Rampage

by John Sandford

  Another man broke cover, slid into the SUV, and shouted, “I’m the last one!”

  They heard Red ask, “Where’s Ginsburg and Freddy?”

  “They’re running on their own. So’s Butch.”

  “Ah, shit.” Red got into the SUV and took off. At the first chance, he turned a corner and was gone.

  A moment later, Twist called and said, “I’ll pick you up where the SUV was. Thirty seconds.”

  —

  The Jeep was moving fast, but pulled over at the last second. They piled into the back, led by X.

  As Harmon yanked the door shut, Twist said, “Cops everywhere. We’ve gotta get out of here.”

  Shay leaned forward and placed her hands on her brother’s shoulders and murmured, “Fenfang.” She didn’t know what else to say.

  “They shot her. She was running right to them and they killed her,” Odin said bitterly.

  “I’m sorry,” Shay said, and pressed her face into his neck. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  “How did this happen to her?” Odin asked. “She lived in China. She was going to college and was living her life, and she ends up in America, with her head cut open like some worthless lab rat….How did that ever happen?”

  “There’s no making sense of it,” Twist said as he cranked the wheel and took them onto a well-lit boulevard. “Stop trying, all right? You gotta stop trying….”

  “I’ve got her blood on my hands,” Odin said.

  “No, you don’t,” Twist said sharply. “This isn’t your fault.”

  “Oh God,” Shay said. “He does.”

  Odin had spoken literally: he was holding his palms out in front of him, and splotches of dried blood were visible as they passed under the streetlamps. “We’ll stop somewhere so you can clean up,” Shay said.

  Harmon had already set his pistol on the floor and was pulling off his wet jacket. He held it over the seat to Odin and said, “This will work.”

  Odin took it. Then he squeezed some water out of a sleeve, rubbed his hands together, and choked back a sob.

  The Chinese prisoner who’d lost the knowledge of his own name was hiding in a hold when the ship hit the bridge. He’d heard the gunfire and, in the silence following it, mumbled a vaguely remembered Buddhist mantra for the well-being of the two Americans and their dog. He’d been crouching, listening, and the impact sent him sprawling.

  He waited, then crept to the top of the stairway and peeked out. The ship hit the piling again and began scraping along it. He stepped out onto the deck and looked up: he was peering at the bottom of a bridge. He could hear sirens in the distance.

  That, he thought, could only be good. He ran light-footed back down the stairway to the first hold and turned the steel latch on the door. The door popped open, and he found a cluster of prisoners, now silent, staring at him. They looked, he thought, like gulag prisoners in some old 1970s film.

  “We are free,” he said in Mandarin.

  They didn’t understand.

  He repeated himself in the elementary Korean he’d picked up in captivity. Some of them shuffled forward, feet dragging. Others just stood and stared, eyes like owls’; one had his arms extended, shaking with palsy. Two of them began whimpering. Zombies: that’s what their captors had called them, and the Chinese prisoner understood the word. And he agreed, though it applied to him as well….

  —

  Five minutes later, twenty cops were looking down at them from the bridge. The ship was still out of control, but there wasn’t much current, and it turned slowly in the water, repeatedly bumping into the bridge pilings. Fifteen minutes after the first impact, two small coast guard boats roared toward the ship, coming from the inland side of the bridge. A moment later, the Chinese prisoner went to the rail as a coastguardsman called up with a megaphone, “Ship’s captain! Ship’s captain!”

  He shouted, “Nobody here! Nobody here!”

  “We will board you. We will board you!”

  “Yes!”

  A grapple-and-pulley device flew over the rail at the middle of the ship and hooked on. The Chinese prisoner bent over the rail and saw that the pulley rope was attached to a ladder, which was being drawn up the side of the ship. Soon a coastguardsman came over the rail with a gun. He didn’t point it at the freakish group in surgical scrubs now clustered by the rail…but he didn’t point it far from them, either.

  He called, “Who are you? What’s going on?”

  The Chinese prisoner called, “We are…” He groped for a word. Then he shouted, “We are slaves! We are slaves! They cut our heads off! They put wires in our heads!”

