Dead Mountain, page 32
This elicited a flurry of titters from the audience.
“Your brother then grabbed the sheriff and threw him down?”
“He sort of checked him with his shoulder and pushed him down.”
“Why?”
“I believe he was trying to protect me.”
“What happened to the phone?”
“The sheriff got up and confiscated it.”
“So the sheriff wasn’t lying on the ground, stunned, as has been asserted?”
“No. He jumped right up.”
“When the phone was returned to you several days later, was the video your brother took still on it?”
“No. It was gone.”
“Did Skip try to run away when the sheriff apprehended him?”
“No.”
“Did he resist arrest in any way?”
“No. He cooperated fully.”
“No further questions,” said Lightfeather. “The defense rests.”
Nora returned to her seat, glancing over at the jury with apprehension. It was clear they were astonished by what had just transpired. But what were they thinking?
Scowsen gave a thunderous summation that focused on the heroism of Hawley and the lying, craven, prevaricating, unreliable, compromised nature of his deputy, Baca. In contrast, Lightfeather’s summation was calm, quiet, and so brief it lasted less than five minutes. He reminded the jury of Baca’s testimony, asked them to consider which of the two stories they believed, and requested they decide Skip’s fate accordingly, as was their duty under the law. The judge then charged the jury, and they filed out of the courtroom. At that point, the judge called for a break. He seemed to expect a quick verdict.
And he was not wrong. Twenty minutes later, before Nora had even been able to finish the lousy cup of coffee she’d ordered in the courthouse cafeteria, the jury came back in and declared Skip not guilty on all counts.
EPILOGUE
CORRIE HAD SLEPT late, as she always did on vacation. What made this particular vacation unusual, however, was that she woke to find a cappuccino on the bedside table and a copy of the Albuquerque Journal propped next to it. She saw the headline and sat bolt upright, suddenly wide awake.
Homer Watts was lying stretched out on a divan at the far side of their yurt, legs crossed, grinning. Sunlight was streaming in a window that looked out over Abiquiu Lake and the red buttes of Ghost Ranch.
Corrie looked back at the paper, then seized it and read, astonished. The headline screamed in an almost tabloid fashion:
ACCIDENTAL NUKE DROP REVEALED
Dead Mountain Mystery Solved
Pharma wiz gravely wounded in
shootout with FBI, arrested for murder
“Holy shit,” said Corrie.
It was all there—everything—attributed to a “confidential and highly placed source, backed up by documentation independently confirmed by the Journal to be legitimate.”
Somebody had spilled the beans. There was a comprehensive description of the entire story, with all its twists and turns: the emergency jettisoning of a bomb to avoid a crash; the clandestine drug experiment on the hikers; their hallucinatory, panicked flight after encountering a searcher in a hazmat suit; how they died; the discovery of the journal—along with a sidebar about an earlier cover-up that destroyed the career of the previous chief investigator, Robertson Gold.
The commander of Kirtland AFB had been asked for comment and—while issuing a statement in obvious consternation about violation of classified information—had not exactly denied anything. SAC Garcia of the Albuquerque FO had refused all comment, as had Supervisory Special Agent Sharp, in charge of the Dead Mountain case. Nora Kelly of the Santa Fe Archaeological Institute, who had played a key role, was away with her brother in Marblehead, Massachusetts, and could not be reached by press time. Socorro County sheriff Homer Watts and Special Agent Corinne Swanson, also deeply involved in the case, were unable to be reached for comment.
Corrie grabbed her phone and looked at it. Nothing. Of course—they were off grid. She turned and stared at Watts. “Did you know about this?”
Watts was laughing. “I swear I didn’t. I got up early and went to Bode’s to get us some breakfast burritos, and saw the headline. I just about fell over.”
Corrie continued to read, amazed. There were related stories as well, one involving the murder of Cheape, another covering a statement from Melody Ann O’Connell of the Manzano Families Memorial Association, insisting the whole thing was just another cover-up and that the Boston Project was clearly to blame.
“My God,” Corrie said, continuing to read the various stories that dominated the entire front section of the paper. “It’s all here—documents, pictures, everything! Who did this?”
“The very question I asked myself.” Watts laughed again, hands behind his head, apparently as amused as hell.
Corrie looked at him. This was the guy who had the skill and nerve to take out DeGregorio a split second before he would have put a bullet in her head. The man who’d saved her life. Movie-star handsome, his amber eyes crinkling with amusement—and all hers. How lucky was she? Life was strange indeed. After all this time she’d spent—worrying about what Watts thought of her, what she should do, how she should act, what their professional relationship should be—he’d invited her to spend four days with him in a yurt in the middle of nowhere. Without thinking—without needing to think—she’d said yes.
