The Ambler Warning

  Time slowed. His hand reached for the area, felt an object projecting from his body, and yanked it out. It was a long, pen-like dart, and it had hit the top part of his sternum, right below the throat. It had hit him there and stuck, like a knife thrown into a tree.

  There was a word for this area of thick bone, Ambler recalled from a training manual: manubrium. In offensive combat, it was a well-protected area you wanted to avoid. Which meant that Ambler might have been very lucky. He dived into the low-draping branches of one of the great eastern hemlocks, and counting on the temporary invisibility conferred by his hiding place, he examined the metal projectile.

  It was not merely a dart; it was a barbed syringe dart, made of stainless steel and molded plastic. On the syringe barrel, small black lettering identified its pressurized contents as carfentanyl—a synthetic opioid ten thousand times more powerful than morphine. A sixton elephant could be completely immobilized with just ten milligrams; an effective human dosage would be measured in micrograms. The sternum was so close to the skin that the needle’s barbs had no chance to anchor themselves in his flesh. But what about the contents of the syringe dart? It was empty, but that didn’t tell him whether it had emptied itself before or after he pulled it out. His fingers returned to the hard bony ridge beneath his throat. He could feel an angry welt where the dart had struck him. So far, he still felt alert. How long had it been in him? His reflexes were fast; surely the elapsed time was less than two seconds. Yet a single droplet could do the task. And a syringe dart of this class was designed to disgorge its contents within moments.

  Then why wasn’t he already unconscious? The question might answer itself before long. For the first time, he became aware that his thinking was growing unfocused, woozy. It was a feeling he was all too accustomed to: he realized that he had been dosed with similar narcotics before, and perhaps many times, on Parrish Island. It was possible that he had built up a measure of tolerance.

  There was a second protective factor. Because the hollow tip of the needle had buried itself in bone, it would have been blocked, the fluid prevented from squirting out freely. And, of course, the complete dosage contained in the dart syringe must have been designed to be sublethal; otherwise a bullet would have been less troublesome. A dart like this, though usually a prelude to abduction, was not itself intended to serve death.

  He was meant to be unconscious by now; instead, he was merely slowed. Slowed at a moment when he could least afford any diminishment of his faculties. The carpet of pine needles beneath him now seemed like a good place to lie down and take a nap. Just for a few minutes. He would rest now and wake up refreshed. Just for a few minutes.

  No! He could not succumb. He had to feel the fear. Carfentanyl, he recalled, had a half-life of ninety minutes. In event of overdose, the optimal treatment was to infuse the opiate-antagonist naloxone. But where that was not available, an injection of epinephrine could be resorted to. Epinephrine. Better known as adrenaline. Survival would come not from keeping terror at bay but from embracing it.

  Feel the fear, he repeated to himself, crawling from beneath the apron of the great eastern hemlock and craning his neck around him. And suddenly he did feel it, as he heard a faint whistling sound again, the sound of rushing air on the rigid, stabilizing wings of a fast-moving projectile, missing him by inches. Adrenaline coursed through his bloodstream: his mouth went dry, his heart began to hammer wildly, and his stomach knotted. Someone was after him. Which meant someone must know who he really was. Self-consciousness evaporated, giving way to the deeply laid circuits of training and instinct.

  Both darts had come from the same direction, from farther up the bank. But what distance? Standard procedure would be to avoid unnecessary close work; a man with a tranquilizer rifle could be effective while stationing himself at a safe remove. Given the limited range of the syringe darts, though, the distance could not be great. In his mind, Ambler walked to his southwest, trying to visualize every detail of the terrain. There was the large stand of hemlocks, their branches tipped with small brown cones; a procession of boulders that could be mounted like steps; a gulch where, during the summer, skunk cabbage and lady’s slippers would flourish in the wet shade. And, securely lashed to an old, ailing elm, a tree stand for deer hunting.

