Silent Assassin(55)

A big part of his job was just intercepting snoops and sending them away. The base was a favorite destination among conspiracy nuts. The enormous radar tower, with its impressive antenna, was more than enough to excite the imagination to create a lot of crazy ideas. People believed all sorts of things about it, ranging from its being used for mind control to being retrofitted as part of some sort of massive laser weapon. And those were sane theories. Others talked about time travel and space aliens. So, inevitably, the crazies would come prodding, trying to prove the existence of the evil secret plots of the U.S. government. But crazy as they may be, no one really wanted to argue with his automatic rifle. Oh, they hollered to heaven almighty that this was an outrage, that the government wouldn’t get away with this, that all the newspapers would be alerted. But they always left.

Those were the exciting moments. For the most part, nothing happened. He spent his time either standing at his post or walking on patrol, looking at the square old concrete buildings or the greenery of Camp Hero State Park.

And this day was no exception. Not a soul stirred, not even a squirrel. Corvey walked among the buildings, with his rifle, held at low-ready position, weighing heavily in his hand and neck. He saw one of the other privates on patrol that day, Orr, about a hundred feet away, and raised his hand to greet him. He walked on, down the road and past the old WWII bunkers. He absently fingered the emergency alert device strapped like a pager to his belt. The existence of the device was enough to make him apprehensive. He was supposed to activate it on the event of a “serious emergency.” He had no idea what that might entail, and of course, no one would tell him.

He looked back at the radar tower. Today, the whole thing was a rusted hunk of metal that groaned when strong winds hit. Definitely no space lasers here. The truth was much more prosaic. Originally built in the Cold War era, the radar was part of the SAGE program, meant to detect approaching bombers. The base itself was older—built during World War II to detect passing U-boats. Nothing out of the ordinary here.

Except Private Corvey had seen things since he’d been stationed at Camp Hero. Men going in and out of the main building of the newly reinstated base in the dark of night, from boats that made shore in the middle of moonless nights—and then no one coming outside, not one, except in those clandestine midnight ins and outs. And on the really quiet nights, he swore that he could hear very faint and distant screaming. It might not be space lasers, but something was going on in there, underground.

Covey looked at the building again, and once more got a chill up his spine. The sun had fully set now, and darkness was beginning to encroach. Just a couple hours more, he thought to himself, and he would be relieved.

He heard a strange rustle in the bushes, and stopped dead in his tracks.

It had been soft, but his ear was trained to hear this sort of sound, and pick it out from the mere rustle of the wind. He gripped his rifle harder in his right hand, and fingered the emergency call button with his left. Oh hell, he thought.

“Who’s there?” he called out. “Orr? That you?”

He heard another rustle. Definitely too big to be a squirrel. He felt his heavy nervous breathing, his heartbeat picking up speed.

“Come out with your hands up!” he shouted.

There was no answer. He held his rifle with both hands and raised it. “Come out with your hands up or I’ll shoot!”

He didn’t have time. Muzzles flashed from three different places in the bushes. He felt the impact of three bullets hitting his vest, knocking the wind out of him. One bullet hit his neck, two his left arm, and two his right thigh. He dropped on the cold hard ground, feeling the dirt against his face.

With the last of his strength, he squeezed the emergency button.





CHAPTER 29


Department of Defense monitoring station, January 29





Private Sanders was puzzling over one of those cutesy, annoying crossword clues with the puns when the buzzing alarm went off. She tossed the newspaper aside and looked at the screen of the computer in front of her. It read, BREACH AT CAMP HERO. She quickly tossed aside the crossword and picked up the phone, making the connection to Camp Hero.

“Camp Hero, this is Crow’s Nest. Do you copy?” She got only static in response.

“Camp Hero, this is Crow’s Nest. Do you copy? I repeat, do you copy?”

She picked up the intercom. “Major Donnell,” she said. “I need you in here.”

He picked up the phone himself and said into the receiver, “Crow’s Nest here. Come in, Camp Hero. Come in.”

It annoyed her slightly that he did that.

“Connect me to this line,” he said, writing down a phone number on the margins of her crossword puzzle. “Sir, shouldn’t we contact the domestic emergency response—”