Shadowfires (40 page)

“Yes. I want to get out before the feds show up.”

“And if you find a clue to where he’s gone, you won’t go after him alone?”

“What did I promise you?”

“I want to hear you say it again.”

“I’ll come for you first,” Benny said. “I won’t tackle Eric alone. We’ll handle him together.”

She looked into his eyes and was not sure if he was telling the truth or lying. But even if he was lying, she could do nothing about it because time was running out. They could delay no longer.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you, Benny. And if you get yourself killed, I’m never going to forgive you.”

He smiled. “You’re some woman, Rachael. You could rouse a heartbeat in a rock, and you’re all the motivation I need to come back alive. Don’t you worry about that. Now, lock the doors when I get out—okay?”

He kissed her again, lightly this time. He got out of the car, slammed the door, waited until he saw the power-lock buttons sinking into their mountings, then waved her on.

She drove down the gravel lane, glancing repeatedly in the rearview mirror to keep Benny in sight as long as possible, but eventually the road turned, and he disappeared beyond the trees.

 

Ben drove the rental Ford up the dirt lane, parked in front of the cabin. A few big white clouds had appeared in the sky, and the shadow of one of them rippled across the log structure.

Holding the twelve-gauge in one hand and the Combat Magnum in the other—Rachael had taken only the thirty-two—he climbed the steps to the porch, wondering if Eric was watching him.

Ben had told Rachael that Eric had left, gone to some other hiding place. Perhaps that was true. Indeed, the odds were high that it was true. But a chance remained, however slim, that the dead man was still here, perhaps observing from some lookout in the forest.

He tucked the revolver into his belt, at his back, and entered the cabin cautiously by the front door, the shotgun ready. He went through the rooms again, looking for something that might tell him where Eric had established another hidey-hole comparable to the cabin.

He had not lied to Rachael; it really was necessary to conduct such a search, but he did not require an hour to do it, as he’d claimed. If he did not find anything useful in fifteen minutes, he would leave the cabin and prowl the perimeter of the lawn for some sign of a place where Eric had entered the woods—trampled brush, footprints in soft soil. If he found what he was looking for, he would pursue his quarry into the forest.

He had not told Rachael about that part of his plan because, if he had, she would never have gone to Vegas. But he could not enter those woods and track down his man with Rachael at his side. He had realized as much on the way up through the forest, on their first approach to the cabin. She was not as sure of herself in the wilds as Ben was, not as quick. If she went with him, he would worry about her, be distracted by her, which would give the advantage to Eric if the dead man was, in fact, out there somewhere.

Earlier, he had told Rachael that the odd sounds they had heard in the woods were caused by animals. Maybe. But when they had found the cabin abandoned, he had let those forest noises sound again in his memory, and he had begun to feel that he had been too quick to dismiss the possibility that Eric had been stalking them through the shadows, trees, and brush.

 

All the way down the narrow lane, from gravel to blacktop, until she reached the state route that rounded Lake Arrowhead, Rachael was more than half convinced that Eric was going to rush the car from the surrounding woods and fling himself at the door. With superhuman strength born of a demonic rage, he might even be able to put a fist through the closed window. But he did not appear.

On the state route, circling the lake, she worried less about Eric and more about police and federal agents. Every vehicle she encountered looked, at first sight, like a patrol car.

Las Vegas seemed a thousand miles away.

And she felt as if she had deserted Benny.

 

When Peake and Sharp had arrived at the Palm Springs airport, directly from their meeting with The Stone, they had discovered that the helicopter, a Bell Jet Ranger, had developed engine trouble. The deputy director, full of pent-up anger that he had been unable to vent on The Stone, nearly took off the chopper pilot’s head, as if the poor man not only flew the craft but was also responsible for its design, construction, and maintenance.

Peake winked at the pilot behind Sharp’s back.

