The Hades Factor (21 page)

They climbed steadily to the three-thousand-foot Mid Pines Summit, picked up the rushing Merced River, and entered the park at El Portal. Marty had been watching quietly out the window. As they climbed two thousand feet beside the rapidly falling river and into the famed valley, his gaze continued to drink in the stunning mountain scenery.

“I think I've missed getting out,” he decided. “Indescribably beautiful.”

“And few people to interfere with the view.”

“Jon, you know me too well.”

They drove past the towering stream of Bridal Veil Falls, wreathed in its own rising mists, and the sheer cliffs of El Capitan. In the distance was legendary Half Dome and Yosemite Falls. They turned sharply onto the north fork of the valley drive and continued on Big Oak Flat Road to its junction with high-elevation Tioga Road, which was closed to all traffic from November to May and often far into June. They continued east through patches of snow and the magnificent scenery of the high country of the untamed Sierras. At last they headed down the eastern slope, the land growing drier and less lush.

As they descended, Marty began singing old cowboy tunes. The meds were wearing off. A few miles before Tioga Road reached Highway 395 and the town of Lee Vining, Smith turned onto a narrow blacktop road. On either side were parched, grassy open slopes with barbed-wire fences marking property lines. Cattle and horses grazed under trees whose black silhouettes stood stark against the gold-velvet mountains.

Marty burst into song: “Home, home on the range, where the deer and the antelope play! Where seldom is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day!”

Smith drove the car up dizzying switchbacks, crossed several streams on rickety wood bridges, and ended at the edge of a deep ravine with a broad creek roaring below. A narrow steel footbridge crossed the ravine to a clearing and a log cabin hidden among towering ponderosa pine and incense cedar. The snow-capped peak of thirteen-thousand-foot Mount Dana towered like a sentinel in the distance.

As Smith parked, Marty continued to fly through his mind, stimulated by the remarkable range of scenery--- from ocean to mountains to cattle land. But now he realized they must be near their destination, and he would be expected to stay here. Sleep here. Maybe live here quite a while.

Smith came around and opened his door, and he climbed reluctantly out. He shrank from the footbridge, which swayed slightly in the wind. The ravine it crossed plunged thirty feet.

He announced, “I'm not putting a toe on that flimsy contraption.”

“Don't look down. Come on, over you go.” Smith pushed.

Marty clutched the handrails all the way. “What are we doing in this wasteland anyway? There's only that old shack over there.”

As they started up the dirt trail toward it, Jon said, “Our man lives there.”

Marty stopped. “That's our destination? I will not stay five seconds in anything so primitive. I doubt it has indoor plumbing. It certainly has no electricity, which means no computer. I must have a computer!”

“It also has no killers,” Smith pointed out, “and don't judge a book by its cover.”

Marty snorted. “That's a cliché.”

“On with you.”

When they reached the ponderosas, they plunged into the gloom under the thick branches that towered high above. The aroma of pine filled the air. Ahead through the tall trees the shack stood silent. Every time Marty looked at it, he shook his head in dismay.

Suddenly a high-pitched snarl froze them in their tracks.

A full-grown mountain lion sprang from a tree ahead and crouched ten feet away. Its long tail whipped, and its yellow eyes glared.

“Jon!” Marty cried and turned to run.

Smith grabbed his arm. “Wait.”

A voice with an English accent spoke from somewhere ahead. “Stand quite still, gentlemen. Don't raise a weapon, and he won't hurt you. And perhaps neither will I”

___________________

CHAPTER

Covert One 1 - The Hades Factor

TWENTY TWO

___________________

1:47 P.M.

Near Lee Vining,

High Sierras, California

From the low-roofed porch of the cabin, a lean man of medium build stepped out of the shadows holding a British Enfield bullpup automatic rifle. His words were addressed to Smith, but his gaze was fixed on Marty Zellerbach. “You said nothing about bringing anyone with you, Jon. I don't like surprises.”

Marty whispered, “I'd be happy to leave, Jon.”

Smith ignored him. Peter Howell was not Marty Zellerbach. His defenses were lethal, and you took them seriously. Smith spoke quietly to the man with the gun. “Whistle up the cat, Peter, and put down the armament. I've known Marty a lot longer than I've known you, and right now I need you both.”

“But I don't know him,” the wiry man said just as quietly. “There's the rub, eh? Are you saying you know all there is to know about him and that he's clean?”

“Nobody cleaner, Peter.”

Howell studied Marty for a long minute, his pale blue eyes cool, clear, and as penetrating as an X-ray machine. Finally he gave a harsh sound somewhere between blowing air and clearing his throat. “Ouish, Stanley,” he said softly. “Good cat. Go on with you.”

The mountain lion turned and padded away behind the cabin, glancing back occasionally over his shoulder as if he hoped he would be called upon to pounce.

The lean man lowered the assault rifle.

