“We could rent a boat and dump it at sea,” Phil proposed, more serious.
Edward stood. “Abandon it along the freeway like a junked car.” He shrugged. “If nobody discovers where the missile was launched from, we might be able to sneak it back later.”
I had experienced a wave of relief when Jay pronounced the satellite scheme finished. Now that the crisis appeared to have been weathered, I also rose to my feet. “If we’re going to keep on keeping on, don’t we need to record the payload area size? Wasn’t that the last chore tonight?”
“Jay?” Pump asked.
His friend leaned over to fumble inside the pack and extracted the measuring tape. He and Pump moved out toward the platform together, and a few minutes later rejoined us by the elevator. Nobody had brought a pen, so we descended to the command bunker again and I typed the dimensions onto our list and again wiped away my prints. Then we returned to the entrance level, where Jay powered everything down. We stood in blackness at the bottom of the ladder. Phil climbed up first.
I heard the cover click open, and a moment or two later snap shut. Phil was clambering back. “Somebody’s out there,” he hissed.
My heart flipped over. I had been feeling a little more relaxed every second, cocky even, thinking, We’ve done it: broken in, looked around, and in a few minutes we’ll be outside and scot-free. Anxiety now roared back. The small room in which we were shoulder to shoulder felt claustrophobic; I was having trouble catching a full breath.
“Quit fucking around,” Edward ordered, shining a light at Phil.
“You sure, Phil?” Remi asked.
“Goddamn sure! I saw someone out there, watching.”
I sensed tension rise in the others around me. With the antechamber lit by the thin beams of flashlights, the thought struck me that the scene resembled a dramatic moment in a submarine movie, with everybody clustered around the ladder to the conning tower while under attack or with water pouring in.
“Let me take a look, man,” Pump insisted.
“Did they spot you?” Willow whispered. “Maybe we should just stay here until whoever it is goes away.”
“Be my guest,” Phil said to Pump, jumping down.
Pump pushed past him.
“Whoever is there probably saw my light,” Phil said. “I was checking around before leaving the hole.”
“Careful,” Willow urged.
“Everybody shut off their lights when I open the hatch,” demanded Pump from up the ladder.
We waited in the dark. Seconds crawled by.
“It’s a cow,” Pump called down. “Beyond the fence. A fucking cow!”
“Cow?”
“A little paranoid, Phil?” Edward needled.
“Shut up.”
Then I was out in the chilly morning, with streaks of dawn brightening the sky above the ridges to the east. Phil and Jay kicked gravel over the manhole cover. As we exited through the site gate, Pump replaced the sprung padlock so that it appeared functional. Before he did, Remi grabbed a mesquite or sagebrush plant and used the branches to sweep away our footprints near the silo. I stepped off the road beyond the gate and secured a branch for myself, as did Edward, and we obliterated our tracks in the dust of the road for fifty yards or so.
During the rest of the trek back to the vehicles, the tightness I’d been living with throughout the night slowly relinquished its grip on my body. Weariness flowed in to supersede the baseline fear and worry that had kept me buzzed since our expedition began. When I finally sank into the microbus’s back seat, tiredness clobbered me.
“Jay and Pump are going to do a little work, and then we’ll all get together again?” I heard Phil ask from the front as the Volksie swung onto the asphalt.
“That seems to be the plan,” Edward said.
Once again there was no traffic on 74. Everybody in the vehicle had lapsed into a state of lethargy, except for — I hoped — Willow, who steered us through the series of curves and dips of the winding mountain road. Phil, beside her, tuned the radio to a station fading in and out from Riverside, or perhaps San Diego. The eternally energetic Beatles, in a tune from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, were celebrating an improvement in their personal life:
I used to get mad at my school
(No, I can’t complain)
The teachers who taught me weren’t cool:
(No, I can’t complain)
You’re holding me down
(Ah-ha)
Turning me round
(Ahhh)
Filling me up with your rules.
I’ve got to admit it’s getting better,
A little better all the time.
(Can’t get no worse)
I have to admit it’s getting better,
It’s getting better
Since you’ve been mine.
Me used to be angry young man….
Static overwhelmed the weakening signal, and Phil hunted up and down the dial. The Beatles’ comments about their teachers had plunged me into a consideration of Dr. Bulgy and how many thesis pages I needed to get squared away by Monday to create the illusion that I hadn’t squandered the summer. This was already Saturday morning. An aura of gloom started to descend on me, but Phil found a station broadcasting Procol Harum, and I drifted off into the band’s stoned meanderings:
The room was humming harder
As the ceiling flew away
When we called out for another drink
The waiter brought a tray
And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face, at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale.
I jerked out of a doze when the microbus halted to let Remi off at his place. Ten minutes later, as I climbed out of the vehicle, the street lights on Cajon shut off. Then I was falling into bed as the new California day shone through the curtains.
I tried to live up to my vow to grind forward with the thesis for what was left of the weekend. The sun woke me a few hours after I crashed. I spent another hour or two fitfully dozing, then got up and groggily hit the books. I could sense the clock ticking toward my rendezvous with Dr. Bulgy. Having the desk in the bedroom was a disadvantage, since my pillow and sheets were an ever-present temptation as I read, scratched notes, and typed draft after draft of new paragraphs.
The room was hot and close all afternoon. I was working in shorts and had to be careful not to drip sweat from my forearms on freshly minted pages. After I cranked out three entire new pages, I rewarded myself by stumbling onto the deck and nodding out on the recliner in the comparative cool of a fresh sea breeze. What seemed like seconds later, voices roused me: the couple who had rented the downstairs last year had arrived. I helped them haul boxes of their household stuff from their rented truck parked on Cajon down the steep driveway and into their living room. As we ascended and descended the route, we yakked, filling one another in on our summers and plans for the new academic year. Like me, Robert was determined to finish his thesis before June; Georgiana had lined up a secretarial gig in the registrar’s office. I could hardly refuse a beer as thanks for helping unload their pile