“And if the majority end up walking, that buys them an extra ten days,” Vasco said. “Let’s do it.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
It took Monkey and Rod almost three hours to go from the Depot in Rome to the Depot in Naples. The E45/A1 highway was in great disrepair, the asphalt broken and missing in places. The forest had grown up to, and, in some cases through, the road. The men decided that using the main road was worth the risk to save time.
“On the way back, we’ll take some spray paint and mark the bad spots,” Rod told Clay over a midnight cup of coffee. “The first time through, Mozart will have to go slower to watch for the marks, and the bus will be slower than the bikes, anyway, but I’ll bet he can do it in four hours round trip.”
“That’s a good sight better than thirteen,” Clay said. “How’d the bus run?”
“Like a charm,” Rod said. “The seats aren’t too comfortable but the engine sounded good. We added some oil in Rome; it didn’t need much. The shorter, easier drive will help that, too. Maybe buy us a couple more trips if…” He didn’t finish the sentence.
“Samson’ll be back,” Clay said. He stood. “Let me check out the bikes’ oil before you head back.”
When Clay closed the door, Rod glanced at Monkey. “You think something’s happened to Samson out there?”
Monkey shrugged. “Don’t think so, but you never know. Samson’s pretty good at taking care of himself, though. He’s probably alright. About ready?”
“Yep, let’s do it.”
The two men left the office, shoving their helmets on and lowering the visors.
Three nights in a row, Clay waved goodbye to a bus full of children and nine motorcycles holding two people each. Three days in a row, he serviced the bus while Mozart slept in the storage room. He was down to one filter and thirty gallons of oil. Vasco would come in the morning and when he saw the supplies exhausted, he would order a march to begin that night. Neahle would be thrilled.
Clay was under the bus giving everything a once over as he did every day, checking for damage from the rough road. From the warehouse, there was a thud and then the sound of something dropping. He slid out and looked around. Nothing. Frowning, he listened for a moment, then slid back under the vehicle. After tightening some bolts, he heard another thud.
Sliding out, he grabbed his biggest wrench, looking over at the storage room to make sure Mozart hadn’t come out. The door was still closed. Clay walked slowly towards the side door, avoiding the shafts of light cast by the semi-opaque plastic tiles on the roof. In the shadow by the door he saw something on the floor. Nothing moved; there was no sound.
Approaching carefully, Clay hefted the wrench up, ready to strike. He was two feet from the large dark shape when it moved and groaned. A hand reached out from the dark coat sleeve. Pushing against the floor, the figure rolled clumsily onto its back. It was Samson.
“Samson!” Clay said, shoving the wrench in the back pocket of his jeans and rushing over. He went down on his knees next to the large man. “Samson! What happened?”
His eyes fluttered, closed, fluttered, then opened. “I got the parts,” he mumbled. “In my bag.” His eyes closed again.
Quickly, Clay ran his hands over Samson’s head, looking for an injury. He found none, but wasn’t comforted. Something was quite obviously wrong.
“Mozart!” he yelled towards to the back. “Mozart!”
No response. The man drove all night every night with a bus full of people in total darkness. He slept like the dead. Clay looked down at Samson, who was now out cold. Looking around, he saw a large duffel bag just inside the door. He ran to it and unzipped it, finding what he expected: parts for the bus. Pulling it out of the way, he ran towards the back.
Flinging the door to the storage room open, Clay rushed over and shook Mozart. “Mi dispiace,” he said, using his limited and newly acquired Italian. “I’m sorry. I need help. Assistenza.”
Slowly the Italian woke and focused on him. He must have seen something urgent in Clay’s face because he was on his feet in a second. “Che c’e? What is it?”
Gesturing for him to follow, Clay ran back out to the door. Samson hadn’t moved. Taking one arm, Clay tilted his head towards the other. Mozart understood. Together they lifted Samson until his arms were across their shoulders; they dragged him to the storage room and laid him on a mattress.
“Luce! Light!” Clay said. Mozart left the dark, windowless room and returned in short order with a large battery powered lantern. He turned it on and knelt down, helping Clay to remove the overcoat entangling the unconscious man. Both of them gasped as they sat him upright and pulled the coat off of his arms. Samson’s shirt was covered with blood.
“We need a doctor!” Clay said, looking up at Mozart.
“Non c’è nessun medico,” Mozart said. Clay didn’t know the literal translation, but he got “no” and “medico,” which told him all he needed to know.
“We need help, we need someone to help,” Clay said, frantically trying to get the button-down shirt off his friend. Mozart opened a pocket knife and cut the shirt away, then sat staring at the gaping wound in the black man’s abdomen. He tilted him forward in Clay’s arms and examined his back. There was a small bullet hole.
