Origin - Season One

by James, Nathaniel Dean

  The helicopter banked sharply and dipped its nose as it began to pick up speed. Neither of the pilots looked back or said a word. Eugene sat down on the floor next to the body and began to stroke the remaining arm like a lunatic repeating some senseless motion for reasons only he can understand. When his phone rang he ignored it. A minute later the pilot turned around and pointed at the headset hanging from a hook in the ceiling. Eugene stared at the man with empty eyes for a moment, then took the headset and put it on. As he listened, his eyes cleared. When the pilot switched the headset from radio back to the intercom Eugene reached forward and tapped him on the shoulder. “Turn around and land at the airport in La Tuque!”

  The pilot shook his head and pointed at the fuel gauge. “We don’t have enough fuel.”

  Before the pilot could say anything else Eugene turned and picked up the machine gun. He spun around, raising the steel butt and brought it crashing into the side of the pilot’s head. The helicopter banked sharply and spun a hundred and eighty degrees. Eugene reached out and grabbed the pilot’s seat to avoid falling back into the cabin. The co-pilot, who had been looking at his chart, grabbed the stick and pulled it up sharply, then reached down and dropped the torque just in time to avoid going into a spin. It took him a moment longer to get her level again. When he turned around he was looking down the barrel of a gun.

  “Did you hear what I said?” Eugene asked.

  The co-pilot nodded and reached for the map. He peered at it for a minute and pointed. Eugene looked down and nodded.

  “We’ll never get permission to land,” the co-pilot said, now terrified.

  “I don’t care,” Eugene said. “Just let me out and take off again.”

  The co-pilot glanced at the fuel gauge but said nothing. Much of the instrument panel was covered in blood and there was a growing pool of it spreading around his feet. He consulted the map one more time, then checked something on the instrument panel and sat back, not daring to turn around.

  When they were less than two miles from La Tuque, the airport’s traffic controller warned them in French not to approach. When he got no response he began to talk faster. The co-pilot turned to look at Eugene, who only shook his head. By the time the runway appeared beneath them the controller was shouting. He repeated the message over and over again, switching from French to English each time. “Unidentified chopper, this is La Tuque tower. We are TFR to unauthorized traffic. Abort your approach.”

  Eugene jumped out the moment the wheels touched the ground and the helicopter’s twin turbines roared as the pilot applied maximum torque and rose back into the air. Two sets of headlights were rushing toward them. Eugene lowered the machine gun to the ground, stepped in front of it and put his hands up.

  One of the vehicles was a fire truck, and it slowed to a stop as soon as the helicopter departed. The other was a police car, and it kept coming. They spotted him and stopped ten yards away. Two men got out, their weapons drawn. The one to Eugene’s right was dressed in a police uniform, the other in a dark suit. Eugene saw the earpiece he wore reflected in the soft light coming from inside the car. The policeman said something in French. When Eugene didn’t answer he looked at the other man.

  “Identify yourself,” the man said.

  If there had been any doubt that the man was an FBI agent, the accent dispelled it. Eugene didn’t reply.

  The agent stepped around the door and took a few steps in Eugene’s direction. After a moment of hesitation the policeman joined him. The agent saw the weapon behind Eugene’s feet, but it was too late. Eugene dropped to one knee, picked up the machine gun and rolled to his right as both men opened fire. Their first salvo missed and Eugene put two rounds into the agent’s neck before he could correct his aim. The policeman fired a shot that missed Eugene’s head by an inch. Eugene rolled forward again and came up on his knees, machine gun raised. “Put the gun on the ground and step forward.”

  The cop, looking scared to death, did as he was told.

  There was a black executive jet parked at the end of the runway under the floodlights outside the small terminal building. Eugene pointed to it. “Is that for the Americans?”

  The cop nodded.

  Eugene came forward, keeping the gun pointed at him and beckoned for the cop to get in the car, then walked to the other side and got in the back seat. “When will they be taken to the plane?”

