by Sean Black
A moment later, Lock slammed the gate shut and sealed it with a large padlock. He stepped back to admire his work. Reaper stood there, his arms splayed out from his body in a crucifix pattern.
‘You really think he’s what they want?’ Carrie asked.
‘I don’t think,’ said Lock, ‘I know. Now, let’s get the hell out before Delta Force get here.’
Dead bodies littered the corridor behind Chance and Trooper as they made their way to the secure holding area, alternating who took point, folding in front of each other at every doorway, working their way quickly but methodically towards their target. Anyone they saw, they shot, including a woman dressed in civilian clothes who had pleaded for her life on bended knee, old-school style. Chance, wishing to conserve ammunition, had cut her throat with a Bowie knife.
‘Let’s hope they ain’t moved him,’ she said to Trooper.
She peered through a mesh-reinforced glass panel in a door that led into the holding area. The door was locked but the room beyond looked empty. She placed a charge and scuttled back, her face kissing the floor as the charge detonated. A few seconds later, the door came to rest at a forty-five-degree angle on its sole remaining hinge. Chance pushed it aside and stepped into the anteroom. A desk ran the length of one wall, its end section lifted up to allow access to another door. This door was also locked.
Chance checked her watch. The digital display was set to count down from five minutes, which was the time at which she’d estimated they’d have to start moving back to the RV point on the roof. Two minutes of the five remained.
She checked the door in front of them. Judging by the hinges, it opened inwards. She flicked her M-4 on to fully automatic, hefted it to her shoulder, fell into a modified Weaver stance and let loose with a burst of gunfire aimed at the lock. Trooper stepped forward, and each gave it a kick. The door flew open and they walked into a much wider corridor. Three doors faced them. One in the middle. One to their left. One to their right.
‘Eeeny, meeny, miney, mo.’
The left. Chance nodded at it. She moved off to one side as Trooper tried the handle. It was open. They stepped in.
Reaper met her gaze. He was locked inside a steel-barred holding cage, each of his limbs double-cuffed to the bars. His mouth was covered to prevent him speaking.
On the front of the cage was an envelope secured in place with gaffer tape. Chance ripped it away with a gloved hand and tore it open. Inside was a single sheet of paper. On it, scrawled in black marker pen, was a message. Good luck getting him out of here, assholes.
It was signed Ryan Lock.
37
For a moment Chance just stood there, staring into the eyes of the man in the cage. He stared back at her. His expression was of a kind no one had seen in ten years. A softness came into his features and his eyes glistened with yearning. Chance felt a rock lodge in her throat, making swallowing painful.
Disregarding the seconds ticking away on her wrist, Chance reached in at the top of the cage and touched his hand in a gesture of comfort. Then she stepped back, freezing the man out and focusing on the task in hand.
She couldn’t use explosives, that was for damn sure. Blow the lock on the door and she’d blow him up too. She sank down on to the floor and checked the bolts that anchored the cage to the floor. She wouldn’t be able to shoot through them without a serious risk of catching a ricochet, but she had to weaken them somehow.
She turned to Trooper, who was gazing at the cage and its occupant with a world-weary ‘What the hell do we do now?’ look of defeat, and pushed his shoulder, snapping him out of it. ‘Get back up on the roof. Get the ropes, all the ropes, and tie them to the skids on the Little Bird. Then get up in the air.’
There was a slow-dawning realization in his eyes. ‘Are you crazy?’ he said to her.
‘Just do it. And tell Cowboy I’m going to need two more minutes.’
As Trooper ran out, Chance fired into the floor, exposing the joists beneath her feet. Then she jogged out of the room, working her way as fast as she could to the floor above.
On the stairs she had to stop to catch her breath, as she felt a fluttering inside her. The embryonic life inside her was urging her on, she told herself, giving her the kick in the pants she needed to finish the job she’d started.
