by Bradley West
Whenever he caught up with Rolf Muller and Katrina, they would be equally interested in the USB stick, which they’d need to sell whatever Dark Cure they produced. He’d dangle the prospect of customer access for a share of either the treatments or the cash. Once Muller and Katerina were on board, he’d spring his own surprise.
* * * * *
Travis confirmed that the Silverado’s keys were in the cupholder. Arkar finished zip-tying the teenage girl’s wrists to the right rear passenger’s hand strap. Travis moved Hugh to the front passenger seat and replicated the zip-tie handiwork. Arkar belted both prisoners in place, then bound and anchored their ankles to their seats’ undercarriages.
“Monitor Johnny and let me know if he wakes up,” Travis said to Arkar. “Otherwise, take the wheel and wait for my sign. The exchange could still go bad, but as long as you keep the doors shut and the windows up, they can’t see through the tinted glass. If anyone works free, kill them quietly. If they run for it, shoot them in the kneecaps.”
“Yes, sir,” Arkar replied with a smile. His short frame squirmed from the back to front seats over the center console. Repositioned behind the wheel, he withdrew his foot-long Spec Ops reinterpretation of the Gurkha kukri and cleaned his fingernails as he watched Hugh out of the corner of his eye.
Travis shut the rear door and walked to the Telluride where the solitary prisoner sat. He started the engine and the air conditioning poured out, putting a dent in the building heat.
“Thank God for that!” Red said from under his hood. “Can you take this thing off me? I can barely breathe.”
“Afraid not. Your leader hid a cute high schooler in the back seat to hijack the exchange. That didn’t work out so well for them—”
“You didn’t hurt Melissa, did you?”
“Melissa?”
“Five-foot-four, brown shoulder-length hair, green eyes—”
“Does she know how to use a Beretta twenty-five cal? That’s what she tried to point at me.”
“Oh, yeah. Hugh’s a gun person. Every weekend, the family’s at the club.”
Travis picked up the handset and raised Arkar. “New intel. That girl behind you is Hugh’s daughter. Let him know that if anyone shoots at me, you’ll kill her. Get on channel eight and so Hugh can warn his men not to get cute with Stephanie and Tyson. In return, they’ll get the one POW back. That was the original deal, and I’ll honor it since we now have Johnny. Over.”
“You have to let the girl go,” Hugh protested in the background. “She’s only in high school.”
“You got your daughter into this situation, not me,” Travis said into the walkie-talkie. “I’m not moving until you speak with your people and I hear the ‘all clear.’ Arkar, I’ll monitor the conversation on eight and move on your say-so.”
Less than a minute later, the Telluride headed up the road with an angry, banged-up Travis at the wheel. What kind of man involved children—his own daughter—in a treacherous hostage exchange?
Travis used Hugh’s handset to raise his men. “I’ll stop short of where I see Stephanie and Tyson. When they’re aboard and we’ve turned around, I’ll release your man. He’ll stay where he is until I give you the all-clear. That will come when the Silverado and this vehicle pass the big rig. If the prisoner moves before I signal you, my sniper will execute him. Do you copy?”
“That’s horseshit! That’s not what we agreed! What about Hugh? What—”
“Arkar, put Hugh back on the line. He’ll explain that there’s a price to be paid for leading men, and this time the cost of his double-cross is that he and his daughter are our prisoners. If they want to argue their points, then Dr. Francisco won’t operate on their wounded man. Over.”
Hugh’s voice signaled defeat as Arkar held the handset close to his face. “Do as he says. Let’s at least get Red back safely and Kelvin operated on.”
Five minutes later, the Telluride and Silverado were behind the semi, and helping hands hoisted young Red to his feet, and removed his hood and bonds.
