The Alpha Deception Read online

  “We’ve discussed that.”

  “Reach any brilliant conclusions?”

  “We’re hoping it means the weapon isn’t deployed yet or perhaps isn’t effective on a wide scale.”

  “Hoping isn’t concluding. We’ve got to face the fact that whoever wrote that communiqué blackmailed us without ever believing we’d succumb to his demands. Which means his demonstration in Hope Valley had a different purpose altogether.” Blaine paused. “Who possesses the kind of technology required to build such a beam?”

  “Considering the research expense, the list stops at us … and the Soviets.”

  “What does the General Secretary say? I assume the President has talked to him.”

  “He denied all culpability and even knowledge of such a weapon. Offered to help in any way he could.”

  “Mindless rhetoric. Could just as easily be playing it cool to keep us off guard. But at least they’re talking. That ought to delay World War III for a while.”

  “We’re at DEF-CON 3 now. Might not delay it for long.”

  McCracken stroked his beard. “Assuming my route takes me to your crystals, how much time would I have to deliver them?”

  “For reasons I’ll explain in Washington, you’ll have one week.”

  “Real generous with time, aren’t you?”

  “My estimates indicate that Hope Valley was obliterated in three seconds at most. The precedent’s been set.”

  Dawn had come by the time they landed in Washington and proceeded straight to the Bethesda headquarters of the Toy Factory. The Bureau of Scientific Intelligence blended with the countryside of which it was a part. The multiplex of buildings was unfenced, looking as much residential as commercial. McCracken and Sundowner drove through the well-sculptured grounds en route to the entrance.

  A pair of marine guards held the door open for Sundowner, with McCracken right behind. Once in the lobby they made for an elevator that descended to the underground floors where the most sensitive experiments were carried out. They exited the elevator four floors later at a stop labeled D and moved straight for a door with yet another guard before it. This time, although the guard recognized Sundowner, the scientist was forced to key in the proper sequence on a pad to gain entry. Blaine entered in Sundowner’s wake and found the two of them to be alone in the lab.

  “Welcome to the home of Bugzapper,” said Sundowner.

  The lab was dominated by a scale model of the Earth nearly ten feet in diameter with the United States perpetually occupying the very center. Suspended over the stationary U.S., held in the air by wires running from a platform attached to the ceiling, were sixteen miniature satellites which looked to Blaine like fancy fluorescent light bulbs.

  “A scale model,” explained Sundowner. “Since the life-size Bugzapper satellites will achieve geosynchronistic orbit, there’s no reason to add rotation.”

  He moved to a computer terminal near the globe and, still standing, pressed a few keys. Immediately the miniature fluorescents caught, casting a bright haze over the whole of the scale version of the United States. Blaine noted that the light emanated from all sides of the miniature satellites at once, seeming to link each up with others.

  “The light is just for effect,” Sundowner explained. “The real Bugzapper’s energy shield will be invisible.” He moved back alongside Blaine and led him up a set of stairs to a raised platform which looked down over and into the model. “What you’re seeing is being powered by an Atragon crystal the size of a fly’s wing.”

  McCracken could hear a faint humming.

  Sundowner reached down to a dish placed next to another computer terminal on a table beneath them and grabbed a marble. Handing it to McCracken, he said, “A miniature Atragon shield is thus in place. Toss the marble down into the light and watch what happens.”

  Blaine dropped the marble down. There was a brief pfffffft and it was gone.

  “By scale,” explained the scientist, “that marble was the size of a huge asteroid. You can see the potency involved here.”

  “Except your shield is going to be facing a death ray, not marbles or even asteroids.”

  Sundowner nodded as if expecting the comment. “Not really a ray, Mr. McCracken—a beam, specifically a particle beam composed of matter—subatomic in scope, to be sure, but focused into tremendous mass energy by the time it reaches the shield. Easily dense enough to activate the sensing mechanism.”

  “What do you mean activate? You mean it’s not always on?”

