DELTA GREEN: JAUNDICED EYES
Part I: Blacker than Black
©1998 Shane Ivey
Panama, 1986.
A soft wind rustled through jungle leaves. The night was clear but moonless and black with swirling mists, and all the stars were dark past a fog-obscured canopy of trees. The air was close and humid and hot. Unseen bat wings flapped, dry and leathery, in the sky overhead as a swarm took flight to hunt. The treeline opened around a wide swath of level grass, the featureless yard of a Spanish- style villa house surrounded by a garden and a low stucco-painted wall. The house and its light and noise seemed incongruous to the soft mist and the endless rustling and hooting of the forest, but it was only the first of many. Less than half a mile away stood other houses on outlying city streets.
Men waited in the garden, armed and bored, swarthy men clad in floral shirts, with submachine guns slung carelessly from their shoulders. Three sat around a table playing cards while a fourth paced along the wall on the far side of the house, smoking a cigarette and staring into the darkness of the fog and the forest.
He could not see the soldiers who crawled there. There were four of them watching him, and another four were dispersed in the treeline around the house. One had already crept undetected to the driveway. They wore a motley assortment of utility clothing and equipment, black market gear from a dozen sources, all of it in perfect condition. All wore mask-like combat hoods and greenish-black face paint. No part of the squad could see more than a few of the others; there was no need. They had trained and practiced this maneuver, drilled until they knew what was to come as surely as a choreographed dance. None of them were green enough to expect that all would go as planned; but they could handle whatever cropped up. They always had before.
The men nearest the smoker stared straight at him, waiting. At that distance in daylight they would have been spotted with ease even in the fog, but not now, not by a target with his night vision ruined by the ambient light of the house and especially by the orange ember, brilliant in the dark of night, of his own cigarette. The men who crept there all thought the same thing: You dumb shit. Dumb and dead. Wish they were all like you.
Finally the guard turned and ambled along the wall toward the corner, toward his friends. Behind him two shapes, slightly darker than the grass, darted from the treeline. In seconds they reached the wall, moving almost silently through the damp grass with practiced ease and coordination. One carried a simple loop of wire, the other a black- bladed knife.
In the treeline, another of their squad cupped a hand around his mouth and uttered the long croaking hiss of one of the countless breeds of monkey in the region.
The sentry turned curiously and looked into the dark. Some instinct drew him; he walked back the way he had come, staring intently across the yard. In a moment he had walked obliviously past the two men hunched against the other side of the wall. The men lifted themselves easily over the wall and their feet touched the ground with barely a whisper of leaves. They moved toward the target with quick steps, one to either side.
At the whisper of the leaves the sentry began to turn, exhaling a stream of smoke which blended at once with the fog. The wire looped around his throat before he inhaled again, blocking air and blood as the killer dragged him back and down. The other's knife caught him hard in the diaphragm. The sentry grunted and his face twisted in agony and confusion as he tried to draw breath, then the now-bloody knife stabbed him again, driving beneath his sternum. His fingers twitched against the cold metal of his useless Uzi; then he died.
The killers crept low to the wall of the house and left the body there. They moved softly to the corners as the others ran across the unwatched side of the house to the wall. The one with the wire stuffed it into a pouch and drew forth a small automatic pistol dominated by a massive silencer. The others climbed over the wall and darted through the garden. One of them looked through a window into a utility closet and laundry room. He rose with a short crowbar-like tool and applied it to the window.
Seconds later, the man with the silencer stood with another inside the closet, creeping toward the door. They heard footsteps approach the door, then an irritated voice in Colombian Spanish: "I'm checking, I'm checking. One moment!"
The men knelt behind the washer and drier; outside, the others pushed the window into place and crouched out of sight. The door opened, flooding the dark room with light from the hall, and a heavy- set man stepped inside. He half-closed the door and looked to a switch box set into the wall behind it. It was too dark. He cursed softly and turned to the string of the hanging bulb.
The silenced pistol fired upward from the crouched position of the killer, two quick shots putting tiny bullets through the man's right eye. The noise of the gunshots seemed terribly loud inside the closet, but the intruders doubted any would notice it beyond a few feet from the half-closed door. The spent shells clattered ringingly to the tile floor. The rounds did not have the power to punch through the skull and create an exit wound, only enough to enter and ricochet from his skull, probably more than once, inside the brain. The man blinked in confusion as blood welled in his eye socket, and he took a hesitant step back before he collapsed. The other intruder stepped up to catch the man as he fell, then shoved him out the window to the others.
The first stuffed his silenced pistol into his pouch and pulled another, a Czechoslovakian nine millimeter automatic. The intruders entered more quickly; two more stepped inside, these carrying squarish Ingram machine pistols with fat suppressors. Outside, the other intruders were in place: it was time to move.
And not soon enough: another man came down the hall and glanced into the closet, asking impatiently, "Jorge, what is the . . ." He had enough time to look with widening eyes at the four disguised men before a suppressed burst tore into him. He fell bloodily to the floor, and the men darted out to the hall. From outside they heard another suppressed burst, then a shout of alarm quickly and painfully silenced.
The sounds of conversation had gone quiet inside the house, though music still blared. A woman laughed. Then a huge man stepped into the hall; the intruders recognized him from their briefings as the head of their target's bodyguards. His eyes were crazed, his nose bright red from a night of chemical abuse, white powder still visible on his mustache. He carried a gleaming machete. He saw the intruders and lunged howling toward them, nearest the one with the pistol.
The intruder felt the pulse pound in his throat as the raid turned to combat and sharp death barreled toward him; time seemed to creep, and the next second stretched into endless images of immediacy: he raised his pistol and fired, the unsuppressed gunshot thunderous in the quiet, putting a round into the huge man's stomach to no apparent effect; then another, then another, walking the shots up, one through the sternum, the next through the throat, and even as his blood spurted out the man stepped forward with the machete raised for a diagonal slash, as good for cleaving a man as for stalks of jungle foliage; the intruder scrambled back and aside, darting clumsily for the cover of a doorway, then the others fired, and a dozen rounds pierced the bodyguard's arm, shoulder, torso, and skull. His momentum carried him crashing to the carpet.
The intruder shook his head for an instant as he hauled himself back up. One of the others winked, his eyes showing the humor that his mask concealed, then signaled with his fingers: move in.
More shots rang out, then shouts and screams. The intruders moved to the next doorways and tossed grenades: more shouts, then flashing explosions, mostly noise. The intruders leaned in low, inspected the rooms visually for a quarter-second before mercilessly shooting their disoriented targets, men and women alike. They moved on, then the one with the pistol reached a stairwell. He glanced back, and his partner relayed the signal to their leader. The order was returned as silently. The two of them moved up the stairs.
On the upper level they found empty rooms. Below they heard gunshots and shouts, suppressed bursts, then the booming report of a shotgun, not one of theirs, only once before the return fire. They found another set of stairs behind a door, leading up to the attic. A faint light shone there. They moved up.
They saw their quarry sitting on the wood floor amid crates and boxes with another man, an older man the intruders recognized as the family physician, a strange character with a background full of inexplicable gaps. Their quarry was barely twenty years old, Eduardo Spinoza, the son of Manuel Spinoza, one of the chief new Colombian drug lords. Before the two sitting men stood a strange brazier of some dull metal lit with glowing embers, above which yellow smoke hovered, seeming to glow of its own accord as much as from the pale flame below. Above them hung the nude bodies of six young women, bound to the attic rafters. All of them were dead and recently mutilated. The smoke curled about them, seeming to touch their bloody hair and flesh with languid attention.
The doctor spoke dreamily in a murmuring, rasping voice: "Oh! See, Eduardo: the King has heard our prayer! He sends angels of night and dream from the mists of Carcosa." Then he looked up and saw the two intruders stepping into view.
"On the floor or die," one of them barked in Spanish.
"But," objected the doctor in confusion, "all is not yet ready."
Eduardo looked dazed.
Within the pale smoke black shapes formed, vague but solid, wheeling in flight and then darting downward. Outside, a man loosed a grunting scream, uncontrolled agony quickly suppressed by instinct and training. In the intruders' earphones they heard their team break radio silence.
"Shit! Get d-unngggk . . . ."
"Man down, man down, watch the trees!"
A dark shape in the pale smoke grew larger than the rest, as if flying nearer to the viewers in the attic.
Eduardo leapt to his feet and darted back for a bay window set into the wall.
The first intruder fired twice into the doctor's head and throat, training and experience compensating some for the inevitable shakiness of combat. His partner shouted and turned his machine pistol toward the smoking brazier.
The dark shape there loomed hugely forward.
It leapt forth on hairy insect legs, one of its bony wings buffeting the first intruder over and cutting a slash into his shoulder. Even as its prey loosed a burst from his machine pistol the thing lunged at him with snapping claws and a savage beak: the bullets entered the thing's dusty carapace and passed through its wings and hit the boxes beyond, then the monstrosity landed upon him. Its beak rose and fell and its claws grasped, and then it lifted the man high by his glistening entrails. The corpses swayed from the rafters overhead.
Eduardo crashed through the window and landed hard on the grass, twenty feet below. The other intruder scrambled for the window, yanking a Chinese high-explosive grenade from his belt. His racing mind verged on horrified panic, but he suppressed it, willed himself to action and well-honed instinct. Don't think--Jesus, that thing--don't think-- don't think! The monster dropped its prey with a wet thud, and turned toward him just as he tossed the grenade. It rolled along the floor and glanced off of the strange metal of the brazier. He leapt through the window. The world tumbled crazily for an instant, then he slammed roughly into the earth.
