by Archer Mayor
“And,” Sammie added, “we’ll draw up a document right here and now, assuming total liability.” I resisted knocking her on the head for that one, nodding in agreement instead.
Abby got to her feet. “Come on, Judy. Lighten up. You know darn well we’re expected to beat the shit out of those units—and lose ’em, too, if it comes to that. That’s why we got ’em in the first place, and we signed a waiver.”
She crossed the room to one of the cabinets, unlocked the top drawer, and returned with a plastic box. She opened it, extracted what looked like three small wafers, and laid one in each of our hands. “Latest technology. Designed to track birds in flight.”
I cradled it in my palm, barely feeling its weight. “This talks to a satellite?”
Abby looked pleased at my incredulity. “Yup. And—what’s better—it’s more powerful than the collar we showed Sammie. I can’t say we’ve ever put it in a car trunk, but the makers say it should work. We’ve only had ’em for a week or so.”
I held it up to the light and examined it more closely. I then fixed Judy Coven eye-to-eye. “They would be perfect.”
Judy bit her upper lip thoughtfully. “Abby’s right,” she finally admitted. “We’re not at risk as much as I said. I would like that document, though, in case things do go sour. Companies like ours are plowed under all the time by one lawsuit or another, and I don’t feel like joining them, especially over some deal you won’t tell us anything about.”
Sammie rolled her chair over to one of the desks and grabbed a sheet of paper. “Done.”
I turned the wafer over to Abby Coven. “How do they work, exactly?”
She dropped it back into the plastic box. “The tradeoff is the power supply. The larger units can emit pretty much a continuous signal, so the satellite can track it around the clock. Depending on the size and configuration of the battery, the unit will work from a few days to several months. These little guys can’t do that. They talk to the satellite periodically. The less they talk, the more the power source lasts. We heard they’ve used units kind of like these on monarch butterflies. ’Course, those emitted only once every few days, so they’d last for weeks. In any case, the rate of frequency can be programmed in.”
“And how are they picked up by you?”
This time, it was Judy who rolled her chair across the floor, stopping before one of the computers, which she switched on. “The technology is called GIS, for Geographical Information System. Just as an example, here’s a grid of downtown Brattleboro.” She tapped on the keyboard a few times, and brought up a colorful, slightly fuzzy version of a topo map, with the elevations marked in earth-colored hues, complete with a shadowing effect that made the screen look three-dimensional. I instantly recognized the confluence of the West and Connecticut Rivers, with the looming mass of Mount Wantastiquet hovering on the New Hampshire border.
“What we receive from the sending unit—via the satellite—,” Judy continued, “are the coordinates for latitude and longitude. Those are logged into the computer and appear on the screen as a single white blinking dot.”
A dot like what she’d just described magically presented itself. “I’m cheating here,” she said. “The units aren’t activated, so I just entered in some data. The fastest those wafers can work is once every ten minutes, so every ten minutes you’d get a new dot on the screen, assuming the unit was moved.”
“How long will the battery last at that rate?” I asked.
Judy looked up at me. “I don’t remember. We haven’t really fooled with these much.”
“A week,” said Abby from behind us. “That long enough?”
It wasn’t a question that bore much thought. “Should be,” I said.
I tapped the screen with my fingernail. “You can call up all of Vermont, just like you did Brattleboro?”
“Yup.”
I pointed to several small boxes containing numbers. “These are the coordinates?”
Judy hesitated. “That’s where they’d show up. This is fake, though—I mean, I wrote them in. Real data looks different. It fluctuates a lot. The Department of Defense corrupts all satellite-linked GPS readings somewhat—some kind of paranoid antimissile hangover from the Cold War. They call it ‘selective availability.’ Part of the program here corrects for that, though, so it’s nothing much to worry about.”
Anatoly spoke for the first time, slowly and carefully. “This is legal, outside the military?”
