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“All right. Though we’re so far out in the sticks I doubt that anybody could find the grave…if it even is one. And they’re called the state police here, not the highway patrol.”
“Do what you think is right—I have confidence in your judgment,” Greet said. “By the way, Barbara Cartwright should be landing in Albuquerque about now. She’s bringing her sniper rifle in case we need a stand-off shot.”
“That’s something I hadn’t thought of, but should have,” Letty said. “I had lunch with her last week, which seems about six months ago.”
“I’ll get her a car and put her in the same hotel you’re in, probablythat Holiday Inn you were in before,” Greet said. “She should be in Santa Fe in a couple of hours, and we can figure out in the morning where she should go next.”
When they got off the call, Hawkins asked, “Who’s this Barbara?”
“CIA. With their Special Activities Division. Don’t tell anyone. She’s a friend of mine, she was with me last year in the California situation.”
“Ah. The one nobody can talk about.”
“That’s the one.”
—
Wright was leaningagainst the patrol car when they got back to it, and asked, “How did the secret phone call go?”
He was smiling, big square white teeth, but didn’t seem especially happy.
Letty: “Listen, Jerry, I don’t want to ask you to do this without knowing the problem—but you can’t tell anyone. If you do, you could create a panic. This is a top-secret situation…”
“Aliens?”
Hawkins frowned: “Why would you think that?”
“Because this is New Mexico,” Wright said. “You know about Roswell?”
Hawkins: “Yes, but…No, this is not about aliens. A disturbed individual—an Englishman—may have contrived to create a hybrid virus. He may have combined a very infectious measles virus with one of the deadliest viruses known, much, much, much worse than Covid. His intention is to kill off most of the world’s population to save the world from global warming and other population effects.”
Wright didn’t respond for a moment, then said, “That sounds crazier than aliens.”
Letty nodded: “Yes. If that’s a grave back there, it’s possible that there are some infectious bodies inside of it. A team from Fort Detrick will be excavating the area tomorrow. Detrick is where the Army does germ warfare research.”
“What if there are no bodies? If it’s just a soft spot?”
“That’d be a good thing,” Hawkins said. “Though we’d still need to know what Scott was doing in Lamy.”
Wright said, “What you really need is to have somebody with a gun sitting in Cross’s driveway overnight to make sure nobody gets curious about what we were doing there and goes sneaking around.”
Letty nodded: “Yes.”
“So I’ll run you to the airport in Santa Fe, talk to my dispatcher, and then get back here and sit,” Wright said.
“We’ll try to get you some relief during the night,” Letty said. “Don’t tell your relief what we told you. Just tell him to sit.”
“Don’t worry about a relief,” Wright said. “I’ll grab some cheese crackers and coffee and get back here. I’ve slept in my car before. I’ll wait until your team gets here.”
—
When they wereoff the shoulder of the road, Wright turned on his flashers and siren, and they made the run to the airport at a hundred miles an hour—five miles out to I-25, on what Wright said was one of the more dangerous highways around, down the interstate to another divided highway going north, and then into the airport.
An SUV was waiting for them, and Wright, still with lights andsiren, headed back to Lamy. Letty got a text from Greet: they’d be staying at a Holiday Inn Express.
Hawkins: “Two rooms. I really don’t wish to presume…”
“One would be enough,” Letty said. “But we don’t have to tell anybody that.”
