The Kill Button Read online

  It was a big mystery to her, and it seemed as if both folders would stay top secret. He didn’t want her to see them, not even the titles. Some of what she’d been logging had been interesting—Nazi intelligence cover names, midget submarines, the secret World War II diary of U427, whoever that had been. But Dewey and his bosses hadn’t even been born back then, so who cared? Then she saw him standing beside her with the files under his arm, still looking worried.

  “What are you doing this weekend?” he asked. “I’m staying home.”

  “Two girlfriends and I are driving to New York for a show and some shopping.”

  “Oh, that should be fun.” He stood there a moment. “Anyway, would you remember something for me … SiddhArtha? It’s no big deal, but don’t tell anybody I ever said anything to you.”

  She searched his eyes for some explanation. “Is there something about those files that I should know about? I won’t say a word.”

  He shook his head and walked away.

  NEW YORK CITY

  The next afternoon Dewey caught an airline commuter to the La Guardia Airport and then a taxi to Manhattan, stopping at the Palace Hotel. He went inside and waited in the lobby until dark, carefully watching all the doors. When he was sure no one had followed him, he walked out, found 501 Madison Avenue, and checked the building’s directory inside the door. After a minute he came back out, returned to the Palace, and stood out front looking at St. Patrick’s Cathedral just across the street. Its fairyland spires, bathed in blue and gold by the flood lights along Fifth Avenue, seemed to reach almost as high as the nearby skyscrapers. The pointed arches, flying buttresses, gables, crockets, and foils looked warm, holy, and honey-colored in the otherwise cold city.

  He crossed Madison and walked along Fiftieth Street until he found the vestibule, remembering the cathedral had been built on the lines of a Latin cross, the entrance leading into the nave, or body, and the two arms being the transepts. People were filing in for Saturday night mass. He followed them, blessing himself with the holy water and kneeling in a pew, thinking the services might help settle his nerves. He would need all the help he could get with what he was planning to do. The father came out in his white alb, green chasuble, and rainbow stole and started the liturgy.

  The prayers and songs didn’t help him forget the reason he’d come to New York, and so after a few minutes he decided to leave. Never feeling more overcome with emotion, he crept out of the door and looked up and down Fifth Avenue. He had an hour to waste and wondered where he should spend it, since the only thing he liked about midtown Manhattan was the anonymity of its streets. Seeing Saks Fifth Avenue on the next block, he set off for the crosswalk. All of a sudden, he saw that he was being followed.

  Panicking, he ran, hiding among the people on the sidewalks. Next, he turned and ran a different way, looking back to see if he was still being tailed, although now he was so winded he couldn’t run any farther. Seeing a construction barricade ahead, he followed it, pulled some plywood loose, and squeezed through. He stopped still for a moment, sensing the safety of the darkness, but the horror of it as well. Creeping forward, he slid down an embankment and crawled until he bumped into something. He stood up and waited.

  Distant and very soft, something thumped in the darkness. He held his breath and listened. A speck of light lay on his left where he thought he might escape. But, he still waited.

  “I know you’re down here.”

  The words ripped through him, and now he ran toward the pinpoint of light. Tripping, he somersaulted, then crawled on his hands and knees. His heart was pounding so hard he couldn’t hear if someone was following him.

  “What were you going to tell those people, you little bastard?”

  He crawled again, bawling, but trying to swallow his tears so he could stay silent. Then he sensed there was someone just ahead, so he stopped once more.

  “I saw you go in there. Now tell me, you little piece of shit.”

  The voice was only a few feet away, and he knew there was no use in trying to run.

  “I wasn’t—”

  “Don’t lie to me. Tell me what you were going to do and I’ll let you go.”

  “No—” He couldn’t stop crying because there was no use in believing that he would ever live—for him there was only blackness and terror and no hope at all, just like having strychnine in his stomach. He lost control and wet himself.

