Shoreline

by Carolyn Baugh

  They all paused again, the stillness amplifying the crash of the waves down below. The acrid scent of the tear gas hung over the rather wilted group of Patriots now sitting bound on the lawn.

  “Pretty scrappy of Mrs. Baker, really. Picking a fight with the feds when she had fifty guns pointed at her,” Ben said.

  “She knew exactly what she was doing and she went for it,” Chid said. “There’ll be ballads written about her, don’t you doubt it for a minute.”

  They walked on in silence.

  “I should have known, really. I should have seen it coming. Brünnhilde rides her horse up onto her husband’s funeral pyre after all.”

  “Really?” Derek asked. “Committed—what’s that Hindu thing?”

  “Sati. Not just for pious Indian brides,” Chid said. “Still, that woman would have been rather a repellent Brünnhilde, I have to say, Amazon warrior though she fancied herself. Brünnhilde is a good sort in the operas. Motivated by love more than not.”

  “I’m not seeing it in Carly Baker,” averred Nora. “She didn’t even love her kids enough to keep them out of this mess.”

  “Yes, well, and their dad, our poor would-be Siegfried,” he added, surveying the scene before them, “is apparently only mostly dead.”

  The ambulance had stopped just south of the barn. Schacht was already crouched over Gabriel Baker. Pete sat dangling his legs over the back edge of the ambulance; the EMS tech had given him his first food in two days and he was devouring a granola bar as he watched the interrogation.

  “First, where is Martin?” they heard Schacht ask.

  Gabe Baker only shook his head. His eyes, bloodshot and still streaming from the tear gas, scanned the cloudless sky.

  “I bet,” Chid added, “that our Mr. Martin is buying season tickets for the Canadian Opera Company right about now.”

  Anna shook her head, “Well if he is, he’s doing it online because no boats left this compound. The coast guard was in place since you called it in.”

  Schacht turned to Baker. “Where is he, goddammit,” shouted Schacht. Nora looked at him. She hadn’t seen Schacht lose his cool before, not ever. Then again, she had also never seen him wounded, nor had she seen him watch a supervisory special agent and a CIRG director die.

  Baker shook his head and coughed up blood, making the agents squirm out of the way. “I will never give him up. Never.”

  Anna sighed and then looked at Chid and Nora. “Who’s gonna tell this asshole?”

  Chid raised his hand. “I’m the brownest. It should be me.” Without waiting for general acquiescence, he plowed right in. “Your fearless leader was using you, brother. You know that judge you killed for him? Hand-picked for having wrecked his business. You know the nice city councilwoman you kidnapped and shot? Wicked woman wouldn’t fund his mini-mall. You know all that money you stole? Went into his pocket for his big getaway. He used you. He took advantage of your racism and your hatred and he put you to work … for him.”

  Baker closed his eyes.

  He had to know it was true. He had to have had suspicions, Nora thought, watching the man carefully.

  Schacht signaled to the EMS techs. They began the work of maneuvering Baker onto the stretcher.

  Then Schacht continued addressing him. “You don’t get to die, see?” Schacht said. “You get to stand up and talk to your followers and tell them that you were all victims of an epic manipulation. And then you get to call them off. And you get to apologize and you get to go to jail and stay there.”

  Baker was shaking his head ever so slightly.

  “Why did he make you the voice of the movement, Gabe?” Chid pressed. “Real leaders take on the Man, take on the government, don’t they? Don’t you think it was so he could keep hiding? Even after you were dead and gone?”

  Nora nodded, meeting Chid’s eyes. “Baker was fearless. So Martin dressed him up as the hero, conferred the power on him.”

  “Knowing all along that Valhalla would burn,” Chid said. “Yes.”

  “Where did he go?” Schacht asked, softly this time but no less menacingly.

  Baker was silent, his eyes still shut. Nora began to worry he had died, but she watched his chest rise and fall. Finally he opened his eyes and looked at Chid. “He headed out the night the little black agent ran off.”

