by L. T. Ryan
Fezz scooped his hand under the man’s chin.
“Wait. I know who you're talking about. The girl. Who used to work for us. There was a big meeting tonight, I know that. I heard some guys talking about it. But I don’t know what it’s about. I just started here three months ago. Whatever it’s about, it’s above my pay grade. I don’t ask questions.”
“Did you see her?” Blake asked.
“No. The meeting was already over by the time I got here tonight. I don’t think it went well, though.”
“Why do you say that?” Blake asked.
“Because when I arrived, Mr. Farr was getting into one of the Tahoes. I said hello, but he didn’t respond. He looked upset. Then he peeled out, leaving the lot.”
Blake caught Grant’s eyes. Their blue intensity said what no one dared verbalize.
They might be too late.
“Stay quiet and you live,” Blake said.
Dempsey swallowed hard and nodded.
Grant cracked the door. He looked and listened. Dempsey didn’t say a word.
“All clear,” Grant said.
The team moved out to the hallway and resumed their formation.
Some Rottweiler Let Loose on the Red Rug.
They moved quickly, increasing speed as they rounded each corner. Left. Left. Right Right.
As they rounded the last, they could see the square splotch of light spilling onto the hallway floor through the open door of the genetics lab.
They pushed ahead, breaching the entryway without hesitation.
Blake sucked in a gulp of air, unable to catch a breath. For an instant, it was as if all the oxygen in the room had been used up. On first sight of the pool of blood, Blake’s brain had jumped to conclusions. He was sure that he would find her there, lying on the floor, drained of life. But he was wrong. Wonderfully wrong.
There were three bodies in the room. All men. Two wore the telltale black uniform of the Techyon henchman. Although Blake had only seen Benjamin Becher for a few moments on the steps of the Griffith Observatory, he recognized the gray, mottled face of the third.
Who he couldn’t place was the living man that knelt beside Dr. Becher. Hands and knees covered in blood. His face red and swollen from crying.
“Who are you?” Blake asked.
“Dr. Roberts,” he choked out. A band of mucus strung from his nose over his lips, stretching like an elastic band when he spoke.
Blake bent into a crouch. “Where’s Haeli?”
Roberts said nothing. He lifted his arm and pointed to the ladder in the room's corner.
Griff and Grant darted up the ladder and disappeared.
“What happened?” Blake asked.
Roberts opened his mouth to speak, then took a moment to clear his throat and collect himself.
“Levi shot him,” He started sobbing again.
Blake shot Fezz a look. He knew what little use Fezz had for men who couldn’t pull themselves together. The same went for all of them. But the fact was, they had a use for this one. They needed answers, and something told him Roberts could provide them.
“Dr. Roberts, I’m sorry for your loss.” Blake intended for the statement to calm Roberts, but it only reminded Blake of Haeli and what she had lost. Benjamin Becher had been the only family she had ever known. She had been willing to risk everything. To sacrifice herself to save him.
The deep sadness Blake felt for her was not because her father’s death had taken away her chance of normal life. Her father had done that the moment he betrayed her. It was because Blake knew the pain and guilt that comes with failing to protect someone you love. He did not wish that upon anyone, especially not her.
“Is she alright? Is she wounded?” Blake asked.
Roberts shook his head. “No. I don’t think so.” He glanced at the bodies of the two guards. “She shot them and then escaped through the hatch. It all happened so fast.”
Vibrations emanated from the corner. Clang. Clang. Clang.
“We found a bunch of footprints,” Griff announced as he reached the bottom of the ladder. “Looks like they’re all going south.”
“The men went after her,” Roberts said.
Blake had figured as much. “How long ago?”
Robert shrugged. “A few hours.”
Fezz tapped Blake on the shoulder and gave a brief cock of his head. Blake knew what it meant. Fezz wanted a sidebar. Blake stood and moved a few feet away from Roberts.
“It was a hundred and twelve degrees yesterday,” Fezz said. “If she’s stranded out there at sunup, she’s going to be in serious trouble. I doubt she has any water with her. It’s a day’s hike to the closest town, and that’s if you know where you’re going. We’ve got to go after her, now.”
A defensiveness bubbled up in Blake. How dare Fezz insinuate that he would even consider not going after her? The misdirected anger subsided as fast as it appeared. Fezz didn’t know the scope of it. He didn’t understand the deep connection with Haeli burrowed in Blake’s guts and coursing through his veins. He hardly understood it himself.
“Fezz, I swear to you. I will bring her home.” Blake thought about rephrasing his statement. He unintentionally used the word home. Unconsciously, at least. Haeli didn’t have a home. Her life all but revolved around that premise. But she did, if she wanted it. With him. With them.
“What about Levi?” Griff asked. “Should we split up? Go after him?”
“He took off a few hours ago. Could be anywhere by now,” Khat said. And he was correct. They had lost him. And they had more pressing issues now.
“I could help with that,” Roberts said.
The conversation suspended at the unexpected offer. All eyes shifted to the slight man.
Roberts continued. “I don’t know where he is now. But I know where he’s going to be. I’ll tell you everything you need to know. Consider it my resignation letter.”
Blake smiled.