  “In about ten minutes,” the man said in heavily accented English.

  “Will they arrive in an ambulance?”

  The cop nodded again.

  “Turn off the lights and drive to the end of the runway,” Eugene said.

  When they reached the perimeter fence there was a burst of French from the police car’s radio.

  “Tell them there is nobody here, but you’re checking the area to make sure,” Eugene said.

  “Zey are saying zey hear gunshots,” the policeman said.

  “Tell them the American fired at the helicopter. They’ll believe that.”

  The cop picked up the microphone and spoke. There was a brief reply, then the cop said, “Zey believe it.”

  A minute later two sets of blue flashing lights arrived through the main gate and approached the plane. Eugene reached forward, grabbed the cop’s head with both hands and broke his neck.

  He drove toward the plane, keeping his speed down to twenty. When he got closer he saw two more men, clones of the one he had shot, standing near the foldout steps of the plane. They saw the police car, but only gave it a brief glance, more preoccupied with the ambulance. He watched it approach, followed by another police car. All three vehicles stopped only a few feet from each other. The back doors opened and a paramedic stepped out of the ambulance. Eugene waited for another ten seconds, then got out himself.

  He ran to the ambulance and stopped behind it, shielding himself from everyone but the man in the police car. He rounded the corner and kicked the paramedic in the small of the back, sending the man flying forward onto the ground. The officer was half out of his car when Eugene shot him in the head and ran back to the other police car. He stepped around the trunk just in time to see both men outside the plane reach for their guns and run toward the ambulance. He shot them both twice in the back and returned to the ambulance.

  Eugene flung open the back doors, pointed the machine gun at the figure on the gurney and pulled the trigger. He emptied the entire magazine into it, screaming at the top of his lungs. When the gun fell silent he jumped in and pulled off the sheet. There was nothing there but several stacks of folded white bed linen. Bellowing a scream of frustration, he jumped out and looked into the escorting police car. It was empty. He ran to the front of the ambulance and looked in but there was nobody there either, then spotted the paramedic trying to crawl beneath the ambulance. Eugene brought his boot down on the man’s ankle, breaking it in two places.

  “Where are the Americans?” he screamed.

  The paramedic was too busy screaming to respond. Eugene grabbed him by his broken ankle and pulled him back out. He repeated the question several times before he noticed the paramedic had fainted. He looked over at the plane, then at the gate leading out of the airport, deliberated for a moment, then headed toward the plane.

  One of the pilots was stepping out of the cabin door just as Eugene reached the steps. He saw Eugene, saw the machine gun in his hands and ran back inside. Eugene caught up with him just as he reached the cockpit. The co-pilot was busy trying to talk to the frantic air-traffic controller. When he saw Eugene he dropped the microphone.

  “Take off!” Eugene said. Neither man replied. They began turning switches and dials while the panicked voice of the air-traffic controller went on asking questions and demanding answers. The pilot stood up and pointed behind Eugene.

  “We can’t start the engines while the door is open,” he said, sounding both apologetic and scared.

  Eugene stepped aside to let him through. As soon as the pilot came back and sat down, the engines began to spin up.
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  “The tower will alert the air force,” the pilot said.

  “Don’t worry about that,” Eugene said. “Just get this thing in the air.”

  The pilot shut the radio off and the frantic babbling stopped. A moment later the lights on the runway went out. Both pilots stopped what they were doing and looked up.

  “I’m going to kill one of you if this plane doesn’t take off in the next thirty seconds,” Eugene said.

  The pilots looked at each other, then the one who had closed the door put his hand on the throttle levers. They edged forward until the nose was pointing straight down the runway. He pushed the throttles all the way forward and the engines roared as the plane began to roll. Through the window the lines on the runway, illuminated only by the light on the landing gear, ticked past faster and faster until they became a solid white blur. Just as the pilot pulled back on the controls, the front wheels hit something, but only hard enough to send a shudder through the plane before it rose into the air.

