Cruz got on his walkie-talkie and hit the transmit button several times, their “panic” call, and saw Harmon straighten up, still not on the porch. Cruz said, “Man from gatehouse coming down driveway. He’ll see Harmon in a minute.”
Harmon turned and faded back into the trees, and a few seconds later, Cruz saw him in the trees, again in a stalking crouch, moving toward the driveway.
The man from the gatehouse was striding along now, focused on the Mercedes; he had a flashlight in one hand. As he was about to move into the open, he suddenly stopped.
—
Harmon said quietly but sharply, “Freeze, asshole, or I will shoot you in the head. Let me see your hands, let me see your hands….”
The man stopped, lifted his hands chest-high, and said, “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot….”
Harmon stepped out of the trees, reached out with his free hand, grabbed the man by the collar, and said, “Walk backward, I’ll pull you along.”
“Who are you?”
“Shut up,” Harmon said. He got the man back in the trees and said, “Sit. Put your legs out in front of you.”
Shay materialized beside them. “Somebody’ll be looking for him.”
“You’re them,” the man said, bug eyes on the teenager.
“Tape him,” Harmon said. “Gotta go quick now.”
Shay started taping him up. When his hands and feet were bound, Harmon patted him down, found a Glock pistol and two spare magazines of 9 mm ammo in a holster at the man’s right side and a key ring on a pull cable.
“This should help,” Harmon said. They’d planned to pound on the door of the building with the barred windows, feigning panic, hoping that somebody inside would simply push open the door to see what was happening. But a key was much better.
Shay finished taping up the prisoner, and they left him lying on the ground, looking like a badly cocooned caterpillar.
Running now—up on the porch of the building with the barred windows, pushing on the front door. Locked. Penlight in his mouth, Harmon knelt, shined it on the lock, ran through the keys, found several that looked right, and began slipping them into the lock, trying them, pulling them out. He hit it on the fourth key.
“You push the door,” he whispered. “I’ll lead.”
Shay nodded. Harmon asked, “Ready?”
Shay nodded again and pushed the door open. Harmon slipped through, and Shay followed. They were in an antechamber with another locked door on the other side.
Harmon muttered, “Shit,” and started running keys again. The lock turned with a different key.
“Ready?”
Shay pushed the door, and Harmon went through—in the next second shouting, “Down. Down. I’ll kill you, man, I’ll kill you….”
Shay followed him through, gun in hand, pointing, like Harmon had shown her. There were two men frozen by the sight of the pistols. Both were tough-looking, muscular. One was sitting at a computer; the other was in an easy chair with a stack of magazines. Shay could see a pistol on the man at the computer; but it was pinned by the arm of his office chair.
The computer guy said, “Hey, Harmon. You won’t shoot me.”
“Gonna shoot you, Jeff. Try not to kill you, but you’re a long ride from a doctor.”
Harmon said to Shay, “These guys will both have more than one gun, so don’t get close enough where they can grab you. Start taping up their feet.”
Shay moved up until she was standing by Jeff’s legs, but Jeff was talking to Harmon: “You shoot me, there’ll be thirty guys here in a minute.”
Shay pulled the knife out of her waistband with her left hand and asked, “How about if I stick you?”
Jeff ignored her. He said, “You got one chance, Harmon. Get—”
He didn’t finish the sentence because Shay stuck him: took the knife and drove it into his thigh, then jerked it back out. Jeff gasped, and dark purple blood bubbled out of his leg. “You bitch,” he groaned.
“Got your attention?” Shay asked. “Next time I stick it in your belly button.”
Harmon was looking at the other man now and said, “Do not move that hand again….”
Shay threw four wraps of tape around Jeff’s feet. Blood had soaked his entire right thigh. Shay backed away and said, “Facedown on the floor. Put your hands behind your back.”
“You—”
“I told you,” she said, and turned the knife in her hand, holding it like a rapier aimed at his stomach, and he flinched away, believing her now.
“On the floor!” she said.
Jeff unfolded onto the floor.
