“It’s not like I could screw it up a lot more than it is,” Jonathan said. “I didn’t ask to be involved in any of this, but here I am. Now that I know, I can’t just look away. This can’t be a surprise to you.”
“What if Uncle Sam finds out?” Venice asked.
Jonathan laughed. “If he finds out that a couple of private citizens interfered with their illegal plans to supply forbidden weapons to a foreign nation? He’ll be equal parts scared and pissed. If he found out before the fact, he’d make every effort to kill the citizens who held the secrets. After the fact? He has a massive PR problem to manage. Do Big Guy and his crew know this detail?”
“Yes, they do. They’re calling themselves Team Yankee, by the way.”
“I like the ring of that. And how far out are they?”
“Your official sunset tonight is six-eleven. They plan to reach the shore precisely at seven p.m. It will be full dark by then.”
In a perfect world, that was still too early to launch an op. Midnight or later granted the best combination of fatigue and complacency in an enemy. But in this case, Jonathan agreed that earlier was better.
“I need to figure out a way to kill the power to this place to prepare for their arrival,” Jonathan said.
“No, you don’t,” Venice said. “I’ve got that covered from here. Their electrical grid is an easy hack. They essentially have done nothing to protect it.”
“You were able to do that in a day?” Gail asked. She looked flabbergasted.
“I cheated a little,” Venice said in her coyest tone. “And no, neither of you wants to know what that means.”
CHAPTER 27
“YOU CAN’T STAY HERE,” BAKER SAID.
“I have options?” Tyler asked with a wry smile.
Baker strained forward and cocked his head to look at the door. “How badly are you hurt?”
“I don’t know,” Tyler said. He wasn’t being evasive, merely stating the truth. “Everything hurts, but I don’t think anything’s broken.”
“Can you move fast?”
“What do you have in mind?”
Baker pivoted in his chair to point with his forehead to the corner of the room to his far left and slightly behind. “There’s a passageway back there,” he said. “The bookshelf pivots on its own axis and there’s a stairway there that will take you down to the wine cellar. A clever little feature that never failed to impress visitors.”
How could he not know this after all the times he’d been here? Tyler stood, pausing for a second and wincing against pain from too many places on his body to identify. It didn’t matter whether he could make the trip down the stairs or not. Going anywhere was better than staying here.
“Come on,” Tyler said. “Let’s go.”
Baker said, “I can’t.” He rattled a chain from under the table, out of sight for Tyler. “They got me shackled to granite and mahogany. You’ll have to go it on your own.”
Awareness of the obvious broke like a wave over Tyler’s head. “I can’t just leave you,” he said. “They’ll kill you.”
Baker’s eyes glistened as he manufactured a humorless smile. “I think we all know I’m not seeing tomorrow,” he said. “But I want you to. You don’t deserve any of this.”
“Jesus, Baker, nobody deserves this.”
“You know what I mean. Save yourself. Once you get to the wine cellar, buttonhook around to behind the stairs. That blank panel you see is a door. That’ll take you to the loading dock. It’s the door we use to bring in the wine for the cellar. After that, do your best to survive.” He looked to the floor. “I’m truly sorry, son.”
Tyler didn’t know what to do. He knew what he had to do, but he didn’t know how to begin. “I love you, Baker,” he said. “I love you, Dad.”
Baker smiled. “There you go. I like that word. I love you, too, Ty. Now get the hell out of here.”
Tyler hesitated for a couple of seconds more, and then made his way to the back corner.
“There’s a little latch in the upper right corner,” Baker said. His tone was hurried, just as Tyler’s hands were trembling.
Tyler pushed aside a Reader’s Digest Condensed Books volume from 1996 and slipped his hand behind. The latch wasn’t much, just a lever, maybe three inches long. He tried pushing it up, and it didn’t move. Then he pressed it down and was rewarded with a satisfying click.
“Push on the shelf,” Baker said.