  “I’m not going to ask you again.” The words were getting closer. “Either tell me or I’ll choke it out of you.”

  “Nothing—” He curled himself into a fetal position, wrapping his head with his hands and arms. “I didn’t do anything.”

  All at once a shout echoed from the opposite side of the construction site, two or three hundred feet away. “What’s going on down there? Get the hell out of there or I’ll call the cops.”

  Screaming for help, Dewey rolled to his feet and ran, trying to reach the shout. Then his brain turned blood red and he realized someone had whipped a wire around his neck and was garroting him. He flew off his feet and clawed at his throat, tearing at his skin with his fingers while trying to get them underneath the wire. Every body part turned to pins and needles and started weakening. Finally he saw himself dying, passing into nothingness, a ghostly glow just a few feet away.

  The shout came again. “All right, I’m calling the cops like I said. You assholes are in big trouble.”

  The killer twisted the wire so it wouldn’t loosen, dropped the body, and turned away. Using night-vision glasses, he picked his way through the steel and concrete piled around the construction project. When he reached the plywood barricade and saw he was safe, he shoved the night-glasses into his sport jacket and stepped out onto the sidewalk. Seeing the holy mass had just ended, he mixed with the people leaving St. Patrick’s and followed them away.

  CHAPTER 3

  THE MOGOLLON RIM

  The sunrise brightened the red cliffs and filled the valley with cold light, leaving its stream and dirt road highlighted in the sun’s reflection. Anasazi cliff ruins, like sandcastles, stood against the canyon walls and white-faced cattle grazed on the grassland below. Juniper, pinyon, and paloverde covered the mesas wherever the scree hadn’t spread and shadowed the mountainsides dark blue.

  Now Harry knew where the parachute had dropped him. In the past he’d flown F-16 Vipers off the Luke Air Force Base, and the area around him was a hundred or so miles northeast of Phoenix. He had landed in the red-rock country, south of the Mogollon Rim, Sedona-like with all its rosy buttes, sandstone, and blood-red canyons. Ordinarily, the scenery would have inspired him, but now it meant he’d die if he didn’t get down off the mountaintop. Without water and warmer clothing, he couldn’t survive another night.

  He groaned because of the precipices below him and the beating he’d taken when he had ejected from the Aurora. So damn far down and so sore from head to foot. Throwing off the parachute he’d wrapped himself in after he’d landed, he stuffed it in a hole and added his helmet and spacesuit, leaving him in a white jumpsuit. He covered the equipment with rocks and then looked for the best way down, praying he could reach the stream water before he weakened too much. The decent would be on the sunny side of the mountain and the midday heat would kill him if given enough time.

  Rock after rock, bush by bush, ridge after ridge, he climbed lower, closing his eyes and resting against the rock faces at times, wondering why airplanes didn’t bother him but sheer mountainsides scared him half silly. An aberration of some sort, he supposed. Still, he told himself not to look down on the steepest parts. An hour passed, then two hours. The need for water drove him crazy. If he could only get down to the water before it was too late.

  Then he heard them. Buzzzzzz! Rattlesnakes. God, how he hated rattlesnakes, and he almost wished he were back in space. Picking up a rock, he threw it, trying to drive the yellow and black diamondbacks just below him away. They were sunning themselves on a ledge he needed to cross and he didn’t have time a
nd strength enough to find another way around—not if he wanted to get down before nightfall and live. Looking around, he found a century plant, snapped off its dead stalk, and while inching down, used it to drive the snakes back, striking and spitting venom they were so mad. When would his ordeal ever end?

  Finally, he reached a gentler slope and fought his way through the thornbush to the grassland below. Now he knew that he was safe, even though it would take another hour or so to reach the water. He picked up his pace, despite the bruises and scratches he felt all over his body. Once he reached the stream, he could rest and decide what to do. Groom Lake’s reorbiting command had been haunting him. They must have known that it would have meant his certain death, lost in space, the future specimen of some interplanetary archaeologist wanting to examine a human left freeze-dried a thousand years. What in hell had gone wrong? he wondered. And why had Skeleter, the head of the president’s National Security Council, flown out for the test flight? That seemed strange.

