by Ben Follows
She turned back in the direction she had come, but her original pursuers had caught up, cutting off the fourth and final direction she could have escaped in. She shook her head in disbelief and even laughed a little bit.
“I’m surrounded,” she said. “This is it.”
Jake, over the radio, quietly said, “What happened? I’m in a bad situation, but I’m going to get out of it. I’ll come and get you. Don’t do it. Sarah. I will come and get you. I will save you.”
The FBI team converged from four directions, and the man who was leading the team shouted, “Raise your hands.”
Sarah slowly raised her hands, smiling. “Jake, this is it. Goodbye.”
“Sarah! No! Don’t do it! There are better ways. I will come and get you!”
Sarah laughed. “Jake, I knew I shouldn’t have let you on this mission. You don’t understand anything yet. You’re such a fucking rookie.”
The FBI agents were watching her as they approached. Sarah raised her hands high above her head and then smiled at the approaching FBI leader. “Well played,” she said.
She bit down hard, shattering the cap of her front right molar, feeling the small amount of liquid fall into her mouth and slide down her throat.
Almost immediately she felt herself going limp, losing strength as the poison did its work. She heard Jake shouting something in her ear, but she couldn’t make out the words.
The panicked FBI leader sprinted toward her as fast as he could, but as she lost control of her body, her vision went black, and her mind began to fade, she knew he was too late.
Chapter 30
Jake was trying to look strong but was unable to hold back tears as he was shoved out the back door of the factory and onto the dirt ground outside. Keelan Ochre stood behind him and didn’t make the mistake of approaching him to check for weapons. He kept his distance while the thug with the assault rifle stood in front of him. Once again Jake had no options.
“Now, Jake,” said Keelan. “I want you to tell me everything about how you made Frank Tanners disappear and how you faked his death. Do that and I might let you live. We might even strike up a business relationship. Otherwise, I will give you a very slow and painful death. Do you understand?”
Jake said nothing. He barely heard Keelan, his mind filled with thoughts of Sarah, the closest thing he'd ever had to a sister. With her and Doug, he had felt like he understood what it was to have a family. And now it was all gone.
He kept his hands raised above his head. He knew Keelan was watching his every movement, and even the slightest action would make him shoot. At that moment, both options seemed equally good. On one hand, he could die and be freed from the hell he was living in, but on the other hand he could fuck over the organization that had taken away his family, the organization for which he suddenly felt an overwhelming hatred. If not for The Compound, he would still have Doug and Sarah. It was all their fault.
“Any second now, Jake,” said Keelan. “I will take silence as a no.”
Jake said nothing.
Chapter 31
Obrasey met with Emerson at the freight elevator after they finished their search of the first subbasement. It was empty save for still boxed empty machines. A few of the agents had opened up the boxes to ensure their contents and had confirmed they were machine parts.
“I don’t understand what these are here for,” said Obrasey. “Is it storage? There was plenty of space up top.”
Emerson shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m starting to get worried we won’t find anything. Do you know how much paperwork I’m going to have to fill out for this?”
“There’s still one more basement," said Obrasey. "Frank Tanners is there. I can feel it.”
Emerson nodded noncommittally.
They loaded the first segment of their team into the freight elevator, and it jerked into motion. They were plunged into near darkness, the only light coming from the room above. There was no light from below. Emerson had pondered that perhaps a second subbasement had been in the process of being built but hadn’t been finished, but there had never been any doubt that they were going to check.
Obrasey took out her flashlight and began shining it at the walls around them, giving some light. She shined it down the shaft and was shocked at its depth. They must have been almost a hundred feet beneath the surface. Then the flashlight revealed an opening at the bottom of the shaft, the light of the flashlight thrown over a large area of floor.
The last thirty meters or so down the shaft was slow, and the immense expanse of the room at the bottom came into focus foot by foot. The light reflected off the walls and off the empty floor. It was only when they descended into the opening in the wall that the flashlight settled on the two chairs in the middle of the room and the two men seated there. The one on the left shied away from the light, closing his eyes tight against the sudden onslaught. The other man was slumped over on top of him, blood dripping from his neck.
“Oh my god,” said Emerson. “That’s Frank Tanners.”
“Please help me,” said Frank Tanners, his voice so faint as to be barely heard. “Please. I beg you.”
They opened the door of the freight elevator and stepped out on the stone floor.
“We got him,” said Emerson into his radio. “Hello? Damn, we don’t have any service down here.” He turned to a few of the men with him, pointing them out. “You, you, and you, take the elevator back up and get a message out that we have Frank Tanners. Those fucking cowards are guilty. They probably ran away. Tell Thompson to get a national alert out for Dimitri Kulovich and Paul Vincent.”
The men nodded. Emerson and the remaining agents stepped out of the elevator. As soon as they were out, the elevator lurched back to life and began taking the agents back up to the surface.
Obrasey raised the flashlight, shining it on the two men. As she got closer, it became clear that the man on top of Frank was dead, although his blood had congealed. He had been dead for a while.
“Frank Frederickson?” said Obrasey.
