Dark Target

by David DeBatto

  “The relays are rigged on the stays. The placement on the wires forms a dish shape. You want a look?” DeLuca said, offering him the binoculars.

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Sami said. “David?”

  “Yeah, Sami?”

  “You know I got your back all the way, and I haven’t said anything until now because it’s your show, but at this point, I gotta ask. You got some sort of plan in mind, or are we just gonna wing it?”

  “I thought we’d wing it,” DeLuca said. “I’ve got a few ideas. He’s got a little more firepower than we do, so there’s no point going head to head.”

  “I guess not,” Sami said. “I still like the idea of bringing in a couple thousand guys and asking him to surrender.”

  “That might be plan B,” DeLuca said, plodding on, the going difficult in the thick wet sand. “If he fights, a thousand might not be enough, and if he doesn’t, two is plenty.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Whatever happens,” DeLuca said, “hold your ground and don’t move.”

  The beach road rolled over the dunes between impenetrable hedges of beach plum and dwarf pine, stopping at a salt pond, where a mailbox in the shape of a sperm whale beside a driveway bore the house number they were looking for. At the top of the driveway, they passed through an arch of braided vines as the approach opened onto a large yard, buried under a blanket of slush. The house was a sprawling mansion of five gables and a grand porch facing the ocean, a warm and inviting light glowing amber through the windows. The siding and roof of the house were of weathered gray cedar shakes, in the grand Nantucket tradition. They made their way in the darkness, keeping away from the lights and staying in the shadows, until they faced the house, their backs to the sea, separated from the house by the vast lawn.

  “So far so good,” Sami said. “I don’t think he knows we’re here.”

  “Yeah, but what good is that?” DeLuca said, putting the battery back into his satellite phone. “Wait here and I’ll be right back.”

  He walked to the house, stopping at the bottom step to the porch, where he saw an old brass telescope mounted on a tripod. He looked up a moment, looked down, then turned and walked back, stopping at the top of the stairs leading down to the beach. He gestured for Sami to join him there. Below, nestled into the dunes, he saw a pair of ancient weathered concrete bunkers. He wondered what was in them. Perhaps it was where Koenig kept his servers, behind hardened shelters.

  “You change your mind?” Sami asked.

  “I think I should call first,” he said. “It’s rude to just drop in on people.”

  He dialed Koenig’s number and waited.

  “General Koenig?” he said. “David DeLuca here. I was wondering if I could have a minute.”

  There was silence on the other end.

  “What do you want, DeLuca?” Koenig asked. DeLuca saw a figure appear in the window, looking out with night vision goggles.

  “You’re aware that they might just shoot us,” Sami said, fingering the MAC-10 nervously.

  “I know,” DeLuca said, covering the phone, “but they won’t.” He took his hand off the phone. “I want to talk to you, General. No playing this time. We came alone. You’re not in a good position. I think we can improve it.”

  “I’m not in a good position?” Koenig said. “How is that?”

  “If we could come inside…”

  “Stay where you are,” Koenig said, as DeLuca had expected he would say. “As I see it, you’re the one whose position could bear improvement.”

  “I’m just cold and wet,” DeLuca said. “You’re up shit creek without a paddle. I don’t know if you know this, but my orders are to kill you. Did Peggy Romano tell you that?”

  “Is that a threat, Agent DeLuca?”

  “That’s not a threat, General,” DeLuca said. “I wonder if you appreciate what that means. That means the ground you’re holding is being sold out from under you. It means the people you thought were going to support you aren’t. I know you believe in loyalty, but you’re not getting any in return, General. Only a fool shows loyalty to a traitor. They’re doing the same thing to you that they did to your father and the same thing they did to your grandfather. Think about it. They’ve been trying to get me to believe you’ve been doing this entirely on your own, the rogue general who has to be stopped, and I’m the guy they wanted to stop you. They don’t want you testifying in front of any congressional committees. Which is exactly what you should be doing, General. I know you don’t like the media, but if you want your story heard, you’re going to have to go public, because you know you can’t trust Congress to get you out of this. Only public opinion is going to do that. I think if the public heard your story, they’d support you.”

