Read 02. The Shadow Dancers for Free Online Page B

He's got one hell of a racket where he is that fits his peculiarities to a T, and he's got areliable reputation. He'd have to be offered something really big to switch. He also knows exactly what he's got because he's in charge of the experimentation, and as a stationmaster he's well positioned to move people and goods when he wants."
    "Why not just take him out, then?" Sam asked. "Get him out of there on a pretext, fry his brain, and then take what results he has as well?"
    Bill Markham sighed. "I wish it were that easy, Sam, but it's not. This is a class A operation all the way. They're very good, whoever they are. Vogel will spook and run at the first suspicion, and probably has people there working for him even he doesn't know about whose only job is to take him out if he gets nabbed or exposed. The labs, the whole place he's got, are wired for one hell of a big explosion should anything go wrong, and we don't even know who might trigger it or how. We could kill him, of course, anytime, but that only buys us time until they can set up another site like his that we don't know about. We've tried tricking him out, but he's always come up with a plausible excuse not to leave. If we press too hard, he'll blow that joint and split to a safe line."
    Bill sat back in his chair and sighed. "You see," he continued, "he's our only real lead and he's eggshells. He's no good to us dead. And we have to know what the hell is going on. We don't know what this stuff is, where it comes from, who's bringing it in and how, and, worst of all, we don't know what they plan to do with it. We have a lot of pieces, very few real live suspects, and none of them fit. Why go to all this risk? What's it all about? All we know is that clearly they can't synthesize it, either, so they're pretty limited, and that means they have a very specific plot in mind-but what? Something big, real big, or they wouldn't take all these risks. Very big people are involved just to do what they've done. Who are they? How did they manage it? What are they planning? You see?"
    I did see. Bill had one hell of a problem on his hands. "But, Bill-you got agents, all that technology, all that power. Surely you can do a snatch-and-grab with this guy," I said.
    "You'd think so, wouldn't you? The trouble is, this guy's stationmaster and he's smart. He wouldn't have turned traitor without taking that into consideration. He knew what he was up against, and who. Cranston was a station-master, top, you remember, and he'd even set up a resort on a weak point with a Labyrinth substation in his basement, and he came damned close to getting away."
    We remembered. We had to chase the bastard through the Labyrinth and he still almost killed us.
    Markham slipped some switches and the room went dark and a panel came down in back of his desk. Another button, and some slides appeared on the back, the first of a really enormous mansion that looked like a cross between a fancy home in the country and Fort Apache.
    "Looks like a federal penitentiary with a nice house in the middle," Sam noted. "Are those machine gun towers on that outer wall?"
    "They are, and you have three rows of fence before you even get to the wall. The distance between the first two fences is wide enough for men with nasty dogs to go through, which they do, and there are sensors on the fences for any kind of disturbance. Even a rabbit brings the dogs running. The third fence line is electrified with enough juice to fry anybody. Then there's the wall, which has both machine gun coverage and is thick enough for riflemen to stand between the towers. A hundred and eighty-six guys held a far less secure wall against five thousand infantry for twelve days at the Alamo."
    "But they eventually lost," Sam pointed out.
    "Yeah, they lost-but you could hold this place for a while, anyway. Long enough to realize you were going to be overrun, burn the papers, get out of there and blow the whole complex. The entire estate is honeycombed