Outrage

by John Sandford

  “A couple of times in the last week, that’s all,” Harmon said. “I didn’t want anyone else killed.”

  Sync stepped inside the apartment and pushed the door shut. He looked around, saw open filing cabinets. “When did you figure it out?”

  “I heard a rumor that the Stockton building was empty and knew I’d been punked. With Cartwell all swole up with testosterone and Thorne with all those gunnies, I thought I’d better get out of sight.”

  “You’re right about that,” Sync said.

  “So, did they send you up here to bring me out?” Harmon asked.

  “No. They don’t know I’m here,” Sync said. “I came to warn you.”

  “Really.” Harmon let the skepticism show.

  “Yeah, really. You saved my ass in the ’stan, when my ass was gone,” Sync said. “Now I’m saving yours. You’ve got to get out, get far away, because you know too much. You can keep your mouth shut, but Cartwell won’t trust that. He’ll want your head. You keep your mouth shut long enough, maybe he’ll let it go.”

  “How about you?”

  “We’re even now, so if I see you again, I will take you down.”

  “Ah, man…”

  Sync shook his head and asked, “What happened, Harmon? How’d it get to this? You were one of our top guys. You had a chance to live forever….”

  “If you believe that, you’re dumber than I ever thought you were,” Harmon said. “That treatment—if they can get it to work—is for billionaires, not grunts like us. When the time comes, they’ll put you on the table, saying you’ll wake up as a twenty-year-old, give you a shot, and walk away laughing about it. Look at these people, Sync. They’re murdering children to get what they want, and they can never let anybody know. You think there’ll be any loose ends? Cartwell might scrape in, but not you.”

  “That’s bullshit. We would have gotten in. I’ll still get in.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Harmon said. “And I don’t want it, not if it means killing children so rich people and dirty politicians can have their bodies. Nope. I won’t do that.”

  After a moment of silence, Sync said, “You know more about the details than I thought.”

  “I’m an intel operator,” Harmon said. “One thing I can’t figure out, though, is how they roped you into it. You think buying new lives for billionaires is the American way now? What happened to you?”

  Sync shook his head. “I’m sorry. It would have been good to sit down and work this out between us, but you don’t have the time. Neither do I.”

  Harmon said, “West.”

  “What?”

  “West was a good guy—as good as anybody you ever worked with,” Harmon said. “Thorne murdered him. How could you support that? He was one of your own troops.”

  “He was a traitor,” Sync said, ice in his tone.

  “Traitor? What does that make you? A patriot? A patriot for a company of billionaires who murder children? Jesus, man.”

  “I’m going,” Sync said again.

  Harmon gave the apartment a last glance, and then, briefcase and luggage in hand, he went out the door after Sync, locking the dead bolt with the extra-strength strike plate behind it.

  They took the rear fire stairs down, Sync in front, out of simple gun etiquette: Sync knew that Harmon wouldn’t shoot him, but Harmon didn’t know that about Sync, not for sure. They emerged from the stairwell at the side of the apartment building, out on green grass, edging an adjoining parking lot, on a nice California night.

  “I’ll head out first,” Sync said as an orange tomcat, something limp in its mouth, ran past. “I wish to God this hadn’t happened.”

  “You set me up.”

  “I hoped it was one of the other guys,” Sync said.

  “Well: good job, technically speaking.”

  Sync flashed a grin and held out a hand, and Harmon shook it. Sync said, “We’re even. Remember that.”

  “I’ll remember. If Cartwell sends somebody after me, make it not you.”

  Sync nodded and Harmon said:

  “Take care, Stephen.”

  —

  Harmon jogged to his truck, loaded up the last two bags, and climbed inside.

  He was back at war.

  He smiled as he put the Mercedes in gear. Didn’t feel that bad.

  —

  Sync got on his phone and called Thorne. “I heard about Stockton, and that you got one of the kids.”

