by Kyle Mills
“So he has Chris watching people who are working in related fields,” Carly said, continuing his thought. “Not only to make sure they aren’t getting ahead, but probably to steal ideas that Xander can use. But why take Mason? Why risk it?”
“Xander must be close to something. But he has a problem— something his people can’t figure out,” Richard said. “Even at half speed, August Mason has twice the mental horsepower of anyone else alive. So Chris uses Mason’s guilt about turning me in to lure him to the airport. Then Xander’s people grab him and get him out of the country. I’d bet every dime we have left that Mason’s sitting in a lab right now with a gun pointed at him.” Richard shook his head in disbelief. “Andreas Xander…shit. We’re screwed, Carly. Completely screwed. Do you have any idea how much money and power that son of a bitch has? And doing something like this…he’s obviously gone insane.”
Carly shook her head. “It’s worse than that. He just doesn’t have anything left to lose.”
25
Hagerstown, Maryland
April 28
“Oh, no. Not again,” Susie said, looking up from her coloring book. “That guy is so boring.”
Richard was sitting at a makeshift desk working on the laptop they’d bought. In the corner of the screen, a YouTube feed of August Mason speaking at MIT was playing. Despite the video being almost thirty years old, the man still sounded ahead of his time.
“Boring?” he said. “Are you kidding? He’s one of the smartest people of all time. He’s like Newton or Darwin.”
“Who’s Newton Darwin?”
“For God’s sake, Susie…do they teach you anything in school? Anything at all?”
The veins crisscrossing her enlarged forehead seemed to deepen in color as she negotiated some particularly tight lines on Harry Potter’s face. “Sure. But not stuff about that guy. We’d all be in comas or something.”
Richard sighed quietly as his wife came in with a tray of food. Susie rose from the floor long enough to snatch a ham sandwich and squint disapprovingly at her mother’s short, dark hair.
“What have you found out?” Carly said, sliding a chair up next to the computer.
“Not much. The plane landed at a private airport in a rural part of Argentina—mostly farmland and a few small towns. Based on the tail number, I found the corporation that owns the jet, but beyond the fact that they’re based in Slovenia, I can’t get anything else. I don’t even know what they do. It’s like the company exists just to own that plane.”
They’d spent the day researching everything even remotely related to what was happening to them, hoping to find some rational explanation—to find a way to write it all off to paranoia and coincidence. What little they’d turned up, though, pointed to the possibility that they weren’t being paranoid enough.
He lowered his voice so that Susie couldn’t hear. “The only subject that there’s less about on the Internet than the company that owns that plane is us and Mason. I mean there were a few stories right after it happened, but now it’s like we never existed. Even the links I bookmarked a few days ago are going dead. That’s not normal. Things don’t just disappear from the Internet like that.”
He clicked on a picture of Xander, expanding it to fill the screen. The old man was sitting in his ubiquitous wheelchair, skeletal legs covered with a plaid blanket and blotched, loose-fitting face shadowed by a fedora. “It wouldn’t be hard for him to quiet things down. Hell, he owns about half the media—and what he doesn’t own outright, he’s got stock in or a seat on the board. It’s hard to believe a man who fought in World War II could still have the kind of power he does.”
“Maybe that’s how long it takes to get your tentacles into everything on the planet,” Carly said.
It conjured a depressing but accurate mental picture. There was nothing beyond Xander’s reach. He controlled billions of dollars, countless companies, and probably a significant number of America’s elected officials. In contrast, they had an aging former soldier who didn’t trust them, a gingerbread house hideout, and a stockpile of cash that would barely cover a decent used car. Overall, a fairly lopsided playing field.
Burt Seeger appeared in the doorway and looked down at Susie. “I think you’ve been lying on that cold floor long enough, sweetheart. Why don’t you run upstairs and get ready to go for a walk. It’s too pretty a day to be inside.”
She pushed herself to her feet, still nibbling on the sandwich. “We should go to a park. Maybe there would be some kids playing soccer or something. We could watch.”
Seeger smiled, but the strain was clearly visible in his face as Susie started up the stairs.
“What is it?” Carly said. “Has something happened?”
He crossed the room and laid a sheet of paper next to the computer. It was an article about two missing college students printed from the Internet. Richard scanned it but didn’t track on the meaning until he reached their names.
His head sank into his hand while Carly pored over the text, eyes widening in horror. “We…we just got them to take us out of the swamp. They had a boat…”
“No,” Richard said. “This is my fault. I called Mason from their phone. How could I have been so stupid?”
Seeger had retreated to the doorway and was leaning against the jamb with his arms crossed in front of him. “You two seem to be very dangerous to be around.”
Carly looked up from the article. “You can’t think we had something to do with this. That we hurt these kids.”
“No,” the old soldier said. “They were last seen two days ago. And you were here two days ago.”
Richard finally found the strength to raise his head. “Maybe they’re all right. Maybe they—”
Seeger shook his head. “I don’t know who it is you’ve pissed off, but based on the fact that everything you’ve told me now seems to be true, I think we can be pretty confident that no one is ever going to see those two again.”
