Outrage

by John Sandford

  Fenfang spoke for the first time, distressed: “They are bringing more of us in. He’s going to a ship to get more of us.”

  Harmon said, “Or the new holding facility is mobile—that would be a smart move.”

  “What do we do?” Cade asked. “Call the cops now?”

  Twist: “No. We gotta see what’s there. Gotta be sure this time.”

  Shay: “I agree with Twist.”

  Harmon: “So do I. Everybody stay cool.”

  Twist and Cruz were in the car closest to Adams, and Harmon said, “Zero, get Three off the road. Three, fall in behind us when you can turn around, but do it quick. We need to change headlights behind him. There’s just not enough cars around.”

  “Turning now,” Twist said.

  They followed the silver SUV across a river and then onto the Wilbur Avenue exit.

  “I’m looking at a fairly rough riverside landing of some kind,” Cade said. “Looks like an abandoned wharf—I don’t know if it’s abandoned in real life, but Google doesn’t show anything on it. But that whole area looks pretty open: you gotta be careful.”

  Harmon said, “Everybody slow down. Let One do this….Okay, he’s off Wilbur.”

  Shay, excited now: “Zero, it’s a huge vacant lot. Can you see that? It’s dark, but there’s something back there, there’s lights up in the air.”

  “That’s a ship,” Harmon said.

  Twist called: “Hey, there’s another big SUV coming up from behind us. Moving really fast, he’s gonna pass us, could be more Singular guys….”

  Shay was still watching Adams’s car. “Yes! There’s a ship back there, I can see it in his headlights. And another car, maybe two.”

  Danny: “One, you’ve got to move out, this guy’s coming up really fast, he’s going to see you hanging around.”

  Harmon: “We’re going.”

  He accelerated away, and Shay, looking out the back window, said, “I see him, he’s a few blocks back.”

  “If he goes in there, we’ll see him,” Danny said.

  And a few seconds later, Odin said, “And there he goes, he’s getting off….”

  Twist asked, “What are we doing?”

  Shay: “It’s too open back there, but we’re coming up to something. You guys close up on us, we’ll find a place to stop.”

  “We’re going past the ship, there are three cars already parked there, this last guy will be the fourth,” Twist said. “They’re putting down some kind of ramp from the ship…like for getting off an old airliner, but longer.”

  “There,” Shay said, pointing. “Turn there.”

  Harmon braked hard and turned into a short, poorly lit entrance for a storage facility. It was off on the right side of Wilbur Avenue, out of sight from the ship, but no more than a few hundred yards west. “We’ve found a spot to hide. Everybody…it’s just past the open spot, you’ll see a bunch of Dumpsters near the side of the road, three big white ones, we’re just past that, down a paved drive.”

  Harmon added, “When you turn in here, turn off your lights.”

  He hit the lights and parked at the side of the drive, and a minute later, Twist and Cruz pulled in, and a minute after that, Danny with Odin and Fenfang.

  “Stay here one second,” Harmon said to Shay. He jumped out and jogged to the other vehicles, said a few words, then got back in the Jeep and pulled around in a circle. The other two vehicles followed, and when they stopped again, they were all pointed toward Wilbur Avenue, but tucked out of sight.

  Shay got her camera, pulled it on. Twist joined them, and she saw that he was carrying the other video camera. A minute later, the group was following Harmon up a ten-foot-high dirt berm. There were several lights on the ship, and the headlights from one of the SUVs played against the side of it. The ship was long, low, and brown, with a white towerlike structure at the stern, which Harmon said would contain the bridge—the ship’s control center—as well as the crew quarters.

  They got to the top of the berm just in time to see a man walk down the gangway, go to the SUV with its headlights on, and get in the passenger side. A moment later, the SUV drove away. With their eyes now adjusted to the darkness, they could make out the three cars still clustered at the bottom of the gangway.

  “There’s got to be a guard at the top of the stairs,” Twist said, keeping his voice low.

  “Or something,” Odin said. “Maybe a camera that they monitor from the bridge?”

