Constant Fear

by Daniel Palmer

  “Yes, sir.”

  The agent turned on her heels to go, but Haggar whistled her back around. “And I want to see the blueprints to the school again. Hell, I think I have them memorized by this point, but have somebody get them to me anyway,” Haggar said.

  The agent acknowledged the order with a nod and was off again.

  “I’ll try to call him back,” Ellie said. Her voice came out too soft, too weak, too damn emotional.

  Haggar’s ears must have been tuned to a different frequency, one that picked up subtext like it was amplified, because he gave Ellie a knowing glance.

  “You might not know what he’s reading on the can,” Haggar said, “but I think you can tell me who Jake is screwing.”

  Ellie’s face reddened. The twinkle in Haggar’s eyes surprised her.

  “It’s okay,” Haggar said. “I already figured. But now you can tell me more.”

  Ellie set her hands on her hips, pursed her lips, and looked to the sky. A constricting lump blocked her throat, and everything about Jake hit her at once: the blue of his eyes, the swagger in his smile, a scent sweet as his personality, a touch aware of her needs, the firmness of his body when he lay on top of her, the feel of him inside when she was on top. She loved Jake, but those words had never left her lips. Instead, they had tumbled about in her head, ready to spill out the moment he said it first.

  If he’d opened up to her more fully, those three magical words would have come out faster than Kibo could chase down a stick. But Jake Dent had more secrets than he had shared with her the night of their big talk. And Ellie had a sinking feeling whatever they were would be found inside that trailer.

  “Talk to me, Ellie,” Haggar said. “This guy is a real threat to our operation. We’re talking thousands of people potentially getting sick here from radioactive fallout if that bomb goes off. Not to mention the number of would-be terrorists an incident like that would embolden. Your guy is a match to that bomb’s fuse and I’m going to snuff it out, one way or another. Help me do it without spilling any blood.”

  Ellie took a breath and told Haggar the story, beginning with her meeting Jake at the gun range and concluding with the details she had only recently learned.

  Haggar listened with rapt attention. Despite the crisis unfolding around him, he had a remarkable ability to tune out the world and focus on whatever he deemed most important. Jake Dent was evidently very important to Haggar.

  “Can you talk him out of there?” Haggar asked.

  “I sure as hell can try,” Ellie said.

  “I have seasoned hostage negotiators on hand who can help,” Haggar said. “Will you be willing to do whatever it takes?”

  “Anything,” Ellie said.

  The FBI agent Haggar had sent off to retrieve the school blueprints came running over with them in hand. She had an electric look in her eyes; Ellie guessed they had dug up something of vital importance.

  “Sir, you should come inside right away. I think we have a serious problem on our hands.”

  Someone handed Ellie a pair of gloves. She put them on as she followed Haggar into Jake’s trailer. This was not how she’d imagined being invited into his home, but here she was.

  Ellie looked around and saw only a devoted dad doing his best to provide for his son, to create a home—but the light was dim and rather depressing, the walls were paneled wood and dark, the quarters cramped, and the furniture all looked secondhand.

  Despite this, Ellie had to admire Jake for his effort. Being a single parent under any circumstance was not easy; and in addition to the worry over Andy’s diabetes, Jake’s salary could not have been very much. The trailer was not the ideal place to raise a child, but Jake had spruced it up by filling the home with photographs of a father and a son, memories of good times together, two people making a go of it best they could.

  Seven or so gloved agents began tearing the place apart and their combined body heat turned the trailer sauna hot. For Ellie, it was as difficult to breathe as it was to move. A special agent, tall and dark-haired, greeted Haggar in the living room and led him and Ellie down a narrow hallway. Ellie excused herself to push by the crush of agents engaged in a carefully orchestrated demolition of Jake’s life.

  The agent escorted Ellie and Haggar to Jake’s bedroom. He had the same excited look as the woman who had summoned them into the trailer.

  “What do we got?” Haggar asked.

  “Guns and a whole lot of crazy,” the agent said.

