by Jake Bible
Dr. Probst has to use all of her willpower not to reach across the desk and smack the man.
“If we don’t hear from them by tomorrow, you make a call and get someone to go look for them,” Dr. Probst says. “Or I go looking myself.”
“In what? Your secret spy plane?” Dr. Bartolli laughs. “Just do your job, Cheryl. Let the military worry about people out in the field. I’ll file a report as I’m required to, but I’m not making any special calls. I can bet we’ll hear from them soon, once they get to a working phone.”
“Fine,” Dr. Probst says, turns abruptly, and storms out of the office.
Dr. Bartolli watches her go, and then shakes his head as he goes back to the work on his desktop. He makes a mental note to file the report later. Or in the morning. Well, sometime tomorrow.
***
US Marshal Lucinda “Lu” Morgan reaches out and puts her hand against the side of the bus as the world around her shakes. Her sunglass-shaded eyes search the area, finding the other US Marshals bracing themselves against the four other buses with “Federal Bureau of Prisons” stenciled on the sides. The ground continues to shake for a good couple of minutes before slowly becoming steady once more.
“Hal! You good?” Lu shouts to a short, heavily muscled man on the other side of the gas station.
“Fine here!” US Marshal Hal Stacks shouts back. “You?”
“Just a little wobbly,” Lu replies. “Talley?”
“Cool,” US Marshall James Talley replies from the bus behind Hal’s. Tall and lanky with deep black skin, Talley adjusts his sunglasses, then pulls the gas hose from the bus and sets it into the pump. “Ready to go.”
“Good,” Lu nods. “Stevie?”
“Five by five, Lu,” US Marshall Steven LeDeaux replies from the bus right behind Lu’s. Skinny legs with a great big beer belly, Stevie looks like he’s about to fall over at any second from his top heavy body. Many a fugitive have made the mistake of underestimating the speed of those skinny legs.
“Do you even know what that means, Stevie?” Lu laughs.
“Not a clue,” Stevie laughs back. “Just something my Aunt Jessie always said.”
Lu turns and looks at the bus up ahead of hers. “Tony? All good?”
“All good, boss,” US Marshal Anthony Whipple responds. The youngest of the marshals present, Tony has the look of a star quarterback with blond hair, blue eyes, perfect complexion. He lowers his sunglasses and gives Lu a wink.
She lowers her sunglasses and glares as the winter wind whips about the gas station, kicking up ash and snow that covers the whole city of Salt Lake. Tony winks again and raises his glasses, then pulls the gas hose from the bus and sets it back into the pump. Lu hears a loud click and does the same with her hose before pulling her jacket tight about her and walking towards the station’s small market.
“Bathroom?” Lu asks.
The cashier points towards the back, his eyes angrily studying the street outside his station. Dozens of cars are lined up along the road as National Guard soldiers pace back and forth at the gas station’s entrances, with M-16s in hand, blocking any access to the station’s precious gas.
“You folks about done out there?” the cashier asks. “I gotta let those folks fill up so I can get out of here.”
“We just dropped nearly a thousand dollars on gas,” Lu says. “That should make up for it.”
“It’s not about the money, lady,” the cashier grumbles. “It’s about living.”
Lu rolls her eyes, heads to the women’s bathroom and flips on the dim light. She locks the door and undoes her jeans, carefully taking her sidearm from her belt and placing it on the small sink next to the toilet. She takes care of business, and then stands before the mirror as she washes her hands.
Tall like her mother, red haired like her mother, a natural beauty that could have been a model just like her mother, except for the obviously broken nose that healed crooked, Lu has had to fight her way up the ladder to her post in the US Marshal’s Denver office. No one takes a woman that looks like her seriously in law enforcement. They instantly think she’s a lipstick lesbian and only there to fill a quota. So she was glad she could handpick her crew when she was given the assignment to move fifty of the most dangerous federal prisoners from the Florence, Colorado maximum security penitentiary across the West and up to Seattle.
Knowing the other marshals respect and trust her goes a long way when she has to deal with the fact that the fifty men spread out in the five buses would have zero problem cutting off her head and shitting down her neck.