* * * * *
Dr. Tina Francisco and other noncombatants were waiting when Arkar stopped the Silverado next to the hospital ’Bago. Johnny Gratton had regained consciousness and reported double vision but otherwise sounded okay. Tina cleaned and stitched the small scalp wound under Johnny’s dreadlocks and confirmed that his pupils dilated. She then handed him over to Erinn Strub, who had a nursing degree and had volunteered to assist. Erinn loaded Johnny up with painkillers and supplied blue ice and a towel for the considerable knot on the back of his head. She also firmly removed his hand from her ass as she helped him up the steps of the Winnebago. Knowing Johnny as he did, his Marine Corps brother Jaime took that as a sign of pending rapid recovery.
Stephanie confirmed that she and Tyson were unharmed and that no one had tried to extract blood. She reported to Barb and Carla that Dr. Amrat, the pediatrician, had examined Tyson and suggested a more detailed workup given his head’s swelling and overall lethargy. Carla promised that Tina would be over soon to evaluate the little fellow, who was asleep once again.
Travis and Arkar fed the two Vargos water and left them in their restraints, ignoring complaints of numb hands and forearms. Arkar relieved Jaime from sniper duty, took a walkie-talkie, and reconnoitered on foot. Travis checked on the sentries and they confirmed that the route back to California remained blockaded.
Carla walked up to Travis and they glared at one another, neither one wanting to speak first. Finally, after three seconds, they took two quick steps and gave one another warm hugs. Travis grimaced as pain radiated from his wounded parts while Carla’s scabby back suffered too. Neither of them complained: it was a good kind of hurt.
“We need to get everyone together and decide how this caravan’s going to operate,” Carla said.
“Agreed, but now’s not the time or place. We’re parked in the open, and the sun’s up. We have their leader and his daughter—”
“Why are we holding a child prisoner?”
“Because that teenager had a gun ready to shoot me when I went to retrieve Johnny.”
From ten feet away in the Silverado, Hugh Vargo spoke: “That was to make certain you didn’t try anything. Carla told us you were all former Special Forces. I thought I could stop you from trying any funny stuff. It backfired and I’m very sorry.” His voice cracking, the man finished with a plea: “Keep me, but for God’s sake let my little girl go.”
“We have to get under cover somewhere protected where you can set up your lab,” Travis said to Carla. “Until we do that, nothing else happens: no specialist exam for Tyson, no operations by Tina, and no more hostages freed.” He turned his attention to the Silverado. “Melissa, where can we park these RVs and other vehicles under cover? Is there an airport with a high fence surrounding a hangar?”
“Pinenut Airport is close by, but there isn’t a fence and just one hangar full of planes and dead people,” Melissa replied. “Douglas County Fairgrounds is fenced with empty exhibition halls. Our town doesn’t have electricity either, unless you have solar panels.”
“How far away are the fairgrounds?”
“Outside Gardnerville a mile or two down Pine Nut Road. I can show you the way.”
Travis spoke to Hugh. “Here’s the deal. I’ll put you back on the air with your men, and you tell them that we’re headed past, but you don’t mention where. They let us go untouched, and then we’ll arrange the medical exchange as soon as we’re safe. You have a man who needs an operation, and we have a baby who needs a pediatric exam. If that goes well, maybe Carla shows you how to set up the lab equipment and Stephanie donates a little blood. We’ll have to wait and see. In the near term, if the fairgrounds meet our purposes, we’ll release Melissa. You go free only when we leave town for good. Agreed?”
“Yes. Let’s get this over with. My hands and arms are killing me.”
“I’ll tell everyone that we’re moving out,” Carla said.
“I’ll recall Arkar and swing sout
h to pick up our sentries. We roll in five.” A thought struck Travis, and he turned his attention back to the Vargos. “When you send someone to collect Melissa, have him bring two ham radios with at least six sets of spare batteries.”
“Ham radios? Where will I find those?”
“That’s not my problem. Just make certain that they transmit as well as receive, or else sweet Melissa stays under my care.”
