Winterlong

by Mason Cross

  I had been walking ten minutes before I saw the first identifiable landmark, the twisted, lightning-struck tree that was only a half mile from the main access road to the house. The tree was thirty feet tall, black and twisted and gnarled like something out of a Tim Burton movie. I had seen it when I’d first come out to view the place, and every time I had driven past since then I couldn’t help but glance at it. I stopped by the tree and wiped snow from my goggles.

  The road dipped ahead of me, and I knew that all I had to do was walk straight on, turn left into the access road, and from there it was less than a mile to the house.

  Home free.

  66

  “Comic books?”

  Stark had descended the basement stairs to find Bryant and Markham looking on in confusion as Murphy knelt down and started pulling out more and more of the bagged magazines from the box. Amazing Spider-Man, Detective Comics, Sandman, Astro City.

  He realized that Bryant was staring at him, every bit as surprised as he was.

  “That’s not what I expected,” Bryant said.

  Murphy picked up the box and dumped it upside down, scattering twenty pounds of comics all over the basement floor. There was nothing else in the box. He ripped the firm cardboard apart and discarded it.

  “It’s not exactly what I fucking expected either.” He stood up, and Stark thought the look on his face was a mixture of fury and admiration at Blake’s ruse.

  “He played us,” Stark said. “He knew Bryant would lead us here.”

  They should have known. A secret bookcase? Too showy to conceal anything of real value. More misdirection from Blake. He had known all along that Bryant’s capture and interrogation was a possibility. So he had given Bryant just enough information to make sure they had to keep him alive, but not enough to give them anything worthwhile. It had been credible, because they were already looking in this neck of the woods, but if Williamson hadn’t nailed down the location of the house, the information would have been useless by itself.

  Murphy started pulling out the rest of the boxes and dumping them on the floor. Multicolored covers from decades ago scattered across the floor. There was no flash drive in any of the boxes. When he was done, he went into the cavity and systematically knocked up and down every inch of the walls. Solid brick. Nothing. If the Black Book was in the house, it sure as hell wasn’t down here.

  “We’re wasting our time,” Stark said. “There’s nothing here for us.”

  Murphy looked at him, cold determination in his eyes. “No. We’re going to take this place apart. You,” he said, turning and pointing at Bryant, “stay the hell down here. You do not want to give me a reason to shoot something.”

  Bryant swallowed again and nodded.

  It wasn’t a stealth search. They would make sure the exterior of the house remained undisturbed for Blake’s approach, but the interior was fair game. The team worked quickly. It was a familiar task. They were accustomed to going into an insurgent stronghold under pressure of time, stripping out laptops and memory devices and checking the standard hiding places in any dwelling.

  The task was complicated by the fact that the object of their search was so small. Barely an inch long, the flash drive was easy to conceal, and Blake would know all of the places not to hide it. There was no guarantee it was in the house itself, for that matter. But for now they focused on the house.

  Stark took the office, clearing out the drawers, then pulling them from the desk and checking for anything taped underneath. He disconnected the desktop unit and placed it at the doorway, ready to be bagged and transported back to base along with any other laptops or phones or cameras they came across. The minimalism of the furniture and decor made the task a little more manageable. There were no pictures to conceal things behind, no pot plants offering soil to bury small items within.

  Within forty minutes, they had given the main house a thorough search. They had removed a desktop computer, a laptop, and several assorted memory storage devices: a few flash drives and even some old CD-ROMS. Those would be taken back to base and the analysts could get to work on them to see if they would yield anything useful. But the thing they were looking for, the distinctive black drive, had not yet been found.

  Over the headset, Stark heard Murphy communicate with Markham and Jennings downstairs, sending them out to the cars with the equipment they had gathered so far. Then he heard Murphy raise Walker, who was stationed at the mouth of the approach road to the house. The land rose to that point, giving him a commanding view.

  “All clear on south,” Walker said. “Saw some headlights ten minutes ago, about two miles out, but nothing since.”

  “All right,” Murphy said. “Try not to fall asleep.”

  “Roger that. Anytime you want to swap that roof over your head for guard duty ...”

  “Enjoy the fresh air.”

  Stark took a moment to look out the window, across to the outbuildings. From the way the snow was coming down, they would be lucky to get as far as Albany tonight, even in the SUVs. He doubted that they would find what they were looking for in the adjacent buildings. If Blake had indeed stashed the Book out here, keeping it in the stables wouldn’t make it any less findable. It was worth checking, though. Difficult to search in the dark, but the exterior buildings would have to be crossed off the list when they were done with the house.

  He descended the stairs and found Murphy in the living room. Murphy raised his eyebrows, asking the question, and Stark shook his head.

  “We’ve taken the place apart. It’s a damn needle in a haystack, and we don’t even know if it’s in the haystack to begin with.”

  “Needle in a haystack’s easy,” Murphy said. “All you gotta do is burn the haystack down and go through the ashes with a magnet.”

  “Should we start on the outbuildings?” Stark asked.