She redoes the ponytail her hair is tied up in and then takes a deep breath, ready to get back out there and get on the road to Coeur d’Alene.
“Speaking of,” she laughs as her cell phone rings just as she walks out of the bathroom. She pulls it from her belt and her heart leaps into her throat when she sees the number. “Mom? Mom, what’s wrong? Is it Kyle? Is he hurt? Why are you calling me directly?”
“Calm down, sweetheart,” Terrie replies. “Kyle is fine. We’re a little shaken up by an earthquake that just hit us, but we’re both okay.”
“You felt that too?” Lu asks. “Jesus, if it’s coming from Yellowstone, then we are fucked.”
Lu hears her mom take a deep breath at the use of language, but she doesn’t get a reprimand; they are long past that argument.
“Listen, Lu, there’s been a change of plans,” Terrie says. “Kyle and I will be driving the Bronco until we meet up with you all. We’re in the car now and about to head through Champion on our way to Bonners Ferry.”
“You’re driving?” Lu asks as she nods to the cashier and steps out of the market and into the brisk winter air. “Is something wrong with one of the buses? Did they fill up too fast?”
“No, it’s not the buses,” Terrie says. “Everything is running on time and smooth with those plans.”
“Okay, then what is it. Mom?” Lu asks. “You’re starting to freak me out.”
Lu raises a hand and twirls her finger in the air. Hal sees it, turns and gives a loud whistle. All of the prison corrections officers that are accompanying the buses as backup hustle to their vehicles followed by the US Marshal assigned to each bus.
“I don’t want you to freak out, okay?” Terrie says. “Can you promise me that? No freaking out.”
Lu hears Kyle say something in the background, but Terrie tells him to be quiet and drive.
“Goddammit, Mom! Spit it the fuck out now!” Lu snaps.
Talley looks over and frowns, but Lu shakes her head and points at his bus. He hops on with two corrections officers and the bus doors close and locks behind him. Lu waits for her two officers to board the bus, and then she follows right behind. Inside sits the driver, safe in a steel mesh cage around the driver’s seat, two more corrections officers in a steel cage at the back of the bus, and ten federal prisoners shackled to their seats in the middle of the bus. Lu takes her seat next to the two officers that boarded with her and looks through the steel mesh a foot from her face.
All eyes are on her and she has to fight not to shiver.
“He found Champion,” Terrie states, her voice calm and cool. “He hasn’t found us, but he’s here.”
Lu loses against the shiver and her body shudders. One of the prisoners meets her eye and smiles. She lowers her sunglasses, glares, and then flips him off. His smile widens.
There are several honks and the driver looks over his shoulder at Lu.
“We set to leave, Marshal?” the driver asks.
“Yeah,” Lu replies. “We’re set. Move out.” She turns her attention back to the phone. “Listen, Mom, I’ll need to call you back. Fifteen minutes tops. I just need to make sure we get back onto I-15 and are headed your way.”
“I understand, sweetheart,” Terrie replies. “I know the drill. You do your job and just know I’m doing mine. There’s no way I’ll let that man get our boy, you hear me?”
“I hear you,” Lu says. “Thank you, Mom.”
>
“Never thank me for protecting this family,” Terrie says. “It’s a mother’s duty and why God put me on this earth.”
“Call you in fifteen,” Lu says and hangs up.
It takes all of her will to keep the tears and screams at bay. She can’t risk showing any weakness in front of the prisoners. Men like this can smell it, and even shackled, they will find a way to exploit that weakness to their own ends.
The convoy of buses moves out into the street, pausing only so the National Guard soldiers can move to let them pass, then they are off to the I-15 onramp and on their way north to I-90 and Coeur d’Alene.
He found them, Lu thinks.How the holy fucking hell did he…? Shit…
She looks down at her phone and realizes that the one and only time they’ve ever broken protocol must be the reason. Lu just hopes that the fact a supervolcano is weeks, days, minutes from erupting will slow the man down.
She hopes, but she doesn’t kid herself. She knows the man too well.