  “Active but not on. Otherwise the power drain would be immeasurable. Solving that problem, in fact, was the first major breakthrough we made.” He stopped and looked at Blaine more intensely. “Think of the way Bugzapper’s more mundane namesake functions. You’ve got a negative force confronting a positive force with the difference of potential not quite great enough to jump the gap—that is until a bug flies in and serves as a conductor between them. Energy passes through the bug and the fields are at last connected, with the bug paying the price for it, of course.”

  “Not as simple in your system, though, is it?”

  “Hardly. Four dozen satellites will compose Bugzapper at completion. And by the rules of astrophysics, they can’t possibly maintain a constant distance from each other. So we have to let them stray in their orbits. The distances will vary and it will be up to a super-computer to regulate the flow of energy emanating from each satellite to its neighbors to ensure the difference of potential is great enough so the gap can’t be jumped until something, a missile or a particle beam, forms a conductor. The computer’s judgments and instructions will be determined and made in microseconds.”

  Sundowner hesitated and started back down to floor level, with McCracken right behind. “Of course, it was the discovery of Atragon that turned all this theory into potential reality. Without those crystals to serve as a power source, the shield won’t work.”

  “And,” McCracken picked up, “you’ll need a hell of a lot more of them to fit forty-eight satellites, never mind getting them launched in time for it to matter.”

  “Installation is no problem, since the satellites have already been fitted for some sort of solar storing receptacles. Adapting the Atragon once we’ve got it to the proper specifications won’t take long at all, so my feeling is the satellites can be ready for launch within ten days of delivery, the shield fully operational forty-eight hours after that.”

  “Given the three-week time frame in the extortion note, that’s cutting things close.”

  “At least, though, it gives us a chance.” Sundowner stopped. “I’ve explained what we’re up against. You can see how important this Atragon is to us.”

  “Hold on, Sundance, I already laid things out for you. I’d like nothing better than to bring back your Atragon so long as its trail leads me to the men who killed T.C. But if the trails break off somewhere, you know which one I’ll follow.”

  “I’m willing to accept that.”

  “You don’t have much of a choice. Don’t try to follow me; your men won’t stand a chance, and the attempt will aggravate me to no end. I’m difficult when I’m mad, Sundance.”

  “Can’t you give me some idea where you’re going?”

  “Across the Atlantic.”

  “Narrows it down some… . I could still hold back word of your involvement from the crisis committee, give you some room to move.”

  “We’ve discussed that already, too. No, I’m more worried about a certain fat man named Vasquez. He happens to be a major narcotics distributor I KO’d just before I got shoved into the secretarial pool in France. He’s sworn to kill me if I ever set foot on his turf again.”

  “And just what is his turf?”

  “Most of Europe.”

  “Terrific,” Sundowner moaned. “You realize, of course, that if you’re right about a leak in the Tomb, whoever killed my men and that woman might find you before you find them.”

  “That, Sundance, is precisely the idea.”

  Sundow
ner explained it all to the other men gathered in the Tomb, leaving out nothing but McCracken’s assertion about the presence of a mole. He had to doctor the story a bit to make up for it.

  “So is he working for us or not?” the President wondered at the end.

  “I’d have to say not. But he’s agreed to communicate with me regularly, and it’s my guess he won’t be able to resist finding the Atragon for us.”

  “Why?”

  “The stakes, sir. If this death ray is unleashed, millions of innocent people will die, and that’s the one thing McCracken can’t tolerate.”

  “Don’t turn him into a hero,” cautioned CIA chief Stamp. Then, to the President, “Truth is, we’re talking about a rogue here, a renegade, a killer.”

  “Killer’s a bit strong,” broke in Sundowner.

  “Okay, I’ll grant you that much. But the others fit him well. What has become known as the Omega Command business proved that much. He forced the ruin or resignation of many of our predecessors.”

  “That wasn’t McCracken’s doing, by my recollection,” interjected Secretary of Defense Kappel. “It was the doing of those individuals who brought it on themselves by the way they handled the situation.”

