Winston Chase- The Complete Trilogy

by Bodhi St John

  “Why?” she managed.

  “Because this girl, whoever she is, wants us to meet with Winston tonight at Council Crest Park. Ten o’clock sharp. So, it’s a win-win. If the FBI brings him in, I win. If he escapes and meets us, I win, because I already know he’ll crack like an egg if I threaten you. He already proved this with his dad.” Taking her arm, Bledsoe led her back to the Crown Victoria. “Oh, Amanda. This is going to be such a great day!”

  35

  A Shoelace…Shocking!

  Winston’s heart paused in his chest as a spike of fear ran throughout is body.

  What should he do? Hope the man was slow and try to fire on him? Bad odds.

  Do as he said? Then it would be game over, and the Alpha Machine would be as good as in Bledsoe’s hands. Winston liked those odds even less.

  He dropped Little e at his feet, where it would still be accessible within a second, but he raised his empty hands to show that he posed no threat.

  “I’m going to turn around slowly, OK?” he called.

  “I said face on ground!”

  Hardly daring to breathe, Winston inched his way around to face the agent. The FBI man’s gun fired, and the report struck Winston’s ears like a physical blow. He shuddered on legs that no longer wanted to support him.

  A second later, though, Winston realized that he hadn’t been hit. He could see the agent from the corner of his eye, handgun pointed skyward. It had been a warning shot.

  The agent was a bit older than Winston expected, with a broad bald strip down his scalp and gray mixed into his day-old stubble. His slacks were smeared with dirt, and mud clumped around the soles of his black loafers. Clearly, he’d been out searching all night. Despite that, he seemed reasonably sharp and fresh, which wasn’t encouraging.

  “I’m not gonna do anything!” Winston cried. “I just want to talk. Is that cool?”

  “No, it’s not. You can tell it to—”

  “Look, you’re out here chasing us because of this Devlin Bledsoe guy, right? But have you looked in that hangar down there? He killed my dad. He cut off the top of his head, tested him like a rat, blew off—”

  The agent fired again, and this time Winston saw a puff of dirt erupt from the ground ten feet to his right.

  “The next one will be in your leg,” said the agent. “Maybe. It’s been a very long day.”

  “Sir, I’m not a threat to anybody!” Winston tried again, hoping the right words would come to mind. They didn’t.

  The agent gave a short, bitter laugh. “Like I care.”

  Winston heard a crackle of electricity, and the man’s body suddenly went rigid. He stood there, trembling, eyes wide and mouth open, and then slowly slumped sideways like a falling tree. In his place, Shade crouched after having crept silently up through the shadows behind the agent. He gripped the little black-and-yellow film camera in his hand.

  Holding it toward the agent’s face, which now lay cheek-down in the dirt, Shade put on his most bemused expression and said innocently, “I care.”

  Winston gaped at him.

  Shade grinned as he planted a knee between the agent’s shoulder blades. “Which movie?”

  That brought Winston back to himself, even though his hands still quivered. “Empire Strikes Back. Of course. What is that thing?”

  “Homemade stun gun.” He showed Winston the metal screw protruding from the camera’s side as well as the nail he held in the other, which had a shaft coated in thick blue rubber and a tip glued to a thin wire that retracted back into the camera body. With the shock over and his muscular control returned, the agent tried to get his hands under himself and rise, so Shade placed the camera body on the agent’s neck and the nail’s bare metal head against exposed skin just above the agent’s belt where the shirt had come untucked. He depressed the shutter button and sent the man into a fresh set of spasms. Shade winked at Winston. “Only six million volts, but with twenty-five milliamps, it does the job. Now, let’s get this guy out of the way.”

  Shade released the shutter but kept the electrodes on the agent’s skin as he directed Winston to open his backpack. Winston soon emerged with two zip ties and a small roll of duct tape. He quickly bound the agent’s hands behind his back and cuffed his ankles while Shade kept him immobilized. The agent tried to speak, but Shade cut him off with a curt, “Like I care.”

  When Shade was convinced that the man wasn’t going anywhere, he returned to his bag but soon grimaced.