  Murphy glanced outside. “Later.” He nodded at the two twenty-pound packs Stark and Jennings had brought from the cars. “How long do you need to wire the place?”

  It was Murphy’s fail-safe. If they could not find the Black Book, they could do the next-best thing: destroy the house and everything in it. It wouldn’t provide the certainty he wanted, but if the Book was concealed anywhere here, it would burn up along with everything else.

  “Five minutes, probably less.” Stark answered without hesitation. They had planned carefully, and the advance intelligence on the house had been entirely accurate: exterior dimensions, room layout, construction materials. They had brought exactly what they needed. “We’ll get set up in the kitchen,” he continued. He knocked on the solid wall of the hallway next to the doorway. “This is a load-bearing wall: Take this out and the job’s done.”

  Murphy nodded.

  “All right. After you get done, take Kowalski. Give the barn and the stables the once-over, just see if there’s anything obvious. Easier to look properly in the daylight.”

  “Sir,” Stark acknowledged, hiding his annoyance that they were here for the night now. He knelt down and grabbed the first of the packs to carry through to the kitchen.

  The task was completed in four minutes, not five. It wasn’t the most challenging demolition job he had ever been assigned. When he was finished, he synced the remote detonator. He looked up at Murphy, who was gazing in approval at the small stack of C-4 set up at the optimum spot to level the building.

  “Code is 4649, okay?”

  Murphy nodded acknowledgment, and Stark locked the screen and slid the small remote device into a breast pocket. Both men turned to the door when they heard the sound of someone clearing their throat. Usher was standing in the doorway, staring back at him through those glasses. Stark hated the way he did that. The way he just appeared.

  They waited for Usher to say something, but he just looked back at them, awaiting instruction. Stark detected an undercurrent of contempt in his gaze, a little seasoning to the usual bland blankness. Like he was tired of the lack of progress. Before this mission, Stark wouldn’t have thoug
ht Usher capable of frustration.

  “Anything?” Murphy said at last.

  Usher shook his head. Glanced at the stack of C-4 and then looked back at Murphy, regarding both with the same quiet indifference.

  Murphy ignored it and looked back at Stark. “Okay. Take Kowalski and give the outbuildings a once-over.”

  Stark met Kowalski in the hall, and they opened the back door. Stark activated his night-vision goggles, but with the way the snow was coming down, it was like staring at an old-fashioned television set tuned to static. He clicked the switch off again, and they moved quickly across the open ground to the barn. The structure was two stories tall, with a corrugated aluminum roof. The exterior wood was weathered and warped, but structurally it looked sound. The big double doors at the front were secured by a padlock.

  Stark backed up against the door and surveyed the tree line as Kowalski clipped the padlock off using bolt cutters. A minute later they were inside. The space was all but empty, just some machinery in the corner covered by a tarp and a ladder to the hayloft. Stark was about to tell Kowalski to check the hayloft when Walker’s voice sounded in his ear on the open channel.

  “Murphy?”

  Murphy’s voice came in immediately, “Talk to me.”

  “I got headlights. Estimate one mile away.”

  Stark drew a breath. Was this it? Who else would be on the road?

  “Is he approaching?” Murphy asked.

  “Affirma—hold on. Wait one.”

  Murphy held his breath as he listened to the crackling. The sound had gotten so bad that he’d only just caught the last sentence.

  “Walker?”

  “He’s stopped.”

  “Say again?”

  “I said he’s stopped.”

  “Stay on it, Walker. Stark, are you getting this?”

  “Loud and clear,” Stark said. “You want us back at the house?”

  “Negative. Sit tight. You have a view of the access road out there?”

  Stark looked back out the main doors. They had a clear line of sight to the road, but that would require leaving the doors open. He took a couple steps back, glanced up, and saw that the window in the hayloft looked out on the same ground.

  He confirmed and nodded to Kowalski to close the doors. Murphy spoke over the channel again, addressing Abrams this time.

  “All clear at the cars?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Okay. Remain in position. Jennings, Markham, drop the goods at the cars with Abrams and get back to the south tree line. Approach with caution. And this goes for everyone: Do not take the shot. Allow him to approach the house. We don’t want to spoil the surprise party, do we?”

  67

  Stark had found a broken board in the side of the barn where he could see the main access road without leaving the ground level. He heard the occasional creak from the floorboards of the hayloft as Kowalski shifted position.

  It had been five minutes since Walker’s last report: The headlights he had seen had stopped in the road before switching off. Walker had speculated that the car had grounded in the snow, and he was proved right a few minutes later when he called in a lone man walking north along the road. Stark knew it had to be Blake. This was the only house for miles around. Anyone abandoning a car at that place in the road would either have to be certain that shelter was close by, or would be embarking on a suicide attempt.

  But Stark was surprised they hadn’t heard anything more from Walker yet. Given the position he had reported, Blake should have been practically at the access road by now. When he had waited as long as he could stand, he reached up to tap the button on his headset. Before his finger reached the button, Murphy spoke.

  “Walker, what the hell is going on?”

  There was a long pause, and then Walker’s voice. The sound quality was fine, but Walker was yelling to hear himself over the wind. “He’s gone.”