* * * * *
Muller savored his small triumph as the last of the high school cafeteria’s ample food stores were crammed into the back of the bikers’ two vans. “I’ll drive one with Katerina,” he said to Norris. “You or someone else takes the other. We’ll head north while your bikers spread out and track down that RV with the Maggio woman. We can pick a series of rendezvous points to meet every night, and when they find them, we’ll pounce in force the next day. For example, tonight I know of a place outside South Tahoe—”
“Shut the fuck up!” Norris interrupted. “We don’t move until we get Covid shots and I collect the hundred thousand you owe. The Souls lost half our brothers to that fucking virus and I want that Dark Cure ASAP. We can ride them down anytime.”
Muller didn’t take kindly to being yelled at, certainly not by this hairy thug. “Is that you talking, Norris, or the fifteen men you got with you? Because if you want to settle this one on one, the hole in my guts might drag things out for five seconds or so.”
“Not on your best day, motherfucker.” Norris turned away in contempt and gave his men the round-up sign. Harley engines coughed to life around them.
Muller’s hand moved toward his handgun, but then he thought to glance over his shoulder. Norris’s man Nails stood silently with the Benelli M4 12-gauge shotgun pointed at his back.
“Rolfie, use your left hand to take out your pistol dead slow. Drop it and kick it to me. That’s it.” Norris bent over and picked up the heirloom firearm. “Jesus, this is right out of The Wild Bunch.”
“What about me, Mike?” Katerina asked.
“What about you?” Norris replied. “You coming or going?”
“I’m going with the lab equipment. That’s how I get rich,” she said with a pout.
“In that case, you’re coming in the black van with me, so say goodbye to Rolfie.”
Katerina looked at Muller with raised eyebrows, a smile, and a shrug. Then she walked with Norris to the black van and drove off. In less than thirty seconds, the McClatchy High School back parking lot was vacant other than Rolf Muller: wounded, on foot and unarmed.
Such was Norris’ contempt that he’d left Muller with twenty-five thousand dollars in a carry-on bag, a burner phone and a laptop with priceless Dark Cure information he couldn’t access because Burns had password-protected it all. No one gets over on Rolf Muller. I might be down, but I’m not out. Far fucking from it.
If Burns was still alive, where would he be? A hospital. Muller adjusted his face mask and started walking, the rage in his guts overpowering the burning pain in his side.
* * * * *
The tent array in the park had too many people to risk walking toward. Besides, Burns didn’t even know if he could make himself understood given his missing teeth, wired jaw and sutured cheeks. In the opposite direction lay a side road lined with red emergency vehicles. Maybe he could find water, a change of clothes and footwear, or perhaps an EMT he could convince to drive him somewhere.
The trodden grass and baked earth felt good on his bare feet in the early morning sun. Burns kept his head down and limped as quickly as his knee allowed. He was almost to the line of boxy red ambulances labeled Berkeley Fire Dept Paramedic Rescue and still no one had challenged him. He realized that they’d left the vehicles overnight and the EMTs hadn’t yet returned. The side street was vacant save for a couple of uniformed cops standing at an intersection fifty yards away. Squeezing between the last two ambulances, Burns stood shielded from the medical tents. With no better plan presenting itself, he tried each ambulance's side and back doors until he reached the first one in the line. The back doors were open and a uniformed paramedic sat on the rear bumper, his closed eyes and maskless face soaking up the morning rays. Burns stopped, unable to think of what he might say. He tried to speak and managed to spew blood, spittle and a little noise.
Jolted from his sunbathing session, the paramedic opened his eyes and took in the ghastly sight. “Jesus, why aren’t you in bed?” he cried. The paramedic pawed for a face mask and the elbow-length latex gloves he’d need at a minimum before attempting to deal with this leaky patient.
Burns tried to take a step closer to better make himself understood. His left knee failed and he tumbled in a heap on the street. The paramedic jumped up, ran to the front of the ambulance, and climbed into the driver’s seat. “This is David Gustin in Unit Fifteen parked on Sather Road,” he shouted into the handset. “I need a hazmat team with a stretcher. There’s an accident victim who collapsed in the street wearing a hospital gown. He’s bleeding from repaired facial wounds and may be Covid-positive. Do you copy, over?”
