“My burner phone. I figured someone might use it to find us, so I left it in the parking lot after I ended my last call.”
She felt self-consciously for her back pocket and the phone she’d stowed there. “Is mine going to be a problem?”
“Where’d you get it?”
“From the Idaho Smith.”
“Moncrieff? Should be fine,” said Ben. He paused to scrutinize her. “Unless you’re worried he might be dirty.”
Jenifer shook her head. “He’s straight as an arrow.”
“Well, if we can wrap this up quickly, I’ll find you safe passage back to him. Every good Smith needs a partner.”
He left her gaping at his back as he headed for the bathroom. He caught Oliver’s eye as he passed and favored him with a wink.
“H-how did he—?” Jenifer said when the door shut.
“Don’t take it personally,” said Oliver. “He always knows everything.”
“But he never saw us together.”
“So either the Seattle Smith gave him a full report, or else he’s been watching things unfold for longer than we realized.” Knowing Ben, it was the latter—which left Oliver to wonder when exactly the man had gotten involved.
Perhaps from the moment NPNN broadcasted the sour-faced portrait of an alleged school bomber. On that disgruntled thought, he turned off the television and stood. He adjusted his sling and made a cursory check around himself for any errant personal belongings. Nothing but the hotel amenities remained.
They left the keys in the room and headed out into the bright morning sunshine. A cool breeze ruffled Oliver’s hair as he trailed Jenifer, with Ben bringing up the end of their line. She popped the trunk and set her duffle bag inside, and Oliver tossed his in behind her.
“Well, fancy meeting you here, pretty lady,” said a familiar voice. A man emerged from between their car and the one beside it, a gun trained upon the trio.
“Hancock,” said Oliver in a strangled voice.
The militant wore a triumphant grin. “Long time no see, null.”
Jenifer held her hands aloft, her tense attention flitting from the gun to Hancock’s face. “How did you find us?”
“Oh, I only searched the parking lot of every hotel from here to kingdom come. Took me most of the night. The new plates were a nice touch—I almost missed you but thought I’d take a chance.”
“What do you want, Hancock?” Ben asked with a flat expression. He still held his suitcase, his free hand relaxed at his side.
The militant shifted his attention. “You must be the Tallmadge stooge. I don’t want anything from you except the null. Things don’t have to get messy.”
“Things won’t get messy, because this parking lot is crawling with cameras. If you shoot any of us, your face will be plastered on the twenty-four-hour news cycle before you can say ‘Boo.’ You’ll have every government agency breathing down your neck. Not such a happy prospect for someone whose main goal in life is to stay off the grid, hmm?”
Hancock retrained the gun, forcing a grim expression. “Desperate times and all that.”
“If times are so desperate, it’s your own fault,” said Ben. Careless of the weapon leveled at him, he tossed his suitcase into the trunk and shut it.
“Stay where you are,” Hancock said.
He paused, but only to favor the militant with a reproving look. “You have no cards in this game. The fact that you haven’t already killed Oliver means that you’re loyal to the faction of the Brotherhood that opposes Abel Ross—a faction which, if I’m not wrong, wants to get back into good graces with the rest of the Altair network once the dust settles on all of this. And how are you going to do that if you kill a Tallmadge agent and an activated asset?”
Hancock grunted. “You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?”
“I don’t think it,” said Ben. “Oliver, Jenifer, get in the car.”
“Nobody move.” Hancock, increasingly flustered, waved his pistol to cover three bodies. Jenifer and Oliver exchanged an uncertain glance and then shifted their charged attention to Ben.
He sighed. “I can’t give you the null. You either have to shoot me or stand down.”
A muscle moved along the militant’s jawline. His eyes narrowed, and he shifted his attention to Oliver.
Which proved to be a dire mistake. A crack split the air, followed by several percussive clicks. Hancock jolted, rigid as he fell to the blacktop with a blood-chilling groan. He spasmed, half-tangled in a pair of ultra fine wires.
