Comes a Horseman (25 page)

Trevor smiled. “Come back and get your bag, fella,” he said quietly. “Trashman comes tomorrow, then it'll be too late.”

A shadow fell over him. He looked up to see clouds obscuring the moon, drifting lazily by. His eyes lowered to the raccoon, rocking back and forth as it moved slowly toward the gate, empty-pawed.

“See ya,” he whispered. Deciding to leave the blinds open for light, he turned from the window. A faint shadow stretched out from his feet on the carpeted floor. He followed it out of the room, where it disappeared altogether. He found the bathroom in the dark.

34

O
laf had found the trail and was only a dozen long strides down it when he stopped. Holding perfectly still, he listened. After a moment the sound he thought he had heard came again: a bark. Muffled and far off. Not from the neighborhood dog that had barked earlier. Not from just any dog. This one carried a combination of pitch and treble he knew well. It lasted longer than a normal bark but stopped before becoming a howl.

Freya. Something was disturbing her.

Without hesitation, he ran back up the trail. He bounded off it and in thirty seconds passed the spot where he'd crouched for so long, like a gargoyle watching for evil spirits.

Freya sounded her cry again.

She wasn't fighting or trying to defend the van. She was telling him something required his attention, and the others were letting her. Not a matter of life or death . . . yet. As he ran, ducking under branches, leaping over plants, he considered the possibilities: A hiker had strolled past. Teenagers from town were approaching, cautiously because they were up to no good. A vehicle had pulled near, perhaps a police cruiser.

Olaf crested the hill that rose behind the ridge overlooking the town. He plunged down the other side, moving faster now.

He'd parked the van between two trees and hidden it behind cut branches. Odd that it would be spotted so quickly, especially at night. But Freya—

She barked again, clear in his ears now that he was closer.

Freya would not risk detection had she not already been detected.

Two hundred yards from the van, he slowed his pace. He would not simply plunge into a situation about which he knew nothing. If the police had spotted his van and somehow connected it to Olaf 's handiwork, they might be lying in wait for him. Perhaps they believed he was in the van, asleep or preparing to fend them off with an arsenal of firearms. Freya would not distinguish an ambush from curious passersby, unless they stormed the van or bathed it in blinding halogen lights, neither of which had apparently happened.

He moved from tree to tree, sniffing for a hint of the danger: cigarette smoke, gun oil, body odor. As he drew close, he crouched lower, making his silhouette less human-shaped. When the branches that camouflaged the van came into sight, he lowered his body onto the ground, fluidly, as if melting into the undergrowth. Looking sideways, forcing images onto the more light-sensitive rods on his retinas, rather than the cones directly behind the pupils, he surveyed the darkened forest. He moved quietly on knees and elbows in a move-stop-scan sequence. He circled the van's hiding spot until he'd examined the complete area.

Nothing. Yet Freya continued her rhythmic barking, once every five seconds or so.

He crawled right up to the jumbled branches that obscured the van and slowly moved aside three of them. He pushed his head and shoulders into the gap he'd created. No one hid under the van. None of the shocks sagged with the uneven excess weight of a man hiding inside—a possibility Olaf thought as unlikely as the dogs sprouting wings and flying away. It would have required recording Freya's bark, killing or otherwise incapacitating all three animals, and then playing back the steady bark on nearly perfect speakers. He rolled onto his back to examine the branches high over the van. No hunter's tree stand. No clinging snipers.

What then?

He raised his arms and knocked down the wall of foliage. When he stood, all three dogs were staring out at him. Freya whined. He circled around to the other side and slid open the door. The dogs edged up to the opening.

Remaining outside, he studied their faces curiously and whispered,
“Hva vík hóra?”
Then he caught the amber oil light blinking on the dash. He nodded. He had not trained her to draw his attention to it if it activated, but he was pleased that she somehow knew it was important.

“
Góo stelpa.
Good girl.” He said it with enthusiasm so she'd understand how much she had impressed him. He rubbed her muzzle, then her head, neck, and throat. Thor and Erik watched impassively. They were older than Freya and more secure in the place they occupied in his heart. Still, he scratched their heads and told them, “Good boy,” before nudging all three into the far back.

He brushed aside an assortment of litter on the floor. He reached under the van, found the hidden compartment's release button, and pushed it. The floor panel popped up. He lifted it and propped it open.

Gently he removed the twin aluminum cases, setting them on the ground. He dropped the floor back over the compartment and unfolded a camper's chair in front of the door. He positioned the cases side by side in the van before him, punched numbers into keypads, and popped their locks. He raised their lids and sat facing a communications station as sophisticated and formidable as that of any army's command post. The flashing oil light had nothing to do with the level of oil in the crankcase or the condition of the engine. He had wired it to signal an urgent communiqué from his controllers. Essentially, it acted as a clandestine pager, and he had just been summoned.

THE POUNDING on Brady's hotel room door was nonstop. He set the murder book he was studying on the nightstand, pulled on his pants, and ran to the door.

Alicia was bubbling, bouncing on her toes, stretching her lips into a huge grin.

“Brady!” she said. “I just spoke to Gilbreath again. He agreed to let us go to New York to investigate the Father McAfee lead.”

