River of No Return : A Jake Trent Novel (9781451698053)

by Bertsch, David Riley

  54

  OUTSIDE IDAHO FALLS. OCTOBER 30.

  11:45 A.M. MOUNTAIN STANDARD TIME.

  The storm had moved east, over the Tetons, and the sun was out by the time Divya arrived at the laboratory. She looked severe in black twill dress pants and a heavy peacoat with oversized Tom Ford sunglasses.

  “Where’s Wright?” she said instead of greeting him.

  Jake gave her a play-by-play of Meirong’s escape and Wright’s disappearance. “My guess is he’s still up by the reservoir, looking to hitch a ride out.”

  “He’s got some history with Xiao, Jake. Going back a ways. They know each other.”

  “In what capacity?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Jesus.”

  Jake apprised Divya of the situation with Esma.

  “I’m sorry, Jake. I had no idea what we were getting into.”

  To Jake, she sounded sincere. But all that stuff would have to wait. His priority remained the safety of the two imperiled women, Charlotte and Esma.

  “What’s the plan?” Divya asked.

  “I’m hoping the deputy can persuade the doctor to open Esma up and remove the chip. It was the best I could do.”

  “You’re sure Meirong’s not bluffing about the implant?” Divya asked.

  “I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt.”

  He glanced toward the window. Meirong was peering at them through the blinds.

  “Look.” Jake pointed.

  “What’s she doing?”

  “I don’t know.” Jake felt useless. Was she tinkering with whatever device controlled Esma’s fate? Moreover, how had Divya’s phone call a week earlier led to this chaos? Now the lives of two good people were in his hands, and he had little notion of whom to trust.

  Meirong moved to the desk, where she appeared to be writing something again. When she finished, she brought the newspaper to the window and held it up for Jake and Divya to see. Jake walked through the sopping snow toward the window, until Meirong shook her head and waved him off.

  He returned to Divya’s side, near the concrete abutment where he’d sought cover from the firefight the night before.

  “What does it say?” she asked.

  “Ten minutes.”

  “Damn.”

  “We need to get out of her view for the time being. Keep watch, but from farther out. If she knows we’re still around, she’ll kill Esma.”

  Divya nodded. “Disable the Jeep?”

  “No. Not worth it.”

  It was an unnerving balance; an innocent woman’s life lay on each side of the scale.

  * * *

  Jake and Divya left the parking lot separately and crossed the highway, where they parked Divya’s rental and regrouped in the Charger. A service road continued up a gentle grade to a potato farm.

  “We can see the intersection from here, and she won’t be able to see us.”

  Divya didn’t seem convinced. “What if she goes the other way?”

  “There’s nothing there but the river.”

  Jake took the Steiner binoculars from the car, but there was no clear view of the building itself. A cluster of tall cottonwoods blocked his view. He took out his phone and checked for a voice mail or text from Layle. Nothing.

  He was desperate to know that Esma was okay, that the chip had been removed and the threat was gone. When that happened, he could pursue Meirong without hesitation. And get Charlotte home to her family, where she belonged.

  “You okay?”

  Jake realized his hands were shaking. He tossed the binoculars to the backseat and grabbed another layer.

  “Why did you involve me?” He didn’t make eye contact with her. He was watching the intersection. The wind gusted against their backs. Divya’s long, dark hair blew out from her collar and swam in the wind.

  “Wright asked me to.”

  “Why didn’t the Office come to me first?”

  “He was skeptical of their plans. Now we know why—he’s got other plans.”

  “You could’ve said no. You didn’t have to lie.”

  “Hindsight . . .” Another gust toyed with Divya’s silky hair.

  Jake made eye contact. Her face was flushed, maybe from the cold breeze.

  “I needed you.” She blurted it out, trying to get it over with—throw it into the wind, where it would go away. “This job. The agency. It’s so bursting with deceit.”

  Jake understood.

  “And you were always . . .” She stopped. “You know. It seemed like you always had direction. The proverbial moral compass.”