  “Oooh. I’m really sorry, FBI guy.”

  “What?” asked Winston.

  “I’m out of clean socks,” he said as he held up a specimen colored more in grime than white. “It’ll have to do.”

  The agent’s eyes bulged and he began to thrash and object, but Shade held him still and stuffed at least half of the sock in the man’s mouth. Still, he was courteous enough to lead with the neck end. Winston held the agent’s head as Shade wrapped duct tape across his mouth and behind his neck three times, careful to leave his nose open. The agent was not shy about making his displeasure clear.

  Together, the boys dragged the man off into the trees.

  “Here,” said Shade as he directed them to a particular pine tree surrounded by waist-high shrubs thick with prickly leaves and small red berries. Winston fought against complaining as the bushes scratched at his exposed skin. They propped the seated agent up against the tree, and Shade kept him still with the threat of another shock while Winston bound his torso to the tree with a length of slender nylon rope from Shade’s pack. Winston only knew how to tie square knots, so he erred on the side of keeping the rope tight and doubling every knot.

  “What are you?” asked Winston. “An assassin with a Bag of Holding? How much stuff can you fit in there? Did you bring chairs and a card table?”

  “Efficient packing is a virtue.”

  “Hey, sorry to leave you hanging so long. I had to check out for a little bit. My dad…” Winston paused in his work as he swallowed thickly. “Bledsoe killed him. And I had to give him one of the pieces. The geoviewer. Although the pieces are being weird. It’s blocking me from more than it’s allowing now.”

  Shade’s countenance softened, and he seemed at a loss for words. “I’m sorry, man,” he managed.

  Winston added another couple of rope bonds around the agent and tree, just to keep his hands busy. “I mean, he was in bad shape, anyway. But Bledsoe…made it so much worse. He’s completely over the edge.”

  Shade nodded. “We’re gonna figure this out, and that guy is gonna go back to whatever dusty hole he calls home. Of course—” He tapped the agent’s chest with the camera. The man jerked in fear, but Shade had not pressed the shutter button. “It would be easier if certain people would just leave us alone.”

  “Speaking of.” Winston cleared his throat. “What did you do last night?”

  Shade smiled. “At first, I hid in a tree. One guy actually walked right under me, so I don’t want to hear any more from you about looking like a corn dog in these OSU sweats, ‘cause it came in handy against all those leaves. Around one o’clock, I came down and painted one side of a Mylar blanket in mud for camouflage and buried myself in leaves under a fallen tree. Slept like a baby for about four hours.”

  Winston shook his head. “And here I thought you might have been running around or captured.”

  “Pfff!” Shade waved the idea away like a mosquito. “No, and definitely no. I mean, there might have been a problem if they’d called in more people, especially anyone who knew what they were doing.” The agent snarled and grumbled into his gag. “But no, it was all cool.”

  Winston knelt before the man. He clearly had most of his bodily control back, and his sweaty, dark expression did not have a look of understanding sympathy.

  “Sir, I’m really sorry about this,” Winston said. “I’m not a terrorist, but the guy you’re working for is a maniac.” He stood up, and the agent’s glare followed him. “And I’m sorry about Shade’s sock.”

  “
Really sorry,” Shade added. “Mom is gonna be so mad about losing one, but…whatever. OK, let’s go.”

  As the man tried to call out for help behind them, Winston and Shade tightened their pack straps and set off together into the forest.

  With underbrush tugging at their feet and stray pine and elm branches groping for their faces, Winston and Shade ran deeper into the woods. Winston couldn’t help but notice that Shade’s steps were sure and strong while his own threatened to betray him. Twice, his toe caught on roots, making him stumble and nearly face plant in the dirt, and he almost turned his ankle on a rock that he should have easily evaded.

  “Do you know where you’re going?” he panted at Shade’s back. The oddness of his labored breathing compared to Shade struck Winston. Winston was Shifford’s best runner, while Shade was notoriously ill-suited for long runs. He should be crushing the football player up this hill. Despite Winston’s longer night of sleep, perhaps all that time jumping was already taking a toll on him.

  “See the path we’re on?” Shade asked.