  But of course. A sturdy, portable stand that, like so many “temporary” things, had been put up years ago and never been dismantled. The seat was about three feet square; the heavy straps that held it up were secured around the tree and kept in place by a couple of eyebolts that had been threaded through the trunk. The deer stand was, he recalled, maybe twelve feet off the ground—ground that was maybe twelve feet higher than the ground that Ambler was on. Any professional would have taken advantage of it. How long had the man with the trank gun been studying him before he squeezed the trigger? And who the hell were these people anyway?

  The uncertainties were beginning to tire Ambler, somehow reactivating the micrograms of carfentanyl in his blood: I could rest here. Just for a few minutes. It was almost as if the powerful opiate was whispering the suggestion. No! Ambler wrenched himself back to the present crisis, the here and the now. So long as he was free, he had a chance. That was all Ambler asked for. A chance.

  A chance to make the hunter taste the fear he had inflicted. A chance to stalk the stalker.

  The challenge would be to keep his form low while moving through the woods in a quiet, sure-footed manner. He would have to call on training he had seldom used. Rising from the dense, concealing undergrowth to a crouched position, Ambler slowly lifted his knee, relaxing his ankle and foot as he swung it forward while keeping his knee where it was. The toe of his foot touched down and pressed gently against the surface, making sure there were no twigs that might crackle underneath. The rest of his foot followed, toe to heel, in a smooth, continuous motion.

  Keeping his weight evenly distributed across his foot maximized the surface area upon which the force was applied and so reduced the downward force exerted. Slow and steady, he told himself: but slow and steady was never how he worked. If it hadn’t been for the traces of carfentanyl in his blood, he wasn’t sure he could have stopped himself from bolting.

  Finally, he completed an elliptical course that led him past the ailing elm tree and then back toward it. As he drew within thirty feet of the tree, he found a line of sight through the bramble, trunks, and branches and looked where he expected to find the stand.

  But though the tree was as he had imagined, there was no stand on it. No stand and no sign of a stand. As cold as it was outside, he flushed hotly, seized with apprehension. If not the old deer stand—

  The wind gusted, and he heard a sound, faint but distinct, of wood scraping against wood. He turned toward it and finally made it out. A deer stand. Another deer stand—bigger, higher, and newer, it seemed, secured to the vast trunk of an old plane tree. As quietly as he could, Ambler moved toward it. Mounded around the base of the tree was a thicket of multiflora rose. If only they lost their razor-sharp thorns in winter as well as their leaves! An invasive species from Asia, it tended to form itself into something like natural concertina wire. And for practical purposes, concertina wire was what it might as well have been, coiled around the trunk of the ninety-foot-tall plane tree.

  Ambler peered through branches—past the small bristly seedpods that were outlined against the sky, like pendant sea urchins—and finally made out the figure. He was a big man, dressed in camouflage fatigues and, luckily, facing the opposite direction. That meant that Ambler’s movements had not been detected; the rifleman assumed that he was still somewhere on the terrain that sloped down toward the lake. Ambler peered again, straining to see in the late-afternoon gloom. The rifleman was holding up to his eyes a pair of Steiner Autofocus binoculars—again, a military model, with low-glare coated lenses and a green, rubberized waterproof casing—scanning the distance intently, methodically.

  Dangling around his shoulders from a strap was a long rifle. It had to have been the d
art gun. But the man also had a small sidearm—from its outline, it was probably a Beretta M92. A 9mm U.S. military issue, but usually reserved for members of Special Operations units.

  Was the man alone?

  He seemed to be: he had no walkie-talkie, no visible communicator, no earphone, as you would expect if he was part of a team. But assumptions could not be made.

  Ambler looked around himself one more time. His view of the gunman was partly blocked by a thick branch of the old plane tree, its bark dappled but smooth. The branch—if Ambler moved to his left and jumped straight up, his hands would grasp it, at a point where it was probably thick enough to support his weight. The branch projected straight out from the trunk, just about horizontally, for maybe twenty-five straight feet, and for fifteen feet of that it was thicker than his thigh. Which, he guessed, meant it was thick enough and strong enough for his purposes. If he could swing himself up on it, he could propel himself over the brambles and within a yard or two of the deer stand.

