The Disposable Man (33 page)

And there was no relief from this menace at the top, for as the trees finally pulled away, as if dragged down by the mist, there loomed out of the pale void three gigantic, towering, steel-clad structures—vaguely defined, unfamiliar in form or function, and utterly, threateningly immense.

“My God,” murmured Padzhev, his eyes riveted outside the streaming windshield.

Instinctively, the driver stopped the car.

Only Rarig was smiling. “Impressive, huh? Those are the radar towers—five of ’em. Tallest one’s sixty-five feet. The radar dome designed for that one would’ve made it look like a kitchen stool, but the whole site was decommissioned before they got it in place.” He pointed to a sturdy shack ahead and to the right. “That’s the telephone hut over there.”

Our driver pulled over and we emerged into a freezing, wet, windblown environment that cut through our clothes and coated our faces with moisture. The air was a uniform gray, visibility extending to no more than one hundred and fifty feet.

Sammie looked around, her computer case held to her chest. “This is creepy—like a black-and-white sci-fi movie.”

Ahead of us, as if in response, a metallic moaning was followed by a loud thump as a wide door swung open on a long, low-slung building across the road from the towers.

Rarig’s only comment was “Old computer building, where the scope dopes number-crunched the radar data.” He pointed to the shack’s front door. “Someone’s going to have to blast that lock off.”

Padzhev nodded to the driver, who extracted a gun from under his coat, pointed it at the lock, and pulled the trigger as we all instinctively shied away. Absorbed by the mist, the shot sounded like a damp firecracker.

Padzhev pulled the door open and gestured Sammie through.

The interior was simplicity itself—four battered walls, one tiny barred window, and a shelf with a single phone line curled up on it like a garter snake, all covered with dust. Padzhev looked around, obviously baffled.

Rarig interpreted his expression. “With everyone leaving, and vandals tearing the place apart, this is all the powers-that-be want to waste money on. Even then, they have to replace the lock every once in a while. The wardens bring their own phones when they come.”

Sammie put the computer on the shelf and clipped the phone line into its back.

“Guess we better let Olivia know where we are,” I said casually.

Sammie’s sole reaction was a minute hitch in her movements as she continued setting things up.

“Who’s Olivia?” Padzhev asked.

“One of the two women at the other end of this deal,” I explained, grateful Anatoly hadn’t been chosen to join us. I glanced out the open door. “I doubt the computer’s going to like all that humidity.”

Padzhev growled at the driver, who stepped outside, closing the door behind him. One down, I thought.

Sammie looked around her. “Wish I had a chair. I can’t type on this shelf.”

Padzhev got the hint. “I’ll go find something.”

As soon as he left, Sammie turned to me. “Olivia Kidder?”

I kept my voice low. “What options have we got? This god-damn scheme of his isn’t going to work. Sooner or later, Kyrov’ll get the upper hand and eat us for lunch. We need help.”

We heard voices outside the door as Padzhev shouted something to the other man.

“Set everything up, and if you get a few seconds to yourself, send an SOS to Judy to be forwarded to Kidder.”

“Snowden’ll probably intercept it,” Sammie warned.

“Then e-mail Tony Brandt and make sure he gets briefed by Kidder. Somebody’s going to have to tell the cavalry who’s who up here.”

The door crashed open, making us both jump, and Padzhev and the driver hauled a huge, dented steel box into the room. “Will this work?” he asked, panting.

Sammie perched herself on it, placing the computer on her lap. “Great. Thanks.”

A nervous twenty minutes later, she looked up from the keyboard. “Got it.”

Padzhev sat next to her and peered at the glowing screen. Floating in its middle, like an island on a black sea, was a multihued, three-dimensional slice of map, with a mountaintop at its center. “That’s us?” he asked.

“Yup.” She touched the screen with her fingertip. “We’re right here, and that thin black line squiggling down there is the road. The Quonset village’s here.”

Padzhev stared at it as though it were a crystal ball, which we were all hoping it was. “No sign of anyone else?”

“Not yet. The two women at the other end are going to keep watching till they see a change. Then we’ll get an update—assuming the Trojan horse worked. If it didn’t,” she added grimly, “then I guess the next thing we’ll hear is a knock on the door.”

