Outrage

by John Sandford

  A truck had turned off Route 99 onto the frontage road and then onto the road along the side of the Singular building—a road that went nowhere except around the building and into the parking lot.

  Cruz was holding the binoculars, and he whispered, “When I saw it coming, I thought—”

  He stopped midsentence as the truck disappeared behind the Singular building.

  “Thought what?”

  “Take the glasses,” he said, and thrust them at her as the truck reappeared at the back gate, which was just visible from their perch.

  The lot was brightly lit, and Shay watched through the binoculars as the truck waited until the gate rolled open, then pulled into the lot and turned left, showing its side to them.

  “Oh my God, it’s the same truck as in Sacramento,” she said.

  “That’s what I thought,” said Cruz. “I couldn’t exactly remember the name on the truck in Sacramento, but the writing, the colors, they look right….”

  “It’s either the same truck or one identical to it,” Shay said. “It’s delivering food for the prisoners. Cruz: we’ve found them.”

  18

  They called Twist and Cade, retrieved the escape rope, came down off the roof with the ladder, and ran around to the back of the building, where Twist was pulling up, with Cade a hundred feet back in the truck. Shay jumped into the Jeep, and Twist pulled away, with Cade and Cruz right behind them.

  “You remember that truck when we raided the Sacramento prison?” Shay asked Twist, her voice pitched with excitement.

  “Yeah, the one bringing in the food.”

  “I didn’t pay much attention at the time, but it said something like KENDALL’S KATERING on the side, with Ks. Well, a Kendall’s Katering truck pulled into the back of the building over there. What are the chances that it’s a coincidence?”

  “Slim and none, and Slim is outta town,” Twist said, pounding the steering wheel with his hands. “It’s gotta be Singular.”

  “Now the question is, how do we get in there?”

  “I don’t think we do. Get in there, I mean,” Twist said. “I’ve got another idea.”

  “The one you wouldn’t talk about?”

  “Yeah. Because it’s imprudent, preposterous, and highly flammable.”

  —

  At the motel, Twist said, “The underlying fact is, we can’t get in there. So we make them come out. Or we get someone else to go in. Or both.”

  Cade lifted a finger. “Um, Twist—”

  Twist said, “Shut up for a minute. I drove down 99 and took a close look at the fence around that place. It’s not much. If you hit that fence with a big enough truck, you’d knock it flat. If you hit it in the middle, you’d be looking at that big glass front door. You could drive a truck—if it was big enough—right through the front doors.”

  “Then what?” Shay asked. “We yell at them to surrender?”

  “No,” Twist said. “We throw a bomb at them and let the cops and the fire department clean up.”

  “What?” the other three asked all at once.

  Twist: “Listen. We get a truck. We make some Molotov cocktails. You guys know how to make Molotov cocktails, right?”

  Cade said, “Some Beefeater gin, dry vermouth, maybe a twist of lemon…”

  “That’s a martini, you decadent little punk,” Twist said. “A Molotov cocktail is made with gasoline and engine oil, mixed in a bottle, with a rag tied around the neck of the bottle, which is the fuse. You light the fuse and throw the bottle, it breaks, the fuse lights the gasoline—”

  “But, Twist, if we burn the place, we could incinerate the people we’re trying to save,” said Shay.

  “No, no, no. We call the cops, tell them there’s been an explosion at the Singular building, that people inside are hurt. At the same time, we drive the truck into the fence and throw the Molotov cocktails out the windows into the parking lot. No one gets burned. Then we drive the truck into the lobby. Doesn’t have to be fast, put it in the lowest gear with a brick on the gas pedal. The cops are there in two minutes, the firemen get there a minute later. They see these big fires and the ass end of the truck sticking out of the lobby. Big hole in the front of the building. One of us calls the fire department to say there are a bunch of illegal immigrants in the basement. Somebody else calls the TV stations. The police have to go in and search the building. It’s too bizarre not to. Once the cops find the prisoners, the jig is up. They’re done. Can’t hide it.”

  Cruz shook his head and said it was crazy, and Cade said he thought it could work, and then the three men all waited on Shay, who said, “It’s both things. It’s crazy and it could work. But where would we get a truck like that?”

