The Echelon Vendetta (32 page)

“I’m not certain. But who else has this technology?”

“A lot of people,” said Fremont, staring at the screen. The formless glowing shape drifted out into an open area under the trees and then slipped back into the dark, now less than a hundred yards away and closing in on the safe house.

“Why is
anybody
trying to kill you, Willard?”

Fremont shook his head as he watched the screen, fear, uncertainty, dawning suspicion in his face.

Dalton stepped back from the screen. “Okay, whoever he is, let’s take this guy down.”

“I’m going with you.”

“No. I need you here, on the monitor. Take this.”

He handed Fremont a small Special Forces com set, a throat mike on a neckband and an earpiece. Fremont slipped it around his neck, set it in place without a word. Dalton put on another set, then looked at Fremont, who did a click test to see if the two units were communicating.

“Watch the screen. Whatever you see, let me know.”

“I’d rather be out there,” said Fremont, his face grim. “Last time I was in this situation, it was the one who stayed behind got her throat cut, not the guy who went to look.”

“You’re not a dog, Willard. I’m going to try to take this guy alive, but if you lose radio contact with me for longer than ten minutes, don’t come looking for me. Call the duty desk at Langley and tell them you need an extraction. They’ll recognize the phone line. No one can get in here, not without an Abrams. Sit tight. Wait it out.”

“What if you’re the guy taken alive? Got a gun to your head?”

“You know the answer to that.”

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“Yeah. I do. But a piece of my own would comfort me greatly.”

“There’s a bolt-action 308 in a glass case in the master bedroom. Box of rounds in the slide drawer underneath.”

Fremont assented in silence, his face stony.

Dalton liked him for his steel. No whining, no complaint. None of that phony hillbilly twang either. Whatever he was or had become, he was still a solid field man, and Dalton was glad to have him around. Fremont put his hand out. They shook hands, said nothing.

Dalton went back down the hallway to the side door, slipped on a set of night-vision goggles, eased the locking bars out of their slots, opened the well-oiled steel door, and slipped out into the shimmering green night.

The woods, glowing green in his night vision, had been cleared out to a distance of fifty yards all around the house, for obvious reasons, and he crossed the stony ground in a quick soundless rush, the Colt out, slipping into the green shadows under the trunks.

Above him, through the tangle of black branches and leaves, he could see bright-green patches of open sky. A few pale stars glittered in the moonless night. The cottonwood leaves hissed and rattled in the cold wind and he could see his own breath, a pale-green misty glow in the starlight.

“I see him,” Fremont’s whisper in his right ear. “He’s come out into the light about forty yards south-southwest of your position. What the hell is this guy using? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Dalton checked his wrist compass and moved out slowly, feeling his way through the trees, stepping carefully through the dried thicket and dead branches under his feet. He’d covered about twenty yards in the direction of the target when Fremont came back on the radio.

“Micah, he’s closing. He’s back under the trees now. I can’t see him anymore, but he was definitely heading your way.”

Dalton stopped in place, in a low crouch, his back up against the bowl of a sagging cottonwood. Something slid across the toe of his

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deck shoe, something heavy. By the weight and the speed of movement, a damn big snake. In Montana some of the snakes are harmless. These snakes are usually eaten by all the snakes that aren’t.

Dalton tried to ignore whatever venomous reptile it was that was flowing heavily over his toe in a muscular coiling glide, because now he could hear that deep rising and falling vibration, coming closer.

Out in the cold air the sound was more dense, more alive. It reminded him of a cathedral organ, that deep booming vibrato that shakes the pews. The sound was so strong, so resonant, that Dalton could feel it drumming on his skin, beating against his ears.

Perhaps because of the drug he connected with this kind of sound, or even some lingering effect of the salvia, his heart was hammering inside his chest, his mouth was dry, and when he tried to swallow he bitterly regretted it. This was fear, chaotic and compelling fear, with an undertone of superstitious awe, but it was not yet panic.

