Shades of Mercy, page 1
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To all the kids in my life who have allowed me to enter their imaginations and make-believe worlds with my own tall tales. You have made all this possible.
CHAPTER 1
At 92,000 feet, the Vulture suddenly developed a mind of its own. It dove like the hunter it was, screaming down through the stratosphere, looking for something to eat. Fifty miles away, from his chair in the control center at Groom Lake, a white rectangular box about the length of a shipping container, the remote pilot saw the first sign that something was amiss. The attitude indicator, the instrument that provided him the aircraft’s orientation relative to the earth’s horizon, pitched forty degrees to the right, a severe turn northeast. The control station was state of the art, featuring six twenty-four-inch touchscreen displays for each operator. The three topmost screens, arranged side by side, displayed the aircraft’s various camera feeds. As his eyes moved to the top portion of the screen directly in front of him, the pilot saw the altimeter numbers falling rapidly.
“Uh, problem here.”
His sensor operator looked up from her half-completed checklist. “What?”
“We’re diving.”
She shot him a sideways glance. “Stop screwing around, Sam.”
The pilot moved his right hand from the keyboard and placed it on the control stick, pressing the button on the far left and taking the Vulture out of auto-mode. When he moved the stick toward him, nothing happened. “No joke. Vehicle is no longer on flight plan. Bearing is zero-eight-seven, and I have LOS.”
The loss-of-signal indication was all the sensor operator needed to hear. She typed a command into her keyboard. “Sending lost link now.”
The command was a fail-safe, one that instructed the Vulture’s navigation system to begin flying in predetermined loops until they could regain control. It should have worked instantaneously. “No response,” the pilot said. “Still descending, passing sixty thousand and decreasing speed. Better get on the phone.”
The sensor operator punched a button on the hands-free base next to her that connected her to the RPA communications unit and began speaking into her headset. “Uh, guys, are you seeing this? Vulture is not responding.” She listened intently for a few seconds. “Uh-huh,” she finally responded. “Roger that.”
“What?” asked the pilot.
“As usual, they don’t have a clue. Going to call us back.”
“Great.”
“Did you do an instruments check?”
“Not an instrument failure. Everything is in the green.” The pilot pressed several keys on his terminal and tried moving the control stick again. “She just won’t respond. Someone else is flying her.” He was ex-Navy, an aviator with twenty-two years of actual flight experience who had once landed on an aircraft carrier with a broken tail hook. “No response on signal reboot.”
They both watched as the Vulture turned around just before the Utah border, sailing above the mostly barren desert on a flight path that would, in minutes, bring it back over the secret test range, or over Los Angeles in less than an hour. The sensor operator heard a ring in her headset. She listened. “Roger. Initiating patience timer countdown now.” It was the auto self-destruct timer that could be activated in a worst-case scenario.
Twenty seconds later the patience timer expired. What should have happened next was a shutdown of the Vulture’s engine resulting in a quarter rotation of the wings so the aircraft would spiral benignly to the desert floor.
The pilot grimaced. “Patience timer malfunction. Heading is now south-southwest at two-zero-two, altitude approaching twenty-seven thousand and—”
Letters suddenly began appearing on the monitors in front of them. They spelled out: “Apologies. Have this badass bird back to you in a few minutes. Please stand by.”
The sensor operator rose from her chair. “NFW,” she said. It wasn’t a military acronym.
The pilot depressed a button on his console and spoke into his headset. “Flight Term One, Ops.”
From high up on a mountain to the north, the reply was instantaneous. “Go for Flight Term One.”
“Stand by to issue the command destruct signal on my mark. Do you copy?”
“Ops, Flight Term One copies all and is standing by.”
“Terminate, terminate, terminate.”
“Roger. Flight Term One is transmitting on four two eight megahertz at a thousand watts.”
There was a lot of redundancy built into the flight operations of RPAs. If the patience timer wasn’t working, the transmission of this signal should activate it. The pilot watched and waited for it to do just that. “Flight Term One, Ops, are you sure you’re transmitting? No response from the article.”
A different voice, this one female, controlled and unemotional, streamed into the pilot’s ear. “Ops, Flight Term Two, we see Flight Term One’s signal. It’s likely that the flight termination receiver has been disabled.”
Before the pilot could respond, he saw the indicator for weapons system activation flash green. “Mother of God, the weapons system is arming.”
* * *
Twenty-three thousand feet below, Shiloah Roy’s seventeenth birthday party was moving into high gear. The celebration at the Double J Ranch was beautifully decorated, as was Shiloah herself, sparkling in her turquoise and gold gown, the skirt of which billowed in layers from her tiny waist to her knees and ended in a hem that was the same strawberry blonde color as the hair that flowed down her back in big, thick curls. She looked every bit the million bucks her father had intended, despite her pleadings for a normal birthday party with just a small group of friends. This was to be her formal coming-out, he told her, and people, important people, needed to see her. Shiloah wasn’t stupid. She knew this party was more about him than her. It was a business meeting.
