by Patrick Lee
Travis reached his cover: an island in the kitchen. He dropped to a knee behind it, drew his SIG and leveled it on the door.
Already he could hear the footsteps outside, crunching hard on the exposed gravel. Seconds away.
Three protected shooting angles on a solitary chokepoint, against aggressors who didn’t even expect to come under fire—who expected to burst in on a scuffle among unprepared subjects.
Travis took a breath and steadied his hand on the granite.
The footsteps outside covered the last stretch to the door. Whoever was leading the pack didn’t stutter-step. He hit the lock at full speed and the latch-plate splintered from the frame and the door exploded inward.
Dominic didn’t really expect to hear shooting. The team would seek only to control the situation. At most they’d trigger a few three-round bursts into the ceiling for intimidation, though even that was unlikely. These men were professionals. They knew how to assert themselves without theatrics. And their orders were explicit: take the subjects alive. Gunfire of any kind would be an unnecessary risk.
Dominic’s own orders were in the same vein. His role was to disable the visitors’ vehicle if necessary—one shot to the engine block would do—but otherwise to withhold fire.
Only under the most implausible scenario, in which the visitors eluded the team and seemed likely to escape, was Dominic to engage them with lethal force.
It wouldn’t come to that. The decoy plan had failed pretty miserably—almost comically—but the rest would be warm butter on toast.
He was thinking that very thing when he heard the front door crash in—and right on top of that sound came the first gunshots. He flinched and tore out his earpiece, but not before recognizing what he was hearing: not the 9mm bursts the team would fire, but single shots of something heavier. Forty-caliber Smith and Wesson, it sounded like. And maybe a few 9mm shots among them, but not in three-round bursts. All the shots were sporadic but one at a time.
Then it was over.
Three seconds, start to finish.
In the silence he heard his pulse in his ears. And the wind sighing over the ridge into the valley, pushing the big snowflakes almost sideways.
He felt for his earpiece and put it back in place, but for the longest time he heard nothing.
Travis stood and surveyed the aftermath. His eyes picked out the relevant points in order of importance.
Paige and Carrie were unhurt.
All the bodies in the entry were down and still.
There was no one else coming in. No footsteps outside. No voices. Just empty darkness and blowing snow.
The decoy was still lying bound in front of the chair. Still unconscious. And unharmed.
The women stood from their cover. They met each other’s eyes, and Travis’s.
Travis crossed from the kitchen to the front door, his gun still trained on the bodies. He scrutinized them, saw that each had taken at least one headshot, and felt his tension step down a degree.
A second later it stepped back up.
Five bodies.
In his mind he saw the decoy extending five digits of one hand, then adding another finger with a shrug.
Five, maybe six.
If there was a sixth man, where was he? Why wasn’t he with the group?
Travis thought of the terrain surrounding the cabin, and the answer suggested itself. And made his skin prickle.
A lookout, up high. Almost certainly armed.
He saw earpieces on each of the corpses. He stooped and took the nearest one, and fixed it to his own ear.
“Are you listening?” he said. “Do you hear that? That’s the sound of none of your friends breathing.”
He waited.
No reply.
He hoped he was talking to dead air. But doubted it.
Dominic had already swiveled the mouthpiece behind his head so the man wouldn’t hear his breath. He kept the earpiece in place. He listened. Time drew out. It felt like the audio equivalent of a stare-down.
“Correction,” the man in the cabin said. “One of your friends is breathing. The nice old lady who lied to us. I guess it’s possible she’s not really your friend—but she’s somebody’s friend, isn’t she? I bet she matters to the people who hired you.”
Dominic felt his adrenaline begin to climb. He could see exactly where this was going.
“She has to be someone personally close to them,” the man said. “Who else would they trust to do this? I don’t think they found her on Craigslist.”
Fuck. Fuck.