***
Linder steps from the last bus just as the Bronco cruises down Main Street. He turns and glances at the vehicle, giving the driver only a cursory glance; a teenage boy with his dog (a huge dog) in the passenger seat. Probably a common sight in Montana. He’s about to mentally wish the kid good luck making it out there when he catches the sheriff watching the Bronco closely.
Then she turns and looks right at him.
Linder forces himself to keep walking towards his car and not to look over his shoulder at the Bronco. If the situation was a game of poker, then the sheriff would have already lost, as she gave her entire bluff away.
“Thank you for your time, Sheriff,” Linder says as he casually wipes ash off the driver’s side window then opens the door and hops in. “Travel safe.”
“You too, Agent Linder,” Stephie says. “Hope you make it back to Sacramento without any trouble.”
This makes Linder pause, but only for a split second. He nods and hops into the sedan, starts up the engine, and pulls away from the sidewalk. He turns the car in the direction he came, which is the same direction as the Bronco was going, waves to the sheriff, and drives off.
His first thought is of how the sheriff knew he was from the Sacramento field office when he clearly hadn’t told her. He pulls his cell phone from his pocket and sees he now has thirty plus voicemails, most of them coming in within the last half hour.
“The bitch checked up on me,” Linder laughs. “What does she think she’s going to accomplish with that? Get me reprimanded? Fired? Too late for any of that now.”
He turns the stereo on and begins to sing along to Hank Williams’s “Cold, Cold Heart.”
***
“He’s following you,” Stephie says the second Terrie answers her phone.
Terrie pauses, about to sit up in the backseat of the Bronco where she’s been hiding.
“How do you know?” Terrie asks.
“Everything okay?” Kyle asks from the driver’s seat.
“Just keep your eyes on the road,” Terrie says. “Don’t worry about anything else.”
“The man is super paranoid like you said,” Stephie replies. “I glanced your way for a split second and he caught it. I could be wrong, but my gut says I’m not.”
“Okay,” Terrie sighs. “We’ll have to take some back roads and get to Bonners Ferry the long way. We may miss you guys. Just keep going if we aren’t there. We’ll catch up to you in Coeur d’Alene.”
“What if he tries to stop you? You prepared?” Stephie asks.
Terrie looks at the .45 in her hand and laughs. “If I’m not ready after ten years with ICE and another twenty with the marshals, then the man deserves to win.”
“Don’t say shit like that,” Stephie says.
“Don’t cuss,” Terrie replies.
“Oh, shut up,” Stephie chuckles. “I love you.”
“Love you too,” Terrie responds. “Now hang up and do your job. You have a whole town to move.”
Terrie waits for the click, and then puts her cell phone back into her pocket.
“Take Cedar Ridge Trail,” Terrie says.
“What? Why?” Kyle asks. “That road dead ends.”
“I know,” Terrie says. “It’s also not on any GPS maps. We’re going to drive to the end and wait. Once I know the coast is clear, we’ll get back on 37 and head to Bonners Ferry.”
“Are we really going to miss connecting with the Champion buses?” Kyle asks.
“Not if I can help it,” Terrie says. “But even if we do, there’s enough extra gas in the reserve tank to get us to Coeur d’Alene so we can meet up with your mom.”
***
The sedan shakes and starts to swerve and it takes all of Linder’s control to keep the car from skidding off the road. Another tremor; a bad one.
He switches from Hank Williams to the local AM news station, but all he gets is a few words and mostly static. Linder turns the radio off completely and focuses on the road. He comes around a long bend, and then narrows his eyes. Ahead is a straight stretch of road that goes on for a mile at least. There’s a couple dips and rises, but even with those, he should be able to see the Bronco.
But he doesn’t.
“Wiley bitch,” Linder says, struggling to keep his temper in check.
After more than a decade of hunting, he’s so close to his prey he can taste it. Yet the woman has slipped from his grasp. He knows she’s good, he’d be a fool not to know that, but there’s no way they could have spotted his tail. They must have been given a heads up.
And Linder knows exactly who gave them that heads up.
