Chapter Four
We were thirty minutes along a miserable stretch of dirt road, the last leg of our trip to Fajada Butte. Shadows from a late afternoon sun slanted across the landscape, making the features of Chaco Canyon pop in dramatic relief. We’d taken the highway south from Farmington, New Mexico, then a one-lane service route that looped northwest, and now followed this washboard trail that was beating our Porsche Panamera to scrap iron. With every scrape and bone-jarring bump, pieces rattled loose from the car and tumbled into the dust behind us.
We’d made great time on the highway, the Porsche and its turbocharged 550 horsepower engine howled along at one hundred thirty miles per hour. Time from Durango through Farmington to the last turnoff: one hour, twenty minutes.
Though I had plenty of questions about our mission, we hadn’t talked much because Jolie had driven with NASCAR focus as we zigzagged through traffic.
That was then. Now we crept along at fifteen miles per hour, our maximum possible speed as we bottomed out the shocks on countless potholes along the narrow, corrugated path. Dense, weedy shrubs clawed the Porsche’s paint job. Rocks seemed to leap up from the ground and smash against the frame, as if the native spirits took glee at pummeling this masterpiece of white man engineering into junk.
Jeeps and pickups chattered past the opposite way, the passengers giving us the stink eye for trashing this expensive automobile.
Ordinarily, subjecting any machine to such abuse would’ve made me groan in shame. But this wasn’t my car, and if the owner of this Porsche didn’t have insurance, then boo hoo for him. Besides, served him right for stopping for a hitchhiker like Jolie. He remained on the back seat, asleep, kept unconscious by our grazing on his blood and the enzymes we had pumped into him.
Jolie’s face was a placid mask behind her sunglasses even as she fought to control a steering wheel that vibrated like a paint shaker. When I’d met her years ago in Key West, she and Carmen were cruising on choppers, wearing denim cutoffs and cowboy boots, looking hotter than the neon colors of their bikini tops. Jolie was definitely a good-time girl who complemented Carmen’s brassy outlandishness.
Jolie enjoyed a public brawl almost as much as a bout of casual sex. She was older than me by two centuries, maybe three. I wasn’t sure because all women, even the undead, are circumspect about revealing their true age. The Araneum put her sinister talents to use as an enforcer. She was more than an exceptional specimen of womankind and a powerful female vampire; she was a weapon.
We were going to need all of those talents to rescue Carmen from the aliens, however that was to happen, and then in our fight against Phaedra.
Jolie took her foot off the gas, and the Porsche coasted to a bumpy stop. “Warning light came on.”
“Which one?”
“Take your pick.”
I stared through the dusty windshield at the hills around distant Chaco Canyon. Long way to walk. I got out, hoping I could jury-rig what had busted and coax a few more miles out of the Porsche.
The bodywork appeared to have been whipped with chains by a car-hating sadist. Everything below the beltline had been gnawed to tatters. Nothing remained of the left outside mirror. The right hung from its stub like a loose eyeball. Remnants of the front fascia were jammed inside both forward wheel wells. Tumbleweeds and a prickly pear clung to where the front bumper had been.
Something puddled beneath the engine, and I crouched to look. Oil streamed from the belly pan and pooled on the dirt.
“What do you think?” Jolie shouted from her side. “Can you fix it?”
My diagnosis in three words. “No. Goddamn. Way.”
I straightened and looked about to take stock of where we were. Sagebrush and clumps of grass dotted the low hills surrounding us. To the north, Fajada Butte was still too far away to pick out from the rugged cliffs of Chaco Canyon. I checked the GPS on my cell phone.
Jolie yelled, “What’s our location?”
The phone had no signal, and I tucked it back into my pocket. “Someplace between nowhere and lost.”
I spied a tower to the left, a hundred meters off the road and along a gentle rise. The tower looked about thirty-feet high and was painted beige to blend in with the desert. At first I wished it was a cellular phone mast, hoping that modern technology was finally creeping into this part of New Mexico. But the tower lacked the standard pillow-shaped cell-phone antennae, and I had gotten no signal.
Scanning the horizon, I spotted another one to the north, a spike against the rugged backdrop and possibly another one farther out. Hard to tell at this distance.
