Simon Sees (An Art Jefferson Thriller Book 5)

by Ryne Douglas Pearson

  She’d thought, if anything, only the maintenance injections would be provided. Just vials used in the fifty-first injection. But she’d been wrong. Wondrously, thankfully wrong.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Emily reached into the envelope and found a note. She opened the folded paper and read what were instructions. And more.

  “Give five cc injection of number fifty-two in upper arm. Immediately give five cc injection of number fifty-three in upper arm. Be free, Simon…”

  Gant took the paper from her when she’d finished. “That’s the stuff they used on him?”

  “The end of the protocol,” Emily said. She looked to Sanders. “Do it.”

  The man filled the first syringe and pulled Simon’s sleeve up, sliding the needle into his bicep without hesitation. “I’ve never done this before.”

  “It’s fine,” Emily said. “Give him the last one.”

  Sanders withdrew the needle and filled the other syringe from the remaining vial. He gave the second injection just a half an inch from the first as the Beechcraft began to roll, its engines spinning up.

  “Okay,” Sanders said, easing the needle out and setting the empty syringe aside. “Now what?”

  Emily fixed her gaze hard on Simon’s face, looking for any reaction. Any positive sign. But he remained unconscious. Nothing had changed.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  The aircraft swung onto the runway and accelerated. No one was belted in. They simply hung on as the nose came up, the Beechcraft climbing away from the smallish airport.

  “Where did we just leave?” Gant asked.

  Sanders let himself half fall into the seat just in front of Simon. “Titusville, Pennsylvania.”

  Emily stayed on her knees next to Simon, taking one of his hands into both of hers now.

  “Is he still breathing?” Sanders asked, unable to look for himself.

  “Yes,” she confirmed, feeling his wrist. “I can barely feel a pulse.”

  Ezekiel Sanders closed his eyes. It was impossible to consider they’d come this far. For him, it had been an even longer journey. Twenty years he’d had Simon Lynch on his mind. And now…

  “Maybe it takes time,” Gant suggested.

  Emily nodded, wanting to believe that. “Maybe.”

  Maybe…

  Sanders let that expression of inexactitude and uncertainty hang in his thoughts for a moment. Everything he’d done, everything they’d gone through, had come down to this. To ‘maybe’.

  Not on your life…

  “It’s going to work,” Sanders said. He turned in his seat and faced Emily and Gant for a moment before shifting his full attention to Simon. “He’s going to be fine.”

  Emily nodded. Hope was important. But as she focused on Simon once more she was fully aware that positivity, that desire, did not always overcome the weight of reality.

  Forty Seven

  He’d made it out. Alive. If not whole.

  All things must end…

  But from every ending a new beginning could come. Not entirely different than he believed was being arranged for Simon Lynch by the people who had bested him.

  Your reach exceeded your grasp…

  “This time,” Damian Traeger said to himself in the solitude of the private jet’s main cabin as it cruised two hours after taking off. He could retire to the private space at the back and sleep if he so desired. Rest would do him good. There would be much to do when they landed.

  He had to make some decisions before then, however. Where to land, chief among those choices. He could not return to London. The business empire he’d ruled would soon crumble. Without a doubt the actions of the weasel at the head of the American Justice Department would be discovered, and, with equal certainty, Traeger knew the man would trade knowledge of their activities for a more lenient sentence.

  That might work. For a while. But even prisoners were not beyond reach. Angelo Breem might find himself in a white-collar prison, or in a far more secure facility, but neither would ensure his safety. Prisoners could be bought. Guards, too. And regardless of the fate of his business holdings, Damian Traeger had stashed enough money throughout the world to provide for a more than comfortable life—as well as finance necessary activities.

  “American Bob, enjoy the time you have left,” Traeger said to himself.

