by James Thayer
The technician nodded. "The second plane should be there by now. We'll see what shows up."
The Beechcraft had not been equipped with cameras, and in any event the plane had covered the ground too quickly to take still photographs, so another plane, a Grumman Mohawk from Fort Ord, had been sent for a second fly-by. The Mohawk was a multisensor tactical observation and reconnaissance platform equipped with an ESSWACS (electronic solid-state wide-angle camera system), a five lens assembly that focused light onto five charge-coupling devices. The five currents were sent through an on-board video processor, then through a multiplex system to turn them into a single burst of digital pulses. The plane carried a stabilized transmitter in a helmet-sized blister under its starboard wing, which would send it to an LOS (line of sight) relay station atop Moller Mountain. The signal would be instantly forwarded to the trailer, and the picture reconstructed on the monitor in front of Coates and the technician.
"Still enough light, you think?" Coates asked.
The tech glanced at his wristwatch. "It's only eight-thirty. The sun sets late this time of year. There'll be enough light."
Coates was counting on the tumbledown barn to be missing shingles. He rubbed his forehead with frustration. "I thought I had Nikolai Trusov bottled up in New York."
"Sounds like he got out."
"He went through my so-called impenetrable ring like crap through a goose, goddamn him anyway."
"You know, Detective, I've read the FBI's case report on your Russian. He's a hard man."
"He is that."
"I've never met Owen Gray, but I feel sorry for him, real sorry for him, what with this Nikolai Trusov after him."
Coates snorted. "A gunnery sergeant told me some stories about Owen Gray."
"Yeah?" His instruments instantly forgotten, the captain turned to Coates.
"Gray has a series of scars on his arms and legs. He got them in Vietnam."
"Yeah? How?"
"He fell into a tiger pit, a man trap set by the Viet Cong. The enemy disarmed him, dragged him a mile to the nearest village, and nailed him to a wall."
"Nailed?" The tech made a face. "Like Christ?"
"The VC had more nails than the Romans. They nailed Gray's hands, his biceps, couple more nails in his feet and through his shin bones, nails through his shoulders. Twelve nails in all."
"How'd Gray free himself?"
"He was pinned to that wall for all of a day and some of a night." Coates said his next words slowly, one at a time for emphasis. "Then he ripped himself free."
The captain's face lengthened. "What do you mean?"
"He couldn't pull the nails from the wood, so he yanked himself off the nails. The VC were sitting around an iron pot, boiling their fish and rice, and didn't see or hear him. Gray left chunks of himself on each nail, bloody gobs of skin and muscle. But he freed himself, then walked for three days back to American lines."
"Good God."
"So while you feel sorry for Owen Gray"—Coates smiled narrowly—"feel sorry for the Russian."
A moment passed, the captain digesting the story. Then he asked, "You hungry? I've got a top secret LAPSAT radio downlink that'll order us a pizza."
Coates shook his head. "I want to get the hell out of here as soon as—"
In front of the technician, the NEC monitor's screen turned to white, then ran through a color protocol, flickering quickly through a palette of primary colors. Then an image appeared on the screen showing approximately a square mile of Jefferson County. Visible were a small stream, rock outcroppings, patches of forest, several fence lines, and two buildings. Above the image appeared a series of menu buttons.
"Here we go," the tech said, pulling a mouse from behind the monitor. The tech clicked twice on a screen button. The image was instantly sectioned into twenty-five parts. The arrow then moved to the section containing the house and barn. Another double click, and that portion was magnified. The image was taken directly over the house and barn, and they showed clearly. A chimney throwing a long shadow, a collapsed chicken house near the barn, a wood stand that had once supported a windmill, another pile of wood that might have once been a toolshed, and a green van parked near the house, all were plainly visible on the screen. More clicks, and this image was sectioned, and the arrow found the part containing the barn. Yet more clicks, and that part was enlarged.
