“I hope you’re right.”
“Tell me, is anything they are saying on the news true? Their story seems a lot different than what you told me.”
“I know. What they are saying makes no sense. I was controlling those drones, and we took out everybody. Nobody there even seemed to have a weapon. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. I didn’t see that cop there either, but it all happened so fast, I may have shot her too.”
“It’s a lot of people.”
“I know,” he said and started crying.
“Come on, now. Man up a little. It happened. Things happen. It’s not your fault, kid. You didn’t know. You thought you were playing a video game.”
“But I did it. I didn’t think it was real, but it was. It’s like my whole life. I don’t know the difference anymore between what’s reality and what’s virtual reality. Everything has melded together.”
“That guy, Thomas. They are saying some terrible things about him on the news.”
“Yeah, but none of it can be true. The guy was just trying to escape the grid camp. He wasn’t much different from me.”
“Yeah, it’s a shame how things happen sometimes. Hey, you feeling sleepy now?” Joey asked.
“I guess so. Maybe the coffee wore off. Talking to you seemed to calm me down.”
“Your eyelids keep closing.”
“Yeah, I keep opening them, but they keep closing. I feel like I should lie down.”
“It’s late. You’ve had a terrible night. The Champagne is probably just kicking you into sleep gear.”
Maxime walked over toward the bed, wobbling a little as he walked.
“You okay there, kid?”
“I don’t know. I feel weird.”
“Just lie down, Maxime. I’ll let you sleep. I’ll turn out the light for ya. We’ll leave for Peru tomorra. You’re gonna love it.”
“Thank you,” he said, his voice trailing off.
Joey watched him fall asleep, and waited another few minutes.
“Maxime?” he said loudly right above his face. He clapped his hands hard above his head. Once. No response. Twice. No response.
The heroin Joey had put in Maxime’s drink was enough to kill a horse. He was surprised that the kid had been able to hold a conversation as long as he had.
Joey left the room and closed the door behind him. He had to go get his equipment for the ritual. It was the same ritual he had performed over and over for many years.
Every male escort had a limited shelf life. Some could last as long as ten years, but most were done after five. It wasn’t their bodies that caused the problem, it was their motivation.
Joey could keep them motivated during the first few years to pay back the debt they incurred on their escape. Then he could usually get a few more years from them as they stockpiled money toward their trip to South America. But once they had saved up enough, the motivation was gone. When they were ready to go to South America, Joey faced a choice. He could either help them escape and give them the money, or he could keep all of the money and dispose of them in a less risky way. Joey liked low-risk, big-reward scenarios.
He entered Maxime’s room again with his mini-forklift and container. Closing the door behind him, he went to Maxime’s bed and took off his clothes. He carefully put each article of clothing into the laundry bin. He then pulled Maxime’s naked body head first into the container. Maxime was muscular and tall, so he was heavier than most, but Joey was wearing an exoskeleton around his waist and arms that assisted him in lifting heavy objects. He easily dropped Maxime into the container and positioned his legs and feet such that the entire body fit inside. He then covered the container and used the mini-forklift to take him outside.
Joey was wearing his wig, but he wasn’t worried about overhead surveillance. He pushed the forklift across the yard into a small shack behind the diner, opening the locked doors with a retina scan. Once inside, he walked over to a large cannister and opened the cover. Inside was a special chemical acid that could consume human bodies in minutes. Joey used his exoskeleton to lift Maxime’s body from the smaller container and lower it into the larger container.
As he heard the hissing sounds of the acids interacting with the flesh, he stood back and pulled out a cigarette. He lit it and sang to himself. “Oh what a night,” he said. “Late November, back in 75. What a very special time for me…”
Shit. Doesn’t rhyme. You can’t mess with the lyrics.
He smiled as he walked over to his air purifier and turned it on max power. The shack would smell to high heaven without this little gadget. He had bought it after the first time, when he couldn’t stop vomiting from the smells produced by the acid. But the experience didn’t phase him like that any more. He had lost count of how many times he had needed to do this ritual. More than fifty for sure. Killing Maxime was a no-brainer. He liked the kid, but he liked his own life better, and Maxime would have taken down everything. Sometimes a person can know too much for their own good.
Joey put out the butt of his cigarette in the disposal. He pulled out a second one and lit up. When he was a kid, everyone smoked electronic cigarettes, but he always had an affinity toward the classical version of things. Hand-rolled Cuban cigars, Spanish wines with the grapes crushed under the feet of little Spanish girls, and real tobacco cigarettes, rolled by a machine in North Carolina. Joey’s ritual was a two to three cigarette affair. Given Maxime’s size, tonight was definitely a three-cigarette night.
Joey thought about Thanksgiving.
I gotta message Linda and tell her that we should start later.
It was a long night and he had gotten no sleep. He could push lunch back to 3 pm and catch up on his rest. Linda wouldn’t care. Especially when she found out about the extra million in the bank account.
Joey inhaled and heard his phone beep. He pulled it out and saw the message: an encrypted image. He opened it and laughed.
