Flip

by Christopher J Fox

  Thirty yards from the top of the ridge, the boulders and brush they’d been using for cover vanished, and the path continued into the open.

  “Francisco, how far after the top of the ridge?” Mollie grunted through gulping breaths.

  “The treeline is just over the side, and the path picks up again off to the left. After that, maybe two hundred yards or so to the ravine with the entrance.”

  “Okay. Hold up here. Everyone catch your breath.” She looked back at Greg and Nat, both of whom were winded and tired but on their feet.

  Miguel and John caught up to them a few seconds later. Miguel traded a look with his brother when he saw the open space that was between them and the safety of the mine.

  “Tía, you all make a run for it. We’ll wait behind here and try to slow them down. Maybe we’ll even take a few shots at the chopper.”

  “Okay, mijo. You guys ready?”

  Nat and Greg nodded.

  “Let’s go.”

  The four of them took off, their rapid footfalls kicking up clouds of dust in the purple-blue light of early dawn. Shots, popping off like firecrackers on the Fourth of July, sounded off behind them. Straining, heaving the stretcher, they crested the ridge and almost lost their balance as they descended on the other side. In a few panicked breaths, they made it to the treeline and cover. The path descended, with walls of rock rising on either side, and they slowed their pace. Straight ahead was a dark rectangular shape in the rock wall. As they got closer, Nat read oro y azul carved into the wooden beam that served as the lintel over the entrance to the mine.

  The six steps they took into the mine robbed them of what little light they had. Spent from their dash, they put Aida down and collapsed onto the tunnel floor. Francisco dug a flashlight out of his pack and flicked it on. No one spoke; they just all lay there, panting and looking behind them out the entrance, waiting for Miguel and John.

  ***

  Miguel popped off a few shots to discourage anyone from following too closely. The chopper circled overhead; no one returned fire. John watched the group of four—plus Aida—haul ass over the ridge and disappear.

  Oh, God, keep them safe.

  Still no one fired, and it dawned on him. “They want Aida—they’re not going to fire on them.”

  “Yeah,” Miguel said, “sorry to tell you, amigo. I don’t think they’re gonna do that for us.” He grinned in the gathering light. “What branch were you in?”

  “Navy, I was a rescue diver, medic, and did underwater demolitions.”

  “So you were a SEAL?” he asked, the admiration obvious in his voice.

  “No, we’d go in ahead of the SEAL teams, set things up. We were the brains; they were the brawn. You?”

  “Semper Fi, brother! I was a grunt chewing dirt in Iraq.” And as men under fire do, they shook hands and clasped arms. An abrazo, as it was called in Spanish.

  “Let’s go, Navy!” Miguel said as he headed out, wearing a wicked grin.

  Their sprint to the top of the ridge drew immediate fire, from the chopper and from behind. They had waited too long under the cover at the end of the path, and unit one was almost on top of them. Unit three had moved off the path to get a flanking angle. Miguel and John were in a crossfire from behind, from the side, and from above.

  Between the two of them, John was in better shape, and with legs and lungs pumping, he made it to the top of the ridge first. He was a perfectly dark figure silhouetted against the eastern sky.

  “Drop!” Miguel screamed at him as he heard the report from a shot off to his right. He saw the spraying burst of blood and tissue from John’s right thigh. John collapsed and rolled out of sight on the other side of the ridge.

  Instinct and training drove Miguel. In an odd crouching run, he zigzagged his way to the top and over the ridge. He saw John dragging himself along the ground halfway to the treeline.

  “Shit, Navy. What the hell are you doing?”

  “Waiting for the dirt-slow marine to come save my ass. What took you so long?”

  Miguel grabbed John and slung him over his shoulder, just as he had been trained to do, and stumbled into the path through the treeline. Hot, wet stickiness ran down his back from the wound in John’s leg. A few yards in, Miguel put him down and propped him up against a rock.

  “We’ve got to bind that up. Good thing you’re a medic so you can tell me how to do it right.”

  “Just take any piece of cloth, rip it into lengths, and wrap it around the wound and just above it. Make it tight. I’m lucky it didn’t hit the femoral artery, or I would have bled out by now.”

  “Way ahead of you.” Miguel took out a sling bandage and a trauma pad from his pack. “Hold the pad here and push hard,” he instructed John while he rolled the bandage into a four-foot length.

  “You’ve done this before,” said John.

  “You have no idea. Okay, this next part is gonna hurt.” Miguel wrapped the sling bandage around John’s thigh, pulled it tight, and tied it off. John grunted and turned pale but didn’t pass out. “Good for you. Now let’s get going. Can you hop on one leg?”

  John nodded.

  Miguel got John to his feet and put John’s arm over his shoulders. “Just like a three-legged race from when you were a kid, remember?”

  They headed through the Ponderosa pines toward the mine entrance. Ten steps, twenty-five steps, and the sides of the path started to rise around them. They were so intent on just taking the next step that they didn’t hear the helicopter hovering above them. Fifty-three steps and they spotted the entrance in the cliff side. Just a few more steps and they’d be there.

  ***

  Baka slowly released his breath and squeezed off a round.

