Uncaged

by John Sandford

  One of the long pieces of chain, Twist told Shay, would be used to lock the door to the roof. Several short pieces would weight the bottom edge of the banner, to hold it flat down the side of the building. “You’ll see when we get there.”

  There were four of them: Twist, Cade, Cruz, and Shay. They took the 101 Freeway east out of Hollywood. More than a few motorists were taking advantage of the light traffic and speeding along at a hundred miles an hour or more. Twist drove a steady sixty-five: “The last thing we need is a speeding stop,” he said. “Remember that when you’re planning your next crime.”

  They passed the exit to Dodger Stadium, shifted onto the 110 North, and continued to the cluster of buildings that made up the Los Angeles downtown area.

  The route was complicated, but Twist knew exactly where he was going: he took an off-ramp, switched down a series of poorly lit streets, and pulled into a parking lot that lay almost under the freeway, next to a short white building that smelled like baking bread.

  “Nice and dark,” Cade said as they unloaded the truck. The predawn air was cool, a break from the hot days and warm evenings.

  “Won’t be for long,” Twist said, looking at his watch.

  “I just hope your guy is here,” Cruz said. Cruz was carrying the massive canvas. Although the poster canvas was lighter, yard for yard, than the artist canvas Twist used for his studio paintings, there was so much of it that the roll forced Cruz into a painful stoop after he got it up onto his shoulders.

  Cade carried the heavier of the two chain bags, and Twist carried the lighter one with his free hand. Shay handled her climbing gear and the two support rods—the rods were long and awkward, but not especially heavy.

  The limp and the cane didn’t seem to slow Twist down. He led the way over a three-foot concrete wall at the end of the parking lot, then down a dirt path and along a hurricane fence that separated the bottom of the freeway from the private land on the other side. The warm odor of baking bread had gone away, to be replaced with the stink of a wet basement.

  Their target was the Secox Building, a green-glass-and-steel box that virtually hung over the freeway. They’d walked the length of a couple of football fields, Shay thought, when Twist turned and led them across a narrow service driveway toward the back of the target building. As they got close, he took out his cell phone and made a call.

  Shay muttered, “I thought he didn’t believe in cell phones.”

  Cade whispered back, “Only for the cause.”

  Shay suddenly thought of Odin, and the raid on the animal lab that had put him on the run. This is the same thing, she thought: sneaking into a building in the middle of the night, doing what felt right, but with the possibility that everything could go wrong. She was amazed at how easily she’d been recruited into the whole scheme. She really didn’t have time to go to jail, get sent back to Oregon, and make her way to California all over again.

  A door popped open in the side of the building and a Latino man in a Nike tracksuit was looking out at them. He looked nervous, but said, “Hey, man,” in a thoroughly L.A. accent, slapped hands with Twist, and led the way up.

  Twelve floors.

  “There’s gotta be a better way,” Cade groaned. “There’s this device called an elevator …”

  “Three of them,” Twist said. “With devices called security cameras.”

  Cruz had to stop halfway for a breather. Twist offered to help him carry the canvas, but the narrow stairway was too awkward for that. Cruz said he was okay, he’d caught women who were heavier than that. Shay said, “Hey, am not,” and after a minute, they started up again.

  The stairway ended at a locked steel door. The Latino man pulled a key out of his pocket, opened the door, gave the key to Twist, and said, “I’m outta here. Good luck.” He headed back down the stairs.

  The roof door opened out of a concrete-block shed, little more than a box sitting in the center of the roof. To one side were a series of metal structures, ten or twelve feet high, that housed heating and cooling equipment. After they came out onto the roof in a light breeze, Twist led them to the space between the shed and the air-conditioning units.

  “Our biggest problem is that somebody in one of the other buildings might see us and call the cops,” he said quietly.

  Shay looked around: their building was one of the shortest in the area—thousands of windows looked down on them, although only a few were lit, and she couldn’t see anybody in those. In the space between the metal boxes and the shed, they were relatively hidden.

