Dark Target (29 page)

In the store, DeLuca bought a newspaper and a cup of coffee. The headline on the
Weekly World News
said
“EARTH UNDER ATTACK BY ALIENS; BUSH TO SEND NATIONAL GUARD TROOPS TO MOON.”
“Of course he’d send Guard units,” DeLuca thought.
USA Today
was running a story about how the New England Patriots were quietly building a football dynasty. DeLuca checked the news
for his home state of Massachusetts. The “Big Dig,” the new freeway tunnel running beneath downtown Boston, had sprung multiple
leaks and was closed for repairs. “What do you expect for twenty billion dollars—you get what you pay for,” he thought.

A young girl in braids, braces, white eyeliner, and a tight belly shirt that allowed three inches of flab to form an O-ring
around her middle was working at the cash register. When DeLuca asked to speak to the owner, the girl said he was in the back.
When DeLuca asked her to go get the owner, the girl said he was sleeping. When DeLuca asked her what time he usually woke
up, she said she didn’t know. When DeLuca said he’d come back and asked her if there was a place nearby where he could get
breakfast, he heard a voice call out from the back, “I’m up! I’m up! Hang on a second, goddamn it. I just have to find my
pants.”

A minute later, a man appeared in the doorway, looking something like a troll who lived under a bridge. He had wild hair,
wild eyes, and a full beard that came down to midchest. He was wearing blue jeans held up by suspenders, a red T-shirt and
a black fleece vest over that, on his feet only flip-flops. He ran his fingers through his hair to push his mane away from
his face and poured himself a cup of coffee from the Bunn machine.

“Jesus, Connie—this coffee tastes like you made it yesterday,” he said.

“I did,” the girl said. “It’s perfectly good. There’s nothing wrong with it.”

“She didn’t charge you for that, did she?” the man said, pointing at DeLuca’s cup.

“It’s all right,” DeLuca said. “I’ve drunk worse.”

“So have I, but you shouldn’t have to pay for it,” he said, pouring the rest of the pot down the drain and handing the empty
pot to the girl, then opening the till and giving DeLuca back the dollar eighty-two he’d paid for what he had to agree was
not good coffee. “How can I help you, sir?”

“I was looking for the owner?” DeLuca said.

“That would be me,” the man said, offering his hand. “Arthur Bartok. What can I do for you?”

“David DeLuca,” DeLuca said, taking it. “I was interested in PochahontasVille so I was hoping to talk to you about it.”

“Historically?” “Bartok” said.

“In part,” DeLuca said. “I’m actually thinking of retiring to New Mexico, with my wife, and I’m looking for business opportunities
to buy into. I was just in the UFO museum in Roswell yesterday and the place was packed. I’m just thinking out loud, so I
apologize if I sound like an idiot, but I was wondering if the property might possibly be for sale? Or lease?”

“Bartok” looked at him.

“Right now I own a bar back home, but my wife and I both want to do something that doesn’t involve working nights,” DeLuca
continued, though he knew by the way “Bartok” looked at him that he wasn’t getting across. He saw, in the man’s eyes, an unmistakable
intelligence. That told him he had the right man. There was tension now in the way “Bartok” carried himself, his eyes glancing
momentarily down below the cash register, where DeLuca suspected he kept a gun.

“You want to restore PochahontasVille to its former luster?” “Bartok” said.

“I don’t know,” DeLuca said. “I just like the area and thought I’d ask.”

“I was thinking maybe I’d sell it to PETA as a monument to animal cruelty,” “Bartok” said. “People used to bring in black
bears they’d trapped or half-shot and they’d put ’em in the pits and feed ’em dog food, and then every once in a while there’d
be a special show where they’d take a bear and stake him in the middle of the ring and set dogs on him. That’s the last known
bear-baiting ring in the United States. After that ended, they used the place for cockfights and dog fights. Cockfights are
still legal in parts of this country. Though I don’t suppose that’s what you had in mind.”

“I was just thinking of opening a UFO museum,” DeLuca said. “I thought maybe this would be far enough away from Roswell that
there wouldn’t be any competition. Are there other UFO attractions nearby?”

“This whole state is a UFO attraction,” “Bartok” said. “Thirty-four percent of Americans believe in UFOs and only 26 percent
believe in evolution. Fifty-one percent believe in ghosts. Eighty-six percent believe in the devil. What do you believe in,
Mr. DeLuca?”

