by Mark Alpert
Neither Margaret nor Cordelia had anything to say in response. Taking advantage of the lull, Ariel approached the Elders’ table. She looked directly at her mother. “I won’t do it. I won’t give Sullivan the formula. And I certainly won’t let you murder John.” She glanced at him over her shoulder, then turned back to Elizabeth. “Did you know how he got those burns on his arms? He almost killed himself trying to save Octavia.”
Elizabeth still didn’t look up. She kept rubbing her temples. “Lily, how well do you know your half brother?”
She scowled. “Too well.”
“He fell in love with you, did he not? When he was in his twenties?”
Ariel nodded. “And I told him in no uncertain terms never to come near me. Even back then he was a base creature.”
“So would you ever trust him? On any matter, large or small?”
“Never.” She shook her head firmly. “I’d sooner trust a cobra.”
“Then why do you imagine I would feel differently?” Elizabeth stopped massaging her forehead and looked up at her daughter. “I know he’s lying. Whether or not we give him the formula for the catalyst, he won’t help us. He wouldn’t dare attack the federal agents. He was simply hoping we’d be desperate enough to believe him.” She curled her lip, disgusted. “But we’re not that desperate. We have another option.”
Ariel looked at her in surprise. “What do you mean?”
“Sullivan was right. I have a contingency plan. But he didn’t guess the extent of it.”
Margaret seemed confused again. “Sister! Is there something else you haven’t told us?”
“I told no one. I assigned a team of men to do the work a hundred years ago, and I swore them to secrecy.”
“What work? What on earth are you talking about?”
Elizabeth leaned back in her chair, and then she did something remarkable. For the first time, John saw the Chief Elder smile. “I ordered them to dig a tunnel.”
TWENTY-FOUR
John and Ariel returned to her laboratory as soon as the air in the cavern was breathable, but there was no time to do any more research on the Fountain protein. Although John desperately wanted to know what Fountain was doing to his biochemistry, he’d have to wait for an answer. Ariel was busy downloading the data from her computers and choosing which of her precious chemicals and tissue samples could be saved. John helped her put the selected flasks and petri dishes in sealed cases and miniature battery-operated freezers. In less than an hour they were going to abandon her lab and everything else in Haven.
The researchers in the other laboratories were doing the same thing, packing up the records from centuries of scientific study. In Haven’s vaults the workers stacked gold bars onto pallets and stuffed wads of currency into canvas bags. In the arsenal Conroy’s guardsmen loaded ammunition into rucksacks. But the most frenzied activity took place on the second floor of the Pyramid, where Haven’s library was located. Women in sweat-stained dresses pulled hundreds of Treasures from the shelves and carefully slipped them into fireproof boxes. Other women removed their Treasures from locked drawers in their desks and clutched the leather-bound notebooks to their chests as they fled their offices and apartments. From inside the laboratory John could hear the footsteps of dozens of people running down the corridor, heading for the assembly point that Elizabeth Fury had designated, at the far end of the cavern. He noticed that Ariel kept her own Treasure tucked under her arm as she sat in front of the computer, transferring millions of gigabytes of data to a handful of flash drives.
By eight o’clock John and Ariel had packed all the cases and freezers into a big black storage trunk, about four feet long and two feet wide, like the trunks that kids bring to summer camp. It was ridiculously heavy, over a hundred pounds, but the trunk had handles at both ends, making it possible for them to carry the thing. Because the geothermal plant was inoperative and the elevator had no power, they had to haul the trunk up the same stairway they’d climbed a few hours ago, after the explosion. John held the back end of the trunk, bearing most of its weight as they ascended. The Fountain protein was still flowing through his bloodstream, stimulating the cells in his muscles and brain, so he had no trouble going up the steps. Ariel, though, was sweating and struggling. In addition to the trunk, she carried a backpack that held her most valuable possessions: her Treasure, her flash drives and a black, foot-long medicine case containing a syringe and nine vials of yellowish fluid. This was the Fountain protein she’d extracted from the blood of Haven’s women. Each vial was identical to the one she’d pumped into John.
