Breakout

by A P Bateman

  “Look…”

  “No, you look!” King retorted. “Look at what’s happening here. Do you want to be involved in this when it gets discovered?”

  “It ain’t ever being discovered, brother.”

  “I found it!”

  “By chance!” Cole paced around the bottom of the bed and stood on King’s right side. “Whatever you’re involved in, it caught up with you. They’ve sent you here, and there’s nothing I can do about it!” He moved again, shuffled closer.

  “Are you actually trying to flank me?” King asked incredulously.

  Cole moved quickly as King twisted and rolled onto his right side. The cuff pulled tight and Cole seized his chance. He put a hand over King’s mouth and pinched his nose and clamped King’s left wrist with his right hand. King tried to fight with his right hand, but it strained against the cuff and did nothing.

  “I’m sorry,” Cole said. “It’s better for you this way…”

  King struggled, but Cole’s right arm was a match for his left. He tried to press the man’s arm upwards, but Cole had his own body weight and used all of it, and gravity, to his advantage. He could also breathe, which gave him more strength while King’s own strength was ebbing with every second.

  Cole looked away from King’s eyes and said, “I want to thank you for saving me. You and that crazy fucking Scotsman. But Johnson will have you tortured and shot, and there’s no shortage of vindictive volunteers in this place to shoot you up a bit first.”

  King could barely hear the man now, his own pulse thudding in his ears. He felt drunk, drowsy. The pressure building up in his ears from the lack of air was unbearable. He knew he didn’t have much time left.

  Cole pressed down harder. “Give into it,” he said quietly, his teeth gritted. “It’ll soon be over…”

  King felt the first wave of darkness wash over him. The fight was leaving him. He pictured Caroline, a fleeting image of Jane. He was back with Caroline. A distant shore, her white bikini. She was smiling at him. King saw red spots through the darkness. He was back at Jane’s bedside. Her body was still. It was how he had found her. Gone. He held onto her hand, could see her tiny, frail hand in his own. She sits bolt upright, her eyes wild and she screams, “Fight! Fight Alex, Fight!” King opened his eyes, snapping back. Cole, shocked at his stamina and will, slipped momentarily and King managed a precious gulp of air. He pressed his weight down into his feet and rose off the bed, lifting the man into the air. He dropped down and did it again. Cole shifted his weight and King thrust himself high, but when he dropped, he lifted his left leg up, got the sheet free and wrapped his knee around Cole’s head. He forced his leg downwards and Cole lost his positioning. King got his right leg up and scissor-wrapped them together around the man’s neck, locking his ankles tightly. Cole’s grip on King’s mouth and nose slipped, then was gone altogether as he grabbed King’s legs with both hands. King squeezed for all he was worth, rolled onto his side and caught hold of his right ankle with his left hand, which tightened the grip and locked it off, his forearm pressing the back of Cole’s neck and with it - his throat into the vice-like grip of King’s Ju-Jitsu hold. The contortion burned his cracked ribs, and his chest ached with the exertion. But he could breathe now, and with each breath he put more strength into his grip. The man was straining, wheezing. King could see the whites of his eyes turning red and bloodshot. He was seeing the dots, too. There was spittle at his mouth and King could see the life leaving his eyes.

  “Your turn to give into it, you bastard! Think about your child, Cole,” King said. “Think about the day he was born, his birthdays. The love you gave him, and he returned with smiles and hugs and pictures he drew for you, songs he made up and sang for you…” King’s legs were shaking, but there was still more in his tank, he wasn’t spent yet, and he gripped as tightly as he could, watching the man whose life he had once saved. “I gave you that. I saved you and gave that life to you. And you try to kill me?” He took a deep, calming breath and adjusted his knee for one final squeeze. Cole only had mere seconds left, and the man knew it. He’d been around the block, and he knew he was done.