  Murphy’s voice sounded again in Stark’s ear.

  “What the hell do you mean he’s gone? Where could he go?”

  “He was there. Now he’s gone.”

  Stark stared across to where the access road emerged from the trees. He slid the night-vision goggles back over his eyes and flicked the switch again. More green pixelated television static, but no sign of any movement from the road. What the hell was going on?

  68

  The most important thing about a trap is, you better make damn sure you know who’s setting it.

  The second the picture of Jake Martinez’s dead body showed up in my inbox, I had known trouble was on its way. When my name triggered an alert on the system at Sea-Tac, I realized trouble was much closer than I had anticipated. After that close shave, I had resolved not to take anything for granted.

  I was conscious that my erstwhile colleagues in Winterlong had two very important advantages. One: They were better than anybody else in the world at hunting down a running target. Two: They knew me, and it was likely they could dig up just enough intelligence to predict where I might go.

  Five years ago I had done everything I could to make sure my base was somewhere off the beaten path, somewhere that would leave as small a footprint as possible. I had bought the house cash, posing as an agent for a client in Florida who wanted to acquire a summer place up north. I had paid enough to guarantee a quick sale, but I had selected a house that wouldn’t attract much attention and didn’t have any neighbors within miles. But there’s only so much you can do to stay off the radar. Drakakis eventually deciding to renege on our deal had always been a danger, so I had thought about ways to make sure I had an early warning if they came for me. And I had also considered the scenario that they might take the house in my absence.

  I had taken all of the usual precautions of a homeowner who leaves his house uninhabited for long stretches of time. Timers on the heat and lights. A top-of-the-line security system. Motion-activated cameras on a live Web feed. But those things all relied on power, and I knew that the first thing an invading force would do would be to cut the power.

  Power outages aren’t exactly unusual in that part of the world, particularly during the winter months, so the security system worked with battery backup, as standard. I got an alert by e-mail when the backup kicked in for any reason. It happened a couple of times every winter, and it didn’t mean anything by itself.

  But I also had a backup for the backup. A battery-operated motion sensor covering the front and back doors that sent a signal via GPS whenever it activated. Again, I would get an alert every so often when a particularly eager salesman or charity collector ventured down the access road, found the house, and rang the doorbell. In itself, it didn’t mean anything. But when both things happened on the same night, within five minutes of each other—when the power cut out and, minutes later, somebody approached the front door—that meant everything.

  The five minutes I had spent on the kindly store owner’s computer in Wilston had confirmed my fears. Not only had the power cut out; not only had the motion alarm been activated; but the perimeter motion detectors I had set up around the tree line had been gamed. It had been done skillfully—barely a blip in the telemetry, but it was there if you knew when to check the history, in this case around the time of the power cut. The live cams covering the grounds of the house had gone offline simultaneously.

  From the moment I had seen the picture of Martinez’s body, I knew something had changed and that they were playing for keeps. And I knew I would have to show them the error of their ways. The house was a trap, all right. Now it was time to show them who the trap belonged to.

  69

  The twisted lightning-struck tree was a half mile from the access road, but it also marked the point where one of the old riding trails intersected with the road. I didn’t think there had been horses stabled at Hamilton Falls for at least a couple of decades before I moved in, so the trail was overgrown and obscured under normal conditions. Under a foot of snow, it was invisible, unless you knew exactly where to look. The
trail led west for a couple hundred yards until it met the stream that ran through the estate. There the path forked. Continuing west, it crossed a small wooden bridge. To the north, it followed the path of the stream, gaining height as it approached the ridge overlooking the rear of the house. The stream made it easier to follow the trail. Within minutes, I was at the highest point of the ridge looking down on the house.

  There were no signs of life, but I knew they would be careful about that. They’d be expecting me, would probably have someone watching the main road. The snow had been coming down too hard for it to be obvious, but there were depressions in the snow leading from the edge of the woods to the house. If I focused, I could just make out foot trails, where three or more people had advanced across the open ground in front of the house. There were absolutely no signs of trails or tire tracks from the direction of the main approach road, and this was exactly as I had anticipated.

  I kept low and back from the edge as I navigated the remainder of the ridge. The path forked again. Going right would bring me down to the flat ground, the trail coming out at the old stables. I ignored that path, because I wasn’t ready to approach the house just yet. I bore left and kept moving. Five minutes later, I slowed as I approached a point where there was a small hill. I got down on my belly and crawled through the snow to the edge. I peered over the edge and saw the ground fall away through the trees. Beneath the snow, I knew that the trail continued down the hill before curving off to the west. Looking beyond the curve, I saw a thick stand of trees and a wide clearing where the logging road came out. Just as I had expected, there were two black SUVs parked there, facing the road back out to enable a rapid exit. The vehicles were already coated with snow, except for on the hoods above the still-warm engines.

  I lay motionless and watched the area for a couple of minutes. I saw no movement, but I was certain they would not have left the position unguarded. It was difficult to see anything with the snow coming down so hard.