by Aaron Pogue
"I still don't understand," Martin said.
"I'm going to talk to Avery. I'm going to pretend to negotiate, try to see what he's up to. Meanwhile, I want you to get that map to Reed. Tell them to move on the bunker, but be careful. It's probably enough for them to just hold the ridge, actually."
"I think you should talk to Reed," Martin said.
"You're right," Katie said, eyes tracing the lines of the map. She was looking to the north, beyond anything she'd considered before, and well outside Timmy's markings. She followed the twisting lines, trying to guess what lay ahead, and nodded to herself. "You're right," she said again, distant, then shook her head. She folded the map quickly and tucked it back into her pocket. "But there's no time."
"Should I put you back in HaRRE?" Martin asked.
"Nope," Katie said quickly. She started heading north, and then stopped herself. "But if you did...I had a question. If you were displaying my double and I started moving—"
"I can handle that," Martin said. "I'm discarding realtime updates altogether."
"Good," she said. She loped into a jog through the woods, north, and prayed she was making the right guesses again. "No. Leave us hidden for now. Pretend we're doing the same thing they are with the SpectreShields. But go ahead and get some more ready, would you? A whole army, really. If we're going to scare them out of that bunker, we're going to need more than three people. Helicopters in from the west. Bring the whole team, and send them straight toward the bunker."
"Well I can just put them right there," Martin said, but Katie shook her head.
"No, you need to buy me some time. If they move too soon...." She stopped, thinking, then shook her head. "I wish I could see them."
"I've tried, Katie. There's not a single video recorder within twenty yards of that bunker. I pulled up source audio and there's something going on, but I can't tell what."
"It's okay." She checked her map again, then pulled it up on her handheld and traced a rough course with the tip of her finger. Not as good as the routing software, but easier than using the paper map. She zoomed in closer on her trail and set it to navigating. A moment later, Avery tried to contact her again, and she nodded. "Thanks, Martin. I'll talk to you again soon." She took a deep breath, tucked her hair behind her ear, and said, "Connect me."
Before he could speak, she decided to start things from a position of power. "What do you want, Avery?"
"I want to know what you think you're playing at," Avery snapped back, cool and insulted. "What do you hope to gain here?"
"I'm going to recover Faye Burke and bring you and your men to justice," Katie said, suave confidence, even as she fought her way through a sprawling blackberry bush and ran the opposite direction. "I'm going to end your small ambitions—"
"Small ambitions?" Avery roared with laughter. "You have no idea! You have no idea what we're capable of."
"Then tell me," she said.
He didn't answer right away. She heard motion on the other end of the line, some sort of commotion, and he hissed directions that she didn't quite grasp. Then he pretended none of it had happened. "I'll tell you what we're capable of," he said, more breathy than she thought he intended. "We're capable of killing Faye Burke."
"That would be a mistake," Katie said, trying not to let him hear the effort in her voice as she picked a path up a rocky slope. And then she stopped. A grin twisted her lips. "Besides," she said. "I thought you let Faye go." She started moving again, more sure than ever. "She's an industrious woman. She's probably long gone—"
"You stupid girl!" Avery barked. "We never let her go. She's...here. Right here, in the bunker. With us."
"Even easier—"
"No!" he screamed, in a fury. "There's nothing easy about it. This bunker is impregnable."
She tutted at him. "Hardly," she said. "Four bolts in the topside door, and four in the control room, but our guys should be able to pick those pretty quick. We have plenty of men coming in."
"Ah," he said. "Well then." He was back in control now, calm and threatening. "If you've seen the control room, perhaps you do have an idea what we're capable of. We have the resources to survive a siege until we can bring in help."
Katie chuckled. "I suspect we've got access to more help than you do."
"You'd be surprised," Avery replied. "And even if you do come in, we have the means to defend ourselves most aggressively."
"You'll be rats in a hole, Avery. We know how to draw you out."
"Of course...." He gave a weary sigh. "There is always our last resort."