  The door crashed opened and rocked back on its hinges, and two guards entered ahead of Johnson and the doctor. King looked up, then gave the squeeze everything he had. He hadn’t even registered that one of the guards was Brett, who charged in and drove the butt of his shotgun into King’s face. The blow made a sickening crunch, and King dropped back on the bed, Cole falling from between King’s knees and crashing onto the floor and taking with him the drip, ripping the canula out of King’s forearm. King was smarting after the blow but did not see the second one coming. And he remembered nothing more after that.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  100 miles north of Rapid City, South Dakota

  The signal emitted its pulse just twenty-miles West of the Cheyenne River reservation. They had separated into groups, with Big Dave and Powell taking a route in from the East. Adams and Tattooed Mick had driven Northwards and aimed to turn around and come in from the Northwest. Caroline, Rashid and Marnie headed in from the South. They had checked into a motel in a town called Custer, in the Black Hills, near the Mount Rushmore national monument park. The town was a hive of activity with motorcyclists cruising the main drag and the mountain roads to other towns. The Sturgis motorcycle festival had brought half a million bikers to South Dakota and the Black Hills, and at times if felt like it. The roads were still quiet, though – such was the vastness of South Dakota. However, every town they had driven through was awash with leather, denim, tattoos and chrome. The men and women spent well, and they had seen no signs of trouble. These were just people with an expensive hobby out to express their freedom. In a way, a hark back in time to the cowboys who roamed the range. Many of the bikes resembled tacked-up horses, and some even sported rifles or shotguns in Western-style rifle holsters tied to the bike’s saddles, complete with western saddlebags.

  Rashid and Big Dave had looked around while the rest had taken some rest and eaten burgers in a nearby barbeque and smokehouse. The two men had met up with the others in the smokehouse and after they had eaten, and Big Dave had finished two mains and three sides, Rashid and Big Dave had disappeared again for a few hours and returned to the motel ready to go on their recce. Caroline had watched the two men return but hadn’t asked where they had been. Sometimes it was better not knowing. The need to know mantra also meant you had plausible and culpable deniability.

  Ramsay had taken a different route. After the others had left in the cars, he had typed out and emailed a report for Simon Mereweather, who would forward it to Director Amherst only if he thought it necessary. Again, deniability. He had used the time to call his wife and hear about his daughter’s preparations for university and his son’s recent trip to the dentist after chipping a tooth falling off his bike. An all too brief moment of the wonderfully mundane. A semblance of normality in the craziness of maintaining his country’s security.

  After the long drive, it had been nice to unwind with a coffee and the sensation of constant moving had gradually worn off. The others had a long drive ahead of them and he could afford a couple of hours to himself. Refreshed, he had taken a taxi around five miles towards Mount Rushmore, where he had chartered a helicopter. Having noticed the company operating three helicopters on the side of the road on the way into Custer. He had negotiated a rate of one-thousand dollars with the tour operator and the pilot had been grateful for the chance of a longer flight and a break from flying groups of tourists to Crazy Horse – the little-known rock carving of the Indian chief and the same size as the faces of the presidents on Mount Rushmore. No such charter existed for Mount Rushmore, but the route did allow for glimpses at the iconic attraction from afar. Today, though, they would be flying North and away from the tourists.

  “So, what are you, a wildlife photographer?” the pilot asked, glancing at the photographic equipment in Ramsay’s lap.

  “I am,” he replied.

&nbs
p; “What are you hoping to see?”

  “Plains buffalo, or bison,” Ramsay hesitated, remembering what he had previously Googled on his smartphone. “Mountain goats, deer, cougars.”

  “Antelope, you might call them pronghorn,” the pilot said. “I can show you some on the way to the reservation.”

  “Thanks,” Ramsay took out a sheet of note paper and passed it to the pilot. “Do you work for the company, or own it?”

  The pilot frowned at the paper, then said hesitantly, “I work there.”

  “Good,” Ramsay took out a stack of fifty-dollar bills, still bound with the paper band. “There’s a thousand dollars bonus to fly over, or as near to those coordinates as you can.”

  The pilot glanced at the wedge of money, then looked fleetingly at Ramsay before checking his attitude and altitude. He corrected his height with both the cyclic and collective. It was a tidy sum for a bonus, and nobody would be telling the IRS. “Hey, buddy, what is this about?”