  “You think so, Agent DeLuca?” the general said.

  “Look at Oliver North,” DeLuca said. “Same deal. Got used as the White House’s private soldier and screwed when the White House turned its back on him, but look at him now—he’s got his own talk show. He pulled himself out of it. You can, too.”

  “Jesus, David—you’re offering him a talk show?” Sami whispered.

  “So what do you suggest, Agent DeLuca?” Koenig said.

  “What do I suggest?” DeLuca said.

  “He’s keeping you on the line,” Sami whispered to him, covering DeLuca’s phone with his hand.

  “I know,” DeLuca whispered, taking Sami’s hand from the phone as Koenig stepped out onto his porch, wearing a thick Navy peacoat and a watch cap. He recognized the man next to him as Major Huston.

  “Good evening, Major,” DeLuca said. “What I suggest is immunity. For both of you. I can get you that. You won’t have to spend any time in prison. Either of you. I can get Warren Benjamin, Ross Schlessinger, Carla White, and Danforth Sykes behind you,” he told the general, referring, respectively, to the deputy director of Homeland Security, the deputy director of the CIA, the White House’s national security adviser, and the cochairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. “I work directly for them. You give us Carter Bowen, and we’ll make sure you have a soft landing. We know he’s the one you’ve been talking to.” DeLuca was playing a hunch, but it was an informed one.

  “You’re offering me a deal?” General Koenig said.

  “I have the power to offer you a deal, yes,” DeLuca said. “They’ve already started to smear you, just in case you do go public. Did you know that? I have psych evals that say you’re crazy. I know that’s not true. I know that you’ve been following orders. You come in with me and you’ll get a chance to set the record straight. What’s the alternative? You made one mistake—you fell in love with a beautiful girl. I think we can even make the case that she had to be eliminated as a national security risk. They ordered me to kill you, but like you said, I’ve never been too good at staying within the mission. You come in with me and I’ll set you up with the right people. The only people who can protect you.”

  He watched as Koenig consulted Major Huston.

  “It’s sort of amusing,” Koenig finally said to DeLuca over the phone. “I have more power at my fingertips than anyone in the history of the world, and you’re standing there trying to make me think I’m the one in trouble. And you make a good argument, Mr. DeLuca. I have to give you that—you’re really quite persuasive. I can see why you’re as good at your job as people said you were.”

  “We’re both good at our jobs,” DeLuca said. “The difference is that if I’ve done my job right, nobody knows I’ve done it. I don’t have to worry about how history is going to see me. You do.”

  “History?” Koenig said. DeLuca knew it was a button he could push, and Koenig reacted as he thought he would. “Don’t talk to me about history, DeLuca. My grandfather commanded the largest navy in the history of the world, over four thousand ships and two million sailors, and no one even knows his name. They know MacArthur, they know Eisenhower, they even know Nimitz, but the chief of naval operations is lost to obscurity foreve
r. My father misinterprets a single ruling, a clerical error, and that’s all he’s remembered for—he goes to his grave because that’s all he’s going to be remembered for. You dare talk to me about history?”

  “General Koenig,” DeLuca said, “I’m trying to help you. I really am. I know this is going to sound cynical, but if your father or grandfather had accepted help, instead of trying to take it all on their shoulders and go it alone, history might have judged them more favorably. We have public relations companies these days that can take anything and turn it around. Look at the last election. We can get the truth out, General. But not by toughing it out. That’s not how the rules work anymore. And you can’t make it go away by pressing a button.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, DeLuca,” Koenig said. “You’re standing there trying to dictate the terms to me. Do you know what your problem is, Agent DeLuca? You have an entirely overinflated ego. You’re talking to me about history—what do you really know, DeLuca? I can make history. For the first time since this country was founded, we have the ability to really make this world safe. I don’t know what you believe in, DeLuca, but I believe in my mission. There’s nothing you could say that’s going to shake that.”

