by Greg Rucka
I hung up, then turned to the gap in the ceiling and said, “They’re killing the power.”
“About time,” Alena said.
The lights went out. So did the television.
“Keep your voice low,” she warned.
The phone started ringing again. I checked my watch, saw that it was seven minutes past six. I let it ring. It stopped after three minutes, and silence flowed into the void it had made. I could make out the slight sound of Alena above me, in the crawl space between the ceiling and the roof, trying to remove the shingles one by one. From her bag, I found a sweatshirt she’d picked up in her shopping, sent it up through the hole to her, but she sent it right down again.
“I don’t want to sweat,” she said. “It’ll be cold outside.”
I stowed the sweatshirt back in her bag, then went through my bag and put on a couple of extra layers myself. I zipped the bags closed, moved them to the dresser, beside the television, so they would be easy to hand up. Then I went to the door and gave it a listen. No outside noise penetrated, no sounds of traffic, no squawks of radios.
They were waiting, just like we were waiting. In the main, hostage negotiations follow the same patterns as SWAT deployments and the like. Once negotiations have been opened, the guiding principle is to continue them for as long as possible, unless a further development changes the situation. Even though I was refusing to answer the phone, the negotiations were still considered open. Closing them would require a command decision—most likely not to be made until the federal forces arrived—or an act of violence on our part that forced an escalation. If we became an immediate threat to life and limb, they’d have to take us.
But otherwise, they would continue to try to wait us out. With the cold and the darkness and the promise of a very long night ahead of us, they could afford to.
After another fifteen minutes, the phone started ringing again. It rang until a little after half past six, then stopped.
At a minute past seven, Alena stuck her head down through the hole in the ceiling. “It’s done.”
I moved to help her down, and she slid out of the gap headfirst, into my arms, and it was almost like dancing the way I flipped her onto her feet.
“You get a look outside?” I whispered back.
“There’s no one on our roof. The grade is severe, and the ice makes it treacherous. We will have to be very careful. But because of the ice, they will think we won’t try the roof.”
“Anything to secure to, to lower ourselves down?”
She shook her head, then pointed to the queen bed.
We stripped the bed, including the pillowcases and the bedsheet. We tore the linens down to roughly five-inch strips, working as fast as we could. The phone started jangling again, and I stopped my shredding to check my watch. It was six minutes past seven. I waited until the second hand had swept past the twelve, then answered.
“I told you I’d talk to you in an hour, I meant an hour,” I said. “Did you not understand me?”
“Just wanted to make sure you knew I was still here for you, Chris. You two still doing all right?”
“It’s getting a little cold,” I admitted.
“Yeah, nights like this, it can get down in single digits, sometimes even lower. Gets too cold to snow, even.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
We shared a companionable pause, or a pause that, at least, we both hoped the other thought was companionable. Alena had all our strips piled on the bed now, was beginning to secure the ends one to the other in knots.
“You sure you don’t want to talk about Montana?” Galloway asked. “Give me your side of it?”
“You keep asking about that.”
“It’s confusing, it’s not really clear.”
I fumbled around for something to say, something that would suit the part, and finally found myself parroting Bowles. “I’m a patriot, I love my country, you understand me?”
“Sure, I understand.”
“But part of that, part of being an American is fearing my government. That’s my job as a citizen, right? That’s what we’re supposed to do, to keep them honest, to keep an eye on them.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Everyone’s got their hand out,” I said. “I mean everyone, it’s out of control, it’s greed, it’s just pure greed. Everything is about how much they can get from you and me, and the hell with the rest of it.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I am, okay? I am telling you about it. It’s all greed, it’s all these government types just taking and taking and robbing us, robbing us of our future and our promise.”
“Sure. I mean, utility companies, look at that. That’s just another secret tax, right? They’re just another arm of the government.”
“That’s right, that’s right exactly.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Alena pause in her knot tying, shaking her head in mild amusement at my performance. I shrugged.
“You’re making a lot of sense, Chris,” Galloway said. “I think there are a lot of people who feel the way you do.”
“There are. A lot of us, there sure are.”
“But I guess you’ll agree that, you know, how things look now, people aren’t getting that message. How things look now, you understand, that message isn’t coming across.”
“What?”
“You and Danielle, you’re in that room, the lights are out and the heat’s off and we’re all out here, and the cameras are out here with us, you understand. And nobody’s going to let those cameras go in there, we just can’t do that. You’re a smart guy, I can tell you know why we can’t do that.”
“Let me talk to one of them,” I said. “One of the reporters.”
“My superiors won’t allow that, Chris, c’mon. You want to talk to these people, you’re going to have to come out of there, that’s the only way it’ll work. You come out, nobody gets hurt, that’s better for you in the long run, don’t you think?”
“Don’t talk to me like that, don’t do that,” I said, getting angry. “You’re pissing me off again, Bobby, don’t do that.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“No, no, I’ll tell you what, I’ll talk to you in the morning,” I said. “I need to think, I need some time to think.”
