Wildside

  Clara’s hair, though short at graduation, hadn’t been cut in three months and it protected her ears and neck. Her arms had been crossed in front of her, shielded by her body. “I’m fine.”

  Working together, Clara and I carefully moved the fallen debris into the cul-de-sac at the end of the tunnel. There were hot metal edges to be avoided and molten rubber. The smell of ozone and melted plastic was strong. Then we moved back to the switch and activated the gate again.

  The tame side of the tunnel flicked back into place and I released a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. I walked down and examined my contraption. The angle iron bracing was holding fine, but the backs of the cabinets looked like illustrations from Popular Mechanics—cutaway sections to show the interior arrangements of gadgets. The smell of ozone and melted plastic was doubled and I worried about the toxicity.

  I sent Clara down to open the door into the hangar and I opened the door into the barn. There was always a pressure differential and the resulting breeze cleared out the tunnel quickly.

  “What now?” asked Clara.

  “We need a sign.”

  “From the Lord?”

  “Ha. Ha.” I picked up the half sheet of plywood that covered the switch and walked it back to the barn. There was a collection of paint cans, but they were ancient and we had to open five before we found some that was still liquid. It was dark red. When we were finished, the sign said:

  EXTREME DANGER!

  DO NOT CROSS TERMINUS WHEN GATE IS INACTIVE.

  LOSS OF LIFE OR LIMB EXTREMELY LIKELY!

  Then Clara waited on the tame side with the sign as I turned the gate off. I watched my watch closely for thirty seconds, then turned it back on. She was standing well back from the terminus, one hand to her throat, tense. When she saw me she smiled and relaxed.

  I walked over beside her. “How’d the sign look?” I asked. I looked behind me but of course I didn’t see it. The sign was leaning up against the cul-de-sac at the end of the tame side tunnel and to see it, the gate would have to be off.

  “Good. Imposing. It made me afraid to walk across the line.” She looked down. “I was also afraid the gate wouldn’t come back.” She looked back up. “What now?”

  “More shopping.”

  We spent just over two thousand dollars at Sam’s Club on canned and dry goods, vitamins, and over-the-counter Pharmaceuticals. We had to stack stuff above the sides of the truck and use rope to hold it down, but we got it all in one trip. By folding the side mirrors on the truck flat against the sides, we were able to ease the whole load between the two halves of the “contraption” and straight into the hangar.

  Joey, with a break for his daily AA meeting, continued working on the timer. When Clara and I finished stacking supplies in the hangar, Joey and Marie joined us, carrying two cardboard boxes of electronics equipment.

  “It works. I’ve tested it fifty times, varying the times from ten seconds to three hours. I set it up before I went to my meeting, came back, and, bingo, on the button, it tripped. We can only try it for real, now.”

  “Good enough. What do you want me to do?”

  “You run the wire—I’ll put in the frame.”

  Clara and I cut a three-inch-deep groove in the tunnel wall, first down from the switch to the floor of the tunnel, then along the base of the wall out to the hangar. We ran a six-conductor wire along it, then filled it in, plastering it with mud. Then we sprinkled loose dirt over the wet mud, until the groove was completely hidden, indistinguishable from the other side of the tunnel.

  Joey, meanwhile, set a plate into the dirt wall, next to the switch, pounding it back into the dirt to anchor it. On this he mounted the double-coil solenoid, connecting the actuator to the gate switch with a flexible rubber coupling and a hose clamp. He hooked the solenoid wires to a battery, to test it.

  “Okay,” he said, holding up a green wire. “We’ve wired the ground to the negative terminal. I now touch the retraction wire to the positive terminal—”

  There was a loud “click” from the solenoid and the gate flickered, revealing the cul-de-sac and the electromechanical refuse from my contraption.

  Joey released the wire. The gate stayed closed. He picked up a red wire. “This is the wire for the push coil. I touch it to the current like so—”

  There was another “click” and the solenoid pushed the lever in. The gate flickered and the tame side tunnel reappeared.

