Jack Chalker - A War of Shadows

Bob Hartman got to Syracuse in what he believed was record time. The sleek Air Force jet had used more time taking off and landing than it had in the air.

The rest of the team was all ready and waiting for him at the airport. He didn’t ask if they were all cleared; he knew that Carlos Romero, the agent in charge, was and Carlos had picked the others.

They sped off in a five-car caravan to the West. There was one military checkpoint, staffed by a hunch of green kids. For a moment he considered drafting them, then decided better of it. These people wouldn’t be gang chiefs or terrorists.

Twenty-two highly trained and experienced agents walked into the hospital and simply took it over. Hartman, authoritative, rounded up the staff and separated them by occupation and classification without trouble. A small green cigar box was produced, and a calculator-like device, and a call was made.

Less than three-quarters of an hour passed before military busses from Whiteoaks Air Force Base started rolling up. General Kneiss had been prewarned and ready, one of Jake’s good guys.

It took more than three hours to evacuate the staff and “patients” at Martha’s Lake, and Hartman’s team left it an empty shell, lights still burning.

Special staff flown in on Edelman’s orders were already arriving at Whiteoaks by the time he arrived. The severely drugged patients were placed under guard in the small hospital they had on the base; the others were billeted in spare barracks. Hartman recognized quite a number of the patients. They were all scared shitless, he thought, but to an absolutely frightened and beaten person authority is authority and force is force. They had no idea whose side anybody was on, or if in fact there was another side.

The staff proved different. They knew they were in the wrong hands; most demanded to make phone calls or see various government personnel. A few demanded lawyers. The names and numbers of everyone they wanted to talk to were dutifully recorded, but messages were left unsent.

General Kneissel’s trained, cleared, and hand-picked Intelligence boys tapped eight officers and nineteen noncoms trying to make interesting phone calls. Again the numbers were recorded, and these people joined the staff.

The doctors broke first, of course. One little Iranian doctor who said his citizenship was on the line finally admitted all and told the story of Sandra O’Connell. Crofton, the attendant who’d let her escape, was hauled in next and informed that he was in for highly unpleasant treatment for the kidnapping and possible murder of O’Connell. He broke, blaming Braden for everything.

“Where is Braden now?” Hartman demanded.

Crofton shrugged. “I dunno. An Army helicopter came and got him a couple of days ago and we haven’t seen or heard from him since.”

This was also noted. A circle was drawn around Martha’s Lake, and the Army helicopters capable of getting to Braden within the time frame were catalogued. Flight logs and orders were run through computer networks.

Not having to play by the rules made life a lot simpler, Bob Hartman had to admit to himself.

The helicopter, and the name of the captain who had flown it, was quickly isolated. A Bureau helicopter then took Hartman to a National Guard unit just outside Syracuse.

The Officer of the Day and CQ were surprised and startled by the FBI visit, but the OD had been a used car salesman until the emergency and the CQ had been a supermarket clerk. They weren’t about to argue with the authoritative agents.

In an Army car Hartman traveled in the early hours of the morning to the home of one Captain Irving Wentzel, getting him out of bed. His wife’s protests and shrieks were a bit too much; they had no kids, so they took her, too.

The whole thing had been done under tight security, and yet too many people were involved, too many bystander types and buck-passing types to keep it completely quiet.

While Captain Irving Wentzel was being harshly interrogated as to where he’d gone in that helicopter after leaving Diefenbaker Hospital, somebody called somebody who called somebody else.

Finally, somebody dialed 1-500-555-2323.

Sam felt relieved by their uneventful capture, and both amazed and grateful that Suzy had been taken so completely unaware and so unable to do anything at all that she was still alive, whole, and hearty. It eased his conscience a great deal.

Suzy had been silent for most of the ride, but now, suddenly, she was getting curious.

“Sam, look at this road,” she said.

He couldn’t see as well, being shackled farther from the tiny barred and screened window, but still he could see what she meant.

It was a glorified, slightly paved cowpath.

They had travelled a long time—an hour or more, they guessed—stopping only briefly for occasional roadblocks, which held them up not a bit. No roadblocks out here, though. This was a combination of farm country and rich people’s homes, the kind with an acre or more of lawn.

Now the van slowed to a stop. Suzy craned her neck to see out the window.

“Anything?” he asked, getting both curious and apprehensive.

“Cows,” she replied, echoing his feelings.

There was a key in the side lock, then a pullback of the van door. The trooper produced a second key and unlocked the cage, climbing in.

“Sorry to put you folks through this, but it frankly was the easiest way to get you through the blocks and into open country like this,” he said.

Both their mouths dropped. “You mean this was planned ?” Suzy asked.

He nodded as he unlocked their manacles. “Yeah. Sorry about the lack of warning but your expressions and manner made it all the more convincing back there. Most of those folks were real cops. Sorry we couldn’t make it easier, but Charlie was taking a crap and I was getting a candy bar. Hell, we didn’t know when you’d get there.”

“I wouldn’t use this again, though,” Sam cautioned him. “Hell, Suzy almost blew your head off, and we could easily have gotten ours shot in by some of those real cops.”

He shrugged. “Fortunes of war.” They were free and he helped them out of the van. They stretched and massaged their legs.

“Okay,” continued the phony trooper. “Maybe a thousand meters around that bend is Route 30. When you get to it, make a left and cross the road. About a kilometer up you’ll see an unpaved road on your right—it’s the last road in Maryland. If you go under a sign that says ‘Welcome to Pennylvania’ you’ve missed it. Ten or so old but nice homes up there. You want the last one in, a big old house maybe a century old. It usta be the farmhouse for the place before they subdivided it.”

Suzy was all business again. “Ten houses? Won’t that attract attention?”

He shook his head. “Nope. Don’t worry about it. Most of those folks moved into apartments up in Hanover because of the transportation problem, and others got called out in the emergency, down to Baltimore and D.C. and whatever. If anybody’s in any of those houses now, it’s one of us.”

“Somehow I can’t bring myself to thank you, but it’s been a long day and still there’s a long walk ahead, so goodbye,” Sam said.

The “trooper” smiled. “Okay, good luck and all that. Five got in ahead of you, so things seem to be going well.”

With that he got back in the van, did a three-point turn, and headed back along the way he’d come. “Back to the wars,” Suzy said brightly.

He was thinking the same thing, only for a far different set of reasons.

The neighborhood was on the edge of a deep woods, and the other houses, as they’d been told, were empty now. Mt. Venus Road had at one time been paved, but not for thirty years.