CHAPTER ONE

Moss wasn’t more than thirty meters from the entrance but didn’t realize it. He stood looking out from the shade of the red rock escarpment that breached the flat desert landscape, arching its spine toward the east. The only irregularity in the smooth sweep of terrain out in front of him was a sandy knoll to the southeast.

He had walked a grid pattern back and forth through the sagebrush and mescal and ocotillo since noon without success. His clothes and the bandana tied about his head were soggy with sweat, and his eyes ached from the scorching sun despite the expensive sun shields he had bought for the trip. There had at least been spots along the access road in from the two-lane, visible now and then, where the wind had bared the shoulder enough to keep him from driving off into the soft sand. But right where his comsat compass confirmed the coordinates shown on the blueprints, there was no sign anything had ever existed here but sand drifts and mesquite, cholla and tumbleweed and saguaro.

In the suffocating late afternoon heat, he busied himself setting up camp, determined to keep doubt from staining his hopes. He rigged a shade break with a tarp off the side of the pickup to two tent poles and set his camp chair and table under it. He had decided not to bother with the tent this first night. He would sleep in the open in his bivouac bag.

The shadows cast by the saguaro stretched farther and farther as the sun slipped lower in the desert sky. He put a pot of water on the camp stove he’d set on the tailgate, and when it came to a boil emptied a pouch of dehydrated beef and vegetables into it. While it simmered and the water thickened to a more or less satisfying broth, he went looking for firewood. It was cold at night in the desert even in June.

When he returned the stew was ready. With a small campfire under way just beyond the shade break, he opened a tube of saltine crackers and sat eating at the table under the tarp. The landscape was in deepening shadow, the sky turning from sanguine to purple as the sun dropped behind a butte off in the distance to the northwest. He threw a piece of mesquite on the fire now and then, watching the flames dance higher again, casting swirls of sparks up into the rapidly chilling night air. As he dipped saltines into the stew, he was aware of how odd the smell was, the aroma of stew mingled with the odor of a sweat-soaked man and the bone-bleached scent of the desert sand.

This was the first time since starting out that he’d taken a break of any dur