  “Very good, Joey,” I said.

  He smiled. Marie put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed.

  “How many more times do you think we should test it,” I asked, “to make sure the linkage won’t slip?”

  He frowned. “It won’t slip.” His voice was sharp.

  I said gently, “Joey? How do you know it won’t slip? We don’t know anything about that metal. We don’t even know what it is.”

  He looked away and exhaled sharply then took a deep breath. “Sorry. You’re right.” He looked down at the floor. “Are you sure you want to open and shut the gate a lot? I mean, we’ve talked about this before—what if it wasn’t meant to be opened this much?”

  We did it ten more times.

  Joey gave me a look that said, “I told you so” louder than any words could, then wired the solenoid into the wire we’d run, using two wires per pole for redundancy.

  When that was done, Clara and I enclosed the plate, solenoid, and switch in wire screening, which we anchored into the wall with ten-inch nails. Then we plastered over this with mud and dirt, in layers, until we had a stretch of wall identical to its surroundings.

  Meanwhile, Joey took his radio receivers, batteries, timer, and solar photovoltaic panel, and went to work in the hangar.

  Joey and Marie installed things, and then Clara and I hid them.

  The radio receiver, timers, and batteries went into a pocket of dirt at the back of the hangar. Joey mounted the photovoltaic panel on the roof of the tower. Since we couldn’t hide the solar panel, we ran an overt wire (with a broken conductor) from the panel to the backup battery on the shortwave radio in the tower. A hidden wire, with working conductors, ran down one of the tower legs and under the tarpaper on the roof before it terminated in the hidden pocket at the back of the hangar.

  “How much current do the timer and the receiver draw?” I asked Joey.

  “Milliamps. Without the solar charger, it would probably run for two years.”

  I blinked. “I should think that would do the job.”

  “You bet your ass,” Joey said.

  “I am, Joey. I am.”

  Clara rode into the barnyard the next morning. She wasn’t on her motorcycle. She was on her horse.

  “Wow. Pretty good trail ride. It must be ten miles to the stable,” I said.

  “Yeah, well—it’s not bad if you get up early, before it gets hot.” She hung the saddle and tack on the porch rail and tied Impossible in the shade at the side of the house where the grass hadn’t been cut for a month.

  I’d been up since dawn myself, unable to sleep. I’d asked everyone to be there for a breakfast meeting. Marie and Joey spent the night in Joey’s room. Rick didn’t come home the previous night, though he’d told me he’d be at the meeting.

  The phone rang twenty-five minutes later. Marie and Clara stopped talking and watched as I picked up the phone. Joey, stirring pancake batter at the counter, froze.

  It was Rick. “I’m running late.” Then, to the side, “Stop it.” He was laughing, partially covering the mouthpiece.

  “How long do you think you’ll be?” I asked. “It’s Rick,” I said to the guys. Joey started stirring again.

  Rick laughed again and I knew he wasn’t reacting to me. “Oh, better give me an hour.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “You said you would be here. I even asked you to set the time.”

  “Well…things happened.” He sounded less cheerful. “I’ll be there in an hour.”

  I thought about Luis’s friend Richard. “We may not have tha
t time. We’re going ahead with the meeting. We’ll just have to fill you in later, if there’s time.”

  All traces of humor left his voice. “Do what you have to.” He sounded indifferent.

  “Okay. Call before you come out here, okay? And make it a pay phone?”

  “Why a pay phone?” The indifference dropped.

  “Think about it.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “Got it. You haven’t gotten the call, have you?”

  “Would I have let you talk at all? No call. Not yet.“

  He paused again. “Okay. I’m coming now.”

  “Really? You’re not even breathing hard.”

  “Oh, very funny. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “Good. I appreciate your sacrifice.”

  He snorted and hung up.

  I put the receiver down in the cradle. Joey started pouring batter onto the griddle. Clara and Marie began talking again. The phone rang again. They all stopped.

  “Hello.”

  A woman’s voice said, “What number is this, please?”