The bookshelf was hinged in the middle, along the top and the bottom, so the entire section of bookshelf rotated vertically. As the space opened, it revealed the shadowy outline of the top landing of a tight spiral staircase, which seemed to disappear into the blackness below.
“There’s a light,” Baker said, “but don’t use it unless you absolutely have to. The glow shows from around the edges of the shelf. Just keep spiraling down. When the stairs stop, you’ll be in the wine cellar. Trust me.”
Tyler’s heart was racing again, but this time it was different. This time, he had a sense of hope, a sense that maybe this might end better than terribly. He stepped into the darkness, and when he looked back, he watched a tear track down Baker’s face.
“Look,” Tyler said in an urgent whisper. “I shouldn’t tell you this, but help is on the way. After dark. Try to keep faith.”
With that, he disappeared into the shadow and pushed the panel closed behind him. An additional shove produced another click as the latch seated itself. The blackness was absolute, save for the hair-width seam of light that outlined the edges of the bookshelf. Using his cuffed hands to feel his way along, he found the steel rail, and he held on tight as he felt with his toe to find the edge of the top step. To fall down this vertical shaft would be like falling off the roof, with a hard stop against a concrete floor.
The stairs formed a helix that rotated to the left around a center post. By staying to the right-hand edge, where the wedge-shaped risers were thickest, Tyler could keep a firm grip on the rail. If his feet did slip, at least he’d still be hanging on.
He had no sense of distance or depth here in the darkness, and he hadn’t had the presence of mind to count his steps as he began his descent. After what felt far too short a time, the steps came to a hard stop. He tightened his grip on the rail as he explored again with his toes. It turned out only to be a landing, with more steps descending from the far side. He encountered three more such landings before he hit the bottom of the stairway. This time, there was no doubt because the surface under his feet felt entirely different. Felt like concrete. Maybe the trip up and down was faster and easier when you had the use of your hands and you could see where you were going, but Tyler found himself feeling sympathy for the poor staff members who had to negotiate the climb while carrying cases of wine.
So, now what? What was his next move? Somewhere in here—behind the stairs, if he remembered his instructions from Baker—there was a door that would take him to . . . where? Sure, onto the loading dock, and beyond that lay the rest of the island, but the rest of the island was where all the death and danger were. Could he stay in here, he wondered, and avoid all of that?
What was it that Scorpion had told him? That it’s always best to keep as many options open as possible. That was the benefit of maneuverability. If danger is coming in the front door, you always have the option to flee out of the back. That was the problem here. On the one hand, Tyler felt safe for the first time since the initial shots had been fired. No one but Baker knew he was here, and what was the likelihood that the terrorists might stumble upon it?
Actually, he thought, the chances of that were fairly high. Once Alpha and his hit men discovered that he was missing, and they reasoned that there was no way that he exited through the doors where guards were stationed, they would know that he had to have found some hidden means of escape. They would tear Baker’s office apart—hell, they would tear Baker apart—to find that stairway. If he was still here when they connected the dots, he would die.
He had no intentio
n of dying today.
“I hate this shit,” he whispered aloud. Still keeping his cuffed hands on the stairs to keep himself oriented in the dark, he set about searching for the door. It was behind the stairs.
The stairs were circular. Where was the back of a circle?
You’re overthinking this. The back of the stairs would be the direction opposite of the way he was facing when he reached the bottom. To get it right, he stepped back up onto the final riser and pressed his heels into the step above.
Now you’re facing forward. He stepped back down onto the concrete and kept his hands in contact with the stairs until he figured that he was looking at the back wall. The darkness was total. As soon as he let go of the stairs and stepped forward, he became disoriented. He inched forward in tiny, shuffling steps, with his hands outstretched at what he figured to be eye level. If something were on the floor in his path, he knew he would fall, and with any luck at all, he’d catch himself with his hands rather than doing a face-plant. By the same logic, when he got to the wall, his hands would be the first part of his anatomy to arrive.
