Whirlwind

by Joseph R. Garber

  Nothing here worth wanting. Nothing worth having. Nothing worth keeping.

  Except for a woman as innocent as her dreams.

  Only a day ago, he’d thought no more of her than he would of a plastic pawn, a game piece to be moved and sacrificed as he forced Sam to checkmate. Now things had changed, changed a lot. He couldn’t say why. All he knew was that he was responsible for her, a guardian angel to be sure. Whatever happened from here on was his fault and no one else’s. Arrogant ass that he’d always been, he’d thought he could muscle Sam into telling the truth. Instead, cocky, pompous, and too damned certain of his own self-righteous superiority, his neat little scheme had blown up in his face. Now Sam would kill her for sure — if for no other reason than to punish him.

  So, yeah, he’d done it again. Bold, brave Charlie, the guy with the foolproof plan and the lionhearted valor to pull it off. Most of the time he did. Every now and then he didn’t.

  Problem. Big damned problem. He was afraid that this time would be one of those other times, blood-soaked times, and it hurt less when the blood was his own than when it was someone else’s. I know you, old man, he told himself, and with all due respect, this time, you self-centered simpleton, you’ve bitten off more than you can chew.

  He studied the face and form of an enemy of whom he was too fond. He smiled. Looking at her made him smile and he just plain couldn’t help it. Then he turned to the mirror and smiled again, this time at himself. The smiles were different. The first was tender, the second sardonic.

  Thinking only cynical thoughts, Charlie headed for the shower. Soap and water would wash today’s dirt off easily. Would that he could do the same for his soul.

  Charlie didn’t check his e-mail at all. His daughter Carly checked hers too late.

  Message 1:

  From: sledgehammer@undergroundempire.com Wed Jul 20

  23:07:55

  Date: Wed, 22 Jul 23:19:55 +0300

  From: The Sledgehammer

  Reply-To: sledgehammer@undergroundempire.com

  X-Accept-Language: en, fr

  MIME-Version: 1.0

  To: “Carly M Family”

  Subject: Forward to your father

  References:<200195192323.QDD08478potomacmail.com>

  Content-Type: text/plain; charset=x-user-defined

  Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

  X-UIDL: 1e705e5e2111117130f9fc99bsa0acqa

  Miz C.

  Pls relay to Mr. McK in case he misses the msg I sent him direct that I’m unavailable to help him anymore. Also tell him I owe him zero, zip, zilch. But since he’s been a good customer, he gets one favor. Only one. The favor is I’m telling him I just took on a job for a dude named Schmidt. Remind Mr. McK that when I’m paid to do a job, I do the job I’m paid to do.

  Sledge

  This message may contain confidential and/or privileged information. If you are not the addressee or authorized to receive this for the addressee, you must not use, copy, disclose or take any action based on this message or any information herein. If you have received this message in error, please advise the sender immediately by reply e-mail and delete this message. If you elect not to cooperate in this matter, I will scrag your disk, melt your motherboard, and nuke your CPU. So don’t fuck with me, man.

  8

  Cliffhanger

  Thursday, July 23.

  0400 Hours Mountain Time,

  0300 Hours Pacific Time

  Souls are shaped in childhood. Bodies age, but character does not. Eager youth is always in us.

  On the occasion of his twelfth birthday, Charlie had been given two books. The giver was his godfather, later his father-in-law. The gift was Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey in prose translation, a beautiful boxed set bound in grey canvas and illustrated with two-color linocuts.

  In later life, the Iliad would enthrall an adult Charlie. At age twelve, the Odyssey bewitched him, stamping a lasting mark. Crafty Odysseus became first among his heroes, and, perhaps, his permanent, although never-acknowledged, ideal.

  The Odyssey’s adventures were thrilling to be sure; he shivered with delight. But they came at a price: that saga of a wandering warrior gave young Charles McKenzie nightmares.

  Or say rather a nightmare, one single recurring malignant dream that rendered him paralyzed, sweating, stiff with terror.

  He dreamt it still.

