by Bill Evans
“Where are they?” whispered Jenna, ears straining beyond the hard exhalations that rose around her. She eyed a spot about fifty yards back, the way she’d once studied brush for grouse and pheasants when she’d been a young girl hunting with her father. She’d always enjoyed the shooting, but the blood and gore of gutting had proved repulsive. And she’d been gunning for game, not people. Who are chasing you.
Jenna spotted unmistakable movement behind thick vegetation studded by tall trees—and heard a hard, metallic, snapping sound. Were they trapped by men already creeping around them, closing in from the sides? But if the four of them ran, they’d lose even the spotty cover of narrow-trunked trees. Behind them stood only that clearing.
“We can’t go any farther,” she whispered.
“I know,” Dafoe agreed.
They would make a stand here. To fight assassins? Isn’t that what Sang-mi called them? Even thinking this made Jenna feel surreal, like she was living somebody else’s life.
A loud crack froze her thoughts. A bullet snapped a tree limb several feet away and it crashed to the ground. Sang-mi started to bolt. Jenna grabbed her. “No,” she whispered. “They’re trying to flush us out.” Bullets like bird dogs.
Without warning, Bayou barked. Dafoe grabbed his jaw to silence him, but the damage was done and a fusillade exploded. From the muzzle flashes, it looked like half a dozen weapons had unloaded on them.
Bullets ripped into trees or shrieked past. Jenna, crouching, figured that their assailants were shooting blind. Not missing by much, though. And all we’ve got is this thing? She looked at the varmint rifle in her hands. And a pistol?
She aimed and waited for another flash, then fired back with the small caliber rifle, knowing that she’d have to pierce a vital organ to bring down an attacker. At least they know we’ve got guns, though from their cautious approach the shooters must have assumed that the four of them were armed.
Dafoe put Bayou on the ground with another command to be quiet, then rose up and aimed into the darkness. When the next shots erupted, he also fired back.
A distant siren reached them, faint at first, but growing steadily louder. The incoming ceased.
Jenna tried to hear whether their assailants were fleeing, but the sirens were so shrill that they blocked any other sound. Then the Expedition’s headlights arced across a pasture to their left. The vehicle turned into the field and raced down its gentle slope, speeding past them about a hundred feet away. Jenna and Dafoe both opened fire on it. She guessed that they hit their target, but their light weaponry sure hadn’t stopped it.
“Is there a road down there?” Jenna had to shout above the sirens drawing ever nearer.
“Yeah,” Dafoe shouted back. “There’s an old wooden gate.”
Seconds later, they heard the gate shatter. The SUV’s headlights rose and fell three times in swift succession as it bounded onto a cattle path.
Dafoe watched and said, “I was hoping they’d lose at least one headlight. Make them easier to track.”
They began to work their way back to Dafoe’s farmhouse, moving cautiously in case one of the attackers had stayed behind or left them an explosive “gift.” Side by side, weapons raised, Jenna and Dafoe took the lead. She found the sirens increasingly distressing because they blocked every other noise.
Only as they inched closer to the house did they find the sheriff’s presence helpful. His Bronco’s headlights tore a wedge in the night, but revealed little more than cow pies and hoofprints.
Tossing aside caution, they raced toward Sheriff Walker and the New York State Police officer who stood beside him. Everyone started talking at once. The sheriff hushed them with a wave. “One at a time, please,” he said, as if they had all night.
Dafoe went first, telling them about the firefight and the escape of the SUV. The sheriff stopped him quickly.
“You engaged in a gunfight with those fools?” He took Dafoe’s rifle from Jenna and sniffed it, as if he didn’t believe what he’d just heard.
“I’ll get out an APB,” the state policeman said.
“You do that,” Walker replied, amazing Jenna with how much condescension one man could squeeze into three simple words.
“Going to be tough at night to nab anything on the New York State Thruway, assuming that’s where they went,” the sheriff added. “Anything notable about that vehicle that you can tell me?”
Dafoe replied that it had crashed through a wooden gate. “But both headlights were still working.”