And I hung up, then moved to where Alena was coiling our makeshift rope on the bureau. I hoisted her up again, this time just lifting her from the hips, and she pulled herself the rest of the way into the crawl space. I climbed atop the bureau, handed up the two bags, then the rope, then took hold of her outstretched arm and followed her into the cold and musty darkness.
Leaving the phone to ring in the room alone.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
It was bitingly cold and it was treacherously icy and the drop from the edge of the roof to the shadows along the rear of the hotel was easily thirty feet. As Alena worked quickly to conceal the hole she’d made in the roof, I scanned the sky above us. I’d heard the distinctive sound of a helicopter doing fly-over while I’d been talking to Galloway, but now there was no sign of the bird. It was possible it had been ordered down for the night, maybe to preserve fuel or to give the pilot a rest so he’d be ready when really needed. Whatever the reason, it was luck, and dawdling on the roof would be a good way to squander it.
We stayed on our bellies, sliding as much as crawling along the shingles. Now that we were outside, the sounds of the siege became audible, the distant crackle of radios, the sound of the occasional vehicle coming along the road. There wasn’t much noise coming from Lynch, and not a hell of a lot of light, either. Either it was a sleepy little town on a late winter’s night, or, more likely, everyone was at home watching what was happening in their backyard on their televisions.
We moved carefully, sliding ourselves towards one of the many vents that had been cut into the roof. I had to clear some of the snow away to make room for our rope, and it was so hard it cut my hands. Once again, I felt
the ache of the cold. If I got frostbite a second time so soon after the first, I’d end up losing my fingers. While I readied the improvised rope, Alena took the opportunity to eyeball the surroundings, using the elevation to our advantage.
“It’s not deep,” Alena murmured in my ear. “The perimeter seems confined to the hotel lot, patrol cars running out the next couple of blocks. The streets have been closed.”
I nodded, finished looping the rope around the vent, then handed it off to Alena. She took the two ends, rolling onto her back and then back onto her belly to stay low, wrapping them together rappelling style around her waist and crotch. Then she let gravity slide her towards the edge of the roof, and, without any hesitation or pause, simply continued over the edge. I waited to hear the sound of her impact, the smack of a body landing wrong on the ground, but it didn’t come, and as soon as I saw the rope turn from taut to slack, I followed her.
We were at the rear of the hotel, the side furthest from Elk, in a narrower and shallower extension of the parking lot that dominated the front side. Most of the light had been coming from the other side of the street, and the shadows were adequate enough to be comforting. A fence, wooden, perhaps seven feet high, marked the edge of the lot on this side. From above, I had seen that it butted up against the lot for a fast-food restaurant on the other side, then another street that seemed to run parallel to Elk.
That would be the edge of the perimeter, then. Over the fence, through the lot, across the street, and we’d have broken the ring. All we had to do was manage that without being seen or heard.
Alena edged out of the shadows, checking to the right and the left, as I turned back to the building and took hold of one of the ends of the linked sheets. It came free easily, and I drew it down quickly, pulling it hand over hand. Once it was down I gathered it together and looked for a place to hide it. I didn’t see one that wouldn’t be discovered immediately upon daylight, so I shoved it into my bag, instead.
Alena stepped back silently, crouching down, motioning for me to join her. I dropped, and for the better part of another minute, neither of us moved, listening and letting our eyes adjust. There was more light than I’d realized at first, and while it made our concealment less effective, it was going to hurt anybody wearing NVG worse. Night-vision can be a terrific tool, but it has to be used in the right environment. In near-total darkness conditions, it’s ideal.
In an illuminated urban setting, not so much.
This was why Alena had been so insistent that we know if they were using NVG or not, because it gave us both an idea of their spotting distance, both actual and imagined. Wearing their goggles, the team members would believe they were seeing farther, and seeing more, than they actually were. Given the lighting conditions as a result of the streetlamps, the refraction from all the snow and ice, the signposts for the various services offered this close to the interstate, and the general urban light dome, anyone wearing the goggles was actually seeing far less.
She put her mouth to my ear, so close that I could feel her lips brush my skin. “Patrol car right, under the streetlamp. No motion.”
I looked, saw the car she was speaking of. The streetlamp nearby was dropping glare almost precisely on its windshield.
“Left, rooftop, countersniper and spotter,” she whispered.
They were harder to spot, but I found them after a moment. About three hundred feet away, set up on the flat roof of a service station. They’d focused on the door that led to our room, and with good reason: As far as the Lynch PD was concerned, it was our only way in or out. Given that the SWAT team had very clearly shifted to a waiting posture, I wasn’t surprised they’d missed us. They had to be bored and miserably cold, and if the spotter was wearing NVG, half blind as well without even realizing it.
“On three, to the fence together,” she said. “Put me up and over, then follow. Don’t stop.”
I nodded.
She used her fingers, showing me three fingers, then two, then one.