  Chapter 45

  La Tuque, Quebec

  Friday 21 July 2006

  2200 EDT

  Amanda sat by the bed watching as the nurse pushed a cannula into Jesse’s left arm and taped it down. Jesse was sitting up and watching the procedure with a distant, bleary-eyed curiosity.

  When the doctor arrived, two uniformed police officers were with him. One of them was carrying the backpack Amanda had left in the ambulance. The doctor said something to the officers and they left. He examined the wound in Jesse’s arm as well as the cuts on his face and his bruised neck. Satisfied, he directed the nurse to dress the arm and tend to the cuts, then left.

  Amanda was on the verge of falling asleep herself when the door opened and a middle-aged man wearing a ceremonial police officer’s uniform stepped inside. He closed the door gently and introduced himself as Captain Dupille, the local chief of police. He handed Amanda a printed sheet of paper with the logo of the US State Department on it. It was a picture of both her and Jesse. She recognized her own as one taken by her mother a few years earlier outside their home. The picture of Jesse looked like it might have come out of the high school yearbook. The captain spoke fairly decent English. He explained that arrangements were being made to fly them home as soon as Jesse could be moved. Amanda was too dumbstruck to say anything. When the doctor returned a minute later, the captain said something to him in French and he nodded.

  “It’s not really a good idea to move him so soon,” the doctor said to Amanda. “But your people seem very determined to get you home. I read about what happened in Vermont in the papers, although it didn’t explain what happened to the two of you.”

  “What happened in Vermont?” Amanda asked, as if she had no idea what he was talking about.

  “You don’t know?”

  She shook her head.

  “Then it’s probably not my place to tell you,” the doctor said.

  “No. Tell me,” Amanda insisted.

  The doctor turned to the captain, who only shrugged.

  “Several people were killed; a terrorist group, drug dealers. It’s been all over the news. And a woman was murdered, too.”

  “And what are they saying about us?” Amanda asked.

  “They say you made a call to the police on Monday night and nobody has seen you since. I have the paper downstairs if you want to read it.”

  Amanda’s face had gone blank.

  “Are you okay?” the doctor asked.

  “I’m fine,” Amanda said. “It’s just coming as a bit of a shock.”

  “Of course.”

  “We just want to go home,” Amanda said and gave him a smile that suggested the conversation was over.

  “The main thing is that you’re okay,” the doctor said. “I’ve told the police you’re free to go, but you’ll need to keep the drip on him until the bag is empty. It’ll take a few hours.”

  With that, both men left the room.

  Amanda turned back to Jesse and saw he had been listening. The vacant look was gone and he was smiling at her.

  “Some getaway, huh?” he said. The words came out a little slurred, but she could see he was lucid.

  “They’re flying us home,” she said. “To Vermont.”

  Jesse shook his head slowly. “Not a good idea.”

  “Why not?”

  “It wasn’t safe there when we left. How do we know anything has changed?”

  Amanda had no response to that. Jesse raised his left hand and stroked her face. She leaned her head forward and closed her eyes.

  “Who do you think we were running from?” he asked. “And doesn’t it strike you as strange that no one here has even asked us where we have been?”

  She opened her eyes and looked at him, frowning. “You think these people are part of it?”

  “I don’t know,” Jesse said. “But if the police were a safe bet, why did we run when we could have just gone to the sheriff’s office?”

  “Then what the hell are we supposed to do?” Amanda said.

  Jesse looked down at the tube running into his arm. “I can’t do anything. But you can.”

  The look on her face was a mixture of shock and anger. She shook her head. “If you think I’m going to leave you here, you’ve lost your mind, Jesse Corbin.”

  “We’re not safe here,” he said. “If they can find us in the middle of nowhere, don’t you think they’ll find us here?”

  She stood up and turned away. When she turned back there were tears in her eyes. “Stop saying that! I don’t want to fucking hear it. I’m not going anywhere and you can’t make me.”

