Thriller Box Set One: The Subway-The Debt-Catastrophic

by Dustin Stevens

  Once our gear was tucked away in the rear, we rode three-deep back to the interstate and moved another exit north before pulling off and finding a cinema multiplex. There we left Rae’s SUV and my truck parked in the back, not making any attempt to hide them, knowing it would just be wasted effort, Dawson and his men no doubt lurking somewhere nearby.

  Our biggest concern was simply to put as much distance between the two sides as we could, Skye ceding the wheel to me and shotgun to Rae. Fifteen minutes after leaving the state park, we were headed north, content in the knowledge that our vehicles were probably history.

  Someone with more sentimental attachment might have found the whole thing a bit sad, the truck and I having spent more than a decade together.

  Of course, I wouldn’t have lasted very long in Delta or with Rae if I was prone to bouts of sentimentality.

  By the time we were free of Springfield and moving north, evening traffic had mercifully thinned, making the drive quick and painless. Full darkness descended over us, the interior lights just barely painting our features, nobody saying anything until the outskirts of Chicago started to pop up an hour and a half later.

  Not wanting to make the mistake of staying close to the same highway we had entered from, we worked our way north past a slew of suburbs I’d never heard of before turning east and crossing into northern Indiana.

  From there we moved on until we came across the one suburb in the Chicagoland area we all agreed nobody would come searching for us in, stopping for the night at the Avalon Motel we were currently seated in just outside of Gary.

  The cashier at the front desk had barely batted an eyelash at the odd trio as we filed by, a forty-something bearded white man, a thirty-something blonde woman, and a twenty-something Asian girl.

  Based on most of what I had seen on the drive in, every story I’d ever heard about Gary was true. His complete lack of reaction to seeing us only served to confirm that.

  “Two questions,” I said, seated on one of two broken down beds in the room, my legs extended before me, my back flat against the wall.

  On the bed beside me was a pizza box from a local joint, nothing left but a grease stain inside, the product just a shade above awful, but the three of us too hungry to say much about it.

  “What do we know and what do we want?”

  Seated on the opposite bed was Rae, assuming the same exact position as me, save her head was reclined to lean against the wall, her eyes closed.

  Filling the only chair in the room was Skye, one leg folded up beneath her, the other hanging down, her toe just a few inches off the ground.

  “We know this place sucks,” she opened.

  I didn’t disagree with her, though I let the crack go without comment.

  Comfort was far from our most important concern at the moment.

  “We know that Bret Celek works for Meyers Jacoby,” I said.

  “And that Dawson and his men work for Celek,” Skye said. “And that they have my laptop.”

  “Right,” I agreed. “Which, you say, has enough information on it to bury Jacoby.”

  “Twice,” Skye said, the look on her face one of complete sorrow, “but between last night’s raid on the van and this afternoon, everything’s gone.”

  “And there are no other backups?” I asked. “Nothing in the atmosphere, or whatever they call it?”

  “The cloud?” Skye asked, her eyebrows rising slightly, though she failed to comment on my technological shortcomings. “No. That’s the kind of place where you store phone numbers or pictures from college, not classified materials about war crimes.”

  The information was rattled off in a way that let me know she couldn’t believe she was having to explain such a thing, as if dealing with me was akin to seeing a dinosaur in the flesh for the first time.

  I ignored the insinuation entirely.

  “And without it?” I asked.

  “We’ve got nothing.”

  At that I nodded slightly, already figuring as much, but needing to ask the question just the same.

  “Not quite,” Rae said, pulling both me and Skye to look her way. Still positioned in the same manner, her eyes closed, she said, “He’s your dad.”

  I knew the five words were all she would say, my attention turning back to Skye, waiting for her to reach the same conclusion and comment.

  “She’s right,” I said, “at the very least, that gets us in the door.”

  Folds of skin appeared by Skye’s right eye as she considered it, clearly not liking the idea. “Yeah, but is that enough?”

  “Goes to the back end of the first question I asked, which is, what do we want?”

  To that, Skye seemed to have no response, her mouth opening and closing a couple times in order, no sound coming out.

  “Us,” I said, motioning between Rae and myself, “we want this shit to go away, to get our life back. To do that, we either need to kill Dawson and his men, or we need to have something drastic enough that Jacoby calls them off.”

  “Probably both,” Rae added.

  The same stricken look Skye had worn when we first met again passed over her features as she stared from me to Rae and back again. I could tell she wanted so badly to ask who we really were, if we were serious about killing to clear our tails, though she didn’t voice any of them.

  Most likely because she already knew the answers to those questions.

  “Probably both,” I agreed. “So let’s plan for that. What do we need to do so you can get your hands on the data you lost on Burma?”

  Still sitting with her jaw open, Skye said nothing, her eyes having grown two sizes larger as she stared at me.

  “Hey,” I said, snapping my fingers, needing her to wake up and become a participant in the conversation again. “What’s it going to take? A new laptop? Pick one up in the morning somewhere?”