It was 8:30 P.M. The molten-colored sun descended through the haze of wildfire smoke, leaving only the thousand bulbs strung over the dance floor to shine on Shiloah and her friends. Jesse Roy watched his daughter from the extravagant barbecue pit adjacent to the ranch house he had already spent a fortune remodeling. She was everything. And though she seemed ebullient tonight, she had become distant, even combative these last several months, seemingly unappreciative of all the things he had provided, including the elite St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire she attended. Yes, their ranch was in the middle of nowhere, and she had only a few friends nearby, but she had the finest horses to ride and every electronic gadget she could possibly want. Was it drugs, he wondered, a boyfriend back east she was missing? Was it her mother? After eight years, was Shiloah resenting him for her death? If only she would talk to him.
The margaritas and beer were flowing, and the smoke from the Cohiba Esplendidos he and the other men were puffing almost equaled what was coming from the caterer’s grill. As the song faded into its last notes, Jesse Roy walked across the grass to the expensive Las Vegas DJ and took the microphone from him.
“My friends, please join me out here on this beautiful lawn,” he said in a voice bursting with pride. Tall and slender, he was bedecked in a summer beige suit that contrasted nicely with his Kemo Sabe lizard skin boots. At forty-six, especially with his full, pomaded black hair, Jesse looked like the poster boy for what hard work and sweat could win you in life.
More than a hundred guests, about half from south of the U.S. border and the rest Shiloah’s St. Paul’s classmates and their super-affluent parents, stepped onto the grass. They formed two lines facing each other, and they watched as Shiloah walked slowly between them toward her father.
Jesse reached out and took his daughter’s hand. “Shiloah, you are as beautiful as your mother.” Choking up, he made the sign of the cross, an act of sanctification he normally reserved for a big bet at Santa Anita or Churchill Downs, and managed, “May God rest her soul.”
Tears welled in Shiloah’s brown eyes, and with his thumb and forefinger, Jesse squeezed the water out of his own. “I love that you were born on the Fourth of July, as you are a child of this great country and everything it stands for. Independence. That’s you in a nutshell, Shiloah. And it means we have two reasons for fireworks every year.” Everyone cheered. Jesse had paid a king’s ransom for the Zambini Brothers’ eight-minute pyrotechnics show, and he would be damned if he was going to let some county prohibition keep him and his guests from seeing it. Besides, the Double J was nestled in the heart of Dry Valley, surrounded by hills and miles off the highway. No one but Jesse Roy’s guests were likely to see the illegal display. Still, he had a full complement of young men and water hoses standing by in case it sparked on the ground.
Jesse raised a hand into the air and spoke loudly into the microphone again. “Maestro, if you please?”
From the large oval horse arena a hundred yards to the west, the music started again, loud and heavy with drums. Suddenly, a thousand brilliantly colored lights shot into the now dark sky. The laser beams danced across the heavens in every direction, and from behind them came long strings of rockets and a cacophony of explosions and color that rivaled anything on the Las Vegas Strip. It was so loud the people on the ground couldn’t hear each other gasp. Minutes later, it ended in a spectacular burst of red, white, and blue streamers arcing over the ranch and the heads of the party attendees. Bodies and eyes turned to follow the fading rockets, only to find another fireball, much higher and much brighter, coming toward them, leaving a white streak behind it for miles.
Shiloah turned to her father. “Daddy?” she asked, pointing. “Is that for me?”
Jesse Roy and his guests watched in awe as the streaking fireball suddenly seemed to divide. It was an explosion of light, the second fireball glowing even brighter and moving at a much greater speed as it pitched toward the ranch, its fiery propellant illuminating everything below it. Other than the Zambini Brothers crew, Jesse was the only one who knew this was not part of the fireworks he had paid to see. At the last second, he dove on top of Shiloah, covering her with his body.
* * *
The screen on the small laptop was gray, and the few glowing heat signatures that dotted it slowly moved out of view, only to be replaced by more. The hand guiding the Vulture was steady now, its new pilot learning quickly the micro-adjustments that turned the aircraft, made it climb or dive, or altered its speed. The hacker had studied, prepared. Practiced. Approaching the GPS coordinates that were now keyed into the RPA’s navigation, the screen began filling with multiple heat sources. Dozens of them. Then hundreds. The operator slowed the Vulture even more, found the target that had been provided, and fired. The R9X, the missile known in the armed forces as the flying Ginsu, dove toward the ground.
In the command trailer eighty miles to the west, the RPA’s pilot shot to his feet. “Jesus, what the hell did we just blow up?”
Much closer to the Double J, the Vulture’s hijacker typed out an email. It was addressed to nuhaigottome997@gmail.com, and read, “Hey babe, amazing sunset tonight. Did you happen to catch it?”
The reply came thirty-four minutes later. “I did. So amazing. Happy Independence Day.”
CHAPTER 2
Why Porter Beck was behind the wheel would be the topic of some heated discussions later, with lots of angry participants, but it was an overdose call, and it was a friend. Had the rest of his dozen officers not been assisting with wildfires or patrolling the county for illegal fireworks, he could have sent one of them, but being shorthanded was a fact of life in Lincoln County, and despite being a daylight man, he was still sheriff.
