High Treason

by John Gilstrap

  “I’m not sure that’s a great idea,” he said. “I think we want stuff to look as normal as possible for as long as it can.”

  “You mean, except for the corpses?”

  “Maybe we should move them off to the side,” Jonathan conceded. They each chose a body and dragged it from the middle of the floor to the corner where the southern and eastern walls met.

  Yelena watched in silence. In the yellow glow of the incandescent light, the massive head wounds stood out in clear relief.

  “Don’t freak out on us now,” Boxers said. “This is what you signed on for.”

  “I’m not freaking out about anything,” she said. “I’ve seen bodies before.”

  Big Guy drew his KA-BAR knife from its sheath on his shoulder, and used it as extension of his arm to kill the overhead lightbulb with a single swipe, drenching them in darkness.

  Jonathan flipped down his NVGs, turning the darkness into green daylight. “Just stay close to us, Mrs. Darmond,” he said. “Keep a hand on my back if you have to. We can see everything just fine.”

  “I can see shadows,” she said.

  If their intel was right—and so far, it had been holding up pretty well—the door ahead led to a hallway. A turn to the left would take them to the chapel, and a turn to the right would take them to the oldest portion of the jail, which they believed to be empty. Going straight would take them out to the prison yard, and the cluster of buildings that comprised the cell blocks and barracks. If things went according to plan, they could be out of here and on their way home in ten minutes. Fifteen, max.

  They moved to the next door, and paused to repeat the same entry maneuver. “Ma’am, remember that you are always the last one through a door, okay? Going in or coming out, you’re last.”

  A radio broke squelch behind them.

  Jonathan pivoted and reflexively pushed Yelena to the floor. He planted a knee on her back to keep her out of any field of fire. “Ow!” she protested, but he didn’t care.

  “Guard units report in,” a voice said in a Russian-accented English. It came from one of the dead sentries.

  “Unit One is on post and cold.”

  “Unit Two’s okay.”

  Silence.

  In unison, Jonathan and Boxers said, “Uh-oh.” Jonathan stood and helped Yelena to her feet.

  “Unit Three? Are you there?” the Russian voice said.

  “This is trouble,” Boxers grumbled.

  “What is it?” Yelena asked.

  “Unit Three, report.”

  “Some kind of situation check. Making sure the guards are awake and on station.”

  “Unit Four?”

  No response.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Boxers said, gesturing to the bodies, “allow me to introduce Units Three and Four. We need to get moving.”

  Jonathan moved to one of the bodies and found his radio. “Might help to know what they’re up to,” he said.

  He joined Boxers at the door, checked to make sure that Yelena was out of harm’s way, then nodded to Big Guy. “Let’s go.”

  Becky hadn’t realized she’d fallen asleep until somebody rattled her shoulder. She awoke with a start and a hammering heart, and the utter conviction that she should be running away from something.

  “All right, Chickadee, it’s time to go to work.” It was Striker, and his eyes looked even more intense than usual.

  Apparently, she’d been pretty deeply into REM sleep because none of this resonated with her. “I don’t understand.”

  “Scorpion needs our help,” he said. “Looks like we get to join the shooting war.”

  Becky felt a chill. “I still don’t understand.”

  “Of course you don’t. Get your pretty little ass up and I’ll fill you in.”

  As wakefulness bloomed larger, Becky became aware of the cold. She’d been sitting in the cargo area of the helicopter as she waited for the others to return from their mission, and at some point, she’d apparently drifted off. Now, as she sat back up, she became aware of the breeze that poured through the aircraft. A few seconds later, she realized that Striker had modified things significantly.

  “What happened to the doors?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry to say that they had to be sacrificed. Small price to pay, though.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “That’s because you haven’t got your ass up yet.”

  Becky rolled to her feet and stood. It turned out to be even colder than she’d expected.

  “Put your vest back on,” Striker said. “We’re going into the shit, and I don’t want your guts messing up the back of my helicopter.”

  The vest lay on the floor, where she’d dropped it. Becky stooped and picked it up, then shrugged herself into it. “I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

  “Close all the fasteners,” Striker said. “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing all the way.”

  She worked the Velcro straps. “Tell me again where the doors went?”

  “I had to take them off so that you can be my door gunner.” Striker said that as if it were the most obvious thing in the world; as if she should have figured it out for herself.

  “Your what?”

  He held out a harness, loops made of three-inch-wide strips of nylon. “Put this on.”

  “No. Why?”

  “So you don’t fall to your death out of the open doors.”

  Okay, that made sense, she supposed. She took a step closer. “How do I . . .”

  “Put your legs in here,” Striker said. The harness looked a lot like a parachute without the parachute. Becky stepped into the leg openings first, and then allowed him to thread her arms through what was essentially a pair of suspenders. Then Striker clipped it all together into a square plate just below her breasts.

  “This is the DFWI button,” Striker said, pointing to a round spot on the plate.

  “Don’t fuck with it,” Becky translated. “Like the selector switch on the rifle.”