  Nora realized once again that this meant her. She leaned in. “Who’re you calling little, asshole?”

  Baker began to cough, arching his back, his face wracked with effort. Finally he managed to say, “He knew he had to get somewhere safe so he could still run things. Until it was all finished. He took the occupiers with him.”

  “Where?” Schacht demanded a third time.

  “Where else?” Baker retorted. “The brewery.”

  “Why?” Anna said. “He must have known we’d have it under surveillance.”

  “Really?” Baker asked, his voice a low gurgling sound, yet still filled with contempt. “Even if you finally figured it out, you were still going to be putting out a thousand fires. You got time for watching an abandoned building?”

  “He must have had something there,” Chid concluded. “Something he needed before getting away. Was it the money?”

  Gabriel Baker was silent; his eyes had shut again.

  Schacht, frustrated, sprang up and cornered the EMS tech. He gave her a fierce look. “You will do everything in your power to keep this man alive, you got it?”

  The technician raised her eyebrows and then, wordlessly, she and her partner lifted the stretcher into the ambulance.

  Schacht turned back to them. “I know we’re all tired, but Anna and Ford, I want you here to help me deal with the fallout from all this now that we’ve lost Sheila and Sanchez. Nora, Chid, Ben, you head to the brewery. Intercept Martin. See how it is that he’s still conducting operations and see if our victory here means he’s headed for Canada by now.”

  “He’s got too much of a head start,” protested Nora.

  “Well, lucky for you Anna has Vance Evans on speed dial,” Schacht retorted. He pointed a finger at the sky. “Hitch a ride.”

  * * *

  The NBC chopper had maneuvered down onto the stretch of land just beyond where the SWAT helicopter had crashed. Still, to reach it, Nora, Ben, and Chid had to skirt the charred wreckage of the downed CIRG helicopter. She tried not to look, determined now to keep her composure.

  She gazed at the ongoing activity of the compound. Photographers were wading through the weeds, recording every inch. The coroner was there with his ominous black truck. Emergency medical services were aiding in pulling bodies out of the barns. The helicopters hung above, throwing an impossibly blue morning sky into a confusion of glinting metal and sound. Their rotors sliced through the hot summer air, now drowning the rhythm of the waves below.

  Ben hated Vance Evans instantly and viscerally. Nora watched it happen as they settled into the chopper and then solidify as they flew into Erie.

  Vance was shouting at them over the roar of the helicopter’s blades. “So that was a mess, huh?”

  Each of the agents looked at him without replying.

  “Messy week, I’d say. But it’s made for some fascinating journalism.”

  Each looked at him in disgust.

  “Never had so many opportunities to bring the story to the people,” he said. “I feel like a man who’s sitting on the cusp of history here.”

  Nora waited for Chid to hit him with a one-liner in the way that only Chid seemed able to do, but even Chid only looked at the man in silence.

  Anna had told Vance to have his pilot land them atop the building that housed their office. They couldn’t risk him putting them down at the brewery itself and obliterating the element of surprise, or, worse, letting the viewing public know what they were up to. As soon as they’d made their way into the building they bolted down the stairs to the parking garage and into Chid’s rental van.

  He peeled out of the parking garage and barreled up State Street. It was not
a difficult trip as the streets now had become largely deserted.

  The brewery sat on the corner of 21st and State Streets. Its smokestack soared into the air, making it the tallest structure for many blocks. Windows were boarded up in places and broken in others. Bold, intricate swaths of graffiti told tales of teen artists attempting to outdo each other in scope and creativity. Nora was most impressed with the Viva Che inscription that included a striking six-foot likeness of the fallen leader’s face. In several places, small piles of red bricks lay at the base of the massive structure where they had fallen from the wall. A giant advertising mural had been painted onto the brick and now was flaking off. Enough of it remained that the message was legible, however.

  “What does that even mean, ‘Known for the collar it keeps’?” Nora asked. “What do beers have to do with collars?”

