Reckoning (31 page)

Kertzman had already purchased topography maps according to home sites, and he'd planned to check the purchased land against the topography charts to shuffle any unsuitable locations lower on the list.

With resolute calm and a hot cup of coffee beside him, Kertzman picked up the first batch of records, perused the listing of land purchases for Delaware County. Then, with amazing speed, he began to write them down, rearranging the land purchases with the largest plots first, copying them in descending size for the one-year period. It was a lot; 153. He repeated the procedure with Sullivan and Ulster counties, methodically listing each plot in order of size, from largest to smallest in descending order.

Four hours and six cups of coffee later, he was finished. He could have accomplished a lot more a lot quicker, if he had used an Agency computer, but that would have violated the rules of his greater plan, exposed his moves. So he did it the old-fashioned way. And in his own, stubborn self-reliance, he enjoyed it.

"Finished." He leaned back from the desk, rubbing his eyes tiredly. It had been a long time since he had done anything this methodical. It was like the old days, when he was just a grunt highway patrolman in South Dakota, finishing paperwork on top of paperwork with no end in sight.

He stared wearily at the 45 legal-size pages of listings.

You're wastin' time with this, boy!

The thought stung Kertzman.

"No I'm not," he said aloud so that he'd hear himself say it.

Maybe in time he'd believe it.

Frowning, he leaned forward again and began to check the listings of past purchased against current ownerships, discovering who still owned the same plots that were bought in that period of 1990. In the end, he had a list of 25 plots of land that were over 100 acres in size still in the possession of the same owner. There were 40 listings for plots over 50 acres, and the remaining 20 listings were for plots less than 50. Any plots smaller than 20 acres could be ignored.

"That ain't gonna be you, partner," Kertzman whispered to himself. "You want some room. You want to be able to use the terrain, to choose a dozen different lines of retreat."

Kertzman realized that if Gage had arranged another purchase of the land from one identification to another since 1990 it would delay his success at tracking the Delta warrior down. But he was betting Gage hadn't resold the land to another identity. Buying and selling was an activity that violated
Procedures to Escape and Evade.

Kertzman recalled the Special Forces training manuals he had studied on the flight from Washington to New York, copies of the same manuals Gage was issued when he was training in the early eighties.

Escape and Evade. Never move in a straight line. Never become visible. Never attract attention. Move as far as possible as fast as possible, then find concealment and don't move again. Never do anything you don't have to do.

There was more in the training manuals. A lot more. With dazed fascination Kertzman learned methods for creating illegal incendiary weapons out of coffee, sugar, soap, potassium, rubbing alcohol, or turpentine; weapons that could be made quickly and with little preparation from standard kitchen products but which
would explode like napalm and burn even under water. He learned how to improvise lethal booby traps from locks, telephones, whistles, flashlights, doorknobs and even candy bars. And he learned more about camouflage than he ever believed existed.

Kertzman was already familiar with the concepts of using terrain, shadows, and foliage to conceal shape and cover sound. But, while studying the manuals, he learned how to use an enemy's visual depth perception to conceal movement, how to use double slopes to throw the sound of a rifle shot, causing the sound to come from an area several hundred yards away from the actual point of fire.

He learned new methods for locating water in the desert (by studying the birds in the evening), for sewing wounds shut with human hair, and for nocturnal navigation by the stars. And there were techniques teaching how to eat substances that would make a normal person vomit (pinch nose, close eyes, chew with water, and swallow quickly), how to move on dry sticks without making a sound (set the foot down, heel to toe, upon the sticks and in a direction parallel with the sticks), and how to utilize the red-cone, green-cone color receptors of the eyes to detect motion in the dark, instead of simple visual acuity (stare fixedly at the ground parallel with the moving object. Do not look at moving object, but keep object in peripheral vision, allowing cones to monitor movement by distortion of shading).

Kertzman found every secret of ancient and modern combat that man possessed. It was an encyclopedia of both arcane and high-tech methods of killing, the perfect path through war.