  His thoughts shifted from revenge to destination. The pilots would take him wherever he needed to go. It would be an initial point of entry into his new life, though. From there he would disappear. Assume one of the many identities he’d had prepared over the years for an unlikely eventuality such as what he now faced. But preparations were for the instant when the unlikely turned to actuality, and he was ready to move forward.

  Lisbon might suffice. Portugal was a friendly point of entry, with a myriad of routes he could use to more distant havens. Istanbul would work as well. Possibly—

  “Damian…”

  So much could be known by a single word. First, the voice. It was Yuri, his scar-faced Russian bodyguard. If Yuri was there, then Viktor, his partner with gin-blossom cheeks, would be at his side. Second, there should be no voice at all behind him, and the fact that there was told Damian Traeger that he’d made one enemy too many. An enemy that dwarfed even his own ruthless abilities. Third, and most importantly, the voice, without saying so, told him he was going to die.

  Before he could turn to lay eyes on the men, Viktor clamped Damian Traeger’s head to the headrest with one hand and jabbed a needle into the bulging vein on his neck with the other, emptying the contents of the syringe into the mogul’s bloodstream. There were no seconds of awareness that something was terribly wrong, nor any struggle. Damian Traeger simply went limp in the leather seat.

  “Here,” Yuri said, holding out a small cardboard box.

  Viktor withdrew the needle and dropped the syringe in the box. Next, he fished Traeger’s identity papers, his passport, his wallet, from his pockets, and removed any jewelry the man wore, both necklace and rings going into the box with the rest of the dead man’s possessions.

  Yuri made his way to the cockpit and opened the door, leaning into the compact space. “We’re ready.”

  The pilot nodded and keyed his mic. “Topaz Six One One, requesting descent to flight level six to troubleshoot a pressurization issue.”

  “Topaz Six One One, New York departure, descend and maintain six thousand heading zero-four-two. Advise on intentions after trouble shooting.”

  “Topaz Six One One, descending to six thousand, heading zero-four-two, will advise.”

  The pilot looked to Yuri and nodded.

  The Russian moved back through the cabin and found his partner already had the body out of the seat and in the aisle. He set the cardboard box on Traeger’s lifeless chest and grabbed the legs as Viktor seized the arms. They carried him toward the rear, through the private section and into the baggage compartment, which was accessed through a door in the aft lavatory. Two sections of webbing to secure cargo stretched from floor to ceiling in the space, and each man grabbed onto the thick material and waited for the plane to level off at its lower altitude.

  “Now,” Yuri said as the Gulfstream settled in at six-thousand feet.

  Viktor took control of the box with his free hand as Yuri unlocked the baggage door and rotated the handle, releasing and sliding it upward. A blast of constant wind and deafening noise spilled into the cramped compartment, making verbal communication impossible. But there was no need to speak. Each man knew what had to be done.

  Viktor placed the box on the floor, wedged between his feet, and, one by one, picked up the items it contained. He tossed the syringe through the open baggage door. Then the passport. The wallet came next. Jewelry was last. Finally, the box itself was hurled out into the slipstream, everything tumbling toward the vast Atlantic east of Nova Scotia.

  Yuri nodded and each man placed a foot on Traeger’s body, pushing it until his legs hung outside the aircraft
, air rushing past at a hundred and seventy miles per hour finally seizing the dead man and whipping him out into oblivion. The deed, done for Mother Russia, which had promised to compensate both men handsomely for their treachery against their employer, was complete. Yuri slid the baggage door downward in its track, sealing the aircraft once again. The pilot would soon report that they’d discovered there was no issue, and the plane would continue on to London.

  Damian Traeger, whose life had already ended, would disappear completely from the face of the earth as creatures of the deep feasted on his flesh and bones.

  * * *

  I’m me…

  “Simon, wake up,” Emily said. “Come on. Wake up!”

  He’d begin to stir just as the plane began its descent toward Miles City, Montana, mumbling incoherently at first. Then, words took on more clarity. His speech evened out. It was almost as if he was talking from inside a dream he could not escape. Yet.

