The Stickmen (12 page)

Lynn cast another look at the now-veritable
pile of documents and photographs on the bed. She sighed. “Like I
said before, Harlan. It all looks real good…but I still think it’s
fake. Swenson’s used all of his resources, and every new-fangled
high-end forgery technology to pull the wool over your eyes. He’s
using you for his own gain.”

“Okay, but why?” Garrett asked. “He’s dying.
He’s a withered old man bald from chemotherapy and radiation
treatment. He can’t even stand up anymore. His life’s over—so why
do this?”

“Devotion to duty,” Lynn came right back. “A
lot of people take it to their graves. It’s what they lived for,
and what they die for too.”

Garrett made another understanding nod. “I
hear you. And ordinarily, I’d agree with you. But—” Garrett raised
both brows at his ex-wife.

“But
what,
Harlan?”

“You still haven’t seen what else was in the
suitcase.”

“What?”

“Open the flap on the side…”

Lynn, still sitting on the unmade bed, slid
the suitcase toward her, over the piles of documents. She fumbled
with a strapped flap on the front of the case, and eventually she
removed a long folded black plastic pouch. The plastic crinkled
when she opened it.

“Still think it’s all fake?” Garrett
chided.

All the color drained out of Lynn’s face
when she withdrew a long blackened forearm bone complete with a
skeletal two-fingered hand at the end of it.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The window begins to glitter—the
trapezoid.

Dark swirls of light flecked with shining
pin-pricks. Then—

Danny quickly shields his eyes against the
sudden explosion of white glare. Now the window glows bright as
sunlight.

Danny is standing in front of the window.
His face feels warms from the blinding white light, and now,
somehow, he can see again. His eyes have adjusted. It’s just like
it’s been every time. Behind him, crickets trill in the darkness
and the town he lives in lies asleep under the moon. But Danny’s
face is alight from the ship’s window.

School’s out now, but he knows he didn’t do
very well. It’s hard to concentrate in class when he can’t get much
sleep. He knows his father thinks there’s something wrong with him,
he knows his father thinks he’s stupid.

But it’s not Danny’s fault.

They’re
the ones who bring him out
here most every night.
They’re
the ones who call him out to
tell him what to do. Danny doesn’t like it…but he knows he has to
do it anyway. He’s not sure why—he just knows.

They’re
the ones he’s doing it
for—

The white light slowly turned into churning
smears of red and yellow. A slim, stick-like shape moved in the
trapezoidal window.

It seemed to be waving at him.

Yes,
they’re
the ones.

“The Stickmen,” Danny said under his
breath.

Then the Stickmen invited him in.

««—»»

The worst part was the beeping. The drip
monitor, the heart monitor, the respiratory monitor. It was
constant, a ceaseless hell. If he died amid such noise, would he
take it with him to an afterlife? Or was this hell already?

Swenson lay in bed, though sometimes he’d
drift off into half-dreams and see himself lying on something else:
a morgue platform. The image left him coolly resolute. He’d had a
good life, and he’d done important things. He’d had his time, and
he’d made the most of it. Now his time was up. It was simple and
logical. He wasn’t afraid of death. He only wished he didn’t have
to listen to all these machines beeping.

The oxygen tube tickled his nose. Sometimes
if felt as though tiny bugs were crawling atop his bald head, or
around the inside of his pajama collar. Sometimes snakes seemed to
slither up his legs. But these sensations he welcomed; they
distracted him from the ever-growing pain. Too often the pain
seemed like some demonic entity trying to force out Swenson’s
spirit and take over his body.

You can have it,
he thought.

Sleep taunted him, but he never quite got
there. Sometime later, the door opened, and Wentworth, his butler
for several decades, entered the beeping room He held a small
silver try with a glass of juice.

“Time for my late-night fix?” Swenson
joked.

“Your evening medication, General,”
Wentworth said. “And Cranapple.”

Swenson sputtered under his breath. “Shit,
Wenty, I’m going through this stuff like they’re M&M’s. You
might as well go down to Fourteenth and U and buy me some
smack.”

“Shall I pick up a whore for you too, sir?”
Wentworth chided.