  “Curiosity,” Ramsay replied. “Do you know of any reason why we shouldn’t fly over there?”

  The pilot carried on flying straight and level, although it always felt as if the helicopter wanted to flip over. The pilot worked both rudder pedals, the yoke and the collective near-constantly to keep the craft under control. “There ain’t nothing out there but grassland,” he paused. “But it’s restricted airspace. You can’t hunt there, either.”

  “Why?”

  The pilot shrugged. “There was talk of sensitive flora and fauna, the US Fish and Wildlife Service sent literature out to the residents, but there’s nothing there for miles and the reservation has its own laws and law enforcement, so nobody tends to go out that way anyway. You can hunt on the reservation, or at least the Cheyenne Indians can. And if you ain’t a native American, or more specially a Cheyenne, then it ain’t worth your while.”

  “Why?”

  “Them boys are real protective of their rights. They’ll as likely shoot you if you turn up to hunt of their land. There are few jobs, little money and they get real protective of their land and their rights. And they have the right to protect their land, with their own marshals and deputies as law enforcement. Local cops can’t go out there either, only the FBI.”

  “Sounds like a political and law enforcement minefield.”

  The pilot shrugged. “Doesn’t affect you if you don’t go there. I figure we took enough off those guys a hundred-and-fifty-years ago. They can do what the hell they want.”

  “But the land those coordinates are on is not part of the reservation?”

  “No. Close, but no.”

  “Are you willing to chance a fly-by?”

  “I don’t see what harm it can do, it’s not like there’s anybody living there or anything,” he paused. “But why are you willing to part with a thousand bucks?”

  “I’m interested, that’s all,” said Ramsay. “I work for The World Wildlife Fund and I’m hearing that hunters are going in there, flouting the law and taking advantage of the growing numbers of animals. There’re reports of buffalo being shot and butchered for a mass-market. If that’s the case, then the fish and wildlife boys have a lot to answer for. They’re not doing their job.”

  “Right,” the pilot said, and nodded. “World Wildlife Fund? Well, that accounts for the accent. Australian?”

  “You guessed it, er, mate,” Ramsay said. He was as typically middle-class English as it gets and did not have an accent, but almost every American he’d met had thought he was Australian. It didn’t hurt to add a little subterfuge. Anything to create false trails.

  “How low do you want to go?”

  “I’ll leave that to you,” said Ramsay. “Low and slow, I suppose.”

  “Suits me fine,” the pilot said. “We can skim the daisies! Just like back in the ‘Stan. Except out there it was opium poppies and every man, and his brother was shooting at us! Damn, I miss that shit!”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  King awoke, water pouring into his lungs, his senses coming back to life all at once, amid confusion and fear. He coughed and spluttered as he tried to clear his lungs, the water had been little more than a trickle down his throat, but the lungs couldn’t handle the merest quantity, and he was retching uncontrollably. He was aware of people in the room, chatter and breathing, but could not yet focus.

  His arms were searing, the pain burning his joints and tearing at his muscles. The shoulder that had been dislocated back in Washington DC was threatening to pop loose at any moment. He squinted against the light, could see the guard he knew as Brett staring at him, two guards behind him edging their way forwards. Johnson was seated at a stainless-steel table looking through a report with Cole sitting beside him. The man’s demeanour was low, not helped by the neck brace he was wearing and the redness of his eyes. King stared at him, but the man looked away.

  They had strung him up. He was naked and soaked from the bucket of water that one of the men had thrown into his face. His hands were cuffed, and a length of rope had been looped through them and hung to a hook in the ceiling. King dangled limply, his feet a foot or so off the ground.

  Brett stepped forwards and punched King in the stomach. King wheezed and was rocked backwards a foot or so. He swung inertly, starting to spin counter-clockwise, which suited Brett because he followed up with another punch to King’s kidney. King forced himself not to cry out, but it was no use. He breathed hard, tried to get himself under control. The guards were sniggering, and as King twisted back around to face them, he could see the delight on their faces. He caught sight of Cole, who had averted his eyes and made no attempt to look at him.