He saw she was fully dressed and looked back at the clock. “He called you at this hour?”

“Well . . . I called him.” She shrugged one shoulder. “I woke him up, but once he heard me out—”

“We
have
to go?”

“Nooo . . . ,” she said, dragging out the word. “But don't you want to?”

“No.”

“We both need collars, Brady. It's the only way to advance.”

“Have fun.” He grinned and swung the door closed.

35

W
ith the two aluminum cases open before him, Olaf prepared to phone home.

The right case contained a Motorola SATCOM Crypto Transceiver with an internal power supply and a headset. The left case contained an Apple PowerBook computer. He linked the two pieces of equipment with a ribbon cable and hinged open the PowerBook's display. Next, he pulled a collapsible satellite dish from the rear of the SCT, snaked it up to the roof of the van, and pushed its suction-cup base onto the metal. Looking up, he saw stars watching him through the branches of the trees. He believed the dish had a clear shot at the communication satellite sailing invisibly overhead, a false star that received more appreciation these days than real ones. To Olaf, it was a metaphor of the times: technology had replaced the heavens; people worshiped that which gave them cell phones and HBO, instead of the gods who gave them life.

Given a choice, the furthest Olaf would venture into technology was his 1974 VW minibus, and only then on assignment. He was not so ignorant that he didn't see the advantages of instant communication, of using a network of computers to access more information faster than ever, of storing libraries on a disc the size of a wafer. He just wasn't convinced technology was worth losing the things it killed: knowledge from experience rather than keystrokes, embracing friends after days of journeying to them, oral history through storytelling. Maybe it was those who did not comprehend technology's price who were the truly ignorant ones.

However, as it was explained to him when he grumbled about learning to use the SCT and other electronics, the enemy was vast; they were few. Using every available means to secure an advantage was prudent and expedient.

“They will get you home sooner,” explained the man who had come bearing gadgets and Olaf 's assignment, along with tasks for the other warriors of his tribe as well. The man—a thin Albanian named Arjan, with intense eyes and bulging veins—had been holding what looked like a toy gun. He had called it a Taser, which “incapacitates without killing.”

“I have something for that already,” Olaf said, holding up his cantaloupe-sized fist. His compatriots laughed in hearty agreement.

“Perhaps you'd like a demonstration?” Arjan asked.

Olaf rose from the gym floor.

More laughter and boisterous encouragement.

Arjan flipped a switch on the Taser, which emitted a whine that rose in pitch until it surpassed the range of human hearing.

Even with no knowledge of the thing's capabilities, Olaf found the sound disquieting. Still, he stepped up to this challenger. He was only a few inches taller than Arjan, but where Arjan had a sinewy physique, Olaf had flanks of powerful muscles.

Arjan met Olaf 's gaze, then eyed him up and down.

“The Taser will work even through your heavy clothes,” he said. “Why don't you step away a little. Its range is twenty-one feet.”

Olaf turned but didn't take a step. Instead, he spun in a complete circle, using the movement to build speed. His fist came up and crashed into the side of Arjan's face. The sound was like two rocks rapped together. As Arjan's upper half pivoted down, his legs came up. He seemed to levitate in a prone position for a moment before dropping with a thud to the hardwood floor. The Taser clattered away.

Olaf stared down at the unmoving body. “If its range is so far,” he said, smiling at his friends, “why did he let me get so close?”

After that, Arjan had agreed to limit his intrusion into their way of life to essential communications and transportation. “Just make sure you get the job done,” he had said, glaring at Olaf.

Olaf smiled at the memory and dropped back into his chair. Visibly, the SCT consisted of plugs, switches, dials, a numeric keypad, and a wild assortment of colored lights—all arrayed across four black boxes. Olaf powered it up, set the frequency, the prearranged satellite channel, the primary encryption code, the secondary encryption code—both also prearranged for this date—and his call sign. He punched the button that would send the information streaming to the low-orbiting satellite, which would, in turn, send it to another, then another, until it found the one passing 780 kilometers above the SCT that was transmitting corresponding data. It took about five seconds.

Through the headphone, a clear voice spoke:
“Hvar er salerni
?”

He frowned. Who'd thought up these pass codes?
Where is the toilet?
He understood the necessity for verbal verification, but must they be so adolescent? In Icelandic, he responded, “Why do you want to know?”

“You must be joking!”

“The toilet is in Colorado.”

The man on the other end laughed. “I don't think I'm going to make it. It's good to hear your voice.”

“And yours, Ottar.” He smiled and leaned closer to the SCT. “Have you seen Ingun? Tell me she is well.”

“She has been a pest. She insists on speaking to you.”

His smile widened. “And my sons?”

“Jon is a newborn calf: find his mama, find him. Bjorn is all the time looking for trouble.”

Those were his boys, summed up well. He wanted to wean Jon from dependence on his mother and help Bjorn focus his curiosity and lack of fear into bravery. He ached to be with them, but at the same time, sacrificing the embrace of his family made his victories here sweeter. Perhaps this was the nature of sacrifice, that the love required to make it wasn't only yours, but belonged also to everyone you loved and who loved you. Sacrifice by its nature is love, and love is always shared.