by Greg Rucka
That would be the edge of the perimeter, then. Over the fence, through the lot, across the street, and we'd have broken the ring. All we had to do was manage that without being seen or heard.
Alena edged out of the shadows, checking to the right and the left, as I turned back to the building and took hold of one of the ends of the linked sheets. It came free easily, and I drew it down quickly, pulling it hand over hand. Once it was down I gathered it together and looked for a place to hide it. I didn't see one that wouldn't be discovered immediately upon daylight, so I shoved it into my bag, instead.
Alena stepped back silently, crouching down, motioning for me to join her. I dropped, and for the better part of another minute, neither of us moved, listening and letting our eyes adjust. There was more light than I'd realized at first, and while it made our concealment less effective, it was going to hurt anybody wearing NVG worse. Night-vision can be a terrific tool, but it has to be used in the right environment. In near-total darkness conditions, it's ideal.
In an illuminated urban setting, not so much.
This was why Alena had been so insistent that we know if they were using NVG or not, because it gave us both an idea of their spotting distance, both actual and imagined. Wearing their goggles, the team members would believe they were seeing farther, and seeing more, than they actually were. Given the lighting conditions as a result of the streetlamps, the refraction from all the snow and ice, the signposts for the various services offered this close to the interstate, and the general urban light dome, anyone wearing the goggles was actually seeing far less.
She put her mouth to my ear, so close that I could feel her lips brush my skin. "Patrol car right, under the streetlamp. No motion."
I looked, saw the car she was speaking of. The streetlamp nearby was dropping glare almost precisely on its windshield.
"Left, rooftop, countersniper and spotter," she whispered.
They were harder to spot, but I found them after a moment. About three hundred feet away, set up on the flat roof of a service station. They'd focused on the door that led to our room, and with good reason: As far as the Lynch PD was concerned, it was our only way in or out. Given that the SWAT team had very clearly shifted to a waiting posture, I wasn't surprised they'd missed us. They had to be bored and miserably cold, and if the spotter was wearing NVG, half blind as well without even realizing it.
"On three, to the fence together," she said. "Put me up and over, then follow. Don't stop."
I nodded.
She used her fingers, showing me three fingers, then two, then one.
We ran for the fence, low and light. I was faster, and that let me get into position before her, dropping my bag as I went down on one knee, turning to face her approach. She didn't break stride, just put her right foot into my hands, and I lifted with my arms as much as my hips, heard the fence behind me groan for an instant as she made contact with it, and then her weight was gone. An instant later, I heard her landing on the other side, and it sounded like she'd come down hard, and badly, because she couldn't keep from making a noise.
I looped my arms through the straps of my tiny duffel, pressing it against my chest, then reached for the top of the fence and pulled, swinging my legs to the side, to bring them up and over with me. I wanted to be quick, and I wanted to be quiet, and that meant letting my arms, once again, do most of the work until my legs had the momentum to lead. Once they had cleared the top of the fence, though, I twisted with them, turning and following them over.
My landing, like Alena's, was bad, and I discovered why the second I came down. The crust of snow against this side of the fence was deceptive, and thin, and it concealed a layer of ice as slick as oiled glass. My feet went out from beneath me the moment I came down, and I tried to readjust, and instead landed hard, on my left hip.
The urge to curse was almost overpowering.
Alena offered me her hand, and I used it to get back to my feet, then almost immediately went down again for precisely the same reason I had the first time. She caught me, started to slip, and then I had to catch her. It would have been pure Buster Keaton if it wasn't so damn deadly.
There was a Dumpster off to the back, and even in the winter cold, it stank of spoiled milk and rotting meat. We got into its cover, facing the direction we had come, looking back at the fence. The night maintained its relative silence; nothing in it seemed to spike, nothing in it seemed to indicate that anyone knew we had moved.
To the left, the drive-through lane of the restaurant was staggeringly illuminated. Behind us, the light increased until reaching the shelter of the building itself, where it diminished in its awning. From the rooftop of the hotel, I hadn't been able to see if the restaurant was still actually open, or if the lights it had on were a security precaution. Whichever way we went from here, though, we risked greater exposure.
And there was still the problem of getting across the street and past whoever was almost certainly posted there to contend with.
I checked my watch. According to its luminous hands, it was twenty-three minutes past seven. We'd been outside for all of six minutes.
"We use the drive-through lane," Alena said in my ear.
I needed a second to follow her logic, but then I saw it. The drive-through lane was well lit, true, but it was also blocked from view on each side. On the left was the restaurant itself; to the right was a cinder-block wall bordering that side of the property. If we hurried through it, staying to the restaurant side, we'd have cover at least until we reached the edge of the building.
"You go first," she said.
I shook my head. She was slower, and I wasn't about to risk leaving her behind.
Her eyes narrowed, and she was going to argue with me, but then decided that would be an even greater waste of our time. She showed me the three fingers again, counted them down to one, then went into motion. I followed after her, as close as I dared.
It was very bright in the drive-through lane. Glancing past the giant-sized decals of burgers and two-for-one deals in the windows, I could see the restaurant was empty inside.