  “Yeah. Some punk named Cade Holt. Hadn’t had that name.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “Still in Sacramento. It was Stockton, so your guy—”

  “Yeah, Harmon, that sonofabitch,” Sync said. “You better get some guys moving. He knows how to run.”

  “They’ll be at his place in five minutes,” Thorne said. “I’m waiting for the call.”

  “Whatever you do, it’s got to be quick and quiet. You don’t want to take him on face to face, or he’ll light up the whole neighborhood.”

  “We got a sniper,” Thorne said. “It’s all fixed.”

  “Call me when it’s done,” Sync said.

  —

  Thorne hung up and went back to Cade Holt. One of the kid’s eyes was swollen closed, and his lips had been slashed open by his own teeth. His hands were cuffed behind his back; he was leaning in a corner, the wall holding him up.

  Thorne grabbed his chin, dug his nails into Cade’s face. “We’re gonna need some information from you,” he said. “Two ways we can get that: the easy way, and the hard way. You take the easy way, and maybe we can talk about what happens next. You take the hard way, we’ll get the information anyway, and you’ll wind up in a shallow grave out in the woods.”

  Cade tried to twist his face away, but Thorne tightened his grip.

  “Think about it. You’ve got a little time. I sent a guy down to the janitor’s closet for a bucket, and I already got the flannel shirt. That’s the thing about waterboarding: it’s so simple. Simple and sincere.” He laughed.

  21

  When the Singular man hung up, Twist, Cruz, and Shay looked at each other, and Twist said, “We gotta get off the roof and get out of here. If Singular’s got more agents around, waiting for the cops to go away, they could come back looking for us.”

  Shay said reluctantly, “You’re right. Let’s go.”

  Back at the motel, they packed up and were gone in three minutes, Shay riding with Twist and X in the Jeep, Cruz following in the pickup. Twist said, “We’ve got to contact Singular. We’ve got to find some leverage to make them release Cade.”

  “I can’t think straight,” Shay said. “I’ve got no ideas.”

  “The thing they might be most afraid of is that picture Cade found with the vice president and the Korean guy,” Twist said. “If we called Singular headquarters and left a message for the top guy, Cartwell…hell, Fenfang knows his private number….”

  “What would we say? He’ll know it’s real, but he could claim it was a Photoshop job and dare us to put it online.”

  “But they don’t know what else we have,” Twist said. “Maybe we should tell him there’s also a video of the vice president. They’re harder to fake.”

  “Keep talking,” Shay said.

  —

  They drove north out of Stockton, talking to Cruz on a walkie-talkie. He agreed that the call was worth making. But first they called Odin and Fenfang back in Arcata and let them know what had happened. They explained their idea, and Fenfang gave them Micah Cartwell’s direct line—the same one she’d used as Dash back in Reno. Twist broke out a cold phone for the call, but they got the automated message: “You’ve reached the office of Micah Cartwell…Dial zero for immediate help.” Twist punched zero, and a man answered the phone after a couple of rings. “We need to speak to Mr. Cartwell or somebody who can contact him now,” Twist said.

  The man, with an edge of impatience, said, “You’ll have to call during business hours.”

  “This is an emergency and we won’
t be able to call back later,” Twist said.

  “I can record the call and, if it’s a real emergency, pass it on.”

  “Fine,” Twist said. “This message is for Micah Cartwell, and he will want to hear it as soon as you can get it to him. The message is this: Not many people know about the vice president meeting with you and the North Koreans. A lot more will tomorrow, if we don’t have our friend back with us. We will dump the video on the Internet.”

  He clicked off.

  “You think that’ll help?” Shay asked.

  “It might slow them down,” Twist said. He rolled his window down and threw the phone out.

  “Not good enough. Has it been an hour? Give me the satphone and I’ll call the Singular guy back.” The phone rang at the other end, three times, then four, and then the man answered.

  “Yeah?”

  “We have to get our friend back,” Shay said.

  “I’m not in a position to help you with that. I’m running myself.”

  “You could still help us. What would make them release him? You’ve got to know stuff that would let us pressure them,” Shay said.

