Dark Target by David DeBatto Read Free Book Online Page A

Mountain to an administrative position filling out forms for new recruits
     at the Military Entrance Processing Station in Albuquerque. “This is where the cream rises to,” Koenig had said. There was
     something fishy about that, beyond ending a sentence with a preposition.
    Major Huston reminded DeLuca of the Ken dolls his sister Elaine had played with as a child, stiff and plastic and a bit effeminate.
     His smile reminded DeLuca of the televangelists he’d seen on TV, the Pat Robertsons and the Jerry Falwells, so transparently
     unctuous and treacly, accompanied by that pseudo-compassionate tilt of the head that always made DeLuca check to make sure
     no one was lifting his wallet. Huston was young, midthirties, and fit, DeLuca allowed, though his handshake was soft and clammy.
    “Come in, come in,” Huston said. “Sorry you caught us at such a busy moment. Can I get you a coffee or tea?”
    DeLuca asked for a coffee, two creams, no sugar, after noticing there wasn’t a coffee pot in the room. When Major Huston stepped
     out, DeLuca had a quick look around. The pictures on Major Huston’s desk were of his children, a boy and a girl, both in white
     confirmation robes, and another of the whole family in front of a Christmas tree, Huston with his arm around his wife, a buxom
     overweight blonde in a white turtleneck sweater, the tree topped by a large crystal angel. On a bookshelf opposite the door,
     DeLuca saw three photographs framed and hinged together in a triptych, the center photograph showing Huston in full deer-hunting
     forest camo, with his son on the left side of the triptych and his daughter on the right, both also dressed in camo, and in
     each picture, a recently slain deer, the slayer lifting the head of the dead animal by the antlers to display the kill. The
     daughter looked like she couldn’t have been more than nine or ten. A mountain with a peak resembling a snow-capped pyramid
     rose in the background.
    “Do you hunt, Agent DeLuca?” Huston said when he returned, handing DeLuca a Styrofoam cup of coffee. “Rebecca was so proud
     when she got that buck. You should have seen her face.”
    “I don’t,” DeLuca said. He somehow doubted, by the way he smirked, that Major Huston had ever fired a weapon in combat. “But
     I enjoy being invited over for a nice venison dinner by friends who do.”
    “My wife makes a tremendous venison sausage,” Huston said. “Tremendous. But she’s from Kentucky, where they have a long history
     of preparing game.”
    “Where did you grow up?” DeLuca asked.
    “Muncie, Indiana,” Huston said. “My parents were missionaries, so I was actually born in Madagascar, but we moved back home
     when I was two.”
    “What can you tell me about Cheryl Escavedo?” DeLuca said. “Or maybe you should backtrack just a bit and tell me what you
     do here in the systems center.”
    “Well, what I usually tell people is that we don’t run the place, but we make sure the place runs,” Huston said. “All the
     physical systems and environmental-mechanical systems, but all the electronics, too. Communications, computers, IT, finance.
     We’re tech support but we’re software design, too. We’re a server farm, and we do network hubbing for other agencies. I don’t
     know if you’re aware, but the Internet was basically invented here as a way of routing data and communications in a nuclear
     war. These days, we have to monitor it for threat assessment. A big part of our job is keeping up with the tech environment,
     and that changes on a daily basis. We throw stuff out every month that would be an upgrade almost everywhere else. And I have
     to tell you, Cheryl was a big part of the team. We loved Cheryl. I was completely shocked when I learned she’d been taking
     home documents.”
    “When did you learn? Or how?”
    “We run an automated surveillance program,” Huston said. “One component of it is that we twin people’s keystrokes, at random,
     so you