  Now he waited for the next gust in the right direction—away from the gunman, toward him—and sprang upward as hard as he could. His hands grasped the branch, not slapping against it but encircling it swiftly and silently. Another surge from his adrenals enabled him to swing himself up and onto the branch in a single motion.

  A low groaning noise came from the wood itself, as the thick bough flexed a little under his weight. But it was not so loud as Ambler had feared, and the gunman on the deer stand—Ambler was able to see him now—gave no sign that he noticed. The wind had gusted; a tree had groaned: the sequence made sense. It did not attract the hunter’s attention.

  Ambler inched his way down the bough, using his hands and feet in rippling sequence, until at last the stand’s heavy nylon strap was within his grasp. He had hoped to release the nylon webbing, sending the platform crashing to the ground. That would not be possible. The strap’s latch had been positioned on the other side of the trunk, toward the stand. In fact, he could not get much closer without making some small sound that would give him away. Ambler clenched his jaw, willing himself to focus. Nothing ever goes according to plan. Revise, and improvise.

  Ambler raised himself to another branch, squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, filled his lungs with air, and pushed off, throwing himself at the gunman. It was a flying tackle of the sort Ambler hadn’t attempted since his high school gridiron.

  It was also a mistake. Alerted by the noise of Ambler’s exertion, the man turned around. Ambler, for his part, hit the man too low—at knee level, rather than waist level—and instead of being knocked out of the stand the man fell forward and grabbed hold of Ambler with a grip of steel. It was the most Ambler could do to get his hands on the Beretta.

  With a powerful blow, the man knocked the pistol from Ambler’s hand and into the brambles below. As the two men faced off on the small stand, Ambler could tell he would have the worst of it. The man was six foot five, heavily muscled, and yet astonishingly agile. His head was smooth-shaven, a stump-like extension of his thick, powerful neck. He landed blows like a trained boxer: each punch carefully aimed and powered by his entire torso, the arm immediately retracting to a defensive position. It was the most Ambler could do to protect his head; his body was left exposed and the crushing blows, he knew, would soon cause him to double over.

  Now Ambler stepped out of position, slammed himself against the tree trunk, and dropped his hands. He couldn’t have said why.

  The big man looked more pleased than puzzled as he moved in for the kill.

  FOUR

  As Ambler gulped air, his entire body quaking with muscular fatigue, a flicker of the big man’s eye told Ambler what he needed to know: the man was going for the coup de grâce—a single roundhouse punch to the jaw, with all the immense upper-body strength he possessed.

  Except that Ambler did the one thing he was capable of doing, the one thing no professional would think of doing: he dropped to the ground, with exquisite timing. And the bare-knuckled punch connected with the trunk.

  As the man howled in pain, Ambler sprang upward, butting his head into his opponent’s solar plexus, and then, before he even heard the reflexive expulsion of breath, he grasped the man’s ankles and heaved. At long last, the gunman spilled out of the stand, and Ambler plunged down after him. On top of him. Ambler, at least, had something soft to break his fall.

  With fast, deft movements, Ambler yanked off the man’s Kevlar-lined camouflage jacket and combat vest. Then he detached the long-barreled rifle from its sling and used the sling to tie the gunman’s hands behind his back. The center two knuckles of his right hand were red, bloodied and beginning to swell, obviously broken. The man moaned in agony.

  Ambler looked around for the Beretta. It glinted from beneath the thorny coils of the multiflora rose, and Ambler decided to put off retrieving it.

  “Kneel, GI Joe,” Ambler said. “You know the position. Cross your ankles.”

  The man did so, moving with reluctance but without uncertainty, like someone who had forced others into the same position. He had obviously had standard U.S. combat training. Undoubtedly he had had a great deal more.