  He opened a closet and cleared away some clothes to reveal a gun rack with five secured rifles, only two of which Ellie recognized as a Browning and a Remington.

  “So he’s a hunter,” Haggar said. “These weapons all look properly secured to me. And they’re not on his person, so that’s another plus.”

  “That’s what I said, until we found this.”

  From within the closet, the agent removed a large backpack secured to an ALICE frame and brought it over to the bed. He opened the pack, tipped it over, and dumped out the contents. He took more stuff from various zipped-up pouches.

  Ellie studied the items with growing unease. On the bed were several liters of water, a filtration system, clothing, a tent, a tarp, a sleeping bag, cooking gear, and a hygiene kit. It would have all made sense to her, except Jake had never mentioned a love of camping. Somebody who loved camping enough to own this kind of gear would have talked about it, she believed.

  He unzipped another pouch. What he pulled out made Ellie shiver: a SIG SAUER P226, with ammo to go with it. Most campers Ellie knew carried a whistle to scare away the bears, not a high-caliber pistol.

  Haggar eyed the items. “So he’s an outdoorsman who doesn’t want to be mugged in the woods,” he said. “I’m still not concerned.”

  The agent said, “Yeah? Just wait.”

  The agent removed from the closet a twenty-gallon plastic tote with an attached lid. He set the tote on the floor by the bed and took off the lid. The agent pulled out from the tote a tactical helmet with a J-arm attachment, which Ellie suspected accommodated a night vision optical. They took more items out of the container and piled them on the bed: ammo, laminated maps, several large knives, a compass, green Kevlar line, wire, duct tape, magnifying glasses, handcuffs, body armor, satellite phone, batons, and lots of books.

  Their titles made Ellie’s stomach sink. She focused on a few of the meatier tomes: Surviving the End of the World, After the Fall: How Doomsday Preppers Will Look Like Prophets, The A–Z of Prepping , and Get Ready for the End of the World, whose title left little doubt about its contents.

  “I’m not a profiler, sir,” the agent said with a gleam in his eyes. “But it seems we’ve got a loose cannon. This guy thinks the world is coming to an end, and I suspect he’s armed to do battle.”

  Ellie watched the color drain from Haggar’s face and guessed hers had done the same. Heartbreaking as it was, without a doubt, Ellie knew this was the real secret Jake had been guarding.

  Haggar unfolded the blueprints and spread them out on the bed, covering Jake’s survival gear like a blanket. He studied the plans thoughtfully; then he looked to Ellie.

  “Does Jake Dent know how to access all the tunnels at the school?”

  Ellie said, “He never said anything to me, but he’s in charge of maintenance, so I suspect there’s a good chance he does.”

  Haggar whistled long and low. “If that’s the case, our problem just got a whole lot bigger.”

  CHAPTER 34

  David and Rafa squared off onstage like martial arts combatants gearing up for battle. Their heads were bowed, eyes to the floor. Fausto stood behind the pair with one hand perched on each boy’s trembling shoulder. He looked supremely satisfied.

  “So,” Fausto said, eyeing Rafa, “your friend here has the key, you say?”

  David lifted his head and pulled his long hair back from his face to fix Rafa with a furious stare.

  “He has it,” Rafa said. “I know it’s him.”

  “I do n
ot,” David said through gritted teeth. “How do I know you didn’t take it?”

  Rafa bellowed, “Because I didn’t!”

  David craned his neck to look at Solomon, who cowered on the floor, shaking like the last leaf of autumn. “I just want to go home,” Solomon said. “I just want to go home.”

  Without warning, Rafa leaned forward and shoved David hard in the chest. David tried to hold his ground, but staggered a few steps back.

  “Don’t be a coward,” Rafa said, panting out the words. His sweat-drenched face crinkled with a look of utter contempt. “They’re going to kill us if you don’t give it to them. So give it up now.”

  “I told you, I don’t have it!” David screamed back. He lunged forward and gave Rafa an equally hard shove.

  The attack took Rafa by surprise, and he lurched backward before regaining his footing. David and Rafa went at each other simultaneously, clinched, and began to wrestle with neither gaining much advantage over the other. They gripped each other’s shirts as they spun around haplessly.