  Another moment passed without reaction before she blinked several times, each faster than the one before. As she did so she began to shake her head, the idea so ludicrous it appeared her body was rejecting it in short order.

  “What? No! No no no,” she said. “You have to understand, I built that thing myself. This isn’t some Dell you pick up at Wal-Mart and plug-and-play with.”

  Of everything she had just said, the only thing that made much sense at all was Wal-Mart.

  “Okay, so...?”

  “So it was about fifty times stronger than the average PC. How do you think I was able to track you from Elk Grove to Iowa?”

  Again, I hadn’t much thought about it, though the reasoning did make sense.

  This time I accepted the information in silence, not bothering to prompt her, knowing she would get to it in her own time.

  “Which means,” she said, “if I’m going to be able to retrieve even a small amount of that data, I need to find something at least 80% as strong.”

  Whether or not such a thing even existed in a readily accessible format I wasn’t sure, again waiting, letting her get there when she was ready.

  For a moment she stared off, her eyes glazing as she pondered the unspoken question.

  “There may be a way,” she said. “It won’t be easy, but it might be possible.”

  Right now, given that none of us had slept in days and were running only on bad pizza, I felt pretty certain I didn’t want to hear about it. Not until we’d all had a chance to recharge.

  “So the information is stored somewhere?” I asked.

  “No, but there is enough still out there to paint a pretty damning picture. Villages destroyed, huge chunks of overturned ground serving as mass graves. Plenty to get a lot of people’s attention.”

  At that I nodded, the information tracking pretty close with a lot of what I’d seen during my time years before.

  “And the reason you didn’t come forward with this earlier?”

  “Because I was waiting,” she said, “for the final piece of data and the right moment, when I could drop it all out there and completely bury him with it.�
�

  “Hmm,” I said, nodding slightly before resting my head back against the wall, just like Rae beside me. “And when’s the right moment?”

  “Tomorrow,” Skye said, “when he is due in Chicago for a fundraiser downtown at the Hyatt.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  There were two different approaches to campaigning. The first was to charter a plane and hit only the big cities, flying in for an event and leaving the same day, moving on to the next city, and doing the same thing all over again.

  The other was to take things a little slower, to move through the states in a caravan fashion, driving through as many small towns and bergs as possible, making sure to stop for copious photo ops along the way.

  Given that Meyers Jacoby had only recently been named as a VP selection, and was shown to have weakening name recognition the further he got from home, the decision was made for his first few forays to be made by ground.

  While doing so might raise the possibilities of some small glitches like had taken place in Fayetteville, it also allowed for a steady stream of fodder on the airwaves, Fox News having assigned a correspondent solely to ride along and record as much as possible.

  The previous evening, the event in Indianapolis had gone a little later than expected. Normally such things were tethered to a very strict schedule, but given the surprisingly receptive crowd and the amount of money that was flowing in, it was decided that they would stay and milk the moment for as long as possible.

  Which made for a fantastic evening, if not a very late night for all.

  Jacoby’s head had barely touched the pillow in the penthouse suite of the Hyatt Grand Regency when his alarm clock went off, alerting him that it was already 5:30 a.m. again. Having arrived in from the drive just three hours earlier, the very last thing in the world he wanted to do was rise and begin anew, knowing that he had no choice but to do just that though, the end of a tough week on the road mercifully coming to a close soon.

  While the rest of his campaign team no doubt slept hard a few floors below, he foisted himself from bed and walked to the bank of windows overlooking Lake Michigan. A thin layer of early morning fog hung over the water, the first gray light of dawn just starting to pierce the heavy cloud cover lying close to the ground.

  Along the waterfront nearby he could see sailboats moored, their bare masts bobbing slightly with the waves. In the distance to either end sat the Shedd Aquarium and Navy Pier, both silent hulks shrouded in mist.

  It was just Jacoby’s third visit to the city, never having much cause to be there, never having given much thought to the place.

  In his mind, being dubbed “The Second City” was not a compliment, and any place that seemed to be okay with it was not okay with him.

  Sure, much like the Vice Presidential seat, biding one’s time at number two was okay for a while, but at some point they had to at least take a shot at the top spot.

  Just as he intended to.

  Lacing his fingers high overhead, Jacoby heard each of his shoulders crack, followed in order by a half dozen vertebrae down his spine. Dropping his hands to his thighs, he shook out each of his legs, another series of sounds emitted from them in turn.

  A result of his years in the service or his dedication to the workout regimen he didn’t know, was past the point of caring.

  It wasn’t like there was anything he could do about either one at this point.

  Turning away from the window, Jacoby moved toward the closet, his mind already on his biking gear stowed there, on the next forty-five minutes and the pain they promised.

  Halfway across the room he pulled up short, stopped by the sound of two sharp knocks at the door, followed by a pause and then a third.

  Recognizing the coded signal instantly, Jacoby stopped where he stood, the bottom falling out of his stomach. Out of pure reflex his chin dropped to his chest, a deep sigh rolling from him, before he changed course and headed toward the door.

  “I thought this shit was supposed to be over with by now,” he said, raising his voice loud enough to be heard through the thick wooden door.

