Uncaged

by John Sandford

  Shay got hold of X’s collar and pushed her nose next to his and said, “It’s gonna be okay, boy, maybe, if Twist’s boy hormones don’t wreck us. You can bite him if we get away.”

  The dog gave her a quick lick and then another throat rumble; he was with her, but he wasn’t exactly sure that they were doing the right thing.

  Twist said, “Here it is, and here we go.”

  The trail ran next to the arroyo, where earlier four-wheelers and other thrill-seeking drivers had beaten out a path through the rocks.

  Twist shifted left onto the rocks, and the Range Rover began bounding like a three-ton rabbit but managed to stay upright. The truck was throwing up less dust as it pounded across the bare rocks, and the BMW began moving up as the driver’s visibility improved. Twist’s speed had dropped from forty or fifty miles an hour to the thirties, and then the twenties, and the BMW was almost on top of them, and Shay said, “They’re coming! What’re we doing? What are we doing?”

  “We’re about to go around a wicked curve,” Twist said. “Here it is.”

  They went right. Behind them, the BMW found itself on an outside-banking curve that wanted to throw the vehicle off the road to the left, into the arroyo. The arroyo had dropped three feet below the level of the road, so if they went off, they’d take a terrific drop.

  “If they stay on the road …,” Twist said. The BMW driver tried to do that, but the road grew increasingly banked, and the wrong way. “He’s either got to take the jump, which will wreck him, or stay with the road, which will roll him … or stop. He should stop. Give it up, guy, give it up.…”

  The BMW didn’t give it up, and then, suddenly, it rolled, tumbling like a boulder into the arroyo, stopping with its wheels straight up in the air. Twist kept going for two hundred yards, then slowed. “Are they getting out?”

  “Don’t see anything,” Shay said. They sat for a moment, then Shay saw movement at the back of the BMW. “Somebody’s getting out. Somebody’s—Twist, he’s got a gun.”

  Twist hit the gas, and the Range Rover rumbled up the rocks. “He’s going to shoot us.”

  But he didn’t. They were on the tooth-rattling rocks for another quarter mile, then turned back onto the dirt road.

  “Now. Let’s see if they’ve got somebody out in front of us,” Twist said. “They shouldn’t, because they don’t know the mean backstreets of Malibu.”

  They rumbled along the dirt road for a few more minutes, then onto a much better road, though still dirt; twenty minutes after that, they poked the nose of the Range Rover out onto a paved road.

  “Not out of the woods yet,” Twist said. A battered Xterra went by, carrying two blond guys with four surfboards on the roof.

  “I have no idea where we’re at.”

  Twist smiled at her. “We’re about ten miles, give or take a landslide or two, from the real California.”

  Shay: “The real one? I thought I was in the real one. What’s the real one?”

  “It’s called the Valley. You can put the dog in the back.”

  After another long, rambling drive along Kanan Dume Road and then Mulholland Highway, they rolled up a ramp onto the 101 Freeway.

  “This car is way too expensive to ditch,” Twist said. “We’ve got to hide it, and there’s no better place to hide it than a busy parking lot. I don’t want to get towed, either. We need a place where it can sit for a while.”

  “How about an airport?” Shay suggested. “Long-term parking?”

  Twist looked at her and said, “You really do have a criminal mind. That’s perfect. I know just the one. We dump it at Bob Hope in Burbank, and Lou can pick it up in a week or so, when things quiet down. Get on the phone, call Cade and Cruz. We’ll meet them there in an hour.”

  “And then …”

  “Sacramento.”

  They left the truck in an economy lot off Winona Avenue and took a shuttle to the airport; the shuttle driver was not excited about X, but Twist said, “We’ll really appreciate it if you just let us ride.” He poked a ten-dollar bill at the driver, and it instantly disappeared.

  Cruz and Cade were waiting when Twist towed Sean’s giant suitcase through the main entrance. “We’re in short-term parking,” Cruz said. “You have any problems?”

  “Pretty routine,” Twist said.

  “Nice scenery between Malibu and the 101,” Shay added.

