by John Altman
When she uncovered the first block, the motor-oil smell summoned the old flashback: the boy wearing the checkered kaffiyeh, the earthy-oily whiff of RDX … She forced the memory away. Uncovered the Saran-wrapped chunk. Then another, and another.
She paused again, calculating. She would need only a fraction of this amount—no more than could fit inside the black valise. The vacuum-sealed prosthesis contained its own customized fuses and detonators. That left her some extra explosive, some unnecessary blasting caps …
They would realize soon enough that she had been here. Why not leave them a little surprise—send a message and perhaps, in the process, buy herself some more time to maneuver?
She set aside a block of explosive: enough to serve her purposes with Michael Fletcher, with some extra left over for safety. The remaining blocks she prepared with Nonel tubes and electric blasting caps. Checked connections, programmed the numbers. She reburied the bulk of the C-4, but poorly. Left the shovel sticking out from beneath cover, where they couldn’t miss it.
As she made her way back to the high ridge, a mountain intervened between her and the rising sun. And for a few moments there in the breaking dawn, she cast no shadow at all.
* * *
The operations room had become a cauldron of activity.
Horowitz had pulled out all the stops, and to good effect. Klein would lead them to the girl. Two tac teams, with a third on reserve, would pounce. All-seeing ARGUS could not be escaped—a sure thing if ever there was one.
But Dalia Artzi had devoted her professional life to the thesis that maneuverability trumped force. The illusion of overwhelming advantage was just that. Take things at face value, and you risked losing the forest for the trees, just as Napoleon had done at the Château d’Hougoument.
These trees. This forest right here, portrayed in scintillating digital bits on the monitor above the fireplace.
The woman’s voice had been unexpectedly young, girlish. “Lots of fog. Not safe to drive.”
How had she known that it was not safe? Because Yoni Yariv was at the bottom of a well. Because Yoni had missed some prearranged signal, some expected communiqué, and so Jana had realized that something was amiss.
And why should Dalia have been surprised by the youthfulness of the voice? The voice fit the face. Just a girl. But make no mistake: a killer. Savvy, cunning, and utterly ruthless.
Jana knew they were onto her, which meant she knew, or at least suspected, that her contact had been compromised. Yet she was still delivering herself to them?
No. Jana was using Klein as a diversion.
On the monitor, ARGUS depicted thirty-six square miles of terrain via 1.8 billion glorious pixels, with Klein’s house increasingly off center—the bullseye following the Chevy. “The house,” Dalia said aloud.
Horowitz turned. “What about it?”
“She’s drawing us away. We’ve got to watch the house.”
Horowitz frowned, gestured to a tech. Seconds later, another window opened on-screen, close on the house. Dalia regarded the roof in need of new shingles, silvered in the dawn light. The snow shovel standing ready. Garbage cans, the lids propped on loosely again.
Her gaze moved. To the girdled tree near the driveway. That same intuition vibrating. Jana had been here.
She found a glint.
Suddenly, Horowitz was beside her. Gesturing again. The camera zoomed closer. They were looking at several centimeters of metal: a pipe, a handle, barely exposed beneath an overhang of branches. “What is it?” he murmured.
Dalia shook her head. The resolution sharpened. Not metal, she thought. Some kind of metallic-sheened polypropylene. A black plastic link handle … “A shovel.”
Horowitz turned to the tech. “Was that there before?”
A moment of fumbling; then an earlier image of the same patch of forest appeared. 05:44:30. The glint was there.
“Earlier.”
05:22. The glint was gone.
But in its place was a flesh-colored smudge.
“Enlarge,” Horowitz commanded.
The image enlarged, resolved. A sliver of cheek, smudged with dirt, barely visible through the branches, peeking out from beneath a brown covering, perhaps a blanket.
Dalia closed her eyes. The world seemed to be falling away behind her.
Less than an hour before. Less than five miles away.
