Koontz, Dean R. - Strangers

by Strangers(Lit)

  activities of such a dubious nature.

  One of them said, "And who the fuck are you?"

  Parker did not attempt to jive them, did not foolishly claim his rights

  as a U S. citizen, did not bother to say anything at all. He just took

  three running steps toward the drawn drapes, praying that a big window

  or sliding-glass balcony door lay beyond them, that it would shatter on

  impact, that the drapes would protect him from serious cuts, and that he

  would be outside and gone before they knew what happened. If the drapes

  were a lot wider than the window, covering more blank wall than glass,

  he was in big trouble. Behind him, the men shouted in surprise ' just

  as he hit the drapes, for they'd obviously believed they'd trapped him.

  He went through the material with the unstoppable power of a locomotive.

  The impact was tremendous, sending a devastating shock across his

  shoulder and through his chest, but something gave way with a crack and

  a screech and a crash of glass, and he was through into daylight,

  vaguely aware that the doors had been French rather than sliding panels

  and that he had been lucky the lock was flimsy.

  He found himself on a second-floor balcony with a pair of redwood lounge

  chairs and a glass-topped table, over which he fell. Even as he was

  going down on top of chairs, banging knees and barking shins, he was

  already coming up again, up and over the balcony rail, leaping out into

  space, praying he would not land in a particularly woody shrub and be

  castrated by a sharp, sturdy branch. He fell only twelve feet onto bare

  lawn, jarring his other shoulder and his back but breaking no bones. He

  rolled, scrambled to his feet, and ran.

  Suddenly, in front of his eyes, foliage snapped-flutteredshredded, and

  he didn't know what was happening, and then as he continued to run,

  pieces of bark exploded off a tree, and he realized they were shooting

  at him. He heard no gunfire. Silencer-equipped weapons. He zigzagged

  toward the perimeter of the property, fell in an azalea bed, scrambled

  up, ran on, reached a hedge, threw himself over it, and kept on running.

  They had been ready to kill him to stop him from spreading the news of

  what he had seen in the Salcoe house. Right now, they were probably

  hastily moving-or killing-the Salcoes. If he found a phone and called

  the police, and if the killers were agents of the U S. government,

  whose side would the police be on? And who would they believe? One

  eccentric and rather curiously dressed artist with a woolly beard and

  flyaway hair? Or three neatly attired FBI men claiming they were in the

  Salcoe house on a legitimate stakeout of some kind, and that Parker

  Faine was, in fact, the felon they had attempted to arrest. If they

  demanded custody of him, would the police cooperate?

  Jesus.

  He ran. Abandoning the Tempo, he sprinted down the sloped wall of a

  shallow glen, along the rocky course of a narrow brook, between trees,

  through underbrush, up another wall of the same glen, into someone's

  back yard, across that lawn and into another yard, alongside a house,

  out into a street, from that street to another. He slowed to a fast

  walk to avoid drawing attention to himself, but he continued to follow a

  twisty route away from the Salcoe house.

  He knew what he had to do. The horror he had just seen had made the

  extremity of Dom's plight clearer than ever. Parker had known his friend

  was in danger, deep in a conspiracy of monumental proportions, but

  knowing it in his mind was not the same as knowing it in his guts. There

  was nothing for him to do but go to Elko County. Dom Corvaisis was his

  friend, perhaps his best friend, and this was what friends did for each

  other: shared their trouble, fought back the darkness together. He

  could walk away, go back to Laguna Beach to continue work on the

  painting that he had begun yesterday. But if he chose that course, he

  would never like himself very much again-which would be an intolerable

  circumstance, for he had always liked himself immensely!

  He had to find a ride back to the Monterey Airport, catch a flight to

  San Francisco International, and head east from there toward Nevada. He

  was not concerned that the men in the Salcoes' house would be looking

  for him at the airport. The only words any of them had spoken in his

  presence were: "And who the fuck are you?" If they did not know who he

  was, they would most likely figure he was a local. The keys to the

  Tempo had a rental-company tag on them, but they were in his pocket. In

  an hour or two, of course, the bad guys would trace the car to the

  airport, but by then he should have taken off for San Francisco.

  He kept walking. On a quiet residential street he saw a young man,

  about nineteen or twenty, in the driveway of a more modest house than

  the Salcoes', carefully scrubbing the whitewalls on the tires of a

  meticulously restored, banana yellow, 1958 Plymouth Fury, one of those

  long jobs with a plenitude of grille and big sharity fins. The kid had

  a slickedback ducktail haircut to match the era of his vehicle. Parker

  went up to him and said, "Listen, my car broke down, and I've got to get

  to the airport. I'm in a big hurry, so would you drive me out there for

  fifty bucks?"