She remembered. She knew what he was getting at, but couldn't quite believe it. "You'd blow yourselves up?"
"We have tasted true freedom," Avery said. "Yes. We would gladly die rather than submit ourselves again to the tyranny of Hathor."
"That's a stupid choice," Katie said.
"It's not our choice," he answered. "It's yours. The explosives are already wired. If you breach the outer door before we disable the device, it will destroy the bunker and everyone in it—including Faye Burke and Eddie McSisters. Do you want that on your conscience?"
She checked her handheld, scanning ahead along her path in the HaRRE environment, and found a slope she didn't want to tackle. She took the chance to stop and catch her breath while she looked for an alternate route in the virtual environment, and answered Avery offhand.
"No," she said sincerely. "No, I don't want that." She took a deep breath, let it out. "It sounds like we're at an impasse, then. Nobody wins."
"I'm sure we can find some solution," Avery said. "We're happy to wait right here in our home while you arrange safe transport for us." Katie frowned, ignoring his words. In the background, she'd heard a distant roar. The sound of a gasoline engine growling to life. It was a sound she remembered quite clearly, and one she never would have heard in the depths of the bunker.
"Very well," Katie said, relenting. She started moving again, following a better path on her handheld. "You'll trade us Mrs. Burke for safe passage. But we're not going to let you take the SpectreShields with you."
"You won't have any choice," he snapped, reveling in his power. "You'll do what we say, or the hostages die."
Katie wanted to laugh. On both ends of the line, they were fighting so hard to win a position that neither of them had any interest in at all. She was sure of it. He had to be bluffing every bit as much as she was.
"Of course," she said, "You do realize I'm not authorized to arbitrate a hostage situation? We'll...." She sighed, playacting. "We'll have to bring in negotiators from DC for that. That's all going to take time."
She said it in a tone of apology, and got exactly what she wanted. "Oh, fine!" he said, and she could hear the smile behind his feigned irritation. "In the meantime, I want you and your men to pull back. If even one of you comes within sight of the bunker, someone will die."
"You have my word," Katie said. "We're falling back now."
Then she broke the connection and ran on. She knew he would be doing the same, scrambling on his end to finish whatever he was planning before Katie's reinforcements arrived. She silently hoped Reed and Phillips didn't arrive too soon, but that seemed unlikely.
Then her feet carried her to the top of a small rise, and thirty feet ahead she saw a break in the trees. She checked in HaRRE, but there was nothing. Her face split in a grin, and she started forward more slowly now. She put away her handheld, then squared her shoulders and hefted the shotgun before her. Then she started down the hill, forward.
Ten paces through thinly-spaced poplars, and then she stepped out onto a dirt lane that had been carved through the woods. Narrower than even the logging road she'd come to know, it was just wide enough for a pickup truck—or a Jeep. It wasn't on any map, and the trees on both sides of the road grew close enough to hide it from view overhead.
It followed the flow of the land, though. She had spotted it right away on the topographical map, running due east and west, it would eventually open onto the interstat
e thirty miles north of Bickmore. To the west it writhed with the flow of the land for a couple miles before it suddenly curled sharply to the left, all the way back around, before plunging through a narrow pass and right into the northwest edge of the bunker's little valley.
It was their escape route. It was the other way out of the valley. Katie glanced over her right shoulder, east toward civilization, then turned to her left and started walking, slow and easy, straight toward her tormentors.
14. Rendez-vous
She walked for half an hour in the deep silence of nowhere. That was long enough for her faith to waver, long enough for her to wonder if she'd just abandoned Faye completely—not to mention Reed and Phillips.
She was in contact with them and Martin. All four of them were on a line together, but after the excited flurry of the first few minutes as she relayed everything she knew—or thought she knew—of the situation, she was mostly just listening now. Reed and Phillips had found the ridge, but it had taken a lot of direction from Martin.