She hauled herself up the stairs and tracked back, counting the same number of paces she’d taken on the floor below. She’d have to get the charge right. Get it wrong on the high side and Reaper would die. Use too little and there would be a mess but no hole.
In the end, the decision was made for her. There was only one charge left. She placed it, and hooked up the detonator. She spooled out several lengths of det cord, her thighs aching as she scuttled back in a permanent crouch. The clock was ticking though, and they were stealing time they didn’t have.
Lock led the way out into the lobby, a marble-floored area with two banks of elevators. All the mayhem seemed to be contained above them. Explosions. Gunfire. A regular riot. He crossed to the smoked-glass windows that led out on to the street where EMS ambulances and cop cars crowded and confusion reigned. Local law enforcement wasn’t trained or prepared for an all-out airborne assault, especially somewhere like Medford.
Looking over his shoulder, Lock glimpsed the Marshal in charge in a heated discussion with a local cop sporting sergeant’s stripes. Lock ignored them and pushed past, out on to the street. Carrie was on his heels, directing her cameraman to snatch some footage of the building as smoke billowed from the upper floors and flames spat from the windows.
Lock could just about glimpse the tail fin of the helicopter rising above the roof. He strained to see how many people were inside the cabin. It looked like someone was getting out of the building — empty-handed, he guessed. He crossed his fingers.
‘Bye bye, assholes,’ he said.
From inside the building there was another massive boom, and the windows that hadn’t already been blown surrendered the glass from their frames. Lock ducked under a car, taking Carrie with him, as crystal splinters rained down on them from above, rendered invisible by the rain.
‘You OK?’ he asked her.
She exhaled, her cheeks flushed with blood, her blonde hair pasted against her face by the downpour. ‘How come Katie Couric never has to deal with this shit?’
Lock smiled. ‘Hey, it’s not all rainbows and butterflies for her either. She had to interview Sarah Palin, remember.’
‘Fair point.’
Lock backed out from under the car. The helicopter was still there. For a second, he thought there must be a problem with it, that maybe it had taken a hit from the couple of sheriff’s deputies who, rather optimistically, were taking aim at it with handguns from the street. Then he noticed the ropes slinking their way down towards the roof.
He backed away from the building, distance giving him a better angle. The ropes were breaking-point tight — tighter, it seemed to Lock, than they would be with someone hanging from them. As the helicopter rose, inches at a time, they strained and twisted round on themselves, rolling the body of the helicopter from one side to the next. Any minute now, thought Lock, those ropes are going to snap and the sudden loss of tension is going to bring the whole thing crashing down.
The helicopter jolted. There was the sound of wood splintering, as if an old sailing ship were being wrenched from a weather-worn dock by the power of an angry sea. Then, rather than free-fall down, the helicopter righted itself and started slowly to descend back on to the roof.
Lock lost sight of it. He clenched his fists, torn between a desire to go back into the building and stay where he could see what was happening. He stayed put, and a few seconds later the blades of the helicopter rose again, more slowly than before. As it rose directly upwards, Lock could see people in the cabin. Three of them. The same number he’d seen when it arrived. No Reaper, then. Not unless he’d switched places with one of them, which was unlikely given that he’d been left in the cage.
The gr
inding gears of a truck’s engine behind him prompted Lock to turn round. An olive-green canvas-covered military transport truck was rolling down the street. Lock wondered why the hell the Marshals hadn’t handed over this whole operation to the military in the first place. Jalicia might still be here if they had. They were too proud, that was why, and it was institutional pride, which was the worst kind as far as he was concerned.
Despite the mayhem and the local cops’ best efforts, the street was still full of civilians. Their eyes were trained on the roof, on the departing helicopter. No more than twenty feet from Lock stood an overweight woman in a pink housecoat, mouth agape, her yellowing teeth a forceful rebuttal to the usual wonders of American dentistry.
‘Holy shit,’ she said.