  Winston did. It looked like the same animal trail he’d come up earlier.

  “Yeah.”

  “Stop up here,” Shade said.

  They came to a curve in the path. A fallen tree lay to their right, stretching down the hill, and rough, rocky ground waited to their left.

  “Step where I step,” Shade said. “Stay on the rocks.”

  Winston followed him, wishing desperately he’d worn boots rather than his black Converse, which slid treacherously on the stones. Shade, on the other hand, had worn Gore-Tex boots with a deep waffle tread, although the shoelace lengths no longer matched. Even worse, Shade might pant and slump like a blown horse, but he showed no sign of slowing, and his footing was always sure. Winston supposed Shade could keep on like this all day, but Winston knew he couldn’t hold this pace much longer.

  Shade noticed this and paused. He waved for Winston to get down, and they crouched low.

  “The agents will be coming, but losing our tracks might slow them down for a few minutes. I’ve seen four so far, including the one we already handled. What about you?”

  Winston shrugged apologetically. “No idea. That one you dropped is the only one I’ve seen.”

  Shade already had his pack on the ground before him. He dug out a black-sheathed knife, some fishing line, a bundle of tubes bound with a rubber band, and other odds and ends. An expression of crazed delight sat on his features, as if he were opening his big Christmas present.

  “You’re not going to kill anybody, are you?”

  Shade opened a hard silver case, revealing three small darts with red fuzz on one end and quite serious-looking, slightly barbed needles on the other.

  “No!” said Shade, brow crinkling. “Probably not. This is only sodium thiopental. I found a bottle sort of lying out in the surgical theater at my sister’s vet practice. It’s a barbiturate used to put animals under during surgery. Five milligrams will knock out a woman when she delivers a baby by C-section. Of course,” he added almost as an afterthought to himself, “too much of it can put someone into a coma. Or kill them. I think some countries actually do use it for euthanasia.”

  “Are you insane?” Winston grabbed Shade’s arm, trying to stop whatever he was doing. “How much is in those darts?”

  His lower lip jutted out a bit, and he looked genuinely offended. “Only six milligrams. Geeze. It’s not like I’m reckless and irresponsible.”

  Hardly missing a beat, Shade put his hands back to work. He continued to dig and set out supplies, most of which made no sense to Winston. He had tent stakes, mouse traps painted forest green, three different kinds of wire of varying gauges, a small plastic box containing an assortment of nails, a fold-up army shovel, a multi-tool the length of Winston’s hand, red cap gun rings, and much more.

  “Got enough?” Winston asked.

  Shade overlooked the snark. “Don’t worry. You have the hard job.”

  Winston got a dark, lurching feeling in his guts. He really hoped his job didn’t entail turning himself in and creating a diversion.

  “What hard job?”

  Shade tried to appear optimistic.

  “Run back to the trail,” he said. “Quick, before they catch up. Continue up the path for at least a quarter mile. When you find another rocky patch, take it. Watch to make sure you don’t leave tracks. Try to vanish. The object of the game is to double back toward me without them knowing it.”

  Winston stared at him. “Dude, I don’t know if I can outrun grown men right now. I’m not in a good place.”

  Shade shook his head and got back to work, unfolding the saw from his multi-tool and slicing into a nearby sapling.

  “If you hurry, you won’t have to,” he said. “And remember: They’ve been up all night looking for me. They’re probably dead on their feet.”

  “And you’re not.”

  “Adrenaline,” said Shade. “Plus, I’m having a blast. This is what I trained for. All that backyard practice? All that wacky website reading? Right here, man. Right now. It’s not zombies, but it’s close.”

  Shade finished sawing through the sapling and quickly cut off the other end, leaving about a two-foot stick into which he cut a large notch.

  “I’m pretty sure all of this qualifies as assaulting federal officers,” said Winston. “At least.”

  Shade pointed the stick at Winston. “Says the nuclear terrorist. Dude, you said it yourself. If these people catch us, they might actually kill us. For real. Or lock us away in a Guantanamo cellar or something for the rest of our lives. It happens.”

  “Guano-what?”