Marty's eyes were bright as he watched the big cat move off. “I've never heard of a trained mountain lion. How did you do it? He even has a name. How deliciously wonderful! Did you know African kings used to train leopards to hunt? And in India, they trained cheetahs---”

Howell stopped him. “We should have our talk inside, you see. Never know whose ears are listening.” He motioned with the Enfield and stood aside to let them precede him into the cabin. As Smith passed, the Englishman raised an eyebrow and nodded to Marty's back. Smith nodded affirmatively in return.

Inside, the cabin was larger than it appeared from the front and belied its rustic appearance. They stood in a well-appointed living room with nothing of the Western lodge about it except the enormous fieldstone fireplace. The furniture was comfortable English country-house antiques mixed with men's-club leather chairs and military mementoes from most wars of the twentieth century. The wall space not taken up by guns, regimental flags, and framed photos of soldiers displayed several giant abstract expressionist paintings--- de Kooning, Newman, and Rothko. Originals worth a fortune.

The room occupied the entire width of the cabin, but a wing, hidden from the front, extended at the left rear deep into the tall pines. The cabin was actually built in an L-shape, with most of it in the stem of the L. The first door off the hallway behind the living room proved to be a study with an up-to-date PC computer.

Marty let out a cry of joy. Peter Howell watched him dash for the computer, oblivious to anyone.

Howell quietly asked, “What is it?”

“Asperger's syndrome,” Smith told him. “He's a genius, especially with electronics, but being around people is hell for him.”

“He's off his medicines now?”

Smith nodded. “We had to leave Washington in a hurry. Give me a minute, then we'll talk.”

Without a word, Howell returned to the living room. Smith Joined Marty at the computer.

Marty looked up at him reproachfully. “Why didn't you tell me he had a generator?”

“The lion sort of took it out of my mind.”

Marty nodded, understanding. “Stan-the-cat is a mountain lion. Did you know that in China they trained Siberian tigers to---”

“Let's talk about it later.” Smith was not as confident of their safety as he had told Marty. “Can you try again to find out whether Sophia made or received special phone calls? And also locate Bill Griffin?”

“Precisely what I intended. All I need do is tie into my own mainframe and software. If your friend's equipment isn't as primitive as his choice of location, I'll be up and running in minutes.”

“No one can do it better.” Smith patted his shoulder and backed away, watching him hunch farther and farther over the keyboard as he entered the computer world that was all his own.

Marty muttered to himself, “How could this pipsqueak machine have so much power? Well, no matter. Things are surely looking up.”

Smith found Peter Howell sitting before a fireplace, cleaning a black metal submachine gun. Beside him, a roaring fire licked and spat orange flames. It was a homey picture, except for the military weapon in the Englishman's hands.

Howell spoke without looking up. “Take a chair. That old leather one is comfortable. Bought it from my club when I saw I'd become something of a liability at home and that it might be wise to do a bunk to where I was less known and could watch my back better.”

A shade under six feet, Howell was almost too lean under the dark blue-green plaid flannel shirt and heavy khaki British army trousers he wore stuffed into black combat boots. His narrow face had the color and texture of leather dried out by years of wind and sun. It was so deeply lined his eyes seemed sunk in ravines. The eyes were sharp but guarded. His thick black hair was nearly all gray, and his hands were curved brown claws.

“Tell me about this friend of yours--- Marty.”

Jon Smith sank into the chair and touched the high points of his and Marty's growing up together, the difficulties of Marty's young life, and the discovery that he had Asperger's syndrome. “It changed everything for him. The drugs gave him independence. With them, he could make himself sit through classes and then do the spade-and-shovel work necessary to get two Ph.D.s. When he's medicated, he can do the boring, nitty-gritty things that are necessary to survive. He changes lightbulbs, does his laundry, and cooks. Of course, he has plenty of money to hire people to do those things, but strangers make him nervous. He has to take the medicine anyway, so why not take care of himself?”

“Can't say I blame him. You said his medication was wearing off?”

“Yes. One way to tell is he talks in exclamation points, just as you heard. He lectures and enthuses and seldom sleeps and drives everyone nuts. If he stays off too long, he can zoom into never-never land and be so out of control he's dangerous to himself and maybe to others.”'

Howell shook his head. "I feel sorry for the young fellow, don't get me wrong.

Smith chuckled. “You've got it reversed. Marty feels sorry for you. And for me. Actually, he pities us, because we can never know what he knows. We can't conceptualize what he understands. It's everyone's loss that he's isolated himself to concentrate strictly on his computer interests, although from what I understand of what he's doing, other computer experts consult him from around the world. But never in person. Always by E-mail.”

Howell continued to clean his weapon--- a Heckler & Koch MP5, as lethal as it looked. He said, “But if he's mechanical and slow when he's on the drugs, and gaga when he's off, how does he manage to get anything accomplished?”

“That's the trick. He's learned to let himself go beyond the stage where the meds are working but not quite into the state where he's flying high and wild. He'll have a few hours a day in that in-between condition, and that's heaven for him. New ideas seize him with lightning speed. He's sharp, incisive, quick, and half out-of-control every minute. He's unbeatable.”