  My heart began pounding. Carefully I said, “This is the number zero.” Marie and Clara stood and Joey turned the burner off under the griddle.

  “Mr. Cervantes is twelve minutes late for his nine o’clock call.”

  “Ah.” I squeezed my eyes closed. “Have you called Snodgrass, Messenger & Sons?”

  “The number in Houston? I was to call you first.”

  I spoke into the phone. “Well, don’t dawdle.”

  “Of course not, sir.”

  She hung up.

  I dropped the phone back into the cradle and, without a word, walked outside. I heard the others follow.

  The sky was clear and it was hot and humid—Texas weather at its worst. There was no sign of trouble, no sign of anything. The alarm at the gate was silent, the fields were empty. I scanned the trees and bushes. My imagination put a federal agent behind each shrub.

  I opened the barn and Joey and Marie walked in behind me. “Where’s Clara?” I asked, then saw her coming across the yard, leading Impossible, her saddle and tack slung over one shoulder.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Can’t just leave him out there.” She kept walking and I had to duck aside, or get stepped on by the horse. “Besides, with a horse here, there’s a reason for all this hay.”

  I took the padlock off the door to the barn and threw it on the workbench. “What if we have to hide on the other side?”

  “We sit it out for a week or two and hope they go away. That’s the plan, right?” Clara said, leading Impossible over to the tunnel. “Why’d you take the lock off?”

  “No, no—what happens to Impossible?”

  “We take him with us, of course. The lock?”

  “To the other side? What will he eat?”

  “Well, grass is good.” She raised her voice. “What’s with the lock?” Impossible shied away and whinnied. Clara soothed him with touch and voice.

  I blinked. “Oh. Well, if you found a big door with a very heavy padlock on it, wouldn’t you want to know what was behind it? We might as well put a sign on the door that says, ‘This way to the time machine.’ You know?”

  Clara led Impossible through the door to the tunnel. I yelled after her, “Something could eat him over there!”

  Her voice floated back up the tunnel. “They’ll have to eat me first!”

  I shook my head. That’s what I’m afraid of.

  When she came back, we opened the main doors, propping them open, and stacked hay to cover the back wall—the tunnel door.

  We were standing around, wondering what to do next, when the gate alarm went off. Joey scurried into the hayloft to look out the window. I took a matchbox-sized black plastic box with two red, recessed buttons out of my pocket. It was the remote control for a car alarm, but its receiver wasn’t in any car. For a brief second my finger touched the warm surface of the red plastic. Then I dropped it back into my pocket.

  “It’s Rick’s car,” Joey called down. “There doesn’t seem to be anybody behind him. He’s shutting the gate…it’s locked…he’s back in the car.”

  I went out into the yard to wait for Rick. After a few moments we heard the distant sound of tires on gravel, then his engine.

  “Is his muffler going out?” asked Joey. The sound was rougher than usual—deeper. As he got closer, the sound increased, but way out of proportion. I could feel it against my skin.

  The helicopters popped up, suddenly, like grasshoppers leaping into the air out of the river bottom. They must have come up the Brazos, mere feet above the water, the river bluff shielding the noise from us until they were almost on top of us. Now they roared toward us and the sound beat at us like a storm.

  There were three of them. One Apache attack helicopter, wasp-waisted, and two squat Blackhawk personnel carriers. One of the Blackhawks sank onto the grass landing strip and the other passed overhead, blotting out the sun, before putting down in the pasture on the other side of the barnyard. The Apache banked sharply and orbited the yard a hundred feet off the ground in a tight circle a hundred yards across.

  I yelled at the others, “Get the door open!” My earlier expectations had been of unsmiling FBI agents in sunglasses and business suits, polite but firm, who might not find the door hidden behind the hay. I didn’t think hay would stop this crowd.

  Clara, Joe, and Marie tore the hay bales down while I waited in the door, watching as everything came unraveled, the small plastic remote control gripped tightly in my right hand.