  “Not enough. I’m just a disgruntled fired employee as far as anyone knows.”

  “Listen: we need to meet,” Shay said.

  “That’d be tough. You don’t trust me and I don’t trust you,” the man said.

  “What are you afraid of?”

  “I’m afraid you’re looking for somebody you could trade for that kid. That would be me.”

  “For God’s sake, we don’t know how to do that,” Shay said, exasperated. “That’s what you do.”

  “I don’t know, you’ve shown some talent for getting what you want.”

  “You said when we talked before that they’ll try to kill you. If we bring them down, that’ll save your butt, too.”

  Silence.

  Shay had a thought: “Hey, you said you know how to climb. Right? You know how to climb?”

  “I climb.”

  “Could you do a 5.10?” Shay asked. The Yosemite Decimal System graded climbs on a numerical basis. A 5.10 was hard, but not a killer.

  “In my sleep,” the man said.

  “You got a rope?”

  “Yeah, I keep one in my truck.”

  “I’m going to steer you to a place,” Shay said. “When you see it, you’ll know you’re safe. And we’ll be safe, because we’ll see you coming, and everybody around you. How does that sound?”

  After a considerable silence, the man said, “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  “First of all, are you in San Francisco?”

  “More or less,” he said.

  “Then head east, toward Yuba City. Do you know where that is?”

  “Yup.”

  “Go to Yuba City and call me six hours from now.”

  “Why that long?”

  “Because if we’re gonna climb, it’d be better to do it in daylight, don’t you think?”

  —

  “We’re going to Yuba City?” Twist asked.

  “No, north of there, to a place called Oroville,” Shay said. “My foster parents took us there once. There’re a couple of motels where we can crash for a few hours. I’m not sure what they are, because we stayed in a tent.”

  “Yeah, that’s what we should have—a goddamn tent,” Twist said. “Sooner or later, we’re going to hit a hotel with an honest desk clerk.”

  Shay outlined her plan for Twist and Cruz while sitting in an all-night gas station diner.

  “We need this guy. If Singular is a threat to him, and we could bring it down, he might help us—and if he’s near the top of the company, he must have all kinds of information that would help us get Cade back.”

  Cruz said, “It sounds good, but this guy led us into the trap in the first place. He could be saying he’s on the run now so we’ll trust him, and then he can reel us in, too. He could just be a great liar.”

  “I know,” Shay said. “But he warned us back in Vegas—I keep remembering that.”

  Twist nodded. “Tell us about the climb again—and what Cruz and I have to do to keep you safe.”

  —

  Harmon probably wouldn’t have gone along with the climber chick except that, first, he thought he’d like to meet her; second, the goofs were doing well enough that maybe they could damage Singular in a way that would make him safer; and third, if they were up to something crazy, like kidnapping him for a trade, he was pretty sure he could handle them.

  He pulled into a rest area south of Yuba City, crawled into the back of the truck, unrolled a sleeping bag, and promptly went to sleep. His cell phone alarm woke him five minutes before he was to make the call. He took a sip of water, brushed his teeth, and spit the toothpaste into some weeds. He would have liked a shower, but he’d gone weeks without a shower before, nothing to wash with but river water or melted snow. He might stink, but he knew he’d survive.

  When the time came, he called, and the climber chick said, “You need to continue north to Oroville. There’s a Motel 6 there, and in the back of the parking lot, there are three orange stakes, some kind of construction thing. At the middle stake, there’s a small plastic bag. Get the bag.”

  She clicked off.

  Harmon pocketed his phone and grinned. The goofs were having the same problem that you have when you try to get the payoff from a kidnapping: you have to give instructions to the man with the money, and there’s no way to tell whether the money man is repeating the instructions to surveillance specialists—FBI, police detectives, private security, whatever.

  Be interesting to see what they’d come up with.