"Looks like you're right," the tech said. "Missing shingles. But look here, too. In front of the barn, in the grass, the double lines of an automobile track. Abandoned barns usually don't have fresh tracks on the ground in front of them."
Coates rose from the chair to lean toward the monitor. "And beneath the barn's roof in the gaps left by missing shingles . . ."
The captain pointed at a feature on the screen. "Looks like there's some yellow in that barn."
"Bright yellow, looks like," Coates added. "And shiny."
"Yeah, that's not hay bales or an old tarp or anything like that."
Coates lifted his jacket from the back of his chair. His voice was tight with excitement. "It's a goddamn Buick Regal is what it is. We've found that Russian son of a bitch." He slapped the captain on the shoulder and turned for the trailer's door.
CHAPTER TWELVE
"You caught these fish?" Adrian asked, nodding at the two rainbow trout on the pan. The fish were cleaned but still had their heads and tails.
Gray moved a skillet over the heat. "In the creek."
"Did you kill the pig, too?"
Gray ignored her. He placed three strips of bacon into the frying pan. The bacon hissed and spat. He jiggled the pan to move the bacon back and forth. Gray lifted a pinch of cornmeal from a porcelain canister and dropped it onto the plate. He rolled the trout in the cornmeal. When bacon grease covered the skillet, he slid the fish from the plate to the frying pan. The trout and bacon sizzled together. On the other grill, steam rose from a stainless steel pot containing brown rice in boiling water. Gray placed a steamer over the water and rice. He lifted spring peas from a paper sack on the counter and dropped them into the steamer. He was wearing jeans and a high-neck University of Idaho Vandals sweatshirt.
Adrian leaned against the post that separated the kitchen from the main room. Her arms were crossed in front of her, and a glass of chardonnay was in one hand. Her mouth was pursed and her eyes moved back and forth. Gray thought she had the look of someone whose guard was up. He lifted a piece of wood from the iron box next to the stove, then opened the stove's front grate. Flame cast the kitchen in flickering red light. He shoved the wood through the opening and closed the grate.
She turned her head at a distant plaintive tremolo that ended in a series of sharp barks. She raised an eyebrow at Gray.
"A coyote." He used a spatula to turn the fish in the skillet.
"I thought they only bayed at the moon." She was wearing a white wool fisherman's net sweater and jeans.
"They howl at anything. Maybe he's mad at the weather."
Living in New York, Gray had gotten away from monitoring the weather. Rain or snow or sun, by the time it reached Manhattan's walled streets it didn't make much difference to Gray. In the Sawtooths, Gray checked the Emory and Douglas barometer on the kitchen wall several times a day, just as his father had for so many decades. That afternoon the mercury had dropped abruptly, and the storm had swarmed into the mountains as night had come. Rain lashed against the roof in wind-driven waves. Windows rattled with the gusts, and beads of rainwater were pushed horizontally along the glass. The wind bawled through the trees, filling the cabin with a deep rumble. Tossed by the wind, the trunks of young aspen trees in the grove behind the cabin clicked together in an uneven staccato. The old cabin creaked and groaned.
Gray lifted the skillet and used the spatula to slide the fish onto two plates. He opened the fish and poked gently them with a fork. "They're done."
With a spoon he retrieved the spring peas from the steamer. "The difference between perfect peas and overdone peas is about ten seconds. It's
all in the timing."
He placed the peas on the plates and sprinkled them with pepper. He drained the rice in the sink and used a serving spoon to divide it onto the plates. Then he carried both plates around the dining table and into the main room to place them on the coffee table next to a wine bottle and two place settings.
"My grandfather was smart in a lot of ways." Gray pushed aside the screen on the fireplace. "One of them was this fireplace. You don't need to carefully balance your firewood on the grate, hoping it won't roll out onto the floor. This fireplace is so large you can just toss a couple of logs in and they'll be all right."
