The Echelon Vendetta

by David Stone

  Dalton blinked at the empty space for a while.

  The fire had burned down low and red sparks were snapping and hissing in the ruins. The ice in his glass popped and turned slowly over, like an iceberg rolling in the deep southern oceans. The long silence ran out, a hymn with neither words nor music nor rhyme nor melody, a symphony of nothingness, of the void, of serene emptiness.

  “I take it he’s gone,” said Fremont, after an indefinite period.

  “Yes,” said Dalton, with deep relief. “He’s gone.”

  “There you go,” said Fremont. “What’s for supper?”

  THE ALARM BEEPER on his bedside table woke Dalton up out of a deep dream of peace: Cora had been sitting at a table in that large light-filled room in the Dorsoduro, nude, writing in a book of gold.

  The remote, set on Vibrate, was buzzing around on the night table like a rattlesnake’s tail. By the clock on the dresser across the room it was a little past four in the morning. In one smooth motion he rolled out of the bed, plucking his big Colt off the table, and silencing the remote. He glanced at the bulletproof window.

  Total darkness beyond it. The night pressed up against the window like the hide of a black bear. In jeans, shirtless and shoeless, he

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  padded down the hall past the closed and locked door behind which Willard Fremont was having another one of the nightmares that had lately made his life a grinding misery that he heard nothing as Dalton passed swiftly down the hall and out into the living room.

  His laptop was still open, sitting on the pine cabinet. The room smelled of stale beer, cigarette smoke, and the steaks Fremont had grilled, expertly and efficiently, in spite of his advanced state of drunkenness, at the end of the long, long evening.

  The image in the laptop screen showed the house; there were two red man-shapes, one of them Fremont, moving restlessly in his bed, and the other of Dalton, here in the living room.

  But there was another large formless shape, crossing the river, approaching the house. Dalton switched the screen over to the night-shot lens.

  The image showed starlight flickering on the surface of the Clark, starlight shimmering on the leaves of the cottonwoods along the banks, a lightless void under them, and the same indistinct shape moving slowly up the nearer bank of the river, an oval shape, the surface of which seemed to shimmer with moving light, with a darker and much more solid shape contained inside it.

  Not obviously a man.

  But manlike enough to trigger the alarm. Dalton stared at the image, at the way it was moving, puzzled. The object was alive, that much was clear, and something in the way it covered the ground suggested stealth, deliberate predatory stealth, but it had no discernible details at all, as if it were a wisp of fog or a marsh light. Dalton dialed up the resolution to maximum.

  The stones of the riverbank leaped into vivid detail, each boulder sharp-cut, the surface of running river scintillating with pinpricks of starlight, the branches of the cottonwoods spidery and black under their moving cloak of silvery leaves.

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  While Dalton watched, the object moved away from the riverbank, crossed the broad sand shoals, floated over the boulders, and as it touched the deeper blackness under the cottonwoods, merged seamlessly with the shadows, as a separate drop of water will melt into a pool. Cloaked, thought Dalton, recalling the black fog that had drifted into the hallway of the Strega hostel in Cortona.

  This was actually someone who was using an infrared cloaking device, a device capable of masking the outlines of an infrared or thermal image. Whoever this guy was, he had to be working for the

  U.S. government. No one else would have access to this kind of technology. And no one else would know that this was a safe house belonging to the CIA. This guy was here to take out Willard Fremont.

  Which meant that someone back in Langley had betrayed them both. But the only guy who knew where they were was Jack Stall-worth, and Stallworth was no traitor. There was a sound, movement in the hall. Fremont, awake, dressed, rounded the corner and froze in place, staring into the muzzle of Dalton’s Colt.

  He blinked at Dalton, his mouth working. “What is it? What’s up?”

  “There was something on the screen,” said Dalton, his face lit from beneath, glowing with blue light from the laptop screen.

  “A man?” said Fremont, staring into the picture, seeing only the ripple of light on the bending river, the tops of the cottonwoods waving with silver light over the impenetrable shadows below.

