James Tabor: The Deep Zone

He knew that what his host was describing was wrong, but in this moment he could believe that it did not compare to the greater wrongs life had inflicted upon him. And there still existed in him a deep, silent place where all things rang one of two ways. Mr. Adelheid’s words rang true. Really, he had always known, or at least suspected. But how could you keep going and not bury that deeper still? There was no other way.

“So we near the end of our evening together.” Mr. Adelheid stood and came to him and they clasped hands again. This time, Mr. Adelheid locked eyes and held his hand and forearm in an astonishing grip, like a tourniquet tightening.

“ So pleased. More than you can know. Before you depart, I would like to show you the house. A historic place, truly fascinating. More cognac?”

“ No . But thank you.”

“Very well.” They walked into the hallway, as dimly lit as the huge room they had just left, and then toward the rear of the house. At the end of that hall they turned right, into another. The passages and chambers were draped in black crepe shadows. Mr. Adelheid held a cigar that trailed blue smoke. When did he light that? The visitor could not remember. Mr. Adelheid drew on the cigar and its tip flared red. They walked and walked, along halls and through rooms, passing many closed doors. At last through one whose hinges squealed and down a narrow, creaking stairway, poorly lit, into darkness from which rose odors of damp earth and stone and decay.

He followed the red coal of Mr. Adelheid’s cigar as if it were a beacon, down one dirt-floored passageway after another, turning corner after corner, and for the first time began to feel afraid. The surface underfoot was rough, and he had to take care not to stumble. Every so often he stooped beneath massive beams.

Mr. Adelheid stopped by a door five feet high, thick, rough-hewn. He could not stop thinking of spiders and snakes. Cellars always did that to him, and this cellar… Mr. Adelheid pushed the heavy door open and ducked into the room. He followed. There were no electric lights. Candles burned in rusting sconces. Massive iron rings, affixed to walls and ceiling, scabbed with brown rust. The smell in the room was stomach-turning, heavy with filth and mold.

The stone floor sloped down toward a central drain. Mr. Adelheid walked to the drain, drew on his cigar. The tip flared red. There was the buzzing of the fly again, louder now, closer to him. For an instant he thought that he might have felt the brush of tiny wings on his lip, but he saw nothing in the gloom. He could not take his eyes off the drain.

“In rooms like this, Captain Sadler took his pleasure. An underground passage led to the Potomac. Still does. Bodies were carted down and consigned to the river, which carried them to the sea.”

“Why did you bring me here?”

“You know why. This is a very serious thing, this new realm you now inhabit. Caveat venditor .”

Let the seller beware .

Mr. Adelheid glanced around the chamber one last time. “Remarkable place, isn’t it? The kind from which you do not emerge unchanged. Nor ever forget.”

Upstairs again, they walked to the front door, which began to open as they approached.

“One more thing you should know.” Mr. Adelheid drew on his cigar, peered through blue smoke. “You will have company at BARDA.”

“You mean other… observers?”

“Yes.”

“Doing the same thing I am?”

Mr. Adelheid tilted his head, exhaled smoke. “Enough to know that they are there.”

Observing , he thought. Observing me. Is that what he means?

He needed to know something. “How do you find… people like me?”

Mr. Adelheid drew a red line in the air with his glowing cigar tip. “You find us.”

“But I never did anything. You reached out to me first.”

“We have done this for a very long time, and we are exceedingly patient,” Mr. Adelheid said. “Not unlike you scientists. A few unguarded words. An indiscreet letter. Financial transactions of a certain kind. These and other things.”

The word came to him: “Signals.”

“Indeed. And the strongest signals are those of distress.”

Like a moth caught in a web , he thought.

“Adou will drive you back. You will hear from me. For now, go and live the days of your life.” Mr. Adelheid disappeared into the mansion.

The guest stepped out onto the porch and almost bumped into Adou. The place had been ablaze with light when he arrived, but now the porch was as dark as the deck of a slaver on a black Atlantic night.

He could just discern Adou’s outline, shadow against dark. Then a lighter clicked and Adou touched fire to the tip of his cigarette. He had taken off the sunglasses. One empty, ragged eye socket flared red in the yellow flame.

“Come.” It did not sound like a request this time. Adou moved off, as sure-footed as a midnight cat. He came behind, stumbling into the darkness.

THE BULLET HIT FATHER WYMAN BEFORE HE HEARD THE AK-47 report. No surprise, that. Haji’s AK rounds traveled a mile in two seconds, way ahead of their sound. You never heard the one with your name on it. So to Father Wyman’s way of thinking, only fools and ground pounders ducked and flinched in firefights. When they were Oscar Mike, he stood tall in his up-armored Humvee turret, head on a swivel, hands on his fifty-cal’s oak, cigar-shaped grips, thumbs on the butterfly trigger.

Father Wyman was not a priest. He was a heartland patriot less than three years out of high school, but he loved to read his Bible and to hold prayer meetings for the other troopers, so that was what the men in Viper Company at Combat Outpost (COP) Terok had taken to calling him. Wyman’s was not a foxhole conversion. He’d inherited from his father and mother an unshakable belief in the Book’s literal truth. It was not an ancient tome of mystic parable, but practical wisdom by which they lived their lives, day by day. They trusted it as farmers trusted their land and wealthy people their money. They read it more often than newspapers. They had no faith in soiled politicians and godless scientists. Anyone with eyes to see and a mortal soul knew that the Bible had survived centuries of sin and dark horror to bring them light. Why would God have saved it for them otherwise? When they touched their Bible, opened it, read from it, its power was as real as wind and fire.

Wyman was as big as he was devout, six-three and 210 pounds. His machine gun was bolted to a wheeled carriage that rolled around the circular track of his Humvee mount, so he could easily man the gun one-handed. He had seen the muzzle flash two hundred meters out. The haji fired—a good shot, considering the AK-47’s notorious inaccuracy—and dropped down behind a washing machine–sized boulder, no doubt thinking himself safe.

Too bad for you, Mr. Haji . Viper Company was equipped with “Badass”—that was what they called the new boomerang anti-sniper detection system (BADS), which used passive acoustic detection and computer-signal processing to locate a shooter with pinpoint accuracy. Badass’s developers, like those who created audible aircraft-crew cockpit warnings, knew that the male brain responded best to a female voice. So, while he was still running on adrenaline, in his earpiece Father Wyman heard a sultry young woman say, “Target bearing one-nine-one. Range two-zero-seven.”

When he turned in that general direction, a bright red dot appeared on a particular boulder, two football fields distant, in the image in his monocular eyepiece. The red dot remained on that boulder no matter which way Father Wyman turned his head. A yellow dot representing his aim point, with computer-calculated elevation and windage adjustments, also appeared in the eyepiece. When the yellow dot merged with the red, a green dot appeared and the woman’s voice breathed, “Target acquired,” followed by a soft, continuous tone.