A War of Shadows, page 14
She nodded.
“I saw him the other day. He told me that the big leaks on the Wilderness Organism story came from Her Highness Georgianne Meekins, the H W Queen herself.”
Maxine Bloom looked surprised. “You think she…?” The question trailed off.
He shrugged. “Who knows? Won’t get any more from Sonny, either. The government censor at the Post canned him when he tried to sneak a story about the camps past to the copy desk. He’s probably in one, now. Hell, Maxie, the American public doesn’t even know! As long as they get their steady diet of soap operas and shoot-’em-ups, mow their lawns if they have any, and read Schlock Confessions while listening to funk music they’re oblivious.”
“Call Nadine,” his secretary said. “Tell her you love her and all that. Then talk to Bob. After that, I’m going to get Maury Edwards up here to give you a sleep shot.”
“Now wait a minute!” he protested.
She was hearing none of it. “Jake, we’ll probably all be dead or in those camps before this is out,” she said ominously. “If we aren’t, it’ll be because of the passion you’ve shown here. We can’t afford to lose you, Jake. It’s my neck, too, you know. How’s the heart?”
He grimaced. “Okay, I guess. I feel so rotten it’s hard to tell.”
Maxine Bloom was one of a handful of people who knew that Edelman had had a triple bypass operation less than five years before. He was to have retired after that, but they needed him.
They all needed him now. He realized that, although the thought made him uncomfortable. So many lives, so many husbands, wives, children needed him, depended on him. He held their lives in his hand.
Maxine went out, and a little while later Bob Hartman came in. Thirtyish, prematurely balding, Jake had rescued him from the obscurity of an inspectorship in Butte, Montana where he’d been sent for nailing a ranking senator with over $138,000 in illegal payoff money. The senator had resigned, of course, and was convicted and sentenced to three years’ probation. They replaced him with another crook, and Hartman saw scenic Butte, where he’d considered quitting and taking a nice police job in a small town somewhere when Jake had tagged him. He was forever grateful to Jake, and intensely loyal to the little man.
“How’d it go?” the chief inspector asked his aide.
Hartman loosened his tie and threw his sports-jacket over the back of his chair. “Not bad. We have a pretty good selection of agents around the country, including here.”
“No word on O’Connell or Bede as yet?” Edelman asked.
The younger man shook his head from side to side. “Nothing. Hell, they’re probably dead. Even if they aren’t, it was pretty easy to bury somebody before, and a cinch now. If anything turns up, though, we’ll know it instantly.”
That satisfied the boss; there was little else he could expect. Edelman changed the subject.
“What about the old rad connection? Anything?” “None of the sleepers has surfaced, it that’s what you mean. Still, there’re rumblings. Something big is up, something not clear but absolutely strong. Best guess is they’re going to hit the cities—maybe one, maybe a lot, all at once.”
“When?” Jake Edelman leaned forward. “Nothing clear. Best guess is sometime during the week of September fifteenth.”
Edelman involuntarily glanced over at his desk calendar. It was August twenty-fifth now, as he well knew.
Three weeks. Three weeks to win the war of shadows, and he was still too much in the dark.
SEVENTEEN
Twelve people sat in a small tent watching the instructor, six males and six females. For the last two weeks they’d lived together, trained together, practically showered together and washed behind each other’s ears. But, aside from Sam and Suzy, none knew the names of the others.
“In two days,” the political officer, who seemed to be an Arab told them, “you will leave Camp Liberty. You will travel independently, although if you wish a pair can go together. No more. You will be provided with all of the identification and background you will need to pass routine muster, but you will not be able to withstand a detailed check. Basically, you are all in the U.S. Army, all of you will have military IDs, uniforms, and orders. Act military, think military, and use their system to get you where you are going.”
Suzy, who’d given up smoking anything but dope while at the camp, was back on the weeds now. They were foul-smelling, a Middle Eastern brand with Arabic writing on the pack. She lit one, then looked up at the instructor. Sam stared at her; he knew that manner, that gleam in her eyes. The old Suzy was back now, back in action, and she was loving every minute of it.
“Okay, so where are we going?” she asked.
The instructor nodded at a projectionist in the rear, the battery-powered lighting went out, and a slide projector came on.
“On August twenty-seventh you will be dropped at various points up to six hundred miles apart up and down the Atlantic Coast, far enough from each other to minimize suspicion of so many independent personnel going to an obscure place. Your orders will state that you are reporting for duty at Catoctin Station, the alternate Pentagon in the Catoctin Mountains just north of Frederick, Maryland, about a hundred kilometers from Washington, D.C., or Baltimore, Maryland. You won’t be going there, though. Instead, you’ll be heading here.”
The slide, which had showed Maryland, then Frederick County, flipped again to show a closeup of the Catoctin area. The instructor walked to the screen and pointed to a spot just to the right and slightly south of Catoctin National Park. It was still parkland, and there seemed to be a lake there.