  “I think something’s broken, man,” the man said in a low, strangled voice, clutching his ribs. Deep South—Mississippi, Ambler would have guessed.

  “You’ll live,” Ambler said shortly. “Or not. That’s really for us to decide, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t think you understand the situation,” the man said.

  “Which is exactly where you come in,” Ambler replied. He started patting the man’s trouser pockets and extracted a military-style pocketknife. “Now we’re going to play a little game of truth or dare.” He swung out the pocketknife’s fish scaler and held it very close to the man’s face. “See, I don’t have a lot of time. So I’m going to have to go straight to the meat of the matter.” Ambler worked to control his breathing. He needed to seem calm and in command. And he needed to focus on the kneeling man’s face, even as he menaced it with the fish scaler. “First question. Are you working alone?”

  “No way. A bunch of us here.”

  He was lying. Even dulled by the carfentanyl, Ambler knew it, the way he always knew it. When colleagues would ask how, he found himself giving different answers in different cases. A tremble in the voice in one case. A tone of voice that was too assertively smooth and insouciant in another. Something around the mouth. Something around the eyes. There was always something.

  Consular Operations had once assigned people to study his peculiar faculty; to the best of his knowledge, nobody had ever managed to duplicate it. Intuition was what he called it. Intuition meant: he didn’t know. Sometimes he even wondered whether his gift wasn’t so much a capacity as an incapacity: he wasn’t able not to see. Most people filtered what they saw when they looked at someone’s face: they operated by the rule of inference-to-the-best-explanation, meaning that whatever didn’t sync with the explanation that made the most sense to them they ignored. Ambler lacked that ability to tune out what did not sync.

  “So you’re alone,” Ambler told the kneeling operative. “As I would have expected.”

  The man protested, but without conviction.

  Even without knowing who they were or what they wanted, Ambler realized that they must have figured it was a long shot that he’d show up here. There were fifty other places he might have gone to, and, he guessed, there were people positioned at those other places, too. Given the odds and the short notice, strategy would dictate a single watcher at each. It was a question of manpower.

  “Next question. What’s my name?”

  “I wasn’t informed,” the man said in an almost resentful tone.

  The claim seemed incredible, but the man was telling him the truth.

  “I don’t see a subject photograph in your pockets. How were you going to identify me?”

  “No photo. Assignment arrived a few hours ago. They said you were forty years old, six foot tall, brown hair, blue eyes. To me, you’re jus
t January man. Basically, if anybody showed up in this godforsaken place today, it was going to be you. That’s how they explained it. It wasn’t like I was being sent to an NRA convention, OK?”

  “Well done,” Ambler said. The account given was strange; it was not deceptive. “You told me the truth. You see, I can always tell.”

  “Whatever you say,” the man said. He was not a believer.

  Ambler needed to make him a believer. The interrogation would go more smoothly that way. “Try me. I’ll ask you a few harmless questions; you answer truthfully or not, as you prefer. See if I can tell. For starters, did you have a dog when you were a kid?”

  “Nope.”

  “See, now you’re lying. What was the dog’s name?”

  “Elmer.”

  “An honest answer. What was your mother’s first name?”

  “Marie.”

  “Wrong. How about your father’s?”

  “Jim.”

  “Wrong,” Ambler said, and he saw that the kneeling man was visibly spooked by the ease with which his responses were assessed. “How did Elmer die?”

  “Run over by a car.”

  “Right,” Ambler said encouragingly. “A truthful answer. Now hold that idea tight. Because from now on, only truthful answers will do.” A beat. “Next section of the exam. Who are you working for?”

  “My goddamn ribs are broken.”

  “That’s nonresponsive. I warned you that I have no time to waste.”

  “They’ll explain. It’s not for me to say.” Confidence was starting to return to the man’s voice; Ambler would have to undermine that confidence or lose his chance to learn what he needed to know.

  “Explain? You don’t seem to understand. They’re not in charge of you right now. I am.” He pressed the serrated edge of the fish scaler to the gunman’s right cheek.