—
When Jeff gave up, the resistance went out of the second man as well.
Three minutes later, they were both taped up, a puddle of blood forming under Jeff’s leg.
Shay walked down the room to a second set of doors and pushed through. Behind them was a hospital ward, smelling of alcohol and floor cleaner, with six prisoners scattered between a dozen army-style beds. They were all lying on their backs, covered with sheets and army blankets. One looked at her—but the other prisoners didn’t move. There was another door on the far side. Following the muzzle of her pistol, Shay pushed through and found a fully equipped operating suite, but no more guards.
“We’re clear!” she called to Harmon. “Tell Cruz.”
Five seconds later, Harmon answered: “He’s on the way.”
There were four men and two women; five of the prisoners were Asian, with one white man. They were all awake, but only three seemed really aware, while the other three continued to stare at nothing. All of them had the same wired-up scalps that Fenfang had had, and all were chained to their beds. Shay took the bolt cutters out of her pack and cut them free, and then the white man said in English, “Don’t hurt me, don’t hurt…”
“Who are you? Who are you?” Shay asked.
“Bob Morris…” He might once have been a heavy man but now was shrunken, with folds of loose skin on the sides of his face, and yellow-and-blue bruises around his eyes. Fresh pink surgical scars were slashed across his scalp.
“Morris? From St. Louis?”
There was a spark in his eye. “Yes. Bob Morris from St. Louis. Don’t hurt me….”
“We’re here to help,” Shay said.
Harmon snapped at her: “Save it. Get the mattresses. We gotta move….”
Harmon picked up one of the Asian men and, cradling him in his arms, carried him to the antechamber. As he was doing that, Shay began pulling mattresses from the beds and carrying them to the front door.
Jeff said, “Harmon, for Christ’s sake…”
“Shut up.”
A moment later, Cruz was there, looking tense. “A light just went on in the bunkhouse.”
“Gotta hurry,” Harmon said. “Somebody’s getting curious.”
When all of the prisoners had been freed and collected in the antechamber, Harmon said to Shay as he pointed at a wastebasket, “Jam the door open and start throwing the mattresses. Cruz and I’ll get the prisoners into the trailer.”
Shay jammed the door, then grabbed two of the mattresses and dragged them to the trailer, parked just outside, and threw them in, one on top of the other: they’d decided to make them two-deep, if possible, to give the prisoners the best possible padding from road vibration.
Harmon was right behind her with one of the prisoners, one of the females, who suddenly stank of urine. Harmon ignored it and kicked the mattresses until they were tight against a sidewall, then laid the prisoner on it. Cruz was already there with the other female prisoner, who was groaning against his chest, and put her on the same stack of mattresses.
Shay got back with two more mattresses and put them down, and Harmon brought Morris out, and Morris said, “Bob Morris, Bob Morris,” and she went back for more mattresses.
Cruz was settling the fourth prisoner. Shay couldn’t fit the last two mattress in the trailer lengthwise, had to put them in sideways, and had just done that when she saw a woman walking
down the driveway, apparently from the gatehouse, and she called quietly, “Woman coming down the driveway.”
Harmon ran back for the last prisoner while Cruz loaded the fifth one, jumped out of the trailer, and ran around to the driver’s seat.
Up the driveway, the woman had stopped, then suddenly began screaming: “Hey! Hey! They’re here, they’re here. Help! Help! Help!”
Harmon loaded in the mumbling man in his arms and said to Shay, “Get my rifle. I’ll stay back here in the trailer.”
As Cruz fired up the truck, Shay got Harmon’s black rifle from the back and ran it to the trailer, then Harmon pulled the gate-style doors shut and said, “Throw the latch, right there, throw the latch.”
Shay threw the external latch and ran back to the passenger side of the truck, jumped in, and said, “Go!”
Up the driveway, the woman was still screaming, and off to her right, Shay could see lights go on in what they thought were the guards’ quarters and, farther away, in the ranch hands’ bunkhouse.
“They’re coming,” she said.