“They…they couldn’t have been much more than twenty years old,” he stammered. “And I killed them.”
“No,” Seeger said. “You didn’t kill them. Someone else did. And we need to figure out who before anyone else dies.”
Richard looked into his wife’s eyes and saw his own feelings reflected there. This had gone far enough. Annette and Troy. The pilots on Chris’s plane. And now two innocent kids. It had to stop.
“We have to turn ourselves in,” he said. “We can’t let anyone else get hurt because of us.”
Seeger let out a long breath. “With someone as connected as Xander involved, I don’t think just walking into some government office and announcing who you are is all that good an idea. You have no idea how far this thing goes.”
“What then?” Carly said. “Richard’s right, we can’t just stand by while everyone around us is murdered. They all had people who loved them too—who loved them just as much as we love Susie.”
“Look, I have a friend I served with in Afghanistan who’s an FBI agent now—he’s the special agent in charge of the Louisville, Kentucky, office. Why don’t I have him very quietly look into what’s happened—your friend Annette, the investigation into you, the plane, these kids. Then we’ll set up an out-of-the way meeting and talk about what we’re going to do. How does that sound?”
“I don’t know if we want to get you any deeper into this thing, Burt. People aren’t—”
Seeger waved a hand dismissively. “I’d trust this guy with my life—in fact, I have on more than one occasion. I can also tell you he’s one of the smartest, sneakiest sons of bitches I’ve ever met. I don’t think there’s any drawback to hearing what he has to say.”
26
Near Sutton, West Virginia
April 30
The intensity of the rain had been increasing for the last hour, and now the wipers were creating waves that crashed spectacularly across the Ford Explorer’s windshield. Burt Seeger was huddled over the wheel, concentrating on the road in the glare of the headlights w
hile Richard twisted around to look in the backseat.
Carly glanced up from the DVD she and Susie were watching, flashing him a weak smile. The storm, with its hazy bursts of lightning and their deafening aftermath, was right out of a bad horror flick. But, in a way, it was also vaguely comforting. God himself couldn’t track them in this.
“How are we doing on time?” Seeger asked, and Richard faced forward again, checking the GPS stuck to the dash.
“We’re about fifteen minutes behind schedule.”
“Maybe we should have toned down all this clandestine garbage and met at a diner somewhere. We’ll be lucky if the road we’re looking for isn’t at the bottom of a lake.”
They were on their way to meet Seeger’s FBI friend in a sparsely populated section of eastern Kentucky, and despite the fact that they had another hour of driving, Richard could already feel the adrenaline leaking into his body. Would the agent have learned anything useful? Would he believe their story and agree to help them? Would he be waiting with a set of handcuffs and an arrest warrant? Or, based on their experience so far, a silenced pistol and a shovel?
Seeger’s phone started to ring, and Richard grabbed it to check the incoming number. “It’s him.”
“Put it on speaker.”
He did, adjusting the volume so they could hear over the rain pounding the vehicle.
“Larry?” Seeger said. “We’re running a little—”
“Hey, Burt!” he interrupted. “I hate to call you at the eleventh hour like this, but something came up at work, and I’m stuck here. There’s no way I’m going to be able to make dinner tonight.”
Seeger’s face went slack. “I’m sorry to hear that, buddy. I was looking forward to catching up.”
“Me too. Getting your call brought back a lot of memories. Remember that Nurestan operation? Man, it’s hard to believe I was ever that young.”
“I know exactly what you mean. I hope the thing at work isn’t serious—that everything’s all right.”
“Everything’s fine. Nothing to worry about. Next time you come through Louisville, give me a call. We’ll make it work.”
“You got it, Larry. Take it easy.” He reached up and shut off the phone before making a U-turn in the middle of the road and heading back the way they’d come.
“What the hell was that all about?” Richard demanded. “Dinner? We—”
“Daddy?” Susie said from the back. “Does this mean we’re not—”
He spun violently in his chair. “The adults are talking!”
Her lack of eyebrows had a way of highlighting the emotions playing across her face, and he cursed himself for the hurt he saw there. Cramming her frail body into a car seat for hours on end caused her a great deal of physical pain, and keeping her up to all hours of the night created unnecessary stress on her weak heart. Topping that off by screaming at her like a madman wasn’t helpful.
Carly immediately laid an arm around her bony shoulders. “It’s all right, honey. Why don’t we turn off the DVD for a while, and you can take a little nap? I’ll wake you up when we see a place we can get some ice cream, okay?”
Richard turned around again, pushing back the guilt he felt. It was something he’d have to deal with later. “What just happened, Burt?”
The old soldier seemed reluctant to answer, instead continuing to concentrate on the road.
“Burt?”
“The Nurestan operation was something Larry and I were involved in that went south in a very big way.”
“Then that’s what he was trying to tell you? That he looked into this thing and it’s as bad as we thought?”
