Disclaimer and thank-yous in the prologue.

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Chapter 5
June 4, 2006
7:20 P.M.
Mojave Desert

"All the leaves are brown, and the sky is gray; I've been for a walk on a winter's day…"

The song might have been older than he was, but the familiar lyrics were soothing to Charlie's frazzled nerves. He'd heard the song many times while he was growing up, of course, but "California Dreamin'" had taken on new meaning during his years under the gray skies at Princeton. It had become even more special when he had returned home to California and settled back in to the familiar climate and surroundings.

And right now, the melancholy of the song fit his mood perfectly. He sat back on his knees, sand and gravel pressing into his shins, and looked out over the hilly, barren desert as the song continued to play through his earbuds. The JPL team was clustered around the rover a few yards away, fiddling with the controls on the remote device like they had been for the last half hour. His latest attempt at getting the little machine out of the mess it was stuck in hadn't been any more successful than the previous two, and it looked like the current try wasn't going any better.

His personal mess wasn't exactly fixed, either. He looked past the group of scientists to the jeep parked off the dusty track that functioned as a road, some fifty yards away, and then to the black SUV parked behind the jeep. David Sinclair stood leaning against the car, his eyes focused on the activity around the rover but occasionally turning his head to sweep his gaze across the desert. His arms were folded across his chest, and though dusk was less than an hour away, he still wore his shades. When Charlie had talked to him earlier, he couldn't read the other man's eyes, and it had made him feel a little uncomfortable. He used to being an equal of sorts to his brother's colleagues, but the current situation was a little different. Although he knew it wasn't true, Charlie felt like David was there to keep an eye on him, like he was the one who was wanted by the law.

He frowned as he dropped his gaze back to the laptop sitting on a piece of cardboard to keep it off the bare ground, knowing that he was lucky he wasn't in trouble with the law. Don had been furious with him yesterday when he arrived but his fury hadn't been as great as he was anticipating. Either the ride had been long enough to ease his anger, or Megan had talked him down, or he just wasn't as upset with Charlie's breach of ethics as would be expected.

More likely, he hadn't wanted to blow up at his younger brother in front of the staff and guests of the Desert Studies Center. More likely, Charlie mused, he was going to hear about it later. His brow furrowed again as he wondered how long he could reasonably stay out here in the desert, waiting for Don to cool down. Would a few weeks be enough time?

There was a ragged cheer from the group clustered around the rover. He yanked the white cords away from his ears in time to hear the sound trail off into a chorus of groans, and sighed. At this rate, it would be a few weeks before he left no matter what was going on with the FBI.

'Guess I'm up to the plate again,' Charlie thought as he unfolded himself from his kneeling position and carefully picked up the laptop, stuffing the iPod into his pocket. He forced his mind to shift back into work mode, away from the nagging guilt about deceiving his brother. They'd find the fugitive. It wasn't like he could get very far without being noticed; there were only so many routes out of the Mojave, and not a lot of places to hide.

Larry had been hovering on the edge of the group, and he was the first to speak as Charlie approached. "I maintain it has something to do with the friction coefficients, Charles. Either that, or the sand grains here are larger than their Martian counterparts."

"I thought the reason we were here is that the dust and sand particles are about as similar to Mars as you can get," Charlie sighed. "And I've checked the friction coefficients a half a dozen times. Maybe I've been assuming too much power is available from the rover."

"She's got nothin' to do all day but sit there and lap up solar energy like a pig at a trough." Harold Zorbin, Larry's colleague, was a tall Texan who took glee in both matching and defying the prevailing stereotypes of people from that part of the country. His metaphors were as homespun as you could get, even during scientific talks Charlie had seen him give at CalSci, but the juxtaposition with the technical content of the presentations was a startling contrast. "Believe me, she's got plenty of juice."

"Yes, but maybe our assumptions about how long her battery life lasts were overly optimistic." Charlie had fallen into the habit of referring to the rover as "she," despite his dislike of the old-fashioned gender roles that traditionally went along with that mode of speech. But that was how everyone else spoke about Spirit, so it was easier to go with the flow. "Maybe more is draining out at night than we've been modeling."

"If that's the case, we can just wait till later in the day when we're sure her batteries are fully charged," Zorbin shrugged. "Don't change that part of your equations."

Charlie looked down at his laptop, mentally running through the list of possibilities. Sand grain size, no. Battery power, no. They'd tried rocking the rover back and forth as if it were stuck in a snow bank, but that had failed as well. Charlie was afraid he was running out of ideas, but he was determined to stick with it. He had to get something good out of this trip, after the way he'd botched things with Dominic Koristet.

