by David Lucin
The room breathed a collective sigh of relief. Townsend said sharply, “Sergeant, report.”
“Ma’am,” Vasquez began, “we’ve been . . . disabled.”
“Disabled?” she spat. “Explain.”
“Spike strips. Homemade ones around a blind corner in both the northbound and southbound lanes. Our tires are shot.”
Baker tore off his hat and threw it across the room. Dumbfounded, Townsend stared at her radio. Liam had the urge to drive a fist into the table. How could they have let these people set up an ambush and booby-trap the highway under their noses? Good Lord, how was he supposed to explain to Gary that Jenn had been taken? The man had already lost a daughter to the war. Losing a second might break him.
“Ma’am,” Vasquez continued, “the drones are following, but those trucks are entering Black Canyon City. As soon as they hit the interstate, they’ll be out of our range in ten minutes, maybe less.”
That was it, then—the pursuit was over. The Major, or whoever was behind this ambush, had planned and executed the operation perfectly. He even accounted for the drones, which suggested he knew about the Militia’s technical capabilities. Now the questions rushed to the front of Liam’s mind. What did the Major want with Jenn and her team? Where was he taking them? Was he really the Major or some other opportunistic raider? Liam couldn’t decide which possibility bothered him more.
“What do we do, sir?” Townsend asked, continuing to work on her bottom lip. “What can we do?”
Liam had no idea. He could deploy a second pair of trucks, but the ambushers were too far ahead already. Imminently, they’d reach the first exit to Metro Phoenix, at which point they would disappear into the urban sprawl. With the pursuit ending in failure, finding Jenn was now a matter of search and rescue. “Recall the other lookout team on the interstate and the scouts in the rest of the valley until we’re sure there isn’t another attack coming. Send a messenger to Cordes Lakes to wake up Murphy. I want him down here in twenty minutes. Then, together, we’ll figure out how to bring our people home.”
* * *
The rumbling beneath Jenn ceased as the truck’s tires left the dirt road and hit pavement. Or so she guessed. After tossing her and Tanis into the bed of this pickup—Wyatt, Aiden, and Freddie went into another—her captors had thrown a black pillowcase over her head, and now all she could see were the ghosts of movement through the fabric. They’d also bound her wrists behind her back with zip ties, like she once did to trespassers at the Beaumont farm.
From her left, inside the cab, a woman said through a radio, “It worked! Your tail’s done for.”
Whoops and hollers erupted from the men riding in the truck.
Jenn’s heart sank. A few minutes ago, that same woman on the radio had mentioned something about two vehicles from the roadblock beginning a pursuit down the interstate. What happened? Was everyone okay? Jenn didn’t want anyone else from the Militia to get hurt—or killed—while trying to save her. As much as she hoped for a rescue, it wasn’t worth more lives, was it?
“See?” a man asked. Jenn recognized him as the one who’d ordered her to surrender. Before he blinded her with a pillowcase, she’d noticed a scar running across his left cheek, and his nose was bent to the side, as if it had been broken but not properly reset. “I told you it’d work. A hose and a bucket of nails. All you need for a spike strip.”
Spike strip? Like what stopped the Nissan outside Prescott in May? These people must have set it up in advance. How coordinated was this attack? And why had they bothered capturing her at all? A ransom, maybe? What did they hope to get in return? Would they demand regular payments of food while threatening further attacks if the Militia refused? That sounded like something the Major would do. After all, he’d demanded “taxes” from survivors in Phoenix no less than a week after the bombs. The man was a cancer, a blight, and the world would be better off if he were dead and his followers eradicated.
“Don’t celebrate yet,” another man said, his voice low and gruff, like he’d been a smoker. It, too, came from the cab. “We’re still in range of them drones.”
The drones! “They’ll follow you wherever you’re going,” Jenn said into her pillowcase, “and the Militia will come for you.”
“Except your drones can’t track us past about ten miles.” She could almost hear the smirk in Broken Nose’s voice. “As soon as we hit the interstate, we’ll put that much distance between us and them in no time.”