“I believe in the devil,” DeLuca said. “I know because I was married to his sister for four years. Do you believe in UFOs?”

“But of course,” “Bartok” said. “I also think professional wrestling is real. Do you believe in UFOs?”

“I’d prefer not to. Though after what I saw last night, I’m starting to wonder. I guess you could say I believe in power.
I believe power invites power. Power begets power. Power assimilates and corrupts and coopts the people who deploy it because
power protects itself,” DeLuca said, quoting from “Bartleby’s” soliloquy on the radio.

“Bartok” eyed the girl behind the cash register.

“Let’s go sit in the beautiful sunshine and talk,” he said. He led DeLuca outside to the ring of bleachers and climbed halfway
up the nearest one, leaning back against the riser behind him. The sky was clear blue, the temperature already in the sixties
and climbing.

“You’re Army,” “Bartok” said. “CI, I’m guessing.”

“And you’re Dr. Gary Burgess,” DeLuca said. “Arthur Bartok would have to be in his eighties by now. Or should I say, ‘Bartleby’?
How’d you know I was Army CI?”

“Well, you said you’d drunk worse coffee, and the only place you could do that is the Army,” Burgess said. “CI was just a
guess.” He pointed to the center of the arena. “That’s where they’d stake the bear. Some of the bigger ones would fight for
hours. Fifteen, twenty dogs. Eventually the dogs would rip it to pieces. This passed for entertainment. Are you a dog lover
… what is it? Captain? Major?”

“Agent,” DeLuca said.

“How’d you find me? Don’t tell me NSA is monitoring the Ed Clark show now?”

“They’re not, but I was,” DeLuca said. “You used the phrase, ‘handwriting is on the wall.’ Your ex-wife said that’s the phrase
you left in your note.”

“How’s Penelope?” Burgess asked.

“She’s okay, I guess,” DeLuca said. “Maybe you should ask her yourself.”

Burgess stared at the horizon.

“They know where I am,” Burgess said. “They would never let someone like me just walk away. I guess when I left we had an
old-fashioned Mexican standoff, but they know where to find me.”

“And you’re not afraid they’re going to do something?” DeLuca asked.

“They can’t,” Burgess said. “Before I left, I wrote a night watchman program. You know those old night watchmen in the factories
who had to go from station to station and turn their key at various locations, and if they failed to reach a station and turn
the key, a siren or a bell of some kind would go off? That’s my protection. I have to enter a password once a week, and if
I don’t, the data dumps to a couple different places. China. Iran. The
New York Times.
”

“The Union of Concerned Scientists?”

Burgess nodded.

“Why can’t they just intercept your password and use it themselves?”

“Because it changes every week,” Burgess said, pointing to his head, “and I’m the only one who knows what it’s going to change
to.”

It was DeLuca’s understanding, according to some digging he’d done, that Gary Burgess’s IQ was off the charts; he was a college
graduate at thirteen and a Ph.D. at sixteen who’d been able to compute long, complicated mathematical equations in his head,
a “Good Will Hunting” sort of polymath who’d grown up a tough kid in New York City and ended up solving Raphael’s Fourth Theorem
at the age of eighteen after mathematicians had tried unsuccessfully to solve it for hundreds of years. It was the kind of
mind the Defense Department took particular relish in diverting to its purposes, DeLuca had always thought.

“And you think they’ll never figure out the pattern?” he asked.

“I’m sure they’ll try,” Burgess said, wagging his eyebrows to say he wasn’t worried. “And when they do, they’ll come for me.
But until then, I’m safe.”

“What data is there to dump?”

“Geez, DeLuca—if I told you that, it would sort of defeat the purpose of the standoff, wouldn’t it?” Burgess said. “As long
as I’m the only one who knows, everyone else is safe.”

“That’s why you left Penelope, wasn’t it?” DeLuca asked. Burgess didn’t answer. “All right then. Suppose I just guess. I’ll
tell you what I’m thinking and you just stop me when I’m wrong.”

Burgess reached into his pants pocket and took out a pack of cigarettes, offering one to DeLuca, who declined.

“If the world knew how close we are to the apocalypse, everybody would be smoking,” Burgess said. “Frankly, I’m surprised
R. J. Reynolds hasn’t adopted that as a marketing strategy.”

“Closer than even you know, I think,” DeLuca said. “Darkstar is deployed.”

Burgess stared at him.

“I’m all ears,” he said at last.