  At Circe’s instruction, Odysseus sailed to the shores of Hell. By the black banks of the River Styx, he dug a pit, filling it with milk, wine, honey, water, crisp barley grain, and fresh blood from the throats of sacrificial sheep.

  It was the blood that did the work.

  The dead came forth. From down below they cock-crowed, belly-crawling out of Hades to sip at the offering, gurgling with pleasure as they lapped life’s never forgotten wine.

  Dead, all dead, every death since the dawn of time, men Odysseus knew, and women too, they crouched like sooty animals at the feast. Even Achilles, of all mortals greatest, was unable to resist the scarlet scent. That most courageous soldier, or rather his hungry ghost, fell to its knees, ringing its lips with gore.

  Once a hero, now a drooling beast.

  Some among the dead spoke. Hearing them was worse than seeing them, for the greater portion chittered insanity. But Achilles could be understood. Oh, yes. Easily. “I’d sooner be the lowest farmer’s lowest slave than king of all the dead.” Thus spoke the bravest of the bravest, whom every man idolized and sought to imitate.

  Then a million, million mourning ghosts pressed ’round Odysseus in their insatiable hunger, their inextinguishable despair.

  Charlie dreamt the dream more often than he admitted, and when he awoke…

  “Charlie?”

  “What?”

  “You are shouting in your sleep.”

  “It’s nothing, Mary. Just that dream. You know that dream.”

  “No.”

  “I’ve told you. It’s scared me ever since I was a kid.”

  “No, I am not Mary. I am Irina.”

  Charlie sat bolt upright. He heard Irina fumble at the lamp.

  “You are crying, Charlie.”

  For once in his life, Charlie McKenzie had nothing to say.

  “Schmidt.” It was how he answered the phone. One word. It was enough.

  “Fer-de-Lance here, sir. Sorry to call at this hour but —”

  “Report.” One word was enough for most situations.

  “McKenzie’s data vault has been cracked, sir.”

  “Excellent.” Soldiers need the simplicity.

  “It’s a two-terrabyte partition on a file server out here in California. Mirrored on a second server at the same site.”

  “Contents?” Verbosity breeds complexity.

  “Unknown. This computer geek…calls himself Sledgehammer…was unable to decode a single word of it. He told me it would take a neural net processor array to break the encryption key.”

  “Status?” Complexity requires thought.

  “Erased, sir. This, uh, Sledgehammer overwrote both partitions with ones and zeros several hundred times. Whatever data McKenzie had on them is gone forever.”

  “The hacker?” Thought impedes obedience.

  “I was at his shoulder every second, sir. Watched him like a hawk. There’s no way he made a backup for his own use. Those files are deleted permanently. Guaranteed.”

  Schmidt smiled faintly. McKenzie was now a man without armor, his head an easy trophy for anyone who wanted it. “Your insurance policy has been canceled, Charles,” he whispered.

  “Sir?”

  Vulnerable at last — it was a warming thought, and Schmidt allowed himself a few seconds to relish it. Then back to business: “This Sledgehammer character, Fer-de-lance, he has a reputation. No matter how closely you supervised him, there exists a possibility that he pirated those data.”

  “I am aware of that, sir.”

  “A single keystroke is all it
would take. He could have copied McKenzie’s files and sent them off to some other site on the Internet. Neither you nor I nor any man would know that he had done so. There’s profit in McKenzie’s files, blackmail profit.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I need assurance that such will not occur.”

  “I’m seeing to it now, sir.”

  “Ah. I am delighted to hear you’ve taken the initiative. Do bear in mind that it would be best if his remains are in a condition that hinder identification.”

  “In progress. No fingers, no fingerprints. No teeth, no dental records —”

  “DNA testing?”

  “Only if the fish don’t do their job. At the moment, I’m in a boat about three miles off Stinson Beach. They say there are sharks in these waters.”

  “They say correctly. Great whites, I believe. Well done, soldier. I’m pleased with your work.”

  “Would you like to speak with Mr. Sledgehammer before I put him overboard, sir? He may be difficult to understand, but he can still talk.”