“Naw, not tonight. I’d be too much for her;
she wouldn’t be able to walk for weeks.”

The butler smiled at the joke; Swenson had
been celibate since the ’70s. Wentworth set the tray down and
remained there until Swenson had taken the pills and chased them
with the juice.

“Is there anything else I can get for you,
General?”

“Naw, not unless you can find me a couple of
new lungs. You think they got ’em at Sears?”

“I’ll check the catalog posthaste, sir.”

“Good. Oh, and tell the SP to help himself
to a beer—the stuff from Kulmbach. Hell, I can’t drink it
anymore.”

The butler looked offended. “Bugger the SP,
sir. What about me? What am I? Chopped liver?”

Swenson shrugged. “Aw, sure, why not? You
can have one too.” Both men chuckled, then Wentworth bid,
“Goodnight, General.”

“Goodnight, Wenty. See you tomorrow…I
hope.”

“Oh, you will, sir. Providence has cursed me
with fluffing your pillows until the end of time.”

“Sounds good to me, Wenty.”

The butler left the room, closing the door
quietly behind him.

Yeah,
Swenson thought.
Maybe—just
maybe—God’ll let me hang around until Garrett’s done the
job…

««—»»

Wentworth tracked across the dim foyer with
the tray and empty glass. All levity gone. He’d miss Swenson very
much. By design—perhaps a universal one—they were both loners
brought together in a chaotic world. They didn’t fit in to the
world, and they didn’t want to. They just wanted to do what life
had ordained them to do. Swenson’s duties were complex,
problematic, and super-secret. Wentworth was just a manservant. But
that’s what he liked. The two of them were opposites who were the
same.

He set down the tray on the kitchen counter,
then mechanically washed and dried the juice glass. He looked
around the empty, silent room, and—for the first time—wiped a tears
out of his eye.

The beer,
he remembered. Swenson had
half a refrigerator full, German imports he always ordered from a
distributor in Deale.
Where’d the SP go?
he wondered.

Come to think of it, Wentworth hadn’t seen
him in over an hour.

He went back out to the foyer, glancing
around. He checked the den and the study. He checked the
half-bathroom by the stairs, then the dining room at the front of
the house.

No sign of the SP.

“Sergeant?” Wentworth called out.

Wentworth looked down the hall, up the
stairs. He rechecked the guard office.

“Sergeant? Where are you?”

Confused, the butler went back to the
kitchen.
He wouldn’t have gone outside,
he considered.
The house is locked up for the night, and the alarm systems are
on.
That’s when Wentworth noticed the small keypad beside the
back door. The small green light would glow constantly when the
alarm was active, and it would blink when the system was turned
off. But—

“What’s this?” he whispered.

The green light was dead altogether. It
couldn’t be a power failure; all the lights were on, and even if
they weren’t the alarm system wasn’t powered by a domestic power
line. Plus, there were back-ups.

Just as Wentworth turned, though, the heel
of his shoe seemed to slip on something.

When he looked down at the floor, he saw
blood.

For the next few seconds, reason did not
occur to him; he felt numb when he opened the utility room door.
More numbness—not shock or fear—gripped him when he saw the Air
Force SP lying dead on the floor in the slowly spreading pool of
blood.

The muffled
pap
which followed was
barely louder than someone snapping his fingers once. Wentworth saw
a plume of something red launch from his own forehead, then spatter
against the shiny white front of the hot-water heater. He blinked,
tried to mouth words, and collapsed, dying several moments later
right on top of the SP.

««—»»

Was it a dream? Swenson saw a great blue sky
and an endless ocean. The sun warmed his face. Was he on a boat? He
must’ve been, for where ever this place was, he could feel himself
gently rocking, as if on the sea.
So beautiful,
he thought
in almost a desperate wonder. He squinted into the sun, watched its
glow along the edge of the earth. Not a cloud in the sky, just
teeming perfect beauty. It astonished him that after so many
decades of life, he’d never had time to notice the simple beauty of
the sky.

Until now.

But then the sky darkened as if some cosmic
cloak had been drawn across the horizon, and when Swenson awoke and
opened his eyes he knew the vision was only a dream. Either a very
cruel one, or just the opposite. A last chance to really
see
something important.