The monster leapt after him; it was directly above the pallid smoke of the brazier when the grenade exploded. The explosion was weaker than it should have been, but it tore a hole in the floor and walls and sent the brazier crashing into the boxes and further mutilated the dead women. Outside, other creatures looming on evil wings over their prey were engulfed in the same weak explosive force, then vanished. Two men near the monsters were sent reeling or killed outright by the concussion.
The one who had thrown the grenade lay on the grass for a second, winded by the fall, his left wrist twisted into a painful angle. He staggered to his knees, then saw Eduardo hobble into a car in the driveway. The intruder rasped, "Stop," then he grimaced and ducked again, covering his face with his arm as Eduardo ignored him. The young man turned the key, shouting with a rush of triumph.
The car exploded as the starter sparked eight ounces of Soviet plastique.
When the battered intruder stood again, he heard the others reporting over their radio link. Three of them remained functional. Over the next few minutes two of them set incendiaries around the house, while he checked the fallen and dragged them to the yard. Then they heard the whoofing sound of an approaching helicopter.
When it landed the men piled the bodies and themselves inside, while other soldiers watched from behind mounted machine guns. They heard distant sirens, but no one else could be seen nearby. As the helicopter lifted away the house went up in a pillar of flame.
Sam Dee, Petty Officer Second Class, United States Navy Medical Corps, SEAL Team Two, cradled his sprained wrist and listened to ragged breathing echo within his own ears. He was twenty-five years old. Through the deepening tunnel-vision of rushing adrenaline and creeping shock he looked at the other wide-eyed survivors of the raid. None of them said a word.
None knew what the hell they would report when the helicopter landed.
Commander Horace Richards stood before the window in his office on the Marine base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, staring out across the painted asphalt of a motor pool at the distant green paneling of the enlisted barracks. Richards had organized the Panama raid, and he had fully expected that it would come off like clockwork and result in the apprehension of a source of valuable intelligence about the Spinoza family. Now he expected to spend weeks explaining himself to the Navy brass as well as the CIA and DIA spooks who would want the story.
He hardly blamed the SEALs who had carried out the mission. They had run into something the intelligence reports had not predicted. Intelligence was never perfect; in most circumstances they would have handled whatever came up. The fact, however, that the team had suffered significant losses, and the risk that would be posed to future operations, were of more immediate concern than any failings in the CIA or the satellite-watchers of the NSA. Richards would rather have throttled the chief spook of the operation, but protocol left that pleasure to figures higher than he. His only recourse was making sense of the the reports of the men within his command. They were battered and shaken, but they would still respond to the abuse of training. He frowned and forced himself again to be the interrogator.
Sam Dee stood uncomfortably at attention behind him, waiting, silently keeping time with the the throbs of pain in his wrist.
Richards turned to face him."We have not gotten a straight answer yet about this clusterfuck. We had a top-notch squad demolished out there. By who? And I don't want to hear about any bug-eyed flying fucking monkeys, either, mister. Who were they?"
Dee stared coldly at the officer. "I don't know, sir. They hit us by surprise. I don't guess any of us got too good a look."
"You said you were right up under one of them."
"Well, I don't know, sir, maybe I got confused in between shooting unarmed hookers in the back."
"We went over those orders in your briefing, God damn it. Word came down from ONI and CIA. It had to come off like a local smash-and- grab. And don't try to change the subject on me, Dee. I have zero time for bullshit."
"Aye, sir."
"So then they ran away."
"They disappeared, sir."
"After they tore your squad a new asshole."
"I guess they did, sir. They sure didn't open a few beers to talk it over, sir."
Commander Richards stepped closer and leaned into Dee's face. Dee blinked, but his face remained stony. "Don't fuck with me, E-5," said Richards. "That's the last slack I plan to cut you. I can . . ."
The door opened, and two men stepped in. Rear Admiral Tony Johnston they both recognized, and both knew things suddenly had gotten very deep indeed. The other man, unknown, wore a bland dark suit and an infantry-grade crewcut.
"Dismissed, Commander," said Johnston easily. Both sailors stood straight at attention and saluted.
"Uh . . . ," asked Richards, "sir?"
"Did I stutter?"
"Dismissed, aye, sir." He saluted again and walked out quickly.
Dee held his salute until the admiral returned it and closed the door. "Sit down, son," he said. "We have a little to talk about."
Johnston was sixty years old with snowy hair. He had piloted a warship near the Mekong for four years in Vietnam, his boat one of the many used as springboard and support for covert land operations launched by SEALs and Marine Recon teams. In the years since then he had stayed close to the world of grey and black ops. He had done his share to support men like Dee, men who would face arrest and prison or execution more quickly than they would ever wear a badge or medal for their "unsanctioned" experiences.
Dee relaxed slightly and sat. His back remained straight at attention. He waited.
"Petty Officer Samuel David Dee," observed Johnston, taking Richards' chair at the desk. "I've read your file. Richards has written some flattering things there. Passing scores in knife school, but top scores in pistol and judo training. Good at ambush. Sharp memory, quick logical skills, close attention to detail, focused, not easily distracted. He says you're a fine corpsman. He also says you turned down a shot at medical training. Why?"
"Hard to say, sir. I guess I just like the field."
Johnston grunted and leaned forward. His eyes glittered. "Don't equivocate with me, Petty. It's not your style. You're spooked, aren't you?"
Dee remained expressionless. "I'll get by, sir."
"Hell. Answer my question. Why did you turn down the recommendation for medical school?"
"I'm a SEAL, sir. I trained for the field, not to sit on books. I figure I'd get bored as hell, if you'll pardon the expression, sir."
"I see. What got you spooked out there in Panama, Dee?"
"Sir? We've been debriefed . . ."
"I know that. The report was vague. Richards is sharp, he knows when to start covering his ass and yours. 'Unidentified enemy troops, including paratroops employing unknown technology.' Is that right?"
Dee paused, licked his lip slightly. "That sounds about right, sir."
"Bullshit. I've seen Richards' squads run into 'unknown technology' before, and they did fine. And from your file, I'd say you're definitely sharp enough to know the difference. What tore your squad up, Petty?"
"Sir?"
"It wasn't any unidentified enemy troops, was it?"
Dee remained silent. Johnston glanced up at the other man, who waited silently through all this. The man said nothing. Johnston looked at Dee again.
"Mister Dee," he said, "I think you ran into something that you never saw or even heard of before. I bet it was unnatural, just about as scary as hell, and I expect it'll go down as a sea-story in the barracks and nothing more than Richards' vague-ass report in the books, which will all be torched before anybody can read them anyway. Does that about sum it up?"
"Just about, sir."
"I want details. You think you're the first? We've seen some shit before. Maybe the same, maybe different but just as wrong. No way to know until I get a straight answer from you."
"I . . ." Dee took a breath. "There was this thing, this torch- looking thing."
The other man spoke, finally. "A brazier?"
Dee glanced at him. "Maybe. Anyway, they were in that, sort of. I don't know if we killed any of them, sir . . . ."
Two hours later Dee stood alone in the hall outside. His mind still leapt from question to question despite his fatigue. Over and over the same images reappeared: a massive black shape, dusty carapace, bony wings, all forming from nothingness and then returning thence, leaving only death and horror. Unidentified troops would look good on the minutes, but it wouldn't help them deal with the . . . things . . . the next time they appeared. And what of the things?
How had the impossible suddenly come into deadly reality?
Johnston and the other man remained in Richards' office, five feet away on the other side of the door. Dee could hear their voices.
"He's a virgin, admiral."
"Not anymore. Besides, he's seen more combat than I have, and he's not whining for any medals he knows he can't get. I think he can hack it."
"Combat, shit. You know what that counts for."
"I know it's a place to start. He's the only one who got a look at the artifact. He's kept it together this long. I think you can use him."
There was a pause. "I'm not comfortable with it."
"You don't need to be comfortable, Major, you need to execute the damn mission."
A moment later the door opened. The "Major" nodded to Dee. "Care to join us again, Mister Dee?"
Dee stepped past him, and the man shut the door once more.
"Dee," said Admiral Johnston, "I want you to listen sharp."
Dee nodded and stood at attention. "Aye, sir."
"This is Josh Barnes, Drug Enforcement Administration, formerly of the Special Forces. He was a major when the Army let him go. He now owns you. Every word he says, you listen up and you follow it like it came from my mouth. You following me, Petty?"
"Aye, sir. Agent Barnes owns me."
"That's right. Everything you witnessed in that raid, and everything you were briefed on for it and for other action involving the Spinoza group, you make available for Barnes. He has the clearance. If you hold out, I'll come looking for you. He already knows I'll come looking for him if he fucks anything up."
"Aye, sir."
"Very good. Gentlemen, I wish you luck. I'll expect a report in the near future."
"Begging your pardon, sir . . ."
Johnston looked at him. "What is it, Dee?"
"What were they, sir?"
Johnston stared silently at him for a long moment. "You ever look at a mirror sideways, Dee?"
"Sir? When I was a kid, maybe."
"You look at a mirror from the side, you see zip. You have to turn it forward, then you see something, all of a sudden. Those things you ran into . . . . Well, maybe they're what's in the mirror when you look at it head-on. Maybe somebody learned how to turn the mirror straight, when all the time we only see it from the side. I figure those things crossed the space in between."
Dee's jaw was tight as he considered this.
"Hell of a fucking world, right? Take it slow, Dee," said Johnston. "Don't wrap your brain around it too much. Those things you ran into, you want a shot at wasting them?"
His voice was tense. "Absolutely, sir."
"Good. Don't try to take it much farther than that. You might be bright enough to see more than you'll want."