A final, frozen instant. Then Horowitz went back to the radio. “Charlie. Checking Charlie. Charlie, rally point one ASAP.”
“I’m going,” Dalia announced, already turning for the door.
* * *
The sun climbed higher.
Birds twittered. An early rising woodpecker hammered. Jana could have been using these minutes to make her escape. But she equivocated, lying prone on the ridge beneath the three layers of blankets, phone in hand.
Just when she was about to give up and not throw more good minutes after bad, she felt a change in the forest. Birds quieted. Her ears twitched. A distant, muffled engine approached.
And another. They stopped far away. Jana held still, blisters stinging, back aching, finger hovering.
She heard the dogs. They kept quiet, as they had been trained to do; but they were eager, snuffling and nosing excitedly through the forest undergrowth. Then she saw them: pulling against a tangle of leashes. Something inside her went slack. Fear of dogs was primal. But her rational mind elbowed past it. The wind blew into her face, so they would not scent her, and in a moment they would no longer exist and she would be on her way.
Patience.
The forward member of the team appeared, working to handle the leashes. Another man came up alongside him, signaling. The point man stopped. The second man moved ahead and found cover behind a tree, checked the mirror on the grip of his pistol, and signaled again. In this method, spilling forward and then drawing up tight behind, reorienting, moving again, the tac team advanced. Toward the bait, the gleaming shovel handle.
She had killed before. A man with whom she’d just been intimate. Up close, with her hands. Now she would kill from a distance. Men she had never even met. The push of a button. Nothing at all.
She licked her lips.
One dog gave an eager little yip; scenting the explosives, launching toward the mound from which the shovel protruded. Jana started to push the button.
Then she registered another approach—a civilian, blundering noisily through trees. With a fraction of an ounce still left to exert on the key, she paused.
The newcomer was a woman. Flat-footed carriage, broad, heavy shoulders. As old as Jana’s mother, maybe even older. Wearing a cheap, tacky coat. And—really?—a powder-blue nightgown. Drawing up close behind the tac team. A few more steps, and she, too, would be within the blast radius.
But the woman had stopped. She was talking with the team leader. The wind carried the words to Jana. Phlegmy fricatives, rhonchial consonants. An Israeli. Urging the team, it seemed, not to get too close. The woman had sensed a trap. Who was this bitch in her tacky nightgown?
Then they were starting to withdraw—yanking leashes, doubtless planning to regroup at a safer distance.
Jana pressed the button.
Next thing she knew, she was on her back. The echo of the explosion rolling away, bouncing off mountains, coming back mockingly. Ears ringing. Déjà vu. Heat on the air, daggers of fire.
The bitch with the big shoulders was also on the ground, surrounded by tongues of flame. But moving. Most of the men moving, too. Crawling. Except one. Blackened, lifeless. Dogs yowling, others inert.
Shaking beneath the burden of the blankets, Jana found her feet again. The detonation had been much more powerful than expected. She had dropped the phone. She hunted for it, but her eyes wouldn’t focus. The forest floor swam and heaved crazily. Her entire body was trembling.
Fuck the pho
ne.
But the valise …
There.
She snatched it up, then turned, legs quivering, ears singing, and began working her way back toward the Mazda on the fire road.
Chapter Nine
North of Andover, VT
She drove twenty miles before the car suddenly felt unsafe.
The nearest mass transit was another thirty miles. But if she stayed in the Mazda, she would never make it.
Just a feeling, but Jana trusted her feelings.
Half a mile later, in the brightening dawn, she reached a frozen mud track rolling away from the main road. Broad tractor treads herringboned into petrified mud. During December, the farm track would see minimal use. Turning onto it, she bumped past a silo, a cowshed, a fenced-in pasture where bovine heads turned to follow her progress. She drove another hundred yards. Reaching an orchard, she pulled behind a stand of bare fruit trees, locked the car, and hiked back to the road.