“I figured as much,” he said.
He pushed some buttons to forward the message to Margaret. Then he pulled out his third cigarette.
Smoking it, he wondered if Margaret would come through on the legislation. He had held up his end of the bargain. He delivered the car and also told her about the farm. He provided her with all the details she needed. Hopefully it was enough.
If she didn’t make the legislation happen, he had other options. Maxime had provided him with details of this Tennessee massacre that could be useful. But he hoped he wouldn’t ever need to use it. The information was so dangerous, he decided not to tell Linda about it.
Too much information can get a person killed.
After his third cigarette, he walked over to the large cannister and looked inside. Nothing but an orange-and-red-colored goo with a terrible smell. Best to leave the air purifier on all night. He picked up a box of powder and sprinkled it liberally over the red goo. The chemicals would mix all night and leave an odorless, viscous fluid that could be poured into a landfill without concern. All part of the ritual. Joey wasn’t a chemist, but when you know the right people, they can teach you useful tricks with chemistry.
It’s a lot easier than digging a hole.
Joey remembered how the old guys used to talk about holes in the desert. Back when Las Vegas was a hopping spot.
He turned off the light in the shack and closed the door. He walked across the yard to his building and entered with the same retina scan. Within minutes, he was in bed and sleeping soundly, dreaming of Thanksgiving turkey and cranberry dressing.
73
SUSAN WOKE UP to a beep from her phone. She looked at the clock and realized she had been sleeping for over an hour. Glancing at the navigation system, she was minutes away from the destination. A peach farm in north Georgia.
Her phone had an encrypted image forwarded from Margaret. It was a location on the peach farm with a red X marking an area of trees. She assumed that this was where she would find the criminal.
Susan had decided that she was done killing for
the night. Whether it was Maria or Thomas, she was going to capture and question. She had a sniper rifle in the car which was loaded with non-lethal netting. The bullets were like airbags, exploding on the target and wrapping them in a netting that is nearly impossible to escape.
Susan needed to understand who these people were and why they were running. Why would this foreign woman come to a US underground site? Why would a man spend twenty years on the grid and then risk his life to escape? Too many questions that needed answers. Not least of all, Susan was done with murdering people.
It was one thing to deal with real criminals or terrorists. But killing Stephanie had been crossing a line. And until she knew more about this Maria person, she had her own conscience to deal with.
She turned on the back screen in the car and looked for CNN.
“Oh my God,” she said.
The screen showed the wreckage of an exploded car with police cars parked all around. The caption read, “Exploding car kills escaped criminals?”
Susan told the screen to increase its volume. The reporter was talking. “Georgia police are now saying that the car doesn’t appear to have any body parts. It is unlikely that either criminal was in the car when it exploded, driving on this old road in northern Georgia. No injuries have been reported as the car is estimated to have exploded around 3:40 eastern time. There is still no word on what caused the explosion.”
Susan raced through her memory. What does this mean for her? She’s going to the peach farm. One of them is there. She looked at the map again with the red X. Where exactly is this? She zoomed in and out of the image to get her orientation. OK, if this info is correct, she’ll get one of them. But what about the other one?
The TV continued and she listened in. “Local police are on the hunt for both the man and woman shown in this picture. The man is assumed to be wearing a wig. Police ask that residents in the north Georgia area report all suspicious activity.”
Can she leave this up to the local cops? Susan wasn’t sure. Maybe if she caught the first one, she could more easily find the second. Should she bring any local cops into her hunt? So far, she had decided against it. She hadn’t tipped off the reporter, Melissa, about the peach farm, and she wasn’t in any hurry to bring in the local PD. Now that she had the exact location of the hiding spot, why bother? If she is interrogating the suspect, there are plenty of questions and answers that she doesn’t want the local police to hear.
“Arriving at destination,” the car said.
Susan put on her wind breaker and grabbed the sniper rifle. She looked at the image on her phone again and compared it to the map on the navigation system. Once she had her bearings, she got out of the car and locked the doors behind her.
It was still several hours before sunrise, but the light from the moon was quite good. Susan had no problem moving into position, finding a small hill where she could get a view of the red X area. Her special training at Quantico with the sniper rifle had seen little utility before today. It had been more than ten years since she had even fired this weapon, but it was like riding a bicycle. She slithered and crawled her way into position and looked through the infrared scope to find any forms of life.
It never occurred to her that the red X could have been wrong. She moved with complete confidence that she was the hunter and there was nothing to fear from the prey. She walked confidently up one side of the hill and then began crouching and crawling when it seemed appropriate, given the red X. She spread out on the ground with the sniper and pointed the scope right at the red X.
Luckily, the intelligence was perfect. She found a person lying on the ground under a blanket, right where the red X said they should be. The person appeared to be sleeping.