The building ended at a children's play structure, encrusted in snow and ice, and looking very much the worse for it as a result. It threw shadows down for our benefit, and we took to them eagerly, hunkering down, now with a view of the street ahead of us. Just as I dropped onto my haunches behind Alena the sound of engine noise reached us, a car approaching, and each of us dropped flat.
A patrol car rolled slowly into view, the driver's floodlight on, splashing light towards the building. I wrapped my arms around Alena's middle, pinning her against the duffel still on my chest, then rolled onto my back, wedging us beneath the last few feet of a slide. She didn't move, and together we watched as the light from the flood flowed in our direction, daylight bright.
Then the light hit the slide, and the shadows concealing us bloomed deeper. I rolled us back the way we'd come as the car continued past.
We waited until the silence returned, the red glow of its taillights marking its passage, and then we sprinted for the street, the edge of the perimeter, and yet another extension to our diminishing freedom.
CHAPTER
NINE
The lipstick was hot pink and called "cotton candy" and Alena applied it quickly, checking herself in the sun visor's mirror. Then she drew herself up in the seat beside me, unfastened the top two buttons of the black-and-red flannel she was wearing, and pulled the shirt taut down her front, tucking it hard into her pants. She settled the cowboy hat atop her head, then gave her reflection a final appraisal before turning to me, still sitting behind the wheel of the Ford pickup truck we'd stolen from the parking lot of a bar some five blocks away from the Outlaw Inn.
When in Rome and all that.
We'd found the lipstick in the glove box, the flannel on the floor, and the hat behind the seat. We'd also found a box of triple-ought shotgun shells and the shotgun it went with, two empty cans of Rock Star energy drink, and a silver hip flask
engraved with a picture of a bucking bronco and the words "Ride 'em, Cowgirl!" The flask had been empty.
"Well?" Alena asked.
"You're going to think less of me for saying this," I said. "But I'd definitely do you."
It didn't earn a smile, just a curt nod, and then she looked out the front window, to the warm lights of the Sweetspring County Airport's flight school. From where we sat in the truck, I could make out a handful of people inside, bathing in the glow of a television screen somewhere out of sight. I knew what they were watching, the same as Alena did. They were watching the same thing the people at the bar where we'd stolen the truck were watching.
Alena and I had to split up. I knew that, and I knew the reason for it, the logic behind it, and I knew both were solid and good. It had been forty-two minutes since we'd managed to sneak out of the hotel and the siege we'd been put under. As far as the world was concerned, we were still trapped in our room, not out and running free. At least, if everything was going according to plan.
But that wouldn't last for long. Maybe another four or five or six hours, if we were exceptionally lucky. Then time would run out, and Bobby Galloway would give way to HRT or a squad of Deltas, and the door would come down, and the people with guns would find our room empty and a hole in the ceiling. The APBs would issue forth like threats of damnation from a Southern Baptist pulpit.
Those APBs would be for a man and a woman, traveling together.
We had to split up.
But I didn't want to. This wasn't going to be like Whitefish, where the cold and the pain had brought me to doubt, because then, doubt had been all it was. This was different. This was each of us traveling alone.
For the first time in over three years, we wouldn't be able to protect each other.
That scared me. Looking at Alena, still staring out the windshield at the flight school, I knew it scared her, too.
"We can find another way," I said.
She shook her head, then shook it again, more vehemently, resolving herself. "We're wasting time. I'll see you in Wilmington tomorrow."
She slipped out of the truck cab, letting a gust of cold in to take her place.
"Be smart," I told her.
"Be smart," she agreed.
Then she slammed the door shut and started for the terminal, and I turned the truck towards the Interstate, and tried not to believe that I would never see her again. Here's what she did:
There were five people in the flight school office, all of them gathered around the television, still watching the live play-by-play of the siege, and all of them past the point of boredom with it. One was a woman, working behind the counter, but the other four were men, the youngest in his early twenties, the oldest perhaps in his mid-fifties. Two were wearing coveralls, clearly maintenance, and so it was the remaining two that Alena focused on even as every eye turned to mark her entrance, and it was the younger of those that she directed her words to, because he would be the most likely to need the opportunity she was about to provide.
"Please," Alena said, and she said it like a local, and not like a woman who was born six thousand miles away. She said it earnestly, and she said it with just enough emotion that everyone could hear it, with the thinness that comes from speaking out of the throat rather than the chest, and that says tears are only a heartbeat away. "Please-are you a pilot?"
"Yes, ma'am," the man said. "Well, almost. Not certified yet. Can I help you?"
"I need to get to Omaha," Alena said, and the tremor in her voice increased, and the tears began to well in her eyes so much that the man looked away, embarrassed for her obvious distress. "I have to get to Omaha tonight, my mamma got hit by a car, I have to get to the hospital to see her. There aren't no flights out of Lynch, I can't get a flight. I asked Sarah, my friend, Sarah, she said I should go to the flight school, she said that if I offered to pay for fuel and the rental and all of that, someone might be able to fly me, someone might need hours and be able to fly me. She says there are always people who need hours and that someone could fly me. Can you fly me?"