After they reached the top of the stairway they joined hundreds of Furies rushing across the floor of the cavern. Women poured out of the Pyramid, some pushing dollies loaded with boxes, others carrying paintings and sculptures hastily swathed in bubble wrap. A team of guardsmen huddled at the base of the Pyramid and used jackhammers to gouge holes into the structure’s stone blocks. Another team drilled holes into the cavern’s rocky walls, and a third group unspooled enormous lengths of orange cable, which snaked between the cavern’s buildings. The men inserted a small gray package into each hole, and then connected the packages with the cable. After a couple of seconds John figured it out: the guardsmen were rigging the cavern with explosives. As soon as Haven was empty, they were going to blow the place sky-high.
The Furies converged at a gap in the cavern’s wall, not far from the asylum. This gap had previously been hidden by a ten-foot-high frieze with stone carvings of bears and wolves and deer, but an hour ago the guardsmen had smashed the relief sculpture with pickaxes, revealing a stone archway behind it. John and Ariel lugged their trunk through the archway and entered a long tunnel dimly illuminated by emergency lights. As John moved deeper inside and his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw a line of metallic rectangles stretching into the distance. It was a freight train with a dozen open-top railroad cars and an old-fashioned steam engine at the far end. The train sat on a pair of steel rails that extended as far as the eye could see.
John whistled. “Unbelievable. And no one but your mother knew that this train was parked here?”
“Almost no one.” With a groan, Ariel stopped and rested her end of the trunk on the ground. She stretched and shook her right arm, working the kinks out of the muscles. “Mother ordered some work done in this section in the early 1900s, but she told everyone it was a mining operation. And all the men who worked on the tunnel kept it secret until they died.”
“How the hell did she get a train in here without anyone noticing?”
“Back in the logging days, there used to be railroad lines all over the Upper Peninsula. Mother must’ve purchased the engine and freight cars from the Lake Superior line and had them delivered to the other end of the tunnel. Then someone backed the train up until it reached this end.”
“How far does the tunnel go?”
“Mother says it ends at the Rudyard Trucking warehouse, which is ten miles west of here. Our family owns the trucking firm, and all the employees are Rangers. They have a fleet of thirty trucks, which the Rangers use for various purposes all over the country. But even they didn’t realize there was a train stop below their warehouse.” She shook her head as she stared at the railroad cars. “Only Conroy and his chief deputy, Bardolph, were trusted with the secret. They’re the ones who kept the train in working order. And Bardolph knows how to drive it.”
“So the plan is to shuttle everyone from Haven to the truck warehouse? Then they’ll crowd into the trucks, and the Rangers will drive them across the country?”
Ariel nodded. “The trucking company is near an exit on I-75, and the Canadian border is just twenty miles to the north. If the Rangers driving the trucks have the proper paperwork, they can be in Canada in half an hour.”
“And where will they go from there?”
“The Elders haven’t revealed that information yet. They worry that Sullivan has more spies among our men, and one of them may devise a way to contact the Riflemen.”
Ariel grasped the handle at her end of the trunk. After a few more seconds of heavy lifting they reached the half-empty train car and passed the trunk to a pair of men standing inside. Then someone shouted, “Lily!” and the name echoed in the dark tunnel. A moment later they saw Conroy running toward them.
The Master of the Guardsmen had an olive-green duffel bag slung over his left shoulder and an assault rifle over his right. Two older guardsmen struggled behind him, weighed down by duffel bags of their own. Both men were panting and red-faced and at least sixty years old. Conroy was panting, too.
“Milady … we need … your help,” he gasped.
“What’s wrong, cuz?”
“The Riflemen … they’re at the fence.”
The news wasn’t unexpected. Sullivan’s deadline had passed four hours ago. By now he surely knew that Ariel wouldn’t give up the formula for the catalyst, no matter how much pressure he applied. He also knew that the federal agents would raid the farm by midnight, and once that happened he’d have no chance at all of getting the formula. So his only option was to attack Haven before the agents did. Ariel furrowed her brow, contemplating strategy. “How many men does he have?”