Howell's creviced face looked up from the weapon. His pale eyes flickered. “Unbeatable at computers, is he? Well, now. That's something else again.” He returned to the H&K submachine gun. It had been the weapon of choice of the British Special Air Service some years ago and probably was still.

“You always clean a gun when you have visitors?” Smith closed his eyes, resting after the long drive from San Francisco.

Howell snorted. “You ever read Doyle's The White Company? Quite good, actually. Much more interesting to me as a boy than Sherlock Holmes. Odd about that. The boy's the father of the man and all that.” He appeared to think about boys and men for a moment before continuing. “Anyway, there's an old bowman in the book--- Black Simon. One morning the hero asks him why he's sharpening his sword to a razor's edge, since the company doesn't expect any action. Black Simon tells him he dreamed of a red cow the nights before the major battles of Crecy and Poitiers, and last night he again dreamed of a red cow. So he was getting prepared. Of course, later that day, just as Simon expected, the Spanish attacked.”

Smith chuckled and opened his eyes. “Meaning, when I appear, you'd better prepare for trouble.”

Howell's weathered face smiled. “That's about it.”

“Right as usual. I need help, and it's probably dangerous.”

“What else is an old spook and desert rat good for?”

Smith had first met him during the boredom of Desert Shield when the hospital spent every day preparing and waiting for action that never came. But it came to Peter Howell. Or, to be exact, Peter and the SAS went to it. Peter had never said exactly where “it” had been, but one night he appeared at the hospital like a ghost who had arisen out of the sand itself. He had a high fever and was kitten-weak. Some doctors swore they had a heard a helicopter or a small land vehicle close by in the desert that night, but no one was sure. How he had arrived or who had brought him remained a mystery.

Smith realized instantly the unknown patient wearing British desert camos without rank or unit markings had been bitten by a venomous reptile. He had saved Peter's life with immediate treatment. In the following days, as Peter recovered, they came to know and respect each other. That was when Smith learned his name was Mal. Peter Howell, Special Air Service, and that he had been deep inside Iraq on some unnamed mission. That was all Peter would ever say. Since he was obviously far too old to be a normal SAS trooper, there had to be more to the story, but it was years before Smith gleaned the rest, and even then it remained hazy.

Simply put, Peter was one of those restless and reckless Brits who seemed to pop up in every conflict of the last two centuries, small or large, on one side or the other. Educated at both Cambridge and Sandhurst, a linguist and adventurer, he had joined the SAS in Vietnam days. When the action faded, he volunteered for MI6 and foreign intelligence. He had worked for one or the other ever since, depending on whether the wars were hot or cold, and sometimes for both at once. Until he grew too old for one, and outlived his usefulness to the other.

Now he had found a well-deserved retirement on the remote and sparsely populated eastern side of the Sierras. Or so it appeared. Smith had a suspicion his “retirement” was as murky as the rest of his life.

Now that Smith was AWOL, he needed the kind of help the SAS and MI6 could give. “I have to get into Iraq, Peter. Secretly, but with contacts.”

Howell began to reassemble the H&K. “That's not dangerous, my boy. That's suicide. No way. Not for a Yank or a Brit. Not the way things are over there these days. Can't be done.”

“They murdered Sophia. It has to be done.”

Howell made a sound much like his recall of Stan the mountain lion. “Like that, eh? Care to explain this AWOL nonsense?”

“You know I'm AWOL?”

“Try to keep in touch, you see. Been AWOL a few times myself. Usually a good story behind it.”

Smith filled him in on everything that had happened since the death of Major Anderson at Fort Irwin. “They're powerful, Peter, whoever they are. They can manipulate the army, the FBI, the police, perhaps even the whole government. Whatever they're planning, it's worth killing people for. I've got to know what that is and why they killed Sophia.”

His submachine gun cleaned, oiled, and back together, Howell reached out a brown claw for a humidor. He filled his pipe. Deeper in the house they could hear Marty raving at his computer, shouting excitedly to himself.

His pipe lit, puffing slowly, Howell muttered, “With that virus, and no known cure or vaccine, they can hold the planet hostage. It has to be someone like Saddam or Khadafy. Or China.”

“Pakistan, India, any country weaker than the West.” Smith paused. “Or no country. Perhaps it's all about money, Peter.”

As the aromatic pipe tobacco scented the room, Peter thought about it. “Getting you into Iraq could cost more than my life, Jon. The price could be an entire underground. The opposition against Saddam Hussein is weak in Iraq, but it does exist. While it bides its time, my people and your people are there to help build it up. They'll get you in if I ask, but they won't compromise the entire network. If you stumble into serious trouble, you'll be on your own. The U.S. embargo is ruining the lives of everyone except Saddam and his gang. It's killing children. You can expect little from the underground and nothing from the Iraqi people.”

Smith's chest tightened. Still he shrugged. “It's a risk I have to take.”

Howell smoked. “Then I better get cracking. I'll arrange all the protection I can. I wish I could go, too, but I'd be a liability. They know me too well in Iraq, you see.”