He brought two pieces of wood from the box and lobbed them onto the fire. Red sparks swirled and disappeared up the chimney. Gray closed the screen. The fire surged, engulfing the new offering. The blaze was the size of a bonfire, and it roared and popped, filling the room with warmth and dancing light. He lowered himself to the couch, facing the fire.
Adrian Wade joined him on the couch. "You didn't take the head off this fish."
"A trout looks better whole."
"You'll eat it, but you won't disfigure it."
"Something like that."
She placed her glass on the table. "You're not having wine?"
"Even one glass takes my edge off. I can't afford that right now."
Gray glanced at her. The fire's hues played on her face and sweater. Golds and reds and blues painted her in reeling patterns, making her seem an illusion. She brought up a few flakes of the fish and touched them with her tongue before eating them. Gray watched her chew. She seemed to do it absently, with the delicacy of disinterest. She gently twirled the wine. Colors of the fire sparkled in the wine and her eyes.
"You're staring at me again," she said quietly.
"Damn it." He shifted his gaze to his plate.
"I still mind, but not so much."
They ate in silence awhile. Gray had hoped for a comment about the fish, but none came. Trout was a meal he knew he cooked superbly, and this fish was tender and buttery, suggesting the wilderness without being gamey.
She sipped her wine. Her lips left a slight red print on the glass. Gray stared at the glass a moment. He wondered why such a common sight—lipstick on a wineglass—could be so suggestive.
She said, "Your friend Pete Coates likes to look at the files of people he works with."
"He knows more about me than I do."
"Did he tell you a lot about me?"
"Nothing I'd call tantalizing," he answered.
"You know about my husband?"
"A pilot who died in a plane crash. Sad business."
"I read once in a psychology text that for any given person in the United States there are sixty thousand other people that person could fall in love with. But I knew that statistic was sheer nonsense. There was one person for me and I had the good fortune to find him. Then I lost him."
Gray brought up a forkful of rice. He wondered where the conversation was going.
"I first met Rick when I was in grade school. Then we went to the same high school, and we both went to UCLA. I don't remember when I didn't know him, and I always knew that I would one day marry him. It was just a given in my life."
She was looking fully at him, so he thought there would be little risk in turning to her to listen. She might not snap at him for staring at her. Her eyes shimmered with reflected firelight.
Adrian went on, her voice a whisper above sounds of the fire and storm. "When I heard Rick died, I died, too, everything except my pulse. I became an empty shell with nothing inside."
"It must have been hard." About as inane a comment as possible, but he could think of no other.
"I have a few seconds of happiness each day just after I wake up in the morning. Then I realize again that Rick is gone. Every morning I endure again the crushing return of his loss."
Gray nodded his understanding.
"Do you know that I haven't dated anyone since he died? I doubt that little fact was in Pete's file."
"In four years?"
She smiled and shook her head. "Four years. And you can infer all you want from that about my sex life, and you'll be right."
"It's not my province to infer anything about you. And besides, I'm too gentlemanly." He chewed several peas. "Not in four years?" He wanted to add that it was a terrible waste, but thought better of it.
She renewed her smile. "It's a terrible waste, right? I've heard that before from guys trying to put the make on me."
"But not from me."
"When I get hormonal urges, I go to my martial arts gym and use a striking bag. An hour's worth usually does it." She ate some of the rice, then said, "From what I understand, you are like me."
Gray shrugged. "I get out once in a while."
She laughed. "Yes, to the zoo or a children's museum or McDonald's for Happy Meals."
He rubbed the side of his nose. "I know what you are doing, Adrian."
"Yes?"
"You are opening up to me, confiding your deepest wound and the great secret of your sex life. But you and Pete Coates are alike, always on the job."
She again sipped her wine.
"You believe that I have something hidden in my past that will help your investigation," Gray said. "You think that if you bare your soul to me I'll reciprocate, that I'll reveal my past so you can clinically examine it like some coroner picking apart a body."
She grinned at him. "It's working, isn't it?"
"Not at all."