  As they watched, another man walked down the gangway, carrying a bag. He threw the bag in the back of another SUV, got in, and drove away.

  “Somebody’s got to be watching it,” Twist said. “It’s like the cheese in a mousetrap.”

  There was nobody in sight, either on or off the ship. They moved in closer, staying in a tight clump behind the berm, until they were a hundred yards out from the ship. They could see now that the ship was tied to a pier that ran parallel to the river—and the only way onto the pier was across a short walkway, where the gangway came down from the ship.

  And the whole area around the walkway was an open concrete slab.

  “It’s a friggin’ fortress,” Harmon said. “Okay. I’ll scout the bow of the ship.”

  “The two of us,” Shay said.

  “All right, but you stay behind me,” Harmon said. “Danny, you’ve shot that M16 of yours a few times, right?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t want to shoot anyone,” Danny said.

  “Don’t have to. If we get in trouble and yell, point the gun at the side of the ship and pull the trigger. It’ll make a hell of a racket and freak out anybody on board. While he’s doing that, everybody else get back to the cars. Shay and I will run for it and hide, and you can pick us up later.”

  “That’s pretty freakin’ iffy,” Twist said.

  Harmon laughed. “Everything we’re doing is freakin’ iffy,” he said. “That’s what makes it so much fun.”

  “I’m coming,” Cruz said. “The three of us.”

  Harmon: “Both you guys are swimmers?”

  Shay nodded, but Cruz conceded, “Not so much.”

  Harmon said to Cruz: “I’d love to have you, but there may be some water involved in this. Shay, you’ll need that black jacket. In fact…” He looked down at his cowboy boots. “I gotta change myself.”

  They gathered around the Jeep’s driver’s seat as Harmon pulled off his boots and changed into a pair of black Nike sneakers.

  He said, “Twist?”

  “Yeah?”

  “If I get killed, put my boots back on me.”

  X made a sound deep in his throat, not quite a growl, and Twist said, “Well, X thought it was funny, anyway.”

  Harmon stepped over to the Volvo and asked Danny to pop the trunk. Danny did, and Harmon took his M16 out of a nylon case, slapped a magazine in place, and hung the rifle over his shoulder. Another magazine went into a lightweight camouflage backpack he wore over his military-style black nylon jacket. Danny’s identical rifle was in a hard plastic case, and Danny fished the case out of the trunk and carried it to the Jeep.

  Twist looked skeptically at Harmon’s rifle and asked, “You think you’ll really need that?”

  Harmon: “Like the NRA says, it’s better to have a machine gun and not need it than to need a machine gun and not have it. I think they said that.”

  “Yeah, well, the NRA can kiss my ass,” Twist said. “The whole NRA.”

  “Something I’d pay to see,” Harmon said.

  Afteer a few last-minute words and warnings, Twist said, “Okay, before we do this…what’s the point?”

  Shay: “The point is, we think we know what we’ve got, but what if the ship’s empty? What if it just got here? You said it yourself, Twist: we have to be sure the test subjects are here. A quick look—”

  Harmon: “A recon.”

  Shay: “A quick recon and we’ll know whether to call the cops now or wait.”

  Ten seconds later, Shay told X to stay and followed Harmon into the darkness.<
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  26

  Shay and Harmon walked stooped over, straight toward the river, across rough ground. Enough light was floating around that they missed big obstacles, like mounds of dirt and bushes, while tripping over small ones or stepping into shallow holes.

  The riverbank dropped steeply to the water, down perhaps six or eight feet, and was muddy. At the water’s edge, the light from the ship and the street was cut off, and the darkness became inky. From there, they had to feel their way forward.

  Shay whispered, “God, I hope there are no snakes.”

  Harmon said simply, in another whisper, “Voices carry.”

  She shut up.

  —

  Harmon was carrying his combat gear in the backpack, the rifle on a shoulder sling, and a pistol on his belt. In addition to the camera on her arm, Shay carried the pistol that Danny had given her, with an extra magazine in each of her front jeans pockets, and her knife, which rode where it always did, down her back. When they got close to the ship, Harmon reached back, gripped one of her arms, and pushed down. They huddled behind some brush, and Harmon put his mouth close to her ear and said, “The bow overhangs the edge of the pier. If we get under there, they won’t be able to see us.”