  Twist picked up a copy of the local newspaper, called the Record, folded it back to the classified ads, and pointed to a circled ad.

  Mack Ten-Yard dump truck. 1976 DM 685, 6/6 manual, 230,000, runs good, Jacobs brakes, newly serviced, fair rubber, everything works, but sold as is. Scale weight 23,000 empty, $5000, call Rod Jurondick at O’Hara’s.

  “We’ve got the cash,” Twist said. “And Cade, master prep-school car thief, can drive anything.”

  “That’s true,” Cade said.

  “What if there’s a guy right inside the glass door with a machine gun?” Cruz asked.

  “That would be a problem,” Twist admitted.

  “I don’t think there is anybody in the lobby. The lights were all real low,” Shay said. “If we crashed through there, but were going slow and jumped before it was all the way in, anybody inside would have a lot more to think about than running out to catch us.”

  Twist was pumped by his plan, twirling his cane between his hands. He said, “It’s still a risk, and we have to admit it. But the way I see it, Cade drives, I ride shotgun, Cruz and Shay drive our getaway vehicles….”

  “No. Cade drives the Mack, you and Cruz drive the getaways, and I ride shotgun—me and X,” said Shay. “If there’s trouble, I can run faster than you, and X, well, you had to see X at Dash’s house to know what I’m talking about. If X thinks I’m in trouble, then even a machine gunner would have a problem.”

  For once, they didn’t argue. The plan felt right. They all nodded at each other, and Cade said to Twist, “Get ready to lay down your money, O rich person.”

  Shay said, “We have to work out the sequence just right: attack, call the cops, call the fire department, call the media, one-two-three, really quick sequence. Then we call Odin and press restart on Mindkill. The video of Fenfang, the X-rays, the secret stuff from Dash’s place, and the videos of Dash and Janes…”

  Twist: “What about the photo of the vice president with the North Koreans?”

  “I’d hold that back until the world believes, then put it out there,” Shay said, and slung her arm around X. “That’ll be the cherry on the cake.”

  Twist nodded. “Let’s call Odin and tell him to be ready.”

  —

  They were up at nine o’clock the next morning. Shay woke to a knock at the door and found Twist standing outside. “I’m going to a bagel joint. Give me your order.”

  She ordered two Diet Cokes and two cinnamon-raisin bagels for herself, then went to get cleaned up. When she got out of the shower, she noticed in the cracked motel mirror that her black hair was showing glints of red, as were her eyebrows. Not much yet, but the hair dye, which had been only semi-permanent, was beginning to fade.

  She wasn’t too unhappy with that; she missed her red hair, and not only the color, but the length of it. The dye she’d combed randomly through X’s coat was holding up, since he wasn’t standing in a daily shower. She realized X hadn’t had a bath in all the time she’d known him.

  “C’mere, boy,” she said, and he trotted over from where he was lying in the bathroom entrance. She stuck her nose in his neck and gave him a smell test and declared: “Fresh as a month-old daisy.”

  She got dressed, gave X a couple of cups of dry dog food and a small can of meat. When he’d fini
shed gulping it down, she washed the bowl, said, “You’re excused” when X burped, and then took him outside for a walk.

  As she returned to the motel, Twist got back with the bagels. He was starting to feel the stress. “It’s like this every time. We get close to doing something, and I get cold feet. Every time. We do it anyway. It’s killing my feet.”

  “We’ll worry when that doesn’t happen,” Shay said.

  —

  When they knocked on the guys’ door, Cruz was on the phone with Rod Jurondick: still speaking English, but with a just-arrived Mexican accent. “Then,” he said. “We will see you at noon.”

  He hung up, checked the time on his phone, and said, “We’ve got two and a half hours to chicken out.”

  “Time to eat, talk, and shop,” Cade said.

  “What are we shopping for?” Shay asked.

  “Cruz needs to become your typical underpaid, overworked, undocumented yardman,” Cade replied.

  “Yes, but I am eager to move up,” said Cruz. “I will leave my puny pickup behind, and I will have a dump truck.”