WE WERE BACK IN THE VILLAGE
in one of the less destroyed huts, most of us bundled into piles around the floor, trying as best we could to keep warm and catch some sleep. Outside, in the darkness, Padzhev and his men had rigged a few booby traps around a marginally defensive layout, which I knew in my gut would finally prove futile. Sammie was stuck on the mountaintop, staring at her unmoving screen and no doubt feeling like a Popsicle by now.

I looped my arm around Gail’s shoulders and she snuggled up closer, as much for the body heat as for the company.

“Joe?” she whispered.

Padzhev had finally left us alone together only a few minutes ago, and given the mood of our last conversation back in Brattleboro, we’d been taking our time getting reintroduced, letting body language do most of the work.

“Yeah?”

“What’s going to happen?”

I gave her shoulder a squeeze, murmuring into her ear. “Nothing good. When all hell breaks loose, I’ll do what I can to get us out of here, but it may be too late. I am sorry.”

“You were hardly in control of things,” she protested.

“I went to Middlebury.”

“Versus what? Sitting around home waiting for the inevitable?”

I had nothing to say to that. What had seemed at the time like an act of independence was now looking more like the fate of a lemming. It wasn’t something I could argue.

She sighed. “Well, I don’t want to be here, but I’m glad we ended up in the same place at the same time. When you left—when you went underground—just after our fight, I couldn’t believe how much it hurt. I hated what had been done to us. I didn’t know if we’d ever see each other again, or how it would be if we did.”

I laughed softly. “And now here we are—some romantic evening.”

She kissed my cheek. “I’ll take what I can.”

But I’d felt her lips trembling.

· · ·

I sensed it first, before I heard a sound, like the smell of a storm before the first drop of rain. I was already peering through the gloom at the hut’s front door when a shadow darkened its threshold. I quickly shook Gail awake as Padzhev began issuing orders in Russian.

“Layer up—as many clothes as you can beg, borrow, or steal. We’re headin’ up the mountain.”

I left her scrambling among the odds and ends we’d salvaged from the motel room, the car trunks and each other and stumbled across the debris-strewn floor to where Padzhev was directing his men.

“My people and I are going up the road.”

He looked at me irritably, interrupted in midsentence. “What? Why?”

“Sammie must’ve given the alert. We going to get weapons?”

He let out a sharp laugh. “That’s not very likely.”

“Then get us the hell out from under your feet.”

One of his men asked a question. Padzhev’s face contorted with pure rage for an instant, and I thought he might lash out. But he clamped it back down and pointed at the door instead. “One car for all of you, and one of my men goes along, with orders to kill anyone who steps out of line. Leave.”

I pointed to Kunkle, who’d spent the whole night with his one arm cuffed high above him to one of the only solid pieces of plumbing still attached to the wall. “Him, too. Give me a key.”

Padzhev swore in Russian, said something to the man next to him, and left us. The man silently handed me a handcuff key and went after his boss.

I jogged over to where Willy was sitting with his back against the wall. As I freed his hand, pale and cold to the touch, he snarled, “Fucking Russkies. If I didn’t like ’em before, I hate ’em now.”

He snatched his hand away as soon as I let go of it and buried it under his left armpit, briefly closing his eyes. “Jesus Fucking Christ.”

I hooked his elbow and dragged him to his feet. “This is about to turn into a battlefield. We’re heading for high ground. You got anything more to wear? It’s going to be even colder up there.”

He looked around, unsteady on his feet, and pointed to a ratty blanket. I threw it over his shoulders and steered him to where Gail had gathered Rarig and Corbin-Teich near the door. Our bodyguard, presumably a non-English speaker, watched us warily and gestured that we should head for the cars.

Outside, the first trickle of dawn’s light had dampened the sky with a wash just pale enough to make the horizon stand out. Overriding that faint, mountain-etched line, however, was a low ceiling of clouds, far more bruised than what had enveloped the radar site the day before. We cut across to the cars, working our way through the tall weeds and underlying trash. Around us, Russian voices rang out in short bursts, and men could be seen running from one position to another as Padzhev fine-tuned his defense. At no point had we been given any idea of the numbers rallied against us, and at no point had I been led to believe it was anything less than twice our own forces.