The toes of his left foot made contact with something. When it made a chirping noise and scampered off, it was all Tyler could do to keep from yelling out.
“It’s the jungle,” he mumbled. “You’re not the only species living here.” If it were a different jungle, one whose indigenous wildlife hadn’t been so carefully curated, he’d be even lower on the food chain.
Though moving slowly, his knuckle still cracked when his fingertips found the wall. As before, he had no sense of distance or orientation. Suddenly, though, getting out of this place—getting back to where he could see things again—had become very, very important to him.
He splayed his fingers and pressed his palms against the surface of the wall. It felt like wood. Swaying his upper body from left to right, he swept the surface with his hands in a giant arc, looking for some indication that he’d found the door. And what would a door feel like?
There’d be a crack. A vertical seam that marked the location of the jamb. And then by following the seam, he’d discover either hinges or a latch. From there, it would be either push or pull. And then it would be the next step, whatever that might be.
He’d just completed the thoughts when his fingers found the crack he’d been hoping for. He traced it with his fingers to about waist height, and there he found the lever-style handle. He pushed it down and leaned forward, but the door didn’t move. The he pulled back, and nearly fell over when the panel opened. He’d expected it to move from left to right, and was startled when it pulled the other way.
The open door revealed nothing but a seam of light a few feet ahead of where he stood. He recognized the air lock for what it was. He walked to the next door, easily found its knob, and placed his hand on it.
This was it, the point of no return.
He took a huge breath and held it for a few seconds before letting it go. “Oh, what the hell?” he mumbled. “Go big or go home, right?”
He straightened his shoulders, stood tall, and pushed the door open onto whatever lay ahead.
Tyler didn’t have it in him to run. Bruised as he was, and still essentially blind in his left eye, he worried that he physically couldn’t make it back to the hideout in the hills—if indeed, that hideout was worth hiding in anymore, after he and Jaime had tilted their hand to X-ray and his friend.
But he had to go somewhere other than here, and he had to get there quickly. The window of opportunity for him to escape summary execution—if he was caught again—had slammed shut. The only chance he had for surviving, he decided, was to put as much distance between him and the terrorists as quickly as possible.
The door from the wine cellar air lock opened onto what was essentially a subterranean loading dock—not underground, per se, but below the view of the guests. It was the door, in fact, that Jaime had told him led to the utility tunnels, which must have explained the second door in the wall of the air lock.
Um, no. Tyler was not going into the tunnels. Not now. He’d had his taste of tight dark spaces, and he didn’t care for more.
He eyed the golf carts that were lined up at their charging stations. They were one solution, to be sure. They were faster than walking, and they were quieter than a gas-powered vehicle, but they were slow, and there was no shielding. If terrorists could see the vehicle, they would know at a glance who was behind the wheel.
And assuming they were actively looking for him, that seemed like a bad idea.
Tyler’s eyes were drawn to one of the landscaper’s trucks that sat idly at the end of the ramp. He knew these dump-bed trucks were real workhorses, and he’d driven in them with Jaime, but they were standard transmission. Tyler wasn’t very good with those. He could work the gears enough to get the vehicle moving and get it stopped, but he was no one’s version of smooth in his actions. Moving from a stop in the middle of a hill was particularly challenging for him.
But the trucks could ford streams and climb any hill. That was how he would get away from Alpha and X-ray. At least for the time being. Maybe if he got away, they would just forget about him. Maybe they’d determine that finding him wasn’t worth the drain on their resources.
Yeah, and maybe pigs will fly.
Screw it.
Better to take a chance and lose than stick around and have your bones broken one at a time. The truck he saw bore the number 0014 on its fender.
