Page 90 of Badlands

Clearly, they couldn’t hear her over the sound of the wind and water. She started down slowly, one hand and one foot at a time. It wasn’t far—about fifteen feet. It wasn’t even as hard as it had looked from above. A moment later, she felt her feet land on a solid bed of sand. She sighed with relief, then started to look for Nora and Skip.

She froze as something cold pressed into her ear.

“Don’t move,” came a hoarse voice. “Now: hands up slowly.”

She raised her arms. A hand went into her pocket and pulled out the Glock. Then her night-vision goggles were yanked from her head and she was searched more thoroughly, her cell phone and badge also being confiscated.

“Okay,” the voice said. “Turn around. Slowly.”

Corrie turned, arms still raised. There he was, the crazybastard, covered in white with black handprints, pointing the monster .45 directly at her. And behind him stood a half dozen red-painted men. Skip and Nora were in their midst, hands already bound behind their backs and stone knives at their throats.

“You’re all coming back with us,” said the figure in white. “And we’re going to finish what we started.”

55

WHAT DOES THATmean, thought Watts:It’s not good?

As if in answer, the helicopter dropped like a stone, so quickly Watts felt himself rise out of his seat and his harness pin him in the air; and then the chopper lurched back up, slamming him down again. The engine made a strained, grinding noise as the chopper recovered its equilibrium. Watts stomped down hard on a sudden, rising panic. He’d been in turbulence on an airplane before, of course—but this was different, way different. He found himself being not simply jolted up and down, but rather thrown around in every direction.

A moment of calm passed and then the turbulence lashed the chopper once again. He gripped the seat rests, looking out the window. Solid black—no lights at all. Since their course took them northwestward, Watts figured they must be over the Ah-shi-sle-pah and Bisti badlands now, where nobody lived except a few resilient Navajos.

“Folks,” came the captain’s calm voice, “what we’ve got here is some clear-air turbulence.” He paused. “I’m going to try to go around it.”

The chopper banked and jounced again, hard. Although Watts was scared, he was even more frightened of showing it. He swallowed, hoping they would get through it as quickly as possible. He would say nothing, ask no questions, keep his face set with an unconcerned expression. He glanced around at the HRT: their faces were still impassive, but he could guess that similar thoughts were probably going through their heads. He looked over at Sharp, who was shrugging around in his seat, eyes closed, as if finding the most comfortable position for a nap.

There really wasn’t anything to worry about, Watts told himself as he watched Sharp settling down: the FBI had top helicopter pilots, and they wouldn’t be flying if it wasn’t safe.

Would they?

Nobody spoke as the chopper continued thudding through the night. Watts looked up and saw the stars through a faint haze of dust. He was familiar with this kind of weather in New Mexico: one of those weird windstorms that arrived on a clear night in the desert, a night without clouds or rain—just brutal gusts and scarifying dust.

Lowering his gaze, he could now make out the faint glow of a town on the far northern horizon—actually, two faint glows, side by side, which could only be Farmington and Bloomfield. That meant they must be planning to circle around the turbulence from the north.

“How long is this detour going to take?” he asked the pilot.

“Hard to say. Thirty minutes, maybe more. The problem is, you can’t see clear-air turbulence on radar, so I can’t determine precisely how extensive it is. That’s what makes it dangerous—that, along with updrafts and dust.”

Watts sat back, frustration mixing with his nervousness. A lot could happen to Corrie and the others in thirty minutes.

56

HANDS BOUND BEHINDtheir backs, Nora and the rest were marched up and out of the canyon on what was evidently a hidden trail the cultists had used to get ahead of them, circle around, and set up their ambush. Nora realized that as they’d been struggling up the slot canyon, thinking they were escaping, the cult members had evidently divined their plan and been lying in wait, ready to spring their trap.

The head cultist—the figure in white—was carrying a big Mag flashlight in addition to the revolver. Several others had headlamps strapped around their red-painted hair. Nobody spoke except Skip, who—his tongue apparently loosened by a cocktail of dismay, resentment, and drugs—started up a refrain of insult. “You people are a bunch of poseurs,” he was saying loudly. And “Wannabe jerkoffs playing Indian with stone knives and fake rituals, supposedly divining the wisdom of the ancients—but modern conveniences like flashlights and guns are okay, is that it?” And “Too bad we shot up your founding dickster, Oskarbi, into confetti.” He was ignored until he said, “Nora, can you believe this clown in white, with all the scaryhandprints all over him, is by day just a slope-shouldered academic named Bromley—”

This was when the figure in white turned abruptly and whacked Skip upside the head with the butt of his gun, sending him sprawling on the ground. Two handlers seized Skip and hauled him back to his feet, dazed, blood streaming down his face.

For an instant, Nora was overwhelmed by shock and disbelief. The vicious, bloodthirsty leader was Bromley, the jerk Corrie had interviewed? But almost immediately the pieces fit together and it began to make sense. He hadn’t looked like a mentally disturbed cult leader, a Charles Manson type—but wasn’t that what people always said about serial killers, when it was too late? But here, in this get-up—a full-blown psycho.

Skip, drugged or not, seemed to have learned quite a bit since he was initially captured. But in retrospect it made sense. Oskarbi hadn’t gone to Mexico. He’d died in the canyon. Bromley must have taken over the cult. Briefly, she wondered how Oskarbi had died. In any event, his acolytes had lovingly preserved his body, while no doubt feeding the rumors that he’d gone back to Mexico.

Skip, bleeding and now silent, was pushed forward along the trail, followed by Nora and Corrie and the rest of the cultists. The trail ran along the canyon rim for several miles before plunging down through a hidden cleft in the rimrock.

It occurred to Nora that, from this vantage point along the rim, someone could possibly make out flames at the spot where Skip and Edison had made camp. And somebody with powerful enough binoculars could keep a watch over that side of the river—to see if, indeed, she and the rest had tried escaping in that direction.

The cleft descended to the canyon through a series of steepstone staircases, cleverly constructed within cracks and fissures in the rock—clearly an ancient trail. When they emerged onto the canyon floor, Nora could see the glow of the fire on the mesa—the place where the rituals were being conducted. They were marched along the canyon bottom, then up to the mesa top. After being manhandled to the opening of the kiva, their hands were untied.

The white-painted figure—Bromley—pointed with the gun. “Down.”

---