Ben discarded the weapon responsible and crossed around the back of the car, where he kicked the pistol from Hancock’s clenched hand.
Jenifer followed on his heels. “You tasered a man holding a gun? Are you crazy?”
“It’s fine: he took his finger off the trigger. Oliver, would you grab that, please?” As he wrenched the still-twitching man to lie on his stomach, Oliver gingerly picked up the pistol. It was heavy in his hand. Images of a snow-strewn ranch and a shrieking Abel Ross flashed through his mind. He held the butt of the weapon like one might hold a dead rat, his limbs trembling.
The electrocution had failed to knock Hancock unconscious, but by his dazed expression, they had plenty of time to subdue him and be on their way.
“There’s some duct tape in the side pocket of my bag, Jenifer,” Ben said. “Could you—”
But his words cut short as tires screeched behind them. A black van with tinted windows blocked them from escape. The side door slid open on quiet rails.
“Not a bad takedown, Junior,” said a man perched on the middle row of seats. “We had bets placed on whether you’d manage it.”
“Aw, crap,” Ben said, his eyes rolling skyward. He had one knee planted in Hancock’s back and maintained a firm grasp on the militant’s wrists. “How did you find us?”
The man’s grin never faltered, but Oliver recognized traces of the stoic mugshot NPNN broadcasted every hour. It wasn’t Adam Wythe, but one of his cronies, a man called Joseph Hart. So Sparta had come looking for him as well. “We put trackers on all the Brotherhood minions out searching for you. This one stopped moving three hours ago. We’ll take the null from here.” He shifted his attention to Oliver and beckoned with his chin for the teen to climb into the back seat.
“You absolutely will not.” Ben abruptly stood. When Hancock, feebly moaning, grasped for his trouser leg, he kicked the shaking hand away.
Hart’s grin vanished as he pulled a pistol from beneath his coat. “It wasn’t a request.”
Held at gunpoint twice in five minutes really was too much. As indignation welled in Oliver’s chest, Ben stepped in front of him, blocking him from view.
The man in the vehicle lowered his voice to a deathly hush. “Stand aside, Junior. I don’t want to have to shoot you.”
“That’d be a fun report to take back to my dad. We might be playing for different teams, but last I knew he still liked me.”
Oliver peeked around Ben as frustration chased across their new antagonist’s face. “We need the null.”
“No, you need a null. Go steal General Stone’s. That one actually needs rescuing.”
“Don’t think it’s not on our list, but we can’t afford to waste what opportunities we have. The null comes with us.”
Oliver’s indignation hardened. “Does the null get a say? Because if not, I might just end this little game of capture the flag right here.”
Jenifer’s breath caught. Ben glanced over his shoulder and went ashen. Oliver had pressed the barrel of Hancock’s gun to his own temple, the rim cold against his skin, his finger on the trigger and his expression deadpan.
In the van, Hart froze. “You wouldn’t, kid.”
“Pull the trigger? I’ve done it before. And it sucks being the flag. Why shouldn’t I opt out?”
The man’s lips parted, uncertainty on his face. His gaze flitted to Ben, but he found no sign of reassurance there. Whatever dire crimes Sparta perpetrated, inciting the suicide of a teenager a
pparently wasn’t high on their list.
In the distance, a police siren wailed.
Dismay wrenched from Ben’s throat. In an instant he turned from resistor to opportunist. “Get in the van, Jenifer, Oliver. Pop the trunk, grab the bags, and get in the van.”
“We’re not a taxi service,” said Hart in a tight voice. “We only want the null.”
“Yeah, well, you get the cops called on us, the least you can do is give us a ride out of here.” He was already climbing into the vehicle’s middle seat, forcing Hart to scoot over—and with little resistance, proof that he had closer ties to the man than indicated by the tense showdown only moments ago. Jenifer wrenched both his and her bags from the reopened trunk.
Oliver balanced Hancock’s gun in his sling and grabbed his duffel. “What do we do about him?” he asked of the Brotherhood lackey still prostrate on the asphalt.