“That’s the good news,” DeLuca said. “The bad news is, we don’t know who’s operating it. I’m guessing your part was working
on the penning fields. Your wife said your specialty was magnetic fields. I Googled some of your old articles and tried to
read them but they were way over my head. The problem was always that antimatter couldn’t become a viable defense option until
a perfect field was created to contain it. And you did that. But you quit when you realized what they were going to do with
it. That’s what’s powering Darkstar, isn’t it? Antimatter.”

“You read too much science fiction,” Burgess said.

“That might be,” DeLuca said. “Right now though, I’m like the world’s most realistic guy. And if you were as realistic as
I am, you’d see that with Darkstar operational, watchman program or no watchman program, their reasons for keeping you alive
are growing thinner all the time. Like the Stealth program. How many times can you fly a black delta-winged airplane over
a Missouri cornfield before you have to admit, yeah, we have black delta-winged airplanes?”

“I’d heard they launched two and one was damaged and the other was black,” Burgess said. “Are you saying it’s not?”

“Officially?” DeLuca said. “It’s not. Unofficially, strange things have been going a lot more than just bump in the night.
Last night, a disk of light appeared above the road in front of me. Could Darkstar do that?”

Burgess nodded.

“They’ve been doing that for years. You take two beams and set one slightly out of phase with the other and intersect them,”
he said. “Like when two spotlight beams intersect at the circus, except that only the intersection registers in the visible
spectrum. I think Darkstar could probably do just about anything they can do with laser effects at a Phish concert.”

“Vaporize people?” DeLuca asked.

“That was sort of the whole idea, originally,” Burgess said.

“The Hitler question?”

“You got it,” Burgess said. “Why bother sending a thousand Marines into Panama if we could just beam a Noriega or a Saddam
Hussein into a million particles while he’s lying in his bed? Think of the lives we’d save. And the expense. Bad for Halliburton,
good for TRW.”

“Bin Laden?”

“If Darkstar really is deployed, like you say, then yeah, absolutely. If I were him, I’d stay in my cave. You’re talking about
the virtual instantaneous projection of nearly infinite power. With or without as much collateral damage as you want, depending
on how the beam is focused and directed. You talk about a surgical strike—this is the same technology doctors use to operate
on people’s eyes without damaging the surrounding tissue.”

“And power corrupts.”

“No shit?”

“So who’s they?”

“Who is or who was? I was working for Space Command when it was Air Force. I got out after it was reassigned to STRATCOM.”

“Did you know Cheryl Escavedo?”

“Who?”

“Cheryl Escavedo,” DeLuca said. “Cheyenne Mountain, archives. Native American. Good-looking.”

“We may have crossed paths inside The Mountain,” Burgess said. “If we did, I can’t remember. I did most of my work at the
DEL at Kirtland. Why?”

“She was trying to contact you, I think,” DeLuca said. “Either you or your wife.”

“Why?”

“We don’t know,” DeLuca said. “They say she stole some disks. What do you know about General Thomas Koenig? Or Major Brent
Huston?”

“What do I know about them?” Burgess said. “One is insane and the other makes the insane one look sober as a judge. Koenig
is a paranoid control freak with delusions of grandeur and a persecution complex. Huston thinks he can talk to God. And he’s
obsessive-compulsive. They both think they have enemies inside and outside the military. Koenig hates Democrats. Huston thinks
homosexuals are after him. So he has delusions of cuteness, I guess. I worked for both of them at Cheyenne.”

“Could Koenig take control of Darkstar?” DeLuca asked. “Best guess.”

“Best guess,” Burgess said. “Hmm. I was going to say I didn’t think so.”

“But?”

“It depends on how long he’s been thinking about it. If someone started at the inception … Hmm. Interesting. You think
it’s Koenig?”

“I don’t know,” DeLuca said. “I know he came into STRATCOM as the security protocols guy, so he had all the keys.”

“Yeah, but having the keys wouldn’t be enough,” Burgess said. “He’d have to have the core codes too, and those were all over
the place. One person couldn’t do it alone. Or two. You couldn’t do it in-house without somebody posing a security risk. I
mean, somebody would figure it out and blow the whistle or leak it or write a book or whatever. I don’t know if you’re big
into conspiracy theories. I’ve always found it hard enough to get more than three people all on the same page at the same
time right out in the open. He could parallel-engineer it out of country, but that would take a lot of money.”