  “No, thank you, Fer-de-Lance. But do leave the line open so I can hear…well, whatever is to be heard.”

  “My pleasure, sir.”

  “The pleasure is all mine.”

  The northern Arizona landscape was new to Irina, scenery so different from the sterile deserts of the south — distant buttes like stately ocean liners; black lava tufts, each tall as a skyscraper; salmon-pink cliffs; tabletop plateaus speckled with piney groves; cloud armadas billowing across an infinite sky. The road ran arrow straight, and on every side the vista would lift all but the most sullen heart.

  Irina’s heart was, although she did not think of it in these terms, most sullen.

  They were on the Navajo reservation, the “rez” Charlie called it because he was an old hand out here and knew the lingo. Dead dogs lay by the road, milestones on a highway from no place to nowhere. Infrequent intersections were prostituted with garish signs importuning tourists to visit…

  …the casino…

  …the pottery shop…

  …the historic trading post…

  Leave your dollars, please, then leave.

  Open spaces again, nothing profaning them, not even electric pylons. Rolling plains of coral-green sage, mustard-yellow rabbit bush, jimsonweed with corpse-white flowers. A huge black raven soared in surprise from the road’s verge, startling Irina as much as her passing had startled it.

  “Water?” Charlie asked, one hand on the Escalade’s leathered steering wheel, the other offering a bottle of Calistoga.

  She shook her head.

  “Better take some. We’re at six thousand feet here. It’s dry country. You dehydrate without noticing.”

  Having already said to Charlie everything she had to say, she neither wished to reply, nor to see him smile his infuriating smile, nor hear him assert over and over again that it was his firm intention to protect her whether she liked it or not.

  How dare he?

  She had been trained by the best, been at the top of her class in every discipline, finished first in every competition, won every —

  “Just because the air is cool, it doesn’t mean you’re not sweating. Moisture is wicking out of your skin as fast as it would in the open desert.”

  She refused to look at him, the arrogant man. Superior, she was superior to him in every attribute except experience. What gave him the right to be so overbearing?

  “Drink some of this water, and stop your sulking.”

  Snatching the bottle from his hand, she hissed, “I am not sulking.”

  “Oh, excuse me. Would ‘pouting’ be a better word. How about ‘grumping’? I know damned well the only accurate word for the expression on your face is ‘scowl.’”

  She savored the water, had needed it more than she had known. After a second swallow, then a third, she twisted the cap back on, dropping the bottle in his lap. “I am capable of looking out for myself.”

  “We had this argument before. You lost.”

  “You will not succeed. I will not be put in jail. I will return to my nation.”

  “Had that argument, too.” He was grinning again, damn him!

  “You have done more than I would have believed possible. I am…” she licked her lips, the word didn’t come easily “…beaten. You have Whirlwind, whatever it may be. You have my computer disk —”

  “Not yours. Belongs to my government.”

  She felt herself flush with fury, and liked it like that. “Arresting me serves no purpose. Only my humiliation. Is that what you want? What is that wonderful American phrase, the one you use to teach bad puppy dogs good behavior — ‘rub my nose in it’?”

  He answered with maddening reasonableness. “At the risk of repeating myself, I’m trying to protect you from people who think you know more than you should.”

  “I know nothing. Only the code name of a project. Only the location of a laboratory that probably has been moved.”

  “Nobody knows what you saw in that lab except you. Maybe you don’t know a thing. Maybe you do. And if that’s the case — if you do happen to have a few of our national secrets locked away in your very sharp mind — then you’re a dangerous proposition. Doesn’t matter that Whirlwind’s safe and sound. Doesn’t matter that I’ve got that disk in my hip pocket. What matters is that you may have knowledge that —”

  “I do not. How many times do I have to tell you? You know the truth. You worked out how much time Dominik and I spent in that laboratory. We had no chance —”

  “Give it a rest, Irina. I believe you. The only information you’ve got is what I’ve given you — and that isn’t worth diddly. But my opinion doesn’t count. I’ve said this before, and I’m going to say it again, and by God, I hope this time you listen. I am not your problem. The people whose hands I’m trying to keep you out of — they’re your problem. They honestly and sincerely think you know something of vital importance to the national defense. There is no way on God’s green earth that you can persuade them otherwise. I’m the only one who can do that. If I can get you to safety, yup, I think I can do that very thing.”