“At this recreation area,” the instructor continued, “you will use the pay phone to call a number we will give you. You will call it, say your Camp Liberty number, and hang up. You won’t be noticed—the place is currently off limits for tourists, and is used entirely by military personnel in the area to take days off. Relax and do the same. Someone will contact you there after they’ve looked you over and determined that you are indeed you. They will bring you to an old farmhouse we have prepared for you, and there you will wait until our people get to you and tell you where your weapons are.”
That intrigued another_ of the team. “Weapons?” The instructor nodded. “Standard pistols, rifles, and other equipment will await you in the farmhouse, of course. However, you will have to troop through some woodlands to get your share of blue cylinders.”
They understood what that meant. They had practiced with mockups.
“You will, sorry, have to carry them back to your base, check them out, and store them. A supply of antidote and a large supply of syringes will be included as well for that particular strain, although, as you now know, the antidote is only effective for three to five days. That is enough, of course, but don’t take it too early and feel protected. After you are set up, we will again contact you with your target, date, and equipment you will need to carry out our task. Please rest assured that we will provide material to effectively paint and disguise the cylinders. Anyone walking in the U.S. right now with a blue sprayer of any kind would get hung on the spot by locals. We had to place the caches before the military emergency ever was declared, though, so blue and exposed they will be when you carry them back to base. Remember that!”
“What happens then?” Sam asked.
“Huh?” The instructor was taken aback by the question, and didn’t seem to know quite what was on the big man’s mind.
“After we accomplish the mission,” Cornish said. “Then what?”
“Why, you get the hell out of there and back to base, and then your target gets very sick, that’s what,” the political officer replied, still puzzled.
“No, no,” the big man pressed. “After that. Then what happens to us?”
“You’ll have to stay underground for quite some time,” the instructor said. “After all, when all of the teams strike all over the nation at the same time, there will be all hell breaking loose.” That was true enough. “After that, we will have other work for you. I have already told you as much as I dare. One or more of you could get picked up, you know.”
The briefing ended abruptly at that point, and they walked back to their quarters. Suzy was silent for a little while, then turned to him. “What’s the matter? Why did you press him like that?”
He frowned. “I don’t like it. There’s something wrong here, something smelly. You don’t feel it?”
She shook her head. “I think you’ve just got the willies.”
“It’s more than that,” he insisted. “Well, like, for instance, why did he tell us about the farmhouse? If any of us were picked up, the pigs could sweep every farmhouse in that county and the others on all sides, looking for one with a new group of tenants who roughly fit descriptions they’d have.”
“You’re crazy,” she said. “Ten to one they’ve had it established for quite a while, with people who look kind of like us. You worry too much.” She reached up, kissed him, then swatted him one in the behind. It didn’t shake him out of it.
“Maybe you don’t worry enough,” he said softly, wondering if in fact she ever worried at all.
EIGHTEEN
Sandra O’Connell awoke. It was pitch dark wherever she was, and damp, and terribly smelly. Everything seemed odd; she tried to sit up and found for a while that she could not. Finally, after several tries, she did it, but her head was spinning and her whole body feeling oddly numb, distorted, misshapen.
She tried to think, to remember where she was and how she’d gotten here, wherever it was. Memories were misty, fragmented, disjointed, but she had a sense of identity, she knew who she was. She remembered, as if through the wrong end of a spyglass, walking out into the lobby of NDCC, being approached by the security men, going into an office—and that was that. Nothing more until now. How long ago? Days? Weeks? Worse?
Almost as disturbing was the quality of the memories; nothing would go together right, get connected. There were odd scenes, strange places and faces, and she couldn’t connect names or situations to any of them. It was a disembodied collection; she seemed to remember those things as if she’d been a third-party observer there, and her mind sometimes pictured her own image in a place or conversation fragment as if she were seeing through someone else’s eyes.
She moved her arm out a little and touched something soft and large. It startled her, and she almost screamed, but managed to get hold of herself. Steeling herself in the darkness, she reached back out again, felt it, then grabbed it and picked it up. It was a real job picking it up, although it was neither heavy nor bulky. Her hand and arm didn’t feel right, wouldn’t quite do what she wanted and willed them to do.
At first the shape of the thing puzzled her. There was no light to see by although the perception of a slight glow coming through slats somewhere assured her she was not blind. Finally she felt the sewn mouth, the button nose and two plastic eyes.
A teddy bear? she thought, totally confused.
She tried to collect her thoughts. It was easier to concentrate on one thing at a time, although matters were still cloudy, dreamlike and easily lost.
Drugs, she decided. They had drugged her with some sort of hypnotic or hallucinogen, and for quite a long while, too. This was bad; some such drugs had lasting, even permanent side effects and aftereffects, and this scared her.
