by Akart, Bobby
It was against that backdrop that Blair and Ryan went directly to the toolshed where Echo was keeping a watchful eye on X-Ray. The Smarts couldn’t return the dead heroes to their families, but they could find a way to return a frightened little girl to her distressed parents.
“Hey, Ryan and Blair,” greeted Echo after the Smarts exited the Ranger. The solemn looks on their faces spoke volumes. Echo was a man who understood sacrifice because he’d lost the life of a daughter during her service as a law enforcement officer. The Echols had been visited by a police notification team, a moment in their lives that had left an indelible mark on Echo. He walked up to them both and gave them a genuine, heartfelt hug. “Are you guys okay?”
Blair smiled and nodded. “That was one of the hardest things I’ve done in my life. But, honestly, Echo, after our last visit, looking at that wife and her two young kids, I just got angry. I’m furious that this happened to us. I realized that we have a huge responsibility to all of these people. And now we have a chance to save one of our own if we can just find her.”
“How can I help?” asked Echo.
“First off,” Ryan started to answer. He pointed toward the toolshed. “Has he said anything?”
“No, not really,” replied Echo. “He’s not aware of everything that’s happened. Remember, he was locked up just as everything went south. He peed himself because a few stray rounds stitched holes along the back of the shed. I got him some pants and helped him change. That’s about it.”
“You went to his place?” asked Blair.
“Yeah. It looks like a Radio Shack in there. He barely has a place to sleep with all of that computer crap.”
Ryan wandered toward the shed, turning his back to Echo. “Did it look like he was trying to pack up? You know, like he planned on leaving.”
Echo shook his head. “No, not at all. In fact, all of his monitors were still turned on. He has spiral notebooks lying open on several folding tables. It just looked like a messy office space for six secretaries, but of course, it’s just him.”
Blair motioned for Ryan to come closer. She began to whisper, “I have an idea.”
“What’s that?” asked Ryan.
“Let’s play good cop, bad cop,” she replied. “We’ll work as a team and break him down.”
Ryan chuckled. “Let me guess, you wanna be the bad cop.”
“No, not this time. Although, if my plan doesn’t work, then I’ll turn into the worst kind of cop Walter O’Reilly ever imagined. You’re the bad cop this go-around.”
“Me? I don’t know …” Ryan’s voice trailed off with uncertainty.
Blair eased closer to him and looked up into his eyes. “This will work. I want you to go in there like you’ve lost your damn mind. He has to fear for his life. Do you understand me?”
“I am pissed off and I’d love to take it out on somebody,” said Ryan. “The guy who snatched Hannah is whom I had in mind, though.”
Blair patted her husband on the chest. “I think X-Ray can help us find Hannah and whoever’s behind all of this. You go in there and pound the crap out of him emotionally. Hell, slug him if you have to.”
“I can pull his long hair,” interjected Ryan.
“Hubs, you can kick him between the legs for all I care. Just scare the crap out of him and I’ll come to his rescue.”
Ryan nodded. “He’ll be just as afraid of you.”
“Good, and he should be. I’ll take him back to his cabin and put him to work. But know this, my hand will be resting on my pistol grip the whole time. I’ll put him down like a dog if he screws up.”
Ryan took a deep breath and conjured up the visions of the grieving families and the anger he felt when he thought of wrapping his hands around the throats of the people responsible for their husbands’ deaths. He suddenly turned and stormed away from Echo and Blair.
Playing his role, Echo shouted after him, “Ryan, wait! You can’t do that to him! Doesn’t he have the right to a trial or—”
“Hell no!” Ryan shouted, cutting off Echo’s question. Simultaneously, he kicked open the old wooden door, slinging it open until it slammed against the wall and nearly off the rusty hinges.
Light filled the darkened space, illuminating X-Ray hugging a round support pole in the middle of the shed, his hands tied together with two sets of zip-tie cuffs.
“Wait. Ryan, what’s the matter?” asked X-Ray, fear in his eyes.