“Who did this indeed?” Watts was saying. “You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to use the process of elimination. Could it have been . . . Garcia?”
“No way,” said Corrie. “He’s too by-the-book.”
“You?”
“Don’t be funny.”
“Nora?”
“Impossible.”
“O’Hara or Bellamy?”
“No. One’s too straight and the other too dumb. They didn’t have access to all this information anyway.”
“Director Raeburn?”
“No way. He ordered the quashing to begin with.”
“Sheriff Hawley?”
This of course was a joke. The sheriff had been indicted for perjury, obstruction of justice, and witness tampering. He’d been forced to resign, with worse apparently to come. “Ha ha, good old One-Bally? Can’t be him—what a dumbass.”
At this, Watts said, “Who’s left?”
Suddenly, Corrie caught her breath. “Not Sharp.”
Watts merely grinned.
“No,” said Corrie. “No way.”
“‘When you have eliminated the impossible,’” Watts quoted, “‘whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ It was you who taught me that line.”
Corrie thought about it. Sharp? The more she pondered it, the more she realized he must have done it. Nothing else made sense. He had access to everything. He was in charge of the case. More to the point, she’d never seen him so disgusted and angry as when the case was suppressed. He’d been appalled and furious all over again when, less than twenty-four hours after the shootout at the lodge, the case was quashed again. The orders came down: Everything that had happened in the Manzanos—the bunker discovery, the journal, the camera, the murders of the caretakers, DeGregorio’s involvement, the exchange of gunfire—would be classified to the max, on direct orders from on high. Everything they’d done, all they had discovered, would be deep-sixed to protect the air force from embarrassment. When Corrie learned that, she thought Sharp might resign. But instead, after initially expressing anger, he’d gone as calm and lethargic as ever—and ordered her to take a two-week break.
Instead of resigning, she realized, Sharp must have played the role of Deep Throat. And come to think of it, wasn’t the original Deep Throat, the guy who’d exposed Watergate, also an FBI agent? She felt a sudden surge of pride in the FBI: despite everything, the working agents of the Bureau had displayed patriotism and integrity.
“Wow,” she said. “You’re right. It’s gotta be Sharp.”
“He’s a good man. Took real balls to do this.”
“But, you know, there’s going to be an investigation of who leaked this,” said Corrie. “I’ll be one of the suspects. So will you. So will Sharp. It could get ugly. They’ll figure out it was him.”
“No,” said Watts. “He’s got more guts than you could hang on a fence. Smart, too, despite that lizard-in-the-sun act. There’s no slack in his rope. If he did this, you can bet he did it with the utmost care. They might suspect him—but they won’t prove anything.”
He got off the divan, came over, and sat down on the bed. “But you know what, Corrie? I’m pretty sure things are going to go in a different direction altogether. There’ll be an investigation—just not of the FBI.”
“What do you mean?”
“Why take blame when you can take credit? That’s what the FBI will do: take credit. As they should. You’ll all get commendations, including Sharp, and if anybody gets investigated, it will be the air force. I mean, they messed up—although it’s probably old enough now that nobody will actually get punished. But the FBI—you all kicked ass. You in particular. They’re going to make you a hero.”
Corrie stared at him. “You really think so?”
He leaned over her and kissed her. “I do. You are a hero.”
“So are you. You saved my life.”
He kissed her again.
Corrie said, “Sheriff Watts?”
“Yes?”
“Are we on federal land?”
“Technically, yes.”
“That puts me in command.”
“Huh?” He grinned. “Are you gonna invoke the Hobbs Act on me, Agent Swanson?”
“Not exactly. Take off that shirt.”
He took off his shirt.
“And the pants. That’s an order, mister.”
He took off the pants.
“Now everything else.”
He obeyed.
“I’d tell you to present arms, but it appears that command won’t be necessary. Get in this bed, Sheriff—on the double.”
“Immediately, Agent Swanson.” And he slipped in beside her.
AUTHORS’ NOTE
We wanted to share with our readers an interesting story about the inspiration behind Dead Mountain. As you may know, one of us—Doug—writes occasional nonfiction pieces for the New Yorker magazine. In the May 17, 2021, issue, he published an article entitled, “Has an Old Soviet Mystery at Last Been Solved?” (Full disclosure: it was one of the most popular articles in the magazine that year.) The piece investigated the strange fate of nine cross-country skiers in the Ural Mountains who died in 1959 under bizarre circumstances on the slopes of a remote massif called Height 1079.