  “Simon, come back to us,” Sanders said. He stood hunched over the seat in front of the man, Gant next to him, the narrow aisle crowded. “You can hear us. I know it.”

  “Simon, I’m here,” Emily said. “We’re all here.”

  “I’m me,” Simon said aloud. “I’m here.”

  He was there. He knew that. He could hear their voices and could feel movement around him. They were in the air, he thought. It felt the same as when he and Emily had been flown away from The Ranch. No, not the same—similar. That was a helicopter. This was not.

  “A plane,” he said, his eyes still closed.

  “Yes,” Emily said. “You’re with us on a plane.”

  “On the ground in two,” the co-pilot shouted back from the cockpit.

  “We’re almost there, Simon,” Sanders said. “Your new home. Come on. Wake up.”

  “It has to be working,” Gant said. “It might just need more time.”

  They’d given him the last two NB injections more than four hours ago as they departed Titusville Airport. Now, about to land at the field in Eastern Montana, something was happening. But was it enough? Had he received the drugs prescribed by the full protocol too late?

  The Beechcraft began to level out as it reached the runway, nose coming up in a classic flare, the main landing gear catching pavement with a screech, the cabin jolted lightly.

  Lightly, it turned out, was enough.

  Simon’s eyes snapped open, his head swiveling left and right, as if he was searching for some landmark. Some touchstone. When his gaze found Emily’s, he calmed instantly.

  “I saw my mother and father,” he told her.

  She pulled him close, embracing him as the aircraft rolled down the runway and took a sharp turn onto a taxiway at the end. Within a minute it was stopped, the floodlights of a nearby hangar revealing a car parked a dozen yards off the right wingtip, not a soul in sight.

  “Pardon,” the co-pilot said as he squeezed past and opened the door, lowering it, the built-in stairs extending.

  “Simon, I’m glad you’re back with us,” Sanders said. “But we have to move. Quickly.”

  Emily eased back from him, smiling, her eyes glistening. Whatever hard exterior she’d cultivated during and after her undercover assignment, it had been shed, for the moment at least.

  “Come on,” Gant said, reaching out to offer a hand to Simon.

  “I think I’m okay,” Simon said.

  He stood himself, Emily staying close to assist just in case. They followed Sanders out of the Beechcraft, Gant bringing up the rear. As soon as the last of them was on solid ground the co-pilot pulled the door upward, shutting it. At the waiting car they stood and watched the aircraft do a one-eighty and roll back to the runway. Less than five minutes after landing, it was airborne again, disappearing into the night sky.

  “We have about a five-hour drive ahead of us,” Sanders said. “There’s water and snacks in the car, but if anybody needs to use the facilities we’ll find the nearest bush along the way. No more face time with anyone once we leave here. Okay?”

  Emily and Gant nodded.

  “Good,” Simon said.

  Sanders slipped behind the wheel of the silver sedan. The key was already in the ignition. He turned it and started the car as the others took their seats, Gant once again next to him as they left the airport and headed for the highway. In the back seat, Emily opened a small cooler, water bottles filling it. A bag next to it contained packages of cookies and chips.

  “Do you want something to drink?” she asked Simon, holding a bottle out to him.

  “No, thank you.”

  “I’ll snag that,” Gant said, reaching back from the front seat. “Pass me up some of those chips, too.”

  Emily did, smiling. The old hacker had settled into a comfortable state, as he might when beginning an ordinary road trip. But there was nothing ordinary about this.

  “You’re feeling better?” Emily asked Simon.

  He looked out the windows to the darkened world, a sign marking their location as Miles City.

  “If we head west we can get to either Helena or Great Falls,” he said.

  Sanders glanced at Simon in the rearview. “We’re heading west, but we’re not going to either of those places.”

  “I know,” Simon said.

  “You still remember,” Emily observed. “The almanac information—it’s still in your head.”