“At least a hundred along the southern fence. And dozens more to the west and north. I’ve deployed guardsmen behind the outbuildings, but I need more sharpshooters to cover the approaches.”
She nodded grimly. “Well, now you have one more.” Stepping toward one of the aging guardsmen, she relieved him of his duffel bag. “Are the long guns in here?”
“Aye, the MK-13. That’s your favorite, is it not?”
Instead of answering, Ariel turned away from him and headed out of the train tunnel. At the same time, John approached the other exhausted guardsman and offered to take his duffel bag. The man gave him a grateful look, but Conroy scowled. “What are you doing, paramour? You’re not coming with us.”
Ariel looked over her shoulder. “Let him come. John did ten weeks of basic training with the American army. And he fought well when we were on the ferryboat.”
“Ten weeks? That’s not very—”
“Don’t be a fool, cuz. Let’s go.”
Conroy kept scowling, but he let John take the duffel bag. Then they followed Ariel out of the tunnel and back to the cavern.
The cavern’s floor was even more crowded than it had been five minutes ago. So many Furies streamed toward the tunnel that John started to wonder if all of them could fit in the railcars. The train might have to make two trips to carry everyone to the trucks. And that meant Conroy’s guardsmen would have to hold off Sullivan for at least an hour, maybe two.
They ran up a catwalk fixed to the wall of the cavern, then climbed a spiral stairway to the surface. It was longer than the stairway John had used earlier that day to ascend from the cavern to the barn. This one seemed to go on forever, rising past the point where John thought the ground should be. At the top of the steps they found themselves in a dark, circular room about thirty feet across, with a high dome for a ceiling. Spaced at regular intervals along the surrounding wall were several horizontal slits, through which John glimpsed strips of dark purple sky in the final stages of twilight. He stepped closer to one of the slits, and when he looked down he saw the shadowed cornfields and pastures of Haven’s farm about a hundred feet below.
The room was at the top of the farm’s silo. It had been converted into a sniper’s nest. As soon as they entered it, Conroy and the two older guardsmen unzipped the duffel bags and removed several long, sleek rifles. The faces of the tired men turned keen and lively as they loaded the guns and attached night-vision scopes with practiced ease. These guardsmen, John realized, were highly trained and knew their weapons well. They knelt on the floor next to the silo’s circular wall and pointed their sniper rifles through the horizontal slits. At the same time, Ariel knelt in front of another slit and loaded her own gun. Then she reached into one of the duffel bags, pulled out a handheld scope, and passed it to John. “You’ll be our spotter,” she said. “That means you find targets for us.” She lay on her stomach and pointed the barrel of her rifle through the slit. “Come down here.”
John sprawled on the floor beside her and looked through the spotter scope, which had a night-vision display. He’d seen this kind of display before, during his brief time in the army. It intensified the available light and outlined everything in shades of lurid green. He saw the cornfields again, but now in vivid detail, the tall, ripe stalks crowded in close rows. He saw the cinder-block outbuildings near the edge of the farm and the guardsmen positioned behind them, clutching their carbines and waiting for the attack to begin. And about half a mile away he saw the farm’s southern fence, topped with coils of concertina wire, and the pine woods beyond.
“You see that gate in the fence?” Ariel nudged him. “That’s twelve o’clock. When you spot a target, call out his position—one o’clock, two o’clock, three o’clock, and so on.”
John focused his scope at the edge of the woods. After a few seconds he saw movement, a green blur between the pine trees. Someone who’d been hiding behind one of the tree trunks had darted to another. An instant later he glimpsed someone else raise his head above a pile of stones. “I see Riflemen.” Panning the scope from left to right, he saw more of them fidgeting behind the trees. “They’re all along the edge of the woods.”