Lock spun round, following her gaze. Up above them, the metal cage, complete with Reaper still shackled inside it, dangled twenty feet beneath the chopper, secured by the ropes tied to the helicopter’s skids. The cage inched into the night sky. The four ropes, attached at either corner of the cage, twisted in the wind, but Reaper kept rising into the storm-blackened Oregon sky.
All around, people had stopped whatever they were doing and were staring. Cops. Civilians. Everyone. Lock felt a shiver of defeat run through them as the nose of the helicopter dipped and it started to coast smoothly away from the building.
Lock shielded his eyes against the glare of the Night Sun spotlight mounted on the nose of the helicopter. He could make out Reaper, his arms still spread, Christ-like, as he ascended into the heavens.
A voice crept into Lock’s mind. Reaper’s voice, but not his words. The words belonged to Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese general. They were the words Reaper had recited from memory back in the cell they’d shared in Pelican Bay.
Engage people with what they expect. It settles them into predictable patterns of response, occupying their minds while you wait for the extraordinary moment — that which they cannot anticipate.
Then, like a cassette machine clicking off as it runs out of tape, the voice was gone, along with Reaper and the helicopter, which had travelled far enough that it had become just another distant point of light in a sky full of dead planets.
‘The extraordinary moment,’ Lock repeated softly to himself, his hand tightening so hard round the grip of his SIG that his knuckles turned white.
38
The cage inched towards the ground, pieces of wooden joist and chunks of plaster still attached to its base. The wait for the chopper to land had been interminable, worse than any time spent in solitary back at Pelican Bay, where seconds could stretch like an eternity. As it made contact with the earth, it toppled over. Reaper went with it, the tightness of the shackles that held him in place saving him from further injury. If Lock hadn’t done his job so thoroughly, Reaper doubted he’d have a bone left unbroken by now. Above him he could see a couple of the ropes slacken and then fall back to earth as they were cut from the helicopter.
Reaper closed his eyes, the downdraught from the helicopter still roaring around him. Then he heard the engine being cut, and the sound of the rotors fell away. There were voices. Men’s voices.
‘Let’s get it upright.’
‘I got bolt cutters in the truck.’
‘Then go get ’em.’
‘We’re gonna need more than bolt cutters. We’re gonna need a blowtorch to get into the cage.’
Kids these days, thought Reaper. He licked his lips. ‘Blowtorch will just weld it together, boys,’ he said. ‘You’re gonna need a cutting torch. Something that runs at a ninety-degree angle. Oxyacetylene. Either that or an angle grinder — you know, like people use for cutting off wheel clamps.’
When it came to engineering technology, Reaper doubted that anyone had the edge on him. A federally mandated right to information had provided him with a wealth of material over the last ten years, plus the kind of time not even tenured academics had to hone their knowledge.
‘I got one of those in the truck,’ said one of the disembodied voices.
‘Then go get it,’ Reaper said, now firmly in charge, the alpha male.
There was the sound of boots sloshing over soaking ground and then the cage was maneuvered so that Reaper was upright.
Reaper could see her properly now. Wow, she was beautiful. A knock-out. And so strong, so commanding. He studied her face, searching out her features. Her deep grey eyes. So clear, so unswerving. Her delicate nose. Those high cheek bones which gave the rest of her face its nobility. Those who doubted that there was indeed a master race need only look at her face to have their objections quelled.
She smiled at him, that same look of shared understanding, then reached in again to touch his hand, pinching his palm between her thumb and index finger. ‘You OK?’
‘I could be on fire, but seeing you would make it all OK,’ he replied, his voice as brittle as a three-pack-a-day smoker.
‘I should have visited,’ she said.
Reaper shook his head. ‘You did what was best.’ His voice grew brittle again. ‘You did good.’
‘We’ll get you out of there real soon.’
Reaper closed his eyes in acknowledgement, and to hide the tears he felt forming. He stayed like that as the men set to work.
Using the angle grinder, they had the cage door open in no time. Once they had one hand free from the cuffs, Reaper helped them with the rest, using a borrowed comb to spring the other cuffs. Then they set to work on the leg restraints.