Branches popped under her feet from time to time, and the autumn breeze sometimes played a-clatter through the leaves in the trees. Birds and squirrels both chittered, too, but apart from that there wasn't a sound in the world except the voices in her ear.
"Dammit, Katie," Phillips snapped, drawing her from her thoughts. "Where did you say the rifle was?"
"I threw it away," she said patiently. "I wasn't trying to stow it for easy recovery."
She heard him fighting his way through the brush and shook her head. "You knew we were coming," he said, peevish.
She laughed out loud. "I was running for my life." She took a deep breath and felt a warmth in her chest in spite of Phillips's bitterness. She had a team now. She wasn't running, she was stalking. She checked the path on her handheld and saw the curve in the path should be coming into sight any time now.
She bit her lip. "Maybe I'm wrong," she said over Phillips's muffled curses.
"Could be," Reed said, "but you've always shown good instincts."
"I know," she said. Then she smiled. "I mean, thanks."
"Don't mention it."
She shook her head. "I thought I would have seen them by now. Maybe I wasn't fast enough. Maybe they were already gone—"
"Or maybe they were never bluffing at all," Phillips said. "I'm sorry, Katie, but Martin got me a recording of your conversation, and I just don't see it. These guys seem like straightforward crazies to me. Aha! Ow, dammit!'
Her lips twitched. "Watch out for the thorns," she said, and ignored his angry retort. "Reed, just in case, you better start getting people in."
"That's going to be hard to do, Katie." He sounded distracted. She pictured him, stretched out flat at the top of the ridge, watching for any sign of movement down below. It would be a lot easier job once Phillips brought back the rifle scope. She felt a twinge of guilt.
"It's a lot harder to mobilize those kind of forces in real life than it is on Martin's handheld," Reed went on, still distant.
"It's not that easy on my handheld," Martin said.
"Still," Katie said. She heard a sound and stopped short. She tilted her head, listening, then started walking again. "Maybe we should get started."
"I've called for backup," Reed said. "They're on the way. Bringing in the kind of construction crews we'd need to dig this thing out of the ground, though...." She heard him shake his head. "I'm not going to put that into motion until we know more. We should know soon, right?"
Then she heard it again, much clearer now. The distant sound of the Jeep's engine rose to a purr in the forest stillness, but it was coming closer. Katie danced out of the road, ducked behind a tree, then raised the shotgun up in front of her, ready.
"We should know right now," she said.
"What?" Reed and Phillips said at once, and she shook her head.
"They're coming," she said. "They're making a run for it."
"I don't see them," Phillips said.
"I thought you said they would be coming this way," Reed said. He didn't seem quite so confused. She heard a touch of suspicion in his voice.
She shrugged and peeked back around the tree. "It was a possibility," she said. The Jeep was still a way off and moving slowly. She couldn't see inside it yet. "I told you, there were two ways out of the valley."
"And you told us to block the one they'd actually use," Reed said. He sounded resigned.
"I told you to get to the one you actually could," she said. "You wouldn't have made it halfway here by now."
"Katie," Phillips growled, "don't do anything stupid." She didn't answer him. She was busy checking on the Jeep again. It was hauling the horse trailer she'd noticed back at the bunker and struggling to pick up speed. Apparently the trailer wasn't empty anymore. Phillips said, "Tell her, Reed."
Reed didn't say a word. Katie took a deep breath, and gripped the shotgun more tightly. "We ready, Martin?"
She heard Martin mumble his assent even as Phillips said, "Oh, Martin knew about this?"
"Quiet, Phillips," Reed said, soft and serious. "You be careful, Katie."
"Will do, sir." She peeked again, took another calming breath, then burst out of cover. She raised the shotgun to her shoulder. Then she danced sideways out into the very middle of the road and stopped with her legs wide, knees bent, and sighted in on the driver's-side window of the Jeep.
It was an imposing sight, a trained law enforcement officer in a firing stance, and she raised her voice into a bellow of authority as the Jeep came closer. "Stop the vehicle! Now! I will shoot!"