Finally, when most of what he was reading was only sliding off his back, Kertzman had set the manuals back in his briefcase, amazed at the knowledge provided to these elite fighting units.

Kertzman shifted, disturbed again by the thought of how dangerous Gage could be. Then he turned his attention once more to the real estate records. Plot by plot, he studied the properties on the topography map, selecting sites which offered good terrain for defense; terrain with hills, gullies, ridges, or sharp inclines. Some of the plots centered around the Ashokan and Roundout Reservoirs, popular tourist attractions busy with people.

No, thought Kertzman, too many people. You want isolation. No chance of any recognition.

Fifteen plots of purchased land ranging from 100 to 300 acres stretched from east to west across a section, Highway 206 to Highway 28. Some were located in isolated, backwoods lakes like Alder, Beecher, and Balsam. Terrain elevations became increasingly steeper as land moved east. Some of the steepest elevations were in the area of Doubletop Mountain, which capped at almost
4,000 feet, low for a Western State but a respectable elevation for this high on the East Coast. An hour later Kertzman had a specific list of high probable sites he would begin to explore in the morning.

Morosely, Kertzman stared at the list. Now for the hard part.

Checking out ownerships would be difficult without arousing suspicion. He could question a few neighbors, a couple of sheriff's deputies, see if he couldn't pick up a sign, a mark that might give him what he needed. But right now he wasn't even certain about what that might be. Probably something obscure. Maybe a neighbor who had no idea about the mystery man who lived next door. A sheriff's deputy who remembered sporadic complaints of rifle fire at a particular location. But Kertzman doubted it. No, this guy would be careful, real quiet, but not so quiet as to arouse suspicion. Neighbors would know him as just another vaguely friendly but private person, and checking with cops could go either way. They might know something, but cops liked to talk. That meant that word could get around that someone was asking questions. And if Gage got wind of a hunting party, he would be gone in the blink of an eye. A ghost.

In the morning, as routine, he would check phone records.

Everybody had a phone, even Gage. It wouldn't take much time, and there might be phone records from this particular company to someone on the property list.

It was worth a shot.

Kertzman stared at the papers a moment longer. His eyes burned. It had been a long week, a long day. He had a lot of work to do in the morning. Wearily he rose and walked to the bed, turned off the light.

Outside, the sounds of traffic, the distant drone of a siren.

He sniffed. Caught the faint odor of something stale and sickly sweet. It smelled cheap.

One day he'd leave all this behind, walk away from the lies, the deceptions, the games, and the power. He'd find his home again in the mountains, find what he'd lost in the city walls that had smothered him for too long.

It was a comforting thought, being alone in the high country, the cold wind at his back, blue sky everywhere. But he wouldn't find it tonight. Tonight he had a job to do, and he was locked in by honor to finish it. If he didn't, there would be nothing for him to find in the desert or the hills or the high country. For in the end he'd only have what he took with him, what he took away from this madness.

Honor. Duty.

A man's got to live with himself.

Slowly Kertzman took off his boots and
lay down, not bothering to remove his clothes. He was glad he had called Emma earlier in the night, had comforted her in her loneliness, had told her he would be home in a few days. But she had still sounded somehow sad. She was tired of so many years of traveling, of him living on the road, investigating, away from home. But it would soon be over. After this. Then they would move back home to the country where they belonged.

Kertzman placed the Colt on the nightstand and removed his hand, waiting a moment. Then he reached out suddenly, groping for a split
-second before finding the checkered handle, the safety, flicking it down. He gripped the gun, familiarizing himself with the abrupt action.

He rested for a moment, imprinting the movement in his mind before initiating the safety and laying the Colt down again, allowing himself to relax.

As his eyes closed he fell instantly into dreams of the forest, and hunting, seeing himself on a cold white ridge in the close morning dark, watching a trail through a scope, waiting patiently for the beast to come up the path in the first faint light of dawn.