  “I believe in my country,” DeLuca said. “I believe in checks and balances. I believe the president should not have the power to go to war without permission of Congress.”

  “The president is an idiot,” Koenig said angrily. “The president froze while this country came under attack on 9/11. The president sat for seven minutes reading Pete the Penguin to schoolchildren when he should have been protecting his country. There’s a lot more we can do in seven minutes today than we could do in 2001, DeLuca. The president would let a caravan of Al Qaeda terrorists cross a glacier in Afghanistan just because they’re accompanied by a half dozen so-called noncombatant Pakistani soldiers—I wouldn’t. There aren’t any noncombatants anymore, DeLuca. If we had Darkstar before 9/11, not a one of those planes would have killed anybody, and that’s the bottom line. You know what your problem is, DeLuca? You’re filled with pride. Well, you know what they say about pride.”

  He took a hand-held computer from Major Huston and held it up for DeLuca to see.

  “Think I can’t make it go away with the push of a button, DeLuca?” he called out across the lawn. “Just watch me.”

  “Hold your ground, Sami. Just hold,” DeLuca whispered.

  Koenig clicked on the PDA.

  Instantaneously, the porch of the house was consumed in a column of light. DeLuca saw Koenig and Huston disappear where they stood, melting into the earth. He grabbed Sami and rolled over the edge of the dune just as a ball of heat passed over his head. He’d expected a brief flash, but instead, the column of light burned for what DeLuca estimated to be ten or fifteen seconds, sending a fountain of flame and smoke and debris high into the air, making a noise like a thousand locomotives bearing down on them. Then the night sky lit up in a massive flash, horizon to horizon, the burst of light originating at the point in the sky where the column of light ended, as if a supernova had occurred, somewhere just this side of the moon, bright enough to be visible through the cloud cover. When it was gone, DeLuca had a blue spot on the back of his retinas as bright as if a camera flash had gone off three inches from his face.

  Then it was dark, save for the light coming from the fire that consumed the house.

  DeLuca stood and helped Sami to his feet, climbing back over the embankment.

  They were able to approach the house, cooled by the freezing rain, until they were close enough to stand at the edge of the hole made by Darkstar’s directed-energy beam, a perfectly round scar in the earth. When they peered over the edge, they couldn’t see the bottom, the sides as smooth as if bored by a drill. Sami found a burning timber and kicked it into the hole with his foot. The red flare disappeared into the darkness, extinguishing before reaching bottom.

  “Jesus Christ,” Sami said. “What just happened?”

  DeLuca took from his pocket a three-dollar Boy Scout compass he’d bought at the general store and showed it to Sami.

  “We were standing one hundred yards due east of the porch,” he told his friend. “I paced it when I walked back. Sometimes low technology still beats high technology. The GPS signal on my phone is off by one hundred yards. This hole was meant for us.”

  “Somebody’d better fill it in,” Sami said. “It could be dangerous if there were kids playing nearby.”

  “Somebody will,” DeLuca said, taking out his phone to call Captain Martin. He estimated it would be thirty minutes to an hour before the Coast Guard and the Massachusetts National Guard could arrive in helicopters to seal off the area. He saw something on the ground. It was the brass telescope he’d seen on the porch. He picked it up and looked through it, pointing it at a distant light. It still worked.

  He threw it into the hole.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw what he thought was a black bear. It was the Newfoundland that had accompanied them on their walk. In the distance, they saw the red flashing lights of a fire truck approaching.

  “Let’s get down to the beach road before the Nantucket FD gets here,” he told Sami. “We don’t want anybody seeing this just now. When the National Guard arrives, you wanna head back or find a room on the island?”

  “I wanna go home,” Sami said. “I don’t care how late it is.”

  “I’m with you,” DeLuca said, tossing his satellite phone into the hole as well. “I’m with you.”

