“Fine,” he said, finding it hard to remain calm. “I’m sorry if we bothered you.” The sudden rapid pounding of his heart sickened him. “I just figured this place would make an interesting story. But I can see I was wrong.”

The guard was noticing things also. He stared past Brent toward Anita, presumably toward her camera. Then he appeared to realize that Brent was hiding a microphone next to his leg.

“We don’t want any trouble,” Brent said.

“Of course not. You’re right. This place is really fascinating. Why don’t you stay right where you are. I’ll go find the guy you need to talk to about permission to do a story.”

He motioned for them not to move, then turned and went into the small building, where he shifted the object he’d been dragging so it couldn’t be seen any longer. Then he disappeared into the darkness.

“Anita, let’s go,” Brent said urgently. He pivoted and saw that she held the camera at her side, a seemingly innocent position.

But the camera’s red light was conspicuous. Regardless of how frightened Brent felt, he was elated that she seemed to have recorded everything.

The van was pointed away from the observatory. Anita rushed to the vehicle’s side hatch and shoved the camera onto a seat.

“There are bodies in that truck,” she said starkly.

“Yes, and he was dragging another body from that shed. What the hell happened here?” Brent hurried toward the van’s passenger door. His lungs felt starved for air, as if he was running a hundred-yard dash.

Anita rushed toward the front of the van, desperate to reach the driver’s door as quickly as she could.

Blood spurted from her left arm.

She dropped.

Brent gaped, suddenly aware of shots-loud and rapid, as if from a string of huge firecrackers. Something zipped past him. Metal clanged repeatedly. He swung toward the observatory and saw that the guard was standing in the open door of the shed, firing an assault rifle. The three rows of fences acted like screens, the chain links and wire deflecting a lot of the bullets. Chunks rose from disintegrating metal. High-voltage sparks flew.

Feeling the heat of a bullet nicking his ear, Brent rushed to Anita and dragged her to the front of the van, out of the guard’s sight. A month earlier, he’d done a story about a gunfight between three bank robbers and a solitary policeman. The policeman had survived be- cause he’d taken cover behind the front of his cruiser, behind the engine, which-Brent was told-could stop just about any bullet.

“Anita.Anita.”

He was relieved to find that she was conscious, but immediately he registered just how wide her eyes were and how rapidly she was blinking in pain. Her dark skin was pale. When he’d dragged her, she’d left a trail of blood on the dirt. The jagged wound in her upper arm was wide, and deep enough to show bone.

She’ll bleed to death.

Brent almost threw up.

Straining to remember what he’d learned in a long-ago emergency first-aid class, Brent tugged off his necktie and twisted it around the top of Anita’s left arm, above the wound. One of the instructors had insisted, Improvise. Sweating, he knotted the tie, pulled a pen from his shirt pocket, and shoved it under the tie. He twisted the pen, tightening the cloth enough to restrict the flow of blood.

“This’ll make your arm partly numb.” He remembered a doctor telling him that. “It might help with the pain, too.”

“God, I hope so.” Anita bit her lip.

The shooting stopped. Amid a hot breeze, Brent smelled burned gunpowder. Struggling not to panic, he peered around the front of the van. At the open door to the shed, the guard dropped a magazine from the bottom of the rifle and inserted a new one. The man’s face was twisted into a grimace that suggested he was in pain. He finished reloading, looked in Brent’s direction, and fired toward the van’s rear tires. Again there were sparks and a spray of metallic fragments as the fences deflected many of the bullets, but enough got through to shred the tires. Brent heard them exploding.

The rear of the van sank.

We’re going to die, he thought.

No matter how quickly his chest heaved, he couldn’t seem to get enough air. He imagined the guard throwing their bodies into the back of the truck with the others. Frantic, he yanked his cell phone from his belt and hit the buttons, but when he held the phone to his left ear, he moaned. All he heard was dead air.

The expression made him taste bile. Dead air.

“I bet I can guess what you’re doing!” the guard yelled. “You’re trying to use your cell phone! Save yourself the trouble! It won’t work! There isn’t any civilian service this far out!”

“My boss knows we came here!” Brent shouted back. “He’ll send people to look for us!”

“When they see the sign, they’ll have brains enough not to trespass on government property! How long will your boss wait before he wonders where you are? Two hours? Three? If people do come here looking for you, by then-believe me-they won’t find you!”

Brent flinched as the guard fired another volley. More of the bullets got past the metal in the three fences and shattered the van’s rear windows.

“Don’t you wish you’d obeyed the sign?” the guard yelled. “I warned you, didn’t I? I said you’d be prosecuted! Hey, Mr. Big Deal Reporter, I’ve got a question for you!”

“Ask me anything!” Brent hoped to stall for time.

“Did you go to announcers’ school or something like that?”

What the hell…? Brent had no choice except to humor the guy. Anything was better than being shot at.

“Yes, I have a college degree in broadcasting!”

“That’s what I figured! You had to have learned it! No one could be born that full of shit!”

The guard shot more holes in the back of the van.

Brent heard liquid splashing onto the ground. His nostrils felt pinched by the odor of gasoline streaming from holes in the fuel tank.

At once he heard something else-the drone of a distant engine. Somebody’s coming. We’ll get help. He stared down the lane that led to the road, but he didn’t see an approaching dust cloud.

The drone became closer and louder, growing into a rumble.

In the air. He turned in the direction of the lowering sun and saw the dark silhouette of a helicopter speeding toward the observatory.

Thank God, he thought.

The guard must have seen it, too. “I’ll deal with you in a little while, Mr. Television Reporter!”

Mouth dry from fear, Brent eased his head around the side of the van and saw the guard vanish into the darkness of the doorway. The building was so small that Brent concluded there had to be stairs leading underground.

The last time the guard had gone back inside, he’d returned with an assault rifle. Brent hated to imagine what he would bring next.

Movement made him turn. Groaning, Anita managed to come to a sitting position and prop herself against the front of the van.

“I can’t drive with this arm.” She cradled it in pain. “The key’s in my right pants pocket.” Sweat trickled down her cheeks. “Let’s get out of here while he’s distracted.”

Brent fumbled inside her pocket and pulled out the key. He also took the knife she’d returned to that pocket. He had no idea what to do with it. Even so, he shoved it into his pants.

Anita struggled to get to her feet.

Brent moved to help, putting an arm around her, guiding her to the side of the van. His rapid breathing was hoarse as he shoved her up into the passenger seat. He shut the door, trying to minimize the noise, and raced around to the driver’s side. Fear made his legs unsteady when he climbed behind the steering wheel. His trembling fingers had trouble inserting the ignition key.

Come on! Finally it slipped in.

He twisted the key, feeling a surge of triumph when the engine roared to life. Abruptly his sense of triumph turned to panic. A glance in the rearview mirror showed the guard rushing from the doorway. The rifle the man held had something thick mounted under the barrel.