by Matt Rogers
She screwed up her face.
‘How many digits was it?’ Slater said.
‘Eight.’
‘How many times did she tell you the code?’
‘Once.’
He couldn’t let her panic. Not now. Not with everything riding on this. If the government showed up, he was as good as dead, and she was reserved for a fate perhaps even worse. Because anyone would be reactionary showing up at a scene like this. If Ruby changed her allegiance and decided to disappear instead of putting the Lynx program on blast, they might never realise the consequences.
‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘You’ll get it.’
She stabbed at the keypad, eight consecutive times.
A green light.
The door popped open, accompanied by a brief electronic buzzer.
Smart kid, Slater thought.
They hustled into the garage.
95
There were four vehicles spread across the open concrete space, roughly the same size as the basement beside it. Three ATVs, painted black — one for each guard booth, he assumed — and a huge Toyota Land Cruiser with a jacked-up suspension and tinted windows. All the buggies had fresh snow on the tyres, yet to melt. It was freezing down here. The guards must have used them for a morning patrol. Maybe part of the routine. Each booth moving out separately, always leaving four guards at a time at the facility. In case of intruders.
In the end it hadn’t mattered anyway.
‘The big one,’ Slater muttered, and Shien ran for the Toyota.
It was a fairly new construction, a world away from the rundown rust-buckets he’d made use of in Yemen. Out there, in the hot oppressive desert, nine out of ten vehicles were Toyota Land Cruisers. A big pick-up truck in such a state of disrepair might attract attention in the North Maine Woods, but this particular Toyota was shiny and sleek and seemingly brand new. Unlikely to have been utilised much at all. Slater used the massive hood to work his way around to the driver’s seat, and he clambered up into the cabin.
‘Key’s on the wall,’ he called out into the empty chamber.
Shien jogged over and fetched the fob off a hook set a few feet off the floor. She threw it across the garage, and Slater caught it and fired the truck to life. He worked the controls on the door and manoeuvred the seat as high as it would go, letting his broken foot dangle out in empty space. A whole lot more preferable to resting it against the footwell. Otherwise every bump and pothole and rut would send pain spearing through his ripped muscles, and that was all but a guarantee out here.
He tested the accelerator and brake with his left foot, unaccustomed to using his other leg to drive. It seemed to work simply enough.
Shien climbed up into the passenger seat and sat in the middle of the leather, her tiny frame nearly swallowed up.
She said, ‘Mother has the door remote.’
They stared out through the windshield at an enormous garage door made of something resembling plexiglass. It took up an entire wall, and blurry daylight trickled in through the translucent material.
‘Put your seatbelt on, Shien,’ Slater said.
She obliged.
‘Close your eyes.’
‘Why?’
‘If the windshield breaks, I don’t want you catching one of the splinters in the eye.’
‘Why don’t you use one of the buggies to weaken the door first? Those big tyres can do a lot of damage.’
Smart kid, Slater thought again.
He said, ‘We’re running on a limited window of time here. I don’t want to alarm you, but I’m about to pass out. I’d prefer that happened with some distance between us and this place.’
‘Oh.’
‘Eyes closed?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good.’
He shifted in his seat, turning his left foot horizontal, and stamped it on both pedals in unison. The engine roared and whined and protested, and Slater gave it a few seconds, and then he let go with his heel. The Toyota shot off the mark and covered the gap in a couple of seconds flat, and it hit the door with a shuddering impact that transferred through the seat, into his legs, down his calves, and then all the broken bones and torn muscles in his foot rattled in place, and he gasped and scrunched up his nose and fought through the whirlwind of agony, and suddenly they were out in the open, the door smashing upward along its tracks instead of bending to distribute the weight, which Slater gave thanks for.
They rocketed out onto a path no wider than a single vehicle, carved through the snow by repeated tyre tracks over the same ground, leading away from the lodge and into a narrow gap between the pine trees. The daylight reflected off the snow, no matter how cloudy it was overhead, and Slater squinted as his eyes adjusted to the new conditions. He saw Shien doing the same out of the corner of his eye.
He braced himself for a war, touching a hand to the HK416 he’d deposited cautiously on the centre console.
Natural instinct.
From repeated experience.
But this was North Maine. There was no urgent response, no matter how secretive the program was, no matter what level of clearance it involved. There was simply no feasible way to muster troops who had access to this kind of knowledge. Not in a hurry. The response would come later, and the upper echelon, or Command, or whatever the hell they went by, would sneak into the clearing under cover of darkness and sanitise all the buildings at once.
And then rebuild…
Slater hit the brakes, hard, and the Toyota jackknifed and slid to a stop in the lee of the lodge. The log building loomed up behind them, overbearing, beckoning them back.
Shien turned, wide eyed, and said, ‘What are you doing?’
They’d almost reached the tree line.