Ryan stormed toward him, reached down and removed his Morakniv blade from its sheath. He raised it high over his head and plunged it toward the much shorter X-Ray, barely missing the man’s ear as the tip of the knife embedded in the wood post.
“Oh my god!” X-Ray shouted as he slid down the pole to avoid Ryan’s attempt to skewer his skull. “What? Why are you doing this? Help! Echo!”
“Shut up!” Ryan screamed in X-Ray’s face so loud that spittle flew out of his mouth and drenched the man’s cheeks. He wrestled with the knife to extract it from the post. Ryan’s anger had caused it to go more than an inch in the wood.
“Ryan, please. Please. Don’t kill me!” X-Ray twisted back and forth in an effort to put the pole between him and Ryan. This only served to give Ryan another method of intimidation.
He grabbed X-Ray’s longish hair and slammed his head against the pole. He reached around the pole with his right hand and pushed the blade up against X-Ray’s throat.
Ryan’s voice was low, guttural, animalistic. He was no longer acting or playing a part. “I’m gonna watch you bleed out. This is for the people who died today. And the little girl they stole from us! This is all on you, pal!”
“No! No! I didn’t know, um. Come on, Ryan. I can—arrrgggh!”
X-Ray screamed in agony as Ryan got a little too close to his throat with the knife, breaking the skin just below the Adam’s apple. Ryan’s grip on the knife loosened somewhat as X-Ray began to sob and beg for his life.
“Puhleeze, Ryan. I can fix this. Help!”
Blair rushed into the toolshed, leaving Echo outside to prevent anyone from responding to X-Ray’s pleas for help. “Ryan! Ryan, stop! Don’t do this!”
“Why shouldn’t I gut him?” he shouted back to her. “This guy, this piece of crap, got three of our people killed. And now Hannah has been kidnapped. What do you think they’re gonna do to that poor little girl?”
Ryan jerked X-Ray’s head back against the post with a thud. He then jerked it to the side, exposing the prisoner’s carotid artery. Back in control of his emotions, he sneered as he brought the knife up against X-Ray’s neck once again. X-Ray tried to crane his neck to pull away, but Ryan’s grip was too strong.
“I understand that,” Blair said in a calming voice. She circled around to face X-Ray, which was when she saw the steady trickle of blood emanating from the wound in his neck. Her eyes grew wide in surprise before she continued. “We need to have a trial. We’re not barbarians here.”
“Those guys who killed our people didn’t offer up a trial first. That’s BS. What about Hannah? Do you think they’re giving her a trial? What are they gonna do—?”
“Hannah? They took Hannah?” X-Ray repeated the question.
Ryan made eye contact with Blair. The two understood each other completely without uttering a word or twitching an eye. It was time for Blair to take over.
Good cop, for now.
“Yes, Walter, the men who attacked us killed three, wounded several others, and kidnapped Hannah. That darling little girl was practically yanked from the arms of her mother and whisked away.”
“All because of me,” mumbled X-Ray. In that moment, he took full responsibility for what had happened at the Haven that day. He realized his seemingly innocent response to a text had had dire consequences for the Cortland family. Tears began to flow down his cheeks, mixing with the blood that now covered his sweatshirt. “Please let me help you find her. I can. I promise.”
He was broken.
Chapter Seven
X-Ray’s Cabin
&
nbsp; The Haven
It was dark when Blair escorted X-Ray back into his cabin at gunpoint. Two guards were assigned to the perimeter along the riverfront, so Blair was confident she could call for backup if X-Ray tried to make a move. She didn’t trust him and assumed he had weapons stashed throughout his living space. While he changed out of his bloody clothes, she didn’t turn her head to provide the young man some privacy. Instead, in an act of intimidation, she watched him carefully, pointing her sidearm at his chest as he undressed.
“Walter,” began Blair, who no longer considered the young man a part of the Haven and therefore refused to recognize his nickname of X-Ray regardless of who had given it to him. “Do not mistake my kindness for weakness. Are we clear?”