“Yes,” said Frank, blinking quickly to adjust to the light. His voice was weak. “Please, I’ll tell you anything you want to know. Just help me.”
Obrasey came within a few feet of him and saw his heavily bandaged right hand, clearly missing a few fingers. The rest of him didn’t look much better. He smelled like a stew a few months past the expiration date. His face was haggard, his hair greasy, his clothes filthy and torn. It was his eyes, however, that ingrained themselves in Obrasey’s mind. Those helpless, pleading, hopeful eyes.
Frank didn’t recognize her. She pointed the flashlight at the man on top of him. “Who’s that?”
“His name is Edward Stamper. Please get him off me.”
“Who did this?” said Obrasey. Emerson came up beside her and seemed to sense her hesitance, reaching forward and grabbing the shoulder of Ed Stamper. He lifted him off Frank, and the body slumped to the right side of the chair, against the armrest.
“Thank you,” said Frank, and he sounded like he meant it. “Dirk. Dimitri. Paul.”
“We know all of them. We’ll get them.”
“He’s dangerous. Get me out of here. I’ll tell you everything.” Frank seemed unable to focus.
Emerson stepped forward. “Obrasey, help me undo these restraints. Frank, are you okay to walk?”
Frank answered with a shake of his head, conserving his voice. They had to use knives to cut loose the bonds on his wrists and legs. The bonds on his legs had turned his skin the white of marble.
Frank took a few seconds of deep breaths. “I can’t feel my feet,” he said.
“Blood flow’s cut off,” said Emerson. “We’ll carry you.”
Emerson went to one side of the chair and Obrasey went on the other. They each took an arm over their shoulder and raised Frank to his feet. He tried to stand and stumbled, neither of his feet taking any of his weight. They had to take his full weight. It was a slow process.
“Sir,” shouted one of th
e agents. “The elevator is stuck. The men you sent only got about thirty meters up. I can see them from here. And there’s some weird sounds coming from the first subbasements, like gears clicking or something. It’s loud.”
“Damn,” said Emerson. “Come here and take this shoulder. I need to see this.”
The agent ran toward them but froze when the ground above them rumbled, sending rocks and pebbles falling on them from the roof above them.
“What the hell was that?” said Emerson.
Then they heard another rumble, and another, then another. The entire subbasement seemed to shake, and pieces of the roof began falling around them. Obrasey felt her heart pounding. She looked for some support or some answer as to what was happening from the FBI agents, but she got nothing. They seemed just as scared as she was. She could hear one explosion after another coming down the elevator shaft.
“What’s happening?” said Frank.
“The machines still in the boxes,” said Obrasey, the truth dawning on her. “They weren’t machines.”
They could hear screams from above them, and then the entire second subbasement was filled with blinding light from the elevator shaft.
The fireball from the explosion of the factory reached the second subbasement so quickly that Obrasey didn’t have time to scream before the explosion engulfed the immense room.
Chapter 32
Keelan had been threatening Jake when the factory exploded behind him, the entire building going up in flames in a matter of seconds. Keelan spun in horror to look at the imploding factory, the walls crumbling and falling in on the rest of his team.
It was the opportunity Jake had been waiting for. The moment the explosion went off—without knowing what was happening or why—he lunged at the thug holding the rifle. The thug was just as stunned as Keelan, and Jake took him down with a quick punch to the throat followed by the knee to the face as he fell.
By the time Keelan had spun back around, Jake was gone, running straight at the fence on the north side of the factory. He grabbed the top of the fence and flipped over it in one fluid motion. He ran across the short open area and into the forest. He was overwhelmed by his emotions and was thankful he could focus on nothing but running. He looked back at Keelan Ochre, who hadn’t given chase and was looking back up at the factory, unable to do anything to save his team.
Jake could feel the warmth of the fires and the explosion as he ran through the forest.
“What the hell is going on?” said Harold in his ear.
“I don’t know,” said Jake. “The factory exploded. Sarah’s dead.”
Harold didn’t answer for a few minutes as Jake continued running through the forest. “I know,” he finally said. “Sarah was a good agent. She deserved better. Come back to the house. We’ll regroup and see if we can salvage this. Otherwise it will be an early retirement for the both of us.”
Jake couldn’t help but remember his plea to Sarah not to retire herself and his endless admiration of Harold as a child. He remembered the trading cards that Doug had kept of Harold. He remembered his last moments with Doug. He kept all this to himself.
“Okay,” he said as he came to a stop in the middle of the forest, panting heavily, unable to think about anything but the things he wanted to forget.
Chapter 33
The chief hadn’t moved since the explosion, even as pieces of debris began landing in front of them, getting closer and closer as they factory crumbled, the metal of the walls crumpling like pieces of newspaper in a fire pit.
He felt a hand on his shoulder.
“We need to move back,” said Thompson. The chief let himself be guided, never turning around or taking his eyes off the burning heap of metal that had once been the hope and pride of Crescent Point, a hope and pride that had been rejuvenated for less than two days. But he wasn’t thinking about the city at that moment.
“Obrasey is still in there,” he said quietly.