Unit Fifteen never heard the dispatcher’s reply because a small oxygen bottle swung with heavy force caught him on the back of his head. Burns dropped the canister and emptied Gustin’s pockets, producing a set of keys and a wallet. The just-issued distress call meant that he didn’t have time to swap clothes. It took every ounce of his strength to pull the unconscious man out of the cab and leave him by the curb. He stripped off Gustin’s slip-on Vans and was pleased to discover that they shared the same shoe size.
Burns noted with satisfaction that the ambulance’s tank was almost three-quarters full and there was a user-friendly GPS unit perched on the dashboard. As the dispatcher’s return calls went unanswered, he typed in McClatchy High School’s Oakland address and saw it was only five miles away. There was an open quart bottle of purple Gatorade in the center console with a straw poking out. He’d drank 1986 Chateau Margaux’s that didn’t taste as good.
Burns didn’t know what he might find at the bombed-out high school, but a half-pint of Stephanie Maggio’s blood in the science lab fridge would put a gold star on what was already shaping up to be a decent day.
CHAPTER FIVE
Back From the Grave
Thursday, July 16, 2020: Douglas County, Nevada; Oakland, California
The fairgrounds proved to be a false start, with a low fence and no cover for the RVs. However, the trip proved useful because they passed an abandoned Nevada DOT maintenance complex that on re-inspection fit their requirements down to a razor wire-topped cyclone fence and a place to park their RVs out of sight. The newly requisitioned semi blocked the front gate and sixteen-year-old Yonten stood guard armed with his dad’s M-4. As the generator thrummed in the background, the 3M’s leadership reconvened in the hospital ’Bago. The first argument was already in progress before attendees had taken their seats. “I am not siting my vaccine lab in this unhygienic location,” Carla said. “Tina said she’ll accompany whoever comes to pick up our teen hostage, perform the operation on the wounded man and see if we can repurpose their OR into a lab.”
“We can’t ensure your security as well as protect everyone here if you’re someplace else,” Travis said. “Surely you can disinfect the staff cafeteria and put your lab there? The town’s hospital and clinics will be full of Covid.”
“Rather than speculate, why don’t I inspect what’s available and pick one? Ideally, there’d be two: one where I’ll batch thirty vaccines and the other for the Dark Cure. Or do you want locals inside the maintenance station too?”
“Why not? We can disarm anyone coming in, control numbers and have hostages if things go to shit.”
Stephanie mustered a stronger voice than her haggard appearance suggested. “We won’t survive if we think like that. It’s no one’s fault that this disease killed millions and tore the world apart. We must cooperate to survive. I know we can’t bring everyone we meet to Canada, but Barb can help them grow crops. And Carla’s already agreed to shar
e her know-how. Gardnerville’s only pediatrician is in his office wiring batteries together to power his diagnostics equipment to better evaluate Tyson. These selfless people give me hope. Yet some of us here are arguing about how many guards we can spare for our people. We need fresh thinking, not the way of the gun.”
“You and Tyson have been through more than anyone,” Travis said. “But we wouldn’t have survived the last week without deploying violence against those who wanted to take our property and lives. Even you fought back against a would-be rapist.”
Sal had heard enough. “The fate of the 3M rests on the decisions you take today. We won’t make it to Idaho, much less northern BC, as a house divided against itself. I’m not healthy enough to contribute much, but for what it’s worth, neither approach is without risk. The convoy lowers our collective risk only if we are single-minded: either interactively cooperate or self-isolate, but not a hodgepodge of each.”
“Which do you prefer?” Carla asked.
“I’m cautious and recent events have made me more distrustful. Be certain we can save ourselves before we sign on to save the world. To date our track record is poor. I prefer that we rely on ourselves and avoid strangers. If cornered, we fight; otherwise, live and let live. Once we’re safe, we share what we know.” He rose unsteadily and took a step toward the rear before pausing. “One other thing: everyone in the 3M who has fired a weapon has a vote for either Carla or Travis, even if they’re below eighteen. If you’re old enough to die, you deserve a say. The ballot needs to be a secret too. That’s all I have.” Sal shuffled down the hall and slid shut the bedroom door.