  They went to the Goodwill. An hour later, Shay was a little embarrassed by the fact they’d built themselves a stereotypical illegal immigrant gardener, complete with a wide-brimmed straw hat and stained blue cotton work trousers. Cruz thought it was hilarious and walked around speaking with a terrible fake accent until Twist told him to knock it off: “You’re gonna screw us up.”

  Cruz said, “Ho, seeeñor, hi don’ theenk so. Hi theenk hi fool anybody….”

  “Twist’s right. You’re gonna screw us up,” Shay said.

  Cruz wriggled his eyebrows at Shay and said, “Ooooh, señorita, you have zee vaary nice maracas, you know what hi say?” He held up a hand, and Cade, who was dressed in worn jeans, a faded Fender T-shirt, and a backward L.A. Dodgers hat, slapped it.

  Cade and Cruz took the pickup over to Rod Jurondick’s house, a low pink concrete-block rambler, neatly kept with a flagpole in the front yard. A little girl was playing on a Big Wheel in the crescent-shaped driveway, and an orange-and-white Mack dump truck sat at the curb.

  Twist and Shay hadn’t expected to go, but they were both so curious about the truck negotiation that they’d followed in the Jeep, with X in the back, and parked half a block away to watch.

  Cade pulled up in front of the house next door to Jurondick’s, and he and Cruz got out of the truck and started up his driveway. The little girl abandoned her Big Wheel and ran to the front screen door. “Daddy,” she called out, “they’re here.”

  Jurondick came out of the house, and Cade and Cruz spent more than half an hour crawling over the truck, starting it, driving it around the block. Finally, they went into the house with Jurondick. “I think they bought it,” Twist told Shay.

  “Took them long enough.”

  “Wanted it to feel real,” Twist said.

  A couple of minutes later, Cade and Cruz came out of the house, Cruz carrying some papers, and Cruz got in the pickup and Cade got up in the dump truck and they drove off down the street.

  “Step one,” Twist said to Shay, and followed after them.

  Cade parked the dump truck on the street outside of the motel. “Jurondick was a nice guy. He made us promise to take care of the ‘Mighty Tonka’ he always wanted as a kid.” They all looked at the beat-up old truck. “Hope he doesn’t watch the news when this thing busts through the building, ’cause, man, the dude’s gonna cry like he’s three all over again.”

  —

  They did a number of things during the afternoon and evening to prepare for the attack: They went to one Walmart and bought a two-and-a-half-gallon gasoline can and a small bag of quick-setting patching cement. At another, they bought two cans of engine oil and two bungee cords; at a third, they bought four big Ball jars, the kind used for canning vegetables, and a pair of rubber kitchen gloves.

  They filled the gas can at a Shell station.

  Cade spent an hour in the truck, working out the best way to anchor the steering wheel with the bungee cords so that, after he jumped out, the truck would continue straight ahead. The bag of patching cement was molded around the gas pedal to hold it down, then sprinkled with water to make it retain its shape. Cade would drop it on the gas pedal and let the truck drive itself.

  They cruised the Singular building twice, and Cade drove around the building in the dump truck, which they thought would be safe enough: who’d suspect that they’d arrive in a dump truck? He reported two cars and a panel van in the lot behind the building; they’d seen three other cars parked in front.

  “Not enough cars,” Twist said. “That’s a big building for six cars.”

  “Probably nobody in there but the prisoners and the guards—there weren’t that many cars at Sacramento, either,” Cruz said.

  At nine o’clock, as it was getting dark, they brought the gas, the jars, and the motor oil into a motel room and, being careful not to spill anything, filled the jars with a mixture of gasoline and oil—X sniffing the air like they were in a bakery—and screwed the lids on tight.

  “The gas sets it off; the oil keeps it going for a while,” Twist said.

  When that was done, they tore up the old cotton shirt that Cruz had worn to Jurondick’s house and tied the rags around the jars.