I laughed, thinking of how improbable that would seem to a lifelong resident of the old Soviet Union. “Yeah—pretty neat, huh?”
I turned back to both Coven sisters, suddenly concerned, and pointed at the oversize computer. “The problem is, though, that all this only works if you’ve got one of those and know how to work it. Isn’t that right?”
Judy’s hands fell from the keyboard and she looked at the screen in a new light. “Yes. I’m afraid so.”
“Where’re you going to be operating from?” Abby asked.
Sammie and I glanced at each other and then at Anatoly, who gave a barely perceptible shrug. “We don’t know yet. It might be dangerous, though. You couldn’t be there, if that’s what you were thinking.”
Abby smiled. “I like a good time, but I’m not that interested. Maybe we could manage it all from here and send you the results.”
That piqued Sammie’s interest. “How?”
“Simplest way would be over the Net—as e-mail. It would be slow, but unless you have the right equipment and a trained operator, I don’t see how else it would work. This way, all you’d need was a laptop with a modem and access to a phone line.”
“And you two at the other end,” I added. “I don’t know how that part would work. If things got hairy, you could be spending a lot of time in that chair.”
The Covens exchanged looks.
Anatoly pulled at my sleeve and whispered, “This is not good.”
I got up and walked with him to another part of the room, keeping my voice low. “Maybe not, but it’s all we got. You can stay here with them, babysit us, or tell your boss you canceled the whole idea on your own.”
He didn’t answer, his choice already clear.
“Could be good publicity,” Sammie was coaxing the two sisters.
I was amazed at her callousness. In point of fact, these women could also end up with their reputations and business ruined. But I added, almost instantaneously, “And maybe some compensation. I know better than to speak for the chief on financial matters, but we’ve found money before for emergencies like this.”
After a telling silence, Judy finally nodded. “Okay, what the hell. I’m assuming you don’t have a laptop?”
We all shook our heads.
“We’ll set you up with everything, then. Just make sure a full inventory is added to that document you drew up.”
Sammie laughed at the pure absurdity of the suggestion. “You got it.”
Chapter 20
GEORGI PADZHEV OPENED THE DOOR OF THE motel room himself, his eagerness transparent. “Did you get what we need?”
Sammie, entering behind me, hefted the canvas bag she had looped over her shoulder.
Rarig and Corbin-Teich were sitting at a table in the corner, their hands free. Willy, I noticed with no surprise, had only graduated from coat hangers to his own handcuffs, his muscular right wrist still attached to his chair.
“Where’s Gail?” I asked.
Padzhev gave me a distracted look, reaching for Sammie’s bag. “She’s fine.”
I stepped in front of him and slapped his arms down. Anatoly immediately grabbed me from behind and shoved a gun in my ear. I kept looking at Padzhev. “Where is she?”
The muscles in his face quivered briefly as he fought for self-control. He then muttered something fast and harsh to Anatoly, who steered me outside, down the walkway, and into the abutting room. Gail was sitting up on one of the beds, no longer bound or gagged, but looking like hell. A guard was lounging in a seat by the window.
>
Anatoly said, “You have two minutes,” and shoved me toward the bed, taking up a station by the door.
I sat next to her and took one of her hands in mine. “How’re you holding up?”
She smiled wanly. “If I knew you’d be this much trouble when we met, I don’t think I would’ve made the effort.”
That cut deeper than she’d intended. I looked at the floor, thinking how right she was.
She touched my cheek. “Joke, kiddo—I wouldn’t change a thing.”
“I wouldn’t blame you if you did. I wish the hell I could.”
“What’s going on, anyway?”
“It’s boiling down to an old-fashioned shoot-out between two rival Russian gangs. I’m just hoping we all get out of it alive.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“You, me, Willy, and Sam, plus some guy from Middlebury and John Rarig. They might have more hostages than they got soldiers by now.”
She watched my face for a long moment, and then asked, “It’s pretty bad, isn’t it?”
