“Could I please have a pair of nitrile gloves?” she asked.

Alfieri handed her a pair, which she snapped on. She picked up one of the old bottles. “Rich and Rare,” she said, reading off the bottle.

“That’s the same brand Gower had in his pack,” Corrie said.

Nora examined some of the other items, then picked up a buffalo nickel. “Nineteen thirty-six,” she said. “That also could be an item left by Gower. These are important clues.”

“In what way?” Corrie asked.

Nora rose. “It might mean that Huckey found Gower’s old campsite. I’d like to look around at some of these holes he dug, if you don’t mind.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” Corrie said quickly. She glanced sideways at her boss.

“Mr. Alfieri will show you where the holes are,” Morwood said. “Milt?”

“My pleasure.” The technician took out a sketch of the town, on which he’d marked the locations where Huckey had been digging. Corrie and Watts tagged along behind the others. Following the rudimentary map, they started at the far end of town and worked their way back toward the police tape.

Nora knelt to examine each hole carefully before moving on. “He was a busy little gopher,” she murmured.

As they approached the livery stables, Nora paused at one particularly extensive area of digging. “This looks promising.”

It was a flat spot not far from the old corral where they’d found the remains of the mule. Nora knelt and picked up pieces of a broken bottle. “Another Rich and Rare,” she said. “And here’s a circle of stones where he had his campfire.” She moved aside a crusted tumbleweed. “Look at this!” she exclaimed, easing a chewing tobacco tin out of the detritus of the stone circle. It was rusted, but the stamped legend Pat. Pending 1940 was still visible along its edge.

Nora stood up. “This was almost certainly where Gower camped. Do you see that rotten canvas in the sand over there? I’ll bet that was his tent.” She looked at Corrie, then Morwood.

“This should be excavated. There might be important clues here. And … ” She hesitated. “If Gower did find more treasure, this would have been a likely place to bury it.”

Morwood looked at Corrie. “Thoughts?”

“I agree.”

Morwood nodded. “I do, too.” He turned to Nora. “In retrospect, I’m glad you were here,” he told her. “And I apologize for my lack of welcome. We should get this dig going as soon as possible. When can you start?”

Corrie held her breath as she watched Nora consider this question. She knew the archaeologist was under a lot of pressure at work, and quite honestly had no idea what the answer would be.

Nora finally spoke. “I’ll need a day to get my gear together and review my assistant’s progress at Bandelier. That means the day after tomorrow. This looks like a two-day job, so I’ll have to camp overnight. If there are no objections, I’ll bring along my brother, Skip.”

Morwood frowned a little, but to Corrie’s surprise he did not object.

32

FIRST SERGEANT ANTONIO Roman sat in the driver’s seat of his M1079 van, staring out the dusty windshield at the empty terrain around him. It managed somehow to be both drab and rugged: dust and sand and stubbles of prairie grass, with low peaks in the near distance. Surrounding him was a small circle of other vehicles: two M1113 shelter carriers, two M1123 cargo loaders, and an M1079A2 base platform. In front of the vehicles, a temporary command shelter had been erected, and within it half a dozen members of his platoon were finishing up the assignment that had come down to them so abruptly. Beside them was a trailer with a pneumatic catapult, currently empty.

His radio squawked. “Tango One, Tango One, this is Victor Nine Nine, over.”

That would be Specialist Third Class Hudson, remote piloting the Nightwarden. Even out here in the Missile Range, with no hostiles for thousands of miles, Hudson liked to play soldier. Roman picked up his radio. “This is Tango One, copy.”

“Final pass negative. Request permission to set return course.”

“All acquisition data received in proper order?”

“All acquisition data properly received, sir.”

“Very well, Victor Nine Nine, permission granted. Land and secure. Tango One, over.”

“Copy, Tango One, land and secure. Over and out.” And the radio faded into silence.

Roman made some notations on his tablet, then slowly looked out again across the landscape. It was after four, and the sun hung low over the distant mountains. Although he wouldn’t tell his team, he was eager to wrap up this bullshit exercise and get back to base. The last episode of the Westworld season was going to drop this evening, and he didn’t plan to miss it.

For the thousandth time, Roman wondered why the old man had suddenly gotten such a bug up his ass. Like any other army base, White Sands had its share of drills and tests, scheduled or unscheduled. But over the last few days, it felt like the place had been mobilizing for Omaha Beach. There had been scouting missions for impending bombing runs; air-conducted updates of strategic survey maps at ultra-high resolution; and even manual searches for ERW. Roman knew that over the years White Sands had seen its share of munitions testing, but careful sweeps had been done, and explosive-remnants-of-war searches seemed unnecessary make-work in the twenty-first century. But most surprising of all had been today’s mission: his team had been tasked with using an RQ-7 tactical reconnaissance and surveillance drone to search for a malfunctioning missile that had impacted in the area of Victorio Peak. And not just any RQ-7-type drone, either, but a Nightwarden, the very latest, equipped with synthetic aperture radar, low-frequency sonar, and a satcom link for beyond-line-of-sight control. It was the only such drone on the base, and—Roman was pretty sure—not intended for mundane tasks like this. Another drone, a more garden-variety RQ-7A Shadow, sat in a trailer behind one of the Humvees as a redundancy measure.