“Egli è là aiutare,” he said, indicating that Clay should lay him down on the mattress.
“What?” Clay said, not understanding, feeling frantic.
“No help. No fix,” Mozart said, shaking his head. He made a gun with his fingers and pulled the trigger. “No fix.”
“No. No, that’s not right. He wasn’t going anywhere dangerous. He said, he said that everywhere he was going, it was okay.” Clay laid Samson gently on the mattress. Blood was trailing down both sides of Samson’s stomach and staining the mattress. Pulling off his own shirt, Clay used it to wipe away the blood. He put a hand on his friend’s forehead. It was cold and clammy.
Samson’s eyes flittered open. “Clay?” he whispered. “Is that you?”
Leaning in, Clay smiled. “Yeah, it’s me. Took you long enough.”
Samson tried to smile but grimaced instead. “I couldn’t find… Most of the places… The parts for trucks, the Firsts…” He coughed and blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. “I went to DC. I had to go… Way out, suburbs. Fairfax. Got everything.” He coughed again, pain spasming his face.
“It’s okay, we’re gonna get some help. You’re gonna be fine,” Clay said, but neither he nor Mozart moved. There was no help to get and nothing anyone could do if they came.
Samson shook his head. “Gang. Right by the portal… I fought ‘em, used my hunting knife. I thought… I thought I got ‘em all, but one… I guess I missed one. Shot me when I was going through to the tunnels. Got here, dragged the bag…” He closed his eyes and his breathing became erratic.
“You did good, man. You did great. You’re a hero.” Tears were streaming down Clay’s face as he clutched his friend’s hand.
Samson’s eyes opened again and he smiled. “Get him,” he said. “Get Darian. Beat those bastards.”
Clay smiled through his tears and nodded. “We’re gonna do that.”
“Be safe. Tell everybody… Tell everybody I’m sorry.” Samson closed his eyes, sighed out one last breath, and was still.
Clay covered his eyes and wept.
When Vasco arrived, he found Clay sitting in the bus in the driver’s seat staring out the windshield, his hands in his lap.
“He didn’t come back?” Vasco asked, sitting in the driver’s seat. “It’s okay. They’re prepared to walk.”
Clay slowly shifted his gaze to the older man. “He came back. If someone can bring me oil, we can make it.” He paused. “Samson’s dead.”
Vasco’s mouth dropped open but no words came out. Finally he managed, “How?
”
“He was shot in the back by some coward in DC.” He wiped tears from his eyes angrily. “He managed to get through the portal, through the tunnels, and all the way back here before he died. He brought the parts. The bus can take everybody now.” He crossed his arms on the steering wheel and dropped his head onto them.
“But… Do you know how far that is? That’s not possible,” Vasco said.
“It may not be possible, but that’s still what he did. He’s in the store room. We’ll have to bury him.”
Vasco got up and left the bus. He returned in ten minutes, pale and angry. “Definitely shot in the back. Did he say what happened?”
Clay lifted his head. “Not much. He was almost dead by the time he got here. He collapsed just inside the door, so Mozart and me, we carried him to the office. We couldn’t tell what was wrong until we got his coat and shirt off… It was awful.”
“Exit wound. He shouldn’t have been able to get here.” Vasco hit the seat in front of him with his fist, furious at the wasted life.
Clay shrugged. “However he got here, he’s a hero. He got all the parts we need and then some.” He sat back and wiped his face with his hand. “Can we take him to Jordan and bury him there, where there’s peace?”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Mozart made eight more trips to Rome, the last one carrying only supplies and three outsiders as guards. Vasco, Abacus, Clay, Riley and Hannah took Samson’s body to Jordan and buried it on a hill overlooking the Sea of Galilee. Hannah transplanted wildflowers to cover the grave. The population of the tunnels mourned Samson at a memorial service under the painting of the bright wave, and honored his bravery by writing the poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling on the wall of the limestone tunnel by the Washington DC portal:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: Hold on;
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
And still Landon didn’t come.
At 11:00 at night, two weeks before the prison was scheduled to move to Rome, Abacus called the largest meeting of rebels that had ever been assembled. They gathered in an old movie theater on Via del Corso in City Center, trickling in over the space of an hour. With the Roman rebel cells, those from Naples, and almost all of the population of the tunnels, there were seven hundred people. Rigoberto acted as translator.