“Woman’s got a gun, got a gun!” Cruz shouted, and Shay looked up the driveway to where the woman had taken a gunner’s stance, both hands on a pistol, pointing it at them. There was a muzzle flash, although Shay didn’t hear any sound and didn’t hear anything hit the truck.
Shay pulled her pistol as Cruz gunned the truck toward the only way out, right toward the woman. Shay stuck her weapon out the window, aimed more or less in the direction of the woman, and pulled the trigger as fast as she could, and the woman turned and ran sideways off the road, fell, scrambled farther off the road. As they went by, Shay fired her last shots well over the woman’s head, and then they were up the driveway, slowing for the turn onto the highway.
Shay had no idea how far down the highway they’d gotten when Cruz, looking into the wing mirror, said, “Headlights turning onto the highway.”
Just as he said it, they heard the sharp crack of Harmon’s rifle from the back. “Keeping them off,” Cruz said.
Shay was on the walkie-talkie to Odin. “We’re coming fast. We’ve got somebody behind us.”
Odin came back: “Car’s started.”
Thirty seconds later, Cruz said, “There’s the bridge. They’re getting closer. With this trailer…can’t go fast.”
Cruz rolled over the bridge and then braked, and Shay jumped out. Odin drove the old Saturn onto the bridge, turning it sideways, blocking the road. Shay could smell the gas pouring out of the five-gallon can onto the backseat. Odin jumped out and, when he was clear, pulled a matchbook from his pocket, lit a single match, used it to set off the others, and, as Shay shouted, “Hurry! Hurry!” and Harmon’s rifle barked in the background, threw the matchbook through the window. The car exploded in flames, and Shay and Odin ran back to the truck. Odin fell just as he got there, and Shay shouted again, “Get up—hurry!”
Odin tried to get up, raised a bloody hand. “I think I’m shot. In the leg.”
Shay grabbed her brother by the wrist and got him standing, heard more gunfire from Harmon in the trailer, and helped Odin hop on one foot until she could push him into the back of the Mercedes.
When he was in, she crawled over him and shouted at Cruz, “Go! Go!”
Cruz pushed the truck as hard as he could while still keeping the trailer on the ground—the highway was not the best. In the back, Shay was freaking out, walking on a thin edge of self-control as she helped Odin pull down his bloody jeans and found his left leg a mass of blood, with more blood seeping out of wounds on both the front and back of his leg.
“Oh my God,” she cried. “No, no, no…”
“How is he?” Cruz shouted. “How bad?”
“Bad, bad—we gotta stop and I gotta trade places with Harmon, he knows about this stuff….”
Odin: “Hurts…but it’s not broken.”
Cruz stopped and Shay hopped out and Harmon shouted, “Why are we stopping? What happened?”
She pulled the latch on the back gate of the trailer and said, “Odin got shot in the leg. You gotta help him. Go help him. I’ll stay back here with these people.”
“Ah, Jesus…Take my rifle. If you use it, make sure you know who you’re shooting at.”
Harmon hopped out, Shay took his place, and Harmon threw the closing latch, and a second later, she heard the car door slam and they started rolling again.
Three of the people on the mattresses were simply slack and silent. Not dead, but blank-eyed and unmoving. The other three were aware of her; one was moaning. Only Morris spoke English, and he was no longer talking.
The ride in the trailer was gritty but not terrible, and the mattresses softened the bumps.
There was no one behind them that she could see, so Shay busied herself with simply keeping the ex-prisoners flat on the mattresses and talking softly and reassuringly, even though they wouldn’t know what she was saying. Given the way they were taken from the barred building, she thought they’d know a rescue was being attempted.
Or she had to hope that they did.
—
Harmon used his brightest flash to look at Odin’s wound. “Okay,” he said, “you’re not going to bleed to death, but you’re going to hurt, and you could get pretty badly infected if it’s not treated. You got some fabric from your jeans in the wound; it has to be cleaned out. We really need to get you to a hospital, but it would be best if we took you all the way through to my friends’ place at First Mesa and then over to the Indian clinic. That could be six hours from now, pulling this trailer, even going straight through.”
