“Yeah. Enough to hit somebody at close range with a shotgun. You had that part pretty much right.”
“All right,” he said. “You can show me later after we get some of this gear set up. I figure our only advantage against professionals is technology, warn us so they can’t sneak up on us.”
“Makes sense.” I had nothing better to offer; it would give T something to do, and I wasn’t planning to be here much longer.
*
The kid worked nonstop. All too often, however, he and I noticed the other looking over a shoulder.
T counted on uninterrupted Wi-Fi to hold his defensive network together. He spent part of the afternoon driving the back roads around Bozeman hacking satellite dish info and identifying three neighbors within a few miles of us who had not secured their signals. Back at the ranch house, T configured our dish so that it would switch randomly across the three accounts, sucking down signals that provided him with undetectable Internet connections. I appreciated his caution in that regard, but still had mixed feelings about him being with us. It was one more complication in a puzzle that was already completely messed up.
I walked the property over and over, searching for a path out in case our access road got blocked. I identified one possible route that would zigzag through the trees and down a gulch to a dirt road. I felt certain we could get out, but I couldn’t be sure the truck would survive the venture.
And deep down, I feared we were just building a trap for ourselves.
Chapter 52
Bait
Three days of dawn to dark work left us limp. Then the waiting began. It was worse than the work.
One night, T announced that he wanted to borrow the truck for the weekend to pick up more materials and visit the girl in Missoula.
“What else do we need?” I said. “We’ve practically got a fortress here. We have enough sensors to count the worms. Let’s just hunker down. And that means staying out of sight.”
“Old man, you may be content to just sit here and wait to get killed, but I don’t intend to go down without a fight,” T said.
“And just what kind of fight do you think three amateurs are going to put up against a pair of professionals?”
“A smart one, Sherlock. That’s what kind. I’m going to make them work for it, and I intend to get my licks in.”
T faced me, face red and fists clenched.
“Stop, you two.”
Amanda looked exhausted. I knew she was not sleeping well. None of us was.
“T, what else do you think we need?” she asked.
“For one thing, backup power for the network. Everything hinges on the network.”
“Don’t you have batteries on those things?” I said.
“Sure, but that only works for a few hours. In a storm, or an attack, the power goes down, and we go blind.”
“Sebastian, let’s at least get a generator,” Amanda said.
“Yeah. Sure. Okay. It’s your money.”
I found Amanda siding with T altogether too frequently. Maybe it was time to put my bug-out plan into effect. I’d talk to her while the kid was away. Once I was gone, Amanda could contact Mike Owens and get his protection. Regardless of whose side he was really on, he wouldn’t harm his wife’s best friend, and that’s what I cared about.
But I would wait for the kid to return. I didn’t want to leave Amanda alone.
“So, you’re picking up a generator and visiting the girl,” I said. “When will you be back?”
“However long it takes to pick up a generator, some cement board and railroad ties,” he said.
“Cement board and railroad ties. What are they for?”
“To make a bunker. These walls hardly keep flies out, much less the kind of bullets a sniper might use.”
“Well, how—?”
“We line one room, our essential living space, with heat resistant concrete board. It won’t stop a bullet, but I’ll bet it absorbs a lot of energy. We back that up with a layer of railroad ties followed by another layer of concrete board.”
“You want to build a bunker inside the house? What if they just set the place on fire? Look, we’re not going to fight it out here. We have to be ready to move out if we think someone has found us,” I said.
The kid sighed.
“We can’t run,” he said.
“Of course, we can. How do you think Amanda and I have gotten this far?”
“And how long has it been? Two weeks? You’ve spent, what, $5,000 or $10,000 so far. How are you going to keep up with that kind of cash flow? And who’s going to get it for you? How long does this last? What if your guy in the Pentagon can’t find these people? Hell, what if he’s one of them?”
T touched a nerve. I worried about Mike Owens, too. For a guy who supposedly has, or had, the backing of higher-ups in the Pentagon, he was making precious little progress finding and capturing these guys. And it was only his word that he had wrapped up three of the six members in the cell. Who really knew how many people were after us? And if they were Navy Seal types, we would be dead the moment they found us.
“So, you say we can’t run. That eliminates any advantage we have. We become sitting ducks. We’re trapped in our own trap,” I said.
The kid’s face lit up.
“No. You don’t get it. They’re the ones who are going to be trapped. We’re the bait.”
*
T went off for the weekend on Friday morning with a warning from me.
“Under no circumstances are you to bring the girl back,” I said.
“Why would I do that?”
“Because you are a horny kid and think you know better than everyone else. I have a very bad feeling about you. You probably think this girl can help somehow. Play with her if you have to—I get that—but leave her where she is.”
He drove off, hauling a truckload of resentment with him.
*
Amanda read my body language like a book. Sarah used to do that, too. Maybe I was just transparent.
“What are you thinking, Sebastian?”
I took her hands and kissed them.
“I think I have to leave as soon as T gets back. And I have to go alone,” I said. “You go back to Denver, get Jan to join you. That will give Mike Owens plenty of reason to protect you, regardless of what he thinks about me. In a couple months, I’ll get word to you that I’m safe.”