  Jake stared at the highway intersection.

  “Jake?” Divya put her hand on his arm.

  “Hold on. What’s that?” He pointed.

  An old cherry-red pickup was slowing down. It pulled onto the shoulder and deposited a well-dressed man. Jake grabbed the Steiners, his hands as steady as rocks now.

  “It’s Wright.”

  Jake got into the driver’s seat and floored it down the dirt road, taking the car’s suspension to its limit. The Charger slid out onto the highway. Jake corrected the wheel slightly to the left, and then accelerated to the right onto Heise Road.

  Jake slowed down and looked for Wright. He was already around the corner of the building, on the side where Meirong had been positioned at the window.

  “No!” Jake shouted in futility.

  Wright was up against the window with his gun drawn, shouting orders at Meirong, who had retreated behind the deceased senator’s desk.

  “Wright! Back off!” Jake rushed the assistant director, who outmatched him physically. He pushed Jake aside.

  “Leave her alone!” Jake yelled.

  “She’s locked herself in. We need to break it down.”

  “Listen, she’s not stable. All she wants is to be free of all the chaos. Live her life without being used and betrayed. We have to make her feel comfortable, at least until everyone is safe.”

  Wright’s face was all confusion. He turned and started to tell Jake to back off, but spun back to the window as Meirong started pounding her fist on the glass.

  She was holding the newspaper again. Black Sharpie. 1 MIN. ESMA.

  “We have to go. She’s going to kill someone with the chip. Innocent lives are in her hands.”

  Wright wasn’t affected by this.

  Jake tried another angle. “There’s only so much that can be swept under the carpet. If she kills again, this whole thing blows up—there will be no containing it. This will all get out. Including what your role is.”

  “Back up, Trent. You don’t know what you’re doing.”

  Through the window, Jake saw Meirong take a seat at the desk. She reached for the keyboard. Jake went for the Mariner. It was in the Charger.

  Jake slammed into the glass with his elbow to break it, but Wright grabbed him by the shoulder and sent him crashing to the ground. When Jake tried to stand he was met with a hard pistol whip to the nose.

  The world started to dim, but Jake fought off the darkness. He clutched at Divya, now by his side.

  Meirong was standing again, away from the computer. She’d done it. When Jake looked at her she showed no remorse. She started scrawling on a piece of newspaper again.

  THERE ARE MORE. 5 MINS.

  Jake wiped away the blood from his face with his sleeve.

  “What does she mean?” Wright asked.

  “He told you!” Divya said, helping Jake.

  Jake packed a handful of melting snow and held it against his broken nose.

  As the snow reddened, he took out his phone.

  J.P. hadn’t called yet, but Jake knew it was coming.

  55

  JACKSON, WYOMING. THE SAME DAY.

  2 P.M. MOUNTAIN STANDARD TIME.

&nbs
p; Esma was still. It was over.

  Who designed this cruel machine? J.P. thought.

  Her blood was on the bed, but her body was not. A tangle of cords remained in a nest by her pillow. J.P. stared at it, still in shock. Then he let out a sigh of relief and looked to the corner of the room, where Layle was helping soothe Esma while the doctor stitched up her incision.

  On the floor next to the bed lay an unusual looking device. Small like a pill and shiny chrome. It hadn’t buzzed or sparked or done anything movie-worthy. Instead, it clicked softly every thirty seconds or so, and continued doing so now on the linoleum.

  Layle must have noticed J.P. staring. “Don’t touch it.”

  J.P. walked over and crushed it like a bug with his size 12 Timberlands. Then he sat on the bed to catch his breath.

  It had been a blur to J.P. Deputy Layle had raced into the hospital room, hollering about Esma’s heart attack and threatening to “take the damn thing out myself!”

  The doctor then resisted, while J.P. looked on in horror.

  Layle took out his phone and called Jake. No answer. He left a short voice mail. “Jake! They won’t listen!”