“It might have bullet holes on the driver’s side,” Jenna volunteered.
The sheriff took a detailed report and suggested that they find somewhere else to spend the night.
Where? Jenna wondered. “Can you give us protection?”
“Protection?” he asked, as if she’d made the most absurd suggestion in memory. “My budget’s been cut three times in the past three years by the State Assembly. I don’t even have a deputy anymore. I can call the feds in the morning and see if they can spare anyone, but I wouldn’t hold my breath—I’d find somewhere safe and go there. Give me a ring tomorrow.”
Is this what we’ve come to? Jenna wondered. We can’t even protect our citizens?
The sheriff and state policeman did pore over the grounds with flashlights, and found where the Expedition had flattened grass in the pasture, but no useful tire tracks turned up until they came across a cow patty with a distinct tread pattern.
After they left, Jenna, Dafoe, Forensia, Sang-mi, and Bayou trooped into Dafoe’s house. He locked the door behind them. Jenna looked out a window, worried about other dangers the darkness might hold. Chills climbed her spine. She turned to Sang-mi and Forensia. “Why were they trying to kill us?”
“You have to tell them,” Sang-mi said to Jenna.
“Tell who what?” Jenna asked impatiently. “I want to know why they’re trying to kill us. If they are North Korean agents, you’d think they’d have bigger fish to fry.”
“They’re trying to kill you.” Sang-mi stared at Jenna. “That’s why they didn’t do anything till you got back. They know that you can tell the world about the rockets. GreenSpirit said you will do that.”
“I can’t tell anyone about anything: I’ve been suspended from the show. And besides, I’m not about to go on air and start spouting because a dead Pagan witch supposedly said so. That’s just—”
“It is true,” Sang-mi said. “My father knows about them.”
“Then our government also knows about the rockets, right? Because he’s being debriefed by the CIA.”
“Then why are we getting attacked?” Dafoe sounded honestly bewildered. “It could be because of you, Sang-mi. You said that they go after family members, too.”
The Korean nodded.
“Maybe because something else is also happening,” Forensia said. “That’s what GreenSpirit is saying, in a way.”
“Oh, please,” Jenna said. “Can we at least agree not to quote conversations with the dead?” Her cell phone rang before she could say anything more: UNKNOWN NUMBER appeared on the screen. She answered with a brisk hello.
A voice asked her to hold for Vice President Andrew Percy. Jenna pressed the phone closer to her ear and walked away from her companions, who looked at her curiously but fell silent.
“This is Vice President Percy,” she heard a moment later. “I haven’t been able to get back to you till now. My apologies.”
“That’s okay,” Jenna said. “I understand. I just wanted to make sure that you knew about the rockets in North Korea that are loaded with sulfates.”
Silence.
Jenna soldiered on. “The rockets are designed to explode in the stratosphere. The North Koreans are planning to bring years of winter to the whole planet in retaliation against the U.S. And other countries, too,” she added hastily.
“Where did you hear that?” The vice president made no attempt to hide his incredulity.
“From an impeccable source.”
�
��I think you can dismiss your ‘impeccable source’ out of hand,” he replied.
“Why, sir? With all due respect, it’s a viable geoengineering technique. One of the simpler ones, in fact.”
“Is that why you’ve been trying to track me down?” His tone turned harsh. Even though he was the vice president of the United States, Jenna bristled when she heard it.
“Yes, sir, that’s exactly why I’ve been leaving messages. I guess you wouldn’t mind me bringing it up on the air tomorrow,” she said, trusting that he’d heard nothing about her suspension.
“I wouldn’t say anything about any rockets,” Percy said. “That kind of speculation can be very harmful.”
“Not if it’s just speculation.” His response intrigued her because it didn’t add up: If there were no threat from North Korea, telling a TV audience about the rockets would amount to no more than mindless media chatter. But if it were real—
The vice president interrupted her thoughts: “May I confide in you?”
