At approximately 6pm they arrive in the town of McNary and contact Garret. After briefing Garret on the current situation he agrees to mobilise as many man as he can and pick Carter and Colorados up. Carter calls Phoenix and mobilises his Hostage Rescue Team. Garret arrives ten minutes later by helicopter and they fly out to the cave. It is just after dark by the time the HRT arrives followed shortly afterwards by a large contingent of State Police. A medical helicopter arrives and Ashford, Margolis and the now deceased Striker are airlifted to Phoenix Memorial Hospital. Margolis recieves some stitches and pain killers and heads back out to the cave. Ashford elects to stay in hospital and chat up nurses.
Carter suits up and his team moves to flank the mouth of the cave. Several smoke grenades are lobbed into the cave. The team prepares to flashbang the cave and then assault it. Carter is to lead the team of three that will head the assault. The assualt starts badly, Carter throws his Flashbang into the cave however one of the other members of the team manages to bounce his flashbang off the roof of the cave and into Bravo team. Cries of "Man down! Man down!" cause confusion as Alpha team attempt entry into the cave. Carter hesitates almost calling an Abort, but proceeds. It proves to be a moot point as the team finds that the cave empty once they are inside.
They find that the sniper has crawled into a fissure at the back of the cave which is too small for them to enter in their flak jackets. The cave contains five bodies and an opaque, mother of pearl, sphere about the size of a basket ball, maybe larger. There are also several boxes of 303 ammunition against one wall. The team secure the cave and forensics are brought in.
Three of the bodies appear to be the partially cannibalised remains of the Apache Shamans, who have been dead for several days. One of the bodies is that of a young woman, she has been abused and mutilated, although her face is fairly badly damaged they decide she is probably Elaine Braverman. The last body is that of the apprentice, he has only been dead for 15 hours or so. Margolis arrives back and assists in the forensics examination. They find several sets of finger prints on the cave walls and one set, which is also on the boxes of bullets, does not belong to any of the corpses. Carter is outside when he hears a coyote howl from the rocks above the cave. He climbs up and eventually finds coyote tracks around a fissure in the rocks, a small amount of smoke is wafting from the fissure. A set of boot prints heads down around the rear of the cave and round to some tire tracks near where some of the police cruisers are parked. A quick check with Garret informs him that several of the State troopers were sent of with tasks. They are able to contact all the troopers bar one. They follow the car tracks to the Begay ranch where the car is abandoned in the barn. The trooper is found in the passenger seat of the car, he has been gutted and his nose and several fingers bitten off.
Margolis organises for all of the evidence to be taken to the Sheriff's office on the reservation.
Margolis begins investigating the forensic evidence while the others retire for the night. She discovers:
- Elaine Braverman was stabbed to death, has no traces of toxin in her system, but has traces of human tissue in her digestive tract.
- The State trooper and the apprentice were affected by the toxin.
- The Shaman weren't.
- Elaine Braverman had been dead for weeks, the Shaman's much more recently.
Margolis ingnores the sphere completely (as Andrew put it it is surrounded by a "somebody else's problem" field)
5th August
Ashford is released from hospital and goes to talk to SAIC Hobson.
Margolis heads for the reservation, on the way there Garret calls her. When she arrives the police station is on fire. Colorados has been killed. All the forensic evidence inside has been destroyed, there is no trace of the sphere.
Garret has found a witness, Thomas Silverhorn. He saw an Indian in cammos with a rifle enter the police station. 3 white men in black suits were breaking into the rear of the station. A gunfight ensued. The men in suits climbed back out the window the had gone in through, still firing into the station. They left in a black lincoln (ANM-2199) with one of their number wounded. Silverhorn left to find a police officer, Colorados was not lying there when he left.
An examination of Colorados' body reveals he was killed bythe same .303 rounds used in the cave.
The match on the prints from the cave comes back shortly afterwards. They belong to one Master Sergeant Emanuel Santana, Special Forces, 48 years of age. He was reported AWOL in 1971 while seconded to a CIA operation. He is considered a threat to national security and several agencies keep open inactive files on the matter.
A check of the license plates reveals that the NSA's car was rented in Globe. It is found by the state police, burnt out on the side of the highway, in the direction of Globe. Mark Fletcher rented the car. He is a resident of Arizona. He has a credit card which he used to rent the car, no other info can be found about him, his home address with the bank is false. He appears to, for all intents and purposes, not exist.
A forensic examination of the car reveals large quantities of blood in the back of the car. All the blood from the car belongs to the same person. The blood contains traces of an anti-biotic and several types of amphetimines. Margolis concludes that a large amount of the blood is probably just blood plasma and that some sort of field surgery was conducted here. Carter ponders whether the NSA might be special forces.
While they are flying around in their helicopter checking various locations the HRT spot Santana near the Begay ranch. After a quick and bloody firefight ensues Santana is brought down by Carter, but not before he has killed 3 members of the HRT and wounded 2 others.
The sphere is found near Santana's corpse. margolis and carter decide to dress the evidence up with as much NSA bait as possible and send it off so that the NSA will snatch it and make it their problem.
Everyone goes home to write up reports.
Margolis decides to do an autopsy anyway, she calls Carter for assistance but is unable to contact him and so gets the assistance of Bill Watson. They are just finishing up the autopsy when the NSA arrives and confiscates everything under the auspice of National Security (yet again).
Bill Watson retires a few days later and moves abroad.
