by Dusty Miller
His backup actually used their heads, using the back door. Splitting up immediately, one went left and one went right. As for Liam himself, it was like he just didn’t care anymore. He hadn’t cared for quite a long time, or so it seemed. He used the front door, making no attempt at stealth.
The others were barreling along, crashing through the underbrush, and then he saw the one on the left flit across the road, using the minimal shadows between street lighting to whatever advantage they could. Gravel crunched to his right. He was intent on his purpose. With them in position, he mounted the front steps and knocked on the door, standing slightly off to one side and with the gun down low at his right thigh.
The weapon was cocked.
He was to the left of the door. The screen door was a right hander and the inner door a left-hander. If all of the cabins had an identical floor plan, the bedroom window on the right side was dark. The big bay window on the left showed a dim light. The curtains were carefully drawn. He tried a peek. Liam saw nothing but a thin slice of empty wall.
There was nothing else for it but to knock.
No one answered the door. He could only wait so long. There was light music going on inside and Liam decided to have a look around the back. Snapping on a powerful mini-light, he kept an eye open for trip wires and booby traps.
The crickets were out. There was all sorts of noise out there. The park was one big, but fairly quiet communal party, going on all around them. A half a dozen radios or music boxes were going, none of them really loud.
Sensing the unseen minder to his right, Liam quietly went to the rear door and peered in. From what he could see the place was unoccupied. There were a couple of lights on and the bedroom door was closed. The bathroom door was closed and the window was dark.
Opening up the screen door, he gave the inner knob a cautious twist. It was locked.
He let out his breath and caught the eye of the nearest watcher.
The whole thing stunk to high heaven. Stepping back, the lady came up. They took a set of lock-picks out of their jacket pocket, careful not to let them clink and rattle as they did so.
Liam leaned in close beside the girl’s head.
“There might be booby traps.”
She nodded, inserting the first of the picks.
Other than that she was ignoring him. He stepped away to let her get on with the work.
From where he was, he saw a boy and a girl come out the front door of the store forty metres away and head this way.
***
The fact that the Bernstein’s cabin was deserted was disturbing. The photos of Lindsey could have been faked, although Dale obviously considered her overdue. They were accepting that much at face value. The cabin was empty, a quick sweep of the resort revealed that they were not in the store, not outdoors and their boat was still at the dock. The fact that the car was there but no sets of keys was interesting. There were still clothes and personal belongings in the cabin.
“So what do we do?”
Little F’s visage stared at him from the laptop screen.
“Well, we buttoned up their cabin. If they return, the odds are our visit will be detected. My guess is that they’re not coming back.”
That one was a tough call, but on balance, it seemed unlikely.
“Do you think they have this Lindsey girl?”
Liam nodded shortly.
“It’s a pretty good bet. What else do they have to bargain with? They’ve got one piece of the puzzle. Let’s not forget they have to get that out of the country. Somehow. Now they want another one—or possibly two, if they know about the biggie in Agnew Lake.” Liam’s reasoning was that the enemy was awfully confident about being able to do just that—so they were coming out of the woodwork and raising the stakes considerably for themselves in the process.
They were also raising the stakes for the authorities.
This was no longer slap-on-the-wrist territory.
A good chunk of the engine cluster still rested on soiled towels on the drying board beside the kitchen sink. Ian had made arrangements for their find at Agnew Lake to be placed under military guard. In the meantime, there were a dozen soldiers and police guarding it, but they were out of the loop information-wise. It would be best to secure the thing, as Liam explained to Frank. They had it in the back of a truck, otherwise it was just a bunch of people standing around wondering what to do next.
“Yes, I see. And we don’t know if they know about that one. What’s your proposal?”
They had traced the call through the cellular towers and the phone network. All they had was a name, George Lowell and the number. The unit had been used within downtown Espanola. The message might have been pre-recorded. The subjects could have been sitting innocently in a doughnut shop and simply pressed SEND whenever they wanted. They would ditch the phone and use another one next time. All they really needed was Liam’s number. Just how they got it was a very good question. They had probably done it using wireless connections and hacking into The Pines’ own computer. Testing the hypothesis, one of their own techs hacked in within three minutes. The Pines was typical for its size in having the bare minimum of computer savvy. Liam had given a phone number and email address when making the reservation.
The subjects waited briefly after making the call. This would be standard procedure, because of the security cams which were becoming universal. After a while, they got up and walked away, disposing of the phone in the trash on the way out. The message could have been sent from anywhere in town, from a vehicle or an alleyway even.
“I’m suggesting that we give them what they want—EMERALD, basically just the piece we have here.” If they could get away with it.
“All right, Liam. If you can get authorization on that end, do what you have to do.”
Liam nodded.
“Goodbye, sir.”
“Good luck, everyone.”
Liam cut the connection.