The flight to Colombia was quiet, even though Dee and Barnes had the transport almost to themselves. Get some rest, Barnes had said, and Dee needed no explanation. He remembered the same lesson from training, when he and the other trainees in Basic Underwater Demolition School were the midst of Hell Week. Rest up while you can, fairies, said one field instructor, expounding endlessly upon the dangers of being less than alert on a real mission. Sleep now, or forever hold your piece. But sleep never came on the flight; when his eyes closed, Dee saw only spiny black hairs and glistening claws in the gap between shadows.
Bogota was all heat and noise after Dee's two-week recuperation in the locked-down quiet of Guantanamo's restricted barracks. Traffic moved at a crawl. The car's air conditioning at full power did little more than push hot air after hotter. People walked past and rode past on mopeds and motorcycles, swerving between crawling cars and the scarred trunks of palm trees.
Barnes finally broke the silence.
"This car's been swept clean, so we can talk. And that's lesson one, cherry. You don't say a single thing about the mission unless I tell you it's safe."
"Aye, sir."
"Aye, nothing. You've been doing black ops for a while now. This is blacker than black, what we're getting into. You never heard of that, and you didn't hear it just now. Just remember: you don't take any of this with you to the bullshit sessions and card tables. Ever. And shitcan the 'Aye, sir' business. Why do you think you're wearing that suit and tie? Your cover is civilian, not Navy."
"Yessir."
"Better. All right. You've never done spook work, so you got a nice, simple cover. You're you. Sam Dee. Except the last two years you haven't been doing black ops down south, you've been working security for me, full-time bodyguard work. With your corpsman training and can-do attitude, you do it fairly well, and I pay you better than you could get doing cop work anywhere. You saved my ass once, and you got my daughter out of a bad date last year. I'm an investor. Oil money out of Texas. Lots of oil. I'm in Colombia looking for pharmaceutical concerns to match up with, and looking for a little snuff while I'm here. There's a venture capital investors' convention in Bogota the next couple of days, so if we look cocky and slack-assed enough we ought to blend.
"In a few minutes we'll be meeting the other operative. He's Elliot Ritter, an NSA spook. COMSEC and COMINT and SIGINT, mostly, plus some specialized training. In his cover he's my partner, a fellow investor running the same firm. He'll lie low, mostly, to work the technical gear while you and I deal with HUMINT, human intelligence. But he knows more about the world than you do, so stay sharp and don't talk too much."
Dee glanced at Barnes slightly askance. "Got it, sir."
The next two days were hectic, each an eighteen hour jaunt through the slums and heights of Bogota playing businessman and bodyguard while Barnes sniffed out contacts who might have access to the Spinoza family. Ritter did not venture out once; for every hour that Barnes and Dee combed the streets, Ritter checked and double-checked their communications and electronic security and tracked the bugs and tracers that Dee surreptitiously placed on vehicles or furniture that Barnes selected.
The safe-house was a one-story block of just-painted brick, pale blue and drab in a hedge-lined yard. Dee supposed it was meant to look cheery; the records showed it rented to a Houston investment firm. There were gaps in the hedges, but no nearby buildings were high enough to allow sight into the house or yard. Elliot Ritter swept the house and their vehicles and personal belongings for bugs irregularly but annoyingly often; he kept track of photographic-capable satellite schedules through three portable computers; another two were linked to government and private communication channels and databases. Pocket- portable receiver/recorders ran non-stop on feeds from microphones planted on Barnes and, with Dee's help, on the contacts with whom they had met over the past thirty-six hours. The house seemed piled high with orderly collections of weaponry and electronics. Dee and Ritter sat at a dining table, taking notes on recordings while Barnes took a shift to sleep.
"No, no, sir, you do not understand," said a plaintive voice on one recorder. "I only see Master Spinoza rarely, only when I make deliveries, and then only sometimes. I never go far into his home."
"I understand," said Barnes' voice. "Listen, friend: If you have the chance to enter the Spinoza household, you should inform me. It is very important to me. I can make it worth your while, no?" A hint of menace crept into his voice. There was a pause.
"Yes, of course. Of course. I will tell you at once should such an . . . opportunity arrive."
"Thank you."
Ritter chuckled. "Josh is slick. He should have gone with CIA. The way he's laying it on now, if he's not careful he'll have half the thugs in this city trying to break into the Spinoza house." Ritter was thin and blonde, with a suntan that looked somehow uncomfortable on his weedy frame. He wore thick wire-rimmed glasses. He was thirty-five years old.
Dee asked, "Why all the heat for Eduardo? In the files it looked like he was a bit player. We wanted him for his contacts, but he was replaceable."
Ritter shook his head. "If you're after the drugs, he was replaceable. Sure, you can get better intelligence from half a dozen goons in Spinoza's house."
"But we're not after the drugs."
"You're the one who tangoed with the demons, right?"
Dee looked away.
"Moving to Contact David-Zero," said Barnes' voice on the speaker.
"Look," said Ritter, with a grim smile, "you did okay, sounds like. Better than I did, first time in the Dark."
"You been in a lot of scrapes like that, then?"
Ritter looked at the rolling tapes. "That's classified, kid." He took a drink of coffee. "You up on your Greenwich Village?"
Dee smiled. "I let it lapse the last year or two. But the reports said Spinoza bankrolls several galleries, and Eddie Spinoza had a show up there. Sounded like some softcase got turned on by the notoriety, then the critics came down hard and they canceled the show."
"Yeah, something like that. Did they show you any of his work?"
"No."
"Figures. Eddie's work featured certain . . . symbolism. Things that attracted our attention. It's hard to explain it any more than that."
Dee mulled that over for a moment. "How many of you are there, Ritter?"
Ritter took another sip of coffee. "Just us, kid," he lied. "Just us and the Admiral."
Dee slept for a few hours that night. Barnes woke him. "Up and at em," he said from the doorway of the bedroom. "Ritter caught a bug."
Ritter's "bug" was a repeating set of scrambled radio signals emanating from eight separate locations, according to the receivers they had established throughout the city. "Source Alpha-One, here." He pointed to a marked location on a computer screen. "Beta-One, here. Alpha-Two, here," he pointed to another location. , "and Beta-Two, here. Gamma-One . . . Gamma-Two. Same pattern, eight times. One signal emits, then another responds."
Barnes looked dubious. "You sure? It looks random to me."
"Sure it does. It's supposed to look random. If it doesn't, the spooks aren't doing their job right. But look. Distances all fall within a set range. And each 'One' source corresponds to a given range of proximity to a known Spinoza affiliate or an American or British intelligence, law enforcement, military, or diplomatic resource."
"That's a lot of possibilities, and that range of proximity leaves a lot of leeway."
"Maybe. But I wouldn't bet that way."
"All right," said Barnes. "Keep following the sources. Find patterns. I want to know where one's going to be, or close to it as we can get."
Ritter looked at him questioningly. Barnes nodded.
"Yeah, maybe. I want to set up a little meeting to find out for sure. This will have to take priority over checking out Spinoza's contacts."
Two days later, Dee shuffled down a Bogota street, wearing local clothes and aping the demeanor of young local men he had seen, and trying hard to look like he was just on his way to a party. Cars drove past; with each honk of a horn he tensed slightly, each time more sure it was the signal. It was past ten o'clock at night.
Acquiring a target had not been too hard, really. Dee and Barnes had established surveillance on coordinates provided and updated by Ritter. Barnes was adept at the work, and Dee learned quickly. Look for the ones who look dangerous, Barnes had said. Most of the time the coordinates moved slowly, if at all. The difficult part had come with the less-mobile sources, when they restricted their movement to indoors, only hitting the streets for short times when Ritter said IMINT sources were less likely to be recording from the skies.
Now Dee's target walked ahead of him at a brisk pace, unaware, hopefully, of his shadow. He was either a native or he knew the area well; there was nothing of the tourist about him. He wore a plain dark suit and he walked with efficiency and purpose. Something about his demeanor set Dee's senses off: Special Forces, or maybe Recon, he thought, I can smell it.
The maneuver was being timed carefully by Ritter. None of the usual imagery intelligence satellites were positioned to observe, but his sources had indicated that a commercial satellite had been covertly repositioned, one capable of taking ground-level-quality photographs of events in Bogota. The good news was that it only took its shots every ninety seconds.
Dee didn't bother to ask how Ritter's sources got their information, or how a privately-ownedsatellite could be "covertly repositioned" by people in whom Barnes and Ritter would take an interest.
Now he stalked along casually and waited for Barnes to decide the time was right. He hated it. How long's this poor bastard been in a suit? He wondered, catching peripheral glimpses of the man ahead of him. I can take him down, but what if we missed something? No Team, here, no squad, no nothing. Mano a mano. He grinned slightly. It was too bad he wouldn't be able to take the story to his Team afterward, he thought. Team or no Team, I'm still a SEAL, and that guy's just Infantry. Mano a mano, plus my little toy. Fuck yeah, then. You ready to dance, mano?
The crowd thinned slightly as the man turned and began walking up a hill. Dee quickened his pace slightly and walked closer behind the man.
A car honked its horn, a long beat and a short one.
That's it, he thought, and he thumbed a button on the device in his pocket.
Suddenly every speaker within hearing distance emitted a tooth- jarring squeal of feedback. The target snarled and reached up, yanking a small earphone from his ear. He looked stunned as he turned to catch a glimpse of Dee's rushing approach: Dee's footsteps made hardly any sound.
Dee sent his fist into the man's midsection, two knuckles raised as he punched his solar plexus. The man gagged and folded but did not go down. By reflex he threw his arm up, swayed into a balanced position, and send his other hand pummeling low for his assailant. Dee deflected the fist with a knife-edged hand, curling his fingers around the man's wrist as he did so, twisting in the same motion. The man stepped in and rolled and nearly broke the maneuver, but he was slow, out of breath, and then he was tumbling over Dee's leg and hurtling for a grim instant through space. He slammed into the wall head-first and crumpled.
