7th Sigma (30 page)

The first sliver of quarter moon was above the horizon when Lieutenant Hodges approached. He was using a service-issue reflector-focused chemlight, which made Kimble both glad and profoundly irritated. The plus was he had no trouble identifying Hodges from the other traffic. The negative was that neither would anyone else.

His first words as Hodges drew abreast were, “Keep looking straight ahead.”

Despite this, Hodges started to swing the light to the side, but he checked himself and swung it back onto the road.

“Tie your shoe.”

Hodges crouched, setting down his light so it shown on his boots, and untied one of his laces.

Kimble closed his eyes, to protect his night vision. “When you're done, kill your light and walk on. When you get to the bridge, leave the road and go down the bank. I'll meet you under the first arch.”

“What if someone's there?”

Kimble nodded to himself in the dark. At least Hodges was thinking a bit.

“I checked. No drunks, no trolls. If I'm not there by the time the moon is above the bank, continue into town. Go now.”

Hodges retied his shoe and, as he stood, clipped the dark cover over his lamp lens. Kimble heard him walk on down the road, his steps tentative at first but gaining confidence as he continued. Kimble hoped he wouldn't break his neck getting down the bank.

The tag was only a minute behind, a person Kimble had heard earlier, but whose footsteps had sped up as soon as Hodges had shielded the light. Kimble got a clear profile against the night sky as the figure walked past and the moonlight had increased enough that he caught a glimpse of straw hat and white-blond hair.

Kimble followed him long enough to see him continue across the bridge. Kimble spent a few minutes in the moon shadow of the railing, waiting to see if the man doubled back. When he didn't return, Kimble worked his way down to the deep shadow under the bridge.

Hodges was at the far edge, looking up at the sky. The burbling of the river as it tumbled across scattered rocks covered the noise of Kimble's approach. He stopped far enough away to avoid getting hit by mistake and said, “Evening.”

Hodges jumped and spun, his hands up. “Jesus!” he said. “You nearly got yourself whacked.”

Kimble didn't correct him. “Come on down by the water.”

Kimble found a rock to sit on and waited for Hodges to pick his way down. Since Hodges had been staring at the moonlit sky, it took some time.
I swear if he opens his light I'm going to throw him in the river.

When Hodges got close enough, Kimble asked, “Did you assign someone to cover your back tonight?”

Hodges stumbled on a rock and crouched to catch himself.

“What?” Hodges was still feeling around, trying to find his footing.

“Just sit there. That's close enough. Someone was following you. Did you assign someone to do that?”

Hodges didn't say anything for a moment, then, finally, “You must be mistaken.”

“Not hardly.”

“You're just a kid. What on earth are they thinking, sending a kid?”

Kimble thought about hitting him. He knew right where Hodges was and the Ranger probably wouldn't even see it coming. “How long have you been in intelligence?”

Hodges didn't answer.

“Did you assign someone to be your perimeter shield?”

Again, Hodges didn't answer.

Kimble kept his ears open. He didn't think Hodges was setting him up, but he was ready to move at the first sign of betrayal—probably into the river, though his afternoon float down the irrigation ditch had given him his fill of water. “You're the signal officer, aren't you?”

“That's classified.”

Kimble counted to ten in Japanese. “Were you Lujan's contact?”

“Uh, yes.”

Oh, shit.

“I'm leaving first. Count to a hundred before you follow.”

“I'm supposed to brief you…”

“No. We won't be talking again.”

“What? Nonsense. You were sent to assist in my investigation!”

Who trained you?
“Message for Control: Delta Uniform. Got that?”

“Delta Uniform? That's it?”

“Send it as soon as you can. Don't forget to count to a hundred.” Kimble walked into the deeper shadow under the bridge. When the bank rose and he was on the relatively smooth dried mud, he sprinted up. The moon was well clear of the horizon now and the road was a bright ribbon after the darkness under the bridge. He ignored it and took to the brush on the north side of the road.

A few minutes later he watched as Hodges climbed the bank and began trudging back to the barracks.