  “What are we going to do when we get there?”

  “I want to take a look at the hawsers,” Harmon said.

  “The what?”

  “Hawsers. Ropes. The ropes used to tie off the ship. Put on your mask. Faces shine.”

  He pulled on his own black ski mask, then turned away from her and began duck-walking along the waterline, toward the ship; she followed. Every few steps, one or the other of them slipped on the muddy bank, plunging their feet into the cold water. The underwater part of the bank felt radically steep, as it would have to be, Shay thought, to accommodate ships. The mud smelled of dead fish and chemicals. Oil, maybe.

  After five minutes of slow, cautious approach, they got to the end of the pier. The pier actually stood several feet away from the riverbank, the outside pilings plunging into deep water. The inside pilings, made of rough concrete, sank into the dirt bank. Another minute of duck-walking got them under the end of the pier and directly below the ship’s hull. The waterline was right at their feet.

  Just above their heads, a pale green hawser, as thick as Shay’s forearm, stretched toward the bow, where it disappeared through an opening below the rail. Judging from the water towers she’d climbed, Shay thought the hull of the ship was probably fifteen or twenty feet high.

  Harmon whispered, “If we climbed the hawser, could we get over the bow from there? That hole might be too small to get through.”

  “Let me run up and take a look,” Shay said. “I can get up there in ten seconds.”

  “You think?”

  “Yes.”

  Harmon said, “If you hear anyone above, don’t hesitate, slide right back down, but stay under the bow. If they see us here, we’re kinda screwed.”

  “Got it,” Shay said. She liked the fact that Harmon didn’t doubt her capabilities.

  “If that hole’s big enough for me to get through, snap your fingers at me,” Harmon whispered. “Finger snaps don’t sound like voices.”

  —

  They both stood up, moving slowly: neither one could see over the pier to the parking lot. The pier was six feet high, and Shay reached up and grabbed the edges with her hands. Harmon said, “I’ll make a stirrup.”

  She felt his hands by her ankle, and they both poked around until her foot was cupped by his hands, and then he stood up, and Shay’s head and torso rose over the end of the pier. She could see now: nobody on the pier, nobody in the parking lot, unless they were in their cars.

  The hawser leading to the bow of the boat was right there. Shay pushed herself up onto the pier, staying behind the mooring post, then straddled the hawser and began pulling herself along it with her hands and arms, while her thighs, calves, and ankles gripped the rope below her. The climb got steeper as she went, but she shinnied up the last few feet and pulled herself through the two-foot-high opening in the bow and onto the deck. She was behind a pile of shipping containers.

  She couldn’t see anything, but nobody could see her, either, she thought. She snapped her fingers at Harmon. Two minutes later, he pushed his backpack through the opening, then squeezed through after it.

  They were on the ship, at the very tip of the bow, in a deep shadow cast by lights on an overhead crane.

  —

  “With only two cars, there can’t be too many people on board,” Shay whispered.

  “Except that a few people might actually live here,” Harmon said.

  “Wouldn’t they have cars?”

  “Not if they travel with the ship.”

  “I’m going to tell the others….” She tapped out a text message—“On board”—and sent it to Twist. “Now what?”

  “Turn on your camera,” Harmon said. “Then let’s see what we can see.”

  —

  They walked from the bow toward the stern, along the riverside of the ship, past stacked shipping containers that rose like a wall beside them. Halfway down the length of the ship, Harmon stopped, and Shay, who was walking behind him, nearly bumped into him. He whispered, “Stay here. I’m going to climb these containers and take a look at the crew quarters, see how many lights are on.”

  “Careful.”

  Harmon jammed a sneaker into the narrow space between two containers and began to climb—and forty-five seconds later, climbed down again.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Everything’s dark.”