  Fausto could not have looked more pleased. He pulled the machete out of the stage floor and raised the blade level with his shoulders as he lifted his arms. For a moment, he looked like a crazed conductor about to guide a symphony with a brutish, oversized wand. His mouth parted into a twisted grin and the metal inside caught the stage lights.

  “Boys, boys,” Fausto said, lowering his weapon. “I say you fix this problem like men.”

  Rafa ignored Fausto. His determination to get David’s confession had become its own presence in the room. “You’re a liar, David. A big, fat liar!”

  “He’s not fat, really,” Fausto said in a semi-serious tone while he appraised David, his fingers rubbing against his chin. “But I do get your point.”

  The boys were focused exclusively on each other. David shouted back, “You know what I think? I think you have it!”

  Rafa’s face contorted with rage as he lunged at David, arms outstretched. David stepped back, but Rafa continued his advance. He fired punch after punch, all of them coming fast and furious. David tried to fend off the blows as best he could by spinning his arms like a windmill, but he had no adequate defense. David dropped to his knees and used his arms to shield his head from Rafa’s unrelenting blows.

  Fausto crouched down to David’s level. “Why don’t you fight for yourself?” he screamed into David’s face, like a boxer’s trainer. “You let him beat you like this? Like a dog? It makes me think he’s right. You are guilty. Hiding something. Maybe I torture you until you talk. Maybe I focus my steel on you.”

  “Tell him!” Rafa screamed. “Give him the key! Give it to him!”

  David picked up his head just in time to see more fists coming his way. He reached up at exactly the right moment and took hold of Rafa’s right wrist. Without letting go, David leapt to his feet, clenched Rafa in a tight embrace, and hurled his friend hard to the stage floor. David went down to the ground, his hair exploding around him, and the wrestling continued.

  The two rolled around on the stage floor exchanging punches, much to the delight and cheers of Fausto’s men, who had circled the entwined pair like a group watching a schoolyard brawl.

  Rafa went for David’s eyes with a clawed hand. David blocked the strike with his forearm, but Rafa managed to grab hold of a clump of David’s thick hair and gave it a hard yank. David howled in pain as he fought to raise his head high enough to sink his teeth into the exposed flesh of Rafa’s delicate wrist. It was a vicious bite, like that of an angry dog.

  Now it was Rafa’s turn to cry out, and he let go of David’s hair as he ripped his hand away. Rafa favored his wounded left hand as he scrambled back to his feet. David clawed his way back to his feet and cleared Rafa’s blood from his mouth with the back of his hand.

  The two squared off again.

  Solomon slid over to the far corner of the stage, away from the commotion, and huddled into a fetal position, traumatized. Pixie didn’t budge. He just sat in his chair and watched the chaos unfold as if it were a feature film.

  Fausto waved to the guard at the door, the one Andy called Whippet, to join everybody onstage. In his hand, Fausto clutched a stack of colorful bills and he held them up over his head and shouted something in Spanish. The rest of the men took the cue and went looking for bills in their pockets. Soon they were shouting indecipherable commands and money began to exchange hands.

  “Cuarenta por El Flaco,” Una Mano said, pointing to Rafa. Fausto ripped the bills from Una Mano’s hand.

  David stepped forward and unleashed a vicious punch to Rafa’s gut. The blow landed hard enough to double Rafa over. This was followed by a rapid exchange of money. The men were laughing and clapping; and though they spoke only Spanish, it was obvious they were betting on the outcome.

  Hilary saw Whippet leave his post by the door to join his comrades onstage. Andy was slipping in and out of consciousness, sweaty, mumbling, glassy-eyed. Hilary knew he was dying.

  Everyone was so focused on David and Rafa’s battle that nobody noticed Hilary leave her seat and sneak over to the unguarded auditorium door. She glanced back at Andy. Even from a distance, she could see his lips moving, and it was easy to imagine him saying, “Harkness, Harkness, Harkness,” over and over again.