A cab pulled up. Dee hauled the man inside, and the driver floored the pedal and drove off like a shot. Behind them Dee saw people looking in confusion at the fleeing cab and the site of the brief action. Dee removed a throat-mike from beneath the man's collar and tossed it out the window, then secured his hands with plastic cuffs. Barnes produced a fat syringe and injected the man with a foul-looking serum.
The cab dropped them off at a rented dental office, three miles away. Barnes had given the driver an imposing stack of American money and advised him to move his family to another country.
Dee hauled the man inside in a fireman's carry, slung over one shoulder. The office building was empty, this late at night, but Barnes had keys. There were no security measures in the building beyond the door locks.
Forty-five minutes later they finished examining and preparing the subject.
"Three teeth is it, then," Ritter said. "No other biological mods."
"Right. Any reason to take out the other two?"
"No, they're empty."
The third tooth had already been extracted. Dee had never performed the procedure before, but he had agreed to muddle through it. Just like working on a regular bone, he had told himself, but in fact it had not been so complex: the tooth was artificial to begin with, made for relatively easy replacement. It was filled with poison, ready to be loosed with hard pressure in just the right place. Dee had laughed at the theatrics of it.
The captive was strapped to the dentist's chair. He had been stirring for several minutes.
"You say his head wound's all right?"
"I gave him a nice bump," said Dee, "but I don't think it's worse than that. Hard to tell, though, with that drug screwing his eyes up."
"Yeah. It takes a while for 'em to wake up with this cocktail," Barnes said, nodding to the vial of the foul-looking serum. "But he ought to be about ready."
"Good," said Ritter. "We've lost an hour already. If we take more than another two, I won't feel as safe."
Dee looked at him. "Why two?"
Barnes answered. "State secrets, kid." He stepped over to the captive and slapped his face.
The man shuddered and opened his eyes. His pupils were wide, their black engulfing each cornea even in the harsh light of the room. "Wh . . . what . . . ?"
Barnes smiled. "Think of this as a test, genius."
The captive looked around, wide-eyed. "You're not Security."
"What makes you say that?"
The man blinked. He shook his head. His eyes remained wide. "Fuck you."
"That drug kicking in yet, tough guy? I bet it's got your vision just as screwy as can be." He leaned down closer to the man. "Maybe we're FBI. Maybe we got tired of you dumbfucks scanning all our Legat's conversations."
"No."
"Maybe we're CIA. Yeah? Maybe this is a black op, and you're the duck that's getting dead."
The man said nothing. He blinked his inky-looking eyes.
"Maybe I'm an alien," said Barnes softly. "Maybe I'm a Grey, and I want to pick your brain and probe your ass. Conversation and kinky sex. Hell, that sounds to me like a good date. What do you say, soldier?"
The man said nothing. He looked increasingly confused, as if overwhelmed by sensations.
Barnes continued. He seemed to be enjoying himself. "What do you think? Are those skinny bastards just trying to be sociable?"
"I don't understand," said the man. "What are you--"
"Don't you try to lie to me. Look at me! We have you juiced up on shit I can't even pronounce. I know you can't tune me out or screw with me. You're not even physically capable of it right now."
The man stared at him. His face twisted into a strange amalgam of fear and rage and credulity.
Barnes said, "You boys are after Spinoza, aren't you? Why?"
The man shook his head. "No . . . no . . . No, we're after . . . I mean . . . it's . . ."
"TALK!" Barnes shouted, and the man physically cringed, as if the word itself had been driven into his brain. Barnes leaned down. "Why are you after Spinoza? Why are you after Spinoza? Why--"
"THE YELLOW SIGN!" The man seemed to shriek despite his own will. He looked baffled and horrified at the words he was speaking. "He has seen the Yellow Sign, and we must learn where!"
"Who must learn? Who?"
"We . . . They said . . ."
Ritter turned to Dee. "Let's check the halls," he said quietly.
"THEY who?" yelled Barnes.
"They said . . ."
Ritter nudged Dee. His voice was harder. "Move."
"WHO?" Barnes still shouted.
Dee stepped out to the hall ahead of Ritter. He heard the captive shout as Ritter closed the door behind them.
"The OUTSIDERS!"
Dee and Ritter conducted a slow patrol of the halls, steering clear of those with line-of-sight from large windows. Ritter seemed thoughtful.
After the first sweep, Dee said, "What's that mean, 'The outsiders'?"
"He was delusional. Power of suggestion: all that talk about the Greys. Barnes had to mix in the fantastic with the ordinary to get the subject's thought processes moving in the right direction. It's the way the drug works, or something. He could have talked about elves and goblins and got a similar result."
"Then why . . ."
"Why'd I move you? In case he does say something real. Didn't Barnes give you the 'Blacker than Black' speech?"
They walked in silence for a few minutes.
"Tell me something, Ritter. Which are we? The Hatfields, or the McCoys?"
Ritter looked at him, said nothing.
Dee persisted. "What's this all about, Elliot?"
"What do you mean?"
Dee glanced back at the dentist's door. "I mean, Barnes was going at it like he'd been waiting years to get that guy on the slab. Christ, he had a hard-on before the spook woke up."
"You want to know if this is personal?"
"Is it?"
Ritter was silent for a moment. Then: "We'll probably never know who that sap is, not really. Odds are we won't get much useful out of him. Then we'll probably pass him up to our bosses and move on, same as his people would do to us, have been doing to us for years."
"He's an American operative?"
"He's part of an outfit that operates above and beyond the chain of law and command. They're traitors and spies. Barnes is just enjoying the moment. The worm doesn't turn too often."
"So it is personal."
"It all gets personal, sometimes. All the shit. I'll tell you something. Back in the world, a stranger is playing with my kids and sleeping with my wife. What the hell am I doing here?"
Dee did not answer.
"So I guess that makes it pretty damn personal to me," said Ritter.
"Then why are you here?"
"This is the job." He was quiet for a moment. "When I was a kid, I wanted to be on BLUE BOOK. Man, I ate that stuff up. The Air Force and flying saucers, right on the edge of meeting people from other worlds, all of it. Of course, they canceled BLUE BOOK right after I graduated the Air Force Academy. So I stayed in signals intelligence and communications intelligence, and I kept my ears open. I half-way didn't believe BLUE BOOK was really shut down. I figured, if they said BLUE BOOK had been a smokescreen, then maybe that's just a smokescreen itself. You work close enough to intelligence, you start seeing three sides to every lie.
"So, anyway, all the time I kept studying other things, too. All the secrets and codes and lies that we've always had. I mean humanity, not just America. It got me into some strange skies. Kabbalists say that every word of the Pentateuch has many meanings; not just the story that we learn in Sunday school, but each letter is symbolic of something else. What if they could decipher that code? Then there were European alchemists, who took it a step further and saw symbolism and correspondences in the elements and in our souls. People still think they were just trying to get rich by trying to turn lead to gold.
"But that was just the start. Senzar, Aklo . . . But anyway, that's how I found The King in Yellow, and the Yellow Sign."
"Yeah? What is it?"
"The Sign . . ." He sighed. "The King in Yellow is just a play. Sort of existential fantasy, heavy on the symbolism. At least, that's what it seems like. A godlike King comes back to pass judgment on his rebellious and doubting subjects, and then their city turns into his city, their reality becomes his reality. Hastur and Carcosa are one. The only truth is the King," he continued quietly, staring dreamily for a moment into the shadows, "and doubt becomes despair. It cropped up around the turn of the century and stirred up a lot of controversy, then it got suppressed after a lot of readers went suicidal with depression.
"A few years ago somebody published it again in a horror story. He said he'd gotten hold of the original and transcribed it. I don't know why. Notoriety, maybe, or maybe he wanted to make it seem real to keep the dilettantes away from the real thing. It didn't take much digging to realize that he'd written a fake.
"The Sign is just a symbol, a sigil they drew on the cover of the play. In the play, people who knew the Yellow Sign were doomed. Sooner or later, everybody found the Yellow Sign. Neither is much of anything to look at, on their own. It's what they imply that makes them strange."
"And?"
"I think they are metaphor and emblem of the truth of reality."
Dee waited. Ritter sighed again. "Look, we've been telling each other the same story all along, in religion, in art, philosophy, politics . . . Is beauty the sense of purity, of truth? We're a race of screaming monkeys who can only tell the truth with lies."
"So you know the truth, now? From that play?"
"Eddie Spinoza did. Something in his paintings . . . He showed it obliquely, just shadows of it, just like we always see it."
"But you want it straight-on."
"Don't you want the truth?"
Dee shrugged away the disquiet that he felt. "Eddie's dead and gone, and his paintings were scrapped. After this mission, I plan on going back to the world in one piece and seeing my mom and meeting girls and smoking cigarettes and getting drunk, and the hell with hairy fucking bugs. Then I'll head back to Coronado and get wet and sandy, and if I'm lucky they'll start giving these city ops to Delta Force again. And that's good enough for me. I figure, the rest of it, that's just college philosophy. That just sounds like all those hippies and artists saying 'God is dead' to look profound."
Ritter smiled bitterly. "If only they were right."