  Good night.

  ***

  Miguel crumpled to the ground and lay facedown in the dirt. John fell and rolled off the path. He clambered behind a boulder.

  “Miguel!”

  John saw the entry point just below Miguel’s left shoulder blade. His expert eye tracked the path the round had taken through Miguel; the exit would have to be just to the left of center chest. Miguel was dead.

  The chopper had moved off but looked like it would circle around. No doubt the other assholes were close behind.

  Move it, Johnny boy.

  He craned his neck around the rock and saw the entrance, not twenty-five yards away. Adrenaline got him to his feet; grit carried him the rest of the way.

  ***

  “One down. Don’t approach him. I lost the others,” said Baka. “Don’t go into that ravine. It’s a kill box. We’ll circle around up here. They must have left the path. I’ll search for them and direct you in. They couldn’t have gotten far.”

  28 The Last Leg

  T he waves were relentless. Aida spent the energy Max had given her fighting to keep her balance against their pounding force and to stay near her family. After that was gone, the waves punished her until she was a mere blade of grass tossed about by the whim of a tornado. The unnatural waves whipped the background swells and crests of the Wave World into a violent frenzy, and she lost sight of Greg and Nat. She was alone and powerless. A numbness took hold of her, and the only pearl she could see was his—Baka, the monster, the hunter, the killer, her murderer. Even through the waves, he drew ever closer, heading in the same direction as she. Their pearls drew even with each other like two horses running the last length of a race, neck and neck to the finish line. Their paths would touch soon.

  As she felt the last of her life ebbing away, she thought it cruel of God to have her spend her last moments of life separated from those she loved most and in the company of this revolting beast. She immediately regretted this sentiment against the Almighty when she saw a death fold form and open in front of her.

  Then she realized. If I’m dead, he’ll call off the chase, and Greg and Nat will be safe.

  She always had understood the power of personal sacrifice.

  Nobody lives just for themselves.

  This was
what had driven her into medicine, what had validated her life as a mother and spouse. She found the greatest value in herself when she was helping others. It had been a life well lived, and now it would be a life well ended. If she could have smiled, she would have.

  ***

  “They’ve started again,” Johar announced into the communication loop, which now included the executive assistant director for science and technology, Theresa Waters, and her boss, the director of the FBI. After the first set, Waters, who headed the OTD, advised him of this unique threat. The director needed to see it for himself, so here he was.

  The patterns were identical. Concentric circles of red dots expanded cross the continent from their origin in southwest Washington.

  “This is incredible,” the director let slip on his open mike. “Are we recording this?”

  “Yes, sir, in triple redundancy,” Johar replied, then cringed, wondering if someone else should have answered.

  It didn’t matter to the director who had answered. He had what he needed. “Tell Seattle to go now. I’ll get this through the AG and ISC.”

  ***

  How long? How far? Aida wondered.

  The binding tightness of longing and sorrow and some fear contested with the joyful warmth of loving memories and gratefulness for her life in her heart. Baka’s pearl was just out of reach now.

  Soon. It will be very soon. Lord, keep them safe.

  Wild waves rocked her, and she witnessed two of them merge, immediately growing to double the size of the originals. Borne on the crest of this rogue wave, a jumbled cluster of pearls illuminated her view. She saw it would pass through her before she reached her end. Out of a desperate desire not to be alone, to be with other people one last time, Aida reached for them just as the rogue wave hit her.

  Tumbled and tossed, she still stretched for the lights. They came to her, and she grasped for them. She saw that another event line followed closely behind them. It was like the one in the plane.

  Fire.

  She went, sparkling like a bottle rocket and, in utter disbelief, found herself standing on the bow deck of a large boat facing the two-story cabin area, the wind pushing on her back.

  The roiling smoke that billowed from the rear of the vessel filtered the light from the rising sun, keeping it from blinding her. She heard screaming mixed with loud voices giving instructions to move to the lifeboats, but she knew that wouldn’t work; the fire had cut them off from passengers.

  Aida saw people inside the cabin, mostly adults, dressed in work clothes, as if they were heading for their shifts, and they saw her too.

  “This way! Come this way!” she shouted, waving to them. They would all be safest in the front of the boat. A man locked eyes with her, nodded, and grabbed his family. They exited the cabin to move toward her.

  ***

  “This is Roger Roget, KTLA morning news. There’s breaking news right now off the coast of Long Beach, a fire on the Catalina Catamaran ferry. It’s on its first run from Long Beach to Avalon, the five-thirty a.m. sailing. The boat’s stopped in the water about halfway between Long Beach Harbor and Avalon. That’s about eleven or twelve miles from the nearest land. Nearby vessels are coming to its aid. The Coast Guard station in Long Beach is responding. I understand we have live video from KTLA News One chopper. Here’s Dawn Olvera with the latest.”

  “Thanks, Roger. As you can see, this is a very dangerous situation. The rear of the boat is completely engulfed in flames, cutting the passengers off from at least some of the lifeboats. There’s a lot of confusion on the deck and in the main passenger areas.”