  Cruz said, “We’ve got an hour before the sun comes up.”

  It took half an hour to assemble the banner. The poles went in the top sleeve and were linked together with a piece of pipe and two bolts to make one long, stiff rod. Six lengths of rope were tied to the poles through holes in the sleeve. They’d been premeasured so they could be tied to ventilation ducts coming out of the roof. Six short lengths of chain, from Twist’s bag, had to be attached to the bottom of the banner to weigh it down and keep it from flapping if the wind kicked up.

  The assembly would have been simple enough—in a lighted room. On the dark roof, it was more complicated. Twist had a flashlight, but was reluctant to use it—flashlights looked too burglarlike.

  By the time they finished, light was leaking over the San Gabriel Mountains to the east, and the city was waking up. Traffic was heavier, and more windows were being lit with every passing moment.

  When the banner was ready to go, Cade shook a long length of remaining chain out of the bag, and Twist dragged it over to the concrete-block shed that protected the roof door.

  “Here’s the way this works,” he told Shay. He dragged the chain in a loop around the entire shed, then fed it through the steel handle on the door. “All you do is feed the chain through the handle here, then padlock it.”

  He took a fist-sized padlock out of his pocket and slipped it through the two end links of the chain. “That’ll keep them from opening the door from the inside. The door is steel, so they’ll have to get some heavy gear up here to knock it down. Or knock down a wall. Or hire a chopper to land on the roof. Whatever they do, it’ll take a while to figure out and then get it done. Hours, maybe. The longer the banner is up, the better for us.”

  Shay walked over to one of the cooling units, looked at the metal stand that supported it, kicked it, looped one of her nylon tie-ins around it, threaded her rope through the tie-in, and threw her weight against it as hard as she could. Nothing budged. She yanked it twice more, and was satisfied. “I’m ready,” she said. “Where do I go when I get down?”

  “We’ll be waiting for you,” Twist said. He looked at the light coming over the mountains, and his watch. “Fifteen minutes, and we go.” He dipped into his pocket and pulled out a wad of red bandannas, the kind cowboys wore around their necks.

  And anarchists wore over their faces.

  “Masks, everyone,” Twist said.

  They should have gone in fifteen minutes, but didn’t go for almost twenty-five. Twist was pacing in the space between the heating and cooling boxes and the shed, muttering to himself.

  Cade said, “Man, it’s getting pretty light …”

  “Can’t go yet.… Can’t go,” Twist said.

  “Gotta go soon,” Cruz said. “Everything’s lighting up.”

  Everything was: the buildings around them were coming alive. Twist looked at his watch and said, “We might have to go without them.”

  At that instant, they heard the first of the news helicopters. “There they are,” Twist said. “Let’s do it.”

  Moving as quickly as they could, the guys ran the bundle of canvas out onto the parapet at the edge of the roof, where it loomed like a long, thick snake—a freshly fed anaconda, maybe. The poles along the top edge of the banner were already tied to the support ropes back to the ventilation ducts.

  Twist got on his phone and made a call. He said to Shay, “They don’t know exactly where the action is going to be. They just kn
ow it’s on the 110.”

  He turned away, put a finger in his other ear, and began talking into the phone. Then he clicked it shut and said to Shay, “You’re sure about this? About going down the building? About not landing on your head?”

  Shay could feel the tension in her stomach, but also a warm, uncoiling excitement. She grinned at him as she knotted her long hair into a bun and said, “I’m good.”

  He studied her for a moment, then said, “Nothing we do would be worth you getting killed. Or hurt. Nothing.”

  “Don’t chicken out on me, Twist. You got me all hot to do this.”

  “All right, all right,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  She went to get tied into her rope while Twist, Cruz, and Cade moved to the edge of the building. Twist called, “Everybody lift … everybody stand clear of the poles. Don’t get your feet tangled up, or you’ll go over the side with the banner. Careful, careful … Goddammit, Cade, watch your hands.…”

  As they were doing that, a helicopter came thrashing down the 110, just at eye level, stopped, hovered, and Shay could see a cameraman in the door. A half mile behind the first chopper, a second one was moving in.