  “We were freaked,” Cade said. “We thought you guys were in trouble.”

  “Hey, she was with me,” Twist said.

  33

  They headed north in a two-car convoy. Neither Cruz’s used truck nor the Camry they’d bought from Cruz’s connection could be counted on to be completely reliable, and if one of them broke down, the other would be there to help. Cade would drive the Camry, with Twist trying to get some sleep in the back.

  Shay would go with Cruz, because X fit best on the narrow backseat of the truck.

  “Before we leave town, we should check GandyDancer and tell West we’re okay,” Shay said.

  “And tell him that we’re headed to Sacramento, but not exactly where—we want to make sure it’s not a trap, so we’ll want to look around when we get there,” Twist said. “If we meet, it’s on our ground, not his.”

  “If we’re that worried, we should pull the battery on Shay’s phone,” Cade said. “If he’s lying to us, they could track it when he calls.”

  “It’s supposed to be for emergency contacts,” Shay said. “It already saved us once.”

  Cruz: “If we’re on the road, there’s nothing we could do about an emergency, even if he called.”

  They all looked at Shay, who nodded, dug the phone out of her bag, and pulled the battery.

  They made a stop at a Burbank Starbucks, sent the message, and then headed north. X sat up on the backseat, peering past Cruz and Shay through the windshield, watching L.A. thin out and then disappear like fairy dust as they passed Castaic and got into the Grapevine, and then down into the San Joaquin Valley and the endless farmlands. With the highway stretching ahead as straight as a ruler, X lay down and went to sleep.

  Five and a half hours, up the Central Valley, the small towns, and a couple of big ones in the distance, flicking away in the growing darkness. They made one stop, for gas and coffee and the bathrooms. Twist walked around the parking lot, stretching his bad leg, and then they were rolling again.

  During the first hour, there was some conversation between Shay and Cruz about what really happened during the car chase out of Malibu, and they listened to a Los Angeles AM station for news about a chase—there wasn’t any—until they lost the radio signal. After that, they went quiet for a couple of hours, just the drone of wheels on pavement, neither of them uncomfortable in the silence between them.

  “You sleepy?” Shay asked. “I can drive if you want to close your eyes for a while.”

  “Nah, I’m good.”

  “Cruz … can I ask you something?”

  “Sí.”

  “That tattoo by your neck, the one your mother didn’t like—”

  “That’s not the one she didn’t like,” he said.

  “Oh. So you’ve got two?”

  “Two, twelve, seventeen—who’s counting?”

  “Seventeen?”

  He chuckled. “You asking what’s so badass about my tat?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He flipped on the interior lamp and raised up his T-shirt. She could see a five-inch-long cross and blue script on the right side of his rib cage.

  “I can’t make out the words.”

  “It says RIP GABRIEL.”

  “That’s not so bad.”

  “It also says SANGRE POR SANGRE. ‘Blood for blood.’ ”

  “Oh.”

  After a while: “Did you?”

  “No. Thought a lot about it … but no.”

  They went on into the night.

  At eleven o’clock, West’s phone buzzed. He looked at the screen, recognized the number. He clicked it on and said, “Yes.�
� He listened, then said, “I’ll be there.”

  At twelve-thirty, he pulled into the designated Walmart. Though it was late, there were dozens of cars scattered around the lot. As he’d been told to, he parked his black Jeep Rubicon halfway back in the lot, centered on the building, and got out of the truck. He waited a minute, then two, and then his phone rang and a man asked, “Where are you?”

  “Right where Shay said.”

  “Guy’s going to come get you in a minute. He’s driving a white Toyota pickup. He’ll get out. He’ll park so you’re between the pickup and your car.”

  “Don’t run me over.”

  “One minute.”

  A minute later, a white pickup pulled into the parking lot, angled across the blacktop, and swung up next to West. The driver left the engine running, got out, and walked around the truck. A tough-looking Latino kid, who nodded at West and said, “I’m going to pat you down.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Phones and weapons.”