  “Right. Press that and the whole harness falls away. You only use it if we, like, fall into the water and you’re being dragged down by the sinking aircraft.”

  “Oh my God.”

  He waved at the air. “No, I don’t mean to spook you. We’re not going to spend a lot of time over water.”

  “Where are we going to spend a lot of time?” she asked. “I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Striker nodded to the two rifles that lay on the floor. One was the one Scorpion had given her, and the other was one that Scorpion had left behind. To her eye, they both looked the same.

  “Were you any good with those?”

  Something in the way he asked the question rang a warning bell. “I’m not shooting at anyone,” she said.

  “I get that,” Striker said. “And the only people you’ll need to shoot at are the ones who shoot at you first.” As he spoke, he stretched out a bungee cord from a spot between her shoulder blades and hooked it into a wire that she’d not noticed, which ran the width of the helicopter, from door to door. “We’re open on both sides because I don’t know where the enemy will be. You’ll be our only defense, though, so try to shoot straight when the time comes.”

  Becky felt as if she’d entered a show in the middle of the third act. Worse, it was a show she didn’t like. “I’m not shooting at anyone,” she said. “I’ve already told you that.”

  “I respect that,” Striker said as he lifted one of the rifles from the floor. He arranged the loop in the strap so that she could slip her right arm into it.

  She complied.

  “Here’s the thing,” Striker continued. “I got a call from Mother Hen that the team is in trouble and they need us to pluck them out of it. This chopper is your ride home, and I’m going. Your choices are to stay behind and find your own way back to wherever you come from, or you can roger up and save a few lives.”

  “I don’t believe in killing,” Becky said. Why couldn’t thes
e people understand such a simple concept?

  “Then you’re just flat-out in the wrong damn place,” Striker said.

  Becky opened her mouth to respond, but shut it when she realized that she had no idea what to say.

  Striker inhaled deeply, and then planted his fists on his hips, his head cocked to the side. “Look, Miss. Becky, is it?”

  She nodded.

  “Look, Becky. With all respect, you’re in exactly the same position as every soldier who’s gone to war for the first time. You’re scared shitless. Thing is, you don’t know if you’re more scared of killing or being killed. That’s fine. All I know is there’s a bunch of people out there who are taking a lot of risk to separate good guys from bad guys. I’m going out there to help them, and all of us have a lot better chance of coming home alive if I’ve got a gunner in the door. If you say no, the answer is no, and you get to live the rest of your life wondering how things would have been different if you answered the call. Call it a shitty deal if you want, but it’s the facts. Tell me what you want to do.”

  What she wanted to do was set the clock back and tell David to eff off when he asked her for help.

  “I’m not going to shoot,” she said.

  “Put the safety on, then,” Striker said.

  She placed her thumb on the lever and pressed. The switch was already in the right place.

  Striker twitched his head in an approving nod. “All right, then,” he said. “That lanyard should hold you. If we get into some wild gyrations, though, you might should hang on to keep from rolling out of the door. Worst case, though, you can’t fall out.” He smiled. “You good?”

  The only appropriate answer was a lie. “I’m fine,” she said.

  Striker’s smile became a grin. “Cool. Let’s go save us a couple of lives.”

  “Rooster, Mother Hen. We have instructions for you. You need to leave the vehicle. You’re too close to a main highway to risk being seen by police.”

  It was an outcome that David hadn’t even considered. He hadn’t seen any traffic, but that was more a function of the hour than the location. Plus, there were tire tracks leading from the roadway to this spot. It wouldn’t be unreasonable for a passing cop car to assume that someone had driven off the road into danger.

  He’d already pulled the door handle and was sliding back out into the cold when he said, “Where do you want me to go?”

  “Are you armed?”

  “I can be.”

  “No. Leave all weapons behind and just start walking east. Keep the river on your left. Walk toward the downtown. If Scorpion gave you a ballistic vest, leave that behind, too. You need to look like a guy out for a walk.”

  “I want to be very clear,” David said. “I do not want to be stranded here.”

  “Understood. But there’s no more surefire way to get stranded than to get yourself arrested.”

  It was a very good point. He stripped off the vest with its pouches of ammunition and tossed it onto the Chevy’s front seat. For good measure, he leaned back inside and turned off the ignition and removed the key. He slipped it into his pants pocket. He was about to close and lock the door when he remembered that the radio was attached to the vest. He pulled it out of its pouch, disconnected the remote transmit connection and slipped the radio into his coat pocket. From now on, he’d have to bring the unit to his mouth to speak.

  Wanting to avoid the highway, he turned left and headed down toward the water, where a ring of trees along the shoreline would give him a little cover.

  He pressed the mike button. “What do I tell a cop if I do run into one? And how am I getting out of here?”

  A long silence.

  “Mother Hen?”

  “Rooster, right now, I don’t know how anybody’s getting out of there. Do your best to stay safe and I’ll get back to you. Keep the channel clear.”