The home of Manuel Spinoza was an estate of surpassing beauty and exquisite design, a lush and sprawling garden which arose fragrant and magnificent around high houses, long barns, and wide corrals. Spinoza was born on the streets of Bogota, an urchin gifted with nothing but his own iron will and remarkable cunning. And luck: Spinoza was certainly born with luck. By his fortieth birthday he was one of the wealthiest men in Colombia, a man to be reckoned with, a modern aristocrat who cultivated the stylings of a feudal Spanish lord. Merchant and killer, noble and fixer, prideful in his right to contradiction and hypocrisy, in his heart he was a lover of beauty, and over the years he spent anonymous fortunes indulging that love. More than one gallery and obscure playhouse survived by this shadowy benefactor.
His wife was named Mariel. She was sixteen when she was wed to forty-year old Manuel, and she was seventeen when she bore him his first and only child. For many years Manuel isolated Mariel and his son from the hard truths of his world and brought a succession of fine tutors to provide the education which his wife desired for herself and their child. The boy, Eduardo, had shared his father's artistic temperament, and thanks to his father's wealth he enjoyed the luxury to exert his skills; but likewise he gave free reign to pride, and so he had taken especial glee in the controversy that attached to shows which featured the son of the infamous drug lord. Long distant from the brutal world of his father's life, Eduardo had been careless.
Mariel had been distant for several days, pensive at times, steeped in black misery at others, and strangely dreamy in odd moments that none around her could predict. She seemed to drift further every day. Soon she no longer called her servants by name, and when she heard their names she seemed disinterested or simply baffled. They treated her gently, nevertheless. Her husband was worse. Both had been affected deeply by the death of their only son.
She watched every sunset. She would sit at the window just so, and look out over her shoulder to the deepening pink and purple of the sky and the gathering shadows of the forest and the distant droning city. The sun often reflected from the gentle ripples of the pond. "The Sun is weeping again," she would say in that dreamy voice. "See his tears? They shine yellow and gold in the water." Her maid was around her most in these times, and she would nod and speak encouragingly, while inwardly she ached to leave and to spend time with her family, with life. Her mistress was dying inside. She had been dying since they brought the news of Eduardo's death.
She sat by the window again. She looked out to it, looking sideways over her shoulder as always, her hand folded in her lap. Her maid waited not far away, hating the room. Eduardo's art was hung prominently all about. It was unnatural stuff, imagery that looked fanciful but implied despair. It mocked the sensations which it evoked.
Heavy footsteps came shuffling along the hall. The maid recognized the gait: Mister Spinoza was drunk. Only drunk; he never indulged in the drugs which his family so profitably produced. He never allowed his employees to touch the stuff. There had been rumors that Eduardo had broken the taboo and that Mr. Spinoza had turned a blind eye, but others said it was not so. The maid thought Eduardo had seemed too sensitive to take an interest in cocaine. Perhaps she was indulging her own ideals; certainly Eduardo had painted nothing to draw forth unaltered love or confidence from life.
Manuel Spinoza pushed the door open and looked inside at his wife. He ignored the maid. He took a noisy breath through his nose. "Mariel," he said, with the tone of a man making a great pronouncement. "Our son is dead."
The maid frowned. Again, here he came to make the announcement, as if poor Mrs. Spinoza had not heard him say it every evening for two weeks.
Mariel nodded with a sigh. "Yes," she said. "Yes. He would say--the Phantom of Truth has been laid. Laid to rest, forever."
"He would. He would. But it is wrong!"
"Oh, of course it is."
"There was no Masquerade."
"No." She shook her head thoughtfully, and her face softened as emotions played across it: sadness, despair, a winsome smile; none, it seemed, could dominate.
Manuel remained silent. The maid's frown deepened: again they spoke of this nonsense, the crazy things from that book their son had loved. The book had been missing since Eduardo's death, but they had spent the past days entranced with its memory, entranced with the source of Eduardo's unwholesome inspiration. Then others in the household had become similarly obsessed, speaking of nothing but a dreaded King and rulers choked with ennui. It frightened the maid that they sometimes seemed to think it real.
"Oh." Mariel looked up and regarded her husband with a look that hinted of inspiration. "There may be one yet."
"How? The Phantom . . ."
"But he may come again, Manuel. Did Yhtill not arise? He may . . . You should be the priest, knowing and wise."
"I? But I . . ."
"You cannot be Aldones! We would be divided."
He grunted. "We have not read it, Mariel. Even you only heard the fragments that Eduardo spoke."
The maid stared silently at the floor.
Mariel seemed not to hear him. "Yes," said Mariel. "Yes, have them light the coals! Are the braziers still in place, where Eduardo and Doctor Subin placed them?"
"Here, and outside, yes."
"Have them light the coals. All shall come. All shall come and dance, and all the city of Hastur shall await the return of the Phantom of Truth."
"And the King?"
"Of course," she said softly, looking outside to the dimming world.
"I would rather end the Masquerade before then."
"There is no truth without its price."
He said nothing. She looked at him again, and she smiled with great sadness.
"Have we not seen the Yellow Sign?"
"That's not much to go on," said Ritter. They stood in the hall not far from the dentist's office, where Barnes had left their captive strapped to the chair.
"That's not all," said Barnes. "We're out of time. They're going to hit the place tonight."
"Tonight? He said that?"
"He guessed it. Standing orders for his squad: conduct operations outside the Spinoza compound proper, maintain surveillance, and breach the compound only when circumstance or evidence requires it."
Ritter nodded and scowled. "Circumstance; like one of their spooks getting caught."
"Two things, then," said Dee. "First off, who is our boy, and who are his friends?"
"His name doesn't matter. He's Special Forces, like you said. He's in a team of ten that were assigned to the Spinoza case. They don't know about the things that your team ran into. Which tells us a little about their resources, but not much."
"What kind of local assets will they have when they hit the place? What kind of firepower?"
"Assets, next to zero. You just heard the only useful information they got, and that was from the maid."
"What information? Spinoza had some kind of dance?"
"Had and still is having. They've had it every night for the past week. Everyone in the household has to dress up and come in masks. They make believe like they're characters in that play. Then everyone gets bored and goes to bed."
"And the braziers?" Ritter asked.
"Subin and Eduardo placed nine of them throughout the region. Two in Bogota, the others just out in the woods. Then they put nine more inside the Spinoza estate. Our boy's team followed that up right away and collected the ones outside. The maid said Spinoza has them light up the others every night before the dance."
"Where were they placed?"
"There's no telling. Our boy's too confused to give me details that precise."
"Crap," said Dee, "we can worry about their decorating later. You want us three to do something about a team of nine Green Berets who are going to hit the Spinoza house just to bust up a dance? Nine American Green Berets?"
"What I want is a strike force with air support, but I'm not going to get it. We have no choice. Either we move in fast, or we pick up the pieces."
"It's not just a dance," Ritter said quietly.
"No? Then what the hell is it that's got all of us going in balls-blazing?"
Ritter and Barnes were silent.
"Blacker than black, huh? I hope you have some tactics planned."
Barnes said, "You know the drill, sailor. They don't know we're coming. They'll be jamming up communications for their own raid. So we pick them off until they catch on, and we hope we can duke it out in a stand-up fight from then on."
"And I guess Spinoza's people will roll out the red carpet?"
"Spinoza's people are for the Green Berets to worry about."
Their feet crunched along in a steady chorus of leaves and rocks and drying sticks, and with each new step Dee fought the urge to turn and give his partners one of the icy lectures that he'd gotten in land warfare training. Even Barnes; especially Barnes: Barnes had been out of the field for a while, but he had been a Green Beret himself, once. He ought to know how to move quietly. Dee had objected to Ritter's coming along at all; he didn't have the training, and he could do more good with his gear at the safe house. Barnes had ignored the objections, saying they would need Ritter for his other skills. The plan of action was simple enough: Dee would move in at point, then he and Barnes would take out the opposition, then they would get Ritter inside to figure out what the hell was going on. With luck, the opposition would be obligingly careless and would go down quietly, one at a time.
Barnes had a Land Rover waiting for them at the dentist's office. They left their captive there; Barnes had said someone would retrieve him later. Barnes and Ritter and Dee had taken some gear from the safe-house and driven fast for the Spinoza estate, then they left the Land Rover off a side road two miles from the villa. They had infrared goggles, but Dee insisted that they allow no slack and take no chances. He figured that in the time it took them to hike there, their night vision would kick in and his companions would get used to the need to walk slow and soft. One out of two ain't bad, he thought, except when you're going in one to three against Special Forces.
As they walked, nobody spoke. Dee had plenty of time to think, with some detached part of his brain running nonstop while he focused on moving and on the sounds and smells and light of the dim world around him. They were a mile from the Spinoza estate; it was past four in the morning, and the forested hills were blanketed in stifling fog. That, at least, absorbed some of the sound; if his partners could be a little quieter, thought Dee, they might have a chance at surprise.
Every word he says, Admiral Johnston had ordered, you follow like it came from my mouth. Dee felt stupid that he had not asked for clarification or qualification. Would Admiral Johnston order him to move in and kill close to a dozen American soldiers? Would he brook the audacity it would take to question the order and verify it up the chain of command? Perhaps, or perhaps not. Dee had learned to follow orders over the past few years. He thrived as a SEAL because he was smart and he understood things quickly, but also because he moved, he acted and he executed plans without a lot of useless second-guessing and moralizing. Some duties were onerous, of course; sometimes he still heard the grunts and screams of dying prostitutes, women who simply had the singular misfortune to ply their trade with a tacit enemy of the United States government. But Dee was a soldier, first and last, and orders were orders, and once he decided a leader was worth following he knew his duty was to follow without question. Would Admiral Johnston order a hit on a squad of American soldiers? Who the hell knew? But he had sent Dee along on this operation with orders to follow Agent Barnes, and Dee felt confident he would only have done so after considering the implications.