  “I’ll call security if I have to!” the doctor shouted.

  Layle had finally seen enough; he pinned the MD against the wall and spoke calmly but sternly. Their faces were only an inch apart. “Listen to me. That woman right there is going to die. You can choose to be either a hero or a hindrance.” He tossed the man to the ground and approached Esma.

  “Fine! Don’t touch her!” The doctor stood up and shouted into the hallway for local anesthetics and an extra hand.

  A careful incision was then made four inches above her left breast while J.P. and Layle held her down. With the help of a surgical assistant, a thoracoscope was inserted into Esma’s chest cavity.

  “No history of heart disease?” the doctor asked the assistant.

  “None.”

  “Okay, there’s something here. Confirm, please, that she doesn’t have a pacemaker.”

  “No pacemaker.”

  “Oh my God.” The doctor was frozen for a second. “You’re right. It’s something . . . I don’t know . . . man-made.”

  “Hurry!” J.P. shouted.

  The doctor startled and got back to his task. He reached in carefully with his hemostats and removed the device. For a second, he held it in front of his eyes in amazement.

  Click. Click.

  “Shit!” The doctor dropped the chip, hemostats and all, into a surgical tray. “Thing shocked me!”

  “Nobody touch it!” Layle kicked the whole tray to the ground.

  It was a peculiar-looking object, like something from a sci-fi film. Two short nodes on one end, and two tiny wires leaving the other.

  “Pretty sure it’s dead,” the doctor said. J.P. was still standing over the crushed mess of tiny wires. “We’re going to take her to a clean room. Give us ten minutes.”

  J.P. only nodded. He walked out to the waiting area with Layle, who, after helping him sit, brought over a Styrofoam cup of ice water. J.P. gulped it down.

  “You’re okay.” Layle was kneeling on the tile in front of J.P. “Look at me. You’re okay. We did it.”

  “Fucking nightmare,” was all J.P. said, and Layle laughed.

  “No shit.”

  Dr. Antol bustled through the waiting room in street clothes, saying, “I’ll be right back with you,” and headed back toward the ICU. The surgical assistant had called for her.

  The color started to return to J.P.’s face. “How did you know?”

  “Jake called me.”

  A few minutes later, Dr. Antol returned to the waiting room.

  “C’mon back,” she said in a soothing voice.

  Esma’s new room was only a few doors down. Layle waited outside while Dr. Antol took J.P. in.

  “We gave her an injection for the pain, so she’s sleeping now. She’ll still have to be treated with antibiotics. A two-day course, at least.”

  “And?”

  “I’d be lying if I said we’ve ever experienced something like this.” She looked into his desperate eyes. “But, I’d assume with that thing gone, she’s not at risk anymore. How did this happen?”

  “Some other time.”

  The doctor left J.P. alone with Esma.

  He slid a chair over from the window and sat. He leaned forward, rested his head on the bed at Esma’s side, and started to cry.

  56

  IDAHO FALLS, IDAHO. THE SAME DAY.

  3 P.M. MOUNTAIN STANDARD TIME.

  Wright crossed Heise Road, to where Jake and Divya had gathered out of Meirong’s view.

  “You all right?”

  Jake had another snowball to his nose and was listening to the voice mail from Deputy Layle. He still stared toward the industrial park, keeping an eye on Meirong without her getting wind of it. That would cost more lives.

  “I need your help to go get her.” Wrong timing by Wright.

  Jake growled back at him. “We backed off to stop her from killing an innocent person. Isn’t one enough? She’s too volatile to aggravate at this point.” Jake glared at the assistant director. His menacing gaze and twisted nose made Wright look down. There was silence for a moment.

  Jake put the phone back in his pocket and spoke up. “You got what you wanted, right? She’s trapped—can’t leave that compound without us knowing.”

  “I’m sorry for anyone who died and their families, Jake.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “You don’t know what my orders are.”

  “You’re not acting on orders. There’s something in this for you.”