“Yes, sir, by all means.” Though Jenna didn’t believe for a nanosecond that he would say anything of substance, she played along—and a moment later found out how wrong she could be:
“If you breathe a word about any of this, you’re going to end up in a supermax for a long, long time,” Percy said.
A heavily fortified federal prison? What’s going on? “Why are North Koreans trying to kill me?” she asked.
“Trying to kill you?”
Jenna thought he snorted with derision. She quickly told him what had happened.
“And you’ve reported this, you say, to the police?”
“That’s right.”
“Did you say anything about North Korea or rockets to them?”
Curious that he was back to that again. “No, I did not.”
“Remember what I said: a supermax.” He hung up.
Jenna forced herself to take a big breath before turning to the others, who had listened to her every word.
“The vice president?” Dafoe asked.
She nodded. “And he just threatened me with a long stay in a supermax, if I said a word about the rockets.”
“You have to tell people,” Sang-mi said.
“Stop saying that,” Jenna snapped, “and just let me just think.” She turned back to Dafoe. “What worries me is I can’t stop thinking about bin Laden. For years before 9/11 he threatened the U.S., blamed us for everything. He even had the North Tower bombed in ’93. There were people in government trying to get the attention of the White House and the defense agencies, trying to go through all the proper channels, and no one listened until those goddamn planes slammed into the towers and killed three thousand people.”
“The Koreans are going to kill the whole world,” Forensia said.
Jenna nodded. “North Korea’s leader is doing the same thing bin Laden did,” she said. “He’s blaming the U.S. and threatening us because of his country’s droughts and famine, climate change and—”
“He’s got a point there,” Forensia said.
“No!” Jenna said furiously. “I won’t give that bastard even that much. You can’t let psychos like him justify anything because that becomes a way of their justifying everything, even rockets that would end the world.”
Jenna sat heavily on Dafoe’s couch. “You know what I think? I think Percy just confirmed everything that Sang-mi’s been saying.” Jenna stared at the young Korean woman, who said nothing, perhaps sensing that the ground had shifted in her favor.
“I remember you saying,” Dafoe nodded at Jenna, “that in your book you wrote about how North Korea likes to piggyback on crises whenever they can. You look at the situation in the Maldives, and it’s hard to imagine that they’ll ever find a bigger crisis to jump on than that tanker.”
“There’s another reason the North could be moving now,” Jenna said. “Because if you’re going to be doing something against us, what better time to do it than on election day.”
“You’re right,” Dafoe said.
“You wait till everybody goes to the polls, and then you launch,” Jenna added. She pulled out her phone and called Nicci, catching her on the second ring. In a voice as bright and casual as cotton candy, Jenna asked Nicci to meet her at the Shaughn Hotel at five the next morning.
“The Shaughn? Really?” Nicci said.
“I can’t go back to my apartment.”
“What’s up?”
“Can you trust me till then?” Jenna asked.
“You know I can.”
“See you. I’ll be registered under Dafoe’s last name, Tillian.”
Jenna looked at Dafoe’s rifle and pistol. “Are these all the guns you have?”
“That’s it. Up till now, all I’ve been fighting are coyotes.”
“Let’s grab whatever ammunition you’ve got and hope for the best, because I’ve got a nasty feeling that we’re going to be fighting animals a lot more dangerous and devious than coyotes.”
“Are you going to tell everyone?” Sang-mi asked.
“If I can get on the air, I’ll say plenty. But that’s a big ‘if’ because I’ve been suspended.”
“We may have bigger problems than that,” Dafoe said with a telling glance at the dark world outside.
Jenna nodded and grabbed the pistol. “Let’s head down to the city. We’re sure not spending the night here.”
CHAPTER 23
Jenna sat in the front passenger seat of Forensia’s rattly, rusty Subaru wagon with the rifle held tightly in her hands. Forensia had gladly surrendered the driving duties to Dafoe; his truck, with a single bench seat, could never have held the four of them. Riding shotgun, Jenna constantly searched their surroundings as Dafoe drove cautiously down a series of country roads before merging onto the New York State Thruway.