* * *

THIRTY

Slashing, leaping, and circling in a form of deadly ballet, Gage moved forward and back, twisting, catching, and releasing.
Suddenly Chavez's knife was torn from his hand, spinning like a wheel to land in the dirt.

Chavez nodded, grunted, and picked up the knife, which was still in its sheath. And they began again, sparring, slashing with the sheathed weapons, moving and fighting as if the blades were exposed.

Sarah watched, sitting on the woodpile beside the house. Almost 24 hours had passed since she had spoken with her father about Gage, and neither of them had mentioned it again. Sandman was preparing to go into the hills, his usual maneuver with dusk, for first-shift guard duty. But for the moment he stood beside Sarah, shouting instructions to Gage and Chavez.

"Don't try for a trap!" Sandman shouted at Gage. "You're always tryin' for a trap! That's what gets you hurt! Let it happen! Don't try to make it happen!"

Teeth clenched, Gage slashed upwards from the waist. Chavez grunted explosively, twisting to deflect Gage's forearm with his own, slashing in again as Gage jerked his arm back. The sheathed blade missed by a foot and they were circling again, keeping careful distance.

"Explain this to me," Sarah said suddenly to Sandman, who immediately seized the opportunity.

"You see," he began enthusiastically, gesturing to describe his point, "you got seven angles of attack. High, middle, and low from each side. That's three on each side. The seventh angle is straight forward. When Gage moves to Chavez's right, he's cutting off three of Chavez's best angles because Chavez is right-handed. That means Chavez has to bring his arm way out to use those three right-side angles to cut. He won't do that. It'll open up his defense. He needs to keep the blade up close, in front. So he has to turn with Gage, or back up and reposition or something to get his angles back. It's constant movement and distance."

Chavez slashed. Gage's free hand followed the blade, caught the wrist, and with his forearm and a quick twist, sent Chavez's sheathed blade pin wheeling through the air again. Chavez nodded, as if he approved of the move. Then he picked up the knife and they began again.

"That's called a trap," Sandman replied without looking at her, keeping his eyes on the sparring. "Gage trapped his hand, disarmed him. Gage is good at it but he looks for it too much. He always did."

A moment passed.

"A trap is a lot simpler when you're fighting someone who doesn't know what he's doing," Sandman added, still studying the movements. "But Chavez is good. Just in the last thirty seconds Gage tried for two more, and Chavez cut him both times."

"Not really cut," Sarah said, knowing it didn't need to be said but not able to help herself.

"No, no, just playin'," Sandman replied, smiling at her for a second, then sobered again. "Gage is movin' a little slow, not like he should. Usually he'd be all over Chavez." He paused. "Maybe my boy ain't right yet. Might be hurtin'."

Sarah waited a moment, then, "How good would someone have to be to cut Gage up like he did?"

Sandman shrugged. "When we was in regular Special Forces, they'd get into these knife contests, sort of like a duel but nobody would get killed. If you killed your opponent, you lost and you lost face. And that was what really mattered. They didn't care about dying. They cared about reputation. And the only way to really win a contest was just to make your opponent stop fightin'."

Sarah narrowed her eyes. "How did they make each other stop fighting?"

"Blood loss," Sandman said, eyes widening. "Shock. Whatever. I never got into one, myself, but Gage got into them all the time. He had a reputation. People was always challengin' him. We'd be in a bar or somethin', and that weird, jabberin' Filipino trash talk would get started. Or sometimes the hotshot knife fighters on the islands would hear that we were in town and they'd hunt Gage down for a little match. He never turned one down." Sandman closed his eyes and grimaced, visibly emotional with the memory. "Man! Them fights was nasty! And fast, boy! Faster than you could see! Blades flyin' everywhere. Blood hittin' the floor, gettin' on your shoes.

