The Second Ship (17 page)

Chapter 35

Heather rolled over in bed and opened her eyes, surprised to see her own arms stretching high into the air. It was Saturday, and she was still alive and not in a federal penitentiary. Considering the horrible nature of her dreams, this waking was a major improvement. Jesus. She had been so busy just trying to survive the week that she hadn’t really had a chance to notice much about the arrival of the New Year. But here it was, already six days in.

Heather rolled out of bed and slipped into her long, flannel robe and her fur-lined, moccasin-style slippers, then made her way quietly down to the kitchen. By the time the teakettle started whistling, she already had the chamomile tea bag situated in her cup, switched on the television, and begun channel surfing for any news that might indicate some other disaster was on its way to annihilate them.

The smell of the tea wafted up to her nostrils as she began pouring the hot water over the bag, and then paused to add a little Splenda.

At first she barely registered the scratching at the kitchen window, so softly did it intrude into her consciousness. When she did look up, there was nothing there, just a large section where the condensation had left a cloud on the pane. Only as she started to turn away did she see it, crude letters in the condensation where a finger had traced them on the outside of the glass.

“I know what you are.”

Heather set down her tea and walked across to the windowsill. On closer inspection, it was a thin layer of frost, not steam or condensation, that had been scratched away.

She shifted her gaze to the tree line at the back edge of their yard. There, standing in the snow beneath the pines, stood the Rag Man, his long, greasy, blond hair and the mouthful of bad teeth in his grinning face immediately recognizable. His eyes, though. Where were his eyes?

For a brief moment Heather considered calling her dad, but her fury wouldn’t let the man escape yet again. Grabbing a long butcher knife from the block on the countertop, Heather opened the sliding glass door and stepped out into the predawn darkness, the garden dimly illuminated by the light from their back porch. As she stepped out, the Rag Man slid back into the trees.

Heather lunged after him, almost slipping on the ice coating the deck’s lower step, but she managed to right herself as she plunged into the snow-covered grass beyond. She reached the tree where she had last seen him, whirling to make sure he did not jump out of the darkness behind her.

There in the snow beneath the tree, a clear set of footprints led into the woods just beyond her backyard. Heather sucked in a deep breath, then moved, head bent to keep the trail in sight as she made her way forward. In seconds the trees behind her masked her house from view, bringing down a deeper darkness that would have been absolute, except for the light of the three-quarter moon that filtered through the branches high above.

Those tracks in the snow pulled her onward, her hand clutched so tightly around the handle of the big knife that it seemed the skin would peel away from her knuckles at any moment. She felt like screaming after the Rag Man: Who are you? What do you want from me? Stay the hell away from my family!

“I know what you are.”

The voice behind her was so close she could feel the hot breath puff against the back of her neck, could smell the rot in those decaying teeth. Suddenly all the anger and strength leached out of her body, replaced by an icy terror that left her frozen in place, unable to move. Unable even to turn her face to look into those vacant eye sockets.

“I know what you are becoming.”

Heather tried to scream, but somehow could not manage to get the sound out of her throat. Only when she heard the soft thud of something heavy hitting the snow at her feet did she realize she’d dropped the butcher knife.

“Becoming…”

The feel of the hand on her shoulder was more than she could bear, rousing her to twist and lurch away.

“…going to becoming?”

The weight of the blanket dragged her down, and she lifted her head, struggling toward the light.

“Heather, wake up. Are you going to be coming down to breakfast?”

Heather sat straight up in bed and found herself staring into her father’s face.

“Wow. That must have been some dream you were having. It’s after eight o’clock.”

Heather suddenly remembered that she could breathe. The shock of transition from the vivid dream to wakefulness left her dazed.

“Heather?”

“Sorry, Dad,” Heather said, wiping at her face with both hands. “I must have really been out. What was it you were asking me?”

He laughed. “Maybe I should let you go back to sleep. The Smythes are going to be here in forty-five minutes for brunch.”

“Oh. Thanks. I definitely want to shower and get cleaned up first.”

“Okay. We’ll see you in a few minutes then.”

As the door closed, Heather sank back into bed, amazed that her father hadn’t heard the pounding in her head. She had never been subject to migraines, but this one was a real skull cracker of a headache. If she hadn’t just told her dad that she was going to come down for breakfast, she would have taken a couple of aspirins and crawled back into bed. Recalling the dream, Heather decided she didn’t really want to sleep again anyway.

By the time she had drained the hot water heater and stepped out into the steam-filled bathroom, Heather was feeling a little better. The headache was still there, but the rest of her seemed to be ready to greet the land of the wakeful. She glanced up at the mirror, half expecting to see finger-printed words in the condensation. No words. Thank the Lord.

Heather was several minutes late getting downstairs, but she had still somehow managed to beat the Smythes. That surprised her, considering the Smythe family’s notorious punctuality.

“Hi, sleepy head,” her mother said as she pulled a pan of hot biscuits from the oven and applied butter.

“Hi, Mom.”

Her father looked up from his paper. “Glad to see you looking perkier. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you that deep into the land of nod.”

“It’s their exhausting study schedule this week,” said her mother as she set a large red-and-yellow plate in the middle of the table, biscuits piled high atop it. “It’s too much, coming right out of the holidays. I’ve a good mind to complain to the principal.”

“Mom, please don’t,” said Heather quickly.

Her mother snorted. “It was just a thought.”

Just then the door opened, and the Smythes poured in to happy greetings all around.

“Sorry we’re late,” Fred Smythe began. “We had a tough time getting these two kids roused this morning. You would have thought they were dead.”