  He crossed the road he’d seen earlier and headed downhill toward the stream, then saw an old blue pickup with a flanged hood and red dust rolling behind its tailgate driving toward him. Feeling the joy of seeing someone who could help him, he turned and waved his arms … though he wondered how he’d explain where he’d come from, since the rancher would want to know why he was wandering around in the middle of nowhere.

  The pickup stopped and the rancher stared at him, agape, his forearm hanging out the side window and so sunburned that Harry thought at first the man might be African-American. The dark face looked almost as leathery as the arm, although aesthetically brightened by Indian eyes and black hair falling below a cowboy hat, weather-beaten also from so many years of use. There was something about the face that took Harry back to the Montana he’d once known, to an old way of life he’d known. There were two dogs in back as well, black and white border collies, taught not to bark, but willing to attack him in a blink of an eye if he so much as raised his arm too high. Smiling, he stepped forward. “Do you have any water for a thirsty man?” he asked. “I was on my way to the creek when I saw you coming.”

  “Sure I got water, and come around the cab and get some.” The craggy-faced Indian shook hands with a calloused grip, one having always worked hard. “What in hell are you doing out here? It looks like you been dumped on your head and clawed by wildcats. You all right?”

  Still smiling, Harry walked around the pickup and quickly searched for the right answer. By the time he opened the passenger door, he’d come up with one. He wouldn’t lie too much, just enough to keep his explanations to a minimum, and misleading as well. He sank into the front seat.

  “I’m okay, just beat up a little. My name’s Harry Sharp and my experimental plane quit over the mountains. I ended up in the rocks and it took me until now to get down. Not having any water was the worst of it.”

  “Mine’s Joe Echohawk, but folks around here mainly call me Apache Joe. Here, drink out of this jug, but take it easy and don’t make yourself sick. Give yourself time to rehydrate.” Joe pushed a beat-up red and white water jug across the seat, then added, “You was flying one of those contraptions with a snowmobile engine clean up there? Godalmighty, no wonder it cut out. What in hell did you think you were doing? There ain’t no airports around here.”

  “It was a little bigger than that, but you’re right about me staying lower. I was on my way back to Las Vegas.”

  “What do you do up there? You a pilot or something?”

  Harry drank a cup of water. “Yes, I work at one of the airports.” He needed to change the subject and get Joe onto something else. “Say, what’s the best way to get back home?” he asked, filling the cup again. “Is there someplace I can get a ride?”

  “Well, not anymore today. It’s way too late, and besides, you’re coming home with me and getting cleaned up. You look awful. Ain’t nobody around my place except me and the dogs, and we don’t get a lot of company. We’ll figure something out in the morning.” Wheeling the pickup around, Joe started back down the road, shifting, but running slow. “How come you’re wearing a Lockheed jumpsuit?” he asked. “You work for them?”

  Disconsolately, Harry laughed and slowly shook his head. There wasn’t much use in lying anymore, since Joe had already figured out most of it, or would in a few more questions. He needed to end it. “Not anymore,” he answered. “I think I’ve just lost my job.”

  Joe drove on, now and then looking out his window at the red Herefords grazing along the road. Next, he bore in a little harder. “The reason I was driving around out here was I heard this God-awful noise last night. Woke me up, you know. Figured something must’ve crashed, so I’ve been snooping around.”

  Harry drank a third cup of water. “Well, I’m thankful you did.”

  “Is there much left of that airplane?” Joe looked straight at him. “Any chance somebody could find it?”

  Harry compressed his lips and shook his head again. “Nope, I’m afraid it’s long gone.”

  With his black eyes gleaming, Joe next asked, “Is this one of those deals where if I ask too many questions you’ll have to have me killed?”