“Leave him. Come on.”
Hancock emitted a whimper, but the lingering effects of his electrocution prevented any further protest. As Oliver slid into the back seat next to Jenifer, Ben snagged the butt of the pistol and confiscated it. The van peeled out of the parking lot before the door had fully shut.
“Pass the gun along, Junior,” said Hart with beckoning fingers. “You’re on our turf now.”
“Sure I’ll do that, and have you toss me out at the first intersection,” said Ben. He swung around to the back seat, sandwiching Oliver between himself and Jenifer. The van turned onto a side road and wove its way through a residential neighborhood.
With the thrum of the moving vehicle to drown out his voice, he leaned close to Oliver and whispered, “If you ever point a gun at your head again, I’ll break both your hands and truss you up in a straitjacket for the rest of your life. Understood?”
A chill tumbled down Oliver’s spine. “I was bluffing,” he said in a hush, conscious of Hart only feet away.
“I don’t care.”
Shaken by the man’s intensity, he clammed up. A tense silence governed the occupants of the van, giving him opportunity to examine Hart and the square-jawed driver who kept his eyes firmly on the road. Hart was leaner than his mugshot, and his leathery face had more lines. The driver wasn’t one of the five wanted fugitives. Thin-lipped and middle-aged, he maintained a stony expression as he navigated through the town.
They pulled into an alleyway behind a rundown strip mall. Hart slid the side door open to more sirens floating on the morning breeze. “Everybody out. We’re changing transport.”
“We’ll take our chances on foot,” Ben said, stubbornly maintaining his position in the back seat, thereby blocking Oliver and Jenifer from exiting.
Hart hit the pavement and turned, a steely glint to his eyes and a cavalier grip on his gun. “Don’t make me regret bringing you this far, Junior. Your dad might resent a bullet, but he won’t care if I drag you out by the scruff of your neck and leave you pistol-whipped beneath a bush. Now file out, and no funny business, any of you.”
With a downward slant to his mouth, Ben hopped to the ground. Oliver, following him, took the stiffness of his shoulders as a poor sign. The usually unflappable agent, for all his information-gleaning, had no exit strategy this time.
Beyond the van was a white delivery truck with a shipping company’s logo on its side. Hart ushered his three stowaways into the back before climbing in himself and pulling the door down. They settled amid boxes of all shapes and sizes, with no view of the outside world. As the new vehicle pulled into motion, Jenifer snuck looks at Ben as though to ask what was happening. He kept his attention fixed on Hart.
Oliver ran his fingers along the edge of a box. “Are all of these real? Did you guys steal a delivery truck?”
“Naw, kid. We just borrowed it.” Hart stowed his gun away and sat with his back against the metal wall, his legs tented and his forearms perched on his knees. Their driver, visible through a passageway into the front of the truck, steered the vehicle careless of his passengers. Every time he braked, they tensed themselves against tumbling over. The longer they rode, the grimmer Ben’s expression became.
“What did we just get into?” Jenifer whispered.
“Exactly what I was trying to avoid,” he replied. “Let me do all the talking when we get where we’re going.”
She nodded, her mouth pressed into a troubled line.
For his part, Oliver closed his eyes and rested his head against the metal panel behind him. This was no different than the life he had always known, people in power deciding his fate and shuffling him from one place to another. Did it really matter whether he was working for Sparta or Tallmadge, as long as the Rosses stopped their destructive trail?
He should’ve gotten in the black van by himself instead of dragging two others into the unknown.
Eventually, the delivery truck stopped and the engine died. A glimpse through the windshield showed the dim lighting and concrete walls of an underground parking garage. Hart heaved himself from among the boxes across from them. Before he opened the back door, he eyed Ben speculatively. “Do I need to warn you not to make any rash moves, or are you smart enough not to play hero?”
“I know well enough to check the lay of the land first.”