  “The collar is the foamy part of the beer on the top,” Ben replied. “Clearly your friend Pete needs to educate you better.”

  “Yes, well, he’s having a rough week,” Nora said.

  “Aren’t we all,” Chid interjected, pulling swiftly into the parking lot.

  “Anna was going to call for backup as we were leaving,” Nora answered.

  “Well no one’s made it.”

  “Everyone is still at the compound. They’ll get here,” Ben said, evidencing an optimism Nora was sure he didn’t really possess.

  They forced open the wide front doors with a crowbar from the back of the minivan.

  “Vests?” Nora asked.

  They both nodded.

  They all drew their handguns and stepped slowly into the cavernous building. They were assaulted by the smell of decay. It was hot, hotter than Nora expected, and she immediately felt as though she had to struggle for breath. She felt a creeping panic as her eyes fought the dimness to make out shapes and forms. How could they search fifteen thousand square feet? What if they were wrong and Martin was long gone?

  They all exchanged looks and then began to fan out across the vast brewery floor.

  Rats darted as they walked. But this part of the brewery had not sat idle. The floor was scuffed, and long black marks were visible in the dimness.

  “People have parked motorcycles here,” Ben said. “Right here on the floor.”

  “Not only that,” said Chid. “Look.”

  There were massive piles of what looked like sandbags interspersed with 55-gallon drums lining the retaining walls. Chid walked over, gave a long, soft whistle, and then looked back to Nora and Ben. “Ammonium nitrate and what seems to be nitromethane … and drums of gasoline. It looks like there’s a ton of it, give or take.”

  Their eyes scanned the room and they saw that he was right.

  “Where are we in the program today?” asked Nora.

  “Hmm?” asked Chid.

  “Well, we just had Sheila and Sanchez for the Prologue and the chopper for Act One and then, well, I guess we saw Valhalla burn, right? Except we used restraint and didn’t burn it for them even though they double crossed us. So what’s left?”

  Chid looked thoughtful in the dimness as his eyes took in the vastness of the old brewery. She could see he was imagining it filled with workers and the smell of brewing beer.

  Nora laid a hand on Chid’s arm. “Is he planning on dying in the end? It’s all I want to know.”

  Chid’s voice was mild. “No, probably not. He stole a ton of money. His model for the global race war is in place, which, again, I don’t think he thinks has any hope of success, particularly since we were able to thwart at least parts of it. But he’s given something to his minions—he’s handed them martyrs like Carly Baker, if nothing else, and that will sustain the mayhem for the foreseeable future. And now … now it makes sense to me that he’d try to get out.”

  “Get out?”

  “Yes, but, Nora … you’re right about something.” Chid did not look at her as he spoke. Rather his eyes scanned the piles of chemicals set against the soaring brick walls. “The compound didn’t burn, and I bet he could have seen that coming. Was Act Two stabbing Siegfried in the back, the final betrayal of Baker? Because it looks like this is his Valhalla, his final act.”

  Ben listened, considering. “This is the one thing that Martin got out of the estate, isn’t it? The brewery?”

  “Yes,” Chid answered. “If it burns … if we can’t establish that Martin and Geyer are one, he’ll get the insurance money.”

  Nora nodded. “I see. I see.”

  They turned their eyes upward. All three of them saw it at the same time. A faint light was coming from under the doorframe high above the brewery floor. They scanned the vast room for the stairway and then found a wobbly metal staircase at the north end.

  “Can we get there without him hearing us?”

  “He has to know we’re here already, Nora. This place is surely wired. Look.” Indeed, he motioned to two different corners and the contours of two different video cameras sharpened for Nora’s eyes as they adjusted to the dimness.

  She turned to Ben. “We have to catch him. To take him alive,” she said.

  “Let’s try, then,” he said. “He’s an old guy. We’re young and spry.”

  “Should we split up?” Chid asked.

  “If we had backup I’d say yes,” said Ben. “Better to stay together. There’s just too much real estate here.”