  He’d left his pack on the deck, and now he picked it up, slipped it back on, and took his pistol out. He whispered to Shay, “If you take your pistol out, which I don’t recommend at this point, don’t get excited and shoot me in the back. Okay?”

  “ ’Kay.”

  They started moving again, and as they got close to the tower that housed the crew quarters and the wheelhouse, they slowed: they could see more easily in the illumination cast from an overhead light on one of the cranes.

  Then they could hear voices. Two men, Shay thought, laughing about something, then simply chatting. And faintly, so faintly that Shay at first thought it was an illusion: she could hear another sound, higher pitched than the men’s voices, almost a buzz, like a hornet’s nest. The hair rose on the back of her neck. She touched the knife at her back—habit—then went for the pistol grip at her side, but didn’t take the gun out.

  Harmon stopped again, leaned past her cheek so that his mouth was only an inch from her ear, and said, “Two guys. There must be an open door. And something else. Do you hear that?”

  She whispered back, directly into his ear, “Yes. I don’t know what it is.”

  “Maybe the crew,” he said. “One thing at a time. Do we take the two guys? If we do that, they’ll know we were here.”

  Shay had to think for a moment, then whispered, “We still don’t know what we’ve got. And we can’t search more if we don’t take them—right?”

  Harmon cocked his head, as though he might not entirely agree, then slipped out of his backpack, patted her arm, and said, “Don’t come up too close behind me. I might need room. Bring the pack.”

  He began moving again. They got to the end of the container stack, and Harmon peeked around the corner, then stepped back and waved her up. Shay peeked. One cabin, right on their level, but closer to the other side of the ship, where the ramp came up, was lit up. The cabin door was half open, and the voices were apparently coming through the opening. A few seconds later, headbanger music came on, some old Motörhead song.

  One of the men in the room laughed about something, and what sounded like an aluminum can banged off the cabin wall, and somebody said, “Two!”

  Harmon stepped around Shay, moving more quickly now, right up to the door. Shay moved up behind him, but not too close, and put the backpack on the deck. She pulled her pistol.

  Harmon looked at her, nodded, peeked inside through t
he open door, then pushed it all the way open with his gun, and said, “Everybody sit quiet.”

  One of the men said, “Hey! Hey!”

  “Jim,” Harmon said to the man directly, “I’m warning you…quiet.”

  The other man shook his head, as if clearing his ears, and said, “Harmon? What are you doing, man? What’s with the mask?”

  “Don’t move, because I really don’t want to shoot anybody, but I will if you try for a weapon. You know that.” Harmon raised his voice and called through the doorway, “Send that girl in with the cuffs. Rick, put the SAW between the last two containers, and cover the crew quarters. Larry, take the gangplank.”

  Cue the girl. Shay picked up Harmon’s backpack and carried it into the small cabin, where two men stood with their hands at shoulder height. They were wearing cargo pants, golf shirts, and athletic jackets, and both had close-cropped hair and well-developed biceps. One was fairly tall, the other a head shorter.

  Shay carefully put the pack on the floor while keeping both her pistol and the video camera pointed at the short man. Neither of the men was wearing armor, and in the twelve-foot-long room, she could hardly miss.

  “I heard you’d turned,” the tall man said to Harmon. “I didn’t want to believe it.”

  “ ’Cause they’re killing children,” Harmon said. “They’re wiping their brains so some rich guys can have them. Honest to God, Jim.”

  “That’s bullshit, Harmon, they’re doing—”

  “Shut up,” Shay said. “I get tired of listening to it. Why do you think they hired you? To guard this piece of junk? You think they’re doing legitimate medical research in a rusting tub?”

  The tall man—Jim—asked, “Is this the chick that ruined Thorne?”

  Shay, with the crazy act: “I should have shot him in the head. If I’d known he was the guy who tortured my brother, I would have.”

  Jim blinked: he now believed she’d shoot.

  Harmon said, “Turn around, move very slowly. Drop into a push-up position. Both of you. Feet together, body up in the air. We’re going to put some ties around your ankles, then we’re going to cuff your hands. We really don’t want to shoot anyone—that’s not why we’re here.”