No other helicopter had been for hire, and the two choppers belonging to the county sheriff’s substation had been engaged and unavailable for quick reassignment. Reluctantly Sharp had decided they had no choice but to drive from Palm Springs to Lake Arrowhead. The dark green government sedan came with a red emergency beacon that was usually kept in the trunk but which could be mounted to the roof beading with a thumbscrew clamp in less than a minute. They had a siren, too. They had used both the flashing beacon and the siren to clear traffic out of their way, hurtling north on Highway 111, then virtually
flying
west on I-10 toward the Redland exit. They had topped ninety miles an hour nearly all the way, the Chevy’s engine roaring, the frame shimmying under them. Jerry Peake, behind the wheel, had worried about a blowout because if a tire blew at that speed they were dead men.

Sharp seemed unconcerned about a blowout, but he complained about the lack of air-conditioning and about the warm wind blowing into his face through the open windows. It was as if, certain of his destiny, he were incapable of imagining himself dying now, here, in a rolling car; as if he believed he was entitled to every comfort regardless of the circumstances—like a crown prince. In fact, Peake realized that was probably
exactly
how Sharp looked at it.

Now they were in the San Bernardino Mountains, on State Route 330, a few miles from Running Springs, forced by the twisting road to travel at safer speeds. Sharp was silent, brooding, as he had been ever since they had turned off I-10 at the Redland exit. His anger had subsided. He was calculating now, scheming. Peake could almost hear the clicking, whirring, ticking, and humming of the Machiavellian mechanism that was Anson Sharp’s mind.

Finally, as alternating bursts of sunlight and forest shadows slapped the windshield and filled the car with flickering ghostly movement, Sharp said, “Peake, you may be wondering why only the two of us have come here, why I haven’t alerted the police or brought more backup of my own.”

“Yes, sir. I was wondering,” Peake said.

Sharp studied him for a while. “Jerry, are you ambitious?”

Watch your ass, Jerry!
Peake thought as soon as Sharp called him by his first name, for Sharp was not a man who would ever be chummy with a subordinate.

He said, “Well, sir, I want to do well, be a good agent, if that’s what you mean.”

“I mean more than that. Do you hope for promotion, greater authority, the chance to be in charge of investigations?”

Peake suspected that Sharp would be suspicious of a junior agent with too much ambition, so he did not mention his dream of becoming a Defense Security Agency legend. Instead, he said disingenuously, “Well, I’ve always sort of dreamed of one day working my way up to assistant chief of the California office, where I could have some input on operations. But I’ve got a lot to learn first.”

“That’s all?” Sharp asked. “You strike me as a bright, capable young man. I’d expect you to’ve set your sights on something higher.”

“Well, sir, thank you, but there are quite a few bright, capable guys in the agency about my age, and if I could make assistant chief of the district office with
that
competition, I’d be happy.”

Sharp was silent for a minute, but Peake knew the conversation was not over. They had to slow to make a sharp rightward curve, and around the bend a raccoon was crossing the road, so Peake eased down on the brake and slowed even further, letting the animal scurry out of the way. At last the deputy director said, “Jerry, I’ve been watching you closely, and I like what I see. You have what it takes to go far in the company. If you’ve a desire to go to Washington, I’m convinced you’d be an asset in various posts at headquarters.”

Jerry Peake was suddenly scared. Sharp’s flattery was excessive, and his implied patronage too generous. The deputy director wanted something from Peake, and in return he wanted Peake to buy something from him, something with a high price tag, maybe a lot higher than Peake was willing to pay. But if he refused to accept the deal Sharp was leading to, he’d make a lifelong enemy of the deputy director.

Sharp said, “This is not public knowledge, Jerry, and I’d ask you to keep it to yourself, but within two years the director is going to retire and recommend that I take his place at the head of the agency.”

Peake believed that Sharp was sincere, but he also had the queer feeling that Jarrod McClain, director of the DSA, would be surprised to hear about his own pending retirement.

Sharp continued: “When that happens, I’ll be getting rid of many of the men Jarrod has installed in high positions. I don’t mean to be disrespectful of the director, but he’s too much of the old school, and the men he’s promoted are less company agents than bureaucrats. I’ll be bringing in younger and more aggressive men—like you.”