  Hilary engaged the push bar and cringed at the sound it made. It was probably just a soft click, and most likely drowned out by the shouting men, but to Hilary it rang out like a gunshot. She froze in place and looked to the stage. All attention was on the boys.

  Hilary opened the door enough to let in a sliver of light, enough for her to slip out. She stepped into the empty hallway directly outside the auditorium and kept pressure on the door to make sure it closed as silently as possible.

  To her left, Hilary saw the building’s exit. Gray light filtered in through two tall picture windows on either side of the front door. Beyond those windows was a wide expanse of green and brown lawn—The Quad. She could run for it. By the time they noticed she was gone, it would be too late. She would lose them in the woods. She could get help. But then how long would it take to get someone back inside? Get Andy his medicine? Andy would never last that long. Never. Or worse, maybe there would be dire consequences because of her escape, and Fausto would slaughter her friends in retribution. What kind of survival would that be? Instead of being their savior, she would contribute to their execution. Her mind flashed on the image of Fausto bludgeoning El Gallo to death all because someone might have alerted the police. What would he do if the police tried to get inside the school for real?

  Hilary took one more wistful look outside. They will negotiate for our release, she thought as a single tear slid out from her eye and snaked down her face. She thought of her mother and father. Her sisters. The life she might never get a chance to live. Her stomach cramped from the weight of her decision.

  Inside, the shouts of the men grew louder. It was the sound of laughter and joy, pure revelry. Hilary turned from the door and sprinted down the hall headed for the stairs. She had taken history with Mr. Langford last year.

  She knew which basement classroom had a Harkness table.

  CHAPTER 35

  The tunnel ran straight as a razor’s edge, and Jake had choices about which way to go. East would take him the rest of the way underneath the Academy Building. West would bring him back the way he came. He headed east.

  Surges of adrenaline kept his mind sharp and body tense. His heart thudded like the steady beat of a war drum. There was enough headroom to stand upright, and plenty of space for Jake’s Glock. He kept the pistol out in front of him as he walked. Five years ago, this section of tunnel had received a much-needed face-lift, and a lot of the wiring was fairly new. But it wasn’t pristine, by any stretch. It still smelled dank, and the walls were slippery to the touch. Jake could hear dripping water anytime he stopped walking.

  As he made it another twenty yards or so, Jake picked up a different sound. Not dripping water. Not rats. Nothing mechanical.
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  It was the sound of laughter.

  The laughter resolved itself into something else—shouting that became indiscriminant chatter. The noises were muffled but distinct. Jake paused to listen. He thought he heard somebody shout, “Give it,” but the long corridor and thick walls distorted the sound.

  Those noises became yelling. The tumult roused Jake and drove him to a quicker pace. He let his mind go blank. His pistol aimed at nothing. He ignored all the precautions he should have been taking. The voices were coming from aboveground, and he knew only one place where that could be—the stage in the Feldman Auditorium.

  The tunnel ran right underneath it. There were two locked doors on either side of the pit below the stage. The pit was nothing but a crawl space about six feet high, taking up roughly the same area as the stage. Theater productions used the pit for all sorts of things, mostly set changes, but a movable staircase down there allowed actors to make quick entrances or exits if required. Running along the back of the pit wall were utility pipes that came through holes bored into the concrete, as well as a sizable fuse box, tapped into the main power supply, which controlled electrical currents for the auditorium. The pit was otherwise empty, with no way out unless somebody had the keys to the tunnel entrances.

  Closer to the pit doors, Jake forced himself to slow down. The voices bellowed even louder. Jake could not make any sense of what was being said, or how many people might be involved. Was it a mix of hostages and hostage takers, and was Andy among those present?

  Jake shut off his headlamp and let the darkness take over. He got onto his stomach and peered through the sill of the green metal door, which secured access to the pit, looking for any trace of light. If the trapdoor happened to be open when Jake went inside, he’d be spotted for sure. He couldn’t see anything, but his nose picked up a definite smell. It was the musty, metallic odor of the blood-splattered bathroom, only on steroids.