As for the rest of it . . . He still could not quite put the interrogation together in his thought. Ritter's excuses and explanations had made sense, some of them, but some of them had clearly been bullshit. Still, Dee took it all seriously; he could easily recall the dusty horror which had nearly been his death, which had disemboweled a fine SEAL while others like it did worse to those outside. Eduardo and Doctor Subin had certainly seemed to have some relation to the monstrous things; and now Ritter and Barnes seemed to think that Eddie Spinoza's parents planned to conjure up similar things in their little masquerade. But Dee had no idea how the things had appeared, or how they might appear again. Somebody learned to turn the mirror, Johnston had suggested. Hell of a fucking world. Maybe so; but how would they turn the mirror back aright?
They seemed to come upon the estate suddenly: there was no light, no noise in the trees and rolling mists, only a thinning of the woods before a high wall which stretched away into the darkness. They huddled behind the trees for five minutes, listening and waiting.
"Power's off," breathed Dee. "No generator, either. No sentries, or else they're quiet as hell. Sounds like . . . sounds like voices in there, distant, a lot of people together."
"Masquerade," said Ritter.
"Yeah, most likely. Goggles." He lifted the goggles to his eyes and thumbed the power. Nothing happened. He switched it again; still there was only blackness. "What the hell?"
"Power's off, all right," said Barnes.
Dee slid the goggles off again. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Blacker than black, kid. They brought out the tools of the trade for this operation."
"You telling me our targets cut off the power to our own goggles?"
"That's what happened. Look on the bright side: they can't see shit, either."
"Shit. That's just great."
"Keep it together, Dee," Barnes warned.
"Don't tell me about keeping it together, Barnes," Dee said angrily. "You never saw together til you saw me in the field. But if we're going in blind against entrenched troops with special operations training, we'll need more than bad attitudes to come out again."
"I know how they operate," said Barnes. "I plan, you execute. That'll get it done."
Dee shook his head. "I guess we'll find out."
"Just keep your eyes open for signs of the targets," said Barnes. He stood.
Dee stood as well. "You better believe it."
They climbed over the wall. Dee went up first, using a mirror to scan the grounds on the other side. There was nobody, only the mist and trees, hedges and unlit buildings in shades of grey and black. He rolled over and hopped to the earth, leaving a rope affixed for the others to climb more quickly. Still no other movement disturbed them, no sign that any had sensed their intrusion.
They moved across the lawn at a jog, feet rustling the damp grass, belts and holsters jingling with each rough step. More than ever Dee wished for his old squad, for men who knew how to move in concert and who each knew how the others would act and react. He shook it off. This is the job, he told himself. Get it on, and save the rest for the debriefing. Soon enough they passed the first hedges and were moving through an orchard. There they paused. Dee smelled still water nearby, and mentally placed the orchard and the pond from the maps they had reviewed in the Land Rover. North of the pond would lay the main road which led to a village outside the estate. Away from the main house it would be easy to become disoriented, he thought; there were two orchards and any number of smaller gardens on the grounds, and the many small houses and buildings all seemed alike in the darkness.
He glanced at his companions. Barnes seemed hypervigilant, even then. His eyes darted back and forth, and he turned to look suspiciously at every breath of wind or soft step of an animal. Ritter was breathing hard from the jog, but he nodded when he caught Dee's eyes. All of them wore dark utility suits with kevlar vests, and Barnes and Dee carried submachine guns sporting long silencers.
Dee turned and had almost set off again when Barnes gestured for him to wait. Barnes stepped closer and breathed a whisper, barely audible.
"Tracks." He pointed to the earth. Dee saw nothing, but then Barnes had no doubt had better training from the Green Berets. "You move alone," whispered Barnes, "and quiet. That way." He pointed to the dim shape of a hedgerow in the darkness. "Ambush. Pick them off. Draw them out of formation. Then we'll hit them."
Dee stared at him silently for a moment, then he nodded and unbuckled his pack and his bandolier, any loose metal or leather to make unwanted noise, and dumped them. He even took the strap from his weapon. He did not think about it; he forced himself not to think about it. There was only the night, and the night held death in nine different guises unless he was quick and silent enough to defeat them.
He ran in nearly a crouch through the fog, his feet rustling along the moist grass, his neck buzzing with the rush of the hunt, his pulse pounding, his throat hot with latent fear well-restrained. This was it; this was the action, this was the apex of all his gory years. His Team had once jokingly called him the Baron, Baron Samedi, filling graves with the wounded men under his care. Now he smiled as he ran, though the pun no longer held any humor. Here he felt he was lord of the graveyard indeed, like a voodoo spirit, coming a dark wind to throw his enemies down.
He saw the first of them before he heard them, and he darted silently to rest against the grass. The man leaned still and watchful against the tangles of an overgrown hedge, an assault rifle ready and aimed into the darkness, heedless to Dee's approach behind him. One here, thought Dee, and he looked at the extent of the darkened hedge and recalled the maps: Two there; one by the shed; enfilading pattern for a southerly approach. He smiled again and crept away northward, toward the shed, already knowing he was behind their line. Sloppy, for Green Berets, he thought. Take out the shed and they'll have a fat hole to fill, and enemies to hunt them while they fill it.
He stopped in a steep grassy depression twenty yards behind the shed. He could see the sentry crouched there against the corner, staring through a rifle scope into the mist to the east. Northeast of him would be another two, Dee had decided, then the first two he had passed in the hedges to the south. That left another three or four moving into the house itself. They know we're coming, and they're smart enough to kill us before worrying more about the goons inside, he thought. Just not smart enough to get it done. He looked around once more, though his course was already laid in his mind. He counted ten to steady his rushing thoughts, to focus, to aim.
He already knew his laser sight would not work; whatever had jammed up their night-vision goggles would disable the lasers just as well. He aimed with iron sights for two seconds, their glowing dots lining up just below the distant man's throat. The suppressed burst cut the air in dazzling fire and dull noise and the target fell in a bloody gargle as the bullets tore through his throat and head, then Dee was running, crouching low and sprinting over the wet grass around west of the shed while he heard a shout and running footsteps from the enemy.
Then he was in an orchard and he stopped and leaned nearly to the ground, listening to the men move. He smiled ferally. There he goes . . . northern idiot splitting from his cover. Dee ran again, now straight ahead and around the shed. He stopped and lay flat beneath a high bush. Scant seconds later the soldier's shape came jogging into view and headed for a stand of elms near the shed. Dee tracked him with the naked sights for three seconds and fired. The man fell with a grunt, and then he screamed.
Dee ran northeast again, toward the dying man's partner but north of him, if he had calculated it right. Yes . . . He heard the rattle of a holster tied down too loosely, south of him. He turned and moved after the sound, snarling silently within the cotton hood, and as his feet stirred unseen leaves he saw the man's shape turning toward him, his Uzi moving slower than his eyes, and Dee checked his approach with a heel and fell to one knee as he aimed. The target shouted and fired a suppressed burst, jogging backwards now, and the bullets flew high and wide. Dee aimed high and fired. The man shouted again as bullets broke his cheek and jaw, but the rest of the burst shot high. Dee's sights tracked him as he fell. Dee was consumed with the iron rush of killing, careless for a moment of the others who would already be coming. He fired again and the bullets tore up the grass just left of the thrashing man's shoulder. Dee hissed and forced himself to exhale. Steady, you stupid bastard, he told himself, but it was no good, the rush was too strong. He fired a long burst and bullets ripped into the head and body of his target.
Then he was moving again. Breathe slow . . . count the seconds . . . He found a low wall and ran south along it, directly toward the men in the hedge but on the other side of it now. He counted four, then he stopped and went prone against the wall and aimed over it and waited. One . . . two . . . three . . .
He counted eight before he saw one of them still east of him, running low across the grass from the hedge toward the wall, thirty yards distant in the eerie moonlit haze of the fog. Dee shifted his aim and sighted carefully, timing his breaths and his pounding heartbeat. He shot the man's legs, cursed, then fired again to kill him.
Getting sloppy, he thought as he hopped the wall and ran toward the hedge. Steady . . . steady and cold as ice is how you-- He glanced north as he heard another suppressed weapon fire, then movement in the periphery of his sight, a shape in an unexpected gap in the hedge, and the butt of a pistol smashed into his forehead in an explosion of brilliant yellow light.
He heard a voice above him mutter gibberish. He saw a red haze; he blinked and forced himself to think. The man stood five feet away, still in the hedge, aiming a pistol at his midsection. His machine gun had fallen out of reach.
"Answer me, you shit," the man hissed. "Or I've got no reason for you to live. Who the fuck are you people?"
Dee's head throbbed. The adrenaline in his veins was cold as ice now, his breath ragged and sluggish and his mouth coppery.
"Last chance," said the man. He aimed carefully. Dee saw the pistol was quite steady, despite the night's action.
"D-don't," Dee grunted. STALL: the word echoed in his mind, the only clear thought he could muster.
"Why the fuck not? Where're your friends?"
"Back . . . I'm alone."
"Bullshit." The man knelt lower and glanced east toward the sound of new footsteps. The pistol did not waver. Another man approached, wearing a plain black utility suit like all of them. Neither man wore a mask, though both wore dark face-paint. Both looked clean-cut, healthy, and afraid.
"No sign of the rest of them," hissed the other man as he approached. "Jack and Terry are dead."
"So's Sisbarro. This fucker says he's alone."
"Fuck him. Shoot him and come on, if that's all he says. We need to get to the house."
The other aimed at Dee's face. "Talk fast, shithead."
"Five," Dee said roughly. He felt nauseous. "Five of us."
"And?"
