Chapter 6

Virgil shot awake, a cry snagged in his throat. As he gasped for breath, tendrils of his nightmare dissipated in the dark. He placed the crook of his arm over his eyes as he forced his heart rate to slow. He had been plagued with bad dreams since he lost Catherine five years ago, but the visions had abated over the past two years down to non-existent. Until now. He thought the nightmare of being buried alive was rooted in the accident that took his wife. That he was almost sure of, but why now? What triggered it after so many months of dreamless slumber? Inhaling deep of the cool night air, he arose and slogged outside. Sleep was not going to visit him the rest of this night.

For the fourth weekend in a row, Cassie hunkered down in front of her computer at the newsroom. Waterford had been on her ass like a diaper to find newsworthy stuff about the rescue organization and/or Mr. Keller. Even though she was pissed he forced her to do this work, once she started digging, the lack of information on either subject intrigued her. One piece of information that plagued her was that no one really knew who the philanthropist was behind Global Rescue.

She had a little more success with Virgil Daniel Keller, but not much. It seemed he was a widower, no kids and had a brother, Wyatt Emerson Keller, who was married to a woman named Karen and had a son Steven.

Cassie sat back in her chair, over a month of digging for a couple scraps of information. How did Lois Lane do it? She poked herself in the head with a finger. 'Think. Think. Think. What would Lois Lane do?' Thankfully Bret was still on a two-week vacation giving her a little extra time to find contacts.

With the memory of the sabotage fading over the past six weeks, Walt sat in what was commonly referred to as the Rescue Room. It differed from an ordinary conference room only by the number of computers. They were linked to satellites, other rescue groups, communications, weather stations, you name it, anything useful in the business was on the system. The absolute hottest technologies were upgraded as soon as the latest and greatest software or hardware was released. Walt had his laptop on the desk, already booted up with a map of the area projected on the wall, via a link with the projector suspended from the ceiling.

A call into GRNI of a lost person came in at 12:11 AM. By 12:12 all pagers of night personnel had been activated. A crew of about 20 would respond, but only a handful would immediately be sent out. As the last person rushed in and sat down, the boss looked to Peter Yen, the resident computer geek, and asked him to start up the infrared satellite link.

"I just received a call of a lost child in the desert." Walt paused for a moment as he looked at his crew. Some shook their heads softly, a few mumblings sounded, others just looked down. "Several families were camping out here." He used the mouse pointer to project the location of the campers on the map. "Several families sat around a campfire when an uncle noticed Teddy Wucksworth was not with anybody. This was at about 9:30 PM. They don't know how long he had been missing at that point and have been searching for several hours with the local police and park rangers since. He's nine. I haven't been in contact with anyone at the site other than one park ranger, who gave us enough information to get going right away. I'm hoping the desert cooling down at night will enable us to pick up body heat more easily from the satellite thermal imaging." He turned to Peter. "Got anything yet?"

"Give me another minute, the image is downloading as we speak." Silence filled the room as all eyes focused on the screen. Time slowed to a crawl as they waited. The room felt eerily quiet. Even the newest technology could be slow in an urgent situation.

"Got it."

He overlaid his infrared image with the map from Walt's computer so that the team could get the coordinates. Walt turned from the picture on the wall back to the group. "John, you and Terry take the Agusta 2 chopper here." He pointed to one of two 'hot spots'. "It looks like a human in a prone position. Virgil, you and Jack take the new bird to this spot, could be someone walking or standing." He pointed to the other 'hot spot'. "The rest of you stay on-call. If neither one of these is the boy, then we'll need to add a manual search on the ground and I want everyone ready to deploy immediately. Get going." The helicopter pilots and their partners hustled out the door. Within minutes, the others could hear the rotor motors revving up.

The two GRNI choppers flew side by side until they separated as the coordinates indicated. John and Terry headed east along an arroyo. The copter flew a straight line as the arroyo swam back and forth beneath them like a sea snake. Within a few minutes, the dried riverbed slithered off in a different direction as the chopper kept on course.