We ran for the fence, low and light. I was faster, and that let me get into position before her, dropping my bag as I went down on one knee, turning to face her approach. She didn’t break stride, just put her right foot into my hands, and I lifted with my arms as much as my hips, heard the fence behind me groan for an instant as she made contact with it, and then her weight was gone. An instant later, I heard her landing on the other side, and it sounded like she’d come down hard, and badly, because she couldn’t keep from making a noise.
I looped my arms through the straps of my tiny duffel, pressing it against my chest, then reached for the top of the fence and pulled, swinging my legs to the side, to bring them up and over with me. I wanted to be quick, and I wanted to be quiet, and that meant letting my arms, once again, do most of the work until my legs had the momentum to lead. Once they had cleared the top of the fence, though, I twisted with them, turning and following them over.
My landing, like Alena’s, was bad, and I discovered why the second I came down. The crust of snow against this side of the fence was deceptive, and thin, and it concealed a layer of ice as slick as oiled glass. My feet went out from beneath me the moment I came down, and I tried to readjust, and instead landed hard, on my left hip.
The urge to curse was almost overpowering.
Alena offered me her hand, and I used it to get back to my feet, then almost immediately went down again for precisely the same reason I had the first time. She caught me, started to slip, and then I had to catch her. It would have been pure Buster Keaton if it wasn’t so damn deadly.
There was a Dumpster off to the back, and even in the winter cold, it stank of spoiled milk and rotting meat. We got into its cover, facing the direction we had come, looking back at the fence. The night maintained its relative silence; nothing in it seemed to spike, nothing in it seemed to indicate that anyone knew we had moved.
To the left, the drive-through lane of the restaurant was staggeringly illuminated. Behind us, the light increased until reaching the shelter of the building itself, where it diminished in its awning. From the rooftop of the hotel, I hadn’t been able to see if the restaurant was still actually open, or if the lights it had on were a security precaution. Whichever way we went from here, though, we risked greater exposure.
And there was still the problem of getting across the street and past whoever was almost certainly posted there to contend with.
I checked my watch. According to its luminous hands, it was twenty-three minutes past seven. We’d been outside for all of six minutes.
“We use the drive-through lane,” Alena said in my ear.
I needed a second to follow her logic, but then I saw it. The drive-through lane was well lit, true, but it was also blocked from view on each side. On the left was the restaurant itself; to the right was a cinder-block wall bordering that side of the property. If we hurried through it, staying to the restaurant side, we’d have cover at least until we reached the edge of the building.
“You go first,” she said.
I shook my head. She was slower, and I wasn’t about to risk leaving her behind.
Her eyes narrowed, and she was going to argue with me, but then decided that would be an even greater waste of our time. She showed me the three fingers again, counted them down to one, then went into motion. I followed after her, as close as I dared.
It was very bright in the drive-through lane. Glancing past the giant-sized decals of burgers and two-for-one deals in the windows, I could see the restaurant was empty inside.
The building ended at a children’s play structure, encrusted in snow and ice, and looking very much the worse for it as a result. It threw shadows down for our benefit, and we took to them eagerly, hunkering down, now with a view of the street ahead of us. Just as I dropped onto my haunches behind Alena the sound of engine noise reached us, a car approaching, and each of us dropped flat.
A patrol car rolled slowly into view, the driver’s floodlight on, splashing light towards the building
. I wrapped my arms around Alena’s middle, pinning her against the duffel still on my chest, then rolled onto my back, wedging us beneath the last few feet of a slide. She didn’t move, and together we watched as the light from the flood flowed in our direction, daylight bright.
Then the light hit the slide, and the shadows concealing us bloomed deeper. I rolled us back the way we’d come as the car continued past.
We waited until the silence returned, the red glow of its taillights marking its passage, and then we sprinted for the street, the edge of the perimeter, and yet another extension to our diminishing freedom.
CHAPTER
NINE
The lipstick was hot pink and called “cotton candy” and Alena applied it quickly, checking herself in the sun visor’s mirror. Then she drew herself up in the seat beside me, unfastened the top two buttons of the black-and-red flannel she was wearing, and pulled the shirt taut down her front, tucking it hard into her pants. She settled the cowboy hat atop her head, then gave her reflection a final appraisal before turning to me, still sitting behind the wheel of the Ford pickup truck we’d stolen from the parking lot of a bar some five blocks away from the Outlaw Inn.
When in Rome and all that.
We’d found the lipstick in the glove box, the flannel on the floor, and the hat behind the seat. We’d also found a box of triple-ought shotgun shells and the shotgun it went with, two empty cans of Rock Star energy drink, and a silver hip flask engraved with a picture of a bucking bronco and the words “Ride ’em, Cowgirl!” The flask had been empty.
“Well?” Alena asked.
“You’re going to think less of me for saying this,” I said. “But I’d definitely do you.”
It didn’t earn a smile, just a curt nod, and then she looked out the front window, to the warm lights of the Sweetspring County Airport’s flight school. From where we sat in the truck, I could make out a handful of people inside, bathing in the glow of a television screen somewhere out of sight. I knew what they were watching, the same as Alena did. They were watching the same thing the people at the bar where we’d stolen the truck were watching.