Grant climbed down a few rungs, then jumped to the floor.
“Do we know what kind of head start they have?” Grant asked.
“A few hours.” The group spoke in near unison. Even Roberts.
Grant offered his palms. “Jeez, just asking.”
“Kook, come here,” Blake said. “I have a plan.”
32
A hint of light blue touched the eastern sky and spread like a drop of dish detergent in a Caribbean oil spill. With it came the orange tinge rimming the underside of the few clouds. It was a welcomed sight.
Since the painted white circle receded beneath Blake’s boots and faded into the blackness, he had been willing the sun to appear sooner than scheduled. It only made it seem longer.
The goal had been to use the million-candle handheld searchlight to scour the valley floor and find Haeli. Not long after takeoff, it became clear how difficult the task would be. Positioned on the platform attached to the right side of the commandeered Little Bird helicopter, Blake would have had an expansive view of the area. In the darkness, he may as well have been looking through a pinhole.
Khat had taken up his position on the left side platform, not that he was going to see anything. He chose it for comfort. Unlike Grant’s Eurocopter, the small MH-6 didn’t have six seats in the rear compartment. In fact, it didn’t have any.
Even the cockpit of the Little Bird was cramped in comparison. Fezz had wedged himself in the front to help Griff with navigation. He tried to calculate how far Haeli would have gotten based on time and conditions. The resulting area was a band of probability, shaped like a carpenter’s staple. If she had stayed on a southerly track, she would have made up more ground. The further she veered toward the rocky slopes, the less distance away she would have travelled.
For the last couple of hours, Griff had zigzagged above these areas, pushing further south after each circuit. It was an exercise in futility. Haeli could have been standing in the middle of the valley, waving her arms, the beam of Blake’s spotlight passing within feet of her.
Grant had left with Seb
astian Roberts the same time as they did. Blake had watched the Ford’s headlights trailing off to the north toward the State road for several minutes after they took to the air. By now, he had already made it to the agreed upon rendezvous point to their southwest.
Blake placed the light on the deck and slid it further inside. He dragged the Kriss Vector toward him by its stock, then grasped its handle. He looked down at the emerging desert. It was amazing how the human eye could capitalize on even the smallest amount of light. And under the predawn sky, it may as well have been noon.
“Drop a bit,” Blake said.
Griff’s affirmative response came, not through his headset, but through the slight negative G-force.
Now that both he and Khat could survey wide swaths of land, Blake felt a glimmer of hope returning. He shifted his eyes along the ground like a cathode-ray tube.
Then he saw something. A lot of somethings.
“I’ve got eyes,” Blake said. “Fifteen to twenty Techyon men about a half a click to the south. Widely spaced out.”
Griff spun the aircraft. The ground picked up speed beneath them. In a matter of minutes, they would pass directly over the armed squad.
“Get ready for some action, Khat.”
Khat gave an enthusiastic thumbs up.
In that moment, Blake regretted the oversight that put them in the air without first trekking out to the truck to pick up a few longer-range weapons. The 9mm submachine guns, while perfect for their purposes inside the compound, would be ineffective from that distance. They would have to be accurate to hit the men on the ground. The men on the ground had to hit the proverbial broad side of the bus. They were, without a doubt, at a disadvantage.
As they passed over the first of the men, Blake noticed little reaction. Apart from one man who appeared to glance upward and give a quick, half-hearted wave.
“They think we’re with them,” Blake said.
It made sense. Over the past couple of hours, they had been weaving and hovering overhead. The men assumed that it was their own people, aiding in the search. Levi had been so secretive that most of the employees, like the man they left hog-tied on the floor of someone’s office, didn’t even know any of this was going on. The ones who had set out on foot did so before Blake and his team had even arrived. Blake took back his original assessment. They had the advantage after all.
Fezz set about recalculating. Haeli had left a few minutes before her pursuers. Unlike the men wearing tactical gear and carrying weapons, she wore regular street clothing. Likely the jeans and tank-top she had been wearing when Blake dropped her off. The men were fanned out, performing a line search. This extra care would slow them down further. On top of all of that, Haeli was just faster.
“At a minimum,” Fezz said, “she would have put a few miles between herself and these guys. With them behind her, I don’t think she would try to hunker down or risk the terrain heading up to the mountains. She’d want to put as much distance between her and Techyon as possible.”
Blake agreed. Although Haeli would have known that heading south would only further strand her in some of the most inhospitable landscape in North America, he also knew that she would have no qualms about taking such a risk. Because he would do the same. In a choice between battling against exhaustion, heat-stroke, and dehydration, and an incoming wall of bullets, the choice was more than obvious.
Upon reaching the starting point that Fezz had chosen, Griff resumed the zigzag search pattern. Blake let his eyes relax, hoping to pick up any slight movement in his peripheral vision. It was a tactic he learned years prior. As a vestige of the past. When people were more prey than predator, the human brain was wired to detect movement more acutely from the sides. The problem at this moment was that he didn’t detect motion from anywhere.
Haeli pulled her knees in close to her chest, wrapping herself up into the smallest package she could manage. The small grouping of chaparral didn’t provide much cover. She hoped it would be enough.
