Reapers (Breakers, Book 4)

by Edward W. Robertson

  At eleven o'clock, they slipped from the Taco Bell on foot, heading east before doubling back to approach the dry cleaners from the back access alley. Another inch of snow had fallen and more was coming down fast. Good. It might hide their tracks.

  Ellie hunkered down at the corner of the neighboring building. She saw no movement except the snow. The back wall was blank concrete with two loading bays, both shut with metal doors, and a plain exit. Gun at her hip, she hurried to the exit door. Footprints marred the snow. They'd just begun to fill.

  She glanced at the others, then tried the door. It didn't budge. She opened her mouth to ask Dee whether she had a hairpin when a voice spoke from beside them.

  "God, it's cold."

  Her skin prickled. She pulled her gun, glancing to all sides, but saw nothing more than snow.

  "It's senseless," the voice went on, tinny but distinct. "You figure they mean to stick us in a field somewhere, right? How am I supposed to pull a plow when I lose my foot to frostbite?"

  "Shut up," a second voice moaned.

  Hobson pointed to a vent in the wall. It had, in all likelihood, once carried steam outside, but now it carried the voices of prisoners. Ellie walked up to it. Tiny icicles hung from its slats.

  "Hello?" she whispered. The men on the other side went dead silent. "Can you hear me?"

  "Who's that?" The man dropped to a whisper, but his voice was clearer than a moment before.

  "Are you being held against your will?"

  "No, I'm just too lazy to find a blanket. Or to untie myself from this bed. You outside?"

  "I'm looking for someone," she said. "Quinn Tolbert. Twenty years—"

  "I know him."

  "Is he in there?"

  "Truck took him and the others away two days ago. Headed south."

  Ellie's heart quickened. "What did the truck look like?"

  "White van. Like the one they brought us here in," the man said. "Hey. I've told you all I know. There's five of us in here still. You got to get us out."

  "Are you under guard?"

  "Couple dudes. Think they're up front. Asleep."

  "Armed?"

  The man laughed. "If they weren't, I would have bitten my way out."

  "You hang tight and be quiet," Ellie said. "We'll see what we can do."

  "My name's Nelson," he said. "Now you know my name, you got to come get me."

  "See you soon, Nelson."

  She turned to the others and gestured toward the neighboring building. Together, they ran to it in silence. Ellie continued past and didn't stop until they were back to the Taco Bell. Fat flakes of snow swept into her face with stinging cold.

  "Mom," Dee said.

  "We have to go now," she said. "If the snow stops, the guards will see our tracks. If it doesn't stop, it may be too thick for the bikes."

  "You told them you'd save them."

  In the darkness of the restaurant, Ellie moved to pack up the blankets they'd used during the day. "So what?"

  "He said the guards were asleep."

  "You think they'll stay that way once we break in? What if we take down two and a third comes in from the back room?" She grabbed a Ziploc bag of bread and shoved it in the trailer. "No matter how good your odds, once the bullets start flying, you can't be certain one won't take you down. That's why violence is the last tool in the box."

  She knew she was babbling, but it was something Dee needed to know. She found the jugs of snow and added them to the trailer. "While I was training for the DAA, I took some karate classes. I once saw a girl tear her ACL without being touched. She stepped wrong and boom, down she went. Crutches for months. The sensei had a running joke about such things. Said he'd hurt himself worse training to handle himself in a fight than he ever would have if he'd never learned. If that's the risk of training, can you imagine the risk of a real fight?"

  "So we leave them?" Dee said. "They're all Quinn to someone."

  "You can't save the world. You'll die trying. But if you stay focused, sometimes you can save the piece that matters most." She put her rifle in the trailer. "You ready?"

  "Not until we do something for those people."

  They glared at each other. They might have gone on this way until the sun rose and glared down on them both, but Hobson cleared his throat.

  "Dee, I reluctantly agree with your mother. We can't intervene directly without exposing ourselves to undo risk."

  "Oh yeah?" Dee said. "And what about intervening indirectly?"