"Calm down," the man said. "Just…why don't you sit down, catch your breath."
She snuffled, wiping at her nose with the back of her hand. "Do you need hours? I'll pay for the rental, I will, please. I have to get to Omaha, I have to go tonight."
"Do a good deed, Brian," the woman behind the counter said, her attention already back on the television. "Fly her to Omaha. Get yourself another five hours, at least. Not like you're going to miss anything-they're still waiting for the Feds to show."
"Go on, son, do it," the older man said. "The damsel's in distress."
"Please?" Alena said. "Please, I'm so scared she's going to die. I have to see her, I have to be there for her."
The man, Brian, hesitated for a moment longer, and Alena saw his eyes sweep over her face, and she saw there was no recognition of her in them at all.
"Sure," he said. "I'd be glad to help you, ma'am." They landed in Omaha just past midnight, local time, taxiing into the charter terminal, and just like at the charter terminal in Lynch, there was no security to speak of, only a bored guard at the door to the tarmac whose job it was to keep unauthorized people out. As with all charter terminals, there was no passenger or baggage screening either going or coming. Alena passed the security guard without earning a second glance, caught the first cab she could, and took it straight to the nearest hotel, where she checked in using her half of the St. Louis identity that Sargenti had provided us.
Once in her room, she used her MacBook to purchase a ticket from Omaha to London that required a change of planes at Washington-Dulles. The flight was scheduled to depart at ten past six that morning. She spent the next three and a half hours watching television coverage of what was happening in Lynch, and determined that what was happening was nothing. As predicted, the authorities in Lynch were playing out the siege by the book, and that meant waiting us out through the long, cold night. The Feds would assume command in the morning, and shortly thereafter determine the rooms were empty.
Alena watched until she had to leave for the airport, checking out at twenty past four. She was in her economy-class seat at forty minutes past five. She was still wearing the cowboy hat.
She reached the Wilmingtonian Hotel in Wilmington, North Carolina, shortly after one that afternoon, driving the rental car she had picked up at the airport outside of Washington, D.C. She parked in the lot, entered the lobby, and found that Sargenti had done as she had asked and as she had expected, and that there was a room waiting for herself and her husband.
She also found that the man listed as her husband had yet to check in. Here's what I did:
It took me until just past eleven to reach a truck stop that I liked the looks of, outside of Casper. I parked the pickup at the far end of the lot, out of the lights. In exchange for the flannel shirt, cowboy hat, and lipstick that Alena had taken, I left behind our makeshift bed linen rope and the pistols we'd been carrying, hiding them in one bundle wedged beneath the seat bench. I took a couple of minutes to give the interior a wipe-down before abandoning the pickup.
The drive had been unpleasant, filled with a rare fear, physically intense, that seemed to rise from the groin and race along the spine. I didn't want to lose Alena, and I couldn't help but sense that, somehow, someway, I already had. I kept the radio on the entire drive, bouncing from AM station to AM station in search of news, and even though the situation in Lynch seemed to remain the same, it gave me no comfort.
Once inside the truck stop, I rented myself a shower and a rack, and bought myself a pack of disposable razors and a can of Gillette shaving cream. Under the water, I shaved my head, but left the stubble that had been growing on my face alone. It took me three of the razors and a lot of time, mostly because, on top of everything else, I was afraid of taking a slice out of my scalp.
After I'd finished, I dressed in the last of the clean clothes from my bag, then found one of the multiple banks of pay phones and started calli
ng airlines. Twenty-two minutes later, I was booked on a flight from Casper to Amsterdam, via Minneapolis and then Dulles. I got myself a bite of something that tasted remarkably like wood, then spent a couple minutes going through the offerings in the gift shop, where I purchased a cowboy hat of my own and a new jacket. The jacket was blue denim, with a bald eagle flying against an American flag embroidered brightly on the back.
Then I hit my rented rack and tried to get some sleep, and instead proceeded to have one of the worst nights of my life.
Every noise outside was a threat. Time and again I started awake at the sound of a laugh, or a voice, or a door slamming closed, or a horn sounding at the pumps. My mind wandered, refusing to focus, refusing to surrender to sleep. Over and over again, I found myself wondering what the hell I thought I was doing. Over and over again, I found myself doubting my commitment to the course I'd chosen. Over and over again, I worried about Alena, about her progress and her safety.
And over and over, I would close my eyes, and I would see Natalie Trent, lying on her blanket of leaves. At six that morning I called myself a cab to the airport then wandered through the gift shop again while waiting for it to arrive, trying to get a look at the television there and the latest news. What I saw surprised me. Apparently, there had been no change in the standoff in Lynch.
That was no longer the case by the time I reached the airport, and I was on my way to the security checkpoint when I caught sight of yet another ubiquitous television, this one in a food court. On the screen, men in tactical gear and full body armor were finally storming the hotel. I glanced at my watch, and realized it had been just over twelve hours since I'd hung up on Bobby Galloway for the last time.