  Even before the Blackhawks touched the ground, men came pouring out of them—green cammo fire ants boiling out of a nest. I could only see the ones in the field, not those from the airstrip, but they ran toward us spreading into a skirmish line as they came. Rick’s car screeched to a halt in the dust storm kicked up by the helicopters. He jumped from the car and ducked into the barn, perhaps fifty feet in front of the charging soldiers. I took him and shoved him on, ahead of me, kicking the interior door shut behind me. The others ran down the tunnel, ahead of us.

  “Go, go, go!” I shouted. Things seemed disjointed and remote, like a disturbing dream. Part of me wondered if I was even awake. Somewhere ahead of us I heard Impossible whinny again, then from behind came the sound of the door slamming open as someone rammed into it.

  I looked over my shoulder. They weren’t running into the tunnel after us, pell-mell. I didn’t blame them. They probably thought they’d sewn us up and could collect us at their leisure. We crossed the terminus and I stopped, shouting, “Get the cameras going. You know what to do!”

  Then I turned and faced them.

  Two soldiers, I didn’t know whether they were marines or army, stood at the door. They held rifles, M-16s I thought, pointed in my direction but, thankfully, not directly at me. The muzzles were tilted downward, at the floor between us. They didn’t look human—their bodies bulged with armor and they were painted, the jungle cammo pattern of their clothing extended via greasepaint to their faces and arms. They looked like they were waiting for something.

  “Something” walked through the door, a minute later, followed by six more soldiers. He was obviously an officer—his face wasn’t painted and he carried an unholstered sidearm in one hand and a handheld radio in the other. He advanced down the tunnel without a pause, the six soldiers behind him in two files of three. He closed to thirty feet and I could see him eyeing the two columns of equipment that framed the terminus.

  I held up my left hand up, palm out, like a school crossing guard. “That’s far enough!” My voice was cracked and strident and I hated the sound of it, but there must’ve been something in it that sounded desperate for the man in the lead stopped and held up the hand with the radio in it. The soldiers behind him stopped as well, though their rifles went from pointing at the floor to pointing at me.

  “You are trespassing on private property. Vacate these premises immediately!” I didn’t think my request had a chance i
n hell of working, but I wanted it on record. If they’d had time, the guys were at the hangar entrance of the tunnel behind me videotaping this.

  “Put your hands on your head and drop to your knees.” He was close enough that I could read his insignia, captain, and his name, Moreno. He had the “voice,” the voice of someone who ordered people around every day and I felt my arms rise almost involuntarily before I stopped myself.

  “I repeat—you are trespassing. You are breaking the law. You are violating my constitutional rights. Do you remember the Constitution? I was under the impression that military personnel still take an oath to defend the Constitution.”

  That made him mad. He gestured with his radio. “Nichols, Martinez—secure him.”

  The two lead soldiers said in unison, “Sir!” and strode forward their rifles pointed at me. I took a step back and they broke into a trot. As the muzzles of their rifles neared the terminus, I thumbed the left-hand button on the little plastic box.

  There was more of a delay than I remembered, and then there was the flash and I squeezed my eyes shut. I heard something hit the floor and the lights went out as outside power was cut. I heard the generator kick in, and after a couple of seconds the fluorescents flickered back on.

  A foot-long section of each soldier’s M-16, the flash suppressor, sight, some plastic forestock, and length of barrel, lay on the dirt—the tame side of the tunnel was gone. I looked closely at the dirt. I’d been trying for just the tip of the rifle barrels and I was scared that I’d hurt someone, but there weren’t any pieces of hand or finger on the ground.

  I shuddered, and buried my face in my hands. I heard movement in the tunnel behind me and someone put a hand on my shoulder. “Are you all right?” It was Clara.

  I stood and smiled weakly. “Right as rain.” I staggered a little and she steadied me. I really was able to walk, but I leaned on her all the way up the tunnel.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “I’M SCARED OF THINGS I DON’T UNDERSTAND.”

  WE WILL ACTIVATE THE GATE TO TALK SOMETIME