  He shooed Winston away. “You gotta go! Now!”

  Shade’s frantic tone pushed Winston to his feet and set him heading back in the direction from which they’d come.

  “Where will you be?” Winston called.

  “Around where we left the path! I’ll find you!”

  Winston had a bad feeling about the condition Shade might find him in, but he broke into as fast a run as he thought he could sustain over the treacherous ground.

  36

  Flight in the Forest

  No sooner had Winston stumbled his way back to the path than he heard a sneeze in the distance from down the hill. He couldn’t see anyone through the trees yet, but he guessed they weren’t more than a couple of hundred yards off and heading his way. Winston searched about himself, feeling panic begin to boil.

  “OK, OK,” he whispered. “Think. Don’t screw this up. Think.”

  What would someone do on TV? Probably stand farther up the path, wait for the men to come into view, wave, and say something clever like, “Hey, dummies!” before running off.

  This wasn’t some kid-friendly, straight-to-rental movie, though. Everyone knew the stakes, and Winston suspected that Bledsoe’s patience was well past gone. He wouldn’t put it past these government agents to simply shoot on sight, plant a gun on him, and call it self-defense, especially after all the mayhem of the previous night. He could shoot them with Little e, but the damage would be significant, possibly fatal, and he might start a forest fire if he missed. Better to shoot them than get shot himself, of course, but Winston resisted the urge to rely on the most destructive option first. He would trust Shade as long as possible.

  Think. The object of the game was to stay barely visible but out of the line of fire.

  Winston gave himself a last moment to catch his breath, then he took off at a run, careful to dig in his heels with each step so the tracks were plainly visible.

  How far had Shade said to go? Winston couldn’t remember, but he ran on, lungs and legs aching, keeping to the right at every fork to draw them away from Shade’s direction.

  Soon, sweat chilled on Winston’s forehead, and he felt slightly dizzy. Normally, Winston loved running cross-country for the air and scenery. Now, though, he was so focused on the ground, avoiding roots and exhaustion, that it took all his attention not to fall. Yet he pushed on minute
after minute, allowing himself to slow when necessary but never to drop to a walk.

  Winston reached the hill’s summit. Trees were more sparse here. He glimpsed the back side of the Air Museum on the plain far below. Many cars and emergency response vehicles now lined the hangar’s perimeter, and a meandering column of black smoke still wafted from the main opening. He couldn’t see into the foliage blanketing the hillside below, however, and it had been a while since he’d tried to confirm that the agents were still pursuing him. Winston had to chance it and have a little faith. Not allowing himself the luxury of rest, he left the path and doubled back toward the north, aiming for Shade’s position…he hoped.

  Fortunately, stumbling downhill was easier than running uphill. Unfortunately, the risk of rolling an ankle and breaking his neck was even higher, and Winston found himself so focused on the ground that he neglected to look up and keep an eye on his bearings. When the agent stepped out from behind a broad, towering pine tree in front of him, Winston nearly ran straight into him. He let out a short yell of surprise, then his clumsy attempt at evasion sent him thudding into the tree. He had just enough presence of mind to raise his hands and catch himself before meeting the trunk face-first.

  The agent reached for him, but Winston ducked away from his hand. The man tried again, and Winston ducked once more. The pine was over five feet across, giving him just enough room to stay out of reach if he was quick. As soon as the agent realized Winston wasn’t going to chance a footrace and might keep up this cat and mouse game all day, he said, “FBI. Stop right where you are.”

  “I don’t think so,” Winston panted.

  “You’re resisting arrest?”

  He lunged. Winston dodged. They made a quick circle around the tree.

  “I’m just playing,” said Winston. “I don’t know what you’re doing.”

  “You’re resisting arrest, sir. I’m Agent Parker of the FBI, and I’m ordering you to halt.”

  Winston searched about, desperate for some idea. The agent wasn’t an old man, and he seemed fit. Chances were he could probably run Winston down in his present condition. Climbing the tree wouldn’t accomplish anything, even if he had the spare seconds to do it. And the longer he stalled, the higher the odds grew of a second agent showing up and putting a quick end to this. He only had one option.