  “What?”

  —

  More coastguardsmen swarmed the ship, and two went up to the control deck, restarted the ship’s engines, and carefully edged it away from the bridge to a pier a few hundred yards away, where they dropped the gangway to the pier’s deck. They were met by a group of local police officers, several Border Patrol agents, and more coastguardsmen, along with TV reporters from a half-dozen television stations.

  The word slaves had gone viral on the police and media networks: the Chinese prisoner had chosen exactly the right word to get attention.

  The TV stations were also alerted that another “slave” had been shot to death and was at an area hospital, and newsrooms around the Bay Area were scrambling to get reporters on the scene.

  The first of the various law enforcement officers up the gangway confronted the experimental subjects, who were loosely watched by four armed coastguardsmen. An overweight, sloppily uniformed police captain looked at the men and what he thought were, on second and third take, a couple of women, bronze studs sticking from their scalps, and asked hoarsely, “What happened to you?”

  The Chinese man stepped forward and said, “I only speak the English. We are took from our lives and made to experiment with. They shaved our hair and they drilled holes in our heads and they put wires inside….”

  “Who’s ‘they’?”

  “The North Korean people and the American doctors.”

  The police captain looked at the ranking coast guard officer and said, “I don’t know a lot about your ranks. I was in the army, myself. But you’re, like, a lieutenant?”

  The lieutenant nodded and said, “Yeah.”

  “I’ll tell you what, Lieutenant, this is way, way above our pay grades. We need to get some serious shit down here and we need to get it quick. I’m hearing there’s another one up at the hospital, shot to death. As far as we know, the water could be full of bodies….”

  The lieutenant raised a hand to quiet the captain and asked the Chinese man, “The people who ran the ship, where did they go?”

  He made a diving motion with one hand and said, “They jump.”

  The captain turned his head toward his shoulder radio and said, “Raul, we probably got some runners up onshore. Get some guys out there to drag the area.”

  Back to the coast guard, happy not to lead, he asked: “What do we do next?”

  The lieutenant said, “I think we get these people to a hospital…one with a security ward.”

  The captain said, “Good. That’s good. I’ll get some guys with guns to take them, make sure nothing gets screwed up. And this whole ship is a crime scene. We gotta nail it down.”

  A Border Patrol agent asked, “What about the media?”

  They all looked toward shore, where the media vans were gathered. “Not much we can do about that,” the lieutenant said. “No comment from any of us, a press conference to be announced later.”

  “But how do we get these…subjects…off the ship?” the agent asked. “Without the media climbing all over them?”

  The police captain looked at the mutilated people, who were clearly frightened as they huddled in their tight little group. “You know what? Somebody needs to get dropped in the shit for whatever the hell is going on here. I say we walk them right by the cameras. Screw anybody who has a problem with that.”

  The lieutenant said, “Yes.” And,
“I’ll back you up if there’s any fallout, Captain. I mean, look at them….How did they get those things in their heads?”

  The captain turned and said to the Chinese man, unconsciously speaking in American pidgin, “We take you hospital, okay?”

  “Okay,” the man said. “We need hospital. We all need hospital.”

  “But you’re okay now; you’re safe,” he said.

  They didn’t look safe. They didn’t look happy, or sad, or okay, or safe. They looked like zombies. They looked like something terrible had been done to them. The Chinese prisoner told his fellow prisoners, in his poor Korean, “We go now.”

  The group shuffled toward the gangway, all clinging together. Owl-eyed and blank-eyed, their feet dragging. One of them groaned, then another started.

  A blitzkrieg of video camera lights hit them, and then pretty much everyone…screamed.

  With Twist at the wheel of the Jeep, and Odin, Shay, Harmon, and X crowded inside, they fled west on Highway 4, led by Danny Dill in the Volvo and trailed by Cruz in the Toyota pickup. Cade, calling from Danny’s house in Arcata, fed them directions.

  “We really whacked the hornet’s nest,” Harmon said. “I gotta give you credit, Shay: it’s possible this is gonna drag them down.”