The Little Bird helicopter hovered almost directly over her now. She could feel the downdraft ruffling the back of her shirt, pushing it halfway up her back.
The ache in her knee was more pronounced in that bent position. She suppressed the urge to rub it. After tripping while in a full sprint and landing knee first on a rock, she had tried to use a little more caution. But she needed to keep moving at all costs. It was the crux of the dilemma she found herself in.
If they detected her from the air, it was over. There would be no way to outrun the helicopter, and there was nowhere to take cover from an air assault. If she stayed hidden, she would likely avoid detection, but the men pursuing her would make up any distance she had put between them. They already drew closer.
In the dark it had been easier. As the helicopter weaved this way and that, the probing light had made it a simple task to keep track of its path. She had only needed to curl up in a ball twice, and only for a few seconds at a time.
Now, in the daylight, she had to use a different strategy. Whenever the aircraft moved closer to her position, she would lie low. Whenever it turned away, she’d run. Simple in theory, not so much in practice. Because of the repeating diagonal pattern, the helicopter was never coming or going. She’d have to make a judgement call. Be ready to take an opportunity when it presented itself.
The opportunity arrived sooner than she had expected. As the helicopter swooped around and back over her, she got ready to bolt.
Wait. Wait. Now.
Haeli unfolded herself and reached top speed in a matter of seconds. She struggled to keep her balance, along with her maximum speed, as she kept her head turned and eyes on the movements of the Little Bird.
Conservatively, she traversed a quarter mile of land before the helicopter made its turn. Without hesitation, she dove into whatever scraps of vegetation were available and squeezed herself into obscurity. A pixel on a giant screen.
The Little Bird roared overhead. In a minute or two or three, it would pass over again, and she would be off.
“We’re low on fuel,” Griff said. “This is going to have to be the last pass if we’re going to make it to the rendezvous.”
“We’re not leaving her, Griff. You can put me down right here. I’ll go alone.”
“Whoa, brother, no one said anything about leaving her,” Griff replied. “I’m just saying, we’re going critical here. We can take more passes, but we won’t be able to get out. We can put her down and search on foot, then at least we’d still have a ride. That’s if we can get back without running into a small army.”
It was a tough decision. Blake didn’t like the odds of finding her on foot. The Techyon men could all attest to that. Then again, if they spent all their fuel finding her, or not, they’d be in the same position she was. But if she had been willing to take that risk, he was more than willing to take it with her.
“Do another pass,” Blake said.
“Roger,” Griff said.
The helicopter turned, inching its way further to the south. Nothing.
Even in the stream of thrusting air from above, Blake could feel the heat rising.
In the scheme of things, Nevada was nothing compared to some places he had been. Iraq stood out amongst them. Parts of Africa. The Himalayas at the other extreme. Blake had always been prepared. He hated the thought of Haeli being out there. Alone. Exposed. Under attack. No matter how capable she might be.
Blake directed his unfocused stare to the ether once more. The muted browns blended. And then, out of the corner of his right eye, he caught it. Movement. To his distant right, about twenty degrees off the back of the tail, a stick figure. Arms pumping, black hair flowing.
“Got her!” Blake yelled. “Turn southwest so I can keep a visual.”
Griff did. As they made the turn, she vanished. Blake struggled to keep his eyes on the exact spot that he had last seen her. A spot that looked like every other in the entire valley.
“A little further,” Blake said. The helicopt
er moved; his eyes remained fixed. “Ok, cut it dead west.”
A half mile later, they approached the spot that Blake had picked out. At least, they’d be close.
“Put her down, Griff. Right here.”
Blake inched further from the fuselage with each foot they descended until he was connected to the helicopter by only the toes of his left foot and the fingers of his outstretched left hand. He waited until they were within four feet before he let go and dropped to the ground.
Boots planted, he swiveled his head. Had he been seeing things? A kind of mirage brought on by his own desperation?
She wasn’t there now. But a small, dark-colored mound mixed in between the dull greens of the sparse desert foliage. He would not have given it another thought if he hadn’t seen Haeli fit into that towel cart at the motel.
Could it be her?
Blake inched closer but only made it a third of the way before the peculiar little lump bloomed into a full-grown human being. One that was already in mid-stride, heading away from him.
“Haeli!” Blake yelled as loud as he could. Barely loud enough to overcome the drone of the helicopter.
Haeli looked over her shoulder. She slowed to a stop, long enough to reverse directions. In a blink, she was running toward him. With each bounding stride, her glistening eyes and expanding smile came more in focus. She was radiant.
In Haeli fashion, she left her feet before she even reached him. Throwing herself into his arms and wrapping her legs around the back of his thighs, she kissed him. A deep, passionate kiss filled with need and relief and possibility. Blake’s hands, fingers spread along her back, pulled her close with no intention of ever letting go.
Haeli dropped to her feet. Their lips parted. They lingered in each other’s eyes.
Although they said nothing, it was as if a full conversation had taken place. The apologies for the mistakes that were made. The fear of having lost out on a chance at something real. The acknowledgement of the pain and baggage that had emotionally paralyzed both of them. All wrapped up in one perfect moment.