Fear clawed at her throat. What would happen when these trucks left the drones’ range? How would the Militia find her? “It doesn’t matter. Taking us was a big mistake. It’s not too late to let us go. Maybe then the Militia lets you drive out of here alive.”
Laughter erupted around her. When it died down, Broken Nose said, “I don’t think we’ll do that. See, the Major’s expecting us to bring a few of you in, and he doesn’t like to be disappointed.”
The mention of the gang leader’s name hardly fazed her, only confirmed what she’d assumed all along. She played dumb, both in hopes of insulting these people and to fish for some information, if possible. “Who? The Major? Is that supposed to mean something to me?”
Another round of laughter. “If it doesn’t yet,” Broken Nose began, “it will soon. Just you wait.”
The vehicle turned hard to the left. Jenn lost balance and tipped over. A rough hand gripped her arm, pressing against the wound on her tricep, and yanked her up. She winced in pain but stopped herself from crying out. The last thing she would do was show these people any signs of weakness.
“I can’t wait to meet him,” she said. “It’d be a shame if the Militia put a bullet between his eyes before I had the chance to introduce myself.”
“You’ve got a real mouth on you, huh? Maybe we should teach you a lesson in manners.”
From the cab, the man with the gruff voice, who Jenn presumed was the leader, shouted out, “On-ramp’s just ahead.”
After veering to the right, the truck began to accelerate as it merged onto the interstate. Wind whipped at the pillowcase over her head, making it difficult to hear or think straight. Where was she being taken? The Major’s headquarters? Sergeant Murphy suspected that he operated in the far northeast of Metro Phoenix, where Jenn had encountered his forces in May. But the area was huge, double the size of Flagstaff and Prescott combined. Even though the bombs and the fires had destroyed much of the city, the peripheral suburbs remained largely intact, meaning the Major would have his pick of empty buildings to use as a hideout. Without drones to track these trucks, the Militia might not be able to find her.
“What do you want with us?” She twisted her arm and bent her wrists, reaching her fingers up to the zip ties in hopes of somehow loosening them. “We didn’t do anything to you.”
She sensed movement in the bed of the truck as Broken Nose said, his voice so close she could smell rotten eggs on his breath, “Oh, lots. You’ll come in very handy. Trust me.”
What she suspected was his hand caressed her shoulder. She cursed at him, then blindly kicked with her right leg, striking nothing but air.
“Stop it!” Tanis cried. “Leave her alone!”
Broken Nose’s raucous chuckling made Jenn’s teeth ache. “The Major’s going to love you guys.”
She readied another jab with her foot, but a hand grabbed her shins before she could kick. Then she felt the distinct pressure of zip ties around her ankles, followed by the sound of them tightening.
“Just passed the ten-mile mark!” a woman with a Southern accent announced from the cab. The driver? “No way those drones are still following us.”
More cheers erupted from the truck. “Told you,” Broken Nose said right into Jenn’s ear. “No one’s coming for you now.”
A growing sense of helplessness threatened to reduce her to a crying heap. She thought about pleading with her captors. Maybe she could negotiate to have her squadmates released while she alone was taken to the Major, but she knew her efforts would p
rove futile; she had no bargaining power here.
She ground her teeth and steeled herself, refusing to lose hope. “The Militia’s coming. I promise you that. Two platoons and a couple combat drones, I bet. You ever seen what a .50-cal does to a person?” She considered telling Broken Nose about the hospital in Phoenix, about how Rusty tore through his people with ease, but she didn’t want him knowing that she’d already heard of the Major, so she tucked the insult away for now and said instead, “One round turns a body into pink mist.”
“Would you shut her up?” the leader ordered from the cab.
She barked out an insincere laugh. “What? You guys can’t handle some harmless razzing? I hope your Major’s got a better sense of humor than you.”
Her hair pulled, stinging her scalp, as the pillowcase was torn from her head. The light made her squint, but she caught sight of a subdivision of copy-paste houses behind a brown concrete fence. Then a sign for Anthem Way flew past at what must have been seventy or eighty miles per hour. They were entering the northern limits of Metro Phoenix.