  Twist shouted, “Wait, wait. We got another camera coming.… Wait, here comes another.… On the count of three … everybody. One! Two! Three!”

  They dropped the banner, and the support ropes snapped tight against the poles that held the banner straight. Twist shouted, “Let’s go! Let’s go!”

  Cade, Cruz, and Twist ran for the roof door, where Shay was ready to lock it behind them. Cruz stopped and told her, “You’ve got guts,” and Twist pushed him forward and asked her once more, “You’re sure?” and she said, “Yes!” and pushed him after Cruz, and suddenly Cade’s hand was on her wrist, and he pulled her into his chest and said, “I’m putting something in your pocket for protection,” and he slid something past her harness and into her back pocket.

  Shay stared up at him, feeling his rapid heartbeat through her shirt, and asked, “What am I protecting?”

  He let go of her wrist and kissed her forehead through his mask. “It’s to protect you. Go!”

  He went through the door, leaving Shay alone on the roof. Quick now: she pulled the chain through the door handle and snapped the lock into the chain. The helicopters were louder than thunder now. The air got choppy, and when she turned, there were four machines looming overhead, with television call letters painted on their sides.

  She pushed the red handkerchief a bit farther up her nose, checked the tension on her rope, and stepped onto the parapet. She stretched, back arched and hands over her head, and almost laughed with the pure over-the-top rush. She turned, took a breath, and started down the side of the building, her toes bouncing off the reflective glass.

  And saw below her a fold in the banner.

  Something had happened during the drop, and one edge had folded across the cartoon—the edge with the woman’s arm and the Nazi armband. She dropped down for a closer look, aware of the beat of the helicopter blades close behind her.

  Two of the weighting chains, she saw, had somehow become entangled when the banner unfurled down the building. She dropped farther, until she was just below the level of the problem spot, and began to pendulum back and forth across the green glass of the building, her knotted hair falling loose.

  The sound of the choppers was ferocious, but she didn’t have time to look. On her third run across, she managed to grab the entangled chain, saw it was simply looped across the other, and flicked it clear.

  The banner dropped open. She looked down and saw Twist, Cade, and Cruz on the ground. Twist was shouting at her, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying. She kicked off the face of the building as hard as she could and dropped the rest of the way in a half-dozen big jumps.

  When she hit the ground, hard, she freed the rope and began pulling on one end. How long had they been? Three minutes? Maybe.

  Cruz was coiling up the accumulating rope and shouted, “Faster, faster,” and finally the rope fell free down the building and Cruz coiled the last of it, and then they were running, down under the freeway where the chopper cameras couldn’t follow, along the chain-link fence, until they were at the SUV.

  They could hear sirens now. The cops were close, but up above, on the freeway, Shay thought.

  They threw the rope in the back of the Range Rover and Twist said to Shay, “You almost gave me a heart attack. If you ever …”

  “What?”

  He shook his head and pulled off his mask. “Nothing. I just … nothing.”

  She climbed inside with Cruz and Cade, Twist cranked the ignition, and they were gone.

  Lou was waiting on the loading dock behind the hotel with Catherine, the kitchen supervisor. As they got out of the truck, Lou stepped over and said, “You’re not going to believe it!”

  “Good or bad?” said Twist.

  Lou nodded at Shay. “She’s coast to coast. You can’t turn on the TV without seeing her swinging across the building.”

  Catherine said, laughing, “When she kicks out that Nazi armband … Oh my God …”

  Shay felt everyone’s sudden stare, and her face flushed.

  “Did they get the banner down yet?” Cruz asked.

  “It was still up five minutes ago,” Lou said. “I don’t think the building manager’s in any hurry to get it down, either. They had him on Channel 5. He said he was outraged—outraged!—but he was laughing up his sleeve.”