  “Jeez … not me,” Harry protested with a smile, sensing the end of it. Joe was smart and from a much wiser generation and there wouldn’t be any more questions. “Do I look as bad as you said?” he then asked. “I feel like I could sleep for almost a week.”

  “Worse, and if anybody sees you in your condition, they might call the sheriff and get him asking questions that you don’t want to answer. My place is over the hill, and when we get there you can wash up and put on some of my son’s old clothing. He’s a big shot now at a casino in Scottsdale and don’t come out here much anymore. I got a daughter too, but she’s an artist in Santa Fe.”

  “How many head you run?” Looking at the cattle along the road, Harry let himself slip back to the plain vernacular he’d grown up with. “The browsing looks good.”

  “Not many, just enough to keep me and the dogs out of trouble.” Joe’s eyes grew a little humid.

  “I love it out here, and it’s beautiful country. This is the place if you want to live till a hundred. It’s real peaceful.”

  They topped the hill that Joe had mentioned earlier and looked down … down on paradise, Harry thought to himself. A ranch house, the outside bleached bone white by the sun, sat beside the stream he’d seen from above, although now it rippled through blue rocks. The roof, corrugated metal the years had weathered to rust patina, looked almost like fine leather, with a redbrick chimney along one eve. The lawn was all crabgrass and bushy with wild cottontails sitting in the shade. Across the lawn stood a barn of vertical, sunbaked boards, its roof the same patina as the house and with hay falling out of its loft. Sycamore and cottonwood towered everywhere, shadowing everything, leaving a profusion of colors with one becoming another.

  They stopped and stepped out. Both dogs jumped down, and the rabbits seemed unafraid.

  Harry ran his hand through his hair. “I’ve died and gone to heaven. This is a wonderful place you have here.”

  “I took it over from my dad after I got back from Vietnam, the police action as the damned politicians once liked to say. It gives me everything I need in my old age. I sell a few head once and a while, keep a garden, and don’t need much else. Got money in the bank I don’t even know what to do with. Kids sure don’t need it, and maybe don’t even deserve it.” Then Joe faced him. “Say, you’re from the West someplace, ain’t you?”

  “Near Helena, and I grew up on a place like this. It’s a great way for a young person to start life.”

  “Well, maybe not anymore. Most young folks now head for Phoenix first chance they get or just sit on some goddamn reservation. This lifestyle will all be gone by the time they figure out what they’ve given up, and then it’ll be way too late. The government will have taken back all the land and kept it for themselves. Pretty soon there won’t be room for folks like me who want to be left alone.”


  Joe’s politics shook Harry from his memories. The government. He had heard enough talk through the years to imagine the danger of flying out of Area 51 and losing the nation’s most super-secret airplane. The only thing worse might be trying to assassinate the president. He had suddenly become a pariah, a nonperson, a big threat, someone who would have to be dealt with if he were found alive. The White House, the Pentagon, the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency, the whole alphabet soup of Washington, D.C. would be hunting for him. Had anyone ever heard of an ex-test pilot from Area 51, and what had happened to all those guys? There must have been other losses of supersecret aircraft. What was the best thing to do?

  He might as well find out, he thought, since chances were he was just making a big deal out of nothing. Everyone would be thrilled that he had lived, and the reorbit command must have been a misunderstanding on the controller’s part.

  “Joe, do you have a telephone? I need to make a call.”

  “Don’t you want to clean up first?”

  “No, I’d better call in.”

  Joe led the way into the house, pointed to the phone, and then left, letting the screen door slap shut behind him. The front room was filled with oak furniture, old easy chairs, and Navajo rugs on an uneven wood floor, but with everything as neat as a pin.

  Harry dialed the code that would let him into the Air Force’s phone center and pressed the star twice to stop anyone from tracing his call. The system had been designed to protect its users from cyberspace spies, although he’d use it against the government this time, just in case. The line rang and picked up.