Heather’s head popped up. Sure enough, both Mark and Jennifer looked like they needed to go directly back to bed.

As the parents chattered in the background, Mark leaned over to whisper in Heather’s ear. “It’s the weirdest thing. Both Doc and I had exactly the same dream last night.”

A cold shiver crept up Heather’s spine. “The same dream?”

Jennifer nodded. “Exactly the same. It was all about you chasing a weird man into the woods with a knife.”

Mark leaned closer. “Yeah. Really creepy.”

A loud clatter caused everyone to look around at Heather, who stood by the table staring down at the butcher knife she had just dropped on the kitchen floor.

Chapter 36

Jack Gregory stepped down from the small private jet, carrying his two small black bags. Glancing back, he saw the lithe, muscular form of Janet Price exit the aircraft carrying a slightly larger, soft-leather duffel.

Without waiting for Harold Stevens, Jack made his way over to the Executive Aviation office, the late-afternoon Albuquerque sun providing plenty of light but little heat on this cold January day. By the time he had retrieved the keys to the two cars that awaited their arrival and had made arrangements for the refueling and the parking of the jet, Harold Stevens had joined Janet in the waiting area.

Jack tossed him a set of keys and then stepped outside to find his own car, a bloodred Audi Quattro. Popping open the spacious trunk, he lifted his and Janet’s bags inside. As he opened the driver’s-side door and slid into the leather seat, Janet distracted him by gliding into the passenger seat, her legs as shapely and defined as a professional dancer’s, the little black skirt not quite reaching her knees.

His glance swept up her body, catching her laughing eyes with his own.

“Same old Jack, I see.”

“Just scoping out my surroundings.” Jack grinned, slammed the door, and brought the engine roaring to life. “We’re supposed to be married, you know.”

“Then you may want to tone down the heat in that gaze of yours. That’s more of a mistress look you have going on.”

“They never said we had to play an old married couple, now did they?”

As he pulled out onto Interstate 25 headed north, Jack glanced back to see Harold following some distance back, the big, white Ford F250 pickup clearly visible.

“How’s Bubba doing back there?” Janet asked.

“It looks like he’s enjoying his ride.”

“He’d like it more if he could get back out on some of these ranch roads. He’s probably having flashbacks to his childhood days out in Arizona. What’s the name of that little town he came from?”

“Show Low. It sits up in the high country above the Mogollon Rim. Pretty place.”

“Thanks, but I’ll stick to New York and leave the backcountry to you hillbillies.”

Janet smiled at the thought. Jack Gregory looked about as much like a country boy as James Bond, comfortable in either a tuxedo or jeans and a brown, leather bomber jacket, equally elegant in either. No. The man was silk and leather, a shot of James Bond with a spritz of Carlos the Jackal blended into one lethal martini, never shaken or stirred.

“What did you find out from the Old Man?” Janet asked.

“They still don’t know where the virus originated, although they’re pretty sure it wasn’t Moscow.”

“So the router tables had been modified?”

“Sometime between the night shift and the end of the trace. Kurtz’s people checked against the nightly backups and several of them didn’t match, although the differences were quite subtle.”

“How was it done?”

“That’s the tricky part. You know those little agent programs that Kurtz thought were just doing a little encryption of random data?”

“Right,” Janet said.

“It turns out that they were posting a periodic health and status code up onto several public web sites. Someone snooping those codes could tell when the agents quit reporting and get a map of how our trace was coming. They apparently launched a cleanup virus as we closed in.”

“But can’t our people find out who was checking the codes on the web sites?”

Jack laughed. “That’s the funniest part yet. They picked out a selection of movie star fan sites. You know. The ones with pictures and juicy gossip. Anyway, the little agent programs were changing little bits here and there in the images, so small it wasn’t noticeable to the viewers.”

“Buried in the hits.”

“You’ve got it. Those sites get millions of daily hits. Determining who was downloading the pictures for the data instead of for their viewing pleasure is impossible.”

“So why are we headed to Los Alamos?”

“Two reasons. Kurtz decoded the message from the computer we heisted. It makes some pretty wild claims about Dr. Donald Stephenson and the Rho Project.”

“So Riles wants us to snoop into the Rho Project? He must be desperate. You go to prison for spying on a deep black operation when you don’t have need to know. Did the president approve this operation?”

“We work for Riles. It’s his ass on the line.”

“What’s the second reason?”

“The decoded message was loaded with inside information from the Rho Project.”

“So we have a mole in the project leaking out damaging information on his boss?”

“A very brilliant mole. Probably a mathematician, based upon the incredible encryption algorithms used. It’s not an intelligence operative, that’s for sure. They made too many mistakes in the way they tried to hide the trail in Moscow. This is an amateur playing at the spy game.”

Janet nodded. “So we take out the amateur, find out what he knows, and then decide how deeply to dig into the Rho Ship.”

“We’ll work both sides at once. I want you to focus on finding our mole. Harold and I will take a little look into the Rho Project and see what turns up.”

A smile of anticipation lifted the corners of Janet Price’s beautiful mouth. “I’ve never liked rodents. Snuffing this one should be entertaining.”

“Get the information first.”

A needle-thin ice pick glittered in Janet’s hand as she grabbed her hair and gave it a couple of quick twists before shoving the pointed weapon through it, firmly securing her long brown locks in a tight bun atop her head.

“Of course.”

A large green sign slid toward them along the right side of the highway.

Santa Fe, six miles.

Good. Best to get a hotel room for the night. No use letting deadly little Janet’s sudden hunger go to waste.