Gideon's Corpse

46

Stone Fordyce peered down through the open door of the chopper, manipulating the control stick of the “night sun,” the chopper’s powerful spotlight. As the pool of light played over the boiling surface of the river, he felt an unexpected catharsis, a certain sense of mingled relief and sadness—there didn’t seem to be any way a person could survive those horrible rapids. It was over.

“What’s beyond this whitewater?” Fordyce asked the pilot through his headset.

“More whitewater.”

“And then?”

“The river eventually comes out into Cochiti Lake,” said the pilot, “about five miles downstream.”

“So there’s five miles of this whitewater?”

“Off and on. There’s one really bad stretch just downstream.”

“Follow the river to Cochiti Lake, then, but take it slow.”

The pilot wended his way down the river while Fordyce searched the surface with the spotlight. They passed what was obviously the violent whitewater: a bottleneck stretch between vertical walls with a rock in the middle the size of an apartment building, the water boiling up against it and sweeping around in two vicious currents, creating massive downstream whirlpools and eddies. Beyond that the river leveled out, flowing between sandbars and talus slopes. With no floating reference point, it was hard to judge how fast the water was moving. He wondered if the bodies would rise or sink, or perhaps get caught up on underwater rocks.

“What’s the water temperature?” he asked the pilot.

“Let me ask.” A moment later the pilot said, “About fifty-five degrees.”

That’ll kill them even if the rapids don’t, thought Fordyce.

Still he searched, more out of a sense of professional thoroughness than anything else. The river finally broadened, the water growing sluggish. He could see a small cluster of lights downstream.

“What’s that?” he asked.

The pilot banked slowly as the river made a turn. “The town of Cochiti Lake.”

Now the top of the lake came into view. It was a long, narrow lake, evidently formed from damming up the river.

“I don’t think there’s anything more we can do along here,” said Fordyce. “The others can continue their search for the bodies. Take me back to Los Alamos.”

“Yes, sir.”

The chopper banked again and rose, gaining altitude and accelerating as it headed northward. Fordyce felt in his gut that Gideon and the woman must be dead. No one could have survived those rapids.

He wondered if it was even necessary to interview Chu or the other security officers. The idea that someone had planted those emails to frame Crew was ridiculous and well-nigh impossible. It would have to have been an inside job, involving at least one top security officer—and to what end? Why even frame him?

But still he felt uneasy. Leaving a bunch of incriminating emails on a classified work computer was not the most intelligent move a terrorist could make. It was, in fact, stupid. And Crew had been anything but stupid.