  Before Jesse could say anything else, the police captain returned. He saw Amanda and stopped. “I’ve arrived in a bad moment. Please excuse me. But I’m afraid we must go. Your plane is waiting.”

  Two more officers came into the room behind him. One was pushing a wheelchair, the other still had the backpack.

  They helped Jesse out of the bed and into the chair. One of the officers pulled the IV bag off its hook, and Amanda stepped forward to take it. When they emerged from the building into the cool night air, the captain took one of his officers aside and spoke to him in guarded tones. The man nodded and walked to one of the two police cars parked next to an ambulance just outside the doors. The other officer put the backpack down and went back inside. He returned with a stack of folded sheets and walked to the back of the ambulance. The captain was talking to the paramedic by the driver’s door. They seemed to be having a heated discussion about something. The captain raised his voice and shouted something at the paramedic, who turned around and got in behind the wheel. The officer with the sheets climbed into the back of the ambulance and began stacking them in bundles on the gurney. When he had spread them evenly he took the last one, unfolded it and spread it on top of the rest. Amanda and Jesse watched this bizarre chain of events unfold with puzzled amusement.

  The officer who had done the trick with the sheets jumped out and closed the back doors, then pushed Jesse’s wheelchair past the ambulance to the back door of the other police car. The captain joined them and opened it.

  “We must go,” he said. “I will explain on the way.”

  The two officers helped Jesse into the back of the car and Amanda climbed in next to him. The captain got in on the passenger’s side.

  Once they were on the road, the captain called someone on his cell phone and spoke to them briefly in French. A few minutes later, they passed the local airport and saw what looked like a helicopter hovering above the runway. The captain looked up and said something to the driver. Amanda couldn’t understand the words but he sounded incredulous. She looked out the back window and watched as the helicopter rose into the air, then they rounded a corner and it disappeared from view.

  “This is a precaution,” the captain said, turning back to look at them. “The plane taking you home is at Trois-Rivieres, about two hours down this road. The one waiting for you here is, how do you say, a decoy?”

  – – –<
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  Jesse was asleep when they arrived. A security guard waved the car through the gate and they drove past the small terminal building straight onto the runway. A white executive jet sat at the end of it. As they got closer, they could hear the engines were already turning over.

  A man was standing at the top of the airstair. He wore jeans, a blue denim shirt and a cowboy hat as white, and almost as big, as the plane. He descended the steps, took a cigar from his breast pocket and lit it with a Zippo lighter, turning it in his hand and sucking to get it going. The captain got out and the two men spoke for a moment, then the captain signaled for the driver to get out. The man in the hat stepped aside and let them carry Jesse up the steps. He took the cigar out of his mouth, spat a strand of tobacco onto the ground and winked at Amanda.

  “How do, ma’am?” he asked in a thick Texas drawl.

  “You’re with the State Department?” she asked.

  His eyes widened in mock surprise. “Hell, no!”

  “Then who are you?”

  “My instructions are to say that Maurice sent me. I don’t know no Maurice, but I have it on good authority that he’s the one paying the bill.”

  At the sound of that name Amanda felt a weight lift from her heart. She smiled and moved a step closer. “So what are you? Some kind of mercenary?”

  He laughed and took a long drag on his cigar. “I’ve been called worse, but not by anyone quite as purty as yourself. Come on, time’s a wastin’ and this thing drinks fuel like a burning oil well.”

  He stubbed the cigar out on the heel of his boot and Amanda followed him up the steps.

  “You got a name, Mister?” she asked.

  “Name’s George. But you can just call me Captain.”

  The inside of the plane was lavishly decorated in white and cream. There were several large chairs upholstered in tan leather that Amanda thought looked more comfortable than La-Z-Boys. The police captain and his deputy had helped Jesse into one of them, but the junior man was stuck holding the IV bag. Amanda took it and the police captain shooed him out.