“There’s nothing we can do,” said Thompson. “Get out of the blast radius. We need to move back.”
“Did you get what your sent those agents for?”
Thompson paused as they approached the car, where a petrified Dirk was sitting.
“No. She killed herself,” said Thompson.
“She killed herself?” The chief spun around. “Who?”
“A friend of Jake Lavelle. We found sniper rifles and an assortment of grenades hidden behind a bush near her perch. She was his lookout.”
“Was Jake Lavelle in there? Is he dead?”
Thompson stared past the chief. “I’m sorry. I don’t know.”
Dirk, from the back seat of the vehicle, shouted out at them, “What the fuck is going on?”
“We don’t know,” answered Thompson matter-of-factly.
“Obrasey is still in there,” said the chief, only just now getting his mind in order and the shock subsiding. “We need to go in.”
Thompson put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “My partner is in there too. Do you really think I wouldn’t love to go in there and save him? I’ve seen explosions like this before.” He paused and stared at the ground for what seemed like a long time. “They’re done. They’re dead. There’s nothing we can do.”
“No, there must be some way.”
“I’m sorry, Gordon. There’s no way. We’re going to solve this, but we can’t save them. It would only be adding our bodies to the dead.”
Chief Williams looked up at the pillar of smoke stretching into the sky, knowing that most of the town of Crescent Point would be seeing it. The locals and tourists alike would be looking up in fear. Many would be running. Any hope that the town had of regaining its prestige was disappearing in the smoke.
Thompson’s phone rang, and he reached into his pocket, checking the caller ID. “I need to take this. Be safe, Chief.”
He walked away, leaving the chief alone with his thoughts. Obrasey was dead. He would have to tell Zach that he had failed to protect her, and he didn’t even know why.
“Chief,” said Dirk. “What’s happening?”
The chief turned to Dirk, who was leaning out the window. He said nothing.
“I swear to you, Chief,” said Dirk. “I had nothing to do with this. This was all that Jake Lavelle guy. I swear.”
“Fuck off, Dirk,” said the chief, turning back around.
“Chief, come on. At least tell me I’m under arrest. Come on, Chief! I’m good, now! I swear! I never broke that promise! Please!”
Thompson shouted, “Get the prisoner into one of the trucks and start transporting him to the Boston FBI office. Anyone fit to do so, follow me.”
He was walking purposefully toward the chief, gun in hand.
The chief matched his stride and walked with him. “What’s going on?”
“I know where Jake Lavelle is. Get in the car.”
Dirk was dragged out of the car by a few FBI agents, still shouting at the chief of his innocence.
“Isn’t that against protocol?” said the chief. “I shouldn’t be…”
“Fuck protocol,” said Thompson. “Get in. You want to help capture the guy responsible for killing Obrasey and Emerson or not?”
At that moment Chief Williams realized that Thompson was hurting just as much as he was. He walked around the car and climbed into the passenger seat where Emerson had sat on their way there. Before he had finished closing the door, Thompson hit the gas and spun the wheel, leaving the factory, the fire, and Obrasey and Emerson behind.
Chapter 34
Jake was staring at the tree in front of him, counting the grooves in the bark as a way to avoid thinking about what had happened. He could still see the faint illumination from the fire lighting the trees around him, but the one he stared at was sheltered from the reminder.
He had removed his earpiece, leaving it to hang over his chest. He could faintly hear Harold’s voice asking him to check in, to tell him what had happened. Jake didn’t respond. He didn’t want to talk to anyone right n
ow, especially not about Sarah.
All he could think about was Doug, about how the same thing was happening again. And he had the same people to blame.
Doug had always loved talking about ethics, something that Jake found boring and infuriatingly useless in everyday life.
Now he wished Doug was there to talk to him.
“You’re not supposed to care about this, that’s what they tell you, right?” he imagined Doug saying. “The mission is all that matters. Not your life, not your friends, not your safety or your self-respect. If that’s the case, you’ve already succeeded in this case. Except for Dimitri and Paul. You still need to kill them; they probably know something. But that’s all very ethically well and good, of course, because it’s the mission.”
Jake ran his hands through his hair. “Shut up!”
More from instinct than anything else, he ducked and rolled along the leaves, some getting caught in his jacket. When he finished his roll, he looked up. There was a tranquilizer dart sticking out of a tree, directly behind where he’d been sitting. He dodged behind a tree and then peered around the near side, looking for some kind of sign of who was shooting. He could just make out figures in the distance clothed in black and moving toward him between the trees.
They were trying to take him out from a distance, he realized, and not give him the chance to do the same thing that Sarah had done, taking capture and interrogation out of the equation.
He had to force his tongue away from the cap on his tooth. He was not ready to die, not yet. Not for The Compound. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.
Without weighing the options, because he didn’t need to, he took off at a sprint through the woods, moving at a diagonal away from the FBI agents and the factory, toward the northeast shore where there was a river, based on the maps of Crescent Point he had studied. As he ran, he heard the distant sounds of footsteps and shouts as the FBI agents saw him running, and he could feel the wind of more darts and then bullets as they exploded around him.