  Without bothering to check the peephole, he yanked it open to see Celek standing before him, a grave expression in place. A long trench coat covered most of his body and his hands were crossed before him, a thin stack of papers clutched in his right paw.

  “If only it were that simple,” Celek said as way of a greeting, the words finding their way into Jacoby’s mind. Venom faded from his features as he looked to Celek and then down to the papers in his hand before moving to the side.

  “You better come in.”

  “Yep,” Celek agreed, stepping through the door. Without waiting for instruction, he walked to the executive desk placed in front of the windows and flipped the papers down, the stack rotating slightly before coming to a stop in front of one of the chairs.

  “What is that?” Jacoby asked, staying a few feet back and raising his face toward the ceiling to peer down his nose at whatever had just been placed before him.

  Sliding his coat down off of his shoulders, Celek let it crumple to the floor behind him, grabbing a second chair and sliding it out. “You’d better sit for this.”

  No part of Jacoby wanted to do so. He had no time, no interest in having this conversation, in sitting down and putting his day even further behind schedule than it already was.

  Adherence to routine was what had gotten him this far. He needed to respect that, to ensure things continued moving forward as planned.

  “Sir,” Celek said, motioning to the chair beside him, “please, sit.”

  The same feeling Jacoby had felt when the knocking first sounded at the door grew more intense as he inched forward and slid down into the seat, very much aware he was still wearing only the boxers and t-shirt he had slept in the previous night.

  The chair beneath him was cold, passing through the thin garments as he came to a rest and pulled the papers over, peering down at what he saw.

  The top page was a printout of a topographical map, the image pulled from a satellite, reflecting a swath of forested land with moderate elevation change in stunning clarity. For a moment Jacoby merely stared at it, trying to make sense of what he was seeing, before the words of Celek in their previous conversation came back to him.

  Burma.

  At once, the image popped into place, the gash of removed forest along the right side making sense, the trench of freshly turned dirt standing out like a neon sign against the backdrop.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “From the girl’s laptop,” Celek said.

  Snapping his attention up to Celek, Jacoby asked, “Skye?”

  “Mhmm, and there’s more. Keep going.”

  Jacoby’s tongue felt like sandpaper as it scraped against the top of his mouth, all moisture long since gone. Moving slowly, careful not to let Celek see any visible sign of trepidation, Jacoby lifted the page and placed it off to the side.

  The next page in line was no less harrowing, the image showing the devastated remains of a village, another no-name place he had ordered wiped off the map under the auspice of stopping the mindless slaughter that was taking place in the region.

  Shuffling it to the side as quickly as he could, Jacoby raised the entire stack. Holding it tight in his right hand, he ran his left thumb down the side, fanning through them one at a time.

  Every single page, more than twenty in total, had something similar spread across them.

  When he was done, he dropped the stack back into place, lifting his gaze up to Celek. “How?”

  “We’re looking into that now,” Celek said, “but the best we can tell, she’s been a busy girl for quite a while now.”

  Jacoby didn’t bother responding to that, the words an understatement of epic proportions. “But, how?”

  “Satellites,” Celek replied. “Looks like she and her minions have been inside every satellite in the known world, using them for her own personal scavenger hunt.”

  Before he
’d even asked the question, Jacoby had figured as much.

  Just hearing the words, though, brought an extra gravitas to the situation that managed to hit even harder than anticipated.

  “Why?”

  At that, Celek said nothing, the answer obvious.

  For so long, Jacoby had known Skye Grant was out there, snooping around. The only reason he had let her go on as long as he did was because he never felt her a serious threat, figuring she was merely looking for her mother.

  Besides, if he acknowledged her in any way, he would be forced to acknowledge her in every way, something he was not yet prepared to do.

  Never would he have guessed she was mining into him to this degree, intent on destroying everything he was and had ever done. Just thinking about it brought a sour taste to his mouth, forcing the previous feelings to the side, replacing them with an ire that was growing more violent by the second.

  “Any idea what she plans to do with this?” he asked.

  “To our knowledge, nothing,” Celek said. “The gear we seized yesterday scratched the surface of what was happening in Burma, but based on the level of encryption and the amount of data stored here, we believe this laptop was the mother lode.”

  Every part of Jacoby wanted to believe that.

  Just as certain as every part of him knew doing so would be quite foolish.

  “We believe or we know?”

  “We believe,” Celek conceded. “The level of sophistication on the device and the classification level on most of this information is so high, copying it would have been almost impossible. Same for storing it electronically.”

  “Electronically,” Jacoby said, “so no cloud, no-“

  “No, nothing like that,” Celek said.

  For a moment, Jacoby allowed the angst within him to pull back, pushing the remainder to the side so as to clear his head, to focus on the problem at hand.

  “What do we think she was planning to do with this?”

  Pausing to consider it, Celek raised one hand, flashing his palm toward the ceiling before dropping it back into place. “No way to know for certain, though it can’t be a coincidence she was living outside of Chicago, came straight back here with Wynn after we flushed them out.”