  The kid knew how to hurry. If he had not been a superb driver, he would

  have fishtailed out of control and spun them off the road into trees or

  ditches on a half-dozen tight turns, for he got all possible speed out

  of the big Fury. After they came through the third sharp turn alive,

  Parker knew he was in good hands, and he finally relaxed a bit.

  At the airport, he bought a ticket for one of two remaining seats on a

  West Air flight leaving for San Francisco in ten minutes. He boarded

  the plane, half-expecting it to be halted by federal agents before it

  could take off. But soon they were airborne, and he could worry about

  something else: getting another flight from San Francisco to Reno before

  they tracked him that far.

  Jack Twist went through the Blocks' apartment from northto west- to

  south- to east-facing windows, surveying the vast landscape for signs of

  the enemy's observation post or posts. At least one surveillance team

  would be watching the motel and diner, and no matter how well concealed

  they were, he had a device that would pinpoint their location.

  He'd brought it from New York with the other gear-an instrument the

  armed forces called the HS101 Heat Analyzer. It was shaped like a sleek

  futuristic raygun from the movies, with a single two-inch-diameter lens

  instead of a barrel. You held it by the butt and looked through the

  eyepiece as if peering into a telescope. Moving the viewfinder across

  the landscape, you saw two things: an ordinary magnified image of the

  terrain, and an overlaid representation of heat sources within that

  terrain. Plants, animals, and sun-baked rocks radiated heat, but thanks

  to microchip technology, the HS's computer could differentiate among

  types of thermal radiation and screen out most natural background

  sources. The device would show only heat from living sourc
es larger

  than fifty pounds: animals bigger than house-dogs and human beings. Even

  if they were out there in insulated ski suits that trapped a lot of body

  heat, enough would escape their garments to give him a fix on them.

  Jack spent a considerable length of time studying the land north of the

  motel, through which he had approached the place last night, but finally

  he decided no one was watching from that direction, and he moved to the

  west-facing windows in other rooms. The west also looked clear, so he

  went next to the windows on the south side of the apartment.

  Marcie had colored the last moon in her album, and when Jack set out

  with the HS101 to look for surveillance teams, she came with him,

  staying close by his side. Maybe she had taken a liking to him because

  he'd spent hours talking to her in spite of her failure to respond. Or

  maybe she was scared of something and felt safer in his presence. Or

  another reason too strange to imagine. He could do nothing for her

  except keep talking softly to her as she accompanied him.

  Jorja followed along as well, and though she did not interrupt with

  questions, she was considerably more distracting than her daughter. She

  was a strikingly beautiful woman, but more importantly he liked her a

  lot. He thought she liked him, too, although he didn't suppose she was

  attracted to him, not in the man-woman sense. After all, what would a

  woman like her see in a guy like him? He was an admitted criminal, and

  he had a face like an old battered shoe, not to mention one cast eye.

  But they could be friends, at least, and that was nice.

  At the living room windows, he finally spotted what he was seeking:

  points of body heat out there in the cold barrens. Across the top of the

  image that filled the lens-Nevada plains and overlaid heat patterns-came

  a digital readout of data that told him there were two sources of heat,

  that they were due south of his position, and that they were

  approximately four-tenths of a mile away. That information was followed

  by numerals that represented an estimation of the size of each source's

  radiant surface, which told him he had found two men. He switched off

  the HS's heat-analysis function and turned up the magnification, using

  the device as a simple telescope, zeroing in on the area in which the

  heat had been detected. He had to search for a couple of minutes, for

  they were wearing camouflage suits.

  "Bingo," he said at last.

  Jorja did not ask what he saw, for she had learned well the lesson he

  had taught them last night: Everything spoken in the apartment was

  sucked directly into the enemy's electronic ears.

  Out there on the barrens, the two observers were prone on the cold

  ground. Jack saw that one man had a pair of binoculars. But the guy

  was not using the glasses at the moment, so he was not aware of Jack

  watching him from the window.

  He moved to the east windows and surveyed that landscape, as well, but

  it was uninhabited. They were being watched only from the south, which

  the enemy figured was sufficient because the front of the motel and the

  only road leading to it could be seen from that single post.

  They were underestimating Jack. They knew his background, knew that he

  was good, but they didn't realize how good.

  At one-forty, the first snowflakes fell. For a while they came down

  only as scattered flurries, with no particular force.

  At two o'clock, when Dom and Ernie returned from their scouting trip

  around the perimeter of the Thunder Hill Depository, Jack said, "You

  know, Ernie, when the storm really hits later, there might be some

  people on the interstate who'll see our wheels out front and pull in

  here, looking for shelter, even if we leave the sign and other lights

  off. Better move my Cherokee, the Servers' truck, and the cars around

  back. We don't want a lot of people rapping at your door wanting to know

  why you're giving rooms to some people and not to them."

