I nodded a numb ac know ledg ment and stood in a catatonic stupor.
“She thinks he li cop ters aren’t safe,” Diesel said to Boon.
“Hah. If everything we did was safe, we’d never do anything, would we?” Boon said.
I inadvertently whimpered, and Diesel scooped me up and set me in the backseat of the helicopter. He took the seat next to Boon and passed me a headset with a microphone.
“Buckle up and put the headset on so we can talk to each other,” Diesel said.
Boon fired the bird, we lifted off the ground, and my heart rate went to stroke level. I closed my eyes and chanted the rosary. This from a woman who hadn’t been to church in three years, and then it was just for Christmas Mass because my mother had made me.
“Open your eyes,” Diesel said over the headset. “Help me look for a clearing where someone could launch a rocket.”
We’d been in the air for five minutes and hadn’t plummeted to the ground in a smoking fireball, so I dredged up some courage, held my breath, and peeked out the window.
Diesel’s voice was in my ear again. “You have to breathe. And stop thinking about flaming, twisted debris and body parts spread over the Barrens.”
“Are you reading my mind?”
“Yeah, and it’s creepy.”
Boon was flying grids, high enough for us to see a large area, low enough to pick out details. We passed over Gail Scanlon’s house and the monkey habitat. It looked untouched. The door to the habitat was still open. No vehicles in the yard. No monkeys. No Carl. The thought made my heart constrict. It was much easier to understand the Barrens from our bird’s-?eye view. We could get a better picture of how the paths connected and led to campsites and abandoned homesteads. There were plenty of clearings, but none that held any real interest. We didn’t see any rocket launchpads. We saw a number of cabins and double-?wides that looked occupied. A car in the driveway of one. Smoke curling from the chimney of another. Not a lot of activity. A truck bounced along a rutted road leading to a little house with chickens scratching around in the front yard.
“Fly over this area again,” Diesel said to Boon. “I know it’s here, and somehow we’re missing it.”
“Maybe it’s not in this area,” Boon said. “Ma
ybe the rockets get trucked in. Remember when we were in Columbia?”
“I hate that idea,” Diesel said. “That makes my life much more complicated. They could truck them in from anywhere.”
“I don’t think they’re that far away,” I said. “Munch was in Gail Scanlon’s neighborhood on his ATV.”
“What exactly are we looking for?” Boon asked Diesel.
“Wulf is hanging with a guy named Martin Munch, a genius working with electromagnetic waves. All of a sudden Munch’s project manager is dead …”
“Twisted neck?” Boon asked.
“Yeah. And now Wulf’s got the manager’s sister. I’m guessing Munch made some sort of discovery, and Wulf is intrigued by it.”
“Had to be some badass discovery to get Wulf into the Pine Barrens. Wulf is more Vienna, Paris, Dubai,” Boon said.
“I think they must be using the Barrens for research,” Diesel said. “There’s lots of space here, and it’s close to areas where Munch has sources for materials.”
“How much space does Munch need to do research?”
“I don’t know,” Diesel said. “Could be as small as a room or as large as a barn. He’d need a source of electric. Maybe a generator. If he didn’t want to be picked up by he li cop ter surveillance, he’d need a garage for his ATV. He’d need a decent road to truck stuff in.”
“We haven’t seen anything as big as a barn,” Boon said. “A generator could be hidden under tree cover. There was a ranch house with an attached garage. There was a double-?wide with a couple outbuildings. Both had dirt roads connecting them to civilization.”
“Enlarge the grid,” Diesel said. “Fly us around a little more, then we’ll head back to the airport.”
WE WERE IN the Subaru, watching Boon lift off and head for Atlantic City. Lucky him, I thought. Boon was going to the land of the endless buffet, and I was still stuck in the Barrens. It was early afternoon, and I knew Diesel was itching to mount up and check out some houses.
“I’m not doing anything until you feed me,” I said.
“How elaborate does this meal have to be?”