Forensia and Sang-mi huddled in the backseat and kept their heads down. They might not have been sure whether the drive south was safer than trying to hide in town, but they’d cast their lot with Jenna and Dafoe, and there was no looking back—except to check if they were being followed.
Dry lightning cleaved the night sky to the west, an atmospheric sideshow that did little to ease the tension in the car, though the threat paled compared to the real danger of a highway shootout. But the trip was unavoidable if they were to get Jenna to the set of The Morning Show early on election day. She held the rifle firmly and her finger never strayed far from the trigger.
Every pair of headlights that overtook the old Subaru felt like a mortal threat, and when a large vehicle raced onto the highway behind them just after they passed a rest area, Jenna could feel everyone stiffen with dread. Dafoe used the mirrors to track the car’s rapid approach. Forensia turned around, gasping, “It’s a big black SUV,” repeating the very words she’d used to describe the black Expedition that she’d first spotted idling by Dafoe’s driveway.
But this three-ton behemoth sprinted by so fast that it almost blew their doors off. It had to be doing a hundred and twenty, hardly the low-key profile of a vehicle packed with foreign assassins scouring the thruway for three Americans and the daughter of a North Korean defector.
“Would it bother you if I put on some news?” Jenna asked Dafoe.
“That’s fine. Go for it.”
“I’m hoping to hear a bulletin that a car full of Asians has just been apprehended.”
No such news, but it didn’t take long before they heard a headline about the tanker takeover, followed by a reporter’s breathless warning about how a world catastrophe could be unleashed “at any second” in the Maldives.
From breathy to boozy—Rick Birk’s voice filled the car: “Live from the heart of the hoth-stidge taking over on the than-ker Dick Cheney.”
Birk sounded drunk to Jenna, though she could hardly imagine that he’d scrounged cocktails from gun-wielding jihadists. Maybe he was exhausted, or frightened half to death. Still, he was definitely slurring his words: “Ther-ists demanding fast, fast action. You hear me? Ther-ists want it f
ast.” Then she heard a loud bang, like he’d pounded a table for emphasis.
Christ, he sounds belligerent. Maybe he is wasted.
“How well do you know that guy?” Dafoe asked, keeping his eyes on the road, the rearview, and everywhere else at once, it seemed.
“Not very. He chewed me out the only time I ever talked to him. It was so offensive that I hung up on him. Then he tried to apologize, but I never took his calls. After that, he got taken ‘hoth-stidge.’” She giggled, couldn’t help herself. “I shouldn’t be joking about an old guy who’s had three fingers chopped off,” although it did feel good, amid all the worry, to experience a few seconds of relief, “but he’s a real creep. I haven’t met anyone who likes him.”
Dafoe listened closely to the radio. “Maybe he’s drinking himself to death. He sounds really plastered. If he’s found some booze, he’ll be lucky if they don’t chop off his head next.”
* * *
Birk could sniff out a purebred teetotaler in less time than it took him to knock back a Manhattan and suck down the damn cherry, and Suicide Sam hadn’t ever had a drink. I want his liver, Birk thought, when the time comes.
Raggedy Ass had nodded off, so Birk had tried several times to get Suicide Sam to wrap some tape around the captain’s mouth to shut … him … the … fuck … up, but this jihadist either didn’t understand English or didn’t care.
For chrissakes, that weasel’s still whining. It’s only three fucking fingers, pussy. I should be the one whining, putting up with your bullshit. Your goddamn fingers stink like gefilte fish, and I’m the one stuck with them on my shirt? I’ll never get these goddamn stains out. We get out of this jam and you’re getting the cleaning bill, buddy.
Birk felt that he had serious grounds to feel so aggrieved. Weasel mouth had tried to bite him—that’s right, bite him—when Birk stepped over his head on the way to the facilities. That did it. Birk whipped out the old avenger and tried to pee on him—give the sourpuss a serious dose of humiliation—before Raggedy Ass pushed him toward the head.
“Fucker needs a muzzle,” Birk said to the cracker jihadist after he’d drained the lizard.