“So here’s how this happens,” the man continued. “The three of us, plus your decoy, are leaving right now. In a tight group. You won’t have a shot that doesn’t risk hitting her. We’re going to stay tight all the way to the Jeep, and we’re going to sit tight inside the Jeep, and we’re going to keep it that way until we’re long gone. And if you try to kill the vehicle and strand us here, my first move is to put her brains in the snow. Try me if you think I’m bluffing.”
A hard plastic clatter ended the speech: the man had dropped the earpiece on the floor.
He wasn’t bluffing. Dominic was clear on that. Even if he’d thought it was a bluff, he couldn’t have taken the chance. He had no idea who the decoy really was—therefore risking her life wasn’t his decision.
It was someone else’s.
He reached into his parka and withdrew the blue cell phone. He double-pressed the send button and saw the display light up, the phone already dialing the man who’d called him last night.
First ring. No answer.
Far below, a broad shape emerged from the cabin. Four bodies clumped together. Three walking, one being carried. Even without looking through the Remington’s scope Dominic could see there was no shot. No single head was distinct—they were all shoved together in a silhouetted mass.
Second ring. No answer.
The group reached the Jeep and piled in and the engine roared. The headlights came on.
Third ring. No answer.
The vehicle backed around in a tight arc until it faced the road, then lunged forward, taking the turn fast and racing away down the valley toward town.
Fourth ring. No answer.
Dominic put his eye to the scope and centered the reticle on the Jeep. He did the math, the variables stacking up automatically in his head: range, velocity, elevation, time.
He could kill the vehicle easily right now. Once that was done he could put shot after shot into the passenger compartment, then sprint down to it and make a thorough finish.
That would hold true for maybe twenty seconds, given the Jeep’s speed. After that it would be more luck than skill.
Twenty seconds, if the call connected right now.
Twenty seconds to explain the situation and get a decision.
Nineteen seconds.
Fifth ring. A click on the line. A man’s voice: “Talk to me.”
Travis hated having the headlights on, making an easier target of the vehicle, but he had no choice. Under this cloudcover the valley would be ink black, and he couldn’t afford to lose the road. Burying the Jeep in snow would be fatal if there really was a sixth man back there.
A memory from childhood came to him: Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman. Some point along this road represented the fabled bridge, the margin beyond which they would be safe.
He was certain they hadn’t reached it yet.
Paige was next to him in the passenger seat. Carrie sat centered behind them, leaning forward over the console. She had the decoy slumped across her lap, still bound, the Beretta pressed to her head in case she woke. Which she seemed to be doing—she was making noises.
How long since they’d pulled onto this road? Ten seconds? Fifteen?
Ahead lay the town, bright and welcoming beyond the darkness that engulfed the Jeep. They were ten seconds shy of the light when the first bullet hit. It struck the left edge of the hood with a sound like a baseball bat’s impact, but deflected without penetrating
the metal. Travis felt the others flinch, and his hands jerked on the wheel, and for a terrible second the vehicle began to fishtail on the snowy road. The back end went left, the wheels spinning without purchase. A second shot skipped off the hard top three inches above Travis’s head. He felt cold air seethe down through the resulting rupture in the material. Then the Jeep straightened and surged forward again, and for the next three seconds nothing happened except that the town got closer and the darkness ahead of them got shorter. Three seconds for them to think they might make it.
Then the rear window shattered and a spring twanged inside a seatback, and blood splattered all over the windshield.
Chapter Ten
Not Paige.
Later, that would be the only thing Travis remembered thinking as the next seconds played out. Not the calculation of how far they had to go to reach safety, or how long that would take. Not the awareness that he needed to keep the Jeep under control. Not even the fear of another shot.
Not Paige. That was it. He could handle anyone else in the vehicle dying, himself included. Just not Paige.
If anybody was screaming, he couldn’t tell. His ears were ringing with increased bloodflow and the wind was keening through the hole above him, drawn by the pressure differential from the missing back window.