She could see the interior now, Avery in the driver's seat and Ken in the front passenger's. Good. That meant there weren't any more snipers in the woods sneaking up on Reed. She could read Ken's lips, "What the hell!" And there was fear in Avery's eyes as he slammed on the brakes.
She could see into the back, too, where Eddie was crammed into the only corner of the back seat not packed with big cardboard boxes. The Jeep's bed was stacked high with them, too, and she saw they filled the trailer behind it.
"There's no sign of Faye," she said quickly. "They probably left her at the bunker. They weren't bluffing about the explosives."
"But the others?" Reed asked.
Katie nodded. "All three are here. You can move forward."
That was all the time she had. The Jeep slammed to a halt, and both men in the front started climbing down to confront her. Ken slowed just enough to grab his rifle from the dash, and Katie had seen that coming.
She charged forward and met him at the door. She hit it with her left elbow, smashing its edge against Ken's shin. Then she followed through with the butt of the shotgun, slamming it up and into his jaw.
He sprawled backward into his seat. On the other side, Avery finally reacted. He reached for a handgun holstered on his hip. But Katie barked, "Freeze!" She brought the shotgun back down, trained on his heart, from maybe six feet away. He froze.
She said, "Drop it!" But the same tone didn't work this time. He kept his hands away from the gun, but he shook his head slowly.
"You really are stupid," he said. "I should've run your ass over."
"I should've just gunned you down from cover," Katie said with a casual shrug. "Wouldn't look good on my record though."
"What record?" Avery barked a laugh. He waved his hands expansively. "We're all invisible out here, Agent Pratt. There are no records. It's rules of the jungle out here. Survival of the fittest." He looked her up and down. "And I don't think you have it in you."
He was goading her, and she knew why. He meant it for a distraction. She caught Ken's twitch of motion, reaching toward the rifle that had fallen in the floorboard. Without once moving the gun away from Avery she stepped back and slammed the flat of her foot against the still-open door. It crushed his legs again and he curled up into a ball on the seat, moaning.
She met Avery's eyes. "You're wrong," she said. "You were always wrong. My team is the best." Then she half-turned her head as if giving an order
and said, "Go on. Show him."
Nothing happened. Avery arched an eyebrow at her, and she nodded toward his pocket. "Check your handheld," she said.
She wanted to check hers, to make sure it had worked, but that would have spoiled the effect. So she waited while he measured her for a moment, then moved a hand cautiously down to retrieve the handheld.
That tied up his firing hand, too, so she took the opportunity to rip the Jeep door open and drag the moaning Ken out into the road. She saw Avery's eyes widen in alarm, and she knew Martin had done his thing. That gave her enough confidence to lower the shotgun while she retrieved the rifle, tossed it away behind her, then brought the shotgun back to bear on Avery.
He hadn't moved. He raised his eyes to hers in terror.
"How in the hell—"
"We're Ghost Targets," she said again, like she was explaining to a child. "We are the best there is." Then she jerked her head. "Over here."
Avery came around the car, and as he moved she saw his eyes darting among the trees. Ken noticed it too, when he finally stopped moaning. He pushed himself up to his knees, then gave a great grunt as he stood upright and glared at Katie with open hostility.
"You're lucky you're not dead," she said in answer. She glanced over at Avery, and he looked convinced. He kept looking down at his handheld then up to stare into the shadows among the trees, then back again. He looked green.
"Hey!" she snapped to get his attention, taking control of the situation. She nodded to the gun still on his belt. "Drop that."
He met her eyes wordlessly for a moment, then nodded once and eased the gun from its holster. Eyes wide, he stared frantically out among the trees while he removed the gun with exaggerated care and flung it to land right at Katie's feet. She began to wonder if maybe Martin had overdone it.
Ken reinforced the thought when he stared at Avery's face, incredulous. "What's gotten into you?" he hissed, easily loud enough for Katie to hear. "She's just a girl!"