There was more traffic over the next hour, including several Rangers returning from town, but he didn't see Bickle among them.

Finally Kimble gave up. He went north along the riverbank and, well outside of town, waded across to reach the Zen Center and climbed up the steep path to his campsite.

18

Messages

Thayet picked up the apples in town and also took a message to the Qwest Heliograph office the next day. It read:

TERRITORIAL MEDICAL CLAIMS ADMIN OFFICE NUEVO SANTA FE STOP LEFT TOWN WITHOUT RESOLVING TREATMENT CLAIM 322355 STOP THREE TWO TWO THREE FIVE FIVE STOP PLEASE INFORM OUTCOME PECOSITO HELIO WILL CALL STOP DU OHARA

The message was converted into Morse blinks of reflected sunshine and passed from station to station before being translated back to paper in the territorial capital. The claims clerk who took delivery of the message pulled the folder for claim 322355 to see what was what. It was empty except for a scrawled note: “This claim on Director's desk. Route all correspondence to the Director.”

When the heliograph arrived on that worthy's desk, she waited until the clerk had left, sealed it in an envelope and had her secretary run it across the street to a Sergeant Ruiz at the Territorial Rangers Headquarters Building.

Sergeant Ruiz raised his voice, as sergeants are prone to do, and the word “Orderly!” echoed down the hall. By the time the private on duty had arrived from the ready room, Sergeant Ruiz had written a name on the envelope. He handed it to the orderly and said, “Double-time, Major Bentham, Department 17.”

Major Bentham was sitting in the analysts' bullpen, talking over border issues with the two men who ran the Mexican desk, when the note came to him.

“Oh, crap. Excuse me, gentlemen. I've got a problem over on the Pecos.” He stepped away and stopped three desks down at the Eastern New Mexico desk. “Who the hell is the local Intel at the Sixteenth Barracks?”

The woman behind the desk, Captain Spitzer, frowned. “Oh, no. What has Hodges done now? I just got a Delta Uniform from your boy, LF, through him.”

Bentham dropped the heliogram to Medical Claims on her desk. “Me, too.”

Captain Spitzer looked at the message. “I'm unfamiliar with this code.”

“Right. It's a last resort. You wouldn't see it unless there was something wrong with normal channels. The only thing it really means is ‘communicate directly via will-call messages into the Pecosito heliograph office.'” Bentham stabbed a forefinger at the signature, DU OHARA. “O'Hara is one of the code designations for LF, and the initials of the signatory are for any code groups—there's the Delta Uniform again.”

“I guess Little Friend means it. It wasn't just Hodges screwing up … again.”

“Didn't we get rid of Hodges? I thought we were going to shove him off onto supply.”

Captain Spitzer shook her head. “You couldn't, remember? The governor? That little chat? Hodges' grandmother?”

Bentham covered his eyes with one hand and sighed heavily. “I'm supposed to be the one with the good memory.”

Spitzer said, “Well, I'd want to put that out of my head, too.”

“So why did we put Hodges in Pecosito?”

“Until the gun smuggling thing came up it was the quietest post in the entire territory. The bugs start to fade out there except for some isolated industrial infestations. I mean, the worst thing about the area is the religious intolerance.”

“Well, he's screwed this up, apparently. Do we have anyone local, outside of the Rangers?”

“Not covert, no. That's why we wanted Little Friend. And Lujan before him.”

“Okay. Please tell me we've got someone above Hodges we can trust? And I don't mean just with the right security rating. I mean someone with his head on straight.”

She pulled a file from the shelf behind her and flipped it open. “Well,” she said, “the CO is Colonel Q.”

“What? Quincy Anson? I thought he was still over at the academy.”

“No. Reassigned three months ago. The brass outside decided they could do the training more efficiently with modern technology and he, uh, declined to live outside.”

“I hadn't heard that.”

She shrugged. “And you didn't hear it from me. They clamped a lid on it.”

Major Bentham stared at her. “Why?”