  He smiled, extremely satisfied about something. "You're a sharp one. Which segues neatly into my plan: we pass the prisoners knives through the vent."

  "That is so stupid," Ellie said.

  "Is it? From the acoustics, I'd say the vent has clear passage into the room. They're tied up, but if they're capable of reaching the vent, the knives will take care of that. From there, it's five of them and the element of surprise versus two guards. Voila! We've discharged our moral duty without exposing ourselves to harm."

  "Except if the guards see us. Or Nelson decides we're being punks and sounds the alarm to punish us."

  But now that the idea was out there—and it was such a simple plan, the sort of thing the DAA had termed a "walkaway": something you set in motion, then stroll away—Ellie couldn't turn her back on it. By herself, she would have had no problem leaving innocents behind. Most of the world was innocent, and she, like just about everyone else, was only concerned with her corner of it. But there at the Taco Bell, Dee was staring at her with such intense judgment it could have carved commandments into stone.

  "At the first sign of trouble, we split up and run," she said. "Rally at the Clavans' sign on the highway. Got it?"

  Dee smiled. "Got it."

  Hobson nodded, expression calculated but ultimately unreadable. Ellie led them back to the laundromat, sneaking around from the side the same way as before. She gestured Hobson and Dee to stay in the shadow of the neighboring building, then crossed to the vent.

  "Nelson," she whispered. "What's on your side of this?"

  "Nothing," he said. "Just some torn-up duct tape. Feeds right into the room."

  "Good," she said with little enthusiasm. "Can you reach it?"

  Soft scraping and shuffling drifted through the vent. "With my foot."

  "Here's the deal. We can't come inside. My daughter's with me. I can't put her life at risk."

  "Hey, hold on a minute," he said, voice climbing. "You can't leave us in here. We haven't done anything!"

  "Be quiet," she commanded. "I'm going to pass you some knives. Use them to free yourselves. In the event you're recaptured, you tell them nothing. Understood?"

  He was quiet a moment. "What if I yell to the guards?"

  "I came back for you, Nelson. I didn't have to."

  His sigh echoed down the duct. "Give me the god damn knives."

  She grabbed two of the vent's slats and bent in opposite directions. They yielded, providing a hole large enough to pass a knife through. She tossed in a jackknife. It clattered down the metal vent, terribly loud, and bounced on an unseen stone floor. Ellie winced and glanced around the quiet lot.

  "Too far," Nelson whispered.

  She tried again with a paring knife she was quite fond of. It skittered over the metal and clacked on the concrete. Shuffling sounds followed.

  "Got it."

  Ellie set three more knives just inside the slats. All told, the five blades made up half of what they carried, but knives, at least, were easy enough to replace. "The others are inside the vent. Good luck."

  "Thanks?"

  She watched the parking lot a moment, then jogged back to Dee and Hobson. They mounted up and rode down the street. Several blocks away, Ellie stopped and got her bearings.

  "We ready to leave?" she said. "Or do we have some kittens to rescue?"

  "Where are we going?" Dee said. "We still don't know where Quinn is."

  Except Ellie did. The mechanic had hinted that way, but worse, her gut knew it. She rarely trus
ted her gut's guidance, and recognizing this, it had more or less learned to stop providing advice at all, but every now and then it piped up with a certainty as cold as the constellations of snow falling to the white-carpeted streets.

  "We're going to New York."

  She hated the words. The place she hadn't been to since the end of the world—and the death of the only man she'd wanted to save.

  17

  The boat swept through the waves, sails taut with the frigid northern wind. The towers of the city thrust from the south of the island like giant's teeth. To the ship's right, the green lady held up her torch like anyone gave a damn.

  Lucy sighed and dug her chin into her collar to protect her nose from the wind. It wasn't much of a boat, really, but she'd never been out in anything bigger than Beau's itty bitty sloop he was always trying and failing to catch marlin with, and by comparison this one, with its cabin and deck, felt pretty grand.

  Their mission, however, felt like a fool's errand.

  "I don't see what y'all are so worried about," Lucy said. "So what if it's a few hours late? Where's it coming from, Brazil?"