  “Why did you attack my man, here?” Johnson asked without looking up from the report. “There was no way in hell you were going to get away. Which kind of leads me to suspect you are a psychopath. In which case, there would be little point me taking anything else you say seriously. I think it may be about time for that nine-millimetre and shallow grave we talked about.”

  “After you,” King groaned.

  Brett stepped forwards but was knocked off balance by the other two who were eagerly making their way towards King for their turn. One of the men was knocked aside and fell onto the ground, landing like a child on his hands and knees and pulling a face of annoyance. Brett and the other guard lost concentration and were about to get back to King when Johnson shouted for them to stop.

  King chuckled as the man got back to his feet. “Fair game,” he said. “But does it have to be these three pricks? On second thoughts, go for it. I could probably take them all down with my hands behind my back, anyway.”

  Brett tore at King, swinging wildly with left and right hooks. King was sent into a spin and Brett waited for him to slow down and turn back towards him. Johnson’s shouts fell upon deaf ears, and when King slowed and was facing him again, he kicked out and caught Brett in the groin with a hard snapping front kick that sounded wet when it made contact. The man went down fast, but King snapped out another kick that landed under the man’s jaw. It helped him on his way, and he landed in a heap, cracking the back of his head on the edge of the metal table. One of the guards took Brett’s place, punching King but guarding his groin with his other leg. It made for a poor stance and he was pulling back a poorly-landed punch, when King’s foot drove up under his chin. King had pulled his bare toes backwards, driving the front part of the sole of his foot into his throat.

  “Enough!” Johnson leapt out of his chair and marched forwards. He glared at the remaining guard and snapped, “Get the doctor!” The guard did as he was ordered, and Johnson stood in front of King, a good and handy metre away. “What the hell is it with you?”

  King was spinning once more. He waited to slow down, when he could eye Johnson he said, “You want me to hang here and take a beating? Fuck you!”

  Johnson looked down at the two guards. Brett wasn’t moving a muscle and the other guard was rasping for breath. He had started to turn a tinge of blue, clutching his throat and twisting fr
om side to side. Johnson ignored him and looked back at King. “Why did you attack Cole? You couldn’t have hoped to get away.”

  King could see Cole looking at him for the first time. He thought he detected a slight shake of his head. The man’s eyes were bloodshot, but there was an intensity behind them. A throw of the dice. He didn’t understand why the ex-SEAL would look at him that way. “I guess I didn’t think it through,” he said. “I saw an opportunity and went for it.”

  Johnson stared at King for a moment, then returned to his folder and opened it. The doctor and the other guard bustled in and the doctor bent down and started ABCs on the two men. The guard shadowed the door.

  “I think you’ve played me. I think you have a reason to be here and an exit strategy. I’ll be damned if I’ll let you get away with it. I think you’re a dangerous man to have around,” said Johnson. “Too dangerous.”

  The doctor stood up and shook his head. “They’re both dead,” he said, not looking at King.

  “And that would confirm it,” he said. He turned to Cole and said, “You and I need a talk.”

  “What about the attacks?” King shouted. “I gave you Chicago, there will be others!”

  “And I’ll let the Secret Service know and increase the threat level on POTUS. There’s always the chance of a plot and an attack, and the Secret Service will have to deal with it. It’s what they do.” He looked back at King, eyeing him up and down with contempt. “And you had your chance. You were warned.”

  Chapter Forty-Five

  “We’re twenty-miles from the signal,” Marnie said, her eyes not leaving the laptop balancing on her thighs.

  Caroline noticeably shivered, despite the balmy temperature. She was a bag of nerves. If she wasn’t working, and if the situation had been different, she could have done with a drink. Or six. She craned her neck to see the screen, taking some comfort that she was just twenty-miles away from the man she loved. With every mile they had driven she had taken solace in closing the gap. Only now, the closer she became, the more impossible the task seemed.