“
It was mean. Sometimes the fight would go a minute, and sometimes it'd last for ten minutes. They'd make them shallow cuts on each other until one would go down. If you weren't good enough to cut without really injurin' the other man, you lost the contest. Or if you passed out from shock or somethin', you lost the contest. Gage never lost. He liked livin' on the edge, in more ways than one." He seemed to ponder a thought. "He's changed a lot, you know. You wouldn't 'a known him in them days. He wasn't... right. Like he is now. I really wasn't that close to him, then. I liked him, but he scared me. That was before Israel, and what happened. But I was out of Black Light by then. Both me and Chavez."

Sarah had wondered about that. "Was that the name of the CIA tactical team?"

He nodded, watching Gage and Chavez.

"Why were you and Chavez out of the unit?"

Sandman sniffed, replied, "I was sent to the house after I lost my leg down south. Chavez left in '89 after he lost his eye."

Sarah focused on Sandman's bitter expression. "How did Chavez lose his eye, if it's not too rude to ask."

Sandman shrugged. "Nuthin' special. He got hit with some phosphorous. 'Bout like usual. Happens to everybody sooner or later. When it's got your name on it, it's got your name on it. Say good night."

A coldness embraced Sarah's heart. "You guys are so calm when you talk about these things. I don't see how you do it. It's sad."

Sandman laughed, breaking the unsettling tension. "Sorry 'bout that. It ain't 'bout a thing. Just soldier talk." He turned to her suddenly. "Hey, you worried? Don't worry. Gage is an expert with a knife."

Sarah shook her head. "I don't understand your world, Sandman. I don't know what it takes to be a soldier. All I know is that I put two hundred stitches in Gage after he came back because somebody had almost killed him in a
knife fight. And you say he's an expert with a knife."

She turned her head to stare fully into Sandman's curious face.

"Well, I didn't see the other guy," Sandman muttered, looking down for a moment. "So he might 'a looked worse. But I know it ain't possible to get too much better with a knife. Gage knows all the techniques, even the really weird ones, all the angles. He's an expert at bridgin' the gap. At closin'. He's fast. Strong. Reflexes like lightnin'. He's a natural at it. Ever since our first days of training, it was always what he was best at. Nobody could touch him. It was, like, a gift from God or somethin'."

He waited so long to speak that Sarah was worried. "Whoever beat Gage ain't real," he added quietly and a trace of worry. "I know Gage. I've seen him do it all. And there ain't nuthin' mortal that could do that to him." He seemed to finish, turned away. "I don't care and I don't know who the other guy is. But I know he ain't real."

Sandman didn't proclaim his regular round of jokes about the cold as he turned away. Sarah watched him walk limply, and somewhat sadly, across the grass, moving towards the hills. She wouldn't see him again until midnight, when Chavez went out to relieve him.

Malachi and Barto were in the house preparing supper. And Sarah waited while Gage and Chavez finished with their sparring. Finally, they were done, and Gage sat down beside her, sweat glistening on his face and neck, but drying quickly in the cold wind. She watched as Chavez lit a cigarette, walked past her to pick up one of the semiautomatic rifles, went inside. She smiled, amused. After a week, she had still not heard him say one word.

Experimentally, Gage flexed his right hand, moving the
fingers, closing them one by one into a fist, opening, testing. Sarah noticed that the incision along his right forearm was healing. The stitches had been removed, leaving slightly noticeable, blue-tinged markings on either side of the incision.

"How do you feel?" she asked casually.

"I'm OK. Probably a little slow."

She nodded. "You look pretty good to me. You've healed up well."

Gage laid the sheathed blade onto a book. She glanced at the title: A Book of Five Rings. An arcane depiction of an ancient samurai was on the cover. The image was scowling, holding a long sword in each hand.

"What's the book?"

Gage shrugged, "Just research."

"On what?" she asked, allowing the situation to guide itself.

"I had a hunch about the guy I fought," Gage replied steadily. "I guessed he had studied classical kendo. I thought I recognized one of his techniques. I was studying up on it in case I meet him again. I want to get a better feel for his style."

"What's the technique?"

