By Eminent Domain td-124

by Warren Murphy

  "There is more," he promised. "There was a helicopter pilot who dropped off the soldiers. When he came back to retrieve them, he claims to have seen an army of ghosts."

  This got Anna's attention. Blinking, she looked up at the young man. "Explain," she insisted, her voice flat.

  "He swears they were there, and then they were not," Sergei said excitedly. "He saw a group of soldiers briefly from the air, then they-poof-vanished from sight."

  Anna's face steeled. Her jaw firmly clenched, she scampered to her feet.

  Perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps whoever was behind this was dumber than she thought. Or mad to tip his hand so soon. One thing was certain: if this was genuine, whoever was responsible was most definitely a man. No woman on Earth would ever be so big a fool.

  "Show me this story," Anna Chutesov commanded.

  And her strained voice was filled with equal parts hope and dread.

  Chapter 7

  So as not to lose the respect of the men under his command, Colonel Robert Hogue made a supreme effort to not vomit on the Eskimo's head. It wasn't easy.

  As a young private, Hogue had served in Vietnam. He had seen plenty bad back then. But that was long ago. The inaction of the intervening years had dulled the horrors of youth. Time was apparently a great healer, even for a set of tired eyes that had seen as much as Colonel Robert Hogue's.

  The rural town of Kakwik, Alaska, was bringing it all back with a vengeance.

  The houses in the remote Eskimo village on the shore of the Yukon River were little more than steel drums. Fingers of thin black smoke still curled from chimney pipes, tickling the snowflakes that slipped down from the pale pink clouds. And all around the squalid village, the dead jutted from freshly fallen snow like gutted ice sculptures.

  Colonel Hogue had nearly tripped over the first body as he and the eighty National Guard troops under his command were marching past the isolated town. The discovery of that one half-frozen corpse had led them here. Once in Kakwik, their routine maneuvers suddenly turned deadly serious.

  Two dozen bodies were arranged in a gruesome tableau alongside the main road of the village. Stomach cavities were split open and throats were slashed. Blood froze black. Dead eyes, pried wide open, stared unseeing at the troops as they passed. Snowflakes collected on lash and lid.

  At the sight of the bodies, a few of the National Guardsmen lost their lunch in the newly fallen snow. Colonel Hogue forged on, fighting his own urge to vomit.

  The bodies along the road had been arranged as if for review. Near a particularly dilapidated home, Hogue noticed another body, separate from the rest. He cautiously left the road, ducking between a pair of corpses.

  The kitchen door was open on the nearest battered tin house. It looked as if the old man who lived there had been shot as he came out the door, then fell down the four wooden stairs of his small porch. Whoever had arranged the other bodies had simply forgotten him there.

  The Colonel bent to examine the old man.

  The Eskimo wore a pair of tattered red long johns and orange socks. Fresh snow, like a scattering of pixie dust, dulled the dark colors.

  "Check the homes," Hogue barked as he stooped over the body. "And stay sharp."

  Ever alert to danger, the National Guardsmen dispersed, moving in packs from house to house. As the men began fanning out, Hogue turned back to the lone body.

  The Eskimo's milky white eyes were frozen glass. A single tap would shatter them into a million fragments. With his head tipped to one side and his arm extended, the dead man seemed to be staring at something. Almost begging understanding from beyond the grave.

  With a frown Hogue got down in the snow next to the body. He followed the dead man's line of sight. "What the hell?" Hogue whispered to himself. Climbing back to his knees, he crawled around the body.

  The dead man's blue hand extended to the base of the stairs. Colonel Hogue pulled out a flashlight. Lying flat on his belly, he directed the beam under the bottom step.

  "Damn," he swore softly.

  "Colonel?"

  The voice came from above. Hogue rolled over onto his shoulder. A sergeant stood above him, his curious face framed by a drab ski mask.

  "Take a look at this," Hogue said worriedly. Confused, the sergeant got down on his belly, crowding in beside the Colonel at the base of the steps. He followed the yellow flashlight beam that Hogue shone on the wood.

  The sergeant grunted in surprise.