  “You are not telling me everything.” A shot in the dark. But it felt right. As she spoke the words, she knew they were true. “There is something else.” She could read him now, read him like a book.

  Charlie frowned at her.

  “What is it? Tell me, Charlie.”

  He chewed the corner of his lip. His eyes focused less on the road than on some inner space she could not touch, but which, given time, she knew she could reach.

  “Do you think I am weak? Do you think I cannot take it? Am I just a little child who is not to be trusted with the truth? Is that how you see me?” He winced. She’d pricked him. “I can handle it, Charlie. Whatever it is, I can deal with it. I might even be able to help. I am good, Charlie, you know I am good. Tell me, and we can work it out together.”

  His jaw tightened. “No,” he snapped. “Not now. Maybe later.”

  “Unacceptable! I am the one who is in danger! You cannot —”

  “Sure I can.” With a wolf’s grin, he tightened his grip on the steering wheel and locked his eyes on the road. “You know that flying saucer stuff?”

  He was changing the subject on her. Unbearable! “No, and I do not wish to.”

  “It was back in 1947. The Air Force was launching radiosonde balloons from Holloman base, looking for high-atmosphere radiation in case Stalin was testing nukes. They called it Project Mogul.”

  “I am utterly uninterested.”

  He ignored her. She might as well not even be there. “So one of these balloons comes down on a ranch outside of Roswell, New Mexico. Well, of course the military runs scampering to fetch its top secret equipment. Then some local rancher tells the newspapers that he thinks an alien spaceship has crashed, and the Army’s trying to hush it up —”

  “You are treating me this way because I saw you cry.” As soon as she spoke, she regretted it. No man wishes to be seen in hi
s weakness, not even a man as strong as Charlie.

  He did not so much as blink. For this Irina, now abashed, was thankful. “Well, my dad figured that was a God-given opportunity to mess with the Russkies’ heads, so he sets up an operation to convince your people we really did have our hands on a UFO —”

  As furious at Charlie as she was at herself, Irina turned her face to the window.

  “Hamadryad to King Cobra. Do you copy?”

  “Cobra here. I copy.”

  “I’m in chopper four. We’ve acquired the target.”

  Schmidt reached out a finger, ejecting Rosenkavalier’s silvered harmonies from his Gelandewagen’s impeccable Harman stereo. “Position?” he asked.

  Hamadryad shouted to be heard above the roar of his helicopter’s engine. “Unmarked dirt road, sir. Runs parallel to the west side of Mitchell Canyon. Can you find that on your map?”

  The G-Wagen sported a wide-screened GPS display. In the passenger seat, Coral Snake, once a Gurkha on India’s northern frontier, now a master sergeant of no nation, tapped a query on the keyboard. “Found it, sir. Mitchell Canyon. Thirty-six degrees and three minutes north. One hundred nine, eighteen south.” His clipped English was flawless, not the least hint of that colonial lilt that always reminded Schmidt of his homeland’s conceited Hindu bourgeoisie. “Our position is almost directly south of it. No roads are shown near the west rim.”

  Lifting the microphone to his lips, Schmidt depressed the Send button. “Are you certain it’s our target, Hamadryad?”

  “Affirmative, sir. Lollipop-red Cadillac Escalade. There’s no missing it.”

  Schmidt touched his tongue to the corner of his lips. How many luridly colored Escalades could there be on northern Arizona’s back roads?

  Only one, Kolodenkova’s.

  A bit after seven in the morning, a janitor found a vintage Winnebago parked behind a school building, muffled cries coming from within. He’d called the local law. Soon thereafter, an aspiring Wyatt Earp, sidearm drawn and hammer cocked, had cautiously opened the suspicious vehicle. Two red-faced retirees were tied up in the back. One of them had wet his pants.