And no one else would know that this was a safe house belonging to the CIA. This guy was here to take out Willard Fremont.
Which meant that someone back in Langley had betrayed them both. But the only guy who knew where they were was Jack Stallworth, and Stallworth was no traitor. There was a sound, movement in the hall. Fremont, awake, dressed, rounded the corner and froze in place, staring into the muzzle of Dalton’s Colt.
He blinked at Dalton, his mouth working. “What is it? What’s up?”
“There was something on the screen,” said Dalton, his face lit from beneath, glowing with blue light from the laptop screen.
“A man?” said Fremont, staring into the picture, seeing only the ripple of light on the bending river, the tops of the cottonwoods waving with silver light over the impenetrable shadows below.
“Yes. I think so. He’s gone now. Into the dark under the trees.”
“How far away is he?”
“Two, three hundred yards out. Near the cottonwoods.”
“Have you got any remote mikes in that area?”
“Yes,” said Dalton, touching an icon on the screen.
The speakers flared up with the sound of rushing water, leaves rustling in the wind. He turned the volume up to full. The room filled with the hissing and rattling of the woodland, the sighing of the wind, the bubbling of water racing over stones.
And another sound, far deeper, a sound that Dalton knew, a sound that chilled his heart and tightened his belly. A sound at the lowest edge of hearing, more a sensation than a sound, a deep rising and falling sound, a low, ponderous vibrato, but with a living, breathing rhythm.
“What’s that?” asked Fremont, staring at the screen.
“No idea,” said Dalton, but his mind was back in the Dorsoduro. He was standing in that light-filled room watching the cylinder spin, the cylinder that growled and hummed and buzzed all at once, with exactly this same rising and falling note, like a big cat purring.
“Stay here,” he said. He padded back down the hall. When he came back he was wearing a black jacket, jeans, and soft-soled shoes.
Fremont saw the big Colt in his hand and his face hardened. “What is it, anyway? What did you see?”
“I think it’s a man using a cloaking device.”
“What? Like an EMP?”
“No. It’s new. But I think I’ve seen it used before. In Italy.”
“He’s here for me?”
“I’d say so.”
“How would anyone know we’re here?”
“Great question. I have another one.”
“Sure.”
“This guy out there, he’s a pro.”
“Obviously.”
“Why is so much time and effort going into killing you?”
“I been asking myself that for weeks. I wish I knew.”
“This goes beyond Echelon. Echelon is a major NSA operation, known to a lot of the general public. No matter how sensitive some of your Echelon work was, this kind of sustained high-tech stalking, using a killer of this caliber, on American soil, this is simply not something that the NSA does. There’s got to be something else going on here. Can’t you think of any other reason?”
“You think this guy’s one of ours? An American?”
“I’m not certain. But who else has this technology?”
“A lot of people,” said Fremont, staring at the screen. The formless glowing shape drifted out into an open area under the trees and then slipped back into the dark, now less than a hundred yards away and closing in on the safe house.
“Why is anybody trying to kill you, Willard?”
Fremont shook his head as he watched the screen, fear, uncertainty, dawning suspicion in his face.
Dalton stepped back from the screen. “Okay, whoever he is, let’s take this guy down.”
“I’m going with you.”
“No. I need you here, on the monitor. Take this.”
He handed Fremont a small Special Forces com set, a throat mike on a neckband and an earpiece. Fremont slipped it around his neck, set it in place without a word. Dalton put on another set, then looked at Fremont, who did a click test to see if the two units were communicating.
“Watch the screen. Whatever you see, let me know.”
“I’d rather be out there,” said Fremont, his face grim. “Last time I was in this situation, it was the one who stayed behind got her throat cut, not the guy who went to look.”
“You’re not a dog, Willard. I’m going to try to take this guy alive, but if you lose radio contact with me for longer than ten minutes, don’t come looking for me. Call the duty desk at Langley and tell them you need an extraction. They’ll recognize the phone line. No one can get in here, not without an Abrams. Sit tight. Wait it out.”
“What if you’re the guy taken alive? Got a gun to your head?”
“You know the answer to that.”
“Yeah. I do. But a piece of my own would comfort me greatly.”
“There’s a bolt-action 308 in a glass case in the master bedroom. Box of rounds in the slide drawer underneath.”
Fremont assented in silence, his face stony.
Dalton liked him for his steel. No whining, no complaint. None of that phony hillbilly twang either. Whatever he was or had become, he was still a solid field man, and Dalton was glad to have him around. Fremont put his hand out. They shook hands, said nothing.
Dalton went back down the hallway to the side door, slipped on a set of night-vision goggles, eased the locking bars out of their slots, opened the well-oiled steel door, and slipped out into the shimmering green night.
The woods, glowing green in his night vision, had been cleared out to a distance of fifty yards all around the house, for obvious reasons, and he crossed the stony ground in a quick soundless rush, the Colt out, slipping into the green shadows under the trunks.
Above him, through the tangle of black branches and leaves, he could see bright-green patches of open sky. A few pale stars glittered in the moonless night. The cottonwood leaves hissed and rattled in the cold wind and he could see his own breath, a pale-green misty glow in the starlight.
“I see him,” Fremont’s whisper in his right ear. “He’s come out into the light about forty yards south-southwest of your position. What the hell is this guy using? I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Dalton checked his wrist compass and moved out slowly, feeling his way through the trees, stepping carefully through the dried thicket and dead branches under his feet. He’d covered about twenty yards in the direction of the target when Fremont came back on the radio.
“Micah, he’s closing. He’s back under the trees now. I can’t see him anymore, but he was definitely heading your way.”
Dalton stopped in place, in a low crouch, his back up against the bowl of a sagging cottonwood. Something slid across the toe of his deck shoe, something heavy. By the weight and the speed of movement, a damn big snake. In Montana some of the snakes are harmless. These snakes are usually eaten by all the snakes that aren’t.
Dalton tried to ignore whatever venomous reptile it was that was flowing heavily over his toe in a muscular coiling glide, because now he could hear that deep rising and falling vibration, coming closer.
Out in the cold air the sound was more dense, more alive. It reminded him of a cathedral organ, that deep booming vibrato that shakes the pews. The sound was so strong, so resonant, that Dalton could feel it drumming on his skin, beating against his ears.
Perhaps because of the drug he connected with this kind of sound, or even some lingering effect of the salvia, his heart was hammering inside his chest, his mouth was dry, and when he tried to swallow he bitterly regretted it. This was fear, chaotic and compelling fear, with an undertone of superstitious awe, but it was not yet panic.