Dee heard the thumping sound of a suppressed burst, and the gunman collapsed into the gap in the hedges a few feet from Dee. Another burst fired into the hedge beside the other gunman, who dropped prone and fired from the ground, his unsuppressed rifle deafening.
Dee rolled into the hedge bushes in the gap and scrambled for the pistol at his hip. He felt terribly slow; he saw long bursts of shots slam into the prone shooter and the ground around him. The man screamed raggedly for barely a second before another burst silenced him. Then came movement to either side: Barnes and Ritter came jogging toward him, and a few feet away the first gunman stirred and half-rose, bleeding and pale with shock, dying; Dee raised his pistol; the man fired an instant before Dee shot him in the face.
Ritter came closer again, then he paused as Barnes stopped and winced. He looked down at his chest.
"Okay," Barnes said hoarsely. "I'm . . . ." He fell in a slump to the grass.
Dee rose unsteadily and went to him. There was a neat hole in his kevlar vest, now covered with blood, directly over his heart. The wound was still hemorrhaging, but weaker by each second. Barnes died with a last incoherent whisper.
Dee stood and looked around shakily. It was over, at least for a span of moments. Seven men lay dead. Seven American men. And why? But that was always the question; that had always been the question. His had been a childhood of boredom and the relentless pursuit of excitement. Then came the Navy, then came the SEALs, then five years of discipline, five years of duty, five years of silence, five years of bloody murder. Why? What did all the dead take with them, that its absence bettered the world?
This is bullshit, he told himself, angry at the distracting reflections, but his thoughts raced on, defying discipline and the logic and cold rationality that had long-since become his instinct.
He looked again at the dead. He had killed before: how many times? He had counted them at first, he and several other young SEALs in a morbid competition, but soon enough it became more detached; not routine, but a part of the job which professionalism demanded they take seriously. But now it seemed important to him to know how many there had been. Something had changed; no, everything had changed. He had killed Americans, perhaps soldiers like himself, doing their duty though they neither understood nor cared for it. They were dead by his hand, and that cast all the deaths before them into a new and questioning light.
What the fuck is this? Jesus Christ, what is this all about?
He took a breath and tried to shake it all off, push it back, look to the job still unfinished, but he remained unsettled. Ritter seemed close to shock. He stared at Barnes as if stunned that the man was dead.
"Come on," said Dee, forcing harshness into his voice. "If these guys were Special Forces, be glad he's the only one of us who's down."
Ritter looked up slowly and shook his head.
He seemed distant, as if listening to voices barely heard.
Dee hissed at him again. "Ritter! You need to tell me the mission so we can get it done. Now wake up and look sharp, God damn it."
Ritter shuddered for a moment. "They--they're saying . . . Inside," he said weakly. "Get me inside. That's all."
Dee shook his head and spat. "Come on, then, and get your ass together." Around them the fog seemed thicker, but he could see the sky overhead, lightening and swirling in strange patterns of grey.
The house was dim and still when they entered it. It echoed of their own creeping steps and soft breath and the distant knocks and murmur of hinted presences. A lone candle lit the first halls through which they walked, then an antique lamp burning antique oil in pale light in a broad dining room. The house seemed rich yet deathly, desolate in its finery, with accents of gold flickering like sparks on dark wood in the half-light of wan and tiny yellow flames.
Dee and Ritter moved with deliberation and care, each step a muted scraping reminder of their isolation within a place still haunted by enemies. Ritter's mouth was a tight line betraying his tension, but his eyes wandered, and to Dee's mind he seemed dangerously distracted. But silence was imperative: Dee said nothing, only gestured more often to direct Ritter's movements and focus the man's attention. Only Ritter knew the reasons for their presence there; without him, Dee could hope at best for a long and deadly flight through the grounds and forest back toward the city. He had little hope that he would survive it without Ritter to call his anonymous contacts for aid. He signaled again, directing Ritter to the side of the next doorway. Ritter blinked and nodded. He frowned, but said nothing, in response to Dee's angry glare.
They found the first corpses in an antechamber, where the walls were pierced and broken from recent gunfire and the furniture was shattered by a fight. The men were Spinoza's, Dee guessed, by their suits. They had been shot to death, and one had gone through a beating before he died; looking at his torn knuckles Dee guessed the man had given some pain in return. "Close quarters," he whispered, slowly inspecting the trajectories of blood and bullets. "And nobody else around. Looks like our boys either killed everyone, or else nobody found this yet. Sloppy, though, trying to take captives. They shouldn't have let them fight back." He looked up at Ritter and saw him staring out the door. "Ritter," he hissed more roughly.
Ritter looked at him slowly, almost blank. "We should go," he said softly. "Soon the suns will rise."
Dee stared at him for a moment. He tasted a faint sheen of tin. Finally: "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
Ritter blinked. "I don't know. I don't know. But we should go on. We're not yet there."
Dee stared at him a moment longer. Ritter's losing it, he thought. He is sure as shit losing it, and I'm hanging out here on a short rope without him. For a moment he considered aborting the mission and explaining Ritter's loss of nerve to Johnston afterward, but then he stood and walked onward. This is the mission, he told himself uneasily. This is it. Full-on, or nothing.
"Come on, then," he said to Ritter.
Deeper into the house they still heard only the low murmur of movement and voices further away, until they came to an open bedroom. There was a high bed with ornate wooden posts, and a half-open wardrobe housed a television set. A small light flickered atop a mahogany chest of drawers: Dee recognized the strange metal of the brazier he had seen before Eduardo and his tutor at their deathplace in Panama. This one seemed its match.
A man lay on the bed, unmoving, on his back with his eyes staring at the dim ceiling. A young woman sat in a chair close to him, leaning forward to whisper into his ear.
Dee aimed his submachine gun at her and waited, but she seemed not to notice. "Get up and stay quiet," he whispered in Spanish, "and no sudden moves."
The woman looked at him with a smile. "But he cannot yet rise, and I cannot leave my love."
Ritter stood with him in the doorway and looked in, bemused. "He is dead."
"He is resting," she said. "But all have come, and soon he will rise."
"All have come?"
She smiled again. "All who know the Yellow Sign."
Dee remained silent. The breath was strangely tight in his chest.
Ritter frowned. "All? Are you sure?"
"All have come who know the Yellow Sign," she said. "Yet not all know the Sign who have come."
Ritter smiled obligingly. "A riddle?"
"A warning." Her voice lilted with the promise of laughter.
Dee shuddered, and suddenly he became aware of a gripping fear, an inexplicable but dizzying fear which seized his throat with ice, pounded hot behind his eyes, made sluggish every movement, tinged every thought with weeping despair. He stepped back once involuntarily as he grimaced and struggled to subdue his emotions.
Ritter did not react. The woman looked at the strange brazier. "The coal burns," she said, "and the suns rise. My love has not long to be still."
Ritter turned and walked away into the hall. "Come," he said to Dee. "We must be quick." Dee breathed deeply and followed him. Ritter looked around for a moment in confusion. "They gather already," he muttered. "The suns rise above the breakers of fog; the moon is still before the towers. The towers . . . The voices . . ." He stopped and shook his head violently, then clutched a hand to his ear. "Enough," he growled.
When he pulled his hand away, he held a strange glassy-looking earpiece, thin and rubbery and transparent, with intricate, almost organic patters to be seen within it. He looked at it and laughed. "They talk about you," he said, holding the thing out to Dee. "Take it. I . . ." He looked around again.
Dee stared at the glassy thing for a moment. As he took it he lifted the gun in his other hand and aimed at Ritter's head. "No more bullshit," said Dee in a low voice, nervous and deadly. "What the hell is going on here, Ritter? Who's giving the orders?"
"The Outsiders," muttered Ritter, "but They will never see us here. This part of it is done. I must go. All have gathered and await the final scene."
Dee sighed in disgust and held the earpiece to his ear. He cursed as it suddenly became fluid. It flowed into his ear; he felt a liquid pressure in his ear and Eustachian tube for an instant. He heard a nauseating liquid sound, then voices, as clean and clear as if they came from the air before him. When he looked up again, Ritter was gone.
" . . . Ritter. Ritter, signal," said the first voice. It was crisp English, American, a man's voice. Dee thought he detected a Southern accent. There was a pause. "I think he's lost it, Admiral. No response."
"Is he moving?" Dee felt his breath catch for an instant. He recognized the voice of Admiral Johnston.
"No, sir, he's still in the hall. He hasn't moved, sir."
"Damn. We should have outfitted Dee with one."
"What now, sir?"
"Go in. Get Ritter out of there. We can snap him out of it for the debriefing."
"But sir, if Lepus--"
"To hell with Lepus. You know he's out of the loop on this operation. Bring in Ritter. If Ritter's learned what he said he'd learn, Lepus won't be a worry for us."
"Yes, sir. What about Dee?"
Dee heard Johnston sigh. "Kill him."
"Sir?"
"If you get Ritter, you won't need anything Dee's seen. He's been exposed to too much without sanction, in any event. Brainwipe's too risky. Bring them both out, then kill Dee. He's a damn good kid, but there's too much at stake."
"Yessir. Moving in, sir. Over."
Dee stared at the empty air for a long moment, dazed and silent, until his thoughts suddenly leapt ahead. It was over. Whatever this fucked-up mission had been about, whatever Outsiders Barnes and Ritter and Johnston and the rest of them answered to or whatever they wanted to achieve, it was unsanctioned and it had gone south. His duty now was to survive despite all treachery.
That motherfucker!
His first raging instinct was to want Johnston's blood as the commanding officer of this betrayal, but he forced himself to think it through. Cold as ice gets you home, he thought. If Ritter lives, you die.