Looking up, there was a semi-circular row of faces watching him soberly.
He nodded brightly.
“And now, we wait.”
Sooner or later the subjects would call back.
***
With no idea of how long they might have to wait, feeding all of these people was a good idea. He had a couple of junior members outside, running the barbecue. Luckily, he had laid in plenty of hotdogs and hamburgers. It was three a.m. when it struck him that the enemy had a good reason to wait.
Kayla—he had finally learned her name, beckoned from her station at the kitchen table where she sat vigil with her phone and a half-eaten cheeseburger and a paper napkin beside her.
“Spencer is free now. He’s mobile. They were relatively well-equipped when they left.” She gave him a look.
They had three more warm bodies now available. Bringing them back here might not be the best way to deploy them. It would be too easy to take the whole bunch out at once.
“Have them hold up in town. They can get a motel—hopefully.” She typed it in carefully.
They still had agents on Agnew Lake. They had people stationed up and down the Trans-Canada Highway. They had agents, boats, planes to the south, where the river discharged into Lake Huron by Manitoulin Island.
She nodded, and as Liam straightened and looked at the back door, she gave Ian further information.
The smell coming in the back door on the light northwestern breeze was getting outrageous.
Liam didn’t know when he might get a chance to eat again.
He stuck his head out the back door. They were just taking off a half a dozen steakettes. There was a slice of melted cheese on every second one. Another person deftly turned a dozen or so wieners, just turning black and sizzling under a thick coating of barbecue sauce.
“Here—give me a couple of those.” The young fellow quickly grabbed toasted buns off the rack and flipped meat patties into them.
“There you go.”
“Condiments?”
“Never.”
Liam shook his head and the young fellow grinned.
Holding one in each hand, Liam wandered down to the beach, where all was peace, calm water and those damnably inscrutable stars overhead in their billions and billions.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The phone rang.
It was them.
That queer voice came over the speakerphone.
“Good evening, or perhaps I should say good morning. Mister Kimball. Well, well, well. What a tricky little fellow. It seems you haven’t been entirely forthcoming with us.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. The debris or components that have been recovered from up north. Agnew Lake, I believe.”
“I don’t have any control over that one. It’s not in my custody.”
“But you can get it, can’t you, Mister Kimball.”
It wasn’t a question, it was a statement. It was even true. He hesitated.
“I’m afraid I really can’t give you both of them. You already have a significant portion yourself—as I recall, you stole it fair and square.”
The chuckle that came out of their tinny speakers was enough to raise the hackles.
“And yet you do want the girl—”
“I expect you to deal in good faith. She’s a very nice girl. I will grant you that. But if you kill her, you get nothing. Also, if you have harmed one hair on her head, I will follow you to the ends of the Earth. I will find you. Sir. And we’re not giving you both pieces.”
They held their breaths as the sound of nightjars and other nocturnal birds came in through the open back door, where the grille sizzled still as it slowly cooled.
“Very well then. We’ll take the one from Agnew Lake. That one sounds so very much more interesting than a wonky old engine cluster—bent, broken and crushed as it is. Your call, Mister Kimball.”
Shit.
They seemed to know an awful lot all of a sudden.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“You had better do it quickly, Mister Kimball. I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you bring both pieces to the old McKerlie sawmill in exactly thirty minutes. Oh. And you had better be alone.”
The call was cut off.
That was it.
Liam looked at Kayla.
“The McKerlie Sawmill…” She zoomed in on the local area and her eyes scanned back and forth.
Liam stood on stiff legs. Finally she found it. Her finger pointed at a small dot on the end of yet another obscure lake, reservoir, a bend in the river.
“Here.”
He nodded grimly.
“Get Ian on the line.”
Half an hour was cutting it fine.
It was impossible, there was just no way that they could do it.
If the opposition was so smart, they must have known that.
***
“I sure hope we know what we’re doing.”
Liam shrugged, taking in the Canadian. Ian’s face was serious. His concerns had been noted for the record.
“It’s been known to happen.” Liam put the four wheel drive utility vehicle in gear, their two prize pieces of EMERALD in the back.
Going as fast as he could, he followed the grassy, two-lane goat-path that led to the McKerlie Sawmill. The place had been abandoned fourteen years previously in response to changing market conditions and the off-loading of jobs to countries where labour, environmental and human rights concerns were not allowed to disrupt the raking in of great, possibly obscene profits.
The track was heavily overgrown, with long, low branches hanging across what might have once been a paved road. Now it was just a track. The opposition had either chosen the place of exchange very well, or very badly.
Keep ‘em guessing, that’s always the way.
They were at the end of a very long road. The only other way out was across country, or by air or water. Interestingly, the hills around the mill had been pretty much denuded within the last fifty years. Consequently, there weren’t a lot of logging roads, at least nothing that showed up on maps or satellite pictures.