Now he just had to hope that the keys were in the storage cabinet. It was Jaime’s rule that any landscaper should be able to access any vehicle at any time, and that meant having the keys accessible ’round the clock. If it had been left up to Jaime, the keys would remain in the ignitions, but Baker had overruled that idea for fear that guests would help themselves while in a drunken stupor—or while underage—and cause real problems. The compromise had been to put all the keys in one storage cabinet, where every vehicle had a corresponding hook from which its ignition key dangled.
Tyler opened the front of the cabinet and was delighted—though not surprised—to find that the key on the peg labeled 14 lay between those labeled 13 and 15. He snatched the key into his fist and limped to the driver’s-side door.
He settled into the seat, inserted the key, kicked out the clutch, and cranked the ignition. The engine turned and caught in two seconds. Jesus, it was loud. But he was on his way. With his hands cuffed, shifting would be a challenge. He leaned far over to his right as he used both hands to pull the transmission into second gear, then sat up straight up behind the wheel again. He over-revved the engine as he searched for and found the engagement point for the clutch. The truck lurched forward, but it didn’t stall. He was on his way.
* * *
Baker Sinise realized now that there’s a level of fear that exceeds the body’s ability to cope. As he sat shackled in the conference room, he felt certain of two things. First, by urging Tyler to leave, he had performed one of the noblest fatherly acts of his life. Second, that same act of nobility guaranteed that Baker would die in pain sometime before the next sunrise.
The certainty of his death brought an odd peace. Yes, the fear was still there, boiling out of control in his gut, but with his options eliminated, the trembling and the pressure of tears behind his eyes had subsided. He wasn’t a religious man, but he hoped that there would be something on the other side. It seemed wasteful that a man could occupy a few cubic feet of the universe for nearly sixty years only to then evaporate.
He’d know soon enough, one way or the other.
That sense of peace evaporated the instant Alpha reentered the room. He’d brought two other goons with him, and they all paused in unison when they took in the view of the interior. Alpha pivoted on his own axis, as if Tyler had somehow slipped in behind him. Next he stepped outside the door through which he’d just entered, and Baker heard him ask if anyone had sneaked by. Baker couldn’t hear the answer, but what else could it be?
When Alpha returned, his face was a mask
of rage. He’d pressed his lips tight, till they looked like a single thin line, and his face glowed red.
Alpha strode over to Baker and lifted him out of the chair by his shirt collar. “Where is he?”
“Who?” Baker’s attempt at aloofness earned him a savage punch to the solar plexus and he crumpled.
“Do not toy with me, Mr. Sinise!” he yelled.
Baker couldn’t have spoken even if he’d wanted to, as his diaphragm seized and struggled to draw air.
Alpha lifted him again by his hair, and Baker closed his eyes as he saw the cocked fist aimed at his face.
“Alpha!” a voice yelled. “Stop!”
The blow did not come. Baker dared to open his eyes.
“Why? This man betrayed us.”
“He’s our enemy,” the other man said. “And we are his. There is no such thing as betrayal among enemies.”
But Alpha wanted to hit him. Baker saw it written on his wide red eyes.
The other man continued, “We need him functional for later. And we need him not to look beaten. The Katie Starling’s captain and crew are not stupid. They will notice a broken face. If the vessel refuses to dock, then all of this has been wasted.”
Alpha’s face was close enough that Baker could smell his breath. The man wanted to kill him.
In the end, he threw Baker back into his chair.
As Alpha’s glare cut his prisoner in half, he said in a barely audible voice. “Find that boy and bring him to me in pieces.”
CHAPTER 28
WITHIN THREE SECONDS OF HANGING UP WITH VENICE, THE TERRORISTS’ radio net lit up with traffic. Jonathan had removed the earpiece a while ago because of the incessant chatter about stuff that didn’t concern him. Now, however, even though the bud rested on the shoulder of his vest, he heard the buzz of something big happening.
Gail heard it, too. It was that emphatic.
Jonathan pressed the piece back into his ear. Within three seconds, he’d gotten the gist of it.
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