  Thirty-five minutes later, he picked up the black plastic bag and looked inside. A multichannel walkie-talkie and a note that said, “Click the transmit button a few times.” Interesting. No one would expect a walkie-talkie, not from a couple of tech freaks like the Rembys. And you couldn’t track it, not unless you were already close by and had some really primitive equipment on hand. Even then, you couldn’t track it closely.

  He smiled again. Not bad. He clicked the transmit button a few times, and a man’s voice said, “North on 70. Call when you cross the lake.”

  All right.

  He drove out of town, north on Highway 70. Headed into the mountains. Into climber territory. He tried to see it from their point of view. He was on a narrow highway; if they were perched on a ridge, they could watch cars behind him, looking, say, for SUVs with several male occupants. Naive, but if they had enough watchers, it could trip up a tracking crew. Wouldn’t trip up a helicopter, though, or a drone, if they were high enough.

  So they hadn’t thought of everything.

  He called as he crossed the lake. The man came back and asked, “Are you in the black Mercedes ML550?”

  “Yes. Big orange spot on the roof,” Harmon said.

  “Drive ten miles and then turn on your trouble lights, the blinkers. The climber will call you.”

  —

  Shay well remembered the rock wall. Not a terribly difficult climb, it went straight up above the highway, with lots of cracks and edges. She probably could get up it without a rope, but somebody had bolted a beginner’s crack, and the bolts would allow her to tie into the wall without doing any work.

  There were two other aspects of the site that she liked: nine-tenths of the way to the top, there was an overhang, almost a cave, where she could settle in and watch the highway below. She could see straight down it, beside the river, for at least half a mile. The second thing was, the hardest part of the climb was just below the overhang. The Singular man would need both hands; she would have both free, for her gun.

  If worse came to worst, and she saw several people coming after her, she could scramble out of the overhang and up the remaining rock to the top of the wall, where the forest waited. No helicopter could land up there: if the land wasn’t covered by tall trees, then it was protected by a jumble of boulders.

  Once she was in the trees, they wouldn’t find her
…unless they had bloodhounds.

  Twist said, before leaving, “Shay…”

  “I know.”

  “Don’t kill yourself. It’d be really inconvenient.”

  He left. He’d be waiting four miles farther along the highway, at an informal turnoff used by fishermen and hikers.

  When Twist had gone, Shay pulled on her pack and started up the wall, free-climbing the easy parts, tying in where the rock got steep. Twenty minutes later, she heaved herself onto the ledge under the overhang. She’d scraped the palm of her hand on a sharp rock and was bleeding a little. She pressed it against her jeans, opened her pack, and took out a pair of binoculars, a bottle of water, and her knife. She ran her fingers along the blade: now just a backup weapon, but even so, deadly as a cobra.

  She slipped it back into its sheath, pushed it under her waistband, took out a cold phone, and dialed.

  Cruz answered: “He’s in a black Mercedes SUV and his trouble lights are blinking. I’m a half mile behind him, but he’s pulling away. I got his truck tag and called it into Odin, who says his name is Harmon. He’s forty-five, and from a quick look at the Net, Odin thinks he was West’s boss and is probably the head of Singular’s intelligence unit…or former head, if he’s telling us the truth.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “Yes. You think we should still go with it?” Cruz asked.

  “Definitely—he’s too valuable not to take a chance with him.”

  “Okay. He’s coming fast. I don’t want to chase him, because he might spot me.”

  “Keep watch,” Shay said. “I’ll call when he gets here.”

  —

  Harmon wasn’t sure whether the man who called was ahead of him or behind him. Behind, he decided after a while, because he was traveling too fast on the narrow highway and never overtook anyone who looked like he might be a member of the group, nor did he see anyone accelerating away from him.

  Twenty minutes after he crossed the lake, he took a walkie-talkie call from the climber. “You’re coming up on a tunnel. See the wall? There’s a parking place off to the right, before you go into the tunnel. Park there. On the wall, you’ll see a line of bolts going up: it’s the beginner’s crack. You’ll know for sure because you’ll find a black Sharpie circle on the rock next to the bottom bolt. I’m most of the way to the top.”