  “Yes. I think so. He’s gone now. Into the dark under the trees.” “How far away is he?” “Two, three hundred yards out. Near the cottonwoods.” “Have you got any remote mikes in that area?” “Yes,” said Dalton, touching an icon on the screen. The speakers flared up with the sound of rushing water, leaves

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  rustling in the wind. He turned the volume up to full. The room filled with the hissing and rattling of the woodland, the sighing of the wind, the bubbling of water racing over stones.

  And another sound, far deeper, a sound that Dalton knew, a sound that chilled his heart and tightened his belly. A sound at the lowest edge of hearing, more a sensation than a sound, a deep rising and falling sound, a low, ponderous vibrato, but with a living, breathing rhythm.

  “What’s that?” asked Fremont, staring at the screen.

  “No idea,” said Dalton, but his mind was back in the Dorsoduro. He was standing in that light-filled room watching the cylinder spin, the cylinder that growled and hummed and buzzed all at once, with exactly this same rising and falling note, like a big cat purring.

  “Stay here,” he said. He padded back down the hall. When he came back he was wearing a black jacket, jeans, and soft-soled shoes. Fremont saw the big Colt in his hand and his face hardened.

  “What is it, anyway? What did you see?” “I think it’s a man using a cloaking device.” “What? Like an EMP?” “No. It’s new. But I think I’ve seen it used before. In Italy.” “He’s here for me?” “I’d say so.” “How would anyone know we’re here?” “Great question. I have another one.” “Sure.” “This guy out there, he’s a pro.” “Obviously.” “Why is so much time and effort going into killing you?” “I been asking myself that for weeks. I wish I knew.” “This goes beyond Echelon. Echelon is a major NSA operation,

  known to a lot of the general public. No matter how sensitive some of your Echelon work was, this kind of sustained high-tech stalking,

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  using a killer of this caliber, on American soil, this is simply not something that the NSA does. There’s got to be something else going on here. Can’t you think of any other reason?”

  “You think this guy’s one of ours? An American?”

  “I’m not certain. But who else has this technology?”

  “A lot of people,” said Fremont, staring at the screen. The formless glowing shape drifted out into an open area under the trees and then slipped back into the dark, now less than a hundred yards away and closing in on the safe house.

  “Why is anybody trying to kill you, Willard?”

  Fremont shook his head as he watched the screen, fear, uncertainty, dawning suspicion in his face.

  Dalton stepped back from the screen. “Okay, whoever he is, let’s take this guy down.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  “No. I need you here, on the monitor. Take this.”

  He handed Fremont a small Special Forces com set, a throat mike on a neckband and an earpiece. Fremont slipped it around his neck, set it in place without a word. Dalton put on another set, then looked at Fremont, who did a click test to see if the two units were communicating.

  “Watch the screen. Whatever you see, let me know.”

  “I’d rather be out there,” said Fremont, his face grim. “Last time I was in this situation, it was the one who stayed behind got her throat cut, not the guy who went to look.”

  “You’re
not a dog, Willard. I’m going to try to take this guy alive, but if you lose radio contact with me for longer than ten minutes, don’t come looking for me. Call the duty desk at Langley and tell them you need an extraction. They’ll recognize the phone line. No one can get in here, not without an Abrams. Sit tight. Wait it out.”

  “What if you’re the guy taken alive? Got a gun to your head?”

  “You know the answer to that.”

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  “Yeah. I do. But a piece of my own would comfort me greatly.”

  “There’s a bolt-action 308 in a glass case in the master bedroom. Box of rounds in the slide drawer underneath.”

  Fremont assented in silence, his face stony.

  Dalton liked him for his steel. No whining, no complaint. None of that phony hillbilly twang either. Whatever he was or had become, he was still a solid field man, and Dalton was glad to have him around. Fremont put his hand out. They shook hands, said nothing.

  Dalton went back down the hallway to the side door, slipped on a set of night-vision goggles, eased the locking bars out of their slots, opened the well-oiled steel door, and slipped out into the shimmering green night.