She continued on foot in the direction she had been driving. A ceaseless high tone, thin and sharp as a blade, still buzzed between her ears.
The first car she heard sounded wrong. A big, powerful engine grinding along in a low gear: a military vehicle, maybe a half-track. She hid behind a stand of pines and watched it pass. Not military after all. A civilian three-quarter-ton pickup, driven by a girl who looked too young. If Jana’s hearing had been right, she would not have made the mistake.
She walked again. A quarter-hour passed before she heard another a car. This time, with the buzz receding at last, she parsed the sound carefully. Four-cylinder engine, traveling at a good clip. Time to take a chance. She thrust out her thumb.
The lime-green Toyota Camry had Vermont plates. The driver was in her midfifties, with tangled gray hair falling around a blue windbreaker. She pulled over and leaned across to open the door. The well beneath the glove box was filled with coffee cups, empty cigarette packs, coleslaw containers.
“Going my way?” the woman asked.
“Going any way,” Jana said as she slipped in, “long as it’s going. Thanks for stopping.”
“My neighborly duty. Car trouble?”
“No, ma’am.”
They pulled back onto the road. “Hitching?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You travel light.” She nodded at the black case.
“Try to,” said Jana easily.
“I’m Steph.” The woman shook hands, not paying much attention to the road.
“Skye.”
Steph pulled a joint from behind one ear, fished a plastic lighter from the ashtray, and, though it was not yet 8:00 a.m., offered both. Jana accepted politely and lit the joint, puffed twice, and handed it back.
“Thumbed cross-country myself.” Steph held in the smoke, exhaled, and cracked open her window. She took another hit and passed the joint. “’Course—phhhaugh—that was a long time ago. Different world. Everybody …” She covered a racking series of coughs. “Did it then. These days, you never know.” She spat out the window. “Had much trouble?”
“I can take care of myself.”
“Where you coming from?”
“Originally, Scranton. But I headed west first.”
“You got it backwards. Ought to head west for winter.”
“It was winter. Last year.”
“You a Libra?”
“Taurus.”
“Could have sworn you were a Libra.”
They drove without speaking for a few moments. Jana watched the side mirror. No sign of pursuit. She could feel the marijuana fuzzing her edges.
“I can take you as far as Coolidge,” Steph announced. “My ex-husband lives there. Technically, I guess, still my husband. We never signed the papers. But it’s been, oh, God, fifteen years. He’s sick now.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Part of life.” Steph tried to smoke, found the joint had gone out, and put it in the ashtray. “Part of life,” she said again, and lit a Merit without offering the pack.
“Mind if I close my eyes? It’s been a weird couple of days.”
“Sweet dreams, angel.”
Jana closed her eyes, then surreptitiously cracked one lid, checking the side mirror again. Nothing except receding landscape. Her fatigue was immense. The digging, the sleepless night, the stress, the weed. Maybe a concussion. She closed the lid again, felt her head roll loosely on her neck. Surely she would not actually fall asleep in these circumstances.
She woke to a hand on her shoulder and only just caught herself before twisting it back reflexively into a submission hold.
“Wake up, angel. We’re here.”
One- and two-story red-brick buildings, a single stoplight, old-fashioned clock tower—quarter past eight. Like a Hollywood movie set from the 1950s, Jana thought. A bakery proclaimed, We Deliver Fresh Daily. Beside it, a barbershop’s red-white-and-blue helix was the only thing moving on this side of the street. Signs pointed to nearby interstates 89 and 91. She could picture the Beav trotting down this sidewalk.
Steph smiled. “Good luck, traveler.”
Jana considered killing her and taking the car. But satellites might have seen them; the Camry might be compromised. And there was a witness, a man soaping windows across from the bakery. So she returned the smile. “Thanks for the ride.”
Standing on the sidewalk with her small case in hand, she watched the Camry drone away, then looked up into the cloudless blue sky. Say cheese.
She turned a tight circle, contemplating her next move.