Half an hour later, he stepped uncertainly from his cage. Chance threw her arms round him and he scooped her up, burying his face in her blonde hair. The men looked away, then busied themselves with other things. Finally, with the softest of kisses to her forehead, Reaper put her down.
‘Let me introduce you around,’ she said, suddenly formal.
Cowboy stepped forward, snapping a salute. ‘An honor and a privilege, sir,’ he said. ‘Not many true patriots left.’
‘That was some damn impressive flying,’ Reaper said.
‘I’m only glad I could be of true service.’
Trooper shook Reaper’s hand. ‘It’s an honor, sir.’
Chance tapped his arm. ‘Come on. We gotta go.’
‘Man, she’s bossy, ain’t she?’ Reaper grinned at Cowboy.
‘You don’t know the half of it, sir.’
Reaper looked at her with pride. ‘Half a dozen more of her in the movement and we’d have cleaned all the filth out of this country by now.’
‘So where now?’ he asked as they walked towards a pick-up truck parked at the edge of the clearing they’d used to land.
‘Going to get you cleaned up. Then we have a private plane chartered tomorrow to get us out of the country.’
Reaper stopped in his tracks. ‘Say what?’
‘You don’t think we should wait? I could try and move it up. We thought they’d be checking all immediate private charters. Plus, we have a couple of loose ends to tie up.’
‘And where were we gonna go? Mexico? Argentina? Some other South American shithole? Hell, no. I didn’t spend ten years down to turn my back on my country.’
‘But if we stay here-’
He put an arm round her. ‘You don’t just light the fuse and then stamp on it. And you don’t turn your back on your country in its darkest hour.’
‘But the movement isn’t strong enough yet.’
‘It was strong enough to get me out. We have an opportunity here. This should be the start, not the end.’
‘But-’
He silenced her with a look. ‘Every day our rights as Americans are getting taken from us. One by one. We got millions of our people homeless and unemployed, getting kicked out of their homes and looking for some leadership. If we don’t have the conditions for a revolution in this country now, then we’ll never have them.’
He opened the door of the pick-up truck, then glanced back at the helicopter, where Cowboy was talking to the other men.
‘You tell those men to remain on standby. I’
m gonna have work for them to do.’
For the first time, he thought that she looked worried.
‘All it’s going to take is one big spark, and this country’ll go up in flames. And this time, no one will be able to stop it.’
Chance looked up at him, her dark grey eyes wide. ‘I knew you were gonna be like this.’
‘How’d you know?’ Reaper said, reaching out and putting his arm round her shoulders.
‘I’m my father’s daughter, ain’t I?’ said Chance.
Reaper smiled. ‘You sure as hell are.’
39
Chance pulled the pick-up truck into the driveway of the ranch house and waited for her father to get out the other side. He took his time doing it, peering over the top of new sunglasses at the stand of trees masking the front of the property.
‘Nice and quiet. How long you been here?’
‘Rented it last month.’
‘Landlord?’
‘It’s a woman. She spends most of her time down in Baja.’
‘Huh.’
The pit bull started barking. Reaper walked over to its run and knelt down. It came over and licked at his hand through the wire mesh. ‘I know how you feel, brother,’ he said to the dog. Then he turned back to Chance. ‘Some guard dog.’
Chance smiled. ‘Never seen him do that before.’ She turned towards the house. ‘We’ll have to go in the back way.’
He glanced at the front door. ‘You rigged it?’
She nodded. ‘There’s an old fire road about four hundred yards back. I have another truck parked back there. Keys are in the ignition.’
He smiled. ‘Man, I taught you well.’
‘Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.’
They headed round to the back of the property. Chance opened the door and they walked straight into the kitchen.
‘If you want to get some rest, there’s a bedroom through there.’
Reaper stretched out. ‘No, I spent enough of my life sleeping.’