  The woods, glowing green in his night vision, had been cleared out to a distance of fifty yards all around the house, for obvious reasons, and he crossed the stony ground in a quick soundless rush, the Colt out, slipping into the green shadows under the trunks.

  Above him, through the tangle of black branches and leaves, he could see bright-green patches of open sky. A few pale stars glittered in the moonless night. The cottonwood leaves hissed and rattled in the cold wind and he could see his own breath, a pale-green misty glow in the starlight.

  “I see him,” Fremont’s whisper in his right ear. “He’s come out into the light about forty yards south-southwest of your position. What the hell is this guy using? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Dalton checked his wrist compass and moved out slowly, feeling his way through the trees, stepping carefully through the dried thicket and dead branches under his feet. He’d covered about twenty yards in the direction of the target when Fremont came back on the radio.

  “Micah, he’s closing. He’s back under the trees now. I can’t see him anymore, but he was definitely heading your way.”

  Dalton stopped in place, in a low crouch, his back up against the bowl of a sagging cottonwood. Something slid across the toe of his

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  deck shoe, something heavy. By the weight and the speed of movement, a damn big snake. In Montana some of the snakes are harmless. These snakes are usually eaten by all the snakes that aren’t.

  Dalton tried to ignore whatever venomous reptile it was that was flowing heavily over his toe in a muscular coiling glide, because now he could hear that deep rising and falling vibration, coming closer.

  Out in the cold air the sound was more dense, more alive. It reminded him of a cathedral organ, that deep booming vibrato that shakes the pews. The sound was so strong, so resonant, that Dalton could feel it drumming on his skin, beating against his ears.

  Perhaps because of the drug he connected with this kind of sound, or even some lingering effect of the salvia, his heart was hammering inside his chest, his mouth was dry, and when he tried to swallow he bitterly regretted it. This was fear, chaotic and compelling fear, with an undertone of superstitious awe, but it was not yet panic.

  He pulled in a deep, silent breath and let it out through his nose, clearing his mind and readying himself. The bass organ sound was very close now, and he could see a great formless shape moving between the glowing trees. He raised the Colt, lined up the three red glowing dots in a level row, and laid them over the pale-green luminous blob that was now moving out from the shelter of a fallen cottonwood.

  The shape hesitated at the edge of the clearing, pulsed in place for a while as the vibration changed into a slower, deeper note. Then it moved out again, entering the clearing, now less than thirty feet away and still coming directly toward his position.

  “I see him,” whispered Fremont. “He’s close, man. Real close.”

  In Dalton’s outstretched hands the Colt was steady, his grip firm, but he could see the effect of his breathing, his rapid heartbeat, in the way the three red dots were pulsing, the two dots on his rear

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  sight moving into and out of line with the single dot on his foresight blade.

  What he really wanted to do was to turn and run, keep running until he could run no more, roll over and lie there in the dark— disgraced, ashamed, alive. In a hidden place in his heart he hated his sense of duty, hated his suicidal sense of honor, and he hated Willard Fremont for needing his protection and devoutly wished him dead.

  The figure was fifteen feet away and the humming vibrato was in the air all around him. He tightened his finger on the trigger, feeling the sear deep in the frame as it ticked across the oiled and polished surface of the hammer, the straining of the hammer spring, the incremental motion of oiled steel on steel. He stared into the cloud and saw a distinct shape, a solid central form, tall, perhaps six feet tall, broad as a barrel, wrapped inside the shifting, flowing cloak that surrounded it.

  Although the humming was in him now, a deep vibration in his chest, in the electric air he breathed, he willed his world into silence, forcing his rising panic down, easing his adrenaline rush until his mind was still and he could see nothing but that hard dark-green shape deep in the heart of the swirling light-green cloud, hear only his heartbeat, feel only the gridwork of engraved lines on the broad blade of the trigger. The three red lithium dots were rock steady, lined up and centered over the heart of this solid shape.

  Ten feet away, and as if he had sensed Dalton’s presence, the figure had stopped moving. Dalton slipped off his goggles: the muzzle flare would blind him for thirty seconds if he kept them on.