  “Not soon enough,” Shay said, grim-faced. “Fenfang and West, both dead.”

  Harmon hung his head. Marcus West had worked intelligence for him at Singular until learning the truth about the company’s research. The young former soldier had risked everything to help Shay, Twist, Cade, and Cruz free Odin and Fenfang from a secret facility, only to be shot dead by Singular’s head of security, Thorne.

  Twist glanced at Harmon in the rearview mirror and sensed a regret that would plague the man for the rest of his days. Twist said: “We need to decide where we’re going. If we go back to Danny’s, we’ll probably be safe, but it’s not the best place to operate from now that Singular’s hurt. It’d be good if we had access to the media.”

  “Like in L.A.?” Shay said.

  Twist asked Odin: “What do you think?”

  He shrugged, withdrawn. “I don’t care.”

  Harmon said, “Whatever happens in the next few days, Singular still has access to a lot of police assets. Believe me, we hacked into everything you can imagine. If they picked up one of our license plates during the night, they could track us through police license-plate registries all the way back to Arcata. The problem there is, if they sent in a bunch of guys like Jim or Stan—”

  “Who?” Twist asked.

  “Navy SEALs,” Shay said. “Tell you later.”

  “Anyway, they send in people like that, Danny’s place is so isolated that they could take us all out and disappear before we could call for help,” Harmon said.

  “What we need is a fort,” Twist said. “I got a fort.”

  Shay: “The Twist Hotel.”

  “To get us out of there, they’d have to massacre about sixty kids,” Twist said. “They really don’t need that right now. Once we’re there, we’d have five-minute access to the biggest media array in the world. People I know. We can operate.”

  Odin spoke up: “We’ll need to get word to Fenfang’s family.”

  Twist nodded and said, “There’s a Chinese consulate in L.A., I’ve seen it. They can help with that.”

  Harmon asked, “Where would I stay?”

  “We got room,” Twist said.

  Shay said, “I’ll call Cade—see what he thinks.”

  When she got Cade on the phone, he said, “Man, cracked ribs or not, I’d ride a rodeo bronc if it’d carry me back to L.A. Work it out.”

  They stopped to use the restroom and get snacks and discuss the approach. Cruz called a friend and offered a thousand dollars of Twist’s money to check out the Twist Hotel and let them know if it was safe. A half-dozen Sureños from Cruz’s brother’s set would filter through the neighborhood around the hotel, talking to business owners, checking for watchers, either from law enforcement agencies or Singular.

  Danny called Cade and gave him complicated instructions for how to set the alarm systems on his house, along with a long list of things to bring with him. Cade would pack up all their stuff and drive to L.A. in the truck Harmon had left there.

  They were energized. They were going home.

  —

  They arrived at dawn.

  The Twist Hotel had six parking places, three of them in use—almost nobody who lived there could afford a car. Three was just the right number for the refugees from the San Francisco fight. They pulled in one after another, and Twist got out and looked at the old pink stucco building and said, “Ahhh.”

  There was a door to the hotel off the parking lot and Twist had the key, but instead of going in the short way, he led the group around to the front, where he bounded up the stairs and pushed through the front door, the one with the taped-up bullet hole in the glass, walked into the lobby, and shouted: “I’m home!”

  At that time of the morning, there were only a handful of people around, mostly teenagers headed for jobs in the hotel kitchen, but they came running to greet Twist and the others. Then Twist led the way to the front desk and said, “I need rooms for my friends.”

  “Hope you don’t need too many,” said the kid on desk duty. “We only got four empties.”

  “We only need three,” Twist said. He got keys for Harmon, Danny, and Odin and then said to the kid, “I’m calling a general meeting here in the lobby at one. Put up a poster.”

  “I can do that.”

  And to the rest of them: “I’m going up to my studio. Somebody show Harmon and Odin around.”

  “Wait,” the kid said, and came out from behind the desk to hand Harmon, Odin, and Danny a flyer that went to every new guest. On it were the ten Twist Hotel Rules, meant to keep the peace in a building with sixty street kids—everything from “Nothing That Attracts the Cops” to “No Ringtones (vibrate or die).” Harmon rubbed his forehead, reading and rereading rule number one: “No Guns (check knives at front desk).”