Broken Nose, uglier than she remembered, smiled at her, flashing crooked yellow teeth, and showed her a bundled-up sock. “Say aah.”
She tried cursing at him, but he grabbed her jaw and yanked it open. With his other hand, he shoved the sock so far into her mouth it made her gag.
“Stop it!” Tanis, a hood over her head as well, squirmed and kicked, but a skinny kid with acne scars and thin lips held her in place.
“Quiet!” Broken Nose warned. “Or you’re next.”
Jenn tried using her tongue to force the sock out, but Broken Nose slapped a piece of duct tape over her mouth, holding it in place. When finished, he sighed like he’d just taken a large swig of cold beer on a hot day.
“Silence,” he said. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
Into the sock, she shouted, “Screw you.” It came out as two pitiful hums. Then her world turned black as the pillowcase returned to her head, but she could hear Tanis’s crying over the wind whipping past her ears.
Furious, she continued fidgeting with her zip ties. She didn’t care if her captors saw or tried to stop her. Actually, she almost wanted them to—she got the sense they were annoyed with her already, and that gave her no small amount of satisfaction.
After a while, Tanis stopped crying, and Jenn’s wrists were so sore she had to take a break from working her restraints, so she sat still, simmering. Each breath through her nose fanned the flames of rage roaring in her chest. Here in this truck, bound and gagged and helpless, she vowed to bring her team home safely, with or without the Militia’s help. Whatever it took, she would do it, no hesitation, no remorse. Crossing her, she swore, would be the Major’s undoing.
13
“Your mom must have been happy to see you the other day,” Ed said from the passenger seat of the solar Dodge.
Banks of brown rock, yellow grass, and green brush sloped toward the interstate as Sam drove south to Sunset Point. In his peripheral vision, he watched the speedometer on the instrument panel, mindful to stay below twenty-five miles per hour. “She was, I think. Gave me a hug, believe it or not.”
Three days ago, Friday, he took the Nissan and a trailer up to Flagstaff as part of a convoy to pick up food, extra blankets, and other supplies. He’d driven into town several times in the past two weeks, but only on Friday did he have an opportunity to stop by the Ruiz house for a short visit.
Mom was ecstatic, the happiest he’d seen her in months. Although she remained hidden away in the office, she let him sit with her on the bed for a full thirty minutes. She only talked about herself, not once bringing up the Militia’s mission or asking how Sam was doing, but he took no offense. He was just glad she’d agreed to see him at all.
Ed kept a vigilant watch out the window and held a pistol in his lap, even though the road between Cordes Lakes and Sunset Point was safe. In May, on his way into the city from Prescott, he was ambushed and shot not far from here, so Sam understood his apprehension.
“Depression’s hard,” Ed said. “My old man dealt with it a lot. When I was little, maybe eight or nine, he lost his restaurant. Skyrocketing lease. Nothing he could control. In a year, he went from owning a popular neighborhood breakfast joint to making less than minimum wage slaving away at gigs for a few of those pre-autodrive ride-share companies.”
“Must’ve been tough times.” The speedometer had crept over thirty, so Sam eased off the accelerator.
“They certainly were, and they only got worse.” Ed stroked his salt-and-pepper beard. He was thin, like everyone else in Flagstaff, but according to Sophie, he’d always been a “twig,” as she called it. “My parents divorced when I was thirteen. Dad was never the same after that. Sometimes he would go days without leaving the house. In the morning, when I’d leave for school, he’d be sitting in his chair in our crummy little apartment. When I came home, he’d be in the same clothes and in the same place. Medications turned him into an empty shell.”
“They kind of zonked my mom out, too, but now that she’s been off them for a while, it was pretty obvious they were working. I don’t know what else we can do.”
“Family makes a big difference. For a long time, it was just me and the old man. Your mom’s got you, your sister, Kevin, Gary, Maria. There’s a whole brood of you.”
Sam eased the truck around a lazy corner. “It’s hard because she doesn’t seem to want help.”
Ed hummed what Sam thought was agreement. “That can be tricky, but sometimes people don’t think they need help until they’ve already gotten it.”