He pulled in a deep, silent breath and let it out through his nose, clearing his mind and readying himself. The bass organ sound was very close now, and he could see a great formless shape moving between the glowing trees. He raised the Colt, lined up the three red glowing dots in a level row, and laid them over the pale-green luminous blob that was now moving out from the shelter of a fallen cottonwood.

The shape hesitated at the edge of the clearing, pulsed in place for a while as the vibration changed into a slower, deeper note. Then it moved out again, entering the clearing, now less than thirty feet away and still coming directly toward his position.

“I see him,” whispered Fremont. “He’s close, man. Real close.”

In Dalton’s outstretched hands the Colt was steady, his grip firm, but he could see the effect of his breathing, his rapid heartbeat, in the way the three red dots were pulsing, the two dots on his rear

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sight moving into and out of line with the single dot on his foresight blade.

What he really wanted to do was to turn and run, keep running until he could run no more, roll over and lie there in the dark— disgraced, ashamed, alive. In a hidden place in his heart he hated his sense of duty, hated his suicidal sense of honor, and he hated Willard Fremont for needing his protection and devoutly wished him dead.

The figure was fifteen feet away and the humming vibrato was in the air all around him. He tightened his finger on the trigger, feeling the sear deep in the frame as it ticked across the oiled and polished surface of the hammer, the straining of the hammer spring, the incremental motion of oiled steel on steel. He stared into the cloud and saw a distinct shape, a solid central form, tall, perhaps six feet tall, broad as a barrel, wrapped inside the shifting, flowing cloak that surrounded it.

Although the humming was in him now, a deep vibration in his chest, in the electric air he breathed, he willed his world into silence, forcing his rising panic down, easing his adrenaline rush until his mind was still and he could see nothing but that hard dark-green shape deep in the heart of the swirling light-green cloud, hear only his heartbeat, feel only the gridwork of engraved lines on the broad blade of the trigger. The three red lithium dots were rock steady, lined up and centered over the heart of this solid shape.

Ten feet away, and as if he had sensed Dalton’s presence, the figure had stopped moving. Dalton slipped off his goggles: the muzzle flare would blind him for thirty seconds if he kept them on.

He blinked as his vision adjusted to the sudden dark, centering his sights on the target, now only barely visible as a moving black shadow in the pale starlight. The bass organ sound increased, driving into Dalton’s mind like a dentist’s drill. The sear inside the frame of the Colt ticked another micron across the surface of the hammer cog.

And another, a steely heartbeat deep inside the revolver.

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The figure hesitated, and then came rapidly forward, a sudden gliding advance straight at Dalton.

The idea of taking this man alive, if man it actually was, seemed quite suicidal at this taut moment, so he fired, three quick rounds in succession, each one a distinct earsplitting thunderclap, the big gun jerking as the round exploded out the muzzle, the red bloom of the muzzle flare lighting up a churning seething mass of tiny glistening forms, the world snapping into darkness again, the image still burning on his retina, the trigger pull harder now that he was back in double-action. A tiny metallic click as the sear released and the spring drove the hammer down. Another booming flash. In his eyes the same cloud of glistening red-tinted particles, shards of shiny black mica in a breaking beach wave. He pulled the trigger one last time. The Colt jumped in his hands. The solid cloudlike shape broke into a million particles, reformed itself like liquid mercury, and rose straight up into the night, a writhing tornado of spinning, buzzing particles, spreading itself out across the tops of the trees.

Then fading, dissolving, disappearing against the stars.

For a time, Dalton could hear a distant vibration, receding, dying gradually away into nothingness. Then silence, complete, deep, stunned, nothing but the sound of his own rasping breath, his carotid pulsing in his throat, and a high-pitched incessant ringing in his deafened ears.

“HONEYBEES?” SAID FREMONT. “A
swarm of honeybees? Nuts. Couldn’t be. They don’t travel at night. Anyway, it’s too damn cold.”

“I’ve seen it before,” said Dalton, wrapping his fingers around his cup of coffee, inhaling the rich, deep scent. “Sometimes if a grizzly breaks a nest open, the main queen gets alarmed, she’ll swarm them up like an army and they’ll move just this way. Even at night.”

