They saw what she was seeing.
It was maybe two or three miles away, commanding a slightly higher elevation. The roof had collapsed; if there ever had been a steeple, there was not one now. The stone walls formed a shell around a hollow center. Even at this distance, in the midday sun, some of the lines of mortar could be made out. Below the walls the earth was an ashen color. Here and there piles of timbers lay jumbled about. The open frame of a building that the wind had gnawed to pieces was still standing, but its days were numbered. But the stone church itself…it had lasted for a hundred years, and might last a hundred more though its congregation now was likely only the lizards and the scorpions. Nomad could see a massive iron gate across the road that wound up to Stone Church. It was secured by what might have been a dark fester of chains and coils of barbed-wire. The wire was strung all around the mountaintop, like spiky hair circling a scabby pate. Day-Glo orange signs were set at intervals in the ground. He couldn’t read them, but he imagined what they probably said: Danger. No Trespassing. Proceed At Your Own Risk. Trespassers Will Be—
What? he wondered.
Swallowed up by Hell?
“That whole story’s some jimcrack bullshit,” he said, but he didn’t say it very loudly.
A wall of brown rock stubbled with brush came up between the Scumbucket and the stone church, and it was gone from view.
EIGHTEEN.
True was thinking. The answer to his original question was that Garth Brickenfield had decided to retire the name ‘Apache Leap’ for a darker image for his annual music festival. It was the kind of story you could email ten people about and a hundred—several hundred?—would know it by the end of the day. Publicity, publicity, publicity. That and a note of weirdness, a smell of Satanic brimstone, and bringing in the vendors that Brickenfield cultivated for this thing and there you had it: an old guy pretending to putter around with antique airplanes while he was building a flying zoopalooza.
Around the next bend, they could feel the music.
It was always the bass, first. It vibrated through the Scumbucket before they could hear it. Somebody’s big huge speakers were cranked up to big huge numbers. The amphitheater’s gates had opened at noon, and by the schedule True had gotten the first band to take the stage was The Bleeding Brains.
They were very, very loud.
True slowed the van down. It rolled toward the orange gate where the GB Promotions security boys were checking the entry passes with hand scanners. True lowered his window and caught the full thunder of bass guitar and bass drum echoing off rock walls and maybe a couple of hundred shaved skulls. He felt like one of the Company’s enforcers; he was way too old for this kind of mess, but to call himself a man he was going to have to go down into that mine.
“Thank you, sir,” the security guy with blue sunscreen on his face said to True when the passes were scanned, and then he looked past True into the van and shouted, “Kick some ass!” as he pumped his fist into the air.
They drove onto the dirt lot behind the huge stage, which like any lot behind a festival stage was a phantasmorama of many elements: the military encampment, the neighborhood block party, the mad scientist’s cluttered lab of crates and boxes and strange electronic gizmos, the power station in a constant state of emergency, the lineup of battered trucks, trailers and vans from that seedy auto dealership in the bad part of town, the grimy place behind the colorful banners at the state fair where all the half-eaten candied apples seem to end up.
True found a place to stop, in between a line of green Port-A-Potties and a purple van painted with grinning silver death’s heads. They had arrived.
The first thing for The Five to do was to go to the large black hospitality trailer with GB Promotions in red on the sides, get their stage passes and some bottled water, eat whatever sandwich and chips they were offering, and figure out exactly what the set was going to be. They had about two hours to settle in. The equipment would have to be unloaded, everything plugged in and checked as best as possible in this environment. They wouldn’t have to worry about unloading any merchandise, because that had already been shipped from RCA to Brickenfield’s company and would be for sale up on the ‘Midway’ where the sea of vendors was located. But it would be barely-controlled chaos, no matter how it was sliced.
True’s first task was to take his leather bag out of the van, walk to the other side of the Port-A-Potties to get some relative quiet from the Bleeding Brains, unzip the bag and reach in next to the lightweight aluminum Charter Arms .38 Special. He removed his small black Motorola Walkie-Talkie with its eighteen-mile range and secure codes. He turned on the voice activation capability.
“This is Prime setting up shop,” True said. “Scout, you guys out there?”
“Affirmative.” The reception was so clear Tony Escobar could’ve been standing right next to him.
“Knave, you copy?”
“Affirmative.”
He went through Lance, Logic, Shelter and Signet. He’d chosen the names from the Admirable Class of minesweeping ships in World War II; the guys rolled their eyes at him, but he was the big dog. “All I can tell you is to stay sharp,” he said when the teams had reported. They knew their business, they had their high-powered binoculars and wore camouflage suits that blended them in with the mountain terrain. Their rifles, all Remingtons with scopes similar to what Jeremy Pett would be carrying, were also camouflaged with earth colors. The tac teams were spread out around the clockface of the amphitheater, and were experts at staying invisible. A thought struck True. “Hey, Clark!”
“Yes, sir?”
Clark Griffin was the leader of the Shelter team. He and his men would be hunkered down in a position nearest to that place up on the higher elevation. That place.
Watch your backs, he almost said.
But that would’ve sounded stupid. It would not be wise for the operation leader to sound stupid. So he said, “This is your kind of music down here.”
“Nobody in that lineup can hold a candle to Buckethead,” Clark answered back. “I’ll make you a fan yet, sir.”
“I’m still in my Crosby, Stills and Nash period,” True said. “Okay, let’s put on our bigboy faces. One reminder: we are not shooting to kill. Check you.” He switched off the voice control. Then, satisfied at least that everyone was where they ought to be, he walked back around the line of portable toilets and went into the nearest one to relieve his aching bladder.
On their way to the hospitality trailer, Nomad’s pace slowed. Ariel noticed and also slowed down. He was staring at something off to the right. “John?” she said, and followed his gaze to an Airstream trailer where a nearly-naked man with tattoos on his arms and chest and long hair the color of butter was sitting on a lawn chair in the sun, his face offered to the rays. Nomad told her to go on ahead, that he’d be there in a few minutes. She hesitated only briefly, as Nomad began to walk toward the Airstream, and then she followed Terry and Berke across a landscape strewn with cables.
Nomad had known this man was going to be at Stone Church. His band Mjöllnir—pronounced “Mole Near”—was scheduled to take the stage at eight o’clock tonight. He had gotten here early, to kick back, mix and mingle, to check out the flashy young tail, to score some good dope, to listen to the new bands. Maybe also because his tour calendar was a lot lighter than it had been ten, twenty years ago. Mjöllnir was the name of Thor’s mythical hammer. The man in that lawn chair, catching sun with his eyes closed against the glare, was a fallen god.
Nomad came up on him silently, as the Bleeding Brains thrashed and screamed onstage about a hundred yards away, but fallen gods still retain their sixth sense, and the man opened eyes as green as new emeralds and with The Look speared Nomad in his tracks.