The Shimmer by David Morrell Read Free Book Online Page A

could see out, no one could see in. And the clandestine nature of the agency was represented in another way--although the buildings were huge, there were even more acres of space concealed underground.
    His own office was located in a three-story building designed to look bland and unimposing. A metal plaque next to the entrance read, ENVIRONMENTAL WIND AND SOLAR DEVELOPMENT FACILITY, suggesting that the work inside was devoted to finding cheap, renewable sources of energy for the government and the military. In actuality, the plaque was one of Raleigh's jokes. The idea that the government and the military would be interested in cost-cutting or ecological issues was laughable. To him, the E, W, and S of Environmental Wind and Solar actually stood for Experimental Weapons Strategy.
    Many of the projects under development in the building were only tangentially related to the NSA's task of gathering intelligence via electronic means, but some--such as the efforts to create lethal rays derived from the microwave beams that transmitted cell-phone messages--were logical extensions of the NSA's tools. So were the experiments to develop communications satellites capable of firing laser beams toward enemy positions.
    But when it came to his personal choice of weapons, as far as Raleigh was concerned, nothing equaled the feel of a firearm. The second of the building's five underground levels featured an extensive gun range, part of which was a so-called shooting house with a maze designed to look like corridors and rooms in an ordinary apartment complex or office building. Along each corridor and within each room, potential threats lurked unseen. As life-sized targets popped up unexpectedly, the objective was to identify them correctly and eliminate armed opponents without injuring innocent bystanders. And the goal was to do so in the shortest possible time, usually no more than two minutes.
    On this Thursday in early June, at 9 in the evening, Raleigh was prepared to beat his own record.
    "With your permission, Colonel."
    "Do your job, Sergeant Lockhart."
    "Yes, sir."
    Lockhart, a bull of a man, shook Raleigh violently, then spun him.
    "You can do better than that, Sergeant!"
    "Yes, sir!"
    The sergeant shook Raleigh so hard that the colonel's teeth knocked together. Then Lockhart spun him so forcefully that the colonel had the sense of being in a centrifuge. For a moment, he wondered if the sergeant might be enjoying his work too much.
    Abruptly Lockhart let go of him, thrust an M4 into his hands, and shoved him into the shooting house.
    The sergeant had, indeed, done his job. Raleigh felt so disoriented that the floor seemed to ripple and the walls to tilt. His heart rushed, and his vision wavered.
    Each time Raleigh tested himself in the shooting house, Lockhart reconfigured the partitions, arranging the layout in a new and unpredictable design. The one thing Raleigh could be sure of was the familiarity of the weapon in his hands. During his twenty-five-year career, he'd used its forerunner--the M16--in numerous conflicts around the world. He knew how to field-strip and reassemble an M16 in absolute darkness and with amazing speed. He'd learned to appreciate its contours and secret places as he would those of a lover. He could shoot that venerable assault rifle with remarkable accuracy, even when it was switched to full auto.
    Still, the M16 had drawbacks, particularly the length of its barrel in the close environments of urban warfare, so the shorter, lighter M4 carbine had been developed. As an officer in the Army, Raleigh had his differences with the Marines, but he definitely agreed with their wisdom in requiring all officers to replace their sidearms with M4s.
    At heart, we're all riflemen, Raleigh thought.
    Moving warily along a dim hallway, he checked that the M4's selector was set for three-shot bursts. He willed his mind to stop swirling and his legs to become steady. With long-practiced biofeedback techniques, he worked to