you, Tony. Next item, I want those two loose gongs in California apprehended and questioned. At this point, we can’t take chances. I want to know immediately when you have them in custody.”
*****
Tork was between fantasy and reality, half asleep and half awake, struggling with the hard ground and fatigue, dozing and waking, looking at his watch only a few minutes from the last time he looked. He knew it was going to be a long hard day.
“Hey, Tork!” Cal was nudging him in the ribs. Dawn was just coming up over the mountain, and light was beginning to illuminate the valley floor.
Tork cried out to Cal in a low voice, “I thought I caught some movement at three o’clock.” They earlier decided to use the clock to determine their position if they saw anything. The twelve would be north, the three would be east, the six would be south, and the nine would be west. Cal faced twelve o’clock and Tork faced six o’clock.
“It’s moving to the right, about three o’clock. Should be moving around us. You might be able to see them in a few minutes. It was about 150 meters out. I couldn’t make it out, but it looked like a small land vehicle,” Cal continued.
Tork concentrated on his right side, straining his ears and eyes, hoping to see whatever it was. He picked up his night glasses and looked.
He saw nothing. He started to think Cal was seeing things and was about to say so when he saw them. There were three vehicles moving slowly, moving about fifty feet and stopping for a second or two, and then going on. He couldn’t quite see what was going on. Then he realized the vehicles were not behind one another; they were about a hundred feet apart, running parallel together. The question in his mind was, What are they doing?
The vehicles continued to move across his line of vision toward their right side, slowing, stopping, and moving ahead. Tork was uneasy. Something about those vehicles troubled him. As they moved away, the sun came up over the mountain.
Tork was scanning the distant landscape and mountains for anything unusual, and he was coming up empty-handed. Cal had his binoculars trained on a distant object. It was blurred, but familiar, just a little too far to identify.
“Boy, what I wouldn’t do for a satellite picture of that little sucker out there.”
“What was that?” Tork asked, lost in thought.
“Tork, I have movement at three o’clock but just can’t make it out.” Cal blinked to clear his vision. “It is gone now. Looked like a large cylinder had come up out of the ground and then went down again. The heat waves are distorting everything, making it hard to focus.”
Tork was having the same problems. The heat waves were so bad it was almost impossible to focus on any one object too long before you started getting dizzy from the dancing heat. “We’re going to be out of water by tonight, Cal. We’ll need to go down to the Jeep and fill our water jugs. It’ll be a good time then to look at the object you saw. Did you get a fix on it?”
“Sorry, Tork. I lost it before I could get a distance. Just know the direction.”
“Keep looking for it and get a compass reading if you can. Finding it will be easier.”
“Okay, Tork,” replied Cal. With his glasses on a short tripod, Cal aligned them to the last area he thought he saw the object. He then set his compass in line with it so he could get a true reading when they spotted it. “God, it’s hot,” he cried.
Tork rolled over on his back and wiped the sweat from his eyebrows. “Yeah, it’s hot, Cal. If we can’t come up with anything today, we’ll go looking for those vehicles we’ve seen. I’m a little curious about what they were up to.”
*****
Colonel Duncan entered the equipment garage looking for the security team they had sent out early in the morning. As he started crossing over to the office, a tall man in desert dress hailed him. “Colonel, just a moment please.”
The colonel stopped and turned. He was in luck as the man shut the door on a Humvee and walked over to him. “Colonel, we set up ground bugs every meter in three rows so they all intersect each other, about a meter apart. Believe me, sir, there is no chance in hell they can slip by us from the old road all the way to the strip and the access doors and entrances. We’ve run a zigzag. If they manage to get by one of them, they’ll walk right into the other one in front.”
Colonel Duncan looked at the security officer. “What happens when you pick them up?”
“Well, Colonel, we’ll be able to pinpoint their direction of travel, and the computer will predict their possible destination, and we’ll be there when they arrive.”
The colonel looked pleased. “I want to know the minute you get a reading. No matter where or what I’m doing, you call me. Understand?”
“Yes, sir,” he replied.
*****
Night had fallen and the cool night air from the desert was starting to chill Tork’s bones. “Cal, it looks like we’re in luck. Little light from the big cheese tonight.”
“Yeah, I’ve had to use my night glasses to see anything at all,” replied Cal.
Earlier Cal had been scanning for the cylinder he had seen during the day, and his vigilance had paid off. It was almost dark when it came out of the ground again, and this time the earth had cooled enough for him to see through the heat waves and pinpoint the target. It was about two hundred meters out and had stayed up more than two minutes, just enough time for a bearing check and distance.
Tork crawled out from under the enclosure and stood up, stretching out the kinks and looking around the area at the same time. “Come on, Cal. Let’s move out. Maybe we can spot that cylinder of yours and find out what those vehicles were up to.”
Cal secured his gear, grabbed the night glasses, and stood up. He too stretched out the kinks from the long day and got his bearing from his compass. Turning toward the direction of the cylinder, he said, “Tork, I figured it to be about three to four hundred yards, just to the right of my position. We should be able to walk right up to its location. It should be easy to find, whatever it is. I think it’s sitting down in the ground and raised hydraulically. We should find a good part of it sticking up just out of the ground when we find it.”
Tork grunted in approval and started toward the last area they had seen the vehicles earlier in the day. Now maybe they could find out just what they were up to and what all that stop and starting was about. “Come on, Cal. Let’s check the trucks we saw first, and then we can see what that cylinder is.”
The two of them spread out about fifty feet apart and started walking toward the area they had seen the trucks. Carefully, and with their night glasses on, they scanned ahead hoping they would not run into a trip wire or another sensor out there waiting for them. Tork found the first set of tire tracks and motioned Cal over to them. They walked slowly along the tracks and could see where the vehicles had stopped and they started again. It appeared no one had dismounted from the vehicles; they just seemed to stop and then start again.
They had gone about hundred yards and Tork spoke, “Cal, I’m going to move over to the next set of tracks. We’ve only seen this set and they’ve been made by only one vehicle. We saw three out here this morning. I’m guessing they were abreast and not in line. Just seemed to look that way to us. Give me a few minutes to find them, and then we can follow them together.”
Cal had walked another hundred yards seeing nothing unusual when he spotted a canister just to his left, sticking up out of the ground. It looked like a can at first, and then he noticed what looked like an antenna sticking out of the top of it. He stopped and adjusted the focus on his night glasses. It was not a can. He walked up to it and could see it was some kind of a device he hadn’t seen before. He turned and made sure his flashlight had its red cover over the lens, and then he flashed it toward Tork.
Tork had been scanning around him and had been unable to see anything