"Fire and Stones Cut," he replied carefully. "That's what it's called. It's supposed to be done with a long blade. A katana. But I think that this guy is taking old sword techniques, those that concentrate on slashing, and he's adapting them to fit the size blade he's using now. It's a difficult thing to do because a lot of sword techniques will never translate to a shorter blade. But some of them will. The stabbing and slashing techniques are adaptable. But the cutting techniques are difficult to adapt because you need a long edge and they don't work with a tanto unless you're real strong in the wrist."

Sarah didn't have the foggiest idea what a tanto was, but she realized that it was the kind of knife that Gage's opponent had used. Yet she also sensed the faintest lessening of his internal distance as he spoke, and she encouraged him to release a little more, approaching him on the ground he knew best.

"How does this Fire and Stones Cut work?" she asked with only the slightest hesitation.

Gage shifted his right shoulder, as if to release tension or
fatigue. Sarah remembered that she had removed over 60 sutures from the area over his right shoulder blade.

"It's a cut that's performed when two blades clash together," he replied, easily. "Without dropping the blade or drawing it back, the samurai pivots his entire body, feet off the ground, all his weight into the arm, and swings the blade in a tight half-circle." He twisted his body slightly, moving his torso to describe the movement. "It's a real quick power move, designed to take advantage of a close
situation. That's how I got this cut across my shoulder. It was so fast that I didn't have time to react. Our blades met and he pivoted. Instantly. It was lightning. I went down and away and he missed but not by much. He was good. The best I've ever seen."

Sarah swept back a lock of windblown hair from her eyes. "Sandman told me you were unbeatable with a knife."

Gage laughed. "Sandman says lots. There's no such thing as unbeatable. That's a concept that people hold who don't really know a whole lot about the psychology of fighting. Some guys are stronger than others, yeah, but everybody has weaknesses that even a poor opponent can take advantage of. And no matter how good you are, everybody has bad days. Emotions play a big part in combat. So many factors, like emotions, adrenaline, training, and mental attitude are all colliding at unreal speeds. Emotions and adrenaline can really mess you up if you're not in a state of constant mental preparedness. A combat mode."

"Is that the way it is with you?" she asked, genuinely curious. "Sort of a constant combat mode?"

Gage nodded somberly. "After a few years it comes natural. I'm always running combat scenarios through my head. Like, what would I do if this or that happened? What is the best angle of defense or attack if somebody comes out of nowhere with a weapon? What cover do I have? To stay alive in this business you have to make the right move when the right move is there. If you don't have it together mentally, you'll make a mistake when that moment comes. It's the constant combat mode that keeps you alive. There's not much room for anything else."

Sarah leaned forward, wrapping a long arm around her raised knee. "It must be tiring."

"Yeah," he replied. "It's tiring. And it gets old." He paused, staring at the ground. "Simon taught me that there is more to life. A lot more. But now I'm back in my old world. And it's hard. I don't know if I'm tough enough for it anymore. I... don't really want to be here. But I'm locked in—"

"You're not locked in," she broke in quickly.

Gage cut her a sharp look. "Yeah. I'm locked in. 'Cause I'm gonna finish this. I'm going to get that manuscript if it kills me." He paused for a second and then added dejectedly, "And I think all of you might need to make some good contingency plans because it's probably going to."

Gage was afraid he would fail all of them, Sarah thought, and maybe he was also afraid he didn't have the nerve to again fight the person who defeated him in New York.

"How good are these people?"

He raised his eyebrows a second, released a sigh. "I can't speak for all of them," he replied steadily, "but Sato, the Japanese, is a master and then some." Gage shook his head, a gaze of shock. "He's unreal. I've never seen anybody like him. He's fast. And stronger than anybody I've ever gone up against. He's got perfect moves. Perfect technique. Eyes that stay on target, no matter what. And his weapon is long enough to give him a distinctive advantage. It looked like an extended tanto. Maybe a twelve-inch blade with a six-inch hilt. Without even trying he could sever an arm or a head. It would be nothing."