  “Man, I gotta keep my piece,” Harmon said.

  Twist snatched the flyer from Harmon’s hands, crumpled it in a ball, and pitched it over his shoulder.

  “Rules apply to anyone under thirty—you’re good,” he said. “But, Miss Shay…your knife, please.”

  Shay took her blade from her waistband and handed it over to Twist, who dropped it in a holding drawer already crowded with knives and various improvised sharp weapons.

  “Anything else?” Twist asked, eager to get up to his room for a shower.

  Harmon said, “Ah…I’m not the only one packing.”

  Twist smote his forehead at the oversight and held out his hand again to Shay. She rolled her eyes and produced the pistol. Twist walked over to Cruz, waited again with open hand, and collected the .45 that came out of his belt.

  Twist turned back to Harmon, handed him the weapons. “Get a gun safe and keep ’em in your room.”

  Harmon nodded, and Twist went on his way.

  Shay said to Harmon, “Narc.”

  —

  Danny had lived in the hotel as a young runaway and knew his way around, so he took Odin up the stairs to their rooms on the second floor. Shay and Cruz took Harmon to his room on the third floor and explained about the showers down the hall.

  “Given the situation, I hate to leave my gun in the room,” Harmon said. “You’re always in the can with your pants around your ankles when the bad guys come through the door.”

  “There are private toilets and shower booths. You’ll be all right,” Cruz said. “Take the gun with you, if you’re worried. But…wrap it in a towel, or something.”

  “Will do,” Harmon said.

  “I’m gonna crash. See you at the meeting,” Shay said.

  Shay shared a room on the fifth floor with a girl named Emily. Cruz was another flight up; he had a single. In the stairwell, Cruz took Shay’s hand and said, “Now that we’re home, it’d be nice to spend some time with
you. In my room. Alone.”

  She kissed him on the angle of his jaw. “If Twist found out, he’d have to kick us out….You know, rule number two.”

  “That ‘No Sex’ thing is mostly…propaganda…for the younger kids.”

  “We’ll talk about it,” Shay said.

  “Talk?”

  “Shhh…” She put a finger across his lips. “I’m exhausted. We’ll talk about breaking the rules tonight.”

  They spent a few minutes sealing the promise, then Shay waved him off. She rattled her keys in the lock and walked through the outer room, which was crammed like a thrift store—Emily supported herself by finding and selling good used furniture and clothing—and into the bedroom, where she found Emily sitting up in bed with a genuine antique Louisville Slugger baseball bat in her hands.

  “It’s you—you made it back,” Emily said. “And you’re all right!”

  “Maybe a little better than that,” Shay said, still feeling Cruz’s touch.

  —

  They all were back downstairs before one, where most of the hotel’s teenage population was waiting. There was a mishmash of styles, from simple wash-faded T-shirts and jeans, to full-on punk with lots of leather and piercings, to dorky fast-food uniforms. All the kids had the windburned look that came from being on the street, and there were a dozen skateboards sitting around.

  Twist showed up right at one o’clock, stood on a table, and twirled his cane, but before he could say a word, a long-haired skater said, “The old dude’s got a gun.”

  Everybody looked at Harmon, and Twist said, “Yeah, he’s our new security guard. Give me any shit and he’ll shoot you.”

  Then Twist caught the kids up on the story as it went so far. To Shay, standing at the back of the crowd with X and Cruz, it hardly sounded real, though she’d lived it.

  Twist was saying, “I checked the Net and the story has gone national. We’re bringing the bastards down. We’ve got more work to do, but instead of hiding, we need to be at the hotel. We don’t think they’ll come for us here again, but we need your help. You’re our security blanket.

  “If strangers show up looking for us, we’ve got to know right away. If they try to push through, slow them down. If they’re cops, don’t fight them, but confuse them. Everybody run, screaming, in every direction, up and down the stairs, pull the fire alarm. Slow them down so we can hide or get out.