The crunch of footsteps on gravel caught his ear, and he turned to see David walking towards them, folding his cell phone shut. "Charlie," he called as he approached. "They found the car."

"Here, we'll look this over while you go straighten things out." Zorbin removed the laptop from Charlie's hands. "Just keep us updated, y'hear?"

The rest of the team had been largely uncurious about the fugitive roaming near their desert worksite, both when Charlie and Larry had sheepishly explained the situation to them last night, and when they were escorted out to the worksite by an FBI vehicle that morning after the explanation that until further notice, they were not to go anywhere unescorted. That was the compromise Don had demanded after Zorbin and his team refused to stop their work with the rover while the authorities searched for Koristet. Zorbin had reasoned that they could see anyone coming towards them from miles away, and although Don was dubious about the ability of the scientists to pay attention to anything but the task in front of them, he had grudgingly agreed.

Charlie walked towards the FBI agent, meeting him halfway, hearing footsteps behind him that he assumed were Larry's. "Where was it?" he asked when he was closer. "And where's Dominic?"

David waved an arm eastward, removing his sunglasses and tucking them into his front pocket. "About thirty miles east of here. The car was left just off the road."

Charlie gave a sigh of relief, and beside him, Larry did the same. "That's strange," his friend murmured. "We had debated whether or not to refill the tank shortly before we arrived, and decided in Barstow to engage in that bit of basic maintenance. He can't have run out of gas."

"No, it got stuck in a soft spot along the side of the road," David went on. "The CHP just found the car, but it's too dark to look for tracks. So they'll try it again in the morning." He clapped a hand on Charlie's shoulder. "We'll get him soon, and I'll be out of your hair."

Charlie nodded, but inwardly he was thinking about Dominic, wandering out in the desert. He didn't think there had been any water in the car, although the young man did have the long-sleeve shirt and pants that he had been wearing when he arrived. But he wouldn't last more than a few hours out in the sun, even with clothing as protection, and given the direction he had driven, it wasn't likely that he would have come across any other cars he could hijack.

That thought made Charlie grimace. The man had held him at gunpoint, stolen his car, kidnapped a young woman, and who knew what else. He didn't deserve pity. Besides, it was almost dark; it wasn't like he was going to die of heat stroke, and the CHP or the FBI would certainly find him in the morning.

"Was that Don on the phone?" he asked hesitantly, gesturing towards the cell phone David still held in his hand.

"Yeah, it was," the other man replied, dropping the phone into his pocket. "He said he was going to come back out here to be here when they catch up with Koristet, and bring him in himself." His sidelong glance at Charlie left no doubt as to why that was the case, and Charlie grimaced.

"It was my understanding that Mr. Koristet is immune from criminal charges because of his father's status," Larry said. "How can he 'bring him in' without violating the rules of diplomatic engagement?"

The daylight might have been fading, but there was still enough to see the slight twinkle in David's eye. "At this point, it's as much a rescue operation as anything else. And since Koristet Sr. is waiting for news of his son…"

"…They might as well meet up at the FBI office," Charlie finished. "And if Don happens to ask him a few questions on the long drive back to L.A…"

David grinned. "Your brother's a smart man, Charlie. Not as smart as you, but don't tell him I said that."

Any other time, the jibe would have made Charlie smile in response, but instead he looked down at the dusty ground. "Can't say I'm feeling too smart at the moment," he muttered.

"Hey, we all make mistakes in our judgment," David responded, clapping Charlie on the shoulder. "Just glad you're all right."

He gave a wan smile and looked up. "That's nice of you to say, David." Particularly since David didn't know the whole story, Charlie thought. He didn't know about the first conversation Charlie'd had with Don, the one where he found out his guest's identity but didn't turn him in. For the moment, at least, it appeared that Don was going to wait until later to deal with the ramifications of Charlie's little error of judgment.

Larry interjected, "What was the terrain like in the vicinity of the car? Will Mr. Koristet find it amenable for concealing his location?"

David blinked as he parsed the sentence, then answered, "I don't know. Does the terrain change much as you go east of here? 'Cause if it's like this," he waved at the rocky terrain around them, "unless he finds a really big boulder to hide underneath, he's not going to have much luck."