"Sure it is. The fire, this remote cabin, the storm outside, the delicious food, me. You are yearning to tell me your secret. The urge is overwhelming."
"I don't feel any such urge." Gray turned back to the fire.
"I can outlast you."
"Outlast me?" He tried to add a touch of scorn to his voice but failed. "You don't know anything about endurance. You don't know—"
He abruptly rose and walked into the kitchen. He returned with a wineglass. He held up the glass to fill it precisely halfway. "Half a glass and I'll still have all my reflexes." He took a drink of the chardonnay, then returned to the couch.
"Tell me your secret," she demanded softly. She crossed her legs and leaned back against the armrest as if expecting a long confession.
Gray swallowed more wine.
"A line of perspiration has appeared on your forehead, Owen."
"This sofa is too close to the fire."
She laughed lightly. "You are sweating because you are about to break. You are desperate to tell me, someone who will understand."
He waved his hand in dismissal.
"You don't have a choice," she said. "Tell me."
Gray swallowed. His throat was dry. He held the glass with both hands. The fire swayed and flashed and hooked its tongues of flame, curling around the logs and twining together and pulling apart. It was enticing him, beguiling him. Tendrils of her scent reached for him, a light gardenia. The wind coursing through the trees had gained a low musical, pulsing quality. The air had become dense. Gray was having trouble breathing.
"You've put something in my wine," he protested feebly.
"It only feels like it. You were about to tell me."
" I . . . can't."
Her voice brushed him. "Tell me."
An age passed.
"That number." The words at last escaped his mouth. "Ninety-six."
"The number of your kills in Vietnam." She was utterly still, perhaps not wanting to derail Gray by a movement.
"That's the number that brought me fame in the Marine Corps, that got a rifle range named after me at Quantico, that got the stories in the Marine Times about the so-called legend. And my ex-wife and the army psychiatrists thought that number was the source of all my problems. The doctors talked about the patriotism of that number, of a soldier doing his duty. My wife kept asking what it was like to look through crosshairs at ninety-six people."
She lowered her chin slightly, a delicate encouragement.
"The number wasn't
ninety-six." He emptied his glass. "It was ninety-seven." He had said it. She had broken him. Gray looked at her, but her face carried no trace of a victor's smirk.
"Ninety-seven," she said, not a question.
He turned back to the fire. Blue flames curled around the bottom of the logs. "My last shot in Vietnam. In Elephant Valley, or at least that's what the Marines called it. My spotter Allen Berkowitz and I had been out for three days. We hadn't had any luck. I don't like to look back and think I was impatient and careless, but of course I was. Berkowitz didn't see them, but I did, the telltale three white dots of a human in the brush, the face and two hands. And a flash of reflected light from a scope or binoculars. We knew we were in enemy territory. No friendlies anywhere near. So I aimed and fired as fast as I could, thinking the flash might be a scope and the enemy had me in it." Gray's eyes dropped from the fire to the stone hearth.
"Go on," Adrian whispered.
A moment passed, then he said, "My kill fell out of the bush where he had been hiding." Gray placed his glass on the table. His hands were trembling, and the base of the glass rattled on the tabletop. "He was an American. A Marine sniper."
With two fingers, Adrian gently touched her chin, as if exploring a bruise. "Are you sure?"
"He was wearing a Marine Corps field uniform and he was a Caucasian. And the only whites operating in the area were Marine Corps snipers. We usually stay away from each other's territories, but somehow our signals got crossed."
"Did you recognize him? Was he someone from your unit?"
"I didn't get close to him. I couldn't. A look through Berkowitz's binoculars was enough, though. It was a good shot, a head shot, right through his nose. Blood and gore and brains were all over his face as he lay there. He was as dead as I've seen anybody, and I saw a lot of dead people. Mostly people I made dead."
"Was it someone from your unit?"
"We all were accounted for that evening. But there were other Marine sniper companies in Elephant Valley. They suffered losses all the time. It's the nature of the profession that sometimes snipers don't come back from patrol."