  "Caribbean," Kerry said. He stood at the railing with his back to her, surveying the gray waves like a French admiral. Four other troopers sat on padded benches around the cabin.

  "That's a thousand miles from here. Maybe the captain hit some bad winds. Or got the runs."

  "She didn't."

  "Oh, you were there with her and saw it all. Mission accomplished!"

  Kerry turned to stare at her. "You don't need to know the ins and outs. You're here to follow orders and shoot anything I tell you to shoot."

  He'd taken on a real superior attitude since they'd shoved off from the pier. Lucy, by contrast, was feeling good. Much better than a couple hours earlier when she'd thought Nerve was about to banish her. His summons, as it turned out, wasn't about her at all. Rather, he was concerned about Distro's little shipping depot. Situated on the New Jersey coast, it was the final waystation the Distro vessels dropped by before chugging in to port; when a boat reached the depot, they radioed in to the city, allowing Nerve advance notice to schedule his laborers to offload its cargo.

  Or something like that. All Lucy knew was that a boat hadn't arrived when it was supposed to. Suspecting Kono interference, Nerve had dispatched them to find out what had gone wrong.

  That was just fine with Lucy. She still had his papers in his pocket. In a day or two, they'd return to the city, and she'd lure Tilly into her trap.

  The boat cut through a channel between two big chunks of land, crossed a broad bay, and entered the open Atlantic. The eastern horizon was a straight gray line. The captain wheeled the boat south, keeping the boat within a quarter mile of the Jersey coast.

  Gulls flapped around. An hour after hitting the sea proper, Lucy spotted a white lump further out to sea. Another vessel.

  "What if it was pirates?" she said.

  "Don't think so," Kerry said.

  "Why not? If it's worth shipping, it's got to be worth stealing."

  "This attack would be the first." Despite his skepticism, he got out his binoculars and stared at the other boat for a long time.

  Yellow sand striped the shore. Houses sat shoulder to shoulder. Smoke rose from a couple chimneys. If Lucy cared, she would have suggested docking and grilling the locals for witnesses, but Kerry seemed hell-bent on getting to the port. She wasn't about to fly ideas that would only slow them down.

  Round about dusk, with gulls heading inland and the sails still snapping, the captain angled closer to shore. He slowed. His mate hung a lantern from the prow. They drifted into a green channel a couple hundred yards across, bracketed by beaches. The north was vacant and pristine. The south front of the channel was overseen by a towering lighthouse, red on its top half, white on its bottom.

  At the end of the strait, the captain swung south into a narrow bay. The lantern glimmered on the placid water. Up front, the mate leaned forward, peering into the gloom for obstacles or snags. The air smelled salty and fishy but in a clean way. With the world reduced to shadows and outlines, the captain guided the vessel into a marina and tied off.

  Kerry hopped down to the dock, furtive, and knelt there, gazing at the stately building at the foot of the piers. "Do not shoot on sight. We have people here. You see someone, call 'Elephant.' Their response should be 'Ivory.' Anything else, treat them as hostile."

  He ordered a man and a woman to set up as snipers on the dock. Once they were positioned, he gestured the others forward. Lucy crept along beside him. Wavelets washed against the moorings. Dull, cloud-filtered starlight shined on the barnacled hulls of weather-scarred ships. Less healthy vessels projected from the water or lay tangled on the docks, broken by storms. Tens of millions of dollars busted up and lost. Lucy grinned. She hoped the yachts' owners had had a good time, because their money sure as shit hadn't saved them from the scythe.

  The clubhouse looked like an Atlantic mansion: three floors, white trim, a big round window high on one side. Deck out front, complete with chairs. Lucy's ears and nose stung from cold. The windows were silent and dark.

  Kerry opened the front door and stalked inside with his gun out SWAT-style. Lucy and the other two followed him in. Inside, it was as dark as a cave. They went room to room, edging past furniture and through doorways, and then upstairs, where Kerry flicked a Zippo so no one would fall from the landing. The floors were well-swept. In an upstairs office, the desks were arranged with charts, ledgers, and hand-cranked radios, but the building didn't hold a single soul.