“Bees,” said Fremont, shaking his head. “Scared the—”

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“Me too.” “You’re lucky they didn’t swarm you. They can kill a man.” “I saw a swarm kill a young Kodiak once, when I was a kid in

Tucumcari. They got into his muzzle, blinded him, smothered him.” “Yeah. Ugly way to die.” “Very.” Behind Fremont’s shoulder the light was changing in the eastern

windows of the house, going from milky gray to pale pink. Fremont followed Dalton’s look, then turned back to his fried eggs and bacon. “Morning soon.”

“Yeah. Long night.” “I kind of wish it hadn’t been bees.” “Why?” “If it had been the guy who was trying to kill me, maybe we

mighta found out something. We’re still in the dark.” “Any more thoughts? On Echelon?” “Yeah. Quite a few. I think this
has
to be about Echelon. Echelon

was the only intelligence op I was ever on that had any real importance. Micah, I’m a small-time field man. Married. Divorced. A bankrupt. If it isn’t Echelon, who is it? My ex-wife’s lawyers? My bookie? My creditors?”

Dalton sensed a building panic in the man and decided that now was a good time to see if he could be led around to the delicate subject of Sweetwater. He poured himself another cup, offered the pot to Fremont. “I thought Echelon was just a technology-monitoring operation. What the hell
were
you guys doing for the NSA, anyway?”

“Okay, we were what the NSA called ‘the remedial arm’ of Echelon. You’re right. Echelon’s brief was—still is—to monitor all kinds of communications worldwide, looking for a lot of things, but in our case it was mainly the illegal movement of prohibited international technology. Weapons-grade electronics. Advanced jet-propulsion sys

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tems capable of being reverse-engineered into engines that could drive a nuclear missile. Anything contrary to our national security, our military superiority. Although we were technically CIA, we were kind of seconded to the NSA. Anytime they detected a company, a person, a charity, a political organization, any entity that was trying to move prohibited technology to an enemy, they sent us in. We were the ones who got our hands dirty.”

“Like what? Assassination?”

“No. Hell no. At least not intentionally. This was years before September eleventh. We lost some people accidentally—foul-ups, civilians wandering into a running op—but nothing on purpose. Mainly we set up complicated stings, false networks, suckered the target into showing his play, and then we took him down hard. Al Runciman and I also did detailed surveillance, basic financial workups, got the domestic life of the target figured out, searched out the background of the company. We managed the gear, the electronics; whatever needed to be specially built, we’d fabricate it ourselves. It was a great outfit, like the special-effects unit on a film crew. We had a string of major successes. One way or another, the leak would get plugged, the technical exchange derailed. Sometimes the people trying to get the prohibited technology out would never even know where it was really going—the end user—or why the deal never got done.”

“And if that failed?”

Fremont shrugged. “Like I said. We were the remedial arm. We’d set them up for the FBI, or for the local cops, and put them out of business entirely, find some way to frame them on other charges. Used the IRS sometimes, the way they got Capone. Most times the targets would never know why they were set up—the real reason, I mean. But we did what was necessary. Get them in prison if we could, but anyway stop them from selling critical technology to our enemies. Whoever was involved. Directly, culpably involved, I

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mean. Root and branch, like cancer surgery. However far down it

went, we sliced it out.”

“By any means necessary? Short of outright murder?”

“Damn right,” said Fremont, his face hardening. “And I’d do it again tomorrow. This is a great nation. It deserves to be defended. I have nothing to apologize for. I’d still be doing it if ...if I could.”

“I didn’t think you needed to apologize. And I agree with you. How many guys were in your unit?”

“Globally, I have no idea. Might have been a hundred separate units around the world, doing the same kind of work for the NSA. Our guys, our unit, we were six guys, and we were mainly responsible for the Southwest. We handled anything that came up from Southern California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado. We were based in Lordsburg mainly, but we went anywhere we had to go. We were a tight crew too, all real good guys. Al Runciman you heard about. And Milo Tillman, who we lost in the high desert in ninety-seven—”