***
“That’s everyone that’s coming,” Mikellson says as watches the doors close on the last bus. “Time to go.”
“Shane waiting for us?” Stephie asks as she walks to her patrol car.
“Yeah,” Mikellson nods, stepping to his own car. “He’s gassed up and ready to hit the road. You taking lead?”
“No, you can,” Stephie says. “I’ll follow. Shane can pull in behind me once we get to him.”
“Works for me,” Mikellson says.
He starts up his car and cringes as it sputters slightly. Even with new air filters, the ash is playing havoc with the engine. The diesel engines of the school buses handle the issue better than the gasoline engines of the patrol cars, but Mikellson wonders for how long. If any of the buses break down before they get to Idaho, they are screwed.
He shoves the worry from his mind and pulls out into the street, honks at the buses to follow, then takes off down the road, ready to get as far away from the source of the ash as possible.
***
The southbound lanes of I-15 are choked with cars, buses, RVs, tractor trailers, and National Guard trucks and Humvees. Everyone is heading south to the hundreds of ships in the Gulf of Mexico waiting to take them to gracious countries willing to offer the Americans sanctuary from the supervolcano that scientists believe will destroy most of North America when it erupts.
But the northbound lanes of I-15 are pretty much empty as far as the eye can see. There’s the occasional local or state law enforcement vehicle, but mostly, the convoy has the interstate to itself.
“We getting our own cruise ship?” a prisoner asks.
“No talking,” one of the corrections officers next to Lu snaps.
“Just wondering if I’ll finally get to learn shuffleboard or not,” the prisoner laughs.
A few others chuckle with him and the officer stands up and whacks the steel mesh with the butt of his pump action shotgun.
“I said shut up!” he shouts. “Don’t make me say it again!”
“Or what, Muldoon?” the prisoner asks. “You’ll come back here and shut me up?”
“No,” Muldoon replies, his beady eyes glaring between the gaps in the steel. He pats his belt. “You all get a healthy stream of vitamin P.”
“You’re going to pee on us?” the prisoner asks. “I thought chicks like you had to sit down to p
iss, Muldoon?”
Muldoon scrunches up his face in anger and reaches for the pepper spray on his belt.
“Knock it off, Officer,” Lu says, grabbing the man’s arm. “You let them get to you now and it’s going to be a long drive. Just sit down.”
“Yeah, Muldoon, just sit down,” the prisoner echoes.
Muldoon looks at Lu’s hand and then at the marshal’s face. Lu still wears her sunglasses, so the officer can’t get a read on her. Finally, he shakes her hand off and takes his seat.
“That’s a good girl,” the prisoner smiles.
“You,” Lu barks. “Shut the fuck up.”
It’s the same prisoner that was eyeing her earlier when she was talking to her mother on the phone. Head shaved, face covered in three day old black stubble, eyes like dark pits, the man just smiles at her, his eyes seemingly able to pierce the darkness of Lu’s sunglasses and see right into her.
“Give me the list,” Lu says to Muldoon. The officer hesitates. “Now.”
The man reluctantly reaches for a clipboard hanging above him and hands it over to Lu. She flips past the first few pages until she comes to the seating chart.
“Anson Lowell?” Lu asks, looking up from the clipboard so she can meet the man’s eyes. “That’s you?”
“That’s me,” Lowell replies. “And you would be?”
“The person in charge,” Lu replies. “You’ll want to remember that.”
“Hard to forget,” Lowell says. “Hot piece like you with a gun? You have no idea how much my type you are.”
Lu reaches under her seat and pulls out a tablet. She opens the case and scrolls the screens until she finds the file she wants. After a few minutes of reading, she lets out a low whistle.
“You are quite the badass, Mr. Lowell,” Lu says.
“Just Lowell,” Lowell grins. “Only people that ever call me mister are judges. It doesn’t turn out well for them.”
“No, no, I can see it doesn’t,” Lu says, reading through Lowell’s file. She finally looks up and gives Lowell a grin to match his. “You killed two county judges before you were eighteen. Something they did must have irritated you.”