“Thank you all for coming,” Abacus started out. “We know many have traveled far to get to Rome. We won’t keep you long, but we wanted you all to be able to meet since we’re going to be working together, and discuss the raid. We’ll hand out assignments in a minute. There’s not a lot of time for training and each cell has a specific task—most of you will be on defensive lines around the city to protect the infiltration team. We know what the prison looks like on the outside, but not on the inside, so there’s a limit to what we can actually plan for, but we’re going to do our best. We’re also working hard in Paris to get some help with communications, and there’s a possibility we can disrupt the GPS so the Firsts won’t be able to track their slaves, at least for a time.”
There was murmuring in the audience as this was translated. Abacus looked at Vasco and gave a small smile. Nothing like a little pressure. Marty was still searching for a way to access the GPS satellites.
“Okay, so in two weeks, the prison arrives in Rome. As we all know, it’s always put down in Circus Maximus, and it’s well guarded. Obviously your cell leaders have watched it over the years, so we have intel on door, staff, vehicle traffic, guards, that kind of thing. Your leaders will go over your assignments with you—we’ve got 15 rebel cells and all of the outsiders, for a total of 25 individual units. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us and we all know it will be dangerous. I’d like to say we’ll all come out of this alive and unharmed, but honestly, I don’t see how that’s possible. Our best hope is to know our jobs backwards and forwards and go into it knowing that freeing Darian is the only hope for freeing the people of this planet. Whatever the cost to ourselves, if we can achieve that goal, then it will be worth it.”
The room was solemn, but as he looked up at the rows and rows of chairs, he could see energy and focus. From his own people, he saw the excitement of years of hard work coming to fruition. From the rebels, he saw a determination to win back their freedom. They would need both, as well as an extraordinary amount of luck.
“Marty? You in here?” Marissa was running down the hall towards the kitchen. Marty stood up and took a step towards the door. She ran right into him, grinning from ear to ear.
“What?” he said, trying to catch the papers she was waving around over her head.
“We’ve got it!”
“Got what?” he asked, afraid to hope.
“The satellite.”
“Are you serious?” Marty’s grin matched Marissa’s as she handed him the printed pages. He sat down at the table, spread them out and started muttering to himself, frowning over the information. Marissa smiled and left.
“Okay, we know it’s geosynchronous… Stationary over Europe…” He flipped through pages and a wide grin creased his face. “Gotcha!”
Grabbing his cell phone, he checked his watch. Fifteen minutes until his scheduled call. It would be Hannah or Monkey, and he wouldn’t be able to give them a definitive answer quite yet, but he’d have hope to give them, and that was enough for today. Tomorrow, he hoped to be able to control the satellite. Now that would newsworthy.
“What would the slaves do?” Neahle asked. “I mean, we won’t have time to instruct them in any way.”
“Escape, if they want to,” Vasco said. He scrubbed his face and ran a hand through his hair. He’d been working eighteen hour days for weeks and was exhausted. His hair still hadn’t been cut and it was falling over his eyes.
“Won’t they get caught again when the satellite goes back online?” Clay asked.
“We can remove the tracking units,” Abacus said.
“I thought you said that killed people.” Neahle looked around the room at her group. Her brother, Abacus and Vasco, Hannah
and Monkey, Riley. These were the people who were going to infiltrate a maximum security prison and free the most dangerous criminal on the planet.
“It can, but then again, so does being a slave. Our main problem with the trackers up til now is that we haven’t been able to take the people somewhere safe to do the surgery. That would trigger an alarm because of the GPS signal. When a slave leaves somewhere he’s supposed to be, they know immediately. But if the satellite is down long enough for us to get the slaves underground where the GPS won’t work, even if the satellite comes back online, we’ll have time to surgically remove the implants in a safe environment.”
“Maybe Marty can figure out how to permanently disable the satellite,” Clay said.
“That would be great, and we can certainly pray for that, but we can’t count on it. If he can get it off and block their access to it, even for a day, we can accomplish a lot. The Firsts are going to be very busy that day, with the comm center blowing up, the prison being stormed, and the satellite going down. We can only count on that one day,” Abacus said.
“We’ve got a few other things going on, too,” Vasco said. “We’ll be blowing up the breeding facility in Osaka and another one that’s not online yet outside of Istanbul. The other rebel cells are all anxious to do what they can, so we’ve given them free reign to cause a ruckus, as long as everything happens simultaneously worldwide.”
“Nice,” Monkey said.
“We’re likely to lose some people,” Riley said.
“It would be impossible not to, but everyone is aware of the risks. The more distractions around the globe, the better chance we have to get Darian out and to safety. It’s a chance the rebels are willing to take.” Vasco sat back in his chair.
Ixeos: Book One of the Ixeos Trilogy Page 24