  “I’ve got a pistol on my right hip, and two phones in my jacket pocket,” West said.

  “Put them in your Jeep and lock the door.”

  West did as Cruz told him, and then Cruz patted him down. West said, “You know, if I was bugged, the bug would be about the size of a fingernail.”

  Cruz said, “Doin’ the best we can.”

  “Maybe I can give you lessons when this is over,” West said.

  “I’d take them,” Cruz said. “Get in the truck.”

  They left the Walmart parking lot, took a left on Reed Avenue, crossed I-80, took another left on Stillwater Road, and then took a circuitous route through a series of empty parking lots, stopping under trees a few times, then returned to Stillwater Road, out to Reed, crossed the interstate again, and back to the Walmart parking lot.

  “Let’s walk,” Cruz said.

  “Didn’t see anybody?”

  “Doin’ the best we can,” Cruz said again.

  Inside the store, Cruz got a shopping cart and told West to get one, and they pushed their carts into the grocery section, where they found a short man in a bowler hat, with a cane, looking at fruit juices. West said, “Mr. Twist. Pleased to meet you.”

  “Just Twist,” Twist said. He tipped his head at Cruz, who pushed his cart around a corner and disappeared.

  “I looked you up,” West said. “You’re fairly famous. Is Shay around? Or is this just the first stop?”

  Twist took him in, then nodded, and Shay, from behind West, said, “Hey.”

  West turned, smiled, and said, “There you are. Didn’t trust me, did you?”

  “Still not saying I do.”

  “I can appreciate that,” West said. “I am trustworthy, but it doesn’t make sense to trust me.”

  “Where’s Odin?”

  “There’s a whole story about that—I think I know, but I’m not absolutely sure.”

  “Let’s move over to the produce department,” Twist said.

  “The Latino guy is checking for operators?”

  “Not just the Latino guy,” Twist said. “There are more of us than that. If Singular is here and they take us on, I can promise you national coverage, ’cause this Walmart’s going up in smoke.”

  “Nobody here but us mice,” West said, and they rolled his cart to produce. A tall, long-haired kid pushed a cart past them and said to Twist, “Nobody came in,” and then kept going.

  West looked after him, less amused, and said, “You weren’t bluffing. There are more of you.”

  “There are,” Twist said. “Tell us the Odin story.”

  West told about breaking into the logistics office and copying the hard drive, then analyzing the information on it and pinpointing what he thought might be a secret lab, and probably a prison. “It’s across the river, in Sacramento. Not more than five or six miles from here. It’s isolated, off to the side in a warehouse district. I saw them take a female in—too far away to tell her age—but they had her wearing leg chains.”

  “You don’t know that Odin’s there, though,” Shay said.

  “No, but it makes sense, if they have that kind of … facility. Also, the people who run the place are exactly the kind of people who would have grabbed Odin and held him. It’s a group run by a guy named Thorne, who’s ex-military, maybe ex-CIA.”

  “The idea of going in after Odin … is that just a fantasy?” Twist asked.

  West shook his head. “No. I have an idea of how it might be done. But I’ll tell you, it might involve a gun or two.”

  “We don’t want to kill anybody,” Twist said.

  “Too late, cracker: people are being killed,” West said. “If they’ve been trying to squeeze Odin about these thumb drives—”

  Twist blinked. “Cracker?”

  “I don’t want to hear that Odin’s been hurt,” Shay said.

  “I’m sorry, Shay, but the way people are acting … I think he’s in real danger.”

  “We need to go somewhere to talk. Somewhere better than this,” Twist said. “Someplace with Wi-Fi.”

  “Pick a motel,” West said.

  Twist stared at him again, then said to Shay, “Your call.”

  Shay said to West, “Promise me that this isn’t a trap.”

  West looked into her eyes, put his hand on his heart. “I swear.”

  Shay said to Twist, “Whatever’s closest.”

  They found a place called the Dunrovin, a mom-and-pop motel off the freeway. They got a room with a surprisingly fast Wi-Fi system, and closed the drapes.