  The images of the burning boat and terrified passengers trying to find any safe place were immediately splashed on screens across the US, then picked up by the international media and beamed all over the globe. No fewer than six broadcast-quality cameras were recording every square inch of the deck.

  “The forward area near the bow of the boat is clear,” Olvera continued, “and…and…I see a woman, waving to her fellow passengers, calling to them to come forward.”

  ***

  The first twelve minutes of the raid went by the book. No surprises, no resistance, just startled staff and patients. Kozlowski’s long night, now turned early morning, bore fruit when they encountered architectural features that weren’t in the building plans. An elevator had been locked off before the response team pushed in. They had to cut the power to certain sections of the building in order to override the building control systems to access it. That was another surprise. Massive amounts of power were feeding into the undocumented lower levels of what turned out to be a complex.

  Everyone on the upper floors was detained; some were arrested. One in particular was pulled from the third-story executive office. He refused to talk, but staff identified him as Jerome Gilden.

  It took the agents another thirty minutes to breach the considerable security of the lower levels. Once Kozlowski got inside, he didn’t know what to think. Again, there was no armed resistance, just frightened nurses and technicians. They found Dr. Qian’s limp body huddled below his computer station. As Qian had no visible wounds, Kozlowski assumed it was death by drug overdose. In a day or two, toxicology would confirm this. What the OTD’s digital forensics experts found on Qian’s workstation was evidence of his penultimate act. He had typed a single command line, launching a program. It read: PURGE.

  Explanations for the two separate surgical suites, the pentagonal room, and the four smaller rooms came faster than Kozlowski expected. The occupants of the pentagonal room were separated and questioned. Some kept quiet; some didn’t. And from those who were willing to cooperate, he learned of the now-deceased victims in the four sarcophagus-shaped containers. Within forty-eight hours, the entire intelligence community descended on The Project, and a day after that, the complex was classified top secret, special compartmentalized by the Department of Defense.

  ***

  Aida heard the thomp-thomp-thomp of at least three news helicopters around the boat. People were leaving the cabin and coming to her. She climbed on top of a deck locker by the railing so she could be more easily seen and kept calling to the passengers. Some had their mobile devices out.

  ***

  “Passengers are making their way onto the front deck of the boat now,” Olvera reported. “Some have jumped over the side into the water, expecting to be rescued by other boats. The woman in white has climbed on top of a bench or something, still waving, still gesturing to everyone, calling them to the safest part of the boat. A whole flotilla of private fishing boats, sailboats, and all kinds of vessels are only a hundred yards away now.”

  ***

  Aida saw that passengers were turning to help other passengers, and some were starting to come near her. The wind had caught the side of the boat like a sail and turned it in the water so the smoke no longer blocked the rising sun. Although its brilliant glare overwhelmed her, she didn’t turn away.

  My last sunrise, she thought as the rubber band tugged on her mind.

  Then, in front of everyone on national and international commercial and social media, Aida vanished.

  29 Oro y Azul

  N atalia and Greg caught John as his right leg gave out and he tumbled through the mine entrance. Miguel’s field dressing, now saturated from John’s exertion, remained firmly in place.

  “Where’s Miguel? What about my brother? Is he still out there?” Francisco demanded.

  “Miguel died,” John choked out through burning pain and fatigue. “The asshole in the helicopter shot him through the heart. I’m sorry—I couldn’t pick him up.”

  Francisco steadied himself on the tunnel wall, then slowly sank to the floor. “We can’t just leave him out there lying in the dirt. We’ve got to get him!”

  “En el nombre del Padre, y del Hijo, y del Espíritu Santo.” Mollie quietly blessed herself and prayed for the soul of her sister’s son. Her whispers were almost drowned out by the grinding sound of the helicopter echoing through the ravine
and into the mine. “Mijo, if you go out there now, you’ll get shot too.”

  “Tía…this is wrong.” Francisco struggled to his feet and took a step toward the entrance.

  Greg spoke up. “Please, Francisco. I know my wife wouldn’t want anyone to die for her. I’m so sorry about your brother.”

  “My dad’s right. She’d want us to try to find a way out of here,” Nat pleaded as she worked to change John’s bandage.

  John got through to him. “Francisco, you two brought us here for cover, and we’ve reached the objective. We’re safe for now, but we have to keep moving. Is there another way out of here?”

  “I don’t know anymore. Maybe, but we haven’t been here in a long time. We’d have to look.”

  “Okay, so let’s get looking,” said Mollie. “If we can find our way out without being seen, we’ll have a chance.”

  Resigned to the logic of it, Francisco picked up his flashlight and shined it down deeper into the silent blackness of Oro y Azul before setting off. Mollie and Greg followed close behind and shared a light between them. John stayed behind to tend to Aida, and Nat stayed behind to tend to John.

  Nat could still see the bobbing flashlights on the walls of the tunnel when Francisco yelled, “Oh, shit! Get back, back, back, back!”

  The muffled scuffling of their footfalls grew as the three of them trotted back up the tunnel, their lights flicking into John’s and Nat’s eyes.

  “Point the lights down!” said John in hoarse whisper. “They’ll be seen outside.”