  “Tried and sentenced by McCracken in Omega’s aftermath,” elaborated Mercheson. “Yes, it’s starting to come back to me now. This McCracken is a menace beyond compare.”

  “Gentlemen,” said the President, “I’m a bit confused here. You mean this McCracken doesn’t work for us in some capacity?”

  “McCracken doesn’t work for anyone, especially not us,” said Stamp.

  “Why not?”

  It was Sundowner who answered. “Long story. It starts back in Vietnam where McCracken was the best we had; an expert at infiltration, sabotage, all forms of counterespionage activities. He was a loner, yes, a rogue, by all respects couldn’t handle the ‘age of accountability’ at all. We kept trying to farm him out, and while he was working with the British a hostage situation came to an unpleasant end. To show his displeasure with the way things had been handled, McCracken pulled an Uzi on Churchill’s statue in Parliament Square and shot off certain sections of his marble anatomy. That’s where he got his nickname.”

  “What nickname?”

  “McCrackenballs.”

  “As in—”

  “Yes.”

  “The point, sir,” broke in Stamp, “is that the balls McCracken has broken over the years haven’t all been ceramic. Plenty have been the flesh-and-blood privates of his superiors.”

  “And usually with good reason,” argued Sundowner. “Omega was a case in point. The government called him out of exile to work for them and their subsequent treatment of him was inexcusable. Consequently, he’s sworn never to work for us again. He went free-lance, started taking on assignments and missions that no one else wanted any part of, almost always to pay off old debts and favors.”

  “And now he’s after the killer of this woman,” the President reminded them, “not the reserves of the Atragon.”

  “His only route to the former is to follow the trail of the latter, and he can accomplish it infinitely better than any team we could dispatch in his place.” Sundowner hesitated long enough for his words to sink in. “Either he’ll find the crystals or he’ll follow a path straight to the force that doesn’t want us to get them—the force controlling the ray. We win either way.”

  “Nobody wins with McCracken,” said Mercheson. “Except McCracken.”

  “I don’t see what we have to lose by the attempt in this case,” concluded the President, “or that we have much choice. McCracken is going out there anyway, and he’s the only one Earnst pointed in the right direction. He’s not working for us, so there’s no culpability on our part for his actions. He was straight with us, and Ryan was straight with him. So as far as we know, Blaine McCracken doesn’t exist anymore.”

  “For now,” said Stamp.

  Sergei Chernopolov, General Secretary of the Soviet Union, held the receiver tighter against his ear.

  “There has been a change in plans, Tomachenko,” he informed the person on the other end. “An American agent has entered the picture. Bangkok must be put on hold until he can be dealt with properly.”

  “Who is this agent?”

  “Blaine—”

  “McCracken,” completed Tomachenko.

  “You know of him then.”

  “I’ve heard of him.”

  “Is he as good as they say, good enough to make inroads and gains?”

  “It is possible.”

  “Likely?”

  “Hard to say under the circumstances.”

  Chernopolov nodded to himself. “Then you know what you must do. McCracken is priority one. Take any steps you feel are necessary. Forget accountability. You report only to me.” He paused. “If you are successful, the slate will be wiped clean. You know what that means.”

  “Yes,” was all Tomachenko replied.

  Another assignment, another mission, and another success because it had to be. So much was riding on it. More than ever.

  Strange how being a woman helped her so. Men underestimated her skills, perhaps hesitated in response to something as infantile as chivalry, or allowed a pleasing body or teasing smile to distract them. A nearly exposed set of breasts could make a finer weapon than any when wielded properly. And the woman used hers as she used whatever else was called for in the completion of her missions.

  Her name was Natalya Illyevich Tomachenko. And she was the number one assassin for the KGB.