Beyond the brief main street, a residential neighborhood unfolded: square Georgian architecture, sun-kissed cupolas and gables and steeples, cars parked in driveways. But even if she could steal one without the satellite noticing, the theft would quickly be reported.
She found a train station. Park and Ride. A shining dome topped with a rusted weather vane. Just opening, shutters swinging back. Beyond the station, railroad tracks with the occasional missing tie, weeds and brambles, weathered utility poles, all receding toward a distant vanishing point.
Safest way to travel. But again, there were satellites to consider. At the first stop, she might find a small army waiting to take her off.
She looked the other way. Far down the street, a discolored Greyhound logo.
Her stomach growled at the smell of fresh bread.
A quiet bell announced her entrance into the bakery. Vivaldi’s lilting strains mingled with the scent of baking bread. Loaves and muffins and rolls and croissants on display, soft in the morning sunshine. A kind-faced man in a dough-stained apron stood behind the register. He smiled, tipping an imaginary hat. She smiled back. A small town, but also a transit hub in an area populated by aging hippies. An unknown young woman was nothing out of the ordinary.
After buying a roll and a cup of coffee, she left the bakery. She paused briefly, then continued down the street toward the bus station, staying in plain sight. Giving any satellite plenty of opportunity to find and photograph her. Giving them plenty of rope.
Chewing hot buttered bread, she passed American Legion Post 26 … a cigar store … a stationery store. Upper Valley Food Co-op, Everyone Welcome. The coffee was strong and good.
A dog barked; her heart tripped. A long, rangy poodle on the far side of the street pulled at the end of a leash, straining after a fluttering pigeon. As the owner heeled it, Jana’s heart found its regular rhythm.
She reached the bus station. Except for a blue-capped woman behind a ticket window, the place was empty. It smelled of Lysol and clay mud. A security camera goggled beneath a large IBM wall clock. In plain view of the camera, Jana walked to the counter and waited where the gray Formica had been worn almost white by decades of elbows. On being told the next bus to Portland, Maine, left in two hours, she bought a ticket for forty-two dollars plus tax. When asked for ID, she produced a driver�
��s license she had made with a color printer and thermal laminator. Lacking a biometric chip and magnetic bar code, it would not get her across any international borders, but it should get her across a couple of state lines.
In the women’s room, she set the coffee and black valise on the enamel edge of a sink, shucked off her pea coat, and turned it inside out, changing the color from navy blue to pale yellow. The fraying liner would pass superficial inspection. Examining her reflection in the mirror, she saw an unappealing young woman: underfed, underrested, with a bad dye job. The scars seemed to stand out, making her face look vaguely asymmetrical. Cheap jeans and a peasant blouse and a threadbare, inside-out jacket. She touched the hair, then took off the coat again. Tearing a strip from the back of her blouse, she fashioned a ragged kerchief that, seen from above, would cover most of the blond. She tied it under her chin. It was the best she could do for now.
She put the coat on again, slipped the case beneath it, and left the restroom and the bus depot without looking back. Retracing her route back up the street, she kept beneath the shop awnings as much as possible. At the stoplight, she waited for a small knot of pedestrians to collect and crossed with them.
Before entering the train station, she scanned from the doorway. No obvious cameras—in this day and age, hard to believe. Maybe a better class of passengers rode the train than the bus.
There, an opaque black dome half-hidden by a sprinkler head. Probably with a 360-degree field of view. She made her eyes keep moving, as if looking for a friend. After quickly scanning the departure board, she turned casually away and walked a few yards down the block. She found a bench beneath a sidewalk awning and sat, tucking the case beneath her legs, and enjoyed her coffee.
Ten minutes passed. Laughing children bought doughnuts at the bakery. Two dog walkers gossiped about a yoga class. Thud, thud, went her head. She wondered again about a concussion. No. Just the exertion of digging, and the stress, fear, and fatigue. She was okay.
