They had traveled for over twenty minutes, seemingly going in the wrong direction, when Hannah caught sight of a dirt road that went off to the left on a more southwesterly course. It was surrounded by dead forest and was likely very hard to see when the trees were full. She slowed the bus and stopped near the road’s entrance. “What say?” she asked. “You want to try this? Might lead to a dead end, but it could take us a lot closer.”
“Yeah. Let’s try it.”
Hannah turned them onto the road and they started up again, leaving whorls of dust behind the tires. The bus jubbled over loose stones, which put them all on edge. A little more than two hundred yards up the road, they came to a chainlink fence about eight feet high. It was topped by a coil of barbed wire, and the fence went in both directions through the woods as far as they could see.
On the gate, which bore a sturdy-looking padlock, was a sign that read PRIVATE PROPERTY, NO TRESPASSING.
They sat with the engine idling. “What do you think, bossman?” Hannah asked.
“I think it’s strange. This is a national forest. How can it be private property?”
“Don’t know, but that’s what the sign says.”
“Yeah.” Dave turned to look at Ethan. “What do you think?”
The expression was determined and the silver eyes were intense. “I think we need to go through that gate.”
Dave nodded. “There’s no such thing as private property anymore, is there? Odd, though, to be in a national forest. Hannah, can you push us through?”
“I could, but I don’t want to. Get anything tangled up underneath or blow the tires…wouldn’t be good.”
“I’ll do it.” Ethan stood up. Hannah opened the door for him and he stepped off the bus. As the others watched, it took maybe ten seconds for the peacekeeper to take aim at the gate with the palm of his right hand and the entire gate to separate from its padlock and chain and go flying through the air; in midair it curved and sailed into the woods on the right. The coil of barbed wire hung down over the entrance but would only scratch a little paint off the bus. Ethan came back aboard and returned to his seat as if the merest amount of energy had been required, though he was opening and closing a hand whose bones and tendons throbbed with a dull ache.
“Easy enough,” Hannah said. “I wish I could’ve done that to my ex-husband. All right, we’re movin’.”
She drove them through. They had taken two curves, still ascending, when another fence blocked the road. It was not made of chainlink; it was at least six feet high and made of what appeared to be a gridwork of thin white wires. Again Hannah stopped the bus before a padlocked gate, because she knew what it was even as Dave said it out loud.
“That’s an electric fence. Damn…somebody doesn’t want people going up this road, that’s for sure.”
“Which means,” Olivia said, “there’s something up there that’s supposed to stay hidden.”
“Right. Well…Ethan, can you knock that gate down?”
“I can,” Ethan said, “but I think you should know that the electricity has been activated.”
“No way!” said Jefferson. “All the power’s knocked out, and why would anybody use up gas for a generator to run that thing?”
“Power is running through the fence and the gate. I can feel the movement of energy. Touching that would be enough to kill any human.”
No one spoke for a moment. Dave scratched his beard and saw that, like the chainlink fence, this one also extended into the forest on both sides as far as could be seen. He thought it was likely the fence went around the entire mountain. Somebody had gone to great lengths and great expense to protect their property, but why?
“We have to keep going,” Ethan said. “I’ll open the gate.” He got off the bus again and made another ten seconds’ work of the gate, breaking it open and folding it back against the fence so no wires were torn. It was a minimal use of his power. He was keenly aware of the sensation of being watched by something other than the Cypher and Gorgon trackers, and scanning the trees he quickly made out two small optical devices in the branches up over his head, painted in gray camouflage. They were both aimed directly at the gate. He assumed someone had just witnessed an action that would immediately cause alarms to go off.
“There are cameras in the trees,” he reported when he got back aboard. “Two that I saw, probably more. I would think someone knows we’re here, and they’re not going to like it.”
With a hard edge in his voice, Dave said, “No reason to stop now. Let’s go on.”
Ethan returned to his seat. Hannah started them forward again and didn’t breathe easily until they were way past the fence. The road steepened in its ascent and once more the bus chugged, the tires struggling for traction in the dust and stones. After a hard pull of perhaps a quarter of a mile they came to a place where the dead trees fell away and above them towered the mountain’s white peak. The road leveled off. Directly ahead it ended at a guardrail overlooking the valley below, with a solid wall of white stone to their right.
Hannah stopped about ten feet from the guardrail. “This is as far as we go, folks.”
They sat in silence, as the hot engine ticked.
“What now?” Jefferson asked. “There’s nothing here!”
“You’re wrong,” Dave said, standing up. “That guardrail…what’s it up here for? To keep a car from going over, so somebody’s been driving that road. Damned if I know, but I can’t see anyplace wide enough to turn around and it would be mighty tough to back down. Which says to me that—”
“Stay where you are,” came a man’s magnified voice from a loudspeaker. “If you step off that, bus you will be executed. Repeat: stay where you are.”
The voice was flat, calm, and deadly in its resolve. It was the voice of a trained professional who Dave figured would have no qualms putting everyone on the bus to death. Whoever it was, he had a big surprise coming.
And then Dave finished what he was saying, as a section of the rock wall at least ten feet wide began to tilt inward and open up on smooth and nearly soundless machinery. “Which says to me that there’s a way in, and it’s big enough for a car.”
Twenty-Seven.
“Are they going to kill us?” Nikki asked, her voice trembling.
Five men with weapons had emerged from the opening doorway in the white stone. Three wore regular t-shirts and jeans and carried automatic rifles, one wore gray trousers and a pale blue shirt with rolled-up sleeves and the fifth was dressed in a black suit with a white shirt and a gray-striped tie. Both these men were carrying automatic pistols. The one in the suit was a black man with close-cropped hair and the one wearing the gray trousers was Asian. All were maybe in their late twenties or early thirties, were clean-shaven, healthy in appearance, and moved quickly. They looked to Dave like very capable killers. They came toward the bus with what appeared to be deadly intent.
“Open up,” said the man in the suit, who seemed to be the leader. He was used to issuing commands; his voice, though not necessarily loud, carried the demand for instant obedience. He took aim at Hannah through the door’s glass. “I will repeat that once, ma’am: open up.”
The others had taken up stations at various points around the bus. All the weapons were trained on the passengers.
“Open it,” Dave said.
Hannah did. The black man came aboard, followed by one of the others with an automatic rifle. “Stand up, ma’am. Leave the key in the ignition and your weapon in the seat and move back.” She obeyed, realizing this was not a man to be messed with. “The rest of you stay very still.” He was holding his pistol in a two-handed grip. His deep-set, olive-colored eyes darted here and there, taking everything in; they stopped on Ethan and remained there for a few seconds before he went on. “You’re going to move slowly now and put your weapons in the aisle. If I don’t like a quick movement, I will kill you. Everyone tell me they understand that.”