Charlie looked down at the ground underneath his feet, analyzing it not from the point of view of a mechanical robot stuck in the sand, but a person trying to evade pursuit. The landscape didn't fit the stereotype of a desert with row upon row of sand dunes; it was more like bare dirt with many scattered stones of varying sizes, dotted with creosote and other scrubby-looking plants. David was right, there wouldn't be any kind of cover large enough to hide a person. But if you planted your feet carefully, you wouldn't leave much in the way of tracks. On the other hand, he thought, what was a spoiled rich kid like Dominic likely to know about keeping his tracks covered? More likely, the FBI would be able to follow his tracks like those of a pig in a mud bank, as Zorbin would say.

Larry was staring off into the distance, squinting at something Charlie couldn't see. "What is it, Larry?" he asked, and noticed that David was looking in that direction as well.

"Well, towards the horizon, there are some shapes that would indicate some kind of change of elevation. And I'm recalling from my study of the topographic maps on the journey here that there are, in fact, some minor mountain ranges in that direction." He furrowed his brow. "I just can't remember if the symbols I saw indicating abandoned mines were in that same location or not."

"Mines?" David asked, reaching for his cell phone. "If he can actually find a hiding place, we need to keep up the search tonight. We should be able to get a helicopter with infrared equipment out here to do that."

Larry had that look on his face that Charlie was all too familiar with, when the physicist wasn't completely sure of what he was saying, but was talking out loud as away of working through the problem. He hadn't gotten a good look at the maps himself, so he couldn't help with that angle, but he could try to probe his friend's memory a bit more. "Larry, what else was on the map that had the mines on it? Do you remember what quadrangle it was, what area it covered?"

The physicist put his hands out in front of him, moving them around as though he were pantomiming feeling a wall in front of him. Charlie exchanged a look with David, who raised his eyebrows but said nothing. When Charlie opened his mouth, Larry pointed a warning finger at him, and continued with his strange motions.

After what seemed like forever but was probably less than half a minute, Larry lowered his hands. "It wasn't the map representing the area where we're currently standing. Topographic maps cover the surface of the whole country in an even grid, and it was the grid square two east of here. There's definitely the potential for some subterranean activity, if my memory serves me correctly." He looked at David. "I assume you can get a hold of the necessary maps to work that out?"

"Yeah, no problem," the agent replied, flipping open his phone. "I'll have Don put someone at the office on it right away, match it up with where the car was."

He turned away to make the phone call, the reception apparently functioning just fine, and Charlie looked back down at the ground underneath his feet. "What did they mine out here, anyway? Gold? Silver?"

Larry shook his head. "A tiny bit of gold, but as I recall from the information I read on the way up here, it was actually borate mining."

"Borate?" Charlie raised his eyebrows. "That doesn't sound like a precious metal."

"No, it's commercially known as borax. You're familiar with the Twenty-Mule Team?" When Charlie nodded, he went on, "The Mojave Desert has one of the richest deposits in the world. It's about the only economic activity that goes on up here, aside from truck stops along the freeway."

"Huh." He thought about that for a moment. "Well, I just hope the helicopter can find Dominic before he burrows down into one of those old mines."

"Yes, it could be quite dangerous for him. And the poor man doesn't have any water except for the spare bottle in the trunk."

Charlie looked at him. As scatterbrained as Larry might appear to be sometimes, there was a compassionate core to his being that never failed to shine through. "You really don't wish him any harm, do you?"

"Oh come on, Charles, I'm unhappy that the man absconded with our vehicle, but I don't wish him any bodily harm, no." He paused and gave Charlie a quizzical look. "Are you telling me that you do?"

Charlie pursed his lips for a moment, then shook his head. "No, not really. I'm just surprised he didn't try to dig his way out. I mean, it might be difficult with only one person, but all you'd have to do is find a couple of flat rocks of the right size, put them under the tires, and …"

He trailed off as he saw the same dawning comprehension on Larry's face that he could feel on his own. "We could find the right kind of rock with one of Spirit's cameras…" he went on.

"…And direct her arms to grasp it and maneuver it into place," Larry finished. "Why didn't we think of that sooner?"

"I'll have to calculate the right size and shape of rock for her to look for, based on the weight of both the rover and the rock itself," Charlie started, the words tripping over each other as they spilled forth. His earlier melancholy had been replaced with the familiar excitement when a new idea took over his senses, drowning out everything else in its path. "And we need to know exactly how far her arms can extend, so we know how large our search radius is."

"And don't forget the density of the rocks, which means you'll need to know their chemical composition…"

Waving at Zorbin and hurrying to reach the rest of the CalSci team while there was still enough light to see by, talking animatedly and gesturing the whole while, they literally left thoughts of the fugitive, as well as David Sinclair, in their dust.