Freedom was right there. A mile or so on an off-road trail, and then a short journey across a bridge, and then back on State Route 161 and onward, to wherever the hell they wanted…
But Slater said, ‘If Ruby changes her mind, then these kids won’t have anyone looking after them.’
‘There’s food in the house. There’s water. Mother was training us to kill people. They can feed and wash and clothe themselves. They’re not idiots.’
‘Who’s the oldest?’
‘Rachel. She’s seventeen.’
Slater nodded. ‘Good enough for me.’
He stamped back on the accelerator, and they took off again.
‘You’re not trying to save them?’ Shien said.
‘I can’t,’ Slater said. ‘Not all of them. But I have a feeling Ruby’s about to bring the whole program down. And if she doesn’t, I will.’
‘How?’
‘Anonymous op-ed.’
‘What?’
‘That’s a conversation for another time.’
He mounted the trail, reuniting with the gloom as the tree canopy passed over their heads. Relatively close to a state of delirium, Slater leant forward and looked past Shien, out through the passenger window, searching for a particular tree not far off the trail where he’d left a man he’d thought he could trust.
He spotted a glimpse of … something. The Toyota was travelling at thirty miles an hour, so it was nothing more than a fleeting image, like a still frame in a moving picture, but it was enough. He saw Russell Williams seated with his back to the trunk, his head drooped and his shoulders slumped, his eyes open but unfocused. And he saw a slender hand around his throat, connected to a lithe frame and a pair of eyes that burned brighter than anything else Slater had seen before. Ruby Nazarian was speaking to him, her tongue darting in and out of her mouth, her nostrils flared, anger and rage and pain in her eyes.
Williams sat there, listening.
And then it all disappeared as they rumbled past, and for a moment Slater thought he’d glimpsed a switchblade in Ruby’s other hand — he couldn’t be certain, but he thought he’d seen the flash of steel. He would never know for sure. He was now a sworn enemy of the United States government, directly responsible for sabotaging a confidential
program designed to neutralise enemies of the state. Even if Williams died along with his pet project, their cross-country trip had been captured on every surveillance camera from here to New York. An investigation was hardly necessary.
They would know it was Slater.
He was excommunicated, all over again.
‘I missed this,’ he whispered to himself.
Shien stared at him. ‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You said something.’
‘Ruby said it best. This isn’t my fight. This isn’t my story. It’s none of my business what happens to Lynx. I can’t save everyone.’
‘Then why did you come?’
‘Because I can at least save you.’
‘Thank you. You don’t know what it means to me.’
‘Yes, I do. And I’m sorry. For not doing my due diligence. For handing you over to Williams without careful consideration.’
‘You don’t need to be sorry.’
He smiled through tears. ‘Actually, that’s the only thing I need to be sorry for in the whole world.’
96
They drove for hours on I-95, back the way Slater had come hours earlier, out of Maine. The snow receded and the woods shrank away, replaced by dull drab terrain. With nothing on the outside of the vehicle worth looking at, eventually Shien’s attention turned inward, as Slater knew it would, and the strange silence gave way to deep thought, and then questions, and then the urgent need for answers.
She seemed to come to her own conclusions.
Conclusions he’d reached well before he’d rescued her.
She said, ‘I can’t stay with you, can I?’
He shook his head. ‘No.’
‘That was never in the plan, was it?’
‘No.’
‘You think your life is too dangerous.’
‘I can rescue you. But I can’t raise you.’
‘I can’t survive on my own, Will.’
‘I know.’
‘What’s your plan?’
‘I have an idea.’
‘Can you tell me?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Will,’ she said.
And something about her tone made him turn.
Her eyes brimmed with tears, but she didn’t sob. She sat there, silently furious, staring him down.
She said, ‘I’m not some thing to be discarded. I have a life and I have feelings and emotions and right now I’m doing what you seem so good at doing. I’m pretending they don’t exist. I’m stuffing them deep down inside and trying to convince myself that I didn’t just see people die and bodies everywhere and blood and … things I shouldn’t see. I’m ten years old. And it seems like you don’t care about any of that. I can put up with it for a while but … I need someone, Will. My parents are gone and that lodge was the furthest thing from a home and I need someone in my life who’s going to take care of me and it sounds like … you’re just going to toss me away again…’
He didn’t respond. Not for a beat. Because there was a titan in his chest ready to burst out, and he only needed to give himself permission to release it.
And it did.
And it all came pouring out.