He grunted. “Just like your old man, Junior.” With a powerful tug, he hefted the door up on its runners, revealing the garage’s interior. It was mostly devoid of cars, but several long dumpsters crowded one corner, their contents brimming with building materials.
Much closer, ten black-clad men stood in a semi-circle, guns trained and red laser-sites fixed upon the new arrivals.
“Unless you want to miss out on all the fun, now’s the time to hand me your weapon,” said Hart with a broad smile and beckoning fingers.
The men carried the lighter, single-shot tranquilizer guns—weapons that Oliver held almost as much in aversion as their more deadly counterparts. He looked to Ben expectantly, only to witness him remove the bullets from Hancock’s pistol.
“Worried I might turn it on you?” Hart asked, amused.
“Just taking it out of play for now.” Ben tossed the ammunition among the boxes near the front of the cargo area. He pinched the butt of the handgun between two fingers and approached Hart with his other arm raised. The moment he was relieved of the weapon, he put both hands behind his head and hopped to the ground.
“He sets such a good example,” Hart said to his remaining pair of captives, cue for them to make a similar exit.
Oliver’s pulse thundered in his ears as his feet hit the cement floor. He stuck close to Ben and Jenifer while points of red danced across their torsos.
“Ha! That’s my boy!” This shout echoed from beyond the semi-circle. A broad-shouldered man pushed through the line, wonder and excitement on his bearded face.
It was Adam Wythe in the flesh. Things had just gone from bad to worse.
Chapter 30
Spartan Hospitality
Sunday, March 10, 11:23 AM PDT, Oakland
Ben hardly had time to grimace before his father gave a whoop and enveloped him in a bear hug.
Hart, arms akimbo, watched this meeting with a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. “Brought you back a nice surprise, didn’t I? Altair cast him as the null’s Tallmadge handler.”
Wythe pushed Ben to arm’s length. “Ooh, you’re not happy to see me, are you,” he said with a wry grin. His son remained stoic. “You should’ve bailed the instant you knew I’d come ashore then. Who do we have here? Our precious Level 5 null, and this must be the lovely—”
“Jenifer,” Ben interrupted, tight-lipped. “She’s an asset that got swept up into this operation by accident. You should let her go. She has a Smith back in Idaho waiting for her.”
“He’s not—” Jenifer started to say, but she caught herself, a blush rising to her cheeks.
Wythe favored his son with a backward glance. “You’ll both be free to go once we have what we need.”
“All three of us,” said Ben in iron tones.
“Where exactly are we?” Ben asked with a look around the abandoned garage.
Wythe slapped him on the back, ever amiable. “You’re gonna love it.”
The three captives submitted to the search. Jenifer lost her cell phone, and Ben lost his receiver and an extra cartridge for his stun gun, even though that weapon had stayed with Hancock in the hotel parking lot. The pair also received zip-ties around their wrists—a condition Oliver escaped, presumably because of his arm sling.
Two more underlings carried away the duffel bags with their personal effects for a more thorough inspection. Hart, meanwhile, regaled Wythe with the tale of their meeting. “Your boy doesn’t flinch when looking down the barrel of a gun.”
Wythe laughed. “Don’t I know it? I take it he gave you a rough time.”
“No. Keep an eye on the null, though, especially if we’re not putting him in restraints. Kid had an absolute poker face while threatening to blow his own brains out. I’m still not sure whether he’d follow through.”
This brought Wythe’s attention to Oliver. “You have plenty to live for, young man, regardless of what the GCA broadcasts about you. We’re happy to offer you a safe haven and a way to settle the score.”
“He doesn’t want your patronage,” said Ben.
His father clapped an affable hand on his shoulder. “Let the boy answer for himself. Just because you don’t see the value of meeting a conflict head-on doesn’t mean he won’t.” They turned to Oliver, then, the resemblance between them uncanny. But while Wythe wore an open, inviting smile, Ben regarded the teen with wary, almost pleading eyes.
Oliver Invictus (Annals of Altair Book 3) Page 21
