Page 25 of What is Found
“Still sounds more like a lot ofmightsthanwill-bes.” Davila waved his good hand to take in the shipping container’s interior. “How’d you get me up here?”
“Slowly.” The way had been slick and treacherous, the bare rock of the path frosted over with ice. He’d been lucky that whoever managed this place had tacked a guide rope, as thick around as a man’s wrist, to the mountain with a series of sturdy eyebolts. In the best of times, the trip up and down the path, which curved around the mountain’s flank, should’ve taken no more than two or three minutes. With Davila’s dead weight on his back and the ice, the trip had taken the better part of a half hour.
“Even with crampons, I’d never have made it without the rope,” he said. “I left you in the van with the engine running so you’d have heat, grabbed the boy, and hoofed it on up to check things out.”
Davila waved his good hand at the ceiling. “How many of these things?”
“Six.”
“That’s a lot of containers.” Davila’s forehead furrowed. “How’d anyone get them up there?”
He shrugged. “Might have been the Russians. The containers are stamped on the outside with numbers and something in Cyrillic underneath. Maybe the Russians figured this was a nice place to hang out, their own private Club Med, and then, when theyleft, some enterprising guy took them over. There are two containers on this side joined to make one nearly continuous space.” He turned the enormous flashlight to a door on the right. “That leads to an office. It’s not much, just a desk, couple of chairs, a couch. Found a bunch of keys in the desk.” Along with assorted desk trash: paper clips, pencils, pens, notepads. Chewing gum. Half-finished packets of cigarettes. There were also several disposable lighters, still with fuel, which he’d pocketed. “Filing cabinets, too. I’ll bet one of the keys on the ring I found will open them.”
“Look inside the cabinets?” When John shook his head, Davila said, “Might be a good idea. I once knew a colonel kept a couple weapons in his. You never know.”
“I’ll check.” He didn’t mention that he’d been a little busy trying to make sure Davila wouldn’t die. “My guess is this container is used by staff.” Aiming the flashlight across the room, he said, “A couple of lockers, see? One holds towels, some clothes. Sandals. The second was stuffed with five sleeping bags, one on top of the other, and mats.”
“For staff to sleep over?”
He nodded. “I bet the manager grabs the cot. But despite what Parviz said, I don’t think we need to worry about people coming here, at least for a while.”
“Why?”
“Well, first off, it’s the next day…” He flicked a look at his watch. “Five in the morning, to be exact, and still snowing andreallycold. Second, there were no old, iced-over tracks leading up or down from here. I know because I checked. Ducked out a few minutes after I got you settled.” After he’d put a zip-tie around the boy’s ankles and essentially cocooned the kid into a sleeping bag to keep him warm. The fact that the kid had that knife nagged. He just couldn’t take a chance the kid was only biding his time. Although, logically, where could the kid go from here? “For another thing, the place was padlocked. There’s no sign that anyone’s been here lately, and there’s a lot of dust.” He ran a finger along the floor near the cot and then played the light off twinkling motes. He thought again of that movie he’d watched with Roni, the one with the penguin in a snow-globe. For an absurd moment, he wondered if Roni was keeping tabs on him from wherever dead people went when they died.
“How’d you get inside?”
“Pry bar from Parviz’s van.”
“That van is the gift that keeps on giving. But we can’t stay here long.” Davila shivered. “F-freeze.”
“There’s a generator around back. There’s a socket for a light on the ceiling and a corner socket down here. They must have light bulbs somewhere and probably some portable heaters. That would suggest fuel squirreled away somewhere.”
“Unless they used it all.”
“Possible. But there are four more shipping containers up here. The main pool’s essentially acircle, and the containers are arranged like the principal ordinates on a compass. So, the two we’re in at south, one each at east and west—probably changing areas—and two shipping containers at north, on the far side of the springs. Decided to wait until you woke up before I went out to take a look.”
“Even if you find fuel, that generator will make a racket.”
He spread his hands. “Open to suggestion, man. We need to stay warm, and there’s nothing here I can use for a fire. Even if there were, we’d have to ventilate this place. Now that you’re pretty awake, I think I should go check those other containers and see what the weather’s doing. You going to be okay?”
“Sure, but…” Wincing, Davila inclined his head toward the sleeping boy. “Leave me a…” He cleared his throat. “A weapon that works. Pr-probably overkill, but…you know.”
“Yeah.” There was something about Davila that bothered him. The way Davila was splinting his left side, holding himself so still…Not right. Might be nothing but bone pain.And I can’t sit with him forever; I have to see if I can find fuel, food, something to tide us over until...Well, until what? They didn’t have their sat phones and were miles from where they were supposed to rendezvous. The only thing working in their favor was that there wasn’t likely to be so much snow in what amounted to a mountainous desert that he couldn’t get the van out.
“I don’t think the boy’s going to come gunning foryou.” He explained about the zip-ties around Matvey’s wrists and ankles. “I couldn’t tend to you and keep an eye on him.”
“True.” Davila took a small pull from a water bottle then made a face as his throat worked in a swallow. “B-but there’s always a first time for everything. Lucky thing I’m right-handed, too.”
“Yeah.” Shucking his sleeping bag, he slipped a Glock from a pocket and handed that to Davila. “Lucky.”
CHAPTER 3
Outside.
Snow was still coming down, the icy bits pecking at his face and hissing over the aluminum cargo containers. The wind spun the fine snow into miniature dervishes that danced in the light from his torch. He stood for a moment, listening to the sizzle of snow over his parka, the patter of ice on aluminum, the distant but continual chuckle of water spilling from the mouth of the spring. A scent of boiled egg yolks and hot metal hung in the air, and, for the first time in years, he thought of his mother: the way she took a steam iron to his father’s shirts as she watched old movies on television on a Sunday afternoon. He remembered one film…what was it? Ah, yes,Stella Dallas. Classic Barbara Stanwyck. He’d watched, fascinated, one eye on the film, the other on his mother pressing the lapels of his father’s shirts into neat, stiff, perfect triangles while huge tears rolleddown her cheeks and pearled on her chin. Every now and again, a tear would splash onto a shirt, leaving an irregular gray splotch like a squashed spider.
His mother was beautiful in that classic way: strong cheekbones, a wide mouth, expressive eyes. Long hair the color of a raven’s wing. When he’d been younger, he remembered turning to his mother as they watched an oldieand saying, with something like awe,Mom, I didn’t know you were in the movies.She’d only laughed and said,No, dear. That’s Joan Crawford.