  "It looks like this man was trying to leave a message," Hogue said. "My guess is he didn't die right away and he heard his killers while they were doing that." He nodded back to where the rows of frozen bodies welcomed the stout of heart into Kakwik. The sergeant frowned as he studied the bottom step. A shape had been drawn in wet blood-now frozen-on the wood. A simple rectangle sat on a shaft, bisected at the midpoint by an arc.

  "What do you think it means?" the sergeant asked.

  Hogue shook his head. "It doesn't look like anything to you?" he asked leadingly.

  "Well, sir," the sergeant said reluctantly, "I don't wanna sound like a paranoid product of the Cold War, but that looks like a hammer and sickle to me. I must be wrong, though. The Russkies haven't had a stake in Alaska in more than a hundred years."

  Before the sergeant could even finish, Colonel Hogue was scurrying back to his feet, a fresh sense of urgency to his ruddy face. The sergeant had confirmed his worst fears.

  "Get the men back here," he ordered urgently. "Get them back here now."

  A sharp noise in the distance was followed by an angry shout. Hogue felt his stomach sink. He wheeled around.

  The first gunshot was followed by others. The men under his command were yelling in panic.

  The Colonel was helpless to stop it. Alone in an isolated Alaskan village facing an enemy from another age, Colonel Robert Hogue felt the youthful ghosts of Vietnam pounce from the recesses of his frightened brain.

  And as the devil danced, Hell erupted anew on the slumbering streets of Kakwik.

  Chapter 8

  His meeting with Smith went on for another hour after Remo and Chiun had left. When Mark Howard finally glanced at his watch, it was closing in on 9:00 a.m.

  "I hate to interrupt, Dr. Smith, but I'll have to get going soon if I'm going to make that flight."

  He was sitting in a hard, straight-backed chair across the desk from the CURE director. Smith looked at his own trusty Timex.

  "I had not realized it had gotten so late," he said. Gripping the edge of his desk, he rolled back his chair. "Here is your identification." He took a laminated tag from his top drawer and slid it across the desk. "There will be no problem gaining admittance, especially at such a hectic time as this. Do your work quickly and get out. Once you are done, return to Folcroft immediately. Do not attempt to contact any old acquaintances while you are there."

  "I understand," Howard said with a tight nod.

  He half stood from his chair, leaning over to take the ID card. As soon as he'd gotten to his feet, he felt a sudden rush of blood to his head.

  "Whoa," Mark said, grabbing on to the edge of the big black desk for support.

  Smith's gray face puckered in concern. "Are you all right?" he asked.

  "Yes," Howard nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just stood up a little too fast, I guess." He shook the dizzy sensation away. "I'm sorry, Dr. Smith, but what were you saying about Alaska?"

  Smith frowned. "Excuse me?" he asked.

  "You said something when I was getting up, didn't you?"

  "No," Smith said. "I did not."

  A flush seemed to grow faintly in the young man's wide face. The generally confident demeanor he had displayed over the past few days seemed to erode before Smith's eyes.

  "Oh," Howard muttered, vaguely flustered. "I just- Oh, okay." He picked up the ID, stuffing it in his breast pocket. "I'll...I'll give you a call when it's taken care of."

  Across the desk, gaze suspicious, the CURE director pursed his lips. "If you do not feel equal to this, I ca
n go myself," he said slowly.

  "No, it's fine, I promise," Howard said, inching toward the door. "Besides, I don't think Remo is too crazy about me. It'd be safer for me to leave town for the day. I'll let you know."

  With a reassuring smile he left the drab office. Once Smith was alone, a dark notch formed behind the bridge of his glasses. His new assistant's sudden odd behavior probably wasn't anything to be concerned about. It could be chalked up to nerves. After all, this was all still very new to him. And his earlier encounter with Remo doubtless hadn't helped.

  Dark expression fading, the old man booted up his desk computer. Banishing thoughts of CURE's personnel, Harold W. Smith quickly lost himself in the more manageable-and thus more agreeable-realm of cyberspace.

  IN THE TIDY outer office of Smith's secretary, Mark Howard breathed a heavy sigh as he slumped back against the door.

  Luckily, Mrs. Mikulka wasn't in the room. He tried to gather his fragmented thoughts.