That made sense. As much as Mom frustrated him, he was committed to being a good son. Or at least a better son than he’d been for the past few years. Thankfully, he could talk to Ed about his mother, Jenn, anything. Kevin had no idea how to play that role in Sam’s life. The role of a father.
When Sam pulled into the FOB near Sunset Point, National Guard and Militia soldiers congregated outside tents and darted between them, carrying weapons or gear. He hadn’t seen the base this busy since the first few days, when all hands were required to set up the barricades.
“What do you think all this commotion is about?” Ed asked.
Unease crept up Sam’s spine. “No idea.”
He parked the Toyota behind the Nissan and a line of other vehicles. Among the tents on the median, a bright purple ponytail caught his attention. Quinn?
She waved at the truck as she bounded through the long yellow grass. Sam hopped out and met her near the front bumper. Strands of hair stuck to her face, like she’d been sweating. Between heavy breaths, she said, “Sam, finally, you’re here.”
That feeling of unease grew, spreading into his ribcage. “What’s going on? I thought you guys were on lookout duty today.”
Quinn bit her lip, eyes falling to her feet. “It’s Jenn. She . . . She . . .”
His lungs deflated, as though Quinn had punched him straight in the diaphragm. “Where is she?” He searched the base but couldn’t find her. She might be in a meeting with Dylan or Liam, so he turned toward the operations tent.
A hand fell on his shoulder, and Quinn spun him around. “Sam, she’s gone. They took her.”
“No,” he said automatically and broke free of Quinn’s grasp. He told himself this was some sort of sick joke. Typical Quinn. Just like when she ragged on him about the solar Dodge. Any second now, she’d have a laugh and Jenn would jump out, pointing and snickering and yelling, Gotcha! Then he’d pretend to get angry while holding her tighter than ever.
He heard Quinn and Ed exchange a few words behind him. “Sam,” Ed said. A new hand fell on his shoulder, this one softer, which only made it easier to break free.
Quinn blocked his path to the operations tent. “Sam, please, listen to me. It was some kind of ambush. They were shot at, and then they were taken.”
“No.” It was all he could say while he stood there, knees shaking. Someone had kidnapped Jenn. How could this happen? “Who did it? Why
?”
“We don’t know.” Quinn dried tears with her palms. “Me and my grunts had just gotten dropped off and she was on her way to her spot with Freddie’s team. They came out of nowhere, Sam. It was all planned out perfectly.”
“The Major,” Ed said.
The gang leader’s name sent a shiver through Sam’s limbs. “Have we heard from the people who took her? They must want something. Why else would they do this?”
“No, not yet,” Quinn said. “Dylan’s with Liam. They’re working on a plan to get her back.”
“Where are they?” Sam asked.
“Operations. But—”
He stormed away before she could finish.
“Sam! They won’t let you in there.”
He tuned her out and shouldered his way into a trio of National Guard soldiers milling around outside the operations tent. They gave confused, wary stares until one of them, a man with a unibrow and a thick beard that covered nearly his entire neck and crept up toward his cheekbones, stiff-armed him in the chest. The name tag on his uniform read HORVAT. “You got a reason to be in there, pal?”
“I need to talk to Liam,” Sam said. “Now.”
Horvat shared a glance with his two colleagues. “The commander? Hate to tell you, but he’s busy at the moment.”
“That’s why I need to talk to him.” Sam pushed away Horvat’s arm, but another soldier, a woman with an eyepatch, stepped in front of him. He wondered if he could take a swing at her and slip into the tent without Horvat taking him down.
“You don’t just get to talk to the commander,” Horvat said. “You gotta be invited or have a meeting with him. This isn’t some free-for-all where he’s seeing civilians whenever they have the urge to chat.”
Something in Sam’s brain snapped. His filter, maybe. “One of the Militia who was taken? She’s my girlfriend.” He cringed at the word “girlfriend.” It didn’t carry nearly enough weight, didn’t come close to describing how much Jenn meant to him.
A flash of distress crossed the female soldier’s face. Horvat’s expression remained unreadable. He said, “Look, kid, I’m sorry, but—”