The shadow stood just inside of the door,
barely perceptible.

“You,” Swenson croaked. “I should’ve
known.”

QJ/WYN never stepped out of the shadow; it
seemed as though he were part of it. In one hand he held the small
semi-automatic pistol with the chambered sound-suppressor.

“We meet again,” came the weirdly neutral
voice.

“I knew you were insane the first time I saw
you,” Swenson said. “I should’ve had you killed.”

“Yes, you should’ve. But that would have
been a waste of time because you and I both know that your people
aren’t good enough. They never have been. They’ve never really had
what it takes—”

“To be like you?” Swenson interrupted. “Yes,
I suppose you’re right. You’re the worst kind of creature that can
exist in this business.”

“And you’re a creature right along with me,”
the visitor said. “You know why I’m here, so you might as well
talk.”

Swenson stifled a cough, managed a wizened
smile. “Anything for a buck. That’s what it’s all about these days
anyway, right? Not loyalty, not duty. Money.”

“You might be surprised.”

“I doubt it. Who are you working for now?
The Company? Freelance? Private sector?”

The operative didn’t answer the question.
“The Area November material, I want it

back.”

“I paid you for that package thirty years
ago, when you worked for me.”

“Things change in thirty years. Let’s just
say I have a new contract now, a higher bidder. These people won’t
tolerate the release of that information.”

Swenson rasped a pained cough. “Don’t you
understand what’s probably happening at Edgewood? The results could
be catastrophic.”

The shadow merely stared back with eyes of
darkness. “Where’s the material, General?”

“It’s not here. What, you think I’d keep it
here?
But you were never the sharpest pencil in the box.
Don’t worry, my friend. What you’re looking for— Well, let’s just
say it’s in safe hands.”

QJ/WYN removed an ice-pick from his jacket
pocket. “CIC trained me well, General, but you’re we’ll aware of
that. There are ways to inflict pain that you have never
conceived.”

Swenson laughed outright at him. “You must
sit on your brains. I’m so full of Dilaudid and morphine you could
put a power drill through my friggin’ skull and I wouldn’t feel it.
Look at you—the big bad hit man. I’m shaking, see? I’m so scared
I’m wetting the bed. So why don’t you bend over real hard and see
if you can stick your head up your—”

Three small red spots appeared almost
simultaneously of Swenson’s chest. He jerked once, let out a
gurgling gasp.

When the shadow left the room, the eye of
Swenson’s mind was again gazing wondrously into an endless blue
sky.

Beautiful,
he thought.
Beautiful.
Then his heart made its final beat.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The information Super-fuckin’-highway
runs deep,
Garrett thought. His computer screen glowed with
more official military brands.

U.S. ARMY PERSONNEL AGENCY

FORT BENJAMIN HARRISON, INDIANA

RESTRICTION CODE FOR THIS SITE:

CRYPTODINARARCO

WARNING: THIS IS A RESTRICTED
DATA-VAULT.

ILLEGAL OR UNAUTHORIZED VIEWING OF
RESTRICTED DATA

CAN BE PUNISHABLE BY DEATH.

“Yeah, yeah,” Garrett dismissed the warning.
Further down on the white- and powder-blue-blocked screen, he found
what he’d been looking for.

m__ALLOCATE/SEARCH OBJECT [NAME]——…

FIND: SEARCH OBJECT:

[SANDERS]\U.S. ARMY COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE
CORP.

****
[SEARCH OBJECT FOUND]
****

“Got it!” Garrett celebrated, but then his
enthusiasm deflated.

On the screen was a personnel photo of a man
in a khaki shirt with a silver 1st lieutenant’s bar at the tip of
one collar, and a gold sphinx at the tip of the other.

But the man’s face had been rubbed out in
black.

A lot of good that does…

OFFICIAL DELETION: PHOTO-OBJECT REDACTED FOR
REASONS

PERTAINING TO NATIONAL SECURITY

“What do you expect, Harlan?” Lynn said,
standing behind him. She was intently watching the screen over his
shoulder. “You’re in real deep here. You’re waltzing around in some
highly restricted data channels.”