  He wasn't sure what had just happened in there. Something had come to him. A strong sense of... Well, of what he didn't know. Not exactly, anyway. His mind now clearing, Mark checked his watch. He wouldn't have to leave to catch his plane for another twenty minutes. There was still time to do a little digging.

  Mark pushed away from the door.

  "Damn spider-sense," he muttered to himself. Leaving the room, he hurried down the hallway to his office. To see what-if anything-was going on in Alaska.

  Chapter 9

  Blind panic blazed like wildfire across the snowy streets of Kakwik. Forty of Colonel Robert Hogue's men had been slaughtered in the initial attack. The stink of blood swamped the frozen air.

  As the dead multiplied, those still living loosed blind bursts of automatic-weapons fire into empty air. There were no targets to hit. Between the shadows and the snow and the perpetual gloom of the swollen twilight sky, Hogue and his men were fighting ghosts. At first it was gunfire. Blinding flashes like focused lightning screamed from out of the thinning snowstorm.

  Barking orders all the way, Hogue and his remaining National Guard troops sought refuge behind the tin walls of the Kakwik hovels. Crouching, frightened, they waited as the gunfire stopped and silence descended once more on Kakwik.

  The sergeant who had recognized the old hammer-and-sickle design squatted behind Hogue.

  When the silence lingered too long, the two men peeked around the side of the house. Light dribbled onto the main drag from the shanty homes. Steam rose from freshly killed bodies.

  "Maybe they're-" the sergeant whispered. Hogue threw up a silencing hand. His ears were trained on the Alaskan night. For an instant he swore he'd heard the crunch of a foot on fresh snow.

  A blur of movement. Something flashing through the snow just before his eyes. Almost simultaneously came a startled intake of air from the sergeant.

  Hogue's head snapped around. One of the sergeant's eyes was open wide in shock. The other eye was nowhere to be seen. In its place was a dripping cavity where an invisible knife had plunged deep into brain.

  With a hiss of air, the sergeant flopped to the snow. And as he fell, the slaughter began anew.

  Men screamed and bodies fell, trails of blood staining snow to red slush.

  Guns vanished, yanked from hands by invisible demons.

  No. Not invisible. As Hogue watched in impotent horror he saw a masked man here, another there. Spiraling, pivoting. Always away from gun or bayonet.

  In no time the forty remaining soldiers were cut to twenty, then ten. When the white-haired man with the red-flecked brown eyes finally appeared from the dwindling storm, ten had become four. Including Colonel Hogue.

  A terrified soldier lunged screaming at the apparition. His head bounced to the ground as his body made a beeline for a snowbank.

  Colonel Hogue couldn't believe how fast the stranger had moved. His eyes had barely registered the death of the first soldier before the other two were rushing forward.

  Another lost his head.

  For an instant while the latest body dropped, the white-haired man seemed to lose his footing on the snow. But if that was the case, he quickly regained it.

  The final Alaska National Guard soldier was thrusting with his bayonet when he became aware of a lightness to his hand. He quickly realized that the lightness stemmed from the fact that he no longer had a hand. His wrist now ended in a raw stump. His hand, still clutching his knife, lay in the snow at his feet. The soldier had no time to ponder the horror of what had just transpired. As he stared down numbly at his own severed appendage, he was finished off with a punishing blow to the forehead.

  As the crumpled body fell, the white-haired young man turned slowly to Colonel Robert Hogue. Behind him came the others, dressed now in snow-white fatigues. Black goggles and ski masks covering their faces, they swarmed in like ants around their queen.

  The Colonel backed against the nearest shanty, breathing puffs of frightened white steam into the cold air.

  "Who are you?" Colonel Hogue demanded. The white-haired man smiled.

  "I am the Master," he said in an accent that was unmistakably Russian. "You need know me by no other name. I have been sent to give you notice that your days of sowing decadence are over. Tell those who hold your leash that the Soviet Union has reclaimed Russian America." His eyes took on the demented glint of a zealot. "Long live the new Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik," the Master said coldly.

  And as Colonel Hogue felt his blood run to ice, the white-haired Russian flashed a toothy smile.