  West brought up Google Earth on Cade’s laptop and spotted what he called the prison. “From above, it’s not clear, but this is a ramp,” he said, tapping the screen. “It comes off the parking lot and drops down below ground level. When trucks come and go, nobody on the outside can see what’s being delivered, or taken out, or even that there’s a truck in there. I was there in the middle of the night, and I saw three trucks come and go. Only one of them delivered a prisoner, but all of them opened that door.…”

  “It looks to me like getting in there is impossible,” Shay said. “Down in that hole?”

  “It’s not quite,” West said. “But it’d be risky. If you come at the building from this angle”—he pointed at the far corner of the building, directly opposite the ramp—“you could crawl up this drainage ditch, right to the corner. Even if they have cameras, I doubt they’d see you. Then you crawl down the length of the building, right next to the foundation, and around the corner to the ramp. The trucks I saw pulled down into the ramp, then reversed and backed up to the door. The driver got out and identified himself at the door, then they opened the door and unloaded from the back of the truck using a dolly. If we wait until the door is open and the driver has pushed a load inside, and we drop over the wall—”

  “Ah, I can only think of about a thousand problems with that,” Twist said. “They do see us with cameras. They’ve got motion alarms. The trucks don’t come. We go crashing in and find ourselves inside a secure room, like the entry rooms in real prisons.”

  West said, “I know. Judging from the security at Singular headquarters, I think we’d be all right. That’s a pretty ragged area out there—all kinds of coyotes and street dogs, lots of stuff to set off alarms, so probably minimal motion stuff. I see cameras at the corners, but they’re looking out, they wouldn’t see us. The trucks … I think deliveries must be frequent. But I’m not sure on any of it.”

  “We have no idea of how many guards there might be,” Cade said.

  “I do know that. Thorne probably runs fifteen or twenty people. Not all of them are at this facility—they do other things, like try to raid Hollywood hotels. I think he probably has no more than ten or twelve to guard this place, and he has to cover three shifts, seven days a week. I’d expect to run into no more than two or three guys. Of course, with this kind of deal, it’s possible that some guys bunk out here. We should be gone before they can get their acts together.”

  “Will t
hey have guns?” Cruz asked.

  “Yes,” West said.

  “You got any other ideas?” Twist asked.

  “Only one that might work, but I’m not sure you’d want to hear about it,” West said. “On the other hand, with your action history, maybe you would.”

  “What is it?”

  “Here, back off the Google picture a bit, move it over this way.”

  Cade did that, and West tapped a point on the screen. “Bring it down to here.”

  Cade enlarged the scene, and Twist asked, “What is that?”

  “It’s a gasoline terminal, where tanker trucks fill up. They fill trucks all night, and they go out to the gas stations. So, they come out this gate”—he touched a gate showing near the gas terminal—“where we have this helpless but really good-looking young redheaded girl, limping, clothing torn, desperately flag down the truck. When it stops, I jump out, stick my gun up the guy’s nose, and hijack the truck—and the guy, so he can’t call anyone.

  “We drive it to the Singular building, which is four miles away. We drive right up to the building, drop the filler hose, and start pumping out. These babies will hold ten thousand gallons of gas. We drive it around the building … touch off the gas … and call the cops and the fire department. When they arrive, we run through the rescue services screaming that there are people down in the basement. They knock down the doors, and there we are.”

  “My God, I do like you,” Twist said.

  “Since this ramp is belowground, what happens if the fire gets down there?” Shay asked. “Everybody gets roasted alive?”

  “We’d have to be careful,” West said.

  Twist brushed back his hair with both hands and said, “The frying pan or the fire?”

  “We gotta choose; we gotta move,” West said. “I really don’t think Odin or this woman I saw … I don’t think they’re in a good place.”

  34

  Shay slipped out of the dry drainage ditch, gloves crusted with dirt, one knee bruised by an unseen rock, onto the lawn. She slid through the grass, with X at her shoulder on a short leash, and up to the building’s foundation. West and Twist were already there, lying down, their backs against the wall. Ten seconds later, Cruz came in.