  “Let’s find a TV,” Twist said.

  They hurried up to the studio floor, where the big television screens were, and caught video of the banner unfurling on the first channel they looked at—all in high-res, close-ups of the masked faces above the banner, then the three men disappearing through the door and Shay locking the chain through the door handle.

  Then Shay standing on the parapet, stretching, a flock of helicopters upon her.

  “What’re you doing, yoga? Or jerking me around? You’re so damn high up,” Twist said. “I’m getting sick to my stomach looking at the TV.”

  Shay watched herself bounce down the side of the building, the turquoise top flashing across the face of the banner, her long red hair coming loose, flying behind the mask, as she swung back and forth, reaching for the tangled chains. Twist closed his eyes like he couldn’t watch, though he was peeking through his fingers, and shouted, “Look at you! Jeez, look at you …”

  Shay cleared the banner and it dropped, and the cameras got a shot of Shay swinging across the Nazi armband, and then she dropped like a rock down the rest of the building.

  The news cameras got them fleeing under the 110, then cut back to the banner, and then, later, to a shot of several cops walking up to the building and staring up at the bare white cartoon breasts of the district attorney—laughing at it.

  Twist collapsed on a couch, a broad smile on his scarred face, and said, “This is the most fantastic action in the history of Los Angeles. People, an extra five dollars for everybody.”

  They laughed at that, and Cruz clicked through the channels, one click, two, three, and there she was again, swinging across the building. Shay flushed and thought, Who is that girl? Twenty-four hours earlier, she had a rat in her face. Now she’s famous, whoever she is. Doesn’t feel like anybody I know, though.…

  Some people knew.

  Checking her email at a Starbucks later in the day, she’d find a note from Jonah, the climber from REI: “That was so cool. Take me on your next climb, I’m begging you.”

  In San Francisco, West was walking along the street licking a pistachio ice cream cone and caught the image on a television set in the window of a stockbrokerage. When Shay’s hair came loose, he couldn’t believe it and stood frozen, the cone forgotten.

  He said aloud, to nobody, “Really? Really, Shay?”

  12

  After the initial excitement died down, Shay went back to her room, found a note from Emily that said “Unbelievable—talk to you this afternoon.” She’d seen the
video.

  Shay’d had only a few restless hours of sleep the night before, and the cumulative weariness from her trip down from Eugene, plus the excitement of the morning’s action, got on top of her. With Emily gone and the room quiet, she stretched out on her bed, fully clothed, and immediately fell asleep.

  When she woke, it was almost noon. She felt good, still a little sleepy; she felt a knot against her hip and dug into her back pocket. She found a flat black stone the size of a quarter, but oval, and remembered Cade’s gift on the roof. She turned the stone in her hand: it was black as midnight, but with a white line running through it, slightly off-center.

  For good luck? Shay didn’t believe in luck, really, or in omens. She believed in mathematics and hard work—but the stone was interesting and had a nice feel to it. She rolled off the bed and put it back in her pocket. If there was any such thing as luck, she could use some.

  She cleaned up, got her laptop, and headed out. On the way down the stairs and in the lobby, people nodded at her, lifted hands, said, “Hey,” and “Great video,” and “So cool,” and she again felt the buzz of it all.

  Shay had spent a good part of her life being shuffled between temporary parents who didn’t much care about her. The sudden attention felt strange. And not bad.

  She walked out to another coffee shop, bought a cup of coffee and a yesterday’s scone for half price, and went online.

  Nothing at the Facebook page. Where was he? Odin had sometimes left her eight or ten messages a day.

  She went to Google News, typed in “animal rights” and “Eugene activists,” and found nothing new. There were references to the YouTube video that Storm had released after the raid, with the horrifying monkey shots, along with Singular’s public relations counterattack. And she found dozens of iPhone shots of college kids rounding up mice and rats for money. Then at the bottom of Google’s main news page, she saw a thumbnail photo of a girl on a rope.