  In spite of his great fear, the Army Colonel couldn't help but notice that this fearsome fighter with the flashing deadly hands was, at least in one small way, a typical Russian. Even after ten years without communism, with access to all the bounty the West had to offer, there apparently still wasn't one damn toothbrush or tube of Crest in the whole godforsaken Bolshevik country.

  Chapter 10

  Mark Howard gained entry to the White House through the Old Executive Office Building. He followed subterranean corridors to the main mansion.

  Men and women swarmed busily all around him. Some were hired guns who were still on hand to help with the transition from the previous administration, but most had the fresh-faced, starry-eyed look of political ideologues.

  With his bland young Midwestern face, Mark fit right in. No one gave him so much as a second glance on his way through the labyrinthine tunnel system.

  He clutched a small black valise tightly in one hand. It looked neither new nor old, just ordinary. His knuckles were clenched white, and the handle was slick with sweat.

  His first visit to the White House had been just a few weeks before. That was as a CIA analyst, when he had gone to the West Wing for an Oval Office meeting with the outgoing President. This time everything was different: his purpose, the President, the agency Mark worked for, even his identity itself. The laminated ID tag Smith had issued him was clipped to his jacket.

  The tag identified him as a telephone company official with high security clearance. The badge looked real enough. Mark hoped it was good enough to fool the pros.

  Heart thudding, Mark followed the memorized route to the small West Wing elevator. A Secret Service agent stood at the closed door, a white wire threaded from collar to ear.

  Mark did his best to hide his anxiety as the agent carefully studied his ID. After a glance at the nervous young man before him, the agent handed back the card.

  "Open your bag, please, sir," the agent said. If he was suspicious, it didn't show. His voice was perfectly modulated, with not a hint of inflection.

  Mark obediently thumbed open the tabs on the valise.

  As the Secret Service man picked through the materials inside, Mark clipped his tag back to his jacket. After a perfunctory search, the agent handed the bag back.

  "Left off the elevator, sir," he announced as he pressed the button. The elevator doors slid open. "Another agent will be there to accompany you."

  "Thanks," Mark said with an anxious smile. Ba
g in hand, he stepped onto the car.

  The agent followed him with his eyes. "First time at the White House?" he asked abruptly.

  Mark was surprised at how easy the lie came.

  The young man exhaled. "I guess it shows, huh?" Howard said.

  The Secret Service agent nodded. "Sometimes I still find it intimidating," he offered. As the doors slid shut there was just a hint of a knowing smile.

  Once the doors were closed, Mark took a deep breath. The car whisked him up to the First Family residence.

  The agent downstairs was wrong. When the doors slid open there was no one waiting for Mark. An order to abandon the family quarters had been issued to all Secret Service personnel on this floor. The command had come from the highest level at the Treasury Department. All agents were to stay out for two hours while national-security experts updated the White House satellite system.

  Of course it was a lie. Feeling like the only man inside the most famous residence on Earth, Mark followed the wide, empty corridor to the Lincoln Bedroom.

  Going to the nightstand next to the bed, Mark opened the bottom drawer. He pulled out a cherry-red telephone that sat inside. Unclipping the cord from the back, he placed the phone on the bed.

  Mark drew the cord through a hole in the back of the drawer and followed it to a silver wall plate behind the bed. Detaching the other end of the cord from the wall, he quickly retrieved a screwdriver from his bag. Removing the phone jack plate, he replaced it with a blank one.

  There would be no problem with someone removing the plate at a later date and tapping into this line. Once he removed the phone, the line had already been rerouted. The Lincoln Bedroom phone line was now officially dead.

  Dropping the old plate and cord into his bag, Mark picked up both bag and phone.

  Where he'd placed it on the bed, the dialless red phone had left a square imprint in the quilt. Sticking the phone up under his arm, Mark smoothed the wrinkles flat with one hand.

  He glanced around the nightstand area. Everything appeared to be as he left it. He crossed to the door. Casting one last look at the stately room that during the Civil War had been President Lincoln's cluttered office, Mark hurried out into the hallway. Unfortunately, in his haste to leave the Lincoln Bedroom, he collided with the man who was rushing into the room from the hall.