In Dee's mind, Ritter's life was already over. He ran quickly down the hall, stalking each corner with his weapon held ready, moving ever closer through the empty rooms toward the great courtyard where he somehow knew they all would be. He felt disconnected from it all, as if observing from beyond the hushed footfalls and soft breath and coursing fear of his flesh. As he passed windows he saw the sky outside roiling steely-grey over looming banks of liquid fog, broken only by strange patterns of black stars, black stars like pinpricks in the dun air, and it did not occur to him to wonder at it.
They waited in boredom and tense anticipation in a great courtyard. Cassilda stood in imperial state with her retinue and family near the fountain. Cassilda? Dee knelt in a well-shadowed alcove and shook his head softly. Cassilda? Her name was Mariel, he remembered. He pictured her face from the briefing dossiers, the fine lines and softness and the deep, sad, beautiful eyes. Her name was Mariel. He had seen to her son's violent death, and seeing her now he somehow found himself regretting it.
He took a deep breath, angry at his own distracting thoughts; he nearly cursed aloud before he remembered to keep silent for the "earpiece" which Ritter had given him, which now lay beneath him on the ground. The unearthly thing had come out easily enough, but he had no way to know what it might still hear. Now he only would leave it as a beacon to attract Ritter's would-be rescuers.
Mariel extended an exquisite arm up toward the steely heavens to direct the gaze of her sycophants. "See the distant Earth and her lonely Sun," she said. "So blind. So blissfully blind."
The priest looked at her with a gaze at once stern and humoring. Manuel! He is no priest. He is Manuel Spinoza, thought Dee, he is her husband, and he is a drug-running scumbag whose death would get me a medal if I could swing it.
"My Queen," said Spinoza, "It is nearly time to retire, is it not? He will not come."
Mariel looked reproachfully at her husband. "Would he lie to me? Would . . ." She paused uncertainly, looking slightly embarrassed, as if forgetting the words of her thought. "Would . . . would this Stranger disdain the court, the heart of Hastur?"
Manuel shook his head. He, too, seemed to speak haltingly. "The Stranger wears the mask, to . . . to . . ."
She spoke hurriedly. "He will come, Noatalba."
Noatalba--Manuel--began to speak, but gasps and hushed exclamations arose from others in the court. Then came another voice, powerful and unhindered by doubt, and from its first utterance Dee sensed a change, sensed comprehension which spread among the eyes and faces of the court.
"Cassilda," said the voice, "I have come."
They turned to the voice, rich with sardonic humor and hints of knowledge yet ungifted, and they muttered in wondering whispers behind their masks: "Yhtill! The Stranger! The Pallid Mask!" Dee strained his eyes toward the darkened balcony upon which the figure stood, and in a chance flicker of torchlight he saw.
It was Ritter.
His face was slack, less apathetic than empty, devoid of the slyness and veiled contempt which filled those spare words. Dee wondered idly at Ritter's skill as an actor, to convey such suggestion by voice alone; but more deeply he knew with growing and unreasoned terror that there was no role there portrayed, no part played, only the truth carried out to its dread fullness now that its sallow phantom had arrived. He looked across the people in the yard and saw no longer maids and butlers and cousins and well-dressed thugs, but courtiers and nobles and serving-ladies, subjects of Cassilda and the Court of Hastur, aching for an end to the endless doubt of waiting. And Dee knew that Ritter had not transformed them, but had been himself transformed.
Cassilda stepped forward, no longer doubting, no longer fumbling for scraps of memory half-imagined; Cassilda stepped forward, epochal despairing Queen, and she turned hesitant eyes to the Stranger.
Dee's mouth suddenly ached with the taste of his own rancid and bilious spit. His eyes throbbed, bulbous orbs glaring in dull heat, drawing his slack flesh unwillingly in a rictus of nausea. Cassilda and Noatalba and the Stranger spoke again, but he could no longer hear their words. He saw other shapes come jogging into the shadows, masked gunmen in black, but they seemed useless and insignificant before the momentous court of Hastur. Thought churned, sluggish and unwelcome, as Dee fought his cresting terror, fought it with will and reason as he had been trained, as had saved him so many times before, then the thoughts sped heedlessly beyond his control.
Cool, cold as ice wins it, logic and reality are how you survive, survive and make the other die, survive and learn and carry on, survive and face the day, face the beating suns, face the faceless, face the coming King . . .
He winced painfully in confusion. Bullshit. This is bullshit, Ritter, it doesn't mean anything, nothing means anything, nothing is anything, nothing is but the coming King.
He stepped back clumsily. Fuck you, Ritter! Fuck you and your "power of suggestion" and your drugs! My thoughts are my own. I'm coming for you. You hear me, fucker? Do you hear me, Stranger? He's coming for you! I--I'm coming for him, I am, I come through the roiling mist of My thought and the drifting oily sky of Mine ill- starred dream, I come for thee, thou fickle children of Mine idle whim, I come for thee, thou who hast known My sign and yet would deny its provenance, and thou, wearer of the mask, messenger of folly, bringer of false Truth, I come for thee . . .
"YHTILL!"
Vomit filled his mouth. The terror of thought no longer his own was torn pained and aborning from his mind and rolled from bitter lips across the rising clouds of unknown Hali, across the oily skies of ancient dreams, across the shifting streets and crumbling spires of immortal expectation, sardonic, empty, sonorous, dolorous, the voice of King or God coming over meaningless eons and the blasphemous plots of maggoty children to claim His due.
"YHTILL!"
Dee stared, slack-jawed, in muted protestation. No . . . he thought or felt, as reason vied with reality in the horror of his soul. . . . no . . . Truth approached and would be cast down; but the hollow King remained. . . . no . . . The walls pulsed and men and women wept with despair, unnatural despair, the dawning understanding of the only truth that remained. . . . no . . . It was not a voice in him, now, not a thought, hardly a feeling, only the dim and shrieking awareness that with courage he might face at last the reality to which all Truth was laid.
"YHTILL!"
The skies twisted in banking mists and fog from the impenetrable Lake of Hali. Dee arose. About him shadows flickered and shifted, the shadows of swaying filthy robes. He felt the mask tight against his face and reached for it in desperation, tugged at its fabric, but felt only the tugging of his own numb flesh. His blood writhed in wormlike vessels and his breath bore the stench of carrion. Moments now, only moments remained before the coming of the pale King. The subjects of Hastur saw him and stared, stricken. He sensed he could understand, he would understand, he would swallow fear and stand and know the truth. He felt a corpulent swelling in his flesh. One hand lifted clawlike to accusingly indicate Yhtill, and he knew the ascension of the King was nearly complete. In that last instant comprehension and courage shattered and slipped from his desperate thought.
Dee ran. Fog deepened over the court and its citizens, wide-eyed and weeping as they beheld the strange stars and awaited the coming King. More of them came from the black-spired streets outside, the people of ancient Hastur to see the rising of the mists of Hali, this day long foretold when Carcosa and Hastur would be one beneath the scalloped tatters of the King. They ignored the wild man who darted along the broken streets and fled them, fled the monstrous shadow of tattered oily rags, the black stars and flapping bat-wings and rolling fogs of the iron sky, the cities now become one in the eternal will of the King, the iridescent dead which shambled in grim awareness along basalt avenues to each exhalation of the unspeakable, fled comprehension and courage, fled beauty and sorrow and all they hold of truth, fled the mists of lost Carcosa.
They found Dee in the forest near the outskirts of Bogota. Colombian and American recovery teams combed the area for days after the disappearance of the Spinoza household, and when one reported a wild- looking man in the woods the American captain drove over to check personally. He found Dee curled on the earth like a fetus, insensate as an animal, stinking of filth and sweat.
"Christ," said the captain. "This is one of them." He looked back at a sergeant and nodded. The man directed several others toward their filthy prize to restrain him for transport.
"Pass the word to the General," said the captain. "It's the new guy. Looks like he's had a hell of a night at the opera, but we have him."
The sergeant spat to the ground angrily. "Captain. Are you sure you need him in one piece, sir?"
"Forget it, sergeant." The captain's voice was hard.
"He killed some damn good men, Captain. A lot of goddamn good men. You didn't see what they did to Merrick, the FBI kid. Blew his face off, clean off into the dirt."
"The top said leave him alone," said the captain. "One piece. You want to argue it with Fairfield? Be my guest."
The sergeant said nothing. He watched the now-helpless killer in a silent lust for revenge.
The sergeant and captain sat across from Dee as their men secured him in the van and drove away on uneven dirt roads that would lead to an unlisted staging area and airstrip. Both men watched him in silence for a time, wondering what had happened to drive the man to stupefaction, and privately both hoped they would never know.
Finally the captain turned to the sergeant. "Do you have the dispatch from the General?"
The sergeant nodded soberly and reached into his coat pocket. He handed the captain a small envelope. The captain did not bother to check its seal. It held only a thin sheet of paper. He read the message and looked again at the sergeant. "Are you sure this is it?"
The sergeant nodded again. "That's all they gave me, sir. Maybe they'll get more out of him at Bethesda."
The captain nodded and leaned forward to be heard clearly. "Well, troop, listen up. One question."
Dee lay still as the van swayed and bumped along the road, his eyes wide and staring through tumbling molecules of steel and nylon to the squirming and devouring endlessness which awaits at the core of all things. In his ears the men's voices rattled and fell in a cacophony of meaningless noise; the captain's question was a droning echo only hinting at the words which came unbidden into his thought, the words of that mocking and dreadful voice of the mists, that doleful voice of tattered robes and empty eternity, of truth without reason, without beauty, without hope. They asked the same thing, and its only true portent was fear.
"Have you seen the Yellow Sign?"