Ariel squinted through the scope on her rifle. “I see them, too.” She looked over her shoulder at Conroy, who was removing more equipment from the duffel bags. “It’s a little strange, cuz, that they haven’t attacked yet. It looks like they’re waiting for a signal.”
Conroy nodded. “The Chief Elder is talking with Sullivan again. Through the wireless video connection.” He pulled a long tube out of the bag and began assembling the weapon. “She’s pretending to negotiate with him, but in truth she’s stalling for time. The evacuation of Haven is taking longer than expected.”
Ariel pointed at Conroy’s weapon, which was much bulkier than a rifle. It looked more like a rocket launcher. “Is that a Stinger?”
“Aye, to shoot down helicopters. The federal agents may try to fly over our fence.” He pointed toward the east. “They’ve set up a staging area three miles away, but they’re not prepared to strike yet. Sullivan is our more immediate concern.”
Curious, John turned his spotter scope to the east. Although he didn’t see any helicopters, he observed at least a dozen state trooper cars parked in a distant field. He turned back to the south, intending to look for more Riflemen in the woods, but while panning the scope along the southern fence he caught a glimpse of a figure in the grass, about a hundred yards left of the gate. The figure was crawling toward the fence and holding an oversized pair of bolt cutters. “Someone’s approaching the fence, eleven o’clock,” he told Ariel. “Looks like he wants to cut a hole in it.”
She instantly pointed her rifle at the man. “Damnation,” she muttered. “It’s Harcourt.”
“Who? What do you—”
“He was in the Rangers for twenty years before the rebellion. We worked together on dozens of assignments.”
The man was fast. Within seconds he reached the drainage ditch just outside the fence and disappeared from view. Then he crawled up the other side of the ditch and started cutting the chain link at the base of the fence. “He’s quick with those bolt cutters,” John noted. “He’ll get through in no time.”
Conroy stopped unloading the duffel bags and came up behind them. “Take the shot, milady,” he urged. “We can’t let him breach the perimeter.”
Ariel
curled her finger around the rifle’s trigger. But she didn’t pull it. In the spotter scope John saw the Rifleman snap six more links, making a crescent-shaped tear in the fence.
“Milady!” Conroy raised his voice. “Do your duty!”
She took a deep breath and let it out. Then she fired the rifle.
John saw the impact of the bullet in Harcourt’s chest. He fell backward into the ditch, the bolt cutters still in his hands. The gunshot echoed across the farm for a few seconds, then faded away. Then John heard a chorus of enraged shouting, a war cry composed of hundreds of voices. Sullivan’s men emerged from the pine woods and rushed forward.
From a distance it looked like pandemonium, but gazing through the spotter scope John could see that the attack was well coordinated. The first line of Riflemen fired a barrage of rocket-propelled grenades, which exploded up and down the length of the fence. The blasts were so bright, they flooded the night-vision display in John’s scope, and he had to close his eyes. When he opened them again the fence was wreathed in smoke, and he couldn’t see a thing behind it, but he could hear the shouts of the Riflemen and the crackling of automatic weapons fire. After several seconds the smoke began to clear and John aimed his scope at the base of the fence. Sullivan’s men were already wriggling through the jagged holes where their grenades had shredded the chain link.
“They’re coming through!” he shouted. “Eleven o’clock, twelve, Jesus, the whole fence!”
Ariel and the other snipers started shooting. Tactically, it was an ideal situation for them. Because the fence was half a mile away, it was within range of the sniper rifles but too distant for the Riflemen to return fire with their carbines. And Sullivan’s men were easy targets as they scrabbled on their bellies through the holes in the fence. Ariel took her second shot as John peered through his scope, and he saw a man tumble backward into the drainage ditch. Another Rifleman crawled halfway through one of the holes, then shuddered and went limp. Ariel fired again and again, fast and efficient, hitting a new target every few seconds. When John looked up from his scope, though, he noticed she was crying. She didn’t make a sound, but her wet cheeks reflected the muzzle flashes from her gun.