be open land, where they once had an artillery range.
It’s very deep underground, hidden out there.
But Jimmy, at least, is here. And Orson.” After a hesitation, I said,
“Alive? ” Roosevelt said, “Mungojerrie doesn’t know.”
“Cats know things, ” Sasha reminded him.
“Not this thing, ” Roosevelt said.
As we stared at the hangar, I’m sure each of us was remembering
Delacroix’s audiotape testimony about the Mystery Train. Red sky.
Black trees. A f uttering within … Doogie removed the backpack from
the Hummer, slipped it over his shoulders, closed the tailgate, and
said, “Let’s go.” During the brief time that the cargo-hold light was
on, I saw the weapon he was carrying.
It was a wicked-looking piece.
Aware of my interest, he said, “Uzi machine pistol. Extended magazine.”
“Is that legal? ”
“It would be if it wasn’t converted to full automatic fire.” Doogie
headed toward the hangar. With the breeze stirring his blond mane and
wavy beard, he looked like a Viking warrior leaving a conquered village,
heading toward a longboat with a bag of plundered valuables on his back.
All he needed to complete the image was a horned helmet.
Into my mind’s eye came an image of Doogie in a tuxedo and such a
helmet, leading a super model through a perfect tango in a dance
competition.
There are two faces to the coin of my rich imagination.
The man-size door, inset in one of the forty-foot-high steel hangar
doors, was closed. I couldn’t remember whether Bobby and I had shut it
on our way out the night before. Probably not. We hadn’t been in a
clean-up-after-yourself, turn-out-the-lights-and-close-the-door mood
when we’d fled this place.
At the door, Doogie extracted two flashlights from jumpsuit pockets and
gave them to Sasha and Roosevelt, so that Bobby and I would have both
hands free for the shotguns.
Doogie tried the door. It opened inward.
Sasha’s crossing-the-threshold technique was even smoother than her
on-air patter at KBAY. She moved to the left of the door before she
switched on the light and swept the beam across the cavernous hangar,
which was too large to be entirely within the reach of any flashlight.
But she didn’t shoot at anyone, and no one shot at her, so it seemed
likely that our presence was not yet known.
Bobby followed her, shotgun at the ready. With the cat in his arms,
Roosevelt entered after Bobby. I followed, and Doogie brought up the
rear, quietly closing the door behind us, as we had found it.
I looked expectantly at Roosevelt.
He stroked the cat and whispered, “We’ve got to go down.” Because I knew
the way, I led the group. Second star to the right, and straight on till
morning. Watch out for the pirates and the crocodile with the ticking
clock inside.
We crossed the vast room under the tracks that once supported a mobile
crane, past the massive steel supports that held up these rails, moving
cautiously around the deep wells in the floor, where hydraulic
mechanisms had once been housed.
As we progressed, swords of shadow and sabers of light leaped off the
elevated steel crane rails and silently fenced with one another across
the walls and the curved ceiling. Most of the high clerestory windows
were broken out, but reflections flared in the remaining few, like white
sparks from clashing blades.
Suddenly I was halted by a sense of wrongness I can’t adequately
describe, a change in the air too subtle to define, a mild tingle on my
face, a quivering of the hairs in my ear canals, as if they were
vibrating to a sound beyond my range of hearing.
Sasha and Roosevelt must have felt it, too, because they turned in
circles, searching with their flashlights.
Doogie held the Uzi pistol in both hands.
Bobby was near one of the cylindrical steel posts that supported the
crane tracks. He reached out, touched it, and whispered, “Bro.
” As I moved to his side, I heard a ringing so faint that I could not
hold fast to the sound, which repeatedly came and went. When I put my
fingertips against the post, I detected vibrations passing through the