They passed into light on the east edge of town and the first available cross street came up fast. Travis braked and hauled right on the wheel, and halfway through the turn he saw a newspaper box on the streetcorner buffeted by a shot. The papers inside fluttered as if they’d caught a moment’s breeze. Then the Jeep was fully onto the side street and accelerating, with two-story brick buildings shielding it from the shooter.
The blood on the windshield was running down, each thick drop now a vertical line.
Travis turned to Paige.
Her left coat sleeve and the left side of her face were bloodier than the windshield.
But no more damaged than the windshield, either. It wasn’t her blood—a fact she seemed to be just verifying for herself. She turned in her seat and looked back at Carrie Holden.
Carrie wasn’t leaning forward over the console now. She was pressed against her own seatback, one hand to the lower left side of her abdomen.
Her fingers were soaked with blood.
“Jesus Christ,” Paige said. She repositioned herself so she was kneeling, facing Carrie; she switched on the dome light and bent down to study the wound.
Her first discovery was notable: the rifle bullet had clipped Carrie’s side—and fragmented in the decoy’s head. Most of which was now gone. As Travis looked more carefully at the blood on the windshield he saw that not all of it was blood. There was gray matter there. And a few chips of bone. He wondered if a death had ever mattered less to him.
He glanced back again and saw that Carrie had pulled up the bottom of her shirt to examine her own injury. It was all but superficial. The bullet had hit her so far to the side that it had almost missed—a quarter inch would’ve made the difference. The result was like a shallow knife slash to her side. Some bleeding, but no serious trauma. She let the shirt fall back over it and shoved the decoy’s body to the floor.
Travis glanced at Paige as she faced forward again. He saw her working out the pieces of what’d just happened.
“I guess it’s possible that whoever killed Garner could’ve found this place,” she said, “if they had the right connections. The government would’ve had no record of where you relocated to, Carrie, but they would’ve seen your name drop off Tangent’s personnel list in 1994. They’d know you were out there somewhere. In the past few years, facial geometry software could’ve probably narrowed DMV records to ten thousand or fewer. Narrow further by age and then look for a real-estate purchase or lease agreement in ninety-four, and they’d be in the ballpark. Wouldn’t take much legwork beyond that point. They might’ve found you five years ago and filed it away under useful.”
Carrie nodded. She looked emotionally drained, but still alert. “I used to be so careful about everything. Paranoid, even. After a while, it felt nice to think I didn’t have to be.”
Paige looked at Travis. “I think I was wrong earlier. The note they left for us—I don’t think they did expect us to understand it. Not in full, anyway. If they anticipated our showing up here, they must have known we’d be hard up for information about Scalar. They knew we’d come here to ask Carrie about it.”
“That makes the trap contradict itself,” Travis said. “Why set up a decoy to get information out of us, if we were only coming because we were clueless?”
He considered it for two seconds and then answered his own question.
“Confirmation. They believed we didn’t know anything, but they wanted to be certain. Like whatever it is they’re doing, they had to rule us out as a threat.”
Paige looked at him. “There’s no way they killed a president just to set all that up.”
“Not a chance. They’d need a bigger reason for that. This feels more like an afterthought.”
“Could the real reason involve putting Stuart Holt in power?” Paige said. “Maybe he’s involved. He’s the one who pointed the FBI toward us, ultimately leading us here.”
“It’s something to keep in mind,” Travis said.
They reached the end of the street and Travis took a left. Three blocks ahead lay Main Street, which was also Highway 550 running north out of town.
“I heard your introductions from the other room,” Carrie said. “Travis Chase. Paige Campbell.” A pause. “You’re Peter’s daughter.”
Paige looked back at her and nodded.
“I watched you grow up in photographs on his desk,” Carrie said. “You were fourteen when I left.” Again she paused. Then she said, “He’s dead, isn’t he? If he were alive, he wouldn’t have let you come here to ask me about Scalar.”
Paige nodded again.
Travis made the right onto 550. He could see the road extending ahead beyond the edge of Ouray, north into the darkness.