  Actually, certain that the enemy was even now listening to them, Jack

  was using the specter of weary snow-bound motorists as a plausible

  excuse to move the pickup truck and the Cherokee, the two

  four-wheel-drive vehicles, out of sight of the observers south of I-80.

  Later, when heavier snow and the early darkness of the storm settled in,

  the entire Tranquility family would surreptitiously leave the motel from

  the rear, heading overland in the truck and the Cherokee.

  Ernie sensed Jack's real purpose; equally aware of eavesdroppers, he

  played along. He and Dom went outside again to move all the vehicles

  around back.

  In the kitchen, Ned and Sandy had nearly finished preparing and

  packaging the sandwiches that everyone would be issued for dinner.

  Now they had only to wait for Faye and Ginger.

  The snow flurries intermittently surrendered to furious but short-lived

  squalls. The day dimmed. By two-forty, the squalls turned to steady

  snow that, in spite of a complete cessation of wind, reduced visibility

  to a few hundred feet. Out on the barrens, the camouflaged observers

  were probably picking up their gear and moving closer to the motel.

  Jack checked his watch more frequently. He knew time was running out.

  But he had no way of knowing how fast it might be running out.

  While Lieutenant Horner repaired the sabotaged polygraph in the security

  office, Falkirk lectured the Depository's chief of security and his

  assistant-Major Fugata and Lieutenant Helms-letting them know they were

  on his list of possible traitors. He made two enemies, but that didn't

  matter. He did not want them to like him-only to respect and fear him.

  He had not yet finished chewing out Fugata and Helms when General

  Alvarado arrived. The general was a lardass with a pot gut, fingers

  like sausages, and jowls. He stormed into the security office in a

  red-faced outrage, having just heard the bad news from Dr. Miles

  Bennell: "Is it true, Colonel Falkirk? By God, is it true? Have you

  actually taken control Of VIGILANT and made prisoners of us all?"

  Sternly but in a tone that could not be construed as disrespectful,

  Leland informed Alvarado that he had the authority to include the secret

  program in the security computer and to activate it at his discretion.

  Alvarado demanded to know whose authority, and Leland said, "General

  Maxwell D. Riddenhour, Chief of Staff of the Army and Chairman of the

  Joint Chiefs." Alvarado said he knew perfectly well who Riddenhour was,

  but he did not believe that the colonel's mentor in this matter was the

  Chief of Staff himself. "Sir, why don't you call him and ask?" Leland

  suggested. He took a card out of his wallet and gave it to Alvarado.

  "That's General Riddenhour's number."

  "I have the Staff HQ number," Alvarado said scornfully.

  "Sir, that's not Staff HQ. That's General Riddenhour's unlisted home

  line. If he's not in his office, he'd want you to contact him on the

  unlisted phone. After all, this is a deadly serious matter, sir."

  Burning a brighter red, Alvarado stalked out, the card pinched between

  thumb and forefinger and held away from his
side as if it were an

  offensive object. He was back in fifteen minutes, no longer flushed but

  pale. "All right, Colonel, you have the authority you claim. So . . .

  I guess you're in command of Thunder Hill for the time being."

  "Not at all, sir," Leland said. "You're still the CO."

  "But if I'm a prisoner-"

  Leland interrupted. "Sir, your orders take precedence as long as they

  don't directly conflict with my authority to guarantee that no dangerous

  persons-no dangerous creaturesescape from Thunder Hill."

  Alvarado shook his head in amazement. "According to Miles Bennell, you

  have this crazy idea that we're all ... some kind of monsters." The

  general had used the most melodramatic word he could think of, with the

  intent of belittling Leland's position.

  "Sir, as you know, one or more people in this facility attempted, by

  indirection, to bring some of the witnesses back to the Tranquility,

  evidently with the hope that the witnesses will remember what they've

  been made to forget and will create a media circus that'll force us to

  reveal what we've hidden. Now, these traitors are probably just

  well-intentioned men, most likely members of Bennell's staff, who simply

  believe the public should be informed. But the possibility also exists

  that they've got other and darker motives."

  "Monsters," Alvarado repeated sourly.

  When the polygraph was repaired, Leland charged Major Fugata and

  Lieutenant Helms with interrogating everyone in Thunder Hill who had

  knowledge of the special secret harbored there for more than eighteen

  months. "If you screw up again," Leland warned them, "I'll have your

  heads." If they failed again to find the man who'd sent the Polaroids to

  the witnesses, he would view their failure as one more bit of evidence