She said nothing, but her look spoke volumes. Disappointment. Regret. Fear.
I sorted my belongings, culling everything that was not absolutely essential. A change of clothes. My sleeping bag. Emergency supplies. A couple days’ worth of canned beans and other unappetizing but filling food. Lots of makeup and large bandages to hide the tattoo. The Webley and ammunition. One cell phone whose number I gave to Amanda, just in case.
I planned to leave my camera gear and tablet. I wouldn’t be taking any photographs any time soon, and T still needed my mini-computer to run the motion sensors. He still hadn’t fixed the used computer he’d bought. If I needed the Internet, I’d visit a library.
Amanda gave me an envelope with $10,000 in it.
We didn’t have much to say to one another the rest of the day. Friday night, we shared the bed but more like strangers than lovers.
I’d have to get used to being alone again. Well, almost alone. Empaya Iba would be with me, too.
Chapter 53
Trouble
T pulled up to the ranch house Sunday morning as I was packing my gear into his car. He was towing a flatbed trailer and he had a female passenger.
It was exactly as I had feared.
I erupted.
“T!”
I felt invisible fingers rising within me, stretching out for T. I watched him go stiff behind the steering wheel.
“Sebastian, no. Don’t.”
Amanda raced down the porch steps.
“Let him go, Sebastian. Don’t do this.”
She grabbed my face, red with rage, and twisted it toward th
e sun. I brought my arm up to cover my eyes. The distraction saved T.
“Are you all right, Sebastian?”
I was sitting on the ground leaning against the car. I could smell Amanda next to me.
“Yeah. I can’t see, but it’ll pass. Go check on that idiot kid,” I said.
I heard a commotion at the truck.
“What are you doing?” Amanda said to T.
“I didn’t think he would be that mad.” He coughed. “God. He tried to hurt me.”
“T, you shouldn’t have. You don’t know how hard this is for Sebastian. He can’t always control it. Oh, T.”
He coughed hard.
“This is the right thing, Amanda,” he said and coughed again. “I know it is.”
I turned toward the conversation, sun spots still flashing behind my eyeballs. The girl stood beside pickup, looking like an unexpected Thanksgiving guest.
She addressed Amanda.
“I’m Jenny Bishop. Is everything all right?”
“Hello, Jenny. I’m Amanda.” She looked at T with concern and affection. “T doesn’t always—”
The kid cleared his throat.
“Don’t worry, Amanda,” T croaked. “Everything is going to be fine. Jenny’s going to help. In fact, she’s essential to my plan.”
I got to my feet, blinking.
“Maybe you should explain to all of us just what your plan is,” I yelled. “I’m sure your friend would like to know what you’ve dragged her into.”
“Look, we’ve got the motion sensors up and working. No one can sneak past the trees and take pot shots at us, okay? If they come in the dark, we’ll have lots of lights rigged, maybe wreck their night vision. We build a bunker in the living room. When the sensors go off, we get into the bunker. You call your friend, Mike. He alerts whoever he needs to, and we make a lot of noise until help arrives. Even out here in the West, a lot of gunfire attracts attention.”
I staggered over to the truck.
“And if the warning system fails? They sneak in, toss in some grenades, make sure we’re all dead and get clean away. Did he raise that scenario?”
I tossed my words at the girl like bombs, but she’d drunk the Kool-Aid.
“The warning system won’t fail,” she said. “T and I will make sure of that. And we’ve got a surprise or two, just for backup.”
Amanda took me by the arm and led me toward the trees so I could regain control of myself out of T’s sight.
Sounds from T and the girl drifted our way: Talking, unloading material from the pickup, driving to another spot, more unloading. The sun spots on my eyes faded, and I tromped less and walked more.
“It looks like we are all in this together,” she said.
Then she whispered in my ear, “I will be with you to the end.”
Yes, I thought, the end.
*
Amanda and I ate lunch alone. She offered to clean up, and I didn’t argue. I gathered some old bottles and cans from the barn and set them up against a tree and practiced demolishing them with the Webley from 20 feet away. I hit with every shot. If I survived until our pursuers got that close and they didn’t shoot back, I’d be great. I wasn’t counting on it, however. I suspected we’d never see them coming.
Since Sarah died, I had accommodated myself to a solitary life. The bad spells of anger, regret and remorse, and far too much gin had diminished, but now I recognized the familiar symptoms. I wanted to shoot something bigger than a can, but I had a limited supply of the special cartridges for the Webley.
I wandered into the woods, heading uphill toward the mountains behind the ranch house. I made my own trail, kicking aside fallen branches and stepping over downed trees. It reminded me of my hike near Jackson Lake. Could that have been just days ago? Time seemed to keep its own pace since my first trip to Borneo. It raced forward for weeks and months, then seemed to stand still for days.
Empaya Iba wanted me dead but hadn’t taken away my power to hurt people. That was every bit as worrisome as the guys who were after us.
Like the machete man, I had somehow fallen short of the demon’s wants or needs. What did it need? I—it—we had killed. How many? Two for sure. The muggers. Oh, and Lyle Floyd in Borneo. Three more at a no-name crossroad in New Mexico. I thought at least the special ops admiral, if not General Brant, should be added to the tally, but Mike said otherwise.