“I can make it,” Odin said through gritted teeth. “Can you do anything for the infection problem? I don’t want to lose the leg.”
“Yeah. I can fix you fairly well. Not hospital quality, but pretty well. I can put some pressure bandages on the wounds—the slug went straight through—and give you a couple of antibiotics and some pain tabs in my aid kit. When we get around the corner on the truck route, we’ll stop again and move you into the trailer, where you can stretch out on the mattresses. You’ll sleep most of the way, and we’ll get you to a doc at the Indian clinic.”
“Sounds…okay. But you know how you told me getting shot feels like a snowball with a rock in it?” Odin asked. His face was a dead-white oval in the truck’s overhead light.
“Yeah?”
“What a crock of shit. I’ve been hit with a snowball; this doesn’t feel like a snowball.”
Harmon grinned and said to Cruz from the backseat, “Gonna want to pick up a little more speed—the people in the trailer are comfortable enough.”
In the distance, they could see the nighttime glow of Silver City. Cruz said, “Bypass coming up pretty quick.”
Harmon was digging through his aid kit. “First things first,” he said. “Let’s stop the bleeding.”
—
When they pulled to the side of the road a second time, Shay was worried that something even worse had happened, but Harmon jogged around to the back of the trailer, unlatched the gate, and said, “We’re moving Odin here so he can stretch out.”
“How is he? And where are we?”
“He’ll be okay, but we need to get him to a hospital sooner or later. He’s gonna need some work. We’re getting close to the main highway north. Once we’re on it, we don’t want to stop. Let’s get Odin back here….”
The transfer took only a minute, Harmon and Cruz making a cradle of their arms and gently moving Odin into the trailer. Odin stretched out next to Morris, who looked at him but made no sound.
Harmon said to Shay, “You go on up front with Cruz. The two of you look pretty innocent. God help us.” He laughed and shook his head.
“What?”
“Never mind. Anyway, lock me in,” he said.
Before leaving Odin, Shay knelt beside him and said, “You’ll be okay.”
“Harmon gave me some dope.” Odin gasped then: “It hurts, but not so bad as it did.”
Shay touched the m
an next to Odin. “This is Robert G. Morris from St. Louis. You remember the video we saw, the man with the mind transfer….”
Odin looked at Morris and said, “Oh my God. It’s really him?”
“It is. And you helped save him. Now sleep.”
A minute later, they rolled on into the starlit night, the long highway pointing toward Arizona. Cruz placed a hand on Shay’s leg and said, “I just…I just…”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yeah,” she said softly, and rubbed his hand. “Me neither.”
—
Twist called at one o’clock in the morning and asked, “You still watching the ranch?”
Shay said, “No. We raided the place, grabbed the prisoners, and now we’re running north in Arizona.”
“What!”
“Yeah. We saw a second body hauled out to the burn pit, and we were worried that the FBI might arrest you and then figure out where we were. So we raided the place and we got out okay….”
She gave him the details, and he said, “Harmon’s got some interesting friends. First Mesa, huh? We’ll meet you. If we drive all night, we can be there in the morning.”
“You gotta get Cade to track down Robert G. Morris’s relatives in St. Louis. If we can get them to identify him…it’ll be another nail in Singular’s coffin.”
“We can do that. Tell Odin to hang tough. We’ll see you tomorrow.”
—
Harmon stood in the back, rifle at his side, watching cars coming up behind them. None seemed to pay any attention to the horse trailer—they were common in that part of the country, and most cars had only a single driver.
Odin was asleep, with a heavy dose of painkillers. Robert Morris spoke aloud a few times, mostly gibberish. The others were silent, and eventually all of them were asleep.
Harmon gazed at these ruined people, these violated people, and thought about his work for Singular and everything that happened afterward.
The help he’d given them, Shay and Odin, didn’t make up for what he’d done for Singular. He’d known that something smelled wrong; he’d known that a company working on prosthetics really didn’t need heavy security agents like Sync, or gunmen like Thorne, but he’d turned his face away from that reality.
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