“Yes, I understand,” he replied, holding his hands in the air as he made his way into his living room.
“Seriously, I will shoot you. In fact, I want to.”
“Please don’t. I promise you. I want to make this right, even if it means I’m expelled from the Haven. I owe it to those people who died. I owe it to the Cortlands and Hannah, whom I genuinely like.”
“I’m sure you do,” said Blair with a hint of snark. She motioned with the barrel of her gun for X-Ray to sit down at the computer and get to work.
He pulled the small office chair out from under the folding table he used as a desk. He nervously wiped the sweat off his palms. He took a deep breath and studied his monitors that displayed various screensavers. One home screen showed a painting of George Washington in a skiff, crossing the Delaware River on Christmas night in 1776.
“Nice touch,” said Blair, complimenting X-Ray for his choice.
X-Ray spoke calmly as he prepared his workspace. “It was a masterful attack, one that surprised the drunken Hessians. The biggest mistake an adversary can make is to let their guard down.”
Blair couldn’t resist. “Like we did with you?”
X-Ray closed his eyes and shook his head. “Fair enough,” he replied. He then turned in his chair and asked, “May I address something that you said at the dining table when we spoke?”
“Might as well,” replied Blair.
“You obviously have a knack for internet research, which explains how you came across some of my alternate social media handles. I want you to know that it’s not what you think.”
Blair laughed. “Well, Walter, what should I think? You have an alter ego that likes to troll the web, engaging in chat rooms with high school girls. Let me get right to it. Are you a pedophile?”
This riled X-Ray, who set his jaw and sat taller in his chair. “No, I am not, obviously.”
“Doesn’t seem so obvious to me,” Blair shot back.
“I’m not, Blair, and you know it. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have let me within a hundred miles of this place.”
Blair sniggered. “Just because I couldn’t prove it to be true doesn’t mean I can’t have my suspicions.”
“You are aware, of course, that was several years ago. At the time, I was nineteen.”
“Twenty,” interrupted Blair.
“Fine, for a while, I was twenty,” said X-Ray defensively. “I was immature for my age and couldn’t relate to college girls. I was only comfortable interacting with younger women.”
“They were teenagers! High schoolers, for Pete’s sake.”
“True, and they were only a few years younger than me. Think about it. How much older is Ryan than you?”
“Fourteen—” Blair began to respond before catching herself. This conversation was irrelevant to the task at hand. “There’s a huge difference. We were both adults when we met. You were trolling for kids.”
“Teens, and they were just a few years younger than me.”
“Jeez, Walter, who cares. I don’t, or you wouldn’t be here, like you said. What I do care about is finding Hannah. Now, get on the stick or you’ll be of no use to us. Comprende?”
He nodded and swung around to his keyboard. He banged away, deftly switching from window to window on his multiple monitors. At one point, he stopped, flexed his fingers and exhaled.
“Good. I’m not locked out.”
Blair looked over his shoulder and saw the official seal of the National Security Agency. “You’re on the NSA website?”
“Sort of, I mean, not the public NSA.gov that you might expect. This is their encrypted interagency domain that can be accessed by the Defense Department and the FBI.”
“Hold up,” cautioned Blair. “Can they trace that back to here?”
“Their servers think I’m in the Dallas office of the FBI. I used a VPN, virtual private network, to mask my identity and location.”
“Did you hack in?”
“Oh, no. I have a user name and password, provided by my handlers.”
Blair shook her head in disbelief. This young-looking, still pimple-faced young man, who just a few years ago was flirting with teenage girls online, had access to the NSA’s databases and surveillance tools.
“What’s your plan?”
“I’m going to access their satellite footage. I’m hoping that, under the circumstances, they devoted more resources to the U.S. mainland in order to assist law enforcement and the National Guard as they deal with the uprisings.”
“Makes sense,” said Blair as she leaned over his shoulder to get a better look. For the first time, she holstered her pistol, but kept her hand resting on the grip, just in case.
