Strangers

ran through an open meadow, down toward the floor of the valley. Windblown snow had stuck to large sections of the thick, interlocking steel loops of the fence, but other areas were bare, and those uncrusted links were what Jack studied most closely.
        "The fence itself isn't electrified," Jack said above the shrieking wind. "There aren't conducting wires woven through it, and the current can't be carried by the links. No way. There'd be just too damn much resistance because they're too thick and because the ends of some of them don't make tight contact with each other."
        Ginger said, "Then why the warning signs?"
        "Partly to spook away amateurs," Jack said. He put the beam of the flash on the overhang again. "However, there are conducting wires strung carefully through the center of that barbed-wire roll, so you'd get fried if you went over the top. We'll cut through the bottom."
        Ginger held the flashlight while Dom dug into one of the canvas rucksacks, found the acetylene torch, and passed it to Jack.
        After he had slipped on a pair of tinted ski goggles, Jack lit the torch and began to cut an entrance through the chainlink barrier. The fierce hissing of the burning gas was audible even above the keening, moaning wind. The intense blue-white acetylene flame cast an eerie light that struck a thousand jewel-bright glints in the snow.
        They were not at a position where they risked being seen from the main entrance of the Depository, which lay over the brow of a hill that sloped up from the other side of the fence. However, Dom was sure the weird acetylene light reached high enough into the night to be spotted from the other side of that rise. If seen, it would draw guards this way. But if Jack was right, if the Depository's security was largely electronic, there would not be guards prowling the grounds tonight; and in this weather, surveillance by video cameras was pretty much ruled out, too, for their lenses would be iced-over or packed with snow.
        Of course, though they wanted to get inside the Depository and have a quick look around, it Would not be a tragedy if they were apprehended here. After all, being taken into custody was part of Jack's plan for focusing attention on Thunder Hill.
        Dom, Ginger, and Jack were not armed. All the weapons had been for the others, in the Cherokee, because their escape was essential. If they were stopped, all was lost. Dom hoped they wouldn't need their guns, and that they were already safely in Elko.
        As Jack cut a crawl-through opening in the fence, the eldritch light of the acetylene torch increasingly captivated Dom and, suddenly, made a connection with the past, hurtling him back once more in memory:
        The third jet roared over the roof of the diner, so low that he threw himself flat on the parking lot, certain the airplane was crashing on top of him, but it swooped past, leaving shattered air and a blast of engine heat in its wake; he started to get up, and a fourth jet boomed over the roof of the motel, a huge half-glimpsed shadowy shape, its running lights carving white and red wounds through the night as it thundered south and angled east, out across the barrens beyond I-80, where the third jet had gone, and now the first two craft, which had passed over at a greater altitude, were far out there, swinging back, one to the east and one to the west;, yet still the earth shook and the night was filled with a great rumble like an ongoing and never-ending explosion, and he thought there must be more jets coming, even though the queer electronic oscillation that had throbbed under the roar was now getting louder and shriller and stranger and was unlike anything jets would produce; he shoved up onto his feet and turned, and there was Ginger Weiss and Jorja and Marcie, and there was Jack running over from the motel, and Ernie and Faye coming out from the office, and others, all the others, Ned and Sandy; the rumble was now like the crash of Niagara Falls combined with the base-throb pounding of a thousand timpani; the ululant electronic whistle made him feel as if the top of his head was going to be sliced off by a bandsaw; there was frost-silver light of a peculiar kind; he looked up, away from the jets that had gone past, over the roof of the diner, looked up toward the light,- he pointed and said, "The moon! The moon!" Others looked where he pointed; he was filled with a sudden terror, and he cried,