He broke for the car, dove into the front seat and cranked up the field radio. Through the Buick’s windshield, he watched the three men kicking apart the fire. Groves was surprisingly nimble, Oppy disjointed as ever. Beyond, blooms of light moved laterally on the horizon. The radio gave off a roar of static untainted by any coherent transmission.

By the time he returned, all that was left of the campfire was a circle of soot. Fuchs was on his knees, slapping the last embers. With the fire out, the party could see how the moon had escaped the clouds and filled the range with an opalescent haze.

“Can we get away?” Groves asked Joe.

“I noticed on the way in that they like to bomb the stretch of road behind us. If we blink headlights at them, they’ll try to drop a fifty-pounder on the hood. Run without headlights and we’ll turn over in a ditch. We may as well stay here.”

“What if you’re wrong?” Fuchs’ face was smudged and his hair stood up straight. “This entire project should not be put in jeopardy because of a stupid Indian.”

“Shut up, Klaus,” Oppy said softly.

Joe said, “B-29s.”

Approaching, the bombers were bigger than anything he’d ever seen in the air. Superforts, twenty tons of steel, twice as big as Flying Fortresses, each of their four engines the size of a fighter. Chutes spilled from the bays, floated and sputtered into flares.

“Good Lord,” Oppy said, “this is beautiful.”

Why flares? Joe wondered.

The lead bomber lifted reluctantly and the next in line took its place, settling lower with closer attention to the ground. Why so low? The belly turret turned, its .50-caliber barrels swinging back and forth. He could make out the green light within the Plexiglas nose. A green bombardier pointed straight down, and as if there were a magical connection with his finger, a phosphorus bomb as bright as snow crystals lit the valley floor. From the bomb came running shapes: horses, brilliant with lather and the glare of the bomb, racing under the wing. Mustangs out of the mountains for the night grazing and the mares the ranchers had left behind. Joe couldn’t make out individual horses, only the motion of their rocking and straining, urged by the dazzle of tracers, and the way they wheeled from rays of burning phosphorus. At a distance of a mile, he thought he could hear not only their hooves but their breath, although he knew they were drowned out by the sounds of pistons and hydraulics and .50-caliber rounds. Then the mustangs and bombers moved on together like a single storm, distance muting the sound, and nothing could be seen except a flash that resembled an occasional, faraway stroke of lightning.

What Joe remembered best was what Oppy said when they were alone in Alamogordo, after the half-track and jeeps had finally appeared and led them to the base.