  The towering Wright shook his head. “You think this makes me happy?”

  Jake gave him a puzzled look.

  “I can’t get Charlotte Terrell back, Jake. I’m sorry. My orders are to keep Meirong.”

  “Keep her?” Divya was intrigued too.

  “I was charged with making sure she didn’t disappear again, or worse, escape back to China. There was no way I could stop Xiao from taking the Terrells, and your friend . . . I didn’t even know about your friend, Jake.”

  “But you worked with Xiao? Schue told me everything.”

  Wright chuckled. “I was a UC, Divya, a plant. I spent a few years in China getting as much information as I could on the technology and the Shar-Pei program. You know we can’t share that information with other agencies.”

  Jake didn’t know whether to believe the man or not, but it didn’t really matter. “So Xiao will just end up killing Charlotte, like he did the chief?”

  “Probably not. If he kills her, he loses his bargaining power for Meirong, and the Chinese government rains hell upon him for losing her.”

  “So Charlotte’s a prisoner, indefinitely.”

  “That’s my guess.” Wright was taking intermittent glances back toward the building.

  “What if more people are implanted, like she said?” Divya’s voice waivered. Jake realized they were all in over their heads.

  Wright just shrugged. He turned back to the laboratory building, where the crown jewel of Shar-Pei was unraveling.

  “Why?” Jake shouted into the breeze.

  Wright looked over his shoulder. “Because she’s a threat to us if she goes home and an asset if she’s here. Cold logic. I have to detain her now, Jake. With or without your help.”

  “I’m not one of your kind anymore.”

  Wright got in his car and went back down the hill to complete his mission, by force.

  * * *

  Jake got out of the shower at 5 p.m. Divya was gone.

  He found her at the lobby bar, where she was having a gin and tonic.

  “I could use something too.”

  “Let’s finish our drinks and get somewhere private.” She dra
ined her cocktail.

  Back in the room, Jake listened intently to Divya’s explanation of Shar-Pei, Xiao, and Tram Village. He was focused now on Charlotte.

  “What about a precision strike, a few men go in and get her?”

  “We would never get the green light with Wright in charge. Besides, it would be way too risky. As soon as Xiao saw American forces, he would hole up with her or kill her.”

  Jake agreed with Divya, especially on the latter point, but let his thoughts develop.

  He stood up from the bed, a focused look on his face. “What if it wasn’t Americans who were striking?”

  “What, like a Trojan horse?”

  “Not exactly. Let’s go get my truck.”

  57

  IDAHO FALLS, IDAHO. THE SAME EVENING.

  5:45 P.M. MOUNTAIN STANDARD TIME.

  Assistant Director Wright was on his way to Salt Lake City, where there were facilities to detain and question Meirong, who was cuffed in the backseat. Jake and Divya were in the 4Runner a hundred miles behind him. As much as Jake despised Wright, he was their only chance to save Charlotte.

  * * *

  The drive from Idaho Falls was just over two hundred miles—the first few dozen of which followed the meandering Snake River on its way to the American Falls Reservoir. Farms eventually gave way to rolling sage slopes and mountain ranges south of Pocatello. Except for the highest mountain passes, the roads were dry. Easy driving.

  Northern Utah was much the same until Tremont and Brigham City, where hay, corn, and barley farms dominated the landscape.

  A text lit up the dark cabin of the SUV. Divya picked up Jake’s phone.

  “From J.P.,” she said.

  Jake panicked, swerving over the rumble strips. “Lemme see.”

  “She’s okay.” Divya held the phone in front of her. Astonished.

  “Lemme see.”

  Jake had slowed to twenty-five miles per hour.

  “She’s alive, J.P. says. They got to her just in time.”

  Jake exhaled loudly. “How did . . .” He stopped, overwhelmed.

  Divya reached over and put her hand on his shoulder. “I don’t know. But Esma’s okay. You have missed calls from both J.P. and Layle. Must’ve been when we were in one of those deep valleys. You did it.”