  Simon nodded.

  “Is everything still there?” she asked.

  He thought for a moment. “I don’t know.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Sanders said from the front seat. “No one is using you ever again. You think what you want to think. Do what you want to do.”

  “Damn straight,” Gant said as he shoved a handful of potato chips in his mouth.

  Simon considered that. What was described sounded like what he understood freedom to truly be. Now he was going to have the chance to experience it.

  “Simon,” Sanders said. “We really haven’t been introduced. My name is Ezekiel. Ezekiel Sanders. And I’ve been thinking about you for twenty years.”

  “Why?” Simon asked.

  “In about five hours, you’ll see why,” Sanders told him.

  Forty Eight

  Just after two in the morning, as Gant and Emily dozed, Sanders turned off Highway 89, taking Obrien Creek Road to a driveway that had just been plowed the previous morning.

  “We’re in Neihart,” Simon said. He’d seen the sign announcing the town some distance back, but he’d have known the location without it. Not for a second had he slept, taking in the wintry landscape in the dark as two of his companions succumbed to exhaustion.

  “Yes, Simon, we are,” Sanders confirmed. “And this is your new home.”

  Simon leaned to the center of the back seat and looked out the windshield, the car’s headlights washing over a cabin-like house. A covered breezeway connected it to a two-car garage, and an open structure to the opposite side of the house was filled with cut firewood.

  “What do you think?” Sanders asked as he stopped the car and turned off the engine.

  “I don’t know,” Simon said. “I’ve only ever had one real home.”

  “Well, you get to make this one whatever you want it to be,” Sanders said. “You and Gant here.”

  “What… Where… Did we stop?”

  Kirby Gant woke loudly, confused, his questions rousing Emily as well.

  “We’re here,” Simon told them, pointing through the windshield.

  “Let’s go inside,” Sanders said.

  * * *

  After a quick tour of the house, Sanders showed them to the space which he knew would cause some concern.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  Emily and Gant approached the computer system installed on the desk in the back bedroom. It was new. State of the art.

  “You sure you don’t want to just send up a flare to let the world know where we are?” Gant challenged Sanders.

  “This is connected to the outside worl
d?” Emily asked.

  Sanders pointed to a power strip connected to a wall outlet, cords running from it to the computer, monitor, printer, and assorted peripherals.

  “Not at the moment,” Sanders told them. “But if you do this…”

  He flipped the power switch and pressed a button on the computer, it and everything else buzzing to life. Gant cringed and instinctively took a step back.

  “Are you crazy?”

  “The technology is twenty years old,” Sanders said. “Not this here, but what connects it to the outside world.” He walked to the window and pointed toward the mountains behind the wooded property. Emily and Gant joined him. “You can’t see it in the dark, but there’s a microwave relay dish two-thousand feet up the slope that connects to a receiving station ten miles away. That station has a sideband link to a failed communications satellite parked in orbit right up there.” His finger shifted and directed their attention to a point high in the southern sky. “Of course, not everything on the satellite failed.”

  “You’ve got a bootleg connection to it,” Gant said, suddenly impressed.

  “No,” Sanders corrected him. “You do. There’s no direct connection to this place.”

  “It can’t be tracked here?” Emily asked. “If they use the computer to connect to the outside world? Watch an online video?”

  Gant smiled, shaking his head.

  “There’s no hardwire,” Gant said. “No physical connection. There are breaks between every hop to the net.”

  “And every single one is unregistered,” Sanders said. “It would still be prudent to maintain security on what information is broadcast.”

  Emily processed what Sanders had just told them, considering the man himself for a moment.

  “Twenty-year-old technology?” she asked. “That would have been practically state of the art the first time you saved Simon.”

  “That makes it all the harder to perform traces now,” Gant said.

  “I wasn’t prescient,” Sanders said. “I prepared this location for him and caregivers, but my superior chose another path. He didn’t know where it would lead.”