  Epilogue

  THE NEXT DAY, THE PAPERS SAID SCIENTISTS believed the earth had witnessed the collision of two asteroids, a million miles from earth but close enough that the energy released created the flash viewed by people from Los Angeles to Moscow. A scientist from NASA said astronomers had had their eye on the two asteroids for some time but thought the likelihood of a collision was remote. He even produced a scientific paper written in 1983 predicting just such an event, a paper DeLuca knew had not existed until that morning, just part of the cover story. One lone scientist said a collision of asteroids couldn’t possibly explain the massive release of gamma radiation from the explosion, but by then the public was too engaged by the cosmic and/or spiritual dimensions of a “near” miss of an asteroid collision to pay much attention. The paper said a television minidrama was already in the works, based on how the earth might realistically respond to such a threat.

  A second story reported a fire on Nantucket, caused by a lightning strike that destroyed the historic home of General Thomas Koenig, who died in the fire, along with an aide. National Guard troops and local emergency crews were cleaning up the area and, DeLuca suspected, filling in a very large hole. DeLuca clipped the article and popped it in the mail to Josh Truitt, with a note suggesting he share the news with Marvin Yutahay.

  DeLuca’s wife had been surprised to see him arrive home at four in the morning, looking tired and limping, but she was glad to see him. She wasn’t surprised when he told her, after only four hours of sleep, that he needed to go to Washington to meet with Phil LeDoux. He promised he’d be back that evening. She told him if he had to stay longer, not to worry—another day or two wasn’t going to make her any more annoyed by the lack of communication than she already was. He told her he’d make it up to her when he got back.

  “You can try,” she said.

  “I might not be able to tell you exactly what’s been going on…”

  “What else is new?” she said.

  He’d asked to meet LeDoux alone. During the flight, he’d tried not to permit himself to think his friend might have betrayed him. It wasn’t entirely reassuring to consider the alternative, that they’d both been duped.

  “I just want you to know I’m goddamned angry,” LeDoux said before DeLuca had a chance to sit down. “I’ve already talked to Maitland at INSCOM and DIA, and I have a call in to Warren Benjamin. Just so you know.”

  “My flight was fine, thanks,” DeLuca said. “They had to de-ice the plane twice, bu
t other than that…”

  “I’m sorry,” LeDoux said. “How are you? You’re limping.”

  “I’m okay,” DeLuca said. “I fell out of a helicopter.”

  “You want to keep that to a minimum,” LeDoux said. “Sit down. Tell me your thoughts. I’ll hold mine for later.”

  “We were used,” DeLuca said. “That’s what I think.”

  “I agree,” LeDoux said. “I’m trying to find out by whom. Colonel Oswald has been transferred. I can’t find out where, but I will.”

  “We were bait,” DeLuca said. “They couldn’t find Darkstar, so they needed to give Koenig a target, so that they’d know when and where to look when he fired on it. And I was it. Am I warm?”

  “As far as I can tell, yes.”

  “What are they telling you?” DeLuca asked. “That the antimatter explosion everybody saw was caused by an overload?”

  “They’re not saying it but they’re implying,” LeDoux conceded.

  “What do you think it was?” DeLuca said. “Here’s what I think. I think Darkstar1 took out Darkstar2, and then when Darkstar1 decloaked to fire on me, they took it out with Darkstar3. I think there’s another one up there. And they want everyone to think the program is down. Yes?”

  “I think you’re right,” LeDoux said. “But I don’t know that for sure. What else?”

  “Koenig was working for the White House. Just like Ollie North. Apart from using Darkstar to clean up his own personal messes, he was only doing what he was told. Huston killed Davidova on his own, to protect his boss and curry favor. Mitch Pasternak said the bullet that went through Davidova’s head came from the same kind of rifle I saw in the picture Huston took of himself with a deer he shot. And when Carter Bowen tried to rein Koenig in, Koenig wouldn’t listen because he didn’t like civilians trying to tell him what to do. Is Bowen going to fall?”

  “Carla White is announcing his resignation today,” LeDoux said. “For health reasons. How are your people?”

  “They’re headed home,” DeLuca said. “I called them this morning. Sami’s flying to Seattle, just to check in on Rainbow. Koenig wasn’t crazy, was he? He was as sane as you or me.”