  Chapter 9

  THE TOWN OF PAMOSA Springs lies at the foot of the San Juan Mountains as they wind their way through southwestern Colorado. The town’s population, barely 700, is tucked into one of the gulleys between foothills that are dwarfed by the San Juans themselves. It’s pretty easy to feel small with mountains stretching nearly three miles high on either side of you, but the people of Pamosa Springs don’t look at it that way. Nor do they concern themselves with the fact that beyond a third side of town lies nothing but dry lands and open country all the way to Silverton. The only access road juts off Route 149; its only destination is Pamosa Springs. Being cut off from civilization on three sides makes for a solitude the residents call security.

  The commercial center of Pamosa Springs, meanwhile, is barely a center at all. Just one main road with several buildings on each side, built for a time when the town was growing, and struggling for survival now that it wasn’t. A restaurant and a bar owned by Hal Taggart sat on either side of a seventy-seat movie house. There was a general store which took care of most essentials, and a mini-mart attached to the two-pump gas station that took care of the rest. The bank doubled as a post office, and the municipal building included the jail, mayor’s office, and no more. A small K Mart that had been in town for twenty years pulled out seven springs back, its space taken by a discount drugstore that stayed only long enough to learn it couldn’t break even.

  Back then, and before, Pamosa Springs wasn’t exactly a boom town, but it certainly showed some of the signs. The natural hot springs running out of the Lake San Cristóbal area hadn’t yet dried up, and a fair number of visitors passed through after sampling a bath with purported rejuvenating qualities. Silver veins in the San Juans kept miners busy enough to need a place to sleep, eat, and buy equipment, and the railroad built a freight yard in the town with plans to lay track to connect up with the Durango and Silverton narrow gauge. But then the silver veins went dry, and the railroad went bankrupt even before reaching the nearest reservoir. The population of Pamosa Springs shrank from just over 2,000, and there were soon almost as many vacant houses as occupied ones.

  The town’s present residents had stuck things out figuring there was still more good in Pamosa Springs than bad. Many had seasonal jobs at the neighboring ski resorts that kept them away for good parts of the season, which often stretched up to eight months. Others ran mail-order businesses or claimed to be artists. Still more commuted to work in cities
up to 150 miles away. You could live like a king for practically nothing in Pamosa Springs as long as you didn’t expect too much. Nobody ever died poor in the town, but nobody ever got rich, either.

  Until now maybe, some of the residents might say guardedly.

  It had been an especially harsh winter in this part of Colorado, and the runoff that accompanied the spring thaw caused massive erosion and several minor landslides through the San Juans and the accompanying hillsides. A few hills bled their bellies open.

  With silver running high in the town’s past, the first thought of the residents was that the shiny stones pulled from the dirt and rocks were more of the blessed mineral. Fact was, there were at least six different kinds of stones pulled from the mountainside and none of them was silver, which was not to say none of them was valuable. On the contrary, several held great promise, including some that looked like pink diamonds, and samples were sent off to the National Assayer’s Office in Washington for identification. The residents of Pamosa Springs sat back patiently to wait for the results.

  Nothing had been heard in three weeks now, and life in Pamosa Springs mostly held to its menial normalcy. The local movie house held over a double feature of Rambo and Red Dawn for the ninth consecutive week. The town’s women composed their twentieth letter to Jerry Falwell, pleading with him to appear at their annual luncheon. Gearing up for the coming elections, a newsletter reminded residents that last time out, the Republican presidential candidate had carried Pamosa Springs with ninety-two percent of the vote.

  And Hal Taggart continued losing customers. Since he operated the only sit-down restaurant in the Springs, this should have been impossible. But Taggart had detoured into misery and isolation since his son’s death in Beirut four years back, and some would say he’d gone clear around the bend. He’d been gone for three weeks after getting the news and disappeared for another two a few months later. Since then his bar and grill had become strictly a grill, open at sporadic, unreliable hours. And now when it was open, no one showed up. But Taggart washed the dishes regardless and talked up a storm to himself. Some said there were nights when he served up platefuls of the daily special to customers who weren’t there. And lately he had taken to shooting the rats in his storage room with an old .22 hunting rifle that hadn’t fired straight in a decade. The rats survived, and the town grew used to the quick blasts coming from inside the grill.