  They began maneuvering their way up the staircase. It was precarious but not impossible, and they all soon arrived, winded, at the slim landing that overlooked the brewery floor.

  Ben readied his gun, then extended his hand and rested his fingertips on the door handle.

  “On my count,” he said. “Three, two, one—”

  And with that he shoved the door open and burst into the room, Nora and Chid hard on his heels.

  The small room was empty. Elegant but empty.

  It was about twelve feet by twenty, and lined with framed prints of masterpieces. It had a slick, gleaming hardwood floor and an antique desk atop which was a sleek computer system. Its two monitors were black and still. Soft strains of music filled the room. A porcelain espresso cup sat on a coaster.

  Chid reached out and touched it. “Still warm,” he whispered.

  Nora looked desperately around. “Where did he go?”

  It would have been impossible for him to have descended the rickety staircase since their entrance. They started exploring the room seeking another way out.

  “Do you think he’s gonna try to blow this place up with us in it?” Nora asked.

  “I didn’t until you brought it up,” said Chid. “But now I’m pretty sure he is.” He peered behind one of the prints. Then he looked back at them with a grin.

  “What?” asked Ben.

  “If I were hiding a secret exit, I’d definitely put it behind my Klimt.” He slid the painting aside to expose a door handle. A few moments later the painting slid back on its own to hide the handle again.

  “Jesus,” Ben said.

  “Shall we?” Chid asked, pushing open the door.

  “Getting away from the ammonium nitrate sounds pretty good,” Ben said.

  The spiral staircase was of old and worn stone. It was dark and led down into pitch darkness. Nora sighed. They all whipped out their phones and turned on the light app.

  “If he’s trying to get away, it’s going to be through that tunnel,” Ben said.

  Chid was nodding. “I’m betting this is leading straight there.”

  They followed him down for what seemed to Nora like miles in the close, musty stairway. Finally they made it to a door. The door opened onto a long corridor, the dark corners of which were dense with spiderwebs. The graffiti artists had broken in at some point. It couldn’t have been hard, she thought, given the porous nature of the building, with its broken windows and webs of fire escapes. To Nora, it seemed as though the scurrying of rats was a constant, dark undertone. She tried to squelch the desire to bolt, and cast an eye back at Ben for courage.

  He winked at he
r.

  “Who winks at anybody anymore?” she whispered.

  “I’m old school. Should I have flipped you off?”

  “Rude.” She looked around. “Is this the part where you start saying, ‘Okay gang, let’s build a trap?’”

  “I can’t,” he whispered. “Forgot my ascot.”

  Chid paused at a low-hanging EXIT sign, long since burnt out, its plastic broken in one corner. He pushed open the door and they saw that it led to a long ramp that zig-zagged downward into pitch blackness.

  Nora swallowed and felt her free hand reach for Ben. He squeezed her hand quickly, then stepped aside so she could follow the other three.

  The basement was filthier than the brewery floor above, and harder to breathe in. The three walked cautiously through the darkness, picking their way across the floor as quickly as they could. Chid finally stopped in front of large wooden doors.

  “Some of those fancy night-vision goggles would have come in handy right about now,” Chid murmured.

  “Or any backup. Any backup at all,” added Nora.

  “Or X-wings from Red Squadron,” said Ben.

  The right side of the door was on a runner, and Nora saw, as the flashlight beams moved over it, that it was designed to slide open. Chid yanked on the door handle and it began to move. When he had slid it all the way open, he peered in and then back at them.

  “What do you think? He may still be upstairs, waiting for the right moment to ignite all those bags.”

  “Or he may have realized that hanging around to enact his vision will mean not getting away with the money,” Ben said. “If I were him, I’d take the robbery money and cut my losses for this place. No matter how dramatic my dramatic flair might be.”

  Chid considered this, then nodded. “I agree. Let’s go.” He poked his head through the door, then shone his flashlight app into the darkness. “Looks like there’s a minecart of some sort.…”