Then Carrie drew a hard breath with a shudder in it, and both Travis and Paige looked back at her. Travis had guessed the pain was getting worse, but she wasn’t wincing, and her hands were nowhere near the wound; they were relaxed on her knee.
The only thing tense was her face—with fear.
She looked at them both. “Is it really starting again? Everything Scalar was about?”
“Yes,” Travis said. “How much do you know about it?”
“Some. I know all about how it started. What led to it. Not much detail of the investigation itself. Peter was … hesitant to talk about it.”
“So I learned,” Paige said.
“Please tell us as much as you can,” Travis said. “Right now all we’ve got are questions.”
Carrie nodded. She sat there a moment putting her thoughts in order. When she spoke again, Travis could still hear the fear, though contained, subdued.
“The Scalar investigation was a cold case. It was cold even when Peter and the others started working on it in 1981. In a way, it was a manhunt, though they knew the man in question was already dead. Their goal was to learn about something he’d done just before he died—something that might have long-term consequences. The man’s name was Ruben Ward. I’m sure you’ve both heard of him.”
The name was instantly familiar to Travis, but he couldn’t place it. It was like trying to match an obscure actor’s name to a face or a role. He looked at Paige and saw no such struggle in her expression—she knew exactly who Ruben Ward was.
She glanced at him. “You read about him your first day in Border Town, in the journal down on Level 51.”
It came back to him before she’d even finished speaking. In the first hour Travis had spent in Border Town, more than three years earlier, Paige had given him a tour of the essentials. Which was to say she’d shown him the Breach. But first she’d taken him into a fortified bunker down the hall from it, and let him read a bloodstained notebook that dated to the Breach’
s creation—March 1978.
That journal had been written by a man named David Bryce, a physicist and a founder of the Very Large Ion Collider project, which had once—very briefly after its completion—resided on the premises. Bryce had decided to keep an informal account of events at the VLIC: a journal that he and others could write in whenever they felt like it. The first entry had been jotted a few hours before the collider’s maiden test shot; Bryce’s tone had been lighthearted and hopeful. The same couldn’t be said for the rest of the entries.
The remainder of the journal chronicled not only the hellish first days after the Breach’s formation, but Bryce’s own descent into something like an animal mindset, his cognitive functions and his inhibitions stripped away by exposure to the Breach—specifically the sounds that issued from it. Breach Voices, as they were now known.
The journal had also mentioned Ruben Ward, the man who had actually thrown the switch to initiate the VLIC’s first shot. The man who, in the strictest sense, had opened the Breach.
Ward had paid instantly for the privilege. According to the journal, he’d collapsed at the moment of the shot—possibly jolted by the switch or its metal housing—and never woke during the days that followed. Travis had heard a bit more about him afterward: Ward had been transferred to some hospital out east, still unresponsive, and ended up in a coma unit. That was as much as Travis knew. In all the time since he’d first heard the story, he’d never brought it up again. Neither had anyone else.
“I was under the impression he died at Johns Hopkins,” Paige said, “a couple months after the VLIC accident. April or May of 1978.”
“That’s what we told people,” Carrie said. “People who joined Tangent later on, after Scalar had come and gone. Kept them from asking unwanted questions.”
“So where did he really die?” Paige said.
“In a hotel room in Los Angeles, late that summer. August 12. He walked out of the coma unit at Johns Hopkins by himself in the first week of May, vanished off the grid for three months, then checked into a room on Sunset and put a .38 in his mouth. At the time we all thought we understood, more or less. Whatever the VLIC accident did to him must have left him scrambled. Maybe deep depression, maybe anxiety. He struggled with it that summer and then called it good, we figured. It wasn’t until a few years later that we found out we were wrong. Very wrong. At which point Peter launched the Scalar investigation to try to piece together those missing three months. He was desperate to find out where Ward had gone during that time, and what he’d done—desperate to learn anything about him, really.”