“It could be. I’ve been told so many lies by now I’m the last one to know what’s what. But I think the top guy here—Georgi Padzhev—is fighting to stay alive, pure and simple. He’s far from his base, cut off and outnumbered, and so desperate for help he’s got us working for him.”
Her face registered surprise. “How?”
“He’s holding you over my head. Sammie and I just got him a fancy bugging system he’s hoping will tell him when the opposition’s too close. I don’t know what the hell good it’ll do.”
Anatoly pushed himself away from the doorframe and tapped his wristwatch.
I kissed Gail and stood up. “I love you. I’ll do what I can.”
She nodded and smiled encouragingly. “I know.”
Back in the first room, Padzhev had spread his new toys on one of the beds. Rarig and Corbin-Teich were standing at its foot, looking like two spectators at a game of solitaire.
“This is quite excellent, Lieutenant,” he said as I entered.
“Sammie fill you in?”
“Yes, she did. I hope we can rely on your two operatives in Brattleboro.”
“You can send somebody down there to shoot one of them as insurance, if you want.”
He looked away from the computer and the small pile of wafer-thin transmitters and fixed me with a stare. “I will if you think it necessary, just as I will shoot your girlfriend in the head if you step out of line.”
I stared back, feeling my face flush. It was time for me to do everything possible to avoid such confrontations—to be amenable, affable, and helpful. To fade into the woodwork until I saw an opportunity to act.
“I appreciate that,” I finally said and jutted my chin toward the electronic pile on the bed. “How do you plan to use this stuff?”
His study of me lasted a few seconds longer, before he stepped away and resumed his nervous pacing. “From what I understand, the best advantage it gives us is if we occupy a stationary position.”
“That’s true,” Sammie agreed. “If we were getting the information in real time, it might not be, but since it’s going to be e-mailed to us, that’ll slow everything down. Our staying put means that much less data to be crunched down and forwarded.”
Padzhev paused by the bed and picked up one of the transmitters again, turning it over in his hand. “So we are the fort and they are the attacking army—a fort before which they will abandon their vehicles and render all this utterly useless.” He tossed it back, barely hiding his disgust.
“That was plan A,” I suggested, “when we thought we were dealing with much clunkier transmitters. What we need is to find a way to plant the bugs on the people, not their cars.”
He gave me a sour look. “If we could do that, Lieutenant, we could also kill them, which happens to be the whole point of this exercise.”
“We have to figure out a way they’ll pick up the bugs themselves,” Sammie said, stimulated, I thought, by Padzhev’s worsening mood, which was beginning to concern me, too. “Like the Trojan horse.”
He lifted his face, intrigued. I felt we’d become courtiers to his fickle king, finding any way possible to prop up his spirits—and extend our own lives.
“How?” he asked, reasonably enough. “What would they want of ours?”
“Weapons,” I answered.
There was dead silence in the room. “The one thing you both have in common, as you pointed out,” I continued, “is you want to kill each other. If you leave behind a cache of arms—like they’d been abandoned in a panic—they’ll probably be picked up and distributed.”
He frowned. “And used against us.”
“A few extra aren’t going to make much difference. We only have eight bugs. We could plant them in eight gun butts.”
“Screw up the sights,” Rarig suggested.
Padzhev shook his head. “They would check for something like that. The Lieutenant is quite right—they must be of obvious value.”
He buried his hands in his pockets and leaned back against the bathroom door, taking us in like a challenging teacher. “So now we are in need of a fort with walls a mile thick—someplace we can control, where we know the terrain, and into which our opponents will have to penetrate on foot, allowing us to intercept them by eavesdropping on their positions.”
“Someplace high and lonely?” Corbin-Teich asked softly.
Rarig looked at him meaningfully. It struck me then that Corbin-Teich had been almost mute since being bundled in here with the rest of us, overwhelmed and perhaps quite frightened by all the fireworks. Or so I’d thought.