  He blinked as his vision adjusted to the sudden dark, centering his sights on the target, now only barely visible as a moving black shadow in the pale starlight. The bass organ sound increased, driving into Dalton’s mind like a dentist’s drill. The sear inside the frame of the Colt ticked another micron across the surface of the hammer cog.

  And another, a steely heartbeat deep inside the revolver.

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  The figure hesitated, and then came rapidly forward, a sudden gliding advance straight at Dalton.

  The idea of taking this man alive, if man it actually was, seemed quite suicidal at this taut moment, so he fired, three quick rounds in succession, each one a distinct earsplitting thunderclap, the big gun jerking as the round exploded out the muzzle, the red bloom of the muzzle flare lighting up a churning seething mass of tiny glistening forms, the world snapping into darkness again, the image still burning on his retina, the trigger pull harder now that he was back in double-action. A tiny metallic click as the sear released and the spring drove the hammer down. Another booming flash. In his eyes the same cloud of glistening red-tinted particles, shards of shiny black mica in a breaking beach wave. He pulled the trigger one last time. The Colt jumped in his hands. The solid cloudlike shape broke into a million particles, reformed itself like liquid mercury, and rose straight up into the night, a writhing tornado of spinning, buzzing particles, spreading itself out across the tops of the trees.

  Then fading, dissolving, disappearing against the stars.

  For a time, Dalton could hear a distant vibration, receding, dying gradually away into nothingness. Then silence, complete, deep, stunned, nothing but the sound of his own rasping breath, his carotid pulsing in his throat, and a high-pitched incessant ringing in his deafened ears.

  “HONEYBEES?” SAID FREMONT. “A swarm of honeybees? Nuts. Couldn’t be. They don’t travel at night. Anyway, it’s too damn cold.”

  “I’ve seen it before,” said Dalton, wrapping his fingers around his cup of coffee, inhaling the rich, deep scent. “Sometimes if a grizzly breaks a nest open, the m
ain queen gets alarmed, she’ll swarm them up like an army and they’ll move just this way. Even at night.”

  “Bees,” said Fremont, shaking his head. “Scared the—”

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  “Me too.” “You’re lucky they didn’t swarm you. They can kill a man.” “I saw a swarm kill a young Kodiak once, when I was a kid in

  Tucumcari. They got into his muzzle, blinded him, smothered him.” “Yeah. Ugly way to die.” “Very.” Behind Fremont’s shoulder the light was changing in the eastern

  windows of the house, going from milky gray to pale pink. Fremont followed Dalton’s look, then turned back to his fried eggs and bacon. “Morning soon.”

  “Yeah. Long night.” “I kind of wish it hadn’t been bees.” “Why?” “If it had been the guy who was trying to kill me, maybe we

  mighta found out something. We’re still in the dark.” “Any more thoughts? On Echelon?” “Yeah. Quite a few. I think this has to be about Echelon. Echelon

  was the only intelligence op I was ever on that had any real importance. Micah, I’m a small-time field man. Married. Divorced. A bankrupt. If it isn’t Echelon, who is it? My ex-wife’s lawyers? My bookie? My creditors?”

  Dalton sensed a building panic in the man and decided that now was a good time to see if he could be led around to the delicate subject of Sweetwater. He poured himself another cup, offered the pot to Fremont. “I thought Echelon was just a technology-monitoring operation. What the hell were you guys doing for the NSA, anyway?”

  “Okay, we were what the NSA called ‘the remedial arm’ of Echelon. You’re right. Echelon’s brief was—still is—to monitor all kinds of communications worldwide, looking for a lot of things, but in our case it was mainly the illegal movement of prohibited international technology. Weapons-grade electronics. Advanced jet-propulsion sys

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  tems capable of being reverse-engineered into engines that could drive a nuclear missile. Anything contrary to our national security, our military superiority. Although we were technically CIA, we were kind of seconded to the NSA. Anytime they detected a company, a person, a charity, a political organization, any entity that was trying to move prohibited technology to an enemy, they sent us in. We were the ones who got our hands dirty.”