  Outside on the deck, Kerry waved his hands over his head at the boat to call in the snipers. "This is fucked."

  "You'd rather we got shot at?" Lucy said.

  "We had people here. Where'd they go?"

  "Croatoan?"

  "It's too dark for this shit. Secure the grounds. We'll resume the search in the morning."

  While the snipers watched from the upper windows of the clubhouse, Kerry led the rest of his people in a sweep around the building. The road on the other side held a few rusty cars, nothing more. Kerry circled back to the deck and went inside and fired up lanterns. A minute later, the captain and his mate walked in from the docks and locked the door behind them.

  They got a fire going, ate smoked fish and potatoes baked before they left. Kerry established a watch and called lights out. Lucy's shift was in the middle of the night. She watched from the round upstairs window, the black bay, the dead town.

  Kerry woke them early. By the time the sun streamed in over the Atlantic, they were fed and ready to search. Nothing appeared out of place: no blood stains, no overturned furniture, no broken windows or locks.

  Lucy got bored pretty quick. While the others thumped through the yacht club for the third time, searching for secret doors or subtle clues, she headed into the freezing morning. A semi-circle of fancy shops and restaurants—windows broken, roofs ripped by past winds—faced a brownish field pocked by standing water. Footprints led away from the marina.

  Much of the field was brackish marsh, but there were patches of solid ground. On one, two furrows lined the earth, fifteen feet long and spaced ten apart, like wagon ruts to nowhere. She walked up close. Beside one, rabbit turds scattered the turf. Looked funny, though. Little creases down their middle. She crouched down and picked one up. It was hard. She brought it to her nose. Coffee bean.

  She stood and walked back to the club. As she climbed the front steps, Kerry walked outside.

  "Where were you?" he said.

  "Had to take a leak," she said. "If this was the Kono, your people went out easy. What was on the boat?"

  "What's it matter?"

  "Maybe your own people got greedy. Hijacked it and sailed off for warmer waters."

  "That would be a bad idea."

  "How would you ever find them?"

  He smiled a bit, goaded toward a secret, then caught himself and shrugged. "Our reach is longer than you think."

  The west half of t
he little peninsula had been dredged to form saltwater canals; each and every home sat on a waterfront and sported its own dock. Kerry sent them to knock on doors and call inside. When they all came back empty-handed, Lucy swore, certain they'd spend another day on this frozen little spit, but Kerry detached two troops to stay at the yacht club, then set sail for Manhattan.

  "Could the Kono know about this place?" she said once they were underway. The wind still streamed out of the north and the captain had to zigzag his way up the coast.

  "I don't see how," Kerry said.

  A light flared in her mind. "Maybe Zoe told them."

  He turned from the sea. "How would she know? She never worked anywhere but the docks."

  "You mean the place every one of your boats comes in? Yeah, she'd never have a chance to learn anything there."

  Kerry rolled his lip between his teeth. "Bribe the crew. Or simply chat them up. In a careless moment, they slip a detail. She passes it to the Kono."

  "And they sit on it until Nerve rebuffs their offer to divvy up the city."

  The big man nodded slowly. Lucy coughed to hide her smile. That ought to stir things up.

  Between the headwind and their late start, they didn't reach Manhattan until hours after dark. Lucy wasn't about to go to bed, though. She flipped on the lights in her apartment, got out Nerve's report, and practiced copying his handwriting.

  She had learned forgery from an early age. Writing as her mom, initially; first school attendance notes, later checks. In middle school, after Tilly had made it okay for the other kids to talk to her, Lucy branched out and established a side business writing notes for them, too. That's when she'd gotten downright artsy with it. Copying individual letters wasn't hard. Any fool could trace them if they lacked freehand talent. But when you traced, or focused on letters one at a time, it gave the finished writing a jangled, messy look that raised the suspicions of even the most naive mind.

  You had to make it flow. Stitch the letters into a seamless whole the recipient would never think to look up from. In a sense, you made the handwriting itself invisible, communicating the ideas inside it directly to the reader's brain.