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“I was there, and I promise you that what I saw wasn’t dry lightning. I can think of only one thing that stops engines and generators and everything else that depends on electricity or magnets. You know anything about astronomy?”

“Enough to tell the difference between it and astrology.”

“Ever since I was a kid and saw my first comet, I’ve had a telescope,” Medrano said. “I subscribed to Astronomy magazine for as long as I can remember. Black holes, supernovas, spiral nebulae. They’re all pretty sexy. But solar storms are my personal favorite. I don’t dare look at the sun through a telescope, of course. I need to rely on films taken by special cameras in observatories. Solar storms give off flares that look like the flicking end of a giant whip. They can get as hot as a hundred million degrees. They radiate the electromagnetic energy of ten million atomic bombs.”

Costigan listened intently.

“They tend to run in eleven-year cycles,” Medrano continued. “From almost no activity to spectacular eruptions. At their peak, the electromagnetic waves have so much strength that when they reach Earth they can knock satellites out of orbit, shut down power plants, and turn television broadcasts into static. The Northern Lights are caused by them. What I saw last night looked like a combination of the two: Northern Lights and solar flares.”

“Solar flares. An awful long way from the sun.”

“I’m not saying they were solar flares. I’m just saying that’s what they looked like. An electromagnetic burst from somewhere on the ground would explain a lot of what happened last night.”

“But what caused it?”

“That’s another way of asking what the lights are. Here’s a theory. The Earth’s core is hotter than the surface of the sun.” Medrano shrugged. “Maybe there are fault lines around here that allow electro- magnetic waves to find their way to the surface.”

Costigan thought about it. “As good an explanation as swamp gas, quartz crystals, radioactive gas, and temperature inversions, I suppose.”

“Well, whatever’s going on, I won’t let this get any worse,” Medrano said. “Most visitors have had enough and are going home on their own. But just to make sure, as of tonight we’re blocking the road. Anybody who wants to drive in that direction will need to take a long detour. The viewing area, the portable toilets, the roadside plaque, the concrete barriers, the parking lot-everything’s being removed. That place will look like just another section of a field by the time we’re finished. Meanwhile, the feds are cleaning up the mess at the observatory and the airbase. We’ll probably never know what went on there. They won’t let us in. And we’ll never officially know what happened at White Sands last night, either.”

“White Sands?” Costigan asked. “The missile range?”

“Yeah, it’s all over the news, and the conspiracy theorists are having a field day. Some kind of ray hit a target at White Sands-a mockup of a town. I think we can guess where the ray came from. Apparently it destroyed the mockup town, blew apart the monitoring station, and obliterated a half-dozen other buildings five miles away, not to mention taking out the electricity for the entire base, including the batteries in their vehicles. The ray was too visible for them to deny it happened. Reports are that twenty military technicians were killed. Civilians watching the night sky from Alamogordo claim they saw a blinding light. The Army attributes all this to a massive explosion at a munitions depot. The explosion was caused by dry lightning, they said.”

“That dry lightning sure gets around.” Costigan’s features were suddenly creased with exhaustion.

“Are you okay?” Medrano asked.

Across the street, the church bells kept ringing.

“Maybe I’ll stroll over there later,” Costigan said. “It’s been a while.”

The police dispatcher knocked on the open door. “Mr. and Mrs. Page are here to see you.”

“Show them in.”

When Page and Tori stepped into the doorway, Costigan smiled. “It’s good to see you, even if you do look a little sunburned.”

“So does Captain Medrano,” Tori said.

“Seems we’re in the land of the midnight sun,” Medrano replied. “We discussed your phone call. You’re right that we’re going to need you here to fill in some of the gaps. But at the moment we have plenty of other details to take care of. So if you can get back here in ten days, that’ll be fine. Mrs. Page, you mentioned that you’re going to have surgery Tuesday morning in San Antonio. Will ten days give you enough time to feel strong enough to travel?”

“We’ll see,” Tori said.

“We can always set up a video conference call, if necessary. I hope it isn’t anything serious.”

Page and Tori didn’t reply.

82

The Falcon 2000 jet took off from the airbase at Fort Bliss and started its four-hour flight toward Glen Burnie Airport near Fort Meade, Maryland. It was piloted by Army Intelligence personnel, who were also affiliated with the NSA. Its passengers were a medical team and Colonel Raleigh.

The colonel stared straight ahead, his eyes blinking occasionally, but otherwise making no movement.

“How long has he been like this?” someone asked.

Because Raleigh was catatonic and couldn’t turn his head, he wasn’t able to identify the speaker.

“Apparently since twenty-two hundred hours last night,” someone replied. That man, too, was out of Raleigh’s line of sight.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“The best I can say right now is trauma-induced paralysis. I don’t know if it has a physical cause, a psychological one, or both. He’ll need to be tested.”

“Considering the mess we found in that underground facility, I’m not surprised he freaked out.”

“Not a very scientific term, but yeah, basically that’s what happened. He freaked out.”

“Do you think he can hear us?”

“I have no idea. His ears were bleeding. There might have been permanent hearing loss. Or else the shock of what happened might have put him in a state of psychological disassociation.”

“Yeah, but the thing is, what did happen? The cameras down there stopped working. The digital recordings were all wiped. All we’ve got are the bodies. Except for the men who were shot, those other poor bastards bled to death before we got to them.”

“Unless the colonel starts communicating, we might never know.”

Incapable of movement, Raleigh kept staring straight ahead.

The hiss of the jet engines gradually changed to the drone of a propeller and a piston-driven motor. The interior of the Falcon dissolved, giving him a back-seat view of a biplane skimming above a dark field while stars glistened.

He wore goggles and a scarf, one end of which fluttered behind him. He worked the controls and drifted toward the horizon.

Ahead, colors shimmered, beckoning.

83

The waiting room had plastic chairs linked together. A television was bolted to an upper corner of the room, tuned to the Home and Gar- den channel. At the entrance, a hospital volunteer sat at a desk and wrote down the names of people who came in, letting them know that coffee, tea, and water were available on the table behind her.

Page sat next to Tori’s mother. After a while, their tension kept them from making small talk. Page flipped through a two-month-old issue of Time, then looked at the television, where a woman wearing gloves and holding a trowel gave viewers a tour of her flower garden.

“How long do you suppose it’ll take?” Margaret asked, looking pale.

“I guess it depends on what they find and how much needs to be removed.”

“My poor baby,” Tori’s mother said.

A woman wearing a surgical gown and bonnet walked into the waiting room. She scanned it, saw the two of them, and came over. Her expression was difficult to read.