all about!” Maura pointed to the half buried canister of VX gas. “Not pesticides. Not mass suicide. It was an accident. These are chemical weapons, Jane. They should have been destroyed decades ago. They’ve probably been buried here for years.”
“Then The Gathering-Jeremiah-”
“He had nothing to do with why these people died.”
Jane looked around the clearing with growing comprehension. “The Dahlia Group-the fake company that paid off Martineau-it has something to do with them, doesn’t it?”
They heard the snap of a breaking branch.
“Hide!” whispered Maura.
They both ducked into the woods just as Montgomery Loftus stepped into the clearing. He was carrying a rifle, but it was pointed at the ground, and he moved with the casual pace of a hunter who has not yet spotted his quarry. Their footprints were all over that clearing, and he could not miss the evidence of their presence. All he had to do was follow their tracks to where they both crouched among the pines. Yet he ignored the obvious and calmly approached the hole that Maura had just dug. He looked down at the exposed cylinder. At the shovel that Maura had left lying there.
“If you bury anything for thirty years, it’ll eventually corrode,” he said. “Metal gets brittle. Accidentally run over it with a bulldozer or crush it against a rock, and it’ll fracture apart.” He raised his voice, as though the trees themselves were his audience. “What do you think would happen if I fired a bullet at this right now?”
Only then did Maura realize that his rifle was pointing toward the canister. She remained frozen, afraid to make a sound. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed Jane slowly creep deeper into the woods, but Maura could not seem to move.
“VX gas doesn’t take long to kill you,” said Loftus. “That’s what the contractor told me thirty years ago, when they paid me to dump it. Might take a little longer to disperse on a cold day like this. But on a warm day, it spreads fast. Blows on the wind, seeps through open windows. Into houses.” He lifted his rifle and aimed at the canister.
Maura felt her heart lurch. One blast from that weapon would disperse a cloud of toxic gas that they could never hope to outrun. Just as the residents of Kingdom Come could not outrun it on that unseasonably warm November day, when they’d opened their windows and their lungs. Death had wafted in and swiftly claimed its victims: children at play, families gathered for meals. A woman on the stairs, whose dying tumble left her bleeding at the bottom.
“Don’t!” Maura said. “Please.” She stepped out from behind the tree. She could not see where Jane was; she knew only that Loftus was already aware of her presence, and she could not hope to outrun his bullet, either. But the rifle wasn’t aimed at her; it remained pointed at the canister. “This is suicide,” she said.
He gave her an ironic smile. “That is the general idea, ma’am. Since I can’t see any way this is going to turn out right for me. Not now. Better this than prison.” He looked off toward the destroyed village of Kingdom Come. “When they get back the final analysis on those bodies, they’ll know what killed them. They’ll be all over this valley, searching for what should’ve stayed buried. It won’t take them long to come knocking on my door.” He released a heavy sigh. “Thirty years ago, I never imagined…” The rifle drooped closer to the canister.
“You can make things right, Mr. Loftus,” Maura said, struggling to keep her voice calm. Reasonable. “You can tell the authorities the truth.”
“The truth?” He gave a grunt of self-disgust. “The truth is, I needed the goddamn money. The ranch needed it. And the contractor needed a cheap way to get rid of this.”
“By turning the valley into a toxic dump?”
“We’re the ones who paid to make these weapons. You and I and every other tax-paying American. But what do you do with chemical weapons when you can’t use them anymore?”
“They should have been incinerated.”
“You think government contractors actually built the fancy incinerators they promised? It was cheaper to haul this away and bury it.” His gaze swept the clearing. “There was nothing here then, just an empty valley and a dirt road. I never thought there’d be families living here one day. They had no idea what was on their land. A single canister would’ve been enough to kill them all.” He looked down, once again, at the cylinder. “When I found them, all I could think of was how to make those bodies go away.”
“So you buried them.”
“Contractor sent their own men to do it. But the blizzard moved in.”
That’s when we showed up. The unlucky tourists who stumbled into a ghost town. The same blinding snowstorm had stranded Maura and her party in Kingdom Come, where they saw too much, learned too much. We would have revealed everything.