The EMS team was still fifteen minutes away treating a drunken cowboy who had tried celebrating the Fourth by shooting a dozen roman candles out of his butt crack. So it was down to Beck and Bo to respond to the 9-1-1 call.
The Sheriff’s Department sat literally across the highway from the Pioneer Hotel, probably no more than a half mile as the crow flew, but it seemed an order of magnitude farther to Beck as he steered his F-150 Police Interceptor like a student driver out for his first lesson. It wasn’t mechanical issues that caused him to weave all over the road. It was because he was impaired, his vision narrowed to a tiny tunnel. The disease had come on quickly, though it had been hiding in his DNA for the first forty years of his life. While he could see almost normally when the sun was up or internal lighting was strong, his eyesight after sundown retreated faster than the British at Dunkirk.
He had come to dread the night.
Right now, it was almost 8:30 P.M., the sun already behind Highland Peak to the west and the sky a fading pinkish hue from all the wildfire smoke. Inside the cab of the truck, Beck’s newest officer, Frank Columbo, was holding on for dear life.
“You might want to buckle up, pard,” said Beck as the truck shot over the 93, siren blaring. He sensed his deputy’s unease, could hear it in his voice. “Doing the best I can. Your patience is appreciated.” Columbo was growing on Beck, partly because he had a cool name for a cop, was quiet, paid attention most of the time, and loved a good cup of coffee. Mostly though, Beck liked him because he was a dog.
The night vision goggles were helping some. No doctor had prescribed them, and Beck was unaware of any studies that had tested their value for people with retinitis pigmentosa. All he knew was that they allowed him to see better than if he didn’t have them on, sensing the smallest amounts of infrared light reflected off objects and then electrically amplifying that light into some kind of glowing green image. It wasn’t nearly as clear as it would be for a person with normal vision, but the goggles allowed him to see most obstacles.
Heading up Main Street, the truck swerving, Beck jumped the curb and took out a stand of shrubs that lined the southern border of the LDS church parking lot. Bo yelped.
“A few bushes,” he assured him, silently hoping that was true. “Pretty sure, anyway. God won’t mind.” An agonizingly long minute later, they careened to a stop in front of the Pioneer, and Beck could make out a glowing green form in front of the old building, arms waving. He knew it must be Josie Conrad. She was a wisp of a woman, in her seventies now, and after sliding to a stop, Beck had trouble keeping up with her as he ran, med kit under his arm, up the steep staircase to the second floor.
The Conrads had owned the hotel for more than thirty years. It had about ten rooms, all with their own western theme, and had originally been a saloon as well. Now it was only the hotel and a small restaurant.
As he and Columbo made the brightly lit second-floor landing, Beck tore off the night vision goggles. Down the long hallway, he could see Byron Conrad, Cash’s dad, straddled over his son’s thighs and performing chest compressions too slow to be effective.
“Sheriff’s here,” Josie yelled as she reached the room.
Beck came through the door a second behind her. Byron rolled off his son, gasping for air and crying. “He’s not waking up, Beck. I can’t get him to wake up!”
Beck gazed down at his oldest friend, on his back, shirtless, his face and lips blue. Not breathing. But it was the lifeless body of the family dog, an ancient golden retriever named Lillibelle, lying next to Cash that told Beck everything he needed to know.
He seized Byron under both arms, hauling him out of the room and into the hallway. “Stay out here, both of you,” he told Josie.
He pointed down at Columbo. “Stay, Bo.” The dog sat on command. Overdoses are not good places for canine officers, especially if there is fentanyl in the room. One wrong sniff of the stuff and that’s it for the dog. No doubt Lillibelle had entered the room with Byron, had inhaled some of the ultrafine powder floating invisibly in the air, and had died almost instantly.
A young couple with worried faces came out of their room a few doors down. “Get back!” Beck yelled. “Everyone, back. Go to the end of the hallway.” There wasn’t much risk of fentanyl exposure to human first responders, he knew, but he wasn’t taking any chances. He reentered the room and dropped to the carpeted floor, confirming Cash’s condition in three quick measurements: pulse, pupils, and body temperature. He had no pulse. His pupils were the size of pinpoints, and his body, a shadow of its former self, was cold.
“Damn it, Cash!” Beck yelled. “Don’t go on me like this!” He pulled the naloxone nasal spray out of his bag, popped the two yellow caps off the injector, attached the atomizer on one end, and screwed the vial into the injector. Then he shot the mist into Cash’s nose. If it would work at all at this point, the drug might take a couple of minutes. But for that to happen, he had to get him breathing again. He rose to his knees and brought his hands, one over the other, firmly down over his friend’s breastbone. He started compressions, aiming for two inches in depth, counting each one out loud. “Five, six, seven…”
From behind him in the hallway, Bo barked, helping with crowd control. “Twelve, thirteen…” Beck heard the awful crack, knowing he had broken one of Cash’s ribs, but continued without a pause. “Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. Come on, Cash! Not like this. Twenty-two, twenty-three…”