Padzhev watched him carefully. “You know of such a place?”
“With only one narrow road, eight miles long,” Lew admitted, sounding like he was reaching far back in time.
Rarig seemed to have made the same decision I had, about buying time with cooperation. “You have a map?” he asked. “I know where he’s talking about.”
Padzhev didn’t move, but one of his men immediately produced a road map of the state, spreading it open at the foot of the bed. Rarig leaned over it, slowly extending his finger and tapping it in the middle of Vermont’s so-called Northeast Kingdom, a remote, sparsely populated, harsh, and beautiful area, famous for its desolate, forested land and the independence of its inhabitants.
“There’s a mountaintop here that might suit your needs,” he said. “It worked for us forty years ago.”
I suddenly remembered what he’d told me earlier of how and why Lew had come to know Vermont. “That the old radar site you were talking about? Where he was held under wraps for two years?”
Lew smiled wistfully. “It was well known for good hunting.”
The irony of that was lost on no one.
· · ·
Rarig’s mountain was as empty and unmolested as he and Corbin-Teich had foretold, but their description had missed the hostile vastness of the place. As we drove in a caravan up miles of narrow, broken, blacktopped road, the edges of which disappeared into the bordering vegetation like liquid, I began feeling we’d left one world for another. Vermont is famous for its trees and mountains, but mostly as a backdrop to a rural domesticity that has stamped the state for well over a hundred years.
The reality of Rarig’s radar mountain was something else entirely.
The Kingdom, of course, has always been a separate entity from that other, bucolic image. Poorer, colder, and less inhabited than the rest of Vermont, it remains the most stalwart reminder of the Ice Age’s grinding havoc. Where sections just slightly south and west of it reflect the ease of long summers, gentle springs, and recreational winters, the Kingdom stays aloof. Hard, harsh, and stark, it is the symbol of what has given New Englanders their tough reputation. This mountain reflected all of that, and more.
The entrance to its single access road had been subtlety itself—a winding country lane, dotted with the occasional modest home, gradually becoming narrower, darker, and less friendly. By the time we’d r
eached the first of two unlocked steel gates, it was clear we were no longer among the inhabitants of this region. Where once military trucks had rumbled freely back and forth, trees now crowded the ragged edge of a scarred pavement barely wide enough for a single car. Overhead, blocking the light, branches reached out for one another like slow-moving dancers.
Had the road been dirt, as they are all over the state, the contrast would have been less jarring—we’d have been using yet another temporary man-made incursion into the wilderness, prone to washouts, overgrowth, and winter’s annual ravages. But this was a government-built road, still in remarkably good shape, lying on the ground like some vestige of a vanished civilization. I thought of Mayan ruins, ghost towns, and abandoned factory buildings—images of hopes lost, people displaced, ambitions thwarted—and the dread that had been rising in me since leaving the motel in South Burlington suddenly overflowed.
Padzhev had chosen to make that motel room the means to deliver the eight doctored weapons, faking a scene of hasty retreat. He hadn’t told us how he’d tipped Kyrov to our whereabouts, but the urgency with which we’d left had injected a mood of genuine desperation in everyone. Padzhev, it was clear, was gambling everything on this tactic, and as we drove farther up the mountain, leaving a familiar world behind, it occurred to everyone, I think, that our chances of returning alive were very slim.
Rarig had told us this mountain was one of the tallest in the Kingdom, and the higher we drove the more easily I believed him. Not only did occasional gaps in the trees reveal views stretching for dozens of miles, but the vegetation began to reflect an exposure to unremitting harshness. Like hundreds of other sites strung out along the nation’s eastern coast like baubles on a necklace, this radar installation had been chosen for the breadth of sky available to it—sky that also carried snow and wind and rain from miles away, sometimes at terrible velocity. The more we climbed the more the trees, the bushes, and even the boulders took on a hunkered-down appearance, like the shoulders of miners kept too long in the pit.