Heroes by David Hagberg (reading cloud ebooks TXT) 📗

convinced that the government was running a home for pregnant nuns in the mountains.

Still another organization argued that the flying saucers they believed had been landing in the mountains for years were operating from a secret base that only Roosevelt and the government knew about.

The rumors were ridiculous, of course. The American people were so naive and gullible that they’d believe almost anything.

Still, the base had been difficult to get to overland on horseback.

He had come across the newly constructed dirt road in his wanderings, but he could hardly ride a horse on it right up to the front gate. Too many questions would be asked. Nor could he take a car up there. Their Hudson had finally given up the ghost and died. It was parked behind the machine shed. One of the Mexican hands tinkered with it whenever he got the chance.

Following the road on horseback, overland, the way the countryside rose and fell, was very difficult. He had been picking his way around the mountains for weeks now, trying to find a way up to where the installation was located.

Survey maps were no longer being sold, at least for the duration of the war, and asking one of the locals to act as a guide was totally out of the question. It would bring too much suspicion down on him.

For a time Schey had thought about joining one of the citizens groups that had picketed the place, but he had decided against that approach as well. The FBI watched those groups very carefully.

If someone new showed up, they’d take a great interest in him.

After his work up in Oak Ridge, the FBI would almost certainly be looking for him down here. They’d have to suspect that he would either come down here or out to Hanford, in Washington, where another large atomic plant was located. If he became visible by joining a group or getting stopped for questions, they’d nail him immediately.

Nothing had been in any of the national newspapers about him or about Eva and the dead FBI agent back in Washington, D.C.

That hadn’t really surprised him, of course. The authorities could hardly advertise that they were looking for spies. It would tip them off, and it would create panic in an already nearly hysterical public.

The path he was on ended within a narrowing box canyon. He wheeled his horse around, worked his way back out of the canyon, and then cut back toward the northeast.

This area was at once desolate and beautiful. There was nothing like it in all of Germany, and most Germans seeing this would be damned glad of it. This was mostly nonproductive land. Huge tracts were needed to support even the smallest of cattle herds.

Only the rattlers and mule deer and goats thrived here. And at times, he was told, even they were at risk.

As hot as he was, he did not feel sweaty, but he was very thirsty. He stopped and drank sparingly from his canteen. The water was warm and tested metallic.

He looked at his watch. It was well after four in the afternoon.

He turned in his saddle and looked back the way he had come.

The valleys in the distance were tinged with blue. It would be at least a half-hour’s hard ride back to where he had left three stray cattle he had found, then another hard hour and a half back to the ranch.

He gazed up toward the ridge that overlooked the box canyon.

It was early yet, he told himself. Somewhere very near the base.

He could feel it. Just a little farther. Just to the top of the ridge, and then, depending upon what he found up there, he’d head back.

The horse jumped as he jabbed his heels into its flanks, and they started up. As a young man, his uncle had taught Schey to ride. He had been on the team in his Gymnasium, and finally he had been in regional competition in the one-year prep school he had attended in Switzerland.

Eva, who had never been near a horse in her life, except for the police horses in the park in Chicago and once in Central Park when she visited New York during a Bund rally, was amazed at his skill.

At first he had had difficulty with the western saddle. The tall horn was disconcerting. He had learned on the much smaller English riding saddle. But very quickly he got used to the working leather, and after a long day on it, he was glad for its width and bulk.

Just to the top of the ridge, he promised himself, coming to the top and then raising up and reining in short, his breath catching in his throat.

Below, in a flattened valley, was a large installation, its buildings, for the most part, aligned in streets and avenues like a well laid-out town or a military base. He hurriedly backed his horse down so that he would not be outlined against the horizon.

Now that he was this close, he wanted to minimize the risk as much as possible.

The first time he had set eyes on the vast buildings and huge machinery at Oak Ridge, he had been awed. But here they were putting the super weapon together. Here was the distillation of all the work being done at Oak Ridge and at Hanford, and some sports stadium in Chicago.

There was only one step remaining for them—that of testing the bomb in the desert south of Albuquerque. He was going to have to find out how close they were to that stage. Once that happened—once the Americans successfully tested their first bomb—the war would be over within a matter of weeks, perhaps days, unless the Germans could beat them to it.

Schey dismounted and secured the horse’s reins to the branch of a low pine, then scrambled back up to the edge of the rim with his camera.

Starting at the far end of the installation, he took a series of photographs, each overlapping the other, that when put together would