Doug sold film rights to the story, but the day the contracts arrived for his signature, Russia invaded Ukraine. Not surprisingly, the production company immediately pulled out—in protest, among other reasons. Not long after, as Doug was complaining to Lincoln about the irony of the situation, Linc suggested it might actually be a stroke of luck. “How’s that?” Doug asked. “Because now,” Linc said, “we can take this fantastic true mystery—and make our own thriller out of it!”
Which we did. Using the old Soviet story as inspiration, we began brainstorming—and researching. We moved the story to the Manzano Mountains of New Mexico, picked because deep inside them is hidden the largest depot of nuclear weapons in the world. The Manzanos also contain a bunker complex built for President Eisenhower and his staff as a place of retreat in case of nuclear war, now sealed up and in disuse. And finally, we drew inspiration from a very real nuclear accident: on May 22, 1957, a B-36 bomber accidentally dropped a forty-two-thousand-pound hydrogen bomb in the Manzanos. The high explosives blasted a crater, but the H-bomb itself didn’t go off—luckily for Albuquerque and a great many New Mexico residents. Armed with Doug’s research, Linc’s outré and fevered suggestions, and both our imaginations, we came up with a fresh mystery for Special Agent Corrie Swanson of the FBI’s Albuquerque Field Office and archaeologist Nora Kelly of the Santa Fe Archaeological Institute to solve. And we conceived a solution hopefully both original and surprising—the capstone, we’d like to think, to a story that might have its footings in a real-life mystery, but that we’ve taken pains to make uniquely our own.
We hope you enjoyed the novel!
Doug & Linc
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
The thrillers of DOUGLAS PRESTON and LINCOLN CHILD “stand head and shoulders above their rivals” (Publishers Weekly). Preston and Child’s Relic and The Cabinet of Curiosities were chosen by readers in a National Public Radio poll as being among the one hundred greatest thrillers ever written, and Relic was made into a number-one box office hit movie. They are coauthors of the famed Pendergast series, and their recent novels include The Cabinet of Dr. Leng, Diablo Mesa, Bloodless, The Scorpion’s Tail, and Crooked River. In addition to his novels, Preston is the author of the award-winning nonfiction book The Lost City of the Monkey God. Child is a Florida resident and former book editor who has published eight novels of his own, including such bestsellers as Chrysalis and Deep Storm.
Readers can sign up for The Pendergast File, a monthly “strangely entertaining note” from the authors, at their website, PrestonChild.com. The authors welcome visitors to their Facebook page, where they post regularly.
ALSO BY DOUGLAS PRESTON AND LINCOLN CHILD
NORA KELLY NOVELS
Diablo Mesa • The Scorpion’s Tail • Old Bones
AGENT PENDERGAST NOVELS
The Cabinet of Dr. Leng • Bloodless • Crooked River • Verses for the Dead • City of Endless Night • The Obsidian Chamber • Crimson Shore • Blue Labyrinth • White Fire • Two Graves* • Cold Vengeance* • Fever Dream* • Cemetery Dance • The Wheel of Darkness • The Book of the Dead** • Dance of Death** • Brimstone** • Still Life with Crows • The Cabinet of Curiosities • Reliquary† • Relic†
*The Helen Trilogy **The Diogenes Trilogy
†Relic and Reliquary are ideally read in sequence
GIDEON CREW NOVELS
The Pharaoh Key • Beyond the Ice Limit • The Lost Island • Gideon’s Corpse • Gideon’s Sword
OTHER NOVELS
The Ice Limit • Thunderhead • Riptide • Mount Dragon
BY DOUGLAS PRESTON
The Lost City of the Monkey God • The Kraken Project • Impact • The Monster of Florence (with Mario Spezi) • Blasphemy • Tyrannosaur Canyon • The Codex • Ribbons of Time • The Royal Road • Talking to the Ground • Jennie • Cities of Gold • Dinosaurs in the Attic
BY LINCOLN CHILD
Chrysalis • Full Wolf Moon • The Forgotten Room • The Third Gate • Terminal Freeze • Deep Storm • Death Match • Lethal Velocity (formerly Utopia) • Tales of the Dark 1–3 • Dark Banquet • Dark Company
Douglas Preston, Dead Mountain