  There was an edge to Mother Hen’s voice that he hadn’t heard before, and in a rush, he realized how many people he’d just let down. Here he was, trying to extract himself from danger at the very moment when everybody else was walking headlong into it. A terrible weight appeared in his gut. It felt like cowardice.

  It felt like shame.

  But what choice did he have? He wasn’t the one who’d abandoned anyone on the shore. The others had abandoned him.

  The slope toward the river steepened as he approached the tree line, and he forced himself to take smaller steps.

  Why did he feel so guilty about all of this? He was a victim, for God’s sake. He only came along because it felt like a grand adventure. That, and because if the mission failed, he’d have nothing to live for back home anyway.

  He came along because a perfect stranger saved him from certain death, and it seemed like the right thing to do. The decent thing to do.

  Now those perfect strangers were heading into hell to save him again. And he was walking away.

  He wished he’d jumped on the boat with the First Lady. Except he couldn’t have, because then they’d have no way of getting away.

  Which they still didn’t because he’d stranded the goddamn truck.

  The air among the trees was noticeably warmer than the air directly at water’s edge, but the footing became progressively more treacherous.

  He hadn’t walked very far—maybe a hundred yards—when he saw a line of headlights approaching. It looked like a clutch of six, maybe eight trucks, neither huge nor small, heading right for him down the Ottawa River Parkway. At the last minute, just before they would have passed closest to him, the first vehicle swung a hard right onto River Road, the approach that led exclusively to Saint Stephen’s Island. The second truck in the line followed, and then the third and the fourth. The others, too. They all bore the markings of various moving and storage companies.

  David pulled his radio from his pocket and keyed his mike. “Yo, Mother Hen, is your satellite picture picking up the parade of trucks that’s headed right toward our team?”

  The last truck in the line—there turned out to be nine of them in all—stopped just after making the turn, maybe twenty, thirty yards away from David. A man dressed in a puffy blue ski jacket climbed out of the driver’s seat and walked around to the back of the truck.

  Mother Hen’s voice chirped loudly, “Do you have traffic for me?”

  The noise might as well have been a cymbal crash, it was so loud against the silence of the night. David moved quickly to press the radio against his chest to muffle the sound, but it was too late.

  Blue Coat stopped abruptly and turned. He looked in David’s general direction, but not straight at him. And he had a pistol in his hand.

  Shit, shit, shit . . .

  If Mother Hen tried to contact him again, they guy would hear it for sure. David reached with his other hand and turned the button he thought was the volume control until it clicked. He’d either turned it off or changed the channel. He hoped that either one would buy him invisibility.

  Blue Coat didn’t move for a long time. In the wash of the taillights, David could see him squinting into the night. After what must have been two solid minutes, he holstered his gun—his weapon—and slid open the roll-up panel in the back of the truck. He removed what looked to be planks and saw horse supports.

  In fact, that’s exactly what they turned out to be. Blue Coat assembled them at the turn and positioned them in such a way as to block off the entire roadway. Battery-powered yellow lights flashed to alert people that from that point north, River Road was closed.

  Blue Coat didn’t bother to close the back of the truck before heading back to his driver’s seat. As he mounted the vehicle, he pulled something from the side door panel and swung it around to point back toward David.

  The beam of a powerful flashlight nearly blinded him. He froze, certain that he’d been seen, and, because he could no longer see the driver, equally certain that he would be shot dead within seconds.

  Then the light moved. The driver was scanning the tree line, one last look to convince
himself that he hadn’t heard what he in fact had. Apparently satisfied, he turned off his light and climbed into his seat. Ten seconds later, he was on his way to join his friends.

  His heart hammering and his hands trembling to the point of convulsion, David turned his radio back on.

  “. . . Hen. Respond, please.”

  “Rooster here. But barely.”

  “Be advised that there’s a line of trucks heading right for you.”

  “No kidding,” he said. “You be advised that I am not walking into town. It’s wrong and I’m not doing it.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m not running. Now I’m going to keep the channel clear.” He turned the volume down to nearly nothing and put the radio back into his pocket.

  He’d spoken the truth about not knowing what he was going to do. But one thing was certain: Bad things were about to happen to people to whom he owed a lot. If they needed him, he was going to be as close as he could be—not as far away.

  If it came to that, though, he was going to need firepower.

  He spun on his heel and ran as fast as the snow would allow back toward the stranded Chevy.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Len Shaw’s spirits lifted when the watchman told him that the trucks were on the bridge. At Dmitri’s insistence, he’d answered the call on speaker. It was already after 1:00 A.M., which put them nearly an hour behind schedule, but there was still plenty of nighttime left to get them loaded up and off the major roads before the morning commuters started to clog the highways.

  “Tell the sentries at the gate to line the trucks up the length of the front wall,” Len said. “I want them loaded one at a time. When one is filled, it can be on its way, and the next can pull up to take its place.”

  “Will do,” the watchman said. “Once I can find the gate sentries.”

  Dmitri’s face darkened. He stood and leaned close to the phone. “You can’t find them? Where did they go?”