I lifted my sunglasses for a better peek but it didn’t help.
Looking south, I saw another tower. And way south, another shimmering in the haze. And farther still, one more. I should’ve spotted them from the road, but I hadn’t been paying attention to anything except feeling the potholes sucker punch my kidneys.
The towers should’ve followed the meandering chicken-scratch path—the most convenient way to haul and erect them. And they weren’t in a straight line. The towers seemed planted in an arc. Facing northwest. Centered on … Fajada Butte.
Where Coyote wanted to meet.
Jolie climbed out the driver’s door. She buckled back into her motorcycle boots and walked toward me.
I asked, “What do you know about Fajada Butte?”
A hand up to shade her face, Jolie swiveled at the hips to study the towers. “It’s a big fucking rock sticking out of the desert. Plus a Navajo spiritual center. An Anasazi Stonehenge. A New-Age psychic vortex. UFO landing platform. No surprise that weird things are supposed to happen there. My turn for a question. Is it me or is there something strange about these towers?”
“Definitely strange. For a couple of reasons. One, they’re oriented toward Fajada Butte. Two, they’re here.” I started hiking to the closest tower, Jolie at my heels.
The tower jutted from a rocky, sandy slope. A flat rectangular box sat on top of the tower. Each side of the box was about two-feet square and angled slightly to the inside of the arc.
Up close, I could see the tower was a metal post roughly a foot in diameter with small lift rings welded up its side. I kicked dirt from the base and exposed a concrete footing. These towers were here to stay.
I circled the tower and discovered a postcard-sized placard attached at eye level. The placard listed a serial number, followed by what I figured were technical specs, and this: Property of Cress Tech International.
“The plot thickens.”
“What do you mean?” Jolie read the placard over my shoulder.
“Remember Hilton Head?”
“How could I forget?”
That was where we had lost Carmen to the aliens. The hotel complex on the island disguised a safe room for Clayborn. “The alien facility on Hilton Head was built and operated by Cress Tech International.” I pointed to what was written on the placard. “The same people who erected these.”
Jolie backtracked from the tower. “Fuck me.”
“Hold that thought.” I also stepped back and kept my eyes fixed to the box mounted on the tower. The box had a transparent prism on top.
My kundalini noir tingled and not in a good way.
“Now what?” Jolie had been watching me, sunglasses raised to read my aura. I’m sure it sparked with plenty of dismay.
“I know what that box is. A psychotronic diviner.”
“How is that different from the projector those bastards had on the truck?”
“This one only detects psychic energy transmissions. The Araneum gave me a copy that I had used to home in on Phaedra back before I turned her.”
Jolie lowered her shades. She spread her arms to encompass the tower array. “So this was built to detect psychic energy?”
“I’m guessing more.” I stared at the diviner and paged through my memory for details. “Here’s what I remember. The Roswell UFO had been taken to Rocky Flats for study. The Araneum built a psychotronic diviner from plans sketched by a Doctor Milan Blavatsky, one of the Rocky Flats scientists assigned to reverse engineer the alien technology.”
“The government knows about psychic energy?”
“For decades, I’m sure. Mostly to experiment with one crackpot scheme after another. Remote viewing. Mind reading.”
“But these work?” Jolie jabbed at the psychotronic diviner. “Right?”
“They do.”
“Can they detect us?”
“Not unless they found a way to improve them. And even if they did, their surveillance would be cluttered with signals. Everything with an aura transmits psychic energy. Me. You. The rabbits. The birds. Even plants. What the diviners detect are bursts of concentrated psychic energy.”
“Felix, the closer we get to Fajada Butte, the clearer the answers are supposed to get. But look at what we have in this crazy-ass bitch of a mystery.” Jolie counted on her fingers. “Psychic energy. That murderous wench, Phaedra. Vampire assassins. A super-secret government contractor.”
“And Carmen in outer space.”
“Yeah, that.” Visibly exasperated, she brandished one hand, all five fingers extended. “Is there anything else?”
“Chale locita, don’t forget me.” The voice surprised us from behind.
Talons and fangs extending, Jolie and I whipped about.
“Hey, vatos. ’Bout time you showed up.” It was Coyote.