Susan increased the zoom and took her time. She shifted from IR view to optical and used the moonlight to see. She saw the face and realized it was the man, Thomas. Adjusting the aim toward the torso, she wondered how the netting would work if the target was underneath a blanket. All of her practice had been with subjects standing or walking or running. The sniper rifle took several seconds to load new rounds, and she didn’t want to risk having to shoot twice. She pulled her handgun out and pointed it into the air. She fired the handgun into the air while still looking through the scope of the rifle. Sure enough, the man woke up with a startle and sat up. He looked around in all directions, frantic. He got up and began collecting his items. Susan didn’t need more than a few seconds to put him down. She stayed with her eyes on the scope and saw him fall. She had hit him square in the chest. The netting wrapped around his body and he was writhing on the ground, trying to get up but unable to.
Susan decided to wait a while longer before running toward the man. Just in case the woman was around. She looked in multiple directions around the man to see if someone was running to him. After about five minutes of seeing no one, she slowly got up, folded her weapon, and walked to collect her prize.
The big question now was: how would she get him back to the car? She hadn’t thought this far ahead, and had left an exoskeleton in the van at the safe house. As she walked, Susan considered her options. Carrying him was impossible. Cutting holes in the netting for his feet might easily backfire and let him escape. The best option may be to interrogate him under the trees and decide afterwards what to do with him. In that case, she needed her interrogation briefcase, which was back in the car.
She decided to check out his area first and make sure he didn’t have any weapons that he could grab through the netting. She also wanted to double-check the strength of the netting before leaving him alone. As she walked up to him, leaves crackled under her feet and he positioned his body to see her.
“Who are you?” he shouted. “Why are you doing this? You are killing innocent people.”
“I’m not killing anybody, Thomas,” she said, and she could see fear come into his face as she said his name. “I just have a few questions for you.”
“How do you know my name?”
“I know a lot about you, I’m afraid. I know about your escape at midnight on a Thursday from the grid camp in Nashville. I know that you rode in a big truck owned by a woman named Elizabeth and went to a UR site ran by a woman named Debbie. I know that you are traveling with a foreign friend who pretends to be from Venezuela, but we both know she’s not.”
She walked up to him and took a rope from her pack. She checked out his netting and put the rope through one side.
“Who are you? How do you know all of this?”
“I’m the woman who decides whether you live or die. And, believe it or not, I want you to live. So, if you want to live, you need to tell me the truth. I’m going to ask you some questions, and I’ll know if you are lying to me. Tell me the truth and I’ll let you live.”
She tied the other end of the rope to the nearest tree, to prevent him from rolling away in the netting.
“Why do you get to hold my life in your hands?”
“Because I’m the one holding the gun. So let’s begin. True or false, your name is Thomas.”
“You know that already.”
“I take that as a true. You spent the last twenty years living in a grid camp outside Nashville.”
Thomas sighed. He looked at her. Something in his look indicated fear but there was also hope. Was he looking for someone? Did he think someone was going to come and save him?
“That’s true. I lived in a grid camp for twenty years.”
“You escaped in a truck owned by a woman named Elizabeth.”
“True,” he replied.
“The woman you travel with claims to be from Venezuela?”
“True.”
“But she’s not.”
“True.”
“She’s currently in the car traveling somewhere?”
He hesitated. “True.”
What did the hesitation mean? Is it a lie or did he hesitate because he decided to tell the truth? Susan had an application on her phone that helped her detect if a person was lying, but t
hat phone was back in San Diego. The phone she was carrying was a burner that Harriet left for her. She turned it on and looked for the app. It was an NSA secret application and wasn’t installed. The phone was bare bones so that Susan could dump it anywhere without concern.
She had something far better than a lie detector in her interrogation briefcase. She would go get it in a minute.
“What is the woman’s real name?”
“Paola,” he said.
“Where is she from?”
“Brazil.”
Unlikely, Susan thought.
“What name is she traveling under?”
“Maria something. I don’t really know. Believe it or not, I don’t know much about her.”
“Why are you traveling together?”
“We both were near the exit of the house. We were lucky. Why did you attack the house?” Thomas asked.
“I didn’t attack any house. I’m the one asking the questions.”
“Why did you kill everyone? They were good people there.”
“Do you want to be shot, Thomas? I’ll shoot you in the kneecap as a warning if you need to know that I’m serious.”
“I saw you kill a hundred people. I know that you’re serious. I’m telling you what I know.”
She looked around him. She felt the netting and saw that it was secure. She looked at his backpack and then saw the gun.
“What is this?” she asked.
“That’s the gun I used to take out your drones.”
“Uh huh,” she said, picking it up. “Where did someone in a grid camp get a weapon like this? How can you act so innocent if you have this kind of weapon? You know that it is highly illegal to have a weapon like this.”
“I thought it was illegal for combat drones to be used against American citizens.”
“It is perfectly legal for criminals to be shot.”
“No one at the site was a criminal. Whoever used those drones is the criminal.”
Susan picked up the gun and the backpack.
“I’ll be back, Thomas. Don’t run off,” she said with a smirk. Then she walked back to her car.
Escape The Grid: Volume 1 Page 31