“Sir, I don’t know what to say,” Peake told him, which was as true as it was evasive.

As intently as Peake watched the road ahead, Sharp watched Peake. “But the men I’ll have around me must be totally reliable, totally committed to my vision for the agency. They must be willing to take any risks, make any sacrifices, give whatever is required to further the cause of the agency and, of course, the welfare of the country. At times, rarely but predictably, they’ll be in situations where they must bend the law a little or even break it altogether for the good of country and agency. When you’re up against the scum we’ve got to deal with—terrorists, Soviet agents—you can’t always play strictly within the rules, not if you want to win, and our government has created the agency to
win
, Jerry. You’re young, but I’m sure you’ve been around long enough to know what I’m talking about. I’m sure you’ve bent the law a few times yourself.”

“Well, sir, yes, a little, maybe,” Peake said carefully, beginning to sweat under the collar of his white shirt.

They passed a sign: LAKE ARROWHEAD—10 MILES.

“All right, Jerry, I’m going to level with you and hope you’re the solid, reliable man I think you are. I haven’t brought a lot of backup with us because the word’s come down from Washington that Mrs. Leben and Benjamin Shadway have to go. And if we’re going to take care of them, we need to keep the party small, quiet, discreet.”

“Take care of them?”

“They’re to be terminated, Jerry. If we find them at the cabin with Eric Leben, we try our best to take Leben prisoner so he can be studied under lab conditions, but Shadway and the woman have to be terminated, with prejudice. That would be difficult if not impossible with a lot of police present; we’d have to delay the terminations until we had Shadway and Mrs. Leben in our sole custody, then stage a fake escape attempt or something. And with too many of our own men present, there’d be a greater chance of the terminations leaking out to the media. In a way, it’s sort of a blessing that you and I are getting a chance to handle this alone, because we’ll be able to stage it just right before the police and media types are brought in.”

Terminate? The agency had no license to terminate civilians. This was mad. But Peake said, “Why terminate Shadway and Mrs. Leben?”

“I’m afraid that’s classified, Jerry.”

“But the warrant that cites them for suspected espionage and for the police murders in Palm Springs . . . well, that’s just a cover story, right? Just a way to get the local cops to help us in the search.”

“Yes,” Sharp said, “but there’s a great deal about this case you don’t know, Jerry. Information that’s tightly held and that I can’t share with you, not even though I’m asking you to assist me in what may appear, to you, to be a highly illegal and possibly even immoral undertaking. But as deputy director, I assure you, Shadway and Mrs. Leben
are
a mortal danger to this country, so dangerous that we dare not let them speak with the media or with local authorities.”

Bullshit, Peake thought, but he said nothing, just drove onward under felt-green and blue-green trees that arched over the road.

Sharp said, “The decision to terminate is not mine alone. It comes from Washington, Jerry. And not just from Jarrod McClain. Much higher than that, Jerry. Much higher. The very highest.”

Bullshit, Peake thought. Do you really expect me to believe the president ordered the cold-blooded killing of two hapless civilians who’ve gotten in over their heads by no real fault of their own?

Then he realized that, before the insights he had achieved at the hospital in Palm Springs a short while ago, he might well have been naive enough to believe every word of what Sharp was telling him. The new Jerry Peake, enlightened both by the way Sharp had treated Sarah Kiel and by the way he’d reacted to The Stone, was not quite so gullible as the old Jerry Peake, but Sharp had no way of knowing that.

“From the highest authority, Jerry.”

Somehow, Peake knew that Anson Sharp had his own reasons for wanting Shadway and Rachael Leben dead, that Washington knew nothing about Sharp’s plans. He could not cite the reason for his certainty in this matter, but he had no doubt. Call it a hunch. Legends—and would-be legends—had to trust their hunches.

“They’re armed, Jerry—and dangerous, I assure you. Though they aren’t guilty of the crimes we’ve specified on the warrant, they are guilty of other crimes of which I can’t speak because you don’t have a high enough security clearance. But you can rest assured that we won’t exactly be gunning down a pair of upstanding citizens.”