The opposition must know something we don’t—an inescapable conclusion. Their exit plan must take the one single road into account. Their options for escape were a little too obvious, and a little too easily circumvented.
With police and other agencies waiting and watching, with bated breath and weapons cocked, there was only one way to find out. The road went up and down, with the occasional boulder sticking up out of the ground. Some of them were high enough to be a threat to the sump. Dawn was near. The deadline had long since gone. That deadline had been imposed to shake them up. They want to keep us off balance. This made sense, but how they expected to exploit it was a good question.
The mysterious voice had ordered them to ground all helicopters, to keep the police out of it. According to the voice, they would know if anything was untoward, anything out of place, anything suspicious. They might have the people, the communications, and the instrumentation to do it—they might.
The girl would be killed instantly.
There was a new threat—if the opposition was interfered with in any way, terrorist bombs would begin to explode in Canadian cities—small ones, but beautifully placed, all across the land. They were escalating the prospect of violence.
As threats went, it was fairly credible. Technically, it was all too feasible.
At this point, all Liam wanted to do was to make the exchange and get Lindsey to safety.
There was more than one way to skin a cat. A blinding spark down low in the trees was the sun. It was so hilly that he was plunged into semi-darkness just around the next bend and the next hill. He was blinded for a moment in the glare, then went plummeting into the mist-laden gloom of the next valley. The cargo tugged on its restraints with every bump.
The authorities had the roads, the highways, the waterways and the airspace above all sewn up.
Theoretically.
More than anything, this promised to be interesting.
***
Liam found the decaying remains of the McKerlie sawmill to be a confusing maze. There were multiple collapsed and burnt-out structures, overgrown areas that must have been parking lots and several oddly intact buildings. The only sign of their demise were broken windows and treetops sticking out of the rooftops.
The path was clearest dead ahead. Zigzagging along, there was a clear space, mostly weeds but there were patches of intact tarmac. Pulling to a stop, he looked around. There was an open door on what might have been the main part of the mill, where rough logs were cut into two-by-fours and perhaps plywood might have been made.
With no clue as to where they might be, he drove in the door with the high beams on.
The vehicle was strong, but it wasn’t bulletproof and the possibility of ambush was high. Liam was wearing body armour and he had his gun—that was the strange part. No mention had been made of coming unarmed.
Alone was good enough for them.
He drove to the middle of the space, with a dozen steel I-beams scattered in a regular pattern, holding up the sloping metal roof. Liam switched off the engine and got out. Liam left the door open.
They were already an hour and a half late. They had received no calls in the meantime.
“Mister Kimball.” It was him.
A man stepped out of a door.
Liam recognized the build, but not the face. This was a stocky blonde man, with a straggling mustache that was undoubtedly fake, and yet convincing.
He turned, keeping his hands loose and open at his sides, extended well away from the body.
“Mister Borz.”
The expressive dark eyes lit up.
“You’re as good as they say. We meet again, Mister Kimball.”
“Where’s the girl?”
“Where’s EMERALD?”
Liam politely indicated the back end of the vehicle with a nod and waited for direction.
The man wasn’t exactly shy. Borz was apparently u
narmed, but the old building was nothing if not dark inside. It was also a warren of upper-level offices, catwalks, skylights and open trusses overhead. It was all built-up in tiers along the south and east sides. Someone almost surely had him lined up in their sights.
It wasn’t the nicest feeling.
“Open it.”
Liam leaned way into the vehicle and used the button in the glove box. This was one reason why he didn’t carry a gun at the small of the back.
The latch popped as Borz stood at his side. Liam went around and lifted the hatch.
Borz stepped forwards, and Liam lifted the thin khaki canvas tarpaulin. The satellite itself, the two major pieces that they had, plus a couple of plastic screw-top canisters of smaller components and other debris, were banded onto a small maple skid that barely cleared the interior of the vehicle.
“Sorry, the light’s not that good in here.”
Borz nodded.
“Excellent. Very thorough.”
He must have known what he was looking at. The man’s face came around. There was an unexpected glint of humour in those eyes.
“Very nice. Thank you.”
“You can take the vehicle or we can dump that off right here.”
“Thank you, Mister Kimball. We will take it from here.” In a surprise move, Borz reached in, lifted the back end of the skid, and pulled it smoothly over the lip at the back.
The skid crashed to the floor, raising a cloud of dust as Liam stepped back. It must have weighed a good hundred kilos.
Borz looked at him again.
“It’s not like we can cause any more damage. Eh, Mister Kimball?”
“I suppose you have a point.”
“No. Not really. But two of my men died for this thing. It really doesn’t seem worth it sometimes, does it?”
“I know exactly what you mean. Where’s the girl?”
Borz raised his voice.
“Bring her.”
Whoa.
All hell was breaking loose back there.