“Don't know. Don't care. Until they start producing crappy Rangers, that is. They're still giving territorial residents preference in the recruiting process so at least they haven't screwed things up too far.”

He shook his head. “But it does mean that Colonel Q is in the right place.
Muy bien.
Set up a secure call, won't you?”

*   *   *

“THEY
said it was the need for modern educational methods—virtual sims, e-books—but I had it from my sources: Too many of the currently serving officers were my students. I think they even threw around that old Soviet phrase, ‘cult of personality.'”

Bugs love electromagnetic radiation, but there are work-arounds. To get to the headquarters communication bunker, Bentham started in the basement and climbed down a ladder, then walked through a winding concrete-stabilized tunnel to a deep pocket in the earth, well underground. The equipment was powered by batteries and these were routinely charged by privates peddling on flywheel generators, all down here with tons of dirt between the EMF and any possible passing bugs. The signals left the buried room as packets of light, in glass bundles, fiber optics running straight up to the roof and then up a Dacron rope to a tethered communications balloon over fifteen thousand feet above sea level. There, solar-charged batteries powered a satellite uplink set, passing signals in both directions.

Bugs don't like thin air. Not because they breathe, but because they have wings. Smallish wings. And when the air gets too thin, the bugs don't rise any higher. It's why you can fly aircraft over the territory—just don't dip below ten-thousand feet. To maintain a margin of error, the legal limit is fifteen thousand.

There are balloons tethered over all significant territorial government installations, including most Ranger barracks.

Bentham took a breath of stale air and shuddered. Ranger communication officers really need to be comfortable in closed spaces.

“Well, I hate to say it, Colonel, but I'm glad you're available. May not be as good for the academy but it's sure good for me.”

“Tell me what this Delta Uniform is. You've mentioned it three times and I still don't know what it means.”

“Director unreliable. It refers to the field director—the person directing the operations of a covert field agent. In this case it means Hodges.”

“I thought Hodges passed you that message.”

“Yes. There are certain codes reserved for field agents so they can communicate things through their directors without the director knowing what it means. But Hodges did send it, so I suspect incompetence, not malfeasance.”

“Well, I'll be honest with you. When I reviewed the staff files after taking over here, I was
not
impressed with Hodges' previous evaluations. I mean, seriously, why is he still doing secure work?”

Bentham cleared his throat. “I tried to transfer him into supply, but there were complications.”

“Supply didn't want him?” Supply was chronically understaffed. Moving supplies with metal-free technology is not easy work. The common wisdom was that they would take
anyone
.

“His grandmother is chair of the Governor's Citizen Advisory Council. I got a visit from the man. He even put on the uniform.”

“Oh, Christ,” said Colonel Anson. “I thought he only wore that for academy graduations.”

The governor was titular commander-in-chief of the Territorial Rangers, but everyone—the officer corps, the territorial administration, and even the governor's own staff—tried to keep him as far away as possible from the working Rangers.

“I don't know the basis of LF's Delta Uniform, so I can't speculate, but I really need to know what's going on.”

Colonel Anson cleared his throat. “I suppose I can get him in here so you can talk directly, but not exactly secretly.”

“No. It's asking a lot, but I'd like you to take over as his director in the field. At least until we know why he doesn't trust Hodges. You'd have to meet covertly, away from your installation.”

“Humph. Secret handshakes and recognition codes? Don't you think I'm a little old for that?”

Bentham laughed. “Identity won't be a problem. You know the boy.”

“I do?”

“LF is Kimble Monroe.”

“Kim? The kid you lent us for the unarmed combat evaluations?”

“Right.”

“Oh, very good. There were some punctured egos
that
day. I had to stop watching. I was going to bust a gut trying not to laugh at the poor bastards.”

“So you remember what he looks like?”

“Pretty much. As of two years ago, anyway.”

“No major changes. Maybe an inch or two of growth, but, if anything, thinner.”

“Right.”

“Is he still as, uh, proficient?”

“He lives in the dojo when he isn't on assignment, but it's his judgment I value. And I try not to use him that often.”