I thought there might be others. Why could I not remember? Had taking a life become easy?
I shivered in the summer heat.
I had failed. I had snuffed out lives, strangling, paralyzing, depriving them of oxygen, then the use of their muscles.
How many sacrifices did the spider need?
Empaya Iba belonged to an isolated headhunter society in Borneo. It simply did not have access to that many victims. At the rate people were dying around me, the spider could kill off the entire interior population of the island in just a few years. That didn’t make sense or seem possible.
I wondered what it could be, if it was not about the number of people dead. I thought again of my friends—Johnnie, Chik and Sammy—and how they died. Twice Iba seemed to want my life. Both times, it involved the Webley. I was going to blow my head off.
Blow my head off. My head. I stopped under the weight of sudden awareness. The spider wanted my head.
Chapter 54
Attack
I still felt restless after my walk in the woods, perhaps more so. I returned to the cabin and collected the ax and whetstone Sonny Ardo and I kept under the seat of the truck.
“What are you going to do with that?” Amanda asked.
“Burn off energy doing something useful,” I said. “Split firewood.” “It’s summer, Sebastian. We haven’t needed a fire since we got here. And there’s a stack of firewood beside the house.”
“Well, maybe I’m thinking of burning T at the stake.”
“All right,” she said. “That I believe. Can I do anything?”
“No, I’m fine. Really.”
We touched hands; she went off to see T and Jenny.
I sat on a stump honing the blade to a sharpness that would be useless for splitting logs. In late afternoon, I stopped when I could shave the hair off my arm with the blade.
With the scrape, scrape, scrape of metal against stone, I had revised my plan. I would help build T’s bunker, then slip away, call Mike Owens and trust him to save Amanda.
*
We turned the electrical and computer work over to the women, and in no time, Jenny had the used laptop functioning. T and I hauled and stacked stinking creosote-filled railroad ties into the house until dark. The next day, we went back at it.
Piling one tie upon another seven heavy layers high, we created a bunker four feet tall in the main room of the ranch house. The only entrance faced the rear of the house where the two bedrooms were situated.
In the bedrooms, we lined the back walls with railroad ties as well, making sure there was no way a lucky angle shot could slip through the bunker entrance. If the bad guys attacked at night, which was most likely, this wall should provide cover long enough for us to get out of bed and into the bunker.
Then we screwed the concrete board to both sides of the railroad tie wall. That served to hold the walls in place and would, I hoped, absorb the energy from whatever size bullets the bad guys shot in our direction.
With the sun setting Monday and the last railroad ties and cement board panels in place, I left T and Jenny to clean up the mess. Amanda and I escaped to the shower. Under the spray, I held her tightly and told her I planned to leave in the morning before the others awoke. She asked me to stay one more day. After all we’d been through, neither of us wanted to part again, and I selfishly agreed.
My plan would have worked, even with the one-day delay. But T screwed us. Betrayal was apparently in his blood.
*
The assassins attacked before dawn.
I heard the computer blare. T yelled. It sounded like he was bounding o
ut of bed. An explosion hit the house where T and Jenny slept.
Jenny screamed.
“T. T. Get up!… Sebastian, T is hit. Help me!”
Amanda and I scrambled out of bed and crawled toward the bedroom door and the bunker beyond. The wall at the head of our bed erupted in splinters a second after Amanda hit the floor. We both yelled in pain as slivers of wood jabbed our backs and legs.
“I can’t find T’s phone,” Jenny screamed. “I can’t turn on the lights.”
“Shit,” I said to no one in particular.
“Sebastian, do something,” Jenny cried. “T is hit. He’s not moving.… Oh, God, T, please don’t die.”
Another crash erupted from T and Jenny’s room. It sounded like the bedroom wall was coming apart, but I couldn’t see anything in the darkness. That was another flaw in the plan. It was dark as only the wilderness can be dark on a moonless night. We hadn’t rehearsed crawling around in the dark.
“Get out of there,” I shouted. “You can’t help T if you’re hit, too.”
Only three shots fired, and the place seemed to be coming down around us.
“I’m not leaving him,” Jenny screamed. “Help me.”
I popped my hand above the Alamo line, groped for the living room light switch and flipped it on. Nothing.
“The power is out,” I shouted. “The generator didn’t kick on.”
“It’s only connected to the computer and the outside lights.”
“Is it working?”
“I think so—I hope so—I don’t know.”
Three rounds fired in quick succession exploded from T and Jenny’s room. She screamed, more in pain that fear.
I put my face close to Amanda’s on the floor.
“Sounds like only one guy shooting from the back. The other guy may be sneaking up on us in front. Is your shotgun ready?”
“Yes,” she said. “Sebastian, we have to get T and Jenny.
”Part of the wall in our bedroom blew in behind us.
Amanda screamed.
“Use Iba!”
I sat up with my back against the railroad ties. Firing without aiming, I put two shotgun blasts through the top of the front windows, spraying anyone lurking outside with shards of glass.“I can’t focus. There’s too much—”
The Mark of the Spider: A Black Orchid Chronicle Page 26