  “Just before you go crashing through the fence, Cade pulls over to the side. You unscrew one of the lids, dip the rags in the gas, then screw the lids back on. When you crash the fence, you light up the rags and throw three of the jars out the window—as far away from the truck as you can,” Twist said. “The fourth jar, you keep in the cab, and after you jump, if you can, you throw that jar back into the cab, hard as you can, so it breaks. We want a fire in the cab when it goes in. Not enough to set the building on fire, but enough to distract anyone inside until the fire department gets there.”

  “You really think that’s necessary?” Shay asked.

  “Yes. After Singular identified Cruz with his DNA, I read up on it,” Twist said. “Fire kills DNA—even a little fire.”

  They took the Molotov cocktails out to the Mack truck and wedged them behind the passenger seat.

  “What are they going to light the fuses with?” Cruz asked.

  Twist’s face went blank for an instant, then he grinned and said, “Holy cats. We forgot to get a lighter.”

  “That would have been a bummer, getting there and no match,” Cade said.

  Shay looked at Cade and Cruz and asked, semi-seriously, “Do you guys feel like criminals?”

  “I do,” Cruz said.

  “I’m getting there,” said Cade.

  “We’re not criminals, we’re outlaws,” Twist said. “There’s a critical difference.”

  “Sounds right to me,” said Shay, and off they went for Bic lighters to ignite their homemade firebombs.

  19

  Twist and Cruz went out first, in the Jeep, ferrying Cruz to the Unclaimed Freight building. He’d carry the ladder and one of the video cameras they’d used on the Dash and Janes raids. He’d film the attack and the response, and be in position to warn Cade and Shay if something looked bad on the approach.

  Twist would get in position to make the pickup.

  They’d all be in touch by walkie-talkie.

  When Cruz was settled on the roof, Twist called: “Go.”

  —

  A heavy chill crawled along Shay’s arms as they drove over to the Singular building. She wasn’t superstitious, but something felt wrong to her.

  She let the premonition go and asked Cade, “What do you think?”

  Whenever he spoke to her, he tended to smile, because that’s what he did. But as he worked up through the gears in the big truck, he glanced at her, unnaturally serious. “I don’t know. This is a tough one.”

  X was on the floor by Shay’s feet, and he, too, seemed to be looking at her with an unusually serious gaze: he knew something was up. She’d recharged him that afternoon, and he was primed to run.

  Cade said, “You sti
ll got the spirit rock? You might give it a rub.”

  “Yeah, I…” Shay dug in her front pocket, then in the other one, and the back pockets, and she blurted: “It’s gone! The rock is gone!”

  “Back at Danny’s? Or the motel?”

  “No, I always keep it in my pocket. I gave it a rub before I went over the wall at Dash’s place, and that worked out….Where is it?” She was patting her pockets again, digging into them, looking for it again.

  “Hope this isn’t a bad omen,” Cade said.

  —

  Not much traffic. Cade didn’t say much more until: “Cop.” A police car rolled by, going the other direction. Kept going. A minute later, he said, “Twist is right behind us.”

  Shay put the walkie-talkie to her face, clicked it, and asked, “Clear?”

  Cruz came back: “Yes.”

  “Then we’re going,” Cade said, sounding grimmer than his face looked. They were on the frontage road, south of the target building. Cade braked, and for an instant, Shay, forgetting, thought something had happened, but Cade glanced at her and said, “Bombs.”

  Right. The Molotov cocktails were her responsibility. She turned and fished the four jars out from behind the seat, and as Cade idled the truck at the side of the road, she unscrewed the top of one of the jars, and the air inside the cab was instantly infused with the odor of gasoline and oil. She carefully dipped the rags on each bottle into the gasoline, then screwed the lid back on and said, “Go—and when you take the jar from me, don’t fumble it or we die.”

  “Got it.”

  Cade reached down and grabbed the ends of the bungee cords that had been fixed to supports in the back of the seats. Another car came up from behind them, honked, and went on by. They were no more than a hundred yards out when Cade said, “I’m shifting down. The weight is right by my foot, push it over.”

  Shay reached down, found the cement weight, pushed it toward the gas pedal. When Cade lifted his foot, she pushed it onto the pedal, and the truck’s engine groaned against the lower gear and picked up a little speed.