‘Shien,’ he said, his voice low and cold. ‘My foot is torn off the bone. I’ve lost somewhere close to a pint of blood. I can barely see straight. And I have eight hours of driving ahead of me, and the entire government at my heels, and the bare foundations of a plan, and no experience of being a father, and no future prospects, and no family, and no friends, and no one that gives a shit about me. There was one man who cared about me, and he saved my life in the Russian Far East, and he’s the closest I came to looking in the mirror without actually staring at my reflection. But Jason King is gone, and he wants nothing to do with me, or this life, and I can’t have a normal existence because it isn’t in my DNA. If I sit still for any amount of time I feel set to explode, but that’s hard to put into words because not many people understand what that’s like. I need chaos and carnage because otherwise I feel like I’m wasting my existence for purely selfish purposes. If I gave it all up to raise you there’d be a hundred or a thousand men and women out there who wouldn’t get their warm ending. They’d die miserable and alone and in horrendous pain in captivity somewhere, all because I made the decision to give up my talent and refuse to go out looking for them. So all these thoughts are constantly jumbled up inside my head, and if I ever let them out or truly think about them, long and hard, I’d arrive at a pretty miserable conclusion no matter what. Which is that I’m destined to break bones and tear muscle and get shot and stabbed until my body finally falls apart from the continuous stress. That’s why I might appear so cold all the time. I care about you more than I’ve cared about anyone in my entire life, and that’s why I made an enemy of the government again. Because that’s the last goddamn thing I wanted to do. I just sacrificed my own future for yours. And I’d do it every single time. So don’t sit there and talk about my lack of emotions. You’re the most important thing in my life right now, and I can’t exactly say why, but every single part of me is trying my absolute hardest to come up with the best future for you that I possibly can. And that’s a lot to deal with. Okay?’
The silence elongated, the cabin supercharged with raw emotion, and finally Shien threw herself over the centre console and hugged him tight and cried into his chest.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Thank you for what you did.’
He rested a palm on the top of her head, and fought back his own tears, and focused on the road ahead.
Heading for New York.
97
Five hours later, after stopping for gas and food and drink and several cups of hot black coffee, and more medical supplies, and a few pain pills, Slater drove into the outskirts of New York with enough confidence in his ability to see this through to the end.
Whatever that constituted.
‘Can you please talk to me?’ Shien finally said. ‘You’ve been so quiet.’
‘You want the truth?’
‘Of course.’
‘I don’t want to give you to anyone. I screwed it up the first time and now there’s a voice telling me no matter what I do, I’ll screw it up again. And on top of that, I care about you. I want you to stay with me. But at the same time, the most important thing is that you have a normal upbringing, which is all I ever wanted for you in the first place before Russell Williams ruined everything. And you deserve that a hell of a lot more than I deserve a companion.’
‘I don’t want you to give me up.’
‘The feeling’s mutual.’
‘So why do you need to?’
‘Did you hear what I told you about my life?’
‘Yes. But isn’t that just chance? We’ve only met when bad things are happening around us. But there have to be normal parts of your life, right? It can’t all be like this.’
‘You’d be surprised.’
‘Why don’t you stop?’
‘That requires a long and complicated answer, Shien. I’m not in the mood right now.’
‘Where are you taking me?’
‘Not far.’
‘How long do we have left?’
‘Maybe thirty minutes.’
‘Then try and put it into words. Because won’t this be the last I’ll see of you?’
‘I’ll try to drop in. From time to time.’
‘No,’ Shien said, her voice low.
Slater had never heard her sound like that.
He looked across. ‘You mean that?’
‘Why wouldn’t I? You don’t get to swing around whenever you feel like it. You either choose to look after me or choose not to. It has to be black and white for something like this.’
‘You don’t talk like you’re ten years old, you know?’
‘Yeah,’ Shien muttered. ‘Life experience, I guess. I’ve grown up fast.’
‘I’m sorry I have to be like this.’
‘You don’t have to.’
‘That’s part of the long and complicated answer.’
‘Give me some of it.’
‘Have you ever had an itch you can’t scratch? In the middle of your back, or somewhere similar?’
‘Yes.’
‘When I sit down and do nothing, that’s what I feel.’
‘Is that so bad?’
‘Think of it like an itch on my mind.’
‘Why do you get it?’
‘Since I was eighteen, all I’ve known is working out and training and drilling combinations on bags and putting in time at the shooting range, and a million other similar exercises. I’ve probably put more time into my body and mind than most people put into their careers, because I had a multi-million dollar pool of government money behind me. You following?’
‘I’m following.’
‘All this happened because I was born with a genetic predisposition.’
‘A what?’
‘I react incredibly quick in combat situations.’
‘I’ve seen it.’
‘How would you describe it?’
‘Like you’re punching at the same speed as the other guy but you look at them like they’re stupid for even trying to win. It’s like you’re built different. I don’t know how to describe it.’
‘I’m built the same, but my mind isn’t. Whenever something happens in front of you, there’s always a delay of milliseconds until the brain processes it. It has to travel through the eyes and down the proper pathways and then it gets translated into information and the brain commands the body to respond. I’ve got some crazy statistic in that field. Someone goes to throw a punch and I see all their muscles tensing and running along a chain in their body, so I know a right hook is coming and I can sidestep it, and it’s almost lazy. You following?’
‘I’m following.’
‘Or I can register three people in front of me and shift my aim from body to body before they even realise what’s happening. None of it’s planned. It’s some animal instinct, from millions of years ago. Mine’s just faster than most.’