We were bundled into a vehicle and driven up the now-familiar tree-encroached lane to the mountaintop. Halfway there, the mists of yesterday returned, wetter this time and worsened by a strong steady wind we hadn’t felt in the village.

When we emerged from the car ten minutes later, however, the contrast was more fully revealed. The temperature, already unseasonably cold, had dropped another fifteen to twenty degrees, pushed there by gusts that forced us to avert our faces just to catch a breath. The few extra layers of clothing we’d scavenged were about as effective as tissue paper.

Bent over, our arms linked, Gail and I half-ran to the telephone shed. A guard Padzhev had left with Sammie met us at the door, weapon drawn, looking nervous. He held up his hand to stop us, but we brushed him aside and stepped into the shack. He didn’t follow. Summoned by his colleague, he left to help escort the others into the nearest radar tower.

Sammie, encased in so many layers she looked like a ragtag, bloated snowman, was still sitting on her metal box, the computer on her lap. From what I could see of her face, she looked utterly exhausted.

I pulled the door closed behind us, cutting off the blast, if not the sounds of its buffeting as it hammered on the thin wooden walls.

“You okay?” I asked her.

Her voice was muffled by whatever it was she’d pulled across her mouth. “Yeah. Hey, Gail.”

“Hey, yourself. You look like your clothes are the only things holding you up,” Gail answered.

I could tell by the corners of Sam’s eyes that she’d smiled. “Probably right. Take a look.”

She swiveled the computer around so we could both see the screen. The familiar map face was there, but now it was covered with a spray of eight small white dots. They were most concentrated about halfway up the slope.

“Where is that?” I asked.

“The village’s front door… Hang on. Another one’s coming.”

In response to a small beep from the machine, she hit a few keys, wiped out the picture we’d been looking at, and summoned its successor. It appeared in sections, stack by stack, slowly, with deliberate care. The end result showed the dots spread out, closer by.

“Inside?”

She glanced up at me. “Yup.”

The radio yelped next to her, making both Gail and me jump—Padzhev shouting for an update. Sammie keyed the mike and calmly described the picture before her.

Several minutes later, the computer beeped again, starting the process all over again.

“Has this been worth it?” I asked, feeling distinctly odd about the true meaning of what we were watching.

“I know it doesn’t look like it, but I think so. I saw ’em coming early on. I could tell Padzhev how to move his troops around. It’d be better if we knew that each dot stood for every bad guy, instead of a sampling, but it’s better than nothing.”

As soon as the picture became clear, she called Padzhev on her own and told him what had changed. “Plus,” she then added, putting the radio back down, “it may have helped us. Remember that scrambling thing the Department of Defense does to GPS readings that Judy told us about? The selective availability? Last night, I got an e-mail from Abby Coven. She said she noticed the flickering in the numbers had quit all of a sudden—that her computer didn’t need to correct them anymore. So she got on the Internet to ask around and found the selective availability on eight of the twenty-four satellites up there had been turned off—the eight servicing this part of the world.”

I had told Gail of our subterfuge earlier. “Do you think it’s Olivia Kidder?” she now asked.

The door burst open violently, helped by the wind, and the man I’d brushed aside stood before us, gun still in hand. “You come,” he shouted.

I heard the computer beep yet again as we were hauled outside. “Hang in there, Sam. I’ll be back,” I shouted over my shoulder, unsure she’d been able to hear the second half of the sentence.

The guard, frustrated, angry, and obviously scared, pushed us toward the tallest tower. Clad in rusty, corrugated steel sheets, it stood hulking like some symbol of Armageddon, thrusting out of the earth like an enormous square column, its top swallowed whole by the gray, swirling mists. I wouldn’t have been surprised upon entering it to find it extended both into the ground and straight up for thousands of feet.

Reality, of course, told otherwise. We were half-thrown into a dark, cold, thunderously noisy steel cube, the exact dimensions of the tower’s footprint. The floor was concrete, the ceiling and twenty-foot high walls metal. There was an enormous elevator shaft to one side, next to a steel-grid stairwell, and the biggest, most robust piece of scaffolding I’d ever seen running from the floor through the ceiling—presumably to support the huge radar dome Rarig said had never been put in place. Otherwise, the whole room looked like an abandoned warehouse building, utterly lacking the exterior’s air of malevolence.