Somehow, though, she knew, she’d been drugged and locked away and had still managed to escape. That was the only explanation for her being here. But if she had escaped, then they were looking for her, and could find her at any moment.
She felt around the shed, finding the two half-broken boards that had been her entryway. Slowly, carefully, she edged over to the opening, and carefully dangled her legs down.
Her feet touched water. It was odd; that tingling numbness was still there, and contact with the water produced a sensation more like wading in gelatin, but the message of water came through.
She hesitated for a moment, first to listen for any sounds—there were none she could hear except insects and the lapping of the water—and then because she had no idea how deep the water would be. Finally she decided to chance it; it couldn’t be very deep or she’d never have gotten inside in a drugged condition. Cautiously she lowered herself down. It was little more than knee-high, which was a relief.
She bent low and emerged from under the boathouse, looking around. It was still dark, but her eyes, accustomed to it from the moment of awakening, saw fairly well the lake and the looming shadows of boats, lights, and equipment. Only one small light was on now, far over to the other side. There seemed to be some movement there, a guard perhaps, but whoever it was had to be pretty far off. The sky was overcast, and the humid air had the feel of thunderstorm about it.
She moved away from the light, back to the shore behind the boathouse, and looked around. Trees all over, it looked like from the darkness and the sounds. She knew she had to get moving fast or else they would catch her, even though she didn’t know who “they” were. Then she heard the sound of a distant truck just off to her left. A road! she thought excitedly. Not too far, either. She decided to head for it, despite the risk of exposure there. Roads went somewhere, and somewhere was where she needed to go.
She was still uncoordinated; it took a little time for her to get things moving in a semblance of normality, but she made the trees and bushes nearest the direction her ears assured her the road was.
Once concealed in the foliage, she paused, feeling momentarily safe and hidden, and took stock of herself. It was dark and she was farsighted without her glasses, so visual checks were blurry and tenuous. Still, she found that she was dressed in tattered shreds of what must have been a hospital gown, and nothing else. She was dirty and covered with grease and grime, but, mercifully, someone had cut her hair extremely short, so it was the least of her problems.
She was a little chilly, but it was the result of the high humidity and approaching storm—and yet the overall warmth and humidity cheered her in that they said that it was still summer, and perhaps not a whole lot of time had passed. The thought that she might be in Florida or some other warm climate area crept slightly up to her thoughts, but was pushed back as unacceptable.
The sound of another truck came, somewhere ahead of her, and she started for it. Stumbling, still dizzy and feeling somewhat disembodied, she made the road in about half an hour.
It was a pretty fancy freeway: four lanes in each direction cutting a swath through the wilderness. It would take a lot of traffic to justify a road like this; in normal times it would be crowded day and night. It was empty now.
There was a green exit sign off to her right, and she headed for it, hoping that it would tell her where she was. Keeping close to the bushes and trees in case another truck should come out of the darkness, she came close to the big sign in a few minutes.
And, suddenly, she felt real panic, and started to tremble and feel sick. Despite her farsightedness, she was in good position to read the huge white-on-green letters and they stood out reasonably well in the lightning flashes.
They just didn’t make any sense. Her mind simply refused to put the symbols together into words she could recognize, no sounds or images forming as she stared at them.
She spent a few minutes getting hold of herself, telling herself it was another byproduct of the drug that would wear off in time, but that thought only helped a little.
There was a rumbling sound off in the distance, and before she could move a large tractor-trailer truck came over the hill and rumbled toward her, its bright lights cutting like knives through the darkness. She flattened against the ground, and it came toward her as she held her breath. Finally it passed, fairly close to her, its lights briefly illuminating her but obviously not enough to give the driver a clear look at her. It went past without slowing down, a big rig with a tandem trailer, and passed out of sight.
She turned slowly and looked at the sign again. It still made no sense to her, but now she noticed the little blue signs underneath. These were symbols telling what could be found at the exit. The little white words underneath were so many random squiggles, but there was the tent sign that meant camping—the lake, of course—and an additional white cross that meant hospital.
Hospital, she thought. Of course.
She looked at the squiggles underneath, knowing what they must say, but they just wouldn’t say the words to her.
She’d heard of the effect, but its happening to her was terrifying.
Still, there was nothing that could be done about it. It was probably something that would pass, she had to believe that, and clung to it. For now, she had to get moving, and that meant away from that hospital, away from this exit sign.
She was starting to feel hungry, with a particular craving for something sweet, but she knew that meals might be few and far between in the near future.
Now what, though? she mused, a dark feeling of hopelessness coming on. She was as good as naked, hungry, in a wilderness the whereabouts of which she didn’t know, and with, undoubtedly, a search on for her.
Escaping was a lot easier in the movies than it was in real life. Still, the alternative, turning herself in and going back to wherever she’d come from, was as good as death to her. That truck had to be going somewhere important; she decided to keep hidden but follow the road.