Seeger shook his head. “When it all hit the fan, we called for an extraction, and they told us that it was too hot—that there was no way they could get to us. What Larry was telling us is that we’re on our own.”
Richard leaned back in the seat and stared up at the water washing across the moonroof. “He obviously didn’t feel comfortable talking freely. Maybe they know about him. About you.”
“He was just being cautious. He said everything was all right, and if Larry says he’s secure, he’s secure. The FBI, though, apparently isn’t.”
“This is crazy,” Carly said, leaning up through the seats. “If they can get to the FBI, what chance do we have?”
“As long as you’re breathing, there’s always a chance,” Seeger said. “I’ve faced some pretty long odds in my life, and I’m still here.”
“This long?” she said.
He didn’t answer.
Richard suddenly felt like something was pressing down on his chest, trying to suffocate him. He refused to give in, though. He had a family to think about. It was his responsibility to protect them.
“We have two leads,” he said, his voice providing a surprisingly realistic facsimile of confidence. “Chris and Argentina. The way I see it, Argentina is the less risky of the two to go after.”
“You’re saying we should go to South America?” Carly said. “We’d have to show our passports and buy plane tickets.”
“Yeah,” Seeger agreed. “But the truth is that the wheels of the airlines and the government don’t turn all that fast. Even if they’ve got ears there, they still have to deal with the bureaucracy. If you buy tickets at the counter right before the flight and get a nonstop, you might be faster than their network.”
“Might be?” Carly said.
He shrugged and eased around a submerged section of road. “Under the circumstances, I think that’s the best you can hope for.”
27
Western Argentina
May 4
Carly eased the struggling car to a stop at a T in the empty road and turned off the engine to let it cool. Outside the open windows, green farmland rolled out in every direction, interrupted only by the occasional stand of leafy trees. The sky was an unbroken blue that promised another day of temperatures over ninety.
“Which way?” she asked.
Richard concentrated on the hand-drawn map in his lap, trying to decipher the directions scrawled in Spanish at the bottom.
They’d arrived in Argentina three days before, buying a flashy but mechanically disastrous BMW on the cheap and setting out for the airport where August Mason had landed. Since then, they’d been posing as wealthy Americans looking for an estate that fit the criteria they’d developed: secure, private, and with a house or outbuildings large enough to contain a lab. They told the local real estate agents that the property didn’t have to be for sale—that money was no object, and they’d offer whatever was necessary for the right opportunity.
It had been a futile exercise in old wineries and estancias until that morning when they heard about a three-thousand-acre property situated more than fifty miles from the nearest town. Foreign contractors had built it, and a corporation chartered in Poland owned it, but beyond that, no one knew anything about it.
“Actually, I think this is it,” Richard said, finally. “The other side of this crossroad is the northern edge of the property.”
Carly started the engine again and drove until she found a pullout surrounded by bushes large enough to make the car invisible from the road.
“I don’t see a fence,” she said as they stepped out into the dust.
Richard jumped into an empty wash and started to climb the steep bank on the other side. “There’s no rule that says you have to put fences on your property line. If I was trying to keep a low profile, I’d hide it in the trees.”
“Where are you going?”
“To see if I’m right about the fence. And if I am, to climb over it. Stay with the car. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Instead, she jumped in after him, clambering up the bank with enough irritation to catch him before he cleared the lip. “No way. You’re the one who should be staying with the car.”
“Carly…”
“We’ve been through this fifty times, Richard. Even without the beard, people will recognize you a mile away. I can play the lost tour
ist and get away with it.”
He opened his mouth to protest, but she broke into a run on the open ground, forcing him to chase.
“Slow down!” he said, coming up behind her, but she just put her head down and ran harder. He was forced to slow when she penetrated the tree line, his bulk making him less efficient at dodging through the tight branches and fallen logs.
When he finally caught up, she was bent at the waist, gulping air with a wide grin on her face.
“You’re not as fast as you used to be,” she gasped and then thumbed behind her at a tall wire barrier painted green, “but you were right about the fence.”
He was going to yell at her for being so careless, but instead, he pulled her to him and kissed her. She backed up against the fence, hooking one of her legs behind his, rubbing up and down his calf. When they were finally forced to come up for air, he brushed the hair from her face. “I can’t imagine my life without you, Carly. I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t with me.”
“Don’t worry. It wasn’t just luck that we found each other. And I believe that whatever it was that brought us together will keep us that way.”
He wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry at that. For some reason, he’d never told her about the elaborate system he’d developed to meet her. That what brought them together wasn’t fate so much as a carefully designed computer algorithm and a filing cabinet full of bogus grocery lists.
He gave her one last peck on the lips and then started pulling his shirt over his head.
“Richard? What are you doing?”
“Barbed wire,” he said, throwing her the sweaty shirt and pointing to the top of the fence. “Fold that up and put it over the top. You’ll need about five layers with that kind of fabric.”
“The voice of experience?”
“Let’s just say I climbed a fence or two when I was a kid.”