“From what you guys just told me, there had to be at least four vehicles bringing the attackers and their ladders to the Haven. There may have been one or two on the other side of the river, but we won’t concern ourselves with that just yet.”
X-Ray began to navigate through the NSA’s subwebs in search of satellite footage from the last twenty-four hours. It took fifteen minutes, but he eventually found two feeds that covered North and South Carolina.
“All right, as we know, traffic from the interstate toward the Haven is sparse. Any cars or trucks coming down Henry River Road, especially with extension ladders strapped on the roof, are important. I’m gonna start the feeds on both of these monitors. You watch the left and I’ll watch the right.”
“Got it.”
X-Ray set the speed of the feed replays at 2x, fast enough to cut their viewing time in half, but also not so fast that they’d miss the approaching vehicles. After forty minutes, they had struck out.
“Do you have any other ideas?” asked Blair as she stood upright from her hunched-over position to crack her back.
“We have to stick with it,” replied X-Ray. “It’s possible they waited until the last minute to get set up. When exactly did the attack occur?”
“Right about the time the morning meeting was breaking up. The morning shift was coming—”
“That’s it!” exclaimed X-Ray. “They must’ve been watching us prior to the attack. Hang on.”
He adjusted the speed to 4x, causing the camera to zip along faster, but still allowing them to notice vehicles heading south toward the Haven.
The time stamp on the footage registered five in the morning when Blair pointed at her monitor. “There! There’s the first one. It was a white van. There were four ladders strapped to the top.”
X-Ray paused his monitor and focused entirely on the footage that Blair pointed out. The two of them watched as five trucks or vans, separated by five minutes, drove down the road and eventually turned off into the woods in various spots.
“That’s them,” X-Ray declared as he leaned back in his chair and clasped his fingers behind his head. “Now we have to follow them back to their nest after the fight’s over.”
Blair breathed a sigh of relief and pulled her radio off her jean’s waistband. “Ryan, you copy?”
“Go ahead.”
“We’ve got something.”
“On my way.”
Blair and X-Ray continued to watch the footage, which didn’t allow them to see any of the attack due to the extensive tree cover. However, when the battle was over, X-Ray z
oomed in to see everyone gathering in the clearing in front of Haven Barn. He paused the camera replay until Ryan arrived.
Chapter Eight
Armageddon Hospital
The Haven
Alpha stood vigil over Frankie’s body, much to the chagrin of the comatose man’s attending physician, Angela. The hulk-like man towered over the gurney and frequently got in the way as Angela was trying to attend to the other injured patients. Gradually, as the evening progressed, everyone was sent back to their cabins except for Tom, who remained under the watchful eye of Donna.
Angela had tried repeatedly to send Alpha out the door, encouraging him to get some rest, check on his team, and even attempted to fool him into running an errand. He didn’t fall for any of it.
Finally, an exhausted Angela rolled a gurney into her office and stretched out on it to catch a few winks. Before she did, she made sure Tom had a pistol tucked under his sheets. She instructed him to shoot Alpha if he tried to harm Frankie, although she wasn’t sure if he’d do it.
“You know,” Alpha began, breaking a long period of silence in the large open space within the hospital, “stupid people are like glow sticks. You just wanna snap them and shake the crap out of them until the light comes on. This guy, lying there in a coma, isn’t much different. Maybe if I jerk him around a little bit, he’ll magically wake up?”
The tone and tenor of Alpha’s voice concerned Tom enough to reach for the handgun for the first time. Before it came to threatening Alpha, Tom tried the diplomatic approach. “Hey, I get it, big guy. I could do it with one good arm, but I don’t think it will work.”
“So the doc says,” grumbled Alpha. “Still, we’ve got to do something to get this thing off dead center. Every hour that passes is bad news for the kid, you know?”
Donna